The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - What is #HateGate？ (ft. Caryma Sa’d)

00:00:00.000 hello everyone we're starting a little bit late but we're happy that you're here to watch

00:00:07.320 this great live stream with a fantastic guest we did uh spencer fernando last week and now

00:00:12.520 we have crema seed uh this week to talk about hate gate and just the overall quote quote unquote

00:00:18.320 anti-hate industry that's currently occupying canada it's a big thing and it's one of those

00:00:23.800 sort of topics that i always kind of talk to people like crema and others behind the scenes

00:00:28.460 you see certain people who post certain things who work for certain organizations and you're like

00:00:32.460 wondering why does anyone call any of these people out and it's been multiple years of me wondering

00:00:36.600 this and daniel wondering this too and it was great to see someone who actually finally started

00:00:41.380 making it effectively their life's work to document non-profit anti-hate groups and the hateful things

00:00:47.620 that they do but without further ado maybe i i'll move it over to you crema you can introduce yourself

00:00:53.560 and then sort of talk about what the concept of hate gate is or just the anti-hate industry and

00:01:00.040 sort of the way that it's sort of been injected into your life as one of the main things that you've

00:01:04.400 been talking about these days nice break hi thanks um for that intro yes my name is karima sad

00:01:10.700 um i'm a toronto-based lawyer turned journalist uh over the course of the pandemic as i started

00:01:19.000 attending and documenting rallies and political events and sort of that materialized into

00:01:27.480 uh this this whole story that that is unfolding before our very eyes and it touches on polarization

00:01:35.760 of society division that's caused and hate hate's a big part of it um the the hate gate

00:01:44.960 concept or or you know it came about uh in a report that i co-authored with elisa hadigan um looking

00:01:54.080 specifically at freedom of information documents that pertain to diagonal on the way that it was

00:02:01.040 investigated leading up to the freedom convoy and in the months following and it exposed this

00:02:09.680 this interconnection a feedback loop between law enforcement media and government officials with

00:02:19.760 in this case the canadian anti-hate network at the center of it and information that was either

00:02:27.760 misleading or entirely inaccurate made its way into the public consciousness because of

00:02:35.840 this feedback loop and some of the strategies that work behind the scenes to turn people on to

00:02:47.600 certain types of division and polarization um so you know i wouldn't say that it's entirely my life's

00:02:56.080 work um but it has this very moment maybe yeah it's evolved um from a hobby or passion project to

00:03:04.400 um something that i'm seriously pursuing and that's because um i had the experience i'm still going

00:03:12.160 through the experience of being targeted um by some of these strategies smear campaigns etc so i i've

00:03:23.360 watched it play out in real time as it affects my life and that's what prompted me to seek out other

00:03:32.480 individuals who have had similar experiences yeah yours is interesting so i'll put it in more context

00:03:38.960 because you you used a lot of um humility which is not appreciated on this show uh karima kind of got

00:03:45.120 big by going into like you'll say during the freedom convoy protests i mean generally for a year up to

00:03:50.720 that but yeah you're up to that but i mean we all blew up i mean i was doing stuff before the freedom

00:03:54.400 convoy we all kind of blew up when the world paid attention and and that but you came in from a more

00:03:59.280 personally center left position i interpreted but you came in pretty neutral and you would show videos

00:04:04.720 of like crazy lgbtqs plus lunatics yelling that everyone's a terrorist and screaming and just like 0.68

00:04:10.960 being ballistic on the streets and that means certain people got mad at you and then you turn the camera 0.99

00:04:15.280 around and there's a guy with a bucket on his head going you know trudeau's a fascist out of nato 0.94

00:04:19.600 everyone's a nazi the world economic forms coming to get us and then other people get mad at you for

00:04:24.080 showing that so and i've also seen you show like the more reasonable things like to your audience 0.84

00:04:28.480 i've seen you show some of the more reasonable freedom speakers and you know i i have to kick

00:04:32.240 a crazy person off a freedom stage once when they gave me an mc chance he just went on like and the

00:04:36.320 massad is at the thing and i'm like nope off you go uh so i can appreciate that you you've shown the

00:04:41.920 the lunatic so this is why you got in the cross as the anti-hate network i i it i've intuited because

00:04:47.920 you did a thing of sort of nuance and that is not how their operation really operates it's they're 0.71

00:04:55.920 funded by the government to find hate but only on one side it's like they they map right-wing hate

00:05:00.720 um they openly cooperate with people or antifa so it it drives a lot i mean their their goal is

00:05:07.280 almost like to drive hate because they go after people people go after them and enrages all of

00:05:12.400 society people say crazy things but they're the experts and and then their expert advice can be

00:05:19.040 used by in extreme circumstances law enforcement intelligence and the legal system to harass people

00:05:25.200 uh so i've always said this tell me if you think this is a good synopsis of what i've

00:05:28.960 kind of said on at a meta level about the anti-hate network is this is sort of how the government

00:05:34.160 launders we'll say censorship authoritarianism more censorship now uh through like a technocratic

00:05:41.680 proxy so like people will always defend government people like oh no you have a free speech or you

00:05:47.360 have free expression that means the government can't come after you the government can tell you

00:05:51.120 what to say but this isn't the government it's an independent body it's the experts it's an ngo

00:05:56.480 it's the anti-hate network they're not the government and they're just making recommendations

00:06:00.880 and then whoever's looking at it the bureaucrats go off the recommendation of experts and then you're

