National Post whitewashes a Nazi slogan to defend Chrystia Freeland
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Summary
The legacy media has finally acknowledged that Canada s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland held an extremist banner at a pro-Ukrainian rally last weekend. But rather than seek to hold her accountable for holding the banner, they sought to hold True North accountable for reporting on it.
Transcript
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The legacy media has finally acknowledged that Canada's Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland
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held an extremist banner at a Ukrainian rally last weekend. But rather than seeking to hold
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Chrystia Freeland accountable for holding the banner, they seek to hold True North
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accountable for reporting on it. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
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Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. So as you recall earlier this week,
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True North broke the story that Chrystia Freeland was at a Ukrainian rally. She was photographed
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holding this red and black banner. The banner represents the Bandera movement, a far-right
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extremist Nazi movement in Ukraine. It's named after Stefan Bandera, who wasn't just a Nazi
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collaborator. He was a Nazi. He led this militant far-right group, a nationalist group. They worked
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with the Nazis. He had his own hand in carrying out Adolf Hitler's Holocaust. He was responsible
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for killing upwards of 100,000 Jews and Poles in Ukraine during the Second World War. As despicable
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as you can possibly imagine. And yet here is our finance minister, Deputy Prime Minister,
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not just holding the banner. She posted this photo. It was posted on her own social media,
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on Twitter and Instagram on Sunday afternoon. By Monday morning, her or her staff deleted that photo
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and found a more sanitized version of the same photo where she was not holding this controversial
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flag. So True North reported on it. I suspect at the time, I speculated that I didn't think that
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the legacy media would pick it up, right? When a conservative goes to a trucker rally and some
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provocateur shows up on a different side of the rally, there for 10 minutes with a Nazi flag,
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every single conservative and every single trucker at that rally is smeared in the media
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as a Nazi. Justin Trudeau said in the House of Commons that the conservatives were standing with
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those who wave swastikas, a complete fabrication, completely untrue, a smear and a lie. But the media
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happily repeated it. And on the contrary, when we have a liberal politician holding up a banner
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that to people who understand, to people who know what this means, it can represent and signify
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an allegiance to a Nazi leader during the Second World War, same era who worked with Adolf Hitler,
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who murdered scores and scores of Jews in Eastern Europe. It's unconscionable. I didn't think the
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media would pick it up. So I have some good news today to report, which is that yes, the media
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has picked up the story. Unfortunately for everybody, the way that the media spin this
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story, it is absolutely unbelievable. So I'm going to go through this piece in the National Post
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pretty carefully and explain absolutely everything wrong with it. So the National Post, Tristan Hopper,
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just to say it straight off the bat, many conservatives still consider the National Post to be a reputable
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newspaper. They still believe that it is the conservative alternative to say the Globe and Mail,
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CBC or the Toronto Star. Well, this episode of the Candace Malcolm Show, this article in the National Post
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tell us, sadly, that that is just no longer the case. The National Post is no better than the Toronto Star
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or the Globe and Mail. They're shills for the liberals. And this piece demonstrates why. Okay, so here it is,
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National Post. Did Chrystia Freeland pose with extremist symbols? Or is it Russian disinformation?
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The headline asks. And then the sub headline here sort of answers that question. It says,
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a classic KGB disinformation smear is accusing Ukrainians and Ukrainian Canadians of being
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far-right extremists or fascists or Nazis, Chrystia Freeland's press secretary says. So they ask a
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question in the headline, and then there's Chrystia Freeland's press secretary in the sub headline,
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answering the question, saying, no, it's not extremist. It's just Russian disinformation.
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And anyone who's sharing this story must be sharing Russian disinformation. So like I said,
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I'm going to read through this piece pretty closely. So here we go. Canadian Deputy Prime
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Minister Chrystia Freeland is being assailed with online accusations that she posed with far-right
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symbols at a pro-Ukraine rally in Toronto. But the symbols may not be as far-right as critics claim.
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And Freeland's office is saying the whole thing reeks of Russian-sponsored disinformation. So again,
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if you're reporting on this, if you're talking about this, it must be Russian-sponsored
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disinformation. Okay, let's keep reading. On Sunday, Freeland joined several thousand
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demonstrators at a pro-Ukraine rally in downtown Toronto. In a photograph her office subsequently
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posted on Twitter, Freeland can be seen holding up a red and black scarf bearing the slogan Slava
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Ukraini or Glory to Ukraine. Observers were quick to note that red and black were the official colors
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of the Ukrainian insurgent army, a nationalist partisan group active during the Second World War.
