The Candice Malcolm Show - This is what “decolonization” really means

00:00:00.520 Decolonization is code. It's a dog whistle, if you will. And it means the mass slaughter of 1.00

00:00:05.540 civilians, or what the radical left likes to call settlers, as we saw on October 7th. Now,

00:00:10.700 if we accept this warped academic theory, which is pushed and promoted across our society,

00:00:15.140 usually dressed up as a diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative, if we accept it and we let

00:00:19.940 it go to its logical conclusion, we will see more October 7th-style massacres, not just in Israel,

00:00:25.240 but across the West, and particularly in Canada. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:40.680 Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in. Today, we're going to unpack the academic terms

00:00:45.720 such as decolonization, settler, and direct action, as well as resistance, and many others. I'm going

00:00:52.440 to talk about the latest scandals, including at my university, the one that I graduated from,

00:00:56.660 the University of Alberta. And later in the show, I am going to be debating my friend and colleague,

00:01:01.780 Rupa Supramania, on free speech and its limits here in the West. So stick around. If you're watching

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00:01:26.540 please make sure to leave us a five-star review if you enjoy the podcast, and to subscribe to

00:01:30.980 The Candice Malcolm Show so you don't miss any of our content. Finally, to everyone listening,

00:01:35.180 everyone watching, please head on over to our website, www.tnc.news, where you can read our

00:01:41.180 latest reports. And don't forget to sign up for our newsletter so that Bill C-18 and the big tech

00:01:46.280 censorship cannot stop you from learning the truth. Thank you so much. The left loves to accuse

00:01:51.920 conservatives of using dog whistles. Now, if you want to test this theory, just head on over to

00:01:56.340 Google, type in Pierre Polyev and dog whistle, and you'll find about 100 legacy media stories accusing

00:02:02.400 him of all kinds of things that he never said, but that some journalists decided that he must believe

00:02:07.580 based on something totally different that he said. Do you get that? Well, I'll give you an example.

00:02:12.060 In March, Pierre Polyev's team posted an image on Instagram of a Canadian police logo. In the

00:02:17.940 description, he included a beautiful commemoration for two brave police officers who were sadly killed

00:02:23.200 in the line of duty in Edmonton. Now, instead of just accepting this nice commemoration of brave

00:02:29.140 police officers who sacrificed their lives for safety, the legacy media decided to pull out some

00:02:35.660 kind of totally different conclusion. They accused him, I kid you not, of promoting anti-Black

00:02:41.820 racism. Yes, Trudeau's media decided that a police logo is actually a dog whistle for an extremist

00:02:48.440 fascist movement, which apparently Pierre Polyev is trying to court. Now, can someone please tell me,

00:02:55.140 is there a large anti-Black fascist community in Canada that Pierre Polyev desperately needs on his

00:03:00.560 side? Who are these fascists, seriously, and where do they live? What party are they currently voting for

00:03:05.700 that Pierre Polyev has to supposedly work very hard to take their vote away and bring it over to the

00:03:11.100 conservatives? Of course, the media never explain any of that. They never bother, but we're just

00:03:15.800 supposed to believe their utter nonsense. Well, what I find interesting when we're talking about dog 0.76

00:03:21.320 whistles is the left's development of their own lexicon, usually obscure academic jargon that

00:03:27.460 eventually makes its way into mainstream language. Now, this jargon includes code words that actually

00:03:33.440 mean something quite different than they first appear. So I'll give you an example. Over the weekend,

00:03:38.160 left-wing writer and podcaster Nora Loretta posted this on X. She's celebrating the increased violence

00:03:44.020 that we see at pro-Hamas rallies. She doesn't come right out and call it violence, of course. Instead,

00:03:48.840 she calls it direct action. Here's your post. She writes, guys, the amount of direct action happening

00:03:54.440 right now is incredible. Now, we know that direct action means violence because Antifa put out a handbook

00:04:00.240 that explicitly said this. They defined direct action as proactive self-defense. Yes, very clever.

00:04:07.580 As in, I'm going to go attack those Nazis over there before they come and attack me. The only problem 0.99

00:04:12.700 is, according to Antifa, anybody who doesn't join in their anarchy and destruction, they consider to be

00:04:18.400 a Nazi. So that means that just about everybody is fair game for actual violence. Now, when Nora Loretta 0.70

00:04:24.760 celebrates direct action, she's no doubt referring to the pro-Hamas rallies that we've seen devolve

00:04:30.300 into riots. We've seen the destruction of property, often Jewish-owned businesses and places of worship.

00:04:36.400 We've seen altercations and physical fights against the police, as we saw recently in Calgary.