00:06:05.440 censored so you didn't get censored by the liberal government you were censored by the anti-hate

00:06:09.120 network so we don't really have a charter problem or or a constitutional problem in this case it's

00:06:14.480 more of a uh private sector it's more consequences thing and i think that's sort of what drives anyone

00:06:19.920 so i call this sort of the laundering of of censorship through these NGOs yeah i think that that's actually

00:06:26.720 a pretty fair uh description of the phenomenon and you know the specific incident um that i was at the

00:06:34.800 center of was trying to have a one-on-one in-person interview with chris sky um which you know if

00:06:45.680 i don't expect that we would have gotten any real nuggets of wisdom uh but part of my approach is

00:06:52.480 seeing the satire the absurdity the humor in some of this and so it would have actually been

00:07:01.360 part of a parcel of a comedy show kind of underlying a roast of chris sky um and i i thought that this

00:07:08.720 would be an engaging and fun way um to sort of tackle some of these issues to confront some of what i

00:07:17.120 perceived as inconsistencies um and you know give people tools for thinking right that that's kind of

00:07:27.120 no like listen i come from a comedy background so i saw the idea and i thought it was a great idea

00:07:33.280 and and but thank you a lot of people did a lot of people did um except for the few who didn't and

00:07:40.640 i was not prepared to encounter a blockade i had no idea that that was coming down the pipeline um you

00:07:49.280 know the show ended up being cancelled that wasn't good enough it was the fact now that i invited him i was

00:07:55.600 planning to platform him even though his platform was substantially larger than mine at the time um

00:08:04.240 and that's kind of so but this concept of platforming i find very interesting because organizations like

00:08:11.040 the anti-hate network will also pick on relatively obscure people at times and elevate them to the

00:08:18.960 status of boogeyman almost um and do that by cherry picking material um characterizing it in certain

00:08:29.760 ways and there's an element of fear-mongering and you um alluded to the the creation of hate i think that

00:08:40.720 there is a vicious cycle that attaches to it because when you single someone out especially if they're not

00:08:48.960 how do i say this jet like they're not important right if they don't have the capabilities to

00:08:54.640 defend themselves like then it becomes quite various like if it's an average person like i

00:08:58.720 kind of had the luxury like this week when we started getting a lot of attention and and going

00:09:03.200 on indian media channels and like kind of going a bit viral on the india stuff the anti-hate network

00:09:08.080 came after us because no one stepped out of line you know i had retweeted something a video someone

00:09:13.600 did of jagmeet saying this to a man who's openly advocating for violence against hindus like

00:09:18.000 he was on tape there's another tape i have of him like saying no we bombed and we did this and

00:09:21.520 we kill and we kill and it's good we get like so not a guy the guy ended up retweeting he had sent

00:09:26.640 some anti-semitic stuff four years ago i'm jewish so right but it's kind of funny like when i retweeted

00:09:32.080 him this guy had actually messaged me like hey by the way this is my past i said this got in a really

00:09:35.920 dark place in the pandemic like i'm sorry about this made an apology then like asked and i connected

00:09:40.640 him with like some rabbis or whatever so like it was a guy who like had some bad moments three years ago

00:09:45.680 like how am i supposed to know this but instead of like getting in it with the anti-hate network and

00:09:51.920 just like this guy who's coming after me i don't know his bio is like i used to work for all vice or

00:09:56.560 other vices who cares block and we're talking about it it's no no we don't say his name like it's just

00:10:01.440 some loser like this is the problem i don't want to give these losers anything like they what they

00:10:06.560 was so clear that he wanted me to be like look the anti-hate network's coming after me support us in our 0.98

00:10:11.440 fight against the anti-hate network and these guys are no nuts and then hype them up and then they 0.98

00:10:15.760 hype us up and it's just like this toxic nonsense thing we're like we just have a bunch of parasites 0.94

00:10:20.000 in our society running around trying to get famous off destroying other people's success and it's like 0.98

00:10:26.320 no like you're losers but not everyone has that like not everyone can just be like okay i don't care

00:10:30.800 like i'm doing something else whatever like for a normal person who needs a normal job who like has to 0.96

00:10:35.360 like send their resume into things like i have 8 000 hours of me saying crazy ridiculous things like i'm not

00:10:40.320 getting a job at like rbc anytime soon i know that but someone who wants to get a job at rbc and the

00:10:45.840 anti-hate network says you're at this protest that can ruin their life right so like i don't want to

00:10:51.600 feed into this system that just goes around destroying people's lives for purity reasons and like the

00:10:57.360 thing is like there used to be just like a town eccentric back in the day that everyone knew was weird

00:11:02.880 and he said weird things but everyone would kind of leave him alone and you wouldn't try and turn

00:11:07.440 the man into a media figure so that's kind of one type of person that like anti-hate and these

00:11:11.840 different sort of uh networks will go after press progress is also part of that a lot about these

00:11:16.560 other sort of like fellow travelers with the anti-hate network what the other type of person

00:11:21.680 is someone who effectively is almost in business with anti-hate i'm not saying in a literal sense

00:11:26.480 but paul from and anti-hate could not go along without each other people like tyler russell and anti-hate

00:11:32.560 live off of each other because if they say ridiculous things or they hold some event where only five 0.99

00:11:36.640 idiots are going to show up they'll get promoted as a person and they get to be considered an 1.00