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Although the group fought against both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, a faction led
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by Stefan Bandera would ally itself with German forces and became an active participant in the
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Holocaust, directly killing thousands of Jews and an estimated 100,000 Poles. It's why red and
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black flags remain a favored symbol of the Ukrainian far-right. The colors are a prominent feature of an
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annual torch-lit march through Kiev held by far-right nationalists to honor Bandera. A widely circulated
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photo by the Canadian right-wing site, True North put it, Freeland posed with a pro-Nazi banner.
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So you can see here that Tristan Hopper uses similar facts to what we had in our True North piece
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to verify and validate that Chrystia Freeland was in fact holding a banner that most people would
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associate, most people in the Ukrainian community would associate with Bandera, who was a Nazi, who
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participated in the Holocaust, and that those colors, that banner, are used during an annual torch-lit
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march, a neo-Nazi march through Kiev held by far-right nationalists. So he verifies our report.
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He verifies our report. He smears us as being a right-wing site in the context of a story talking
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about the far-right being Nazis. So he kind of puts us one step away from Nazis. He's saying far-right
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is Nazis. This is a right-wing site, not far-right, but right-wing. So right next to Nazis. The whole thing
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is a smear. And then he goes on to say, People's Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier put out a tweet
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Tuesday accusing Canada of having a Nazi as a prime minister. And he showed the same photo and
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he later tweeted our piece. Now, I just want to point out the fact that I myself was critical
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of Maxime Bernier for using this language. I put out this tweet. I said, We now have two federal
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leaders who smeared the other side as Nazis. Our political discourse in Canada is reaching parody
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levels. And there's this funny meme, Everyone I don't like is Hitler, an emotional child's guide to
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political discussion. And I quote tweeted Maxime Bernier there because he claims that Chrystia
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Freeland is a Nazi. And to clarify, I wrote another one. I said, My report yesterday illustrates that
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Freeland is callous and reckless with her support of sketchy groups in Ukraine. She's playing into
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Russian propaganda. And she's a blatant hypocrite. Not that she's a literal Nazi. We shouldn't stoop
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to their level of rhetoric. Yes, Justin Trudeau and the liberals love to smear all of their opponents
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and everyone they disagree with. As Nazis, I don't think their opponents should stoop to that level.
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I don't think that people like Maxime Bernier or the head of the conservative party should just
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turn around and accuse them back of being Nazis. I don't think that's productive. I don't think
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that's helpful. And yet the way that Kristen Hopper frames it by putting my piece out saying that I
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accused her of being pro Nazi, and then Maxime Bernier accused her of being a Nazi kind of puts
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it as if we had the same opinion, even though I distinctly condemned Maxime Bernier for making that
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accusation. But don't expect that level of accuracy or nuance from this report from a lazy
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journalist over at the National Post. Okay, so to keep going here, Tristan Hopper writes,
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soon after its posting, the original photo was deleted and replaced with an image of Freeland
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without the scarf. So again, he acknowledges that Freeland deleted the picture, which to a point I also
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made on Twitter, this is a tacit acknowledgement that she shouldn't have been taking pictures with
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that red and black scarf. The red and black scarf represents a far right movement. It represents
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an actual Nazi. And Chrystia Freeland is at fault for posting that original picture and for being in
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the audience and holding it in the first place. And just I want to interject. Some people say,
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oh, she didn't know what she was doing. She's naive. Give me a break. Chrystia Freeland is one of the
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most knowledgeable people about Ukraine, Ukrainian politics. She spent much of her life, much of her
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career in Ukraine. She's a Ukrainian speaker, a Russian speaker. She's incredibly intelligent. She went to
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Harvard and Oxford and was a Rhodes Scholar. She knows exactly what she's doing. She's written
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multiple books on the subject. Don't tell me that she's naive and she didn't know what she was doing.