00:04:41.200 And we've seen blockades of highways, bridges, railways, and other critical infrastructure. Now, it's funny,

00:04:46.600 and I have to note, that when the truckers in the Freedom Convoy went over and blocked the Ambassador

00:04:51.780 Bridge for just a few hours, that was enough for Justin Trudeau to call in the military and introduce

00:04:57.120 martial law to break up the entire protest. But of course, when the pro-Hamas side does it, when they

00:05:03.000 actually go and harass him in a restaurant in Vancouver, and they tie up and block critical

00:05:08.040 infrastructure across the country, what does Trudeau do? Interestingly, it actually leads him to flip-flop

00:05:13.920 on his position. And in this case, he changed his mind and began to condemn Israel for fighting back

00:05:20.240 against Hamas. Funny, funny, strange world that we live in. Now, back to the concept of direct action, 0.97

00:05:26.980 which is considered self-defense to the radical left, just like how many people on the radical left

00:05:32.380 defended the October 7th massacre carried out by Hamas, and they called it resistance, or they called

00:05:38.420 it decolonization. Decolonization. We do hear that word a lot in Canada. So let's dive into it. What does

00:05:44.120 it actually mean? Well, Nanja Sharif, who is a writer at the Soho House magazine and Teen Vogue, she stated it

00:05:50.500 very clearly on X. I don't think that anyone stated it this clearly. This is what she wrote after October

00:05:56.100 7th. She said, what did y'all think decolonization meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays? Losers? That's right.

00:06:04.120 According to some on the left, if you didn't get it before, you get it now. Decolonization means mass murder of

00:06:10.540 civilians. It means a massacre. It means a deadly pogrom against children in their beds. It means

00:06:15.640 genocide of the so-called settlers. Yes, settlers. The same thing that I get called just about every

00:06:20.760 day on social media by radical leftists. So if you have skin color that looks like mine, if you have

00:06:25.380 an English-sounding name like I do, you're probably a settler too. That means that you're not a civilian.

00:06:30.660 According to the radical left, you're fair game for violence, even murder. Yes, you are a legitimate

00:06:36.000 military target. Now, if you think I'm being hyperbolic, I'm not. Here's an example right

00:06:41.000 here. A professor at Yale University, one of the most prestigious institutions in the entire world,

00:06:46.120 saying just that. Settlers are not civilians. It's not hard. Yes, that is what Professor Zarina

00:06:51.880 Grewal, an American studies professor at Yale University, wrote. And no, it isn't just the

00:06:57.360 American radical left. If anything, these phrases are even more common in Canada. And the people who

00:07:02.520 understand these words and what they truly mean, the ones who are most confident and vocal in using

00:07:07.140 them, are usually in Canada. Here are just a few examples. At York University, the Students' Union

00:07:12.600 put out the following statement on October 12th. They wrote, from Turtle Island to Palestine. For those

00:07:17.820 of you who don't know, Turtle Island is what they call North America or Canada. They wrote, from Turtle

00:07:23.080 Island to Palestine and across all occupied lands, these events serve as a reminder that resistance

00:07:28.380 against colonial violence is justified and necessary. This is decolonization and land-backed 0.97

00:07:34.840 actualized as we continue to see the Palestinian people stand firm in their resistance against their

00:07:40.840 oppressors. Did you get all that? I know it was pretty jargon heavy, but they said that resistance

00:07:45.760 is justified, resistance is necessary. Remember, resistance just means violence. This is what

00:07:50.600 decolonization looks like. What we saw, the massacre, the despicable violence that we saw against

00:07:55.460 civilians on October 7th in Israel. That's all necessary. That's all what we mean when we say

00:08:00.260 decolonization. Just making it perfectly clear. And it isn't just a bunch of crazy students at York

00:08:05.300 University in suburban Toronto. We had a professor over at McMaster University, Emil Joseph, basically

00:08:10.600 say the same thing. He wrote the following on October 7th, before the massacre was probably even

00:08:14.720 finished in Israel. He wrote, post-colonial, anti-colonial, and decolonial are not just words you heard in your

00:08:21.620 EDI workshop. Next, here's a sign we saw at a Vancouver protest, just making it perfectly clear.

00:08:26.480 Again, the sign writes, decolonization is not a theory. Finally, we have an Ontario member of the

00:08:32.780 provincial parliament, formerly with the NDP. She got ousted over all of this. Her name is Sarah

00:08:37.220 Jama. She wrote this on October 10th. She said, I'm reflecting on my role as a politician who's

00:08:42.540 participating in this settler colonial system. And I ask that all politicians do the same,

00:08:47.280 hashtag free Palestine. She's just participating in this disgusting settler colonial system that we 1.00

00:08:53.100 like to call Canada. Our entire civilization is a disgrace, according to the far left. Jama continues, 0.97

00:08:59.340 she writes, for 75 years of violence and retaliation rooted in settler colonialism have taken the lives of

00:09:05.100 far too many innocent people. So as you know, and as we all saw, they're trying to justify, they're trying

00:09:09.940 to say that October 7th didn't just happen. It was justified. It was necessary. It was all the fault

00:09:15.240 of the Israelis for being colonial, being settlers, and colonizing Israel in the first place. Much the 0.99

00:09:22.800 same arguments that they make against Canadians. So following all this, we had a bunch of think

00:09:27.380 pieces come out in Canadian publications. I want to go through a few. Tasha Carradine in the National

00:09:31.960 Post wrote this on October 12th. She writes, Jama's statements illustrate the absurd lengths to which

00:09:37.300 the decolonization movement had been taken. Today, the word decolonization has lost all meaning.