00:11:41.760 important political figure because now every single time paul from shakes hands with someone 1.00

00:11:46.320 is at a protest even though nobody knows what he looks like i can barely remember what he looks like

00:11:50.960 he looks like benjamin franklin if he was a loser uh like there's nothing really going on with him

00:11:56.560 yet anti-hate gets so much mileage out of of him donating to derrick sloan getting him kicked out of 0.52

00:12:02.240 the conservative party under a tool he'll he'll take he'll shake hands with adam from adamson's

00:12:06.800 barbecue or whatever and now he's somehow a nazi because one guy showed up or whatever but the and

00:12:12.720 that's where a lot of these like anti-hate groups if anything they are perpetuating and popularizing

00:12:18.560 actual hateful people and then they play you know six degrees of kevin bacon to try and get to

00:12:23.440 reasonable people and then say that you're somehow traveling in the same car as them

00:12:27.280 like and and uh maybe you have to go back to you of course karima the thing is too it feels like

00:12:32.880 the people from the anti-hate network and these sort of other tag along groups hate you so much

00:12:38.000 because they understand you as a person and they act and they know that you're a sympathetic reasonable

00:12:43.280 person that can't be smeared so that's why they come after you the most because you're the you're the

00:12:48.480 person who might actually make people meet in the middle in a certain sense oh well a lot to take in

00:12:55.680 there um a couple of points um i agree that with certain characters who receive attention and focus

00:13:04.480 there is almost a symbiotic relationship there um and you know the the very notion that association

00:13:14.400 means an unequivocal endorsement of anything that this other person has ever said or done

00:13:21.440 is totally absurd uh i think that people should be judged on the merits of what they do and say

00:13:30.560 association may be relevant at certain times to figure out where someone is coming from

00:13:38.720 you know what what is animating them but it has to be done with such care because otherwise if

00:13:48.000 mere association is enough to be tarnished as xyz then people are prevented from communicating with one 0.99

00:13:58.400 another and expression being able to reach across the aisle that's in my view a cornerstone of democracy

00:14:08.880 and if we are unable to do that the only solution is more polarization which leads me to the point

00:14:18.160 that there are different types of people or personalities who get featured by organizations

00:14:25.600 like anti-hate and the ones who are truly at the fringe or maybe normal people who were spotted somewhere

00:14:34.000 or what have you um you know if the spotlight is on them and without clear basis but that leads them to

00:14:45.520 be ostracized by other people and pushed out of their communities or lose their jobs or whatever

00:14:52.320 tethers them to any sense of normalcy in society where do they go they get driven into more and more

00:14:59.680 extremes where you know beliefs are valid validated the notion of persecution and perhaps they are then

00:15:08.080 exposed to even more radical ideas so it's counterproductive even at a face level assessment of what

00:15:15.440 they're doing and then if you dig deeper it can appear even more sinister just going back to what

00:15:23.520 you were saying about the government laundering smears right and targeting individuals who have the

00:15:32.800 potential to i don't even know what the basis of of the targeting is half the time um yeah i mean

00:15:40.000 yeah i mean the links are so tenuous yeah the ten i mean the tenuous links are one thing i mean i've

00:15:44.800 i always this is something that has always fascinated me like i always why do people do what they do i'm

00:15:49.680 always interested by different radical groups and how ideal like how hardline ideologies form it's

00:15:54.240 interesting you know i i tried to come up with a phrase like last year on like reflexive contrarianism

00:16:00.240 and this new thing it's where people see something from the other side and they immediately will take the

00:16:05.040 exact opposite um uh position and you saw a lot of this like right-wing people say left did this on

00:16:11.840 trump right sometimes trump would say something perfectly reasonable and normal my number one

00:16:15.600 thing is back in 2019 donald trump said the islamic republic of iran when they openly said they were

00:16:20.880 murdering civilians in the street he condemned them and said it was a bad thing the democrats attacked

00:16:25.120 him for it right that that should have been something where we could all reasonably be like

00:16:28.720 we might not like trump but murdering innocent people is bad we couldn't get on that

00:16:32.560 right and then like on the right thing it's like you know we're why did i get a lot of things is

00:16:36.320 like the nato stuff like right oh the media suddenly backs uh ukraine this that means russia's the good

00:16:42.800 guys and nato started the war it's like you have to be insane to think that but i saw a guy yesterday

00:16:47.120 literally say he still hadn't seen any footage of the war he's like how how come i haven't seen any

00:16:51.360 footage from this supposed war it's like because you don't look it up because you don't look it up but

00:16:54.800 it's so fascinating though but like this i try and understand and like one of the so i'm getting to

00:16:58.480 like my theory on sort of like how this some of these modern polarizational things form and i

00:17:04.240 like your opinion on this is like it's it's sort of like a you know one in group out group right this

00:17:10.320 like i'm in and i'm out but it's sort of this like need to be like intellectually pure in a way like

00:17:17.280 it's it's like kind of linked to their intelligence in the sense of like the media is lying and i know

00:17:22.880 they're lying so to prove to you guys that i cannot be corrupted ideologically or intellectually

00:17:28.560 like i possess such value i will immediately do the opposite thing so i just signal so hard that

00:17:34.080 whatever the mainstream signaling is i'm just the exact counter signal and this is like some sort of

00:17:38.880 like in-group intelligence displayed to them and that's that's kind of how i've seen this form in sort

00:17:44.080 of left and right modern politics where it's sort of like a need to preserve like their sort of like