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She knew exactly what she was doing. Okay, let's get back to Tristan Hopper and the National Post
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and their pro-liberal spin. It says, Freeland's office confirmed that they removed the original
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photo after it began to be circulated by accounts critical of the scarf's presence. A photo was taken,
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tweeted, and later replaced when it was clear some accounts were distorting the intent of the rally
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and the photo, read a statement by Freeland's press secretary, Adrienne Vupcha. She added that the
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origins of the scarf were unknown. Okay, so fair enough. Include a statement from the deputy prime
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minister and her spokesperson. The piece then moves on to quote a director of the Canadian Institute
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for Ukrainian Studies. So this individual, Natalia Kachenko-Friesen, told the National Post that the
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red and black symbology for Ukraine long predates its adoption by extremist groups. She noted that the
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red and black banners can be seen in paintings dating back to the 17th century. Okay, now this part's
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truly, truly unbelievable. This is one of the most unbelievable things I've ever seen, this paragraph
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right here. So the same scholar, the Ukrainian-Canadian scholar, her name's Kachenko-Friesen,
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she defends the concept of blood and soil. So she says, the black represents Ukrainian soil,
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while the red symbolizes blood. So blood and soil. Although Kachenko-Friesen, a scholar of Ukrainian
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folklore, said it's not traditionally understood as blood in any violent context. Okay, so they're allowed
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to say blood and soil because it's not blood in a violent context. She says, blood is life and blossom
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and not as blood loss in battle, she said. Red and black remain common color scheme in traditional
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Ukrainian embroidery. So let's just stop and acknowledge how absolutely incredible this is.
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Tristan Hopper, the National Post, defending the concept of blood and soil. Blood and soil,
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you can't make this stuff up. Remember when those loser white nationalists were marching with their dumb
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little tiki torches in Charlottesville, Virginia, back in 2017. Do you remember their creepy chants?
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Do you remember what they were saying? They were saying, blood and soil, blood and soil. And back
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in 2017, we were uniformly told by the legacy media that that was a Nazi chant. Here's what that looked
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like. Now at the time in 2017, this is how the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-wing group,
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this is how they describe that chant, blood and soil. They write this, blood and soil, possibly the
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most disturbing of all chants heard in Charlottesville. This is the English rendition of Nazi Germany's most
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fervent chant, Blut and Boden, originally devised as a 19th century German national slogan,
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popularized by Nazi ideology. The phrase is intended to invoke patriotic identification
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with native national identity. And based on the foundation of virulent antisemitism and racism,
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it later became a key component of Adolf Hitler's program seeking to expand territory occupied by the
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Germans. That was a major factor in the Holocaust. The slogan has been adopted by the alt-right,
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particularly its openly neo-Nazi element to emphasize its own nativist and illiminalist
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agenda. So blood and soil, we all agree, is a creepy Nazi slogan. Very, very bad in the context
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of people using it in North America. And yet, however, here's the National Post twisting itself
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into a pretzel to say it's okay when Chrystia Freeland is holding up the same banner, the same National
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Post, by the way, the same newspaper, National Post back in 2018, had an article condemning
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the use of this phrase, blood and soil. Here is this article, how the violent Charlottesville
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rally unmasked key players in Montreal's alt-right. On August 11th, the Montrealers joined a torch
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march through Charlottesville, blending into the crowd that chanted blood and soil. So it was
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despicable for its use in North America a few years ago. But when Chrystia Freeland participates in it
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in 2022. Well, it's no big deal, because really, the red doesn't represent blood. It represents
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flowers. Okay, National Post, what a joke, willing to defend blood and soil to protect their gal.
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Chrystia Freeland, I've never seen anything like this before. Okay, it continues, they find more
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experts to accuse groups like True North of spreading KGB propaganda. So I'll continue to read.
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It says, Marcus Kolga is a Macdonald-Laurier fellow who runs Disinfo Watch, a website tracking
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foreign disinformation narratives. He was also at the Sunday rally, not far away from where the
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scarf was taken. Kolga told the National Post that anyone touting the photograph as evidence of any
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Nazi sympathies among the Canadian federal government are unwittingly participating in an active Russian
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information operation. One of the narratives that they, the Russian Federation, use is to smear critics
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as being fascists or Nazis, he said, adding that it's something that Soviet sources were directing
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at Ukrainian Canadian community as far back as the 1970s. So again, Chrystia Freeland would know all
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this, right? She would know that this flag is used as propaganda by the Russians, that she shouldn't
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be holding it, that as far back as the 1970s, they use this line of thinking, and they use this line of
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propaganda to smear Ukrainians as being far right Nazis. And yet, it isn't Chrystia Freeland's fault for
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being at the rally, holding the flag, taking a picture and posting it. No, no, no. Anybody using
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this as evidence is unwilling. Anyone sharing this information, anybody posting this, anybody writing
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about it, groups like True North, who Chrystia Freeland described as being right wing. We are the
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ones that are participating in the Russian information operation, not Chrystia Freeland.
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See how that all works? See how nice that always works out for the liberals. They're never at fault.