00:09:42.200 Now, I disagree with Tasha here. I don't think that decolonization has lost its meaning. It's the

00:09:47.520 opposite. We found its meaning. Its meaning is clearer now than it's ever been. The left is

00:09:52.500 telling us exactly what the word means, and we need to listen. Next, Howard Englund, writing in

00:09:57.820 The Hub on October 13th, wrote, there is a smaller group for whom the idea of decolonization has a

00:10:03.300 harder edge. They welcome it as a chance to turn the tables on our country's historically dominant

00:10:07.620 European majority, not by supplementing our traditional symbols with new ones, but by

00:10:12.640 disparaging them as shameful and displacing them. Now, Howard is getting a little bit closer,

00:10:18.500 but he still dances around the issue. So the point of decolonization means action. It means direct

00:10:24.280 action. They told us this is not a theory. This is something you hear about in a classroom or in a

00:10:28.100 DEI workshop. Decolonization means direct action. It means violence. That is what they're telling us.

00:10:33.960 Finally, JJ McCullough, who is a prominent Canadian YouTuber, he wrote on October 12th on X the

00:10:39.760 following, I'm a little troubled by the fact that decolonization, which is a very mainstream concept

00:10:44.360 in Canadian political discourse, is understood, at least by some faction of Canadians, to mean

00:10:49.420 indiscriminate extrajudicial killing. Just a little troubled by that. Yes, JJ has hit the nail right on

00:10:55.780 the head. He is right. He is troubled. And we should all be very, very troubled by that. Okay, let's move on

00:11:02.280 to talk about how this is all playing out on university campuses, which, as we know, are ground zero for

00:11:07.340 radical leftism and extremism. And as we're learning, ground zero for the violent ideology that is known as

00:11:13.940 decolonization. So my alma mater, where I graduated from the University of Alberta, became something of a

00:11:20.820 punchline in a joke over the week because of an open letter that was signed by the University of Alberta's

00:11:27.860 Sexual Assault Center. So the center was one of the signatories. It wasn't the only one. There was

00:11:33.060 about 40, from best I could tell, groups and individuals who signed this letter, including

00:11:37.140 Sarah Jamma, the disgraced MPP from Ontario. And the letter, amongst many other things, denied that

00:11:44.240 sexual violence happened against Israeli women. So I won't read the entire letter, but here is what

00:11:49.520 it looked like. It says, stand with Palestine, call on political leaders to end their complicity

00:11:54.380 in genocide. We know that when the far left calls Israel genocidal, they're really just using Hamas

00:12:00.060 talking points because, of course, it is Hamas that is genocidal against the Jews. The Jews are 0.52

00:12:04.340 just simply trying to protect themselves and have their own country. I digress. The letter rambles

00:12:09.500 on and on and on. One of the most interesting parts of the letter is that they specifically call

00:12:14.580 out Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the far left party in Canada. And they call them out. They said,

00:12:18.800 Jagmeet Singh repeated the unverified accusation that Palestinians were guilty of 0.95

00:12:24.340 sexual violence. And so that, of course, the, you know, total hypocrisy and ignorance of a sexual 0.98

00:12:32.000 assault center, a place where women are supposed to go on campus if they have been the victim of a 1.00

00:12:37.000 horrible assault, like sexual assault. They're supposed to feel safe going there. And here we

00:12:41.600 have this group at the University of Alberta denying, openly denying, against all evidence, against all

00:12:48.040 proof that sexual violence took place. Imagine being a Jewish woman on campus at the U of A 1.00

00:12:52.760 and even considering going to a place like that, the sexual assault center, such a disgrace. No 0.98

00:12:58.860 wonder it made headlines around the world. Here's the Daily Mail in the UK. It says,

00:13:02.980 sexual assault center at Canadian university signs on to open letter that disputes women were raped

00:13:08.060 and sexually assaulted during Hamas terrorist attacks. It made news across the U.S. and even in

00:13:13.640 Israel and, of course, across Canada. Former Senator Linda Frum posted this on Twitter.

00:13:19.160 She posted the letter and wrote, the University of Alberta needs to find new professionals to staff 0.98

00:13:23.540 at sexual assault center, given that current members believe some women deserve to be raped 0.99

00:13:27.680 and that Jewish rape victims lie. If you are U of A alumni, please make your feelings known to 0.99

00:13:32.300 President Flanagan. I took up that call since, like I said, I am an alumni of the University of

00:13:37.660 Alberta. So I posted the letter that I wrote to President Flanagan right here. Basically, it's come to

00:13:43.540 my attention. This has happened. You know, I'd like to see you take some action, look forward to seeing how you

00:13:48.160 will handle this situation. I was pleasantly surprised that just one day later, the university

00:13:53.100 did reply to my email and they replied to my call and Linda Frum's call, many others, and they took

00:13:59.460 action. The University of Alberta's President and Vice Chancellor, Bill Flanagan, released the following

00:14:04.240 statement, basically saying, look, this person is no longer employed by the university. The university

00:14:08.980 has appointed a new interim director at the sexual assault center. This was great to see. Actually,

00:14:14.680 pretty proud of my university for taking this action and showing some leadership here. I wasn't

00:14:19.200 the only one. International human rights lawyer, Halal Neuer, wrote the following. He wrote,

00:14:23.080 good news. Samantha Pearson, denier of Hamas rape, has been fired from her position as head of the

00:14:27.980 University of Alberta's Sexual Assault Center. Bravo to Mr. Flanagan at the U of A for his swift action.