00:17:49.600 moral and intellectual integrity by just being but by playing it off of like this villain you've

00:17:55.200 created and often this villain's like ridiculous straw man like no one has these things so you get

00:17:59.120 these like insane opinions that that when they hit the means mainstream like mainstream conditions like 0.81

00:18:04.000 what the hell are these people talking about left and right because they they're creating these crazy

00:18:09.200 opinions as a polar opposite of these demonic opinions they've constructed of their enemies and we 0.99

00:18:15.120 just have these lunatics running around is is is how i see a lot of this

00:18:21.040 yeah um and and i think groupthink plays a part in that right and people wanting to belong and be on

00:18:29.600 side and kind of of a similar understanding and knowing who's your team and who's the team that's

00:18:36.320 against us and that's just it's easier right it's easier that way very easy it's easy to be smart

00:18:43.200 yeah well it boils down to shortcuts right we take shortcuts and okay so and so said this that must

00:18:49.280 mean it's false it's the opposite as you or so and so said this therefore it's right you know like

00:18:54.480 yeah it's not assessing it on the merits and you know this is something that um we came across in

00:19:01.760 preparing the report for hate gate where it's opinions or conclusions that are predetermined almost and

00:19:10.880 looking for evidence to support that or ignoring or dismissing evidence that doesn't um it creates

00:19:17.920 this tunnel vision and things are not properly assessed on the merits um so it's a lack of whether it's

00:19:26.320 work ethic or diligence or critical thinking um but it it does us all a disservice because we're not able to actually

00:19:35.440 exchange ideas in any meaningful way um and you know that that

00:19:44.720 yeah it's bad yeah how do we progress if we're stifling the ability to even talk to one another

00:19:52.000 another how how do we progress forward as the foundation of democracy or one of them is rhetoric

00:19:59.200 right the greeks openly practice rhetoric like go into a park make a crazy speech about something

00:20:05.360 someone else comes up and counters you like this like they realize this at the formation of democracy

00:20:09.840 and i'm not saying ancient greece was this paradise we're like but like no this is thousands of years ago

00:20:14.560 as as we burgeon into into the modern world like people realize for for any sort of for people to

00:20:20.880 have any sort of power in a system they have to there has to be open dialogue and exchange of ideas and

00:20:26.000 this has to be healthy and and we've lost that like we've we've lost that ethos especially in like

00:20:32.560 mainstream um corporate world and it might not be so much from ideology it might just be from fear

00:20:37.840 you know hr departments might be too big you know everything's filmed like everyone just gets a bit too

00:20:42.640 scared and doesn't take risks and it just who's taking risks crazy people right and the people

00:20:48.560 the furthest left and the furthest right in in a culture of fear they're going to be only ones

00:20:52.800 saying their piece on particular issues so you know we're not we're not going to get like this sort

00:20:57.920 of nuanced you know okay on on this particular issue here's a point but here's also a thing where

00:21:03.760 like some people in the center can kind of come it's just like you know you know uh either you know

00:21:11.040 either nato's the greatest or nato's the worst or russia's the greatest russia's the worst ukraine 0.59

00:21:15.440 is real ukraine isn't real like the conversations we're having are not high quality right we're still

00:21:21.680 you know we're debating over what is a woman we're not talking about like you know what is the most

00:21:26.320 effective way to you know increase um public literacy when it comes to legal and political matters

00:21:33.760 like how do we teach high schoolers how to up themselves on a political power curve to get ready

00:21:38.720 for university and coming like these are not the conversations we're having it's who's allowed in

00:21:42.320 the washroom and what flags are we raising in the schools right so it's not that it's not that i i

00:21:47.920 just wanted to add in this because i think this would be something maybe interesting to talk about

00:21:50.880 because i think one of your your best article on all this stuff so far karima has been this one i'll

00:21:55.440 just throw the chat uh it's just from crier media about the uh about basically the anatomy of a smear

00:22:00.560 campaign and not talking about a specific one that you're involved in because i i assume we'll mention

00:22:05.200 some examples later on that you've kind of uh you know where they've kind of you know tried to do the

00:22:09.520 drive-by shooting on you from anti-hate but just the way i just want to use this more mainstream

00:22:14.160 example that every single person here will probably understand is that the way i see it starting is that

00:22:19.920 all this stuff can almost take a couple of years of setup sometimes in order to get to the point where

00:22:24.880 someone who said something completely innocuous two years ago is now cancelled uh two years later is that

00:22:30.640 and i want to sort of start from the idea that like two years ago if a politician had said hey i

00:22:36.480 disagree with the world economic forum because i don't like their political ideology most reasonable

00:22:41.280 thing to say you can disagree or agree with anyone's political ideology and how we got from that to

00:22:46.400 basically pure poly of now being labeled an extremist and conspiracy theorist for disagreeing with an

00:22:52.400 international organization's particular flavor of political ideology by mainstream media sort of uh like

00:22:59.280 journalists who are supposedly supposed to be asking very objective and fair questions

00:23:03.760 at that you know gas station he was at in pei and where i saw us getting from just having a basic

00:23:09.520 opinion to now being a flat out like like uh you know conspiracy theorist and extremist there was

00:23:15.200 multiple layers of these kind of anti-hate type front groups who started sort of making sounds about

00:23:21.920 how well there's some people who criticize the wf who are crazy nazis and that might be true there 0.94