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The people who are trying to hold them accountable are the one at fault. I'll continue to read,
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look, here's Tristan Hopper, finding a fourth person who agrees with him, who defends Chrystia
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Freeland. So to continue reading, disinformation is a real threat and Canadians need to be vigilant,
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said Eeyore Mikulchinskyn, and I apologize for probably mispronouncing that name, the CEO of the
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Ukrainian-Canadian Congress. He told the National Post when asked about the controversy regarding
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Freeland's holding a black and red scarf. So there you have it. Four people quoted, Chrystia Freeland's
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spokesperson, and three other people who are all willing to defend Chrystia Freeland say it is not
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her fault, but it is the fault of people who are talking about this and sharing the image and making
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the connections and reporting on it, trying to hold her accountable. They're the ones who are sharing
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in misinformation and propaganda. You really can't make this stuff up. So you get this.
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Chrystia Freeland is not to blame. It isn't her fault that she posted the photograph. It's not her
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fault that she was in the photograph, that she was holding the flag, that she took the photograph,
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and that she herself posted it. None of those are her fault. That's not her fault at all. The ones
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who are at fault are groups like True North for covering it. We're the ones who are, quote,
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unwittingly participating in an active Russian information operation, unquote, according to the
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useful idiots over at the McDonald-Laurier Institute. What a joke. So she's not the one that's playing
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into Russian propaganda. True North is for reporting it. See how that works. Must be so nice to be a
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liberal in Canada. Journalists are notoriously lazy and stupid. And I don't suspect that Tristan
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Hopper actually bothered to read the article that he linked to, my article that this was all based
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on. If Tristan Hopper had bothered to read my piece, he would have known that I was well aware
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of the Russian propaganda campaign surrounding this issue. That is why I was holding the minister
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accountable for holding the flag, unlike the National Post, who's trying to hold me accountable for
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writing about it. So I'm just going to go back for Tristan Hopper, for anyone who didn't bother
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reading my piece. This was published on Monday night. This is what I said about it. I said this.
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This all creates two major problems for Christy Freeland and the liberals. The first is a tremendous
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double standard at play. Just weeks ago, Trudeau and his allies in legacy media relentlessly smeared
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the trucker convoy as Nazis because of one still unidentified provocateur who crashed the protest before
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quickly disappearing. Trudeau infamously called a conservative MP of Jewish heritage, Melissa
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Lanceman accused her of standing with people who wave swastikas. They smeared an entire group by a
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single despicable flag spotted near the protest. Now, in the case of Christy Freeland at the Ukrainian
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rally in Toronto, she wasn't simply spotted at the same rally as a Nazi. She was literally holding
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the flag. Okay, this is the part where I get into the Russian information again, reading from my piece,
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which was published on Monday night. The second major problem this presents for Freeland and liberals
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is that they are opening themselves to smears and propaganda from the Putin regime. When Putin
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announced his invasion into Ukraine, the justification he provided in part was to denazify
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the country. Putin's war efforts rely on propaganda presenting the Ukrainian government and its allies
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in the West, and yes, that includes Christy Freeland in Canada, as supporting an extremist far-right
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Nazi movement. When a prominent Western leader is photographed with a banner that represents the
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neo-Nazi movement, she is naively playing into Putin's hands. Christy Freeland can scrub her own
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social media to her heart's content, but her photo holding the red and black banner is making the
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rounds on social media and is being used on other websites, including this NPR affiliate. This is a
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significant misstep by Freeland. Let's see if anyone in the media notices or reports on it. Now, notice how
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I pin the blame on Christy Freeland herself. That's sort of how journalism is supposed to work. You're
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supposed to hold powerful people to account. But once again, we learn that the media in Canada has
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different standards in dealing with liberals. So here you have Post Media, once considered the last
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bastion of conservative thought left in the legacy media here in Canada. But here they are, selling
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their souls, spinning for the liberals, smearing independent journalists, and misleading their
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audience for what? Well, you can only assume it has something to do with that $600 million newspaper
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bailout check written by one Justin Trudeau. They crafted an entire article based on Christy Freeland's
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spin. Rather than holding the most powerful woman in Canadian politics accountable for the flag that
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she held, knowing full well what it was and what it meant, the once trustworthy National Post is holding
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me and us here at True North accountable for the crime of reporting on Christy Freeland. It is
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unbelievable. They even go to the absurd extent of defending a Nazi slogan, blood and soil,
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just to defend Christy Freeland. It is unbelievable. The National Post and its writer Tristan Hopper are
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no better than the CBC. They're no better than the Toronto Star. They're willing to say anything to
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stay in the liberals good books to defend their friends in the liberal party, even if it means
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selling out any credibility they had left with their audience. I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is the