00:14:33.540 All universities should fire Hamas apologists. That is absolutely right. Unfortunately, that's not

00:14:40.120 going to happen. There are so many universities that employ Hamas apologists that promote them. 0.89

00:14:45.000 And the problem doesn't just end there. Even in the covering of this story, you see the Globe and

00:14:50.380 Mail do the exact same thing that the woman who got fired from the crisis center said. So here's a

00:14:56.980 headline from the Globe and Mail. University of Alberta replaces Sexual Assault Center director

00:15:01.660 over a letter questioning alleged Hamas rape. So the Globe and Mail throws in the term alleged just

00:15:09.820 again to throw doubt at what is now at this point very much verified claims that Hamas used rape as

00:15:16.840 one of the tools of their horrific attack on October 7th. Despite this very small glimmer of hope from

00:15:23.320 the University of Alberta, the problems run much deeper. I pointed this out last night, Tuesday,

00:15:28.600 November 21st, there was an event at the U of A called Glory to Our Martyrs. Our martyrs. Yes,

00:15:35.840 the Hamas terrorists who murder Jews are known as martyrs. And according to whoever's organized this 0.77

00:15:41.940 event at the University of Alberta, inside an official building, those are our martyrs. Those are

00:15:46.920 our martyrs, according to some people at the U of A. A University of Montreal lecturer who shouted at a

00:15:53.660 Jewish student to go back to Poland has been suspended for the rest of the term, suspended with

00:15:58.720 pay, of course, so not really that big of a deal. Imagine still getting paid for a job you no longer

00:16:03.080 have to do. And that's the supposed punishment. Over at the University of British Columbia, we saw these

00:16:08.100 stickers popping up all over campus. Yes, I love Hamas. Again, they don't just quietly support terrorism.

00:16:14.420 They love terrorism. They love Hamas. And they're very, very open about it. They want everybody to know 0.98

00:16:19.380 they're saying the quiet part out loud. They're saying it really, really, really loudly. They think

00:16:23.380 violence is great. They love Hamas. Now, of course, there are a million examples on university campuses 1.00

00:16:28.920 of radical leftist students and faculty. Sometimes you can't even tell the difference between the

00:16:33.020 students and the faculty. But they are making absurd and obscene comments celebrating Hamas,

00:16:38.260 celebrating terrorism, celebrating October 7th. Resistance is justified when people are occupied, they say.

00:16:43.980 By any means necessary, they say. Globalize the Intifada, they say. Decolonize Canada. All of this

00:16:51.360 just means justification for violence. It's all a call to action, a call to violence, a call for more

00:16:57.080 massacre. Now, thankfully, I'm not the only one noticing. Thankfully, Elon Musk sees it the same

00:17:02.360 way. So I want to point out a series of tweets from the other day. Individual named Colin Wright wrote

00:17:07.860 this. He wrote, decolonization is the woke version of jihad, and it should be viewed and treated the same 0.95

00:17:13.220 way. 100%. I completely agree with this. Now, Elon Musk saw this tweet, and he replied,

00:17:18.660 yes, decolonization necessarily implies a Jewish genocide. Thus, it is unacceptable to any reasonable

00:17:24.980 person. I would go way beyond that. I would not say that it implies a Jewish genocide. I would say

00:17:29.440 it's a genocide against any group that the left calls settlers, or the left considers the need for

00:17:35.220 decolonization, and Canada is ground zero for that. This is where so much of these ideas are coming 0.96

00:17:41.000 from. Elon clarified, and he went even further. He said on November 17th, as I said earlier this week,

00:17:47.440 decolonization from the river to the sea and similar euphemisms necessarily imply genocide.

00:17:53.920 Clear calls for extreme violence are against our terms of service and will result in suspension. Now,

00:17:59.160 this is a good first step. A big public platform like X recognizing that these veiled calls for

00:18:05.020 violence are still calls for actual violence. They have no place in our society. The next important

00:18:10.360 step would be for Canadians to begin to recognize that this term, decolonization, decolonization is

00:18:16.480 simply a call for violence. When you hear it at your place of work, your children's school, or by any

00:18:22.480 government official, you need to stop them. You need to voice your concern and explain to them that it is

00:18:27.980 an extreme call for violence, and extreme calls for violence have no place in Canada.