00:23:26.560 might be some crazy people who like criticize the wf me and daniel see them all the time where they 0.50

00:23:31.760 literally think they control the world and it's like i don't like the wf they also close fob is 0.99

00:23:36.240 also an idiot and does not have enough political power yeah the plan is well i read the great reset 0.99

00:23:40.640 and the great i read the plan it's stupid it's written by someone who was drunk during a second 1.00

00:23:45.920 year sociology class and thinks they're a genius like yes but but we got from we got from there to then 0.95

00:23:51.920 anti-hate and sort of other groups like press progress calling out specific individual people

00:23:56.480 who talk about the wf lot who maybe are a little bit odd and eccentric and then that's moved to the

00:24:01.840 point where you'll have people like duane bratt and other professors or academics being quoted in cdc

00:24:08.160 articles that were saying experts say that or as a wire story from canada press that experts say

00:24:13.600 that you know pure poly of is inviting conspiracy type language and just by the first the anti-hate people

00:24:20.000 basically enabling people to say that criticizing wf sounds conspiratorial that we now then have

00:24:25.120 experts saying this sounds like a conspiracy theory type language and then you have a journalist in

00:24:30.560 pei saying you use conspiracy theory type language and we can just keep dropping the qualifications as

00:24:36.000 we go along and that's kind of what's happened to a lot of people that anti-hate has targeted is that

00:24:41.520 it starts out that they have 17 qualifications for well this is what this what this person said but this

00:24:46.800 person's a specific flavor crazy and they take this meaning they take this opinion in this weird

00:24:52.800 direction or whatever but eventually metastasized into just basically saying you're you're a conspiracy

00:24:58.240 theorist based on literally nothing but the opinion being said by increasingly like credible people

00:25:07.360 yeah there's probably a few things there um one being this tendency toward keyword right like we're

00:25:14.960 our brains are seo optimized almost and so we hear something and then it triggers well this is the

00:25:21.760 implication of it even though there may be other interpretations etc um that are available or plausible

00:25:30.400 but that's just not how we are wired to think anymore um i love by the way i'm gonna i love that

00:25:37.440 line of brains are seo optimized that hit that hit me because sometimes i'm writing an article and i'm or

00:25:42.560 thinking your title i'm like okay you got an seo after like how do i don't change the content but

00:25:46.480 like they're always out of sort of front of me i'm like okay how do you get people to pay attention

00:25:50.000 to one line you said to listen to the other things you're gonna say so yeah my brain is a little

00:25:54.480 bit hardwired like that i'll own that i'll own that i think i have an excuse because i i work on

00:25:59.600 both ends of it but uh that hit me that that will keep me up an extra half an hour tonight

00:26:04.080 you are free to take that one um a gift um i'll trade you i'll trade you that for laundering uh

00:26:13.360 some sort of censorship and we can so so that's an element of it um there's also like when we're

00:26:19.840 talking about experts or expertise um who is being spotlighted as an expert um to what extent are their

00:26:28.400 credentials you know being thoroughly assessed right like and that's not to say that every expert

00:26:34.400 quoted in the news we should dismiss because simultaneously there is a devaluing of expertise

00:26:40.960 and people who have no background in something opining as though they are sort of holding a doctorate

00:26:50.400 right um so it it is happening from both ends where there's simultaneously an over-reliance on

00:26:57.840 experts to um promulgate certain views or narratives um and also um this devaluation of of expertise so

00:27:10.000 it's kind of it's funny how that happens on on both sides and maybe something um to explore further um and

00:27:17.600 then the other aspect of it is conflation um and sort of there's something and then we fuse it with

00:27:25.920 something else and suddenly that something also means something else even though it doesn't always um

00:27:33.680 it's probably also true that politicians to some degree um are aware of what these keywords are and

00:27:41.760 are deliberately invoking them in order to um reach a certain audience or portray certain messaging um so

00:27:51.360 it's you know these things are happening in parallel but it's they pile on each other yeah the conflation

00:28:00.560 thing like that's a modern political tactic if i've ever seen one like it's a right justin trudeau

00:28:05.520 i'm dealing with that right now with sikhs and calisthenes or the conceits and calisthenes or 0.81

00:28:09.200 justin trudeau invites a um a literal nazi to parliament ss waffen nazi and then you have them

00:28:15.040 saying well some conservative mps um met with christine anderson and she's right-wing in germany that

00:28:21.920 makes her i'm gonna call her nito and these are the same things and it's like it's it's not even close

00:28:26.080 uh to the same thing and like you could disagree with christine anderson and you could say you know what

00:28:30.000 she might have said some stuff that i would think is islamophobic fine that does not equate to literal

00:28:36.080 mass murdering genocidal like wearing hugo boss leather uniform throwing people in an oven shooting

00:28:41.680 kids in the head like the the you know that's the conflation thing right and it's like you know the

00:28:47.040 guilt by association only works one way right just uh peer polyev some guy shows up takes a picture

00:28:52.800 jerry mckenzie who doesn't even like peer polyev is a ppc guy oh look who peer polyv supports right and

00:28:58.640 then the media remember when justin trudeau invited jaspal atpal to india a convicted terrorist

00:29:03.680 in our court system we tried to assassinate an indian official he's brought with the liberals to india 0.99

00:29:08.800 and this is right that whoa now the experts say well that that's that's different that's that's

00:29:14.720 that's something and that's you know that's just violence against hindus it's not really an issue so

00:29:19.840 you know what what gets pumped up what doesn't and everything's conflated what about this what about

00:29:24.240 that yeah it's toxic and everyone just kind of checks out because the hardliners have their

00:29:28.880 excuse like all the true and on people it's like oh true to invite a nazi well peer polyev took a

00:29:33.280 picture with someone four years ago so right i it's a wash i'm just gonna cut in here what i'm

00:29:40.080 going to thank jason abby for giving for contributing to the legal fund this is not beer money it is legal

00:29:44.800 money but thank you for that jason but i just wanted to also just talk about just the fact that

00:29:49.520 when you're doing a lot of these anti-hate activists people from the anti-hate network press

00:29:53.360 progress we literally had press progress imply that we're pro-nazi despite half of our writers 0.55

00:29:58.320 having you know dead relatives in uh in poland uh but the thing is that these people are fairly nasty

00:30:05.040 people and i think that's something that people have to cut through it's not that they're trying

00:30:08.320 to do their jobs and they're just a little bit off they just really care about like combating far

00:30:12.960 right hate there's a a smarmy smugness to the way that many of these people go and talk about their

00:30:19.120 work when you see anti-hate network people being uh interviewed and asked questions in parliamentary

00:30:25.040 uh hearings stuff like that dan lloyd asking them questions and then they start kind of like getting

00:30:30.320 all like uppity about the fact that oh you don't you don't support uh far like us going after far

00:30:35.040 right hatred and whatnot it's always this kind of almost mafia-esque gangster type quality to the way

00:30:41.920 that they confront people and they ask them questions and they tend to it always comes with accusations with no

00:30:47.600 ability to actually correct anything and i and pretty much every single one of us here has

00:30:52.240 experienced that and especially you kareemah because again they're not saying that while we

00:30:56.400 think cream is wrong we think kareemah is promoting hate by doing x we think that by platforming chris sky

00:31:02.480 x will happen ergo she should do it it's that they just start throwing insults as soon as you don't bow 0.99

00:31:07.360 down to their particular view on a subject and maybe you can talk a little bit about that because

00:31:12.480 i thought when i was reading that article that you're at the anatomy of a smear campaign

00:31:16.320 the nastiness that immediately comes out from just simply you disagreeing with their tactics

00:31:21.520 is above and beyond absurd yep um and i i think i we talked earlier about groupthink and that affecting

00:31:31.520 both sides of the political spectrum and i think within the left um which is a simplified binary but if

00:31:40.720 we go with that within the left there's an even higher degree of expectation that everyone will be

00:31:48.400 in lockstep on every issue and if you step out or are caught having unorthodox thoughts you are exiled

00:31:59.360 and that's the end of it um so absolutely a purity spiral uh and you know the cannibalization the

00:32:08.560 self-cannibalization of your pool of supporters um so that you know that exists independently in the way

00:32:17.040 that i've experienced it and what i like a modern french revolution in a way where even ross's bear

00:32:22.400 gets the guillotine eventually is kind of yeah yeah that's exactly um so it's short-sighted um on top of

00:32:29.920 everything else because you're alienating support and also one day you're next right so that's silly

00:32:36.080 um but what i describe in anatomy of a smear campaign and the way that i've experienced it is that

00:32:44.560 it starts with anonymous accounts and they are able to say the most outrageous and ludicrous things

00:32:51.360 because there's zero accountability and no real way to fight back because it's not an even battle um one

00:33:00.160 person has their name and face on the line and therefore there's you know anything that can be

00:33:06.080 used as ammunition um and whatever lands or hits has a tangible impact on reputation versus an unknown

00:33:15.760 right a total unknown we we have nothing to work off of except for post history and what they purport to

00:33:24.000 stand for um but anyone can be anyone on the internet right and so so that like that that you've

00:33:32.320 even said some of these anti-hate people and then you've even said some of these anti-hate people who

00:33:36.240 are like board members they are like regular writers they will also like you to the best of your knowledge

00:33:42.160 and all the evidence out there they will they operate anonymous accounts as well even though they

00:33:46.800 supposedly put their face on the internet too well it has been part and parcel of the

00:33:53.920 mo um so i can't say who's doing what currently but it is a known fact um and just last year there

00:34:04.320 was a job posting for someone to go undercover and infiltrate white supremacist groups and you're going

00:34:10.880 to write us two to three articles per week and just totally unrealistic expectations because how can

00:34:17.840 someone stay undercover be accurate and truthful but also meet that quota it you can pick two out of

00:34:26.560 the three at best it's called lying you just have to lie a little bit more but uh but you you know

00:34:32.720 like so we know that that's part like so that's but that's the first layer of it anonymous accounts

00:34:37.680 make smears and then you know other accounts pick that up and maybe soften the language a little bit

00:34:44.240 maybe not um but it goes up this almost chain of command it reaches influencers it potentially

00:34:51.120 reaches journalists um this is repeated into fact this is part part and parcel of how corrupt ngos 0.55

00:34:57.600 work on a lot of issues like i won't get into trouble like geopolitically but i've seen it on like

00:35:02.720 chris you know left-wing ngos and right-wing ngos when they want to criticize a government that's you

00:35:07.840 know not on their thing um you get someone like you know i i see a lot on you know you can use israel

00:35:13.840 or india or any of the things where you have an ngo making outlandish claim that um hindus or sikhs or