00:18:32.620 So how can we fight back against the radical left, their newfound confidence to openly call for

00:18:38.320 violence, or at least veiled calls for violence using terms like direct action, resistance and

00:18:43.740 decolonization, which we know are just euphemisms that mean violence, and in some cases, even

00:18:47.820 mass murder. I wanted to bring in my friend and colleague, Rupa Subramania, to have a discussion 0.96

00:18:53.260 on this topic. I don't know if we always agree, especially on this issue, but I always really

00:18:57.760 respect your position and the research and the thought that goes into it. So a couple of weeks

00:19:02.440 ago on Twitter, there was a sort of brouhaha over a column by Warren Kinsella. He basically

00:19:09.320 pointed to some of the very vicious pro-Hamas rallies and some of the sort of more vocal

00:19:14.740 people that were more or less calling for genocide. And in his original tweet, he wrote this,

00:19:22.460 again, if they're hearing a visa or do not have citizenship, deport them. If they have citizenship, 0.90

00:19:28.220 charge them. I think that they deleted that tweet and changed the headline a little bit,

00:19:31.840 watered it down a little bit. I believe that the latest version of the headline said,

00:19:36.520 charge them, prosecute them, convict them, and then jail them. Either way, Ben Mulroney,

00:19:41.100 who is the son of former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and he's a sort of well-known TV host in

00:19:45.580 Canada, he quote tweeted, Warren Kinsella quote posted and wrote, oh, I co-sign this. And he sort of

00:19:52.440 took issue to it and said, you know, I don't like the fact that people's civil liberties could

00:19:57.620 potentially be violated. We're talking about deporting people just because we don't like their views.

00:20:01.500 So I'm wondering if you could sort of expand on your thinking and talk about why you do not think

00:20:07.280 we should deport people who promote and celebrate mass murder.

00:20:11.320 Well, first of all, I mean, let's unpack what you said. I mean, you know, you're asserting they're

00:20:16.980 celebrating mass murder. All of these things are up for interpretation. They're highly, highly contested.

00:20:23.820 Your view may be that they're calling for mass murder. I've been to three of these rallies here

00:20:30.600 in Ottawa. There are people who, there are all kinds of people who are part of this movement,

00:20:35.980 including people who are calling for mass murder. I'm not denying that. But let's stipulate for the

00:20:41.600 sake of argument that saying river to the sea or free Palestine is inciting violence.

00:20:47.480 Now, that falls under criminal law and should be prosecuted as such. That's my opinion. There is

00:20:57.920 no legal, but there is no legal or ethical basis for deportation on such grounds that I'm aware of.

00:21:04.120 It would be, first of all, it would be unconstitutional. And this is the kind of stuff

00:21:11.440 that happens in totalitarian countries, countries in the Middle East, countries like China, where you

00:21:19.300 question the state or you question Islam, for example. I've lived in some of these places.

00:21:25.000 You do get deported for crossing that red line. And the red line in these countries happens to be

00:21:30.940 these things. I personally don't want to go there. I'm a free speech absolutist, but I want to make it

00:21:38.760 clear that, you know, incitement to violence is where I, you know, there's a clear red line for

00:21:44.760 me there. So, for example, if you tell someone to go, you know, buy a gun and tell them to go and

00:21:50.300 kill a bunch of people, that is not protected speech anywhere that I'm aware of, neither in the

00:21:55.420 U.S. nor in Canada. But we get into more difficult terrain, in my opinion, when it comes to expressions 0.92

00:22:02.500 such as from the river to the sea and free Palestine. Now, on one reading of it, it would seem like

00:22:07.960 this is a call for the destruction of Israel, and this would not be considered protected speech.

00:22:13.920 However, another reading is that this is just a trope or a refrain used on behalf of the

00:22:21.400 Palestinian cause that goes back several decades. It is even used by entities such as the Palestinian

00:22:28.100 Authority, which does not call for the destruction of Israel. It does not wish to annihilate Israel off

00:22:34.960 the map. So, it would be a stretch to say that this is an incitement to violence for someone to

00:22:41.440 take up arms against the state of Israel. Now, I want to point to, I mean, I don't know how much

00:22:50.680 you want to go into this, but, you know, Candace, you and I spoke earlier about how this is a battle

00:22:57.840 for civilization, in a sense. I don't know if you want to go into that, but I'm happy to talk about it.

00:23:05.100 But those are roughly, yeah.

00:23:08.000 Well, we can get into that in a minute, Rupa, because I just want to pick up on what you said.

00:23:11.380 Look, I don't think that Canada is immune from going down a totalitarian path. I think that we saw

00:23:16.080 glimpses of that during COVID and with the trucker convoy and Trudeau just sort of quashing a protest simply

00:23:21.660 because he doesn't like it. So, I am with you on this. I think that we need to preserve the right to

00:23:26.320 peaceful assembly, the right to protest, and the right to free speech. Those are absolute

00:23:30.540 cornerstones of our society. But when we're talking about the difference between a country

00:23:35.320 like Canada, which is an open, diverse, tolerant, pluralistic society, we come across a sort of

00:23:41.720 fundamental problem. I think it's an existential problem when we also pair that with mass unchecked

00:23:48.480 immigration. So, people are allowed to come from anywhere in the world. We don't screen for 0.99

00:23:53.180 ideology. We don't screen for values. So, for all we know, of the people coming to Canada,