00:35:19.280 muslims or whoever their thing is did this the mass thing like they over report something it gets picked 0.80

00:35:25.440 up then by other ngos as ngo says once it gets picked up the original ngo then retracts and says okay

00:35:32.320 we didn't really say that so they're no longer legally liable but everyone else all the end their

00:35:36.080 ngos in the ecosystem they can all report on it by saying these people said it so like they like

00:35:41.760 because if you want to go after somebody you have to go off the original and the original well no we

00:35:44.640 changed it but you still have all these ngos sort of reporting the original extreme you know over

00:35:50.720 exaggeration of the first one and like so again i've seen this tactic being used before on the things

00:35:57.040 all right so there's there's two areas that i think we need to get to uh i think uh what people

00:36:01.520 would find a lot of interesting um so first one i saw this come up in the chat uh greg

00:36:06.000 from diverge media asked and i want he wanted your take on this uh but this would be the government

00:36:10.560 censoring bill c11 um the new podcast regulation yes uh what's uh her view and unless he's he what's

00:36:19.680 he views on the regulation of podcasts here to see being forced on canadian media personalities

00:36:24.480 so i think uh this is we'll do this and then i gotta i got a question after that

00:36:28.160 i think um the crtc is not particularly democratic in the way that it functions

00:36:36.160 um and in who gets to make these determinations about what qualifies i think that it is overreach

00:36:44.480 quite frankly um to even imagine that you can control content on the internet and it feels inevitable

00:36:52.880 that this trickles down to affecting people's ability um to freely express themselves uh which i i see as a

00:37:03.440 net negative even in a world where misinformation disinformation um hysteria hyperbole

00:37:13.600 it's part of a business model right clickbait is a thing so there are incentives for people to be

00:37:23.840 less measured less nuanced less truthful in order to monetize their platforms or gain popularity or fame

00:37:32.240 so that that that that is the issue that needs to be contended with um but i don't think it happens

00:37:38.640 by regulating speech or content um and i think that overall censorship um it's a cudgel and and we should

00:37:48.320 be as a society very careful with how we introduce or use it first of all because political winds can shift

00:37:56.560 at any given moment and once there is an apparatus in place to censor civilians to surveil them to 0.97

00:38:03.520 monitor them uh right it's you're a fool if you think the person in power always will agree with you 0.99

00:38:10.080 you're an absolute fool if you think the person will always agree with you like eventually you're 0.99

00:38:15.200 going to be on the outs of someone in power and it's the old chris for hitchens thing like who do you 1.00

00:38:19.360 trust to to to make the delineation of what is hate what you also end up getting when you have too

00:38:24.800 much crtc regulation as well as just the general uh federal subsidization of like you know the cbc and

00:38:31.760 other media outlets and then the regulations over top of it is that you ban any new information from

00:38:37.040 really entering the scene in a big way in independent media as you probably all know there's zero dollars

00:38:43.760 in independent media there's nothing there because the thing is that there's so many regulations already

00:38:49.200 dictating what you can do and what you can say when it comes to television and radio that everyone

00:38:53.680 else has to do their thing online and then it becomes too difficult to do on we can't even post

00:38:57.840 stuff on facebook right now uh that now you don't you can't have anything but the uh the you can't

00:39:03.920 have anything but the subsidized media and on top of that now you have places like and the only way

00:39:09.120 you can break through is by getting subsidized by doing some sort of performing some sort of function

00:39:14.560 that the federal government agrees with which is kind of where anti-hate comes into play they get a bunch

00:39:19.520 of money because there's no way anti-hate is making enough money on ads and stuff like that and donors

00:39:25.680 in order to get by it's all federal money nobody reads them and that was actually the funny thing

00:39:29.920 that you said karima where they were like can you infiltrate a nazi uh like a nazi cell and write us

00:39:36.240 three articles about it a week i don't even think those people put up three articles a week with the rest

00:39:41.200 of their staff right now it's actually there's not that much hate it turns out to be able to report on

00:39:46.320 yet they want you to report on three articles about the exact same group every single week because

00:39:51.040 they desperately need it but uh but yeah it's like the crtc regulation is is making it so difficult

00:39:56.160 to break into the space and the oversaturation of subsidized media means that most people who might

00:40:01.040 have private interest in funding media and funding other views just don't want to do it because they

00:40:04.800 don't see how you could break through and right now is a very critical juncture because the canadian

00:40:11.600 anti-hate network has made a bid for five million dollars of federal money to be an anti-hate

00:40:17.520 watchdog yeah that's a lot of money and that's a lot i'm gonna have to get a bernie farber tattoo in

00:40:24.320 order to keep myself out of prison i need bernie farber's face on my face in order to just you know

00:40:29.520 be able to buy groceries that'll be the new vaccine passport scan scan an anti-hate tattoo

00:40:35.440 you know it's subjective right because um it it just is and and we already have certain parameters

00:40:46.160 on speech so free expression is free expression up to a certain point i'm not just talking about

00:40:52.960 criminal law but also um you know defamation law certain restrictions on the way you're able to

00:40:59.520 advertise so it's not truly free um and there are mechanisms to deal with it but the the law

00:41:11.440 it it is a tool in the toolkit um and there's not much of an emphasis put on creating in order to have

00:41:23.040 alternatives in order to you know promote or or provoke thought um it's more about shutting things

00:41:30.800 down uh and i i think that that's it's counterproductive um it makes people double down or