00:23:57.660 they could all be fervent, you know, crazed Jew-haters. They could hate gay people and want 0.99

00:24:04.840 to, you know, implement some kind of a law where we kill these people, right? And so, it's like, 1.00

00:24:10.240 sooner or later, in a liberal democracy like Canada, we're going to have to deal with a problem

00:24:14.600 that many people around the world hold views that are simply incompatible with the West. And I do

00:24:20.320 believe it's a civilizational struggle. I think that Canada's made a lot of problems when it comes

00:24:24.420 to just allowing anybody to come in. And then on top of that, you have this festering ideologies

00:24:28.940 on college campuses, as I mentioned previously in the show, terms like decolonization, which people

00:24:34.360 will openly say it means mass violence. It means massacres like October 7th. So, again, you know,

00:24:42.140 not to just simply repeat the question, but I'm wondering if you could get into, like,

00:24:46.140 how does a country like Canada preserve pluralism while also maintaining the freedoms? Because I

00:24:51.080 think that these people will happily use our freedoms against us. They don't actually believe

00:24:54.580 in free speech, Rupa. Because as soon as it comes to people who criticize Islam, criticize the prophet,

00:25:01.960 criticize even Hamas leaders. We saw a Washington Post cartoon taken down a couple weeks ago because

00:25:06.720 it was offensive to Hamas leaders. You know, they're happy to use that sword against us. But then at the

00:25:12.660 same time when it suits them, they're going to drape themselves in the veil of we deserve free

00:25:16.920 speech, we deserve peaceful protests or the right to free assembly. They don't actually hold those

00:25:21.840 values. So how do we deal with that? Well, we have to deal with it because it goes back to the

00:25:26.300 fundamental tenets of Western civilization. Before I get into that, I want to address the values thing

00:25:33.680 when it comes to citizenship. I'm inclined to agree with you. I don't think we should be allowing 1.00

00:25:38.540 people who want to come to Canada and want to implement Sharia law, for example. That's not

00:25:43.940 going to, that's not the direction in which we want to go. So if, for example, I think the U.S.,

00:25:49.340 as far as I am aware, expects you to sign a saying that you are, you don't belong to a communist party

00:25:58.620 or a Nazi party or something to that effect. So yes, I think we could develop something along those 0.88

00:26:04.680 lines, for sure. So we're in agreement there. But how do we preserve this? Now, a lot of people have

00:26:12.700 talked about this in terms of a civilizational battle, what is happening in the Middle East,

00:26:18.160 but it's also, that term has also been used in the context of free speech, you know, a clash of

00:26:25.720 civilization, as Samuel Huntington put it. And so therefore, we must suppress views that we don't

00:26:33.780 like. I think that by going down that route, we're actually undermining a core Western value that

00:26:39.440 goes back to the Enlightenment, which is free and open debate. You might find that kind of speech

00:26:47.100 deplorable and repugnant, and I find that absolutely to be the case. But free speech is not about

00:26:54.680 liking something or upholding the rights of views that we agree with. It is actually, it comes down to

00:27:02.000 protecting the protecting views that we disagree with. And that's the fundamental litmus test of

00:27:09.320 free speech of any civilized society. I want to talk about civilization. Why is this important? Why

00:27:15.340 is this a fundamental core of Western civilization? Well, our Western civilization was founded on two

00:27:21.120 sets of ideas and cultures. One was Greece and Rome, and the other was the Judeo-Christian

00:27:28.440 heritage. So Greece and Rome, all of the knowledge and antiquity accomplishments during classical antiquity,

00:27:37.440 and then the Judeo-Christian heritage. And then, you know, and then the Renaissance happened,

00:27:43.100 which rediscovered the glories of Greece and Rome, and then you had the Protestant Reformation.

00:27:46.760 And then finally, the Enlightenment of the 18th century, which included thinkers across Europe,

00:27:52.520 like Voltaire in France, Immanuel Kant in Germany, David Hume and Adam Smith in Great Britain.

00:27:59.520 But here's the crux, and this is why this is so important. All of these thinkers of the Enlightenment

00:28:04.740 agreed on one thing, which is free, open, and civilized and rational debate. This was one of the

00:28:11.720 fundamental tenets of a free, open, and liberal society. They, you know, look at what happened to

00:28:17.160 Galileo, who was persecuted by the Catholic Church for saying that the earth revolved around the sun,

00:28:22.740 and he had to recant his view just to save his life. Let me remind you, all of this was happening

00:28:28.500 in the context of the 18th century, which witnessed horrific wars and revolutions, you know, notably the

00:28:33.560 Revolutionary War in the US in 1776. And then you had the, as a consequence of that, you had the First

00:28:41.560 Amendment in the US, which offers the most robust protection for free speech anywhere in the world.

00:28:48.280 And then you had the French Revolution of 1789 and beyond, you know, which saw the high ideals of

00:28:56.920 revolutionaries, you know, which was liberté, égalité, and fraternité, subverted by a brutal dictator named

00:29:06.000 Napoleon. The Enlightenment thinkers like David Hume, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, then you go into the 20th

00:29:14.400 century, like Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, all of my heroes, put freedom of expression as a core

00:29:21.280 fundamental value for any free and civilized society. So our Western civilization, as we know it

00:29:28.520 right now, has been refracted through evolution over the centuries in one that prizes public reasoning

00:29:35.800 based on free, open, and civilized debate as a way to discuss and resolve problems of public policy.

00:29:44.420 So in the context of the current situation where you have these pro-Palestinian rallies,

00:29:52.560 I think it would be absolutely detrimental to suppress these voices, because all it's going to do is

00:30:01.860 it's just going to move the stuff underground. We've seen this play out over and over again. Just look at

00:30:07.800 what is happening in Germany right now. They banned pro-Palestinian protests. Has that reduced the number

00:30:12.700 of anti-Semitic attacks? Can someone actually say that is happening? It hasn't. In fact, it's gotten

00:30:19.460 worse.

00:30:20.840 It's certainly a band-aid. It's a remedy. And I'll agree with you on that, Rupa. I just want to jump

00:30:24.880 in, though, because I agree with you on the value of the Enlightenment and those great thinkers that you

00:30:30.680 mentioned. I'll just say that they all had a foundational and fundamental agreement, whether

00:30:35.580 they wrote about it or not, whether they believe themselves to be theists or atheists or Christians,

00:30:40.520 they all held a fundamental ideal of what it meant to be a citizen, what it meant to contribute,

00:30:47.420 what it meant to be an equal member of society. And what I worry about, what I see today, is that

00:30:54.060 we don't share that foundational belief, that that foundational belief has been torn apart and ripped

00:30:58.000 apart, that we don't have the same basis starting point. And I agree that sometimes these bands,

00:31:03.800 these ad hoc bands, aren't necessarily fixing the root of the problem. And I worry that that root of the

00:31:09.100 problem is so foregone that I don't know how we can repair it, starting by saying, look, we have

00:31:14.080 these core values that we all have to agree on. I think that might be a first step in helping.

00:31:20.880 But I agree that you need to be able to think, you need to be able to critique the system,

00:31:25.540 and that that's all happening. But I fear, and another example of this was the viral TikTok trend

00:31:32.000 that we saw last week of young Americans talking about Osama bin Laden and their reverence for him

00:31:37.120 and his letter to America and how it's changed their world, and they're having an existential

00:31:40.360 crisis. It's like, when we don't have a core belief, when we don't have a message that unites

00:31:44.760 our society that tells us why, tells a story to ourselves about why we're here, why what we're

00:31:50.420 doing is important, why we all share, you know, a collective belief, which is something that they

00:31:54.940 did have in the Enlightenment. I worry that we don't have that now. And so we're trying to save,

00:31:59.560 preserve freedom of speech. But it's actually freedom of speech is one of the things that's helping to

00:32:03.300 sort of unravel our whole civilization. We do have it. I disagree with you there. We do have all of

00:32:08.960 the core values at, you know, with us. It's just that we've, we as a not you and I, because I think

00:32:17.560 you and I have consistently stood up for individual liberties and freedom and that sort of thing. But

00:32:23.740 Western society, at least over the last 10 years or so, has taken a wrong turn. You know, for the last

00:32:31.000 few years, it was the left, the progressive left that, that, that, that presided over a culture of,

00:32:38.440 you know, canceling people for views that they disagreed with and, and, and, you know, and

00:32:45.280 especially so here in Canada. But all we have right now is to continue to, all we can do right now is

00:32:53.800 to continue to uphold these rights values, stand up for them every single time that it is under

00:33:00.640 threat. And that is my battle, right? I see the free speech debate, the free expression debate.

00:33:07.000 I see all of these things in an abstract way. For me, it is not specific to a certain crisis,

00:33:13.140 not specific to a certain issue. It is in an abstract way. I look at these things and it is not

00:33:19.880 an emotional issue for me. I look at it in a clinical kind of way. Is this actually going to get us more

00:33:26.000 freedom? Uh, and, and look what happened, um, during the pandemic, right? That wasn't too long

00:33:32.120 ago. The pandemic was sold to us as an existential crisis. You don't abide by these restrictions. You

00:33:38.300 don't abide by these lockdowns. We're all going to die. That was basically the messaging from our

00:33:43.460 public health authorities. Some of us, including myself, momentary, momentarily believe that messaging.

00:33:49.560 And I, and I regret that to this very day. Um, and, and, and so there was this mass justification,

00:33:55.920 uh, for the curtailment of our civil liberties and peacetime. It was imposed on us saying this was an

00:34:01.620 emergency, uh, doctors who dissented were canceled and fired. Um, and, uh, you know, and then you

00:34:07.960 saw the freedom convoy and people who supported the convoy had their bank accounts frozen. It was an

00:34:13.480 Orwellian reaction by the state. And, and I, I, I fear that we are repeating the same mistake here.

00:34:20.480 Um, I find many of the things that are being said at these protests, absolutely abhorrent. By the way,

00:34:27.040 let me point this out. None of this is new. We are only waking up to this problem now. I remember

00:34:32.960 walking, uh, in downtown Ottawa two years ago, a year and a half ago, there was another protest reacting

00:34:38.880 to something that was happening, um, uh, in, in, between Israel and Hamas. And these, you know,

00:34:45.420 everybody was chanting from the river to the sea, free Palestine and so on and so forth, intifada

00:34:50.260 and all of that stuff. There was absolutely no debate. There was no attention paid to this issue.

00:34:58.480 None of this is new. My point is that, you know, we have to allow this to, we, we have to allow,

00:35:06.560 uh, views that we find absolutely abhorrent. We have to, we have to allow that because it is not

00:35:12.280 going to, you're not going to destroy Hamas ideology or radical Islam or any of the things

00:35:17.120 that we find absolutely abhorrent. We're not going to destroy that by suppressing someone else's right

00:35:22.300 to express that, uh, freely. It's not going to go away that way. I think the, the only way we can,

00:35:27.740 uh, do that is through debate. And, and even if the other party does not engage in debate, we must,

00:35:33.780 we must insist on upholding the right to free speech.

00:35:38.680 Okay. I, I, I definitely see where you're coming from and I, and I appreciate your defense of, of

00:35:43.540 sort of basis of, of, of freedom of speech and, and, and fighting against sort of tyrannical

00:35:48.400 government. I'm just going to ask you a couple of questions because I know, you know, you said that

00:35:52.300 a lot of it is up for interpretation. So from the river to the sea, it's nuanced, perhaps you could

00:35:56.700 say that it doesn't mean what we think it means, but some of the words, you know, we've been seeing

00:36:01.040 more and more, right? So, uh, just, just sort of rapid fire here. Uh, if someone calls for jihad,

00:36:06.440 do you think that that's, that's a call for violence?

00:36:09.080 Again, it's, uh, I mean, this is a discussion I had with a senior official in the UK, uh, when I was

00:36:15.760 working on my free speech in the UK story last week, and, uh, we had this very same conversation.

00:36:21.980 Uh, now he's, you know, uh, said that he, he wants to basically see these protests banned,

00:36:28.820 but even he had to concede. It's hard to, you know, from, from, from, uh, um, from a legal

00:36:35.460 perspective, it really is hard. You know, you know, everything is context specific, right?

00:36:40.400 Jihad, a Muslim will tell you it is an internal battle, but we also know that it means, uh, you 0.97

00:36:46.480 know, it could potentially mean. I think, I think, I think most Muslims won't say that Rupa. I think

00:36:50.600 most Muslims will say that, that jihad has long been understood to mean a physical. I, I, I don't

00:36:55.920 know. I mean, the Muslims that I, I, I have, uh, I, I have interacted, I've lived in the Middle East.

00:37:01.120 It is, it is up for interpretation, just like intifada. Intifada, uh, again, uh, has been, it,

00:37:07.800 it, it means resistance. It means resistance or opposition. Uh, nobody had any problems, uh, using

00:37:13.780 the word intifada in the context of the Arab Spring. You see, the thing is, even, even having said all

00:37:20.020 of that, you and I can disagree on what these things actually mean. My point is that it is still,

00:37:25.520 as far as I'm concerned, it is still protected speech. If there's active support for a terrorist

00:37:29.980 cause, material support for a terrorist cause, let's take the Kalistani problem for a second.

00:37:35.960 There are people in Canada, in, in, in our cities who take, uh, out floats and parades glorifying,

00:37:43.400 uh, uh, Kalistani terrorists as martyrs. I find that absolutely repugnant. It, it makes, 1.00

00:37:49.400 it makes me sick when I see that, but I hope I uphold the right to free expression as long as

00:37:55.320 they're doing it peacefully. Uh, as long as they're-

00:37:57.520 Including the mastermind of the Air India bombing? You think if, if someone's holding up a banner-

00:38:00.780 They are doing it. They are doing that.

00:38:02.900 That's protected speech?

00:38:03.780 They are doing that. They are doing that. I mean, they are absolutely doing that. I'm a free

00:38:08.540 speech absolutist. I find it distasteful and repugnant. Again, it goes back to the core

00:38:14.040 value of Western civilization, which is what I care about. Um, you know, it is for me,

00:38:18.940 the litmus test of free speech really is not if you agree with someone, but if you strongly disagree

00:38:23.980 with someone and you respect their right to speak freely, that's the litmus test for a civilized

00:38:29.180 society. And I just don't, I've lived in repressive societies where, uh, you know, things are

00:38:35.820 interpreted differently by someone who wants to come after you. And I've, I've faced the

00:38:40.140 consequences of that and I've seen others face the consequences of that. And we are, uh, going

00:38:45.660 down a slippery slope here in Canada. We've already, we came very close to being a totalitarian

00:38:50.300 society under the pandemic. And I seriously, I do not want us to go down the same path.

00:38:57.340 Okay. I think that's a great place to leave it. Rupra, Supermania, thank you so much for joining.

00:39:00.940 Thank you for your insights. I really appreciate it. And thank you so much for tuning in.

00:39:04.860 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

The Candice Malcolm Show - November 22, 2023

This is what “decolonization” really means

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