00:41:38.720 pushes them to farther extremes um and you know it's it is the antithesis of progress well so i'm gonna

00:41:47.760 i'm gonna i'm gonna jump in here why i i there's i think there's a good follow-up here that i know you

00:41:51.760 have to understand i'm gonna i'm gonna outrank you here so we appreciate that also uh ben bankus

00:41:56.800 and i are arranging a protest against the crtc next saturday we think we just we'll come up i'm gonna

00:42:01.440 meet with him after this and we're gonna protest that so next weekend we'll do something but

00:42:06.480 this sort of shutting things down and free speech and and yeah we have other things and there's other

00:42:10.000 things in law so i'm not a hate speech guy but i understand there are things that you say with words

00:42:14.080 that are illegal like i'm not a crazy person and i think ken has just sort of hit an international

00:42:18.320 incident and there's some people here from india um who might want answers to this particular

00:42:22.400 question and one of the things i kind of went viral on is going ballistic screaming about

00:42:26.640 calistani nonsense in this country i go crazy when we have places like the anti-hit network saying

00:42:32.080 you took a picture with him who took a picture with him who four years ago was beside a poster 0.97

00:42:37.440 uh by someone whose grandfather was friends with adolf hitler and therefore you're dangerous and 0.85

00:42:42.960 here we have canada country where there are calistani-affiliated gurdwaras and the majority

00:42:48.160 of sikhs in canada are not calistani they like me because i'm anti-calistani i know it has nothing

00:42:52.720 to do with the sikh religion it's an isi-funded nonsense bs movement that doesn't care about 0.99

00:42:57.840 sikh human rights because they don't say anything about pakistan but they're screaming about india and 0.79

00:43:03.120 screaming at india fine that's political things but we actually have people who again they did the

00:43:08.000 the the floats with india ghani calling for the assassination of indian ministers um photos

00:43:14.000 praising terrorists as martyrs um putting like targets on people's heads there's people openly

00:43:20.400 running around threatening i mean the lawyer for hard to sign the jars is telling all the hindus to 0.99

00:43:24.880 get out of canada he's going to send them all back to india and we have these factions um that have

00:43:31.200 certain we could say minorities of minorities which are outright threatening like 1.00

00:43:36.000 widespread ethnic violence and we're not like hedging it they're like no no no we're not

00:43:41.600 speaking in english so the anti-hate network was too late to translate but it's like get revenge

00:43:47.040 blood for blood glory to the martyrs like kick them out like fomenting legit violence praising suicide

00:43:53.040 bombings like things that are any reasonable person should say this crosses the line yet this doesn't

00:43:59.440 make it onto the anti-hate network like literal ethnic violence we're calling for it straight out no

00:44:05.360 ambiguity against an identifiable group of hindus sorry from everyone in terms of exoticism that we

00:44:11.760 don't know what these people are up to uh it's just it's too complicated seeks hindus it's this

00:44:16.640 group versus this group i can't make sense of it and then but then you get people going really hardcore

00:44:22.080 after like non-existent i would like the most center-left opinion on this because like it's easy for

00:44:26.960 me and why it is right-wingers to kind of say there's a wokeness element to this and blah blah blah blah

00:44:31.920 um which like i still think there is a bit of a wokeness element too and you could also say maybe

00:44:36.480 a bit of a racist element where you know white people don't care about the lives of brown people

00:44:40.960 because oh that's them that's not us i acknowledge that both sides exist but i i i would like a bit

00:44:46.320 more of a you know a center-left reasoned you know musing maybe on on this well i think if we look at

00:44:55.440 who is staff who's on the board um there's probably a lack of capacity frankly um to deal with issues

00:45:04.640 that aren't plain and obvious and you know part of the norm of what they're looking for in terms of

00:45:12.160 hate um so they just don't have that inclination or skill set or perspective um because it's not a

00:45:24.320 particularly diverse group um and you know representational politics itself can be sort of a

00:45:32.960 check this box okay it's good we have the identity covered um but you know that's not what makes people

00:45:39.600 tick and that's not actually what it means to be diverse in in a sense that uh you're you're getting

00:45:49.840 a variety of opinions and viewpoints and perspectives and you're able to bounce that around

00:45:57.440 that's what erica yeah oh sorry i was just going to say that that's where erica ithel uh apparently 1.00

00:46:03.360 thinks that you're not actually brown because you don't share the right opinions in her opinion

00:46:08.720 right it's a weird form of tokenism um it it eliminates people's agency to

00:46:15.680 think or express themselves um it uh i don't i don't see at all how it um

00:46:26.240 there's one thing i remember from statistics class that i always found very profound it's a mathematical

00:46:31.920 thing but i think it works on this and it's when they said never dichotomize a continuous variable and

00:46:37.520 what that means is like like there's if it's a continuous variable it means it's sort of changing

00:46:42.000 and fluid and you have to analyze like that but if you try and cut it into two things and treat it

00:46:46.320 like an actual number like the conclusions you get will be completely skewed and it doesn't work

00:46:52.160 right that's like a that's like a statistical counting but i i see that always is like it's

00:46:56.640 always been sort of my analogy on sort of the current racial climate in north america where we

00:47:01.280 decotomize the continuous variable it's white people and people of color right and one is good 0.99

00:47:06.240 and one is bad but yeah that's not exactly the way to think of it because again you know black is 0.96

00:47:11.040 different than brown also like brown like right it just ran india bangladesh and then within india

00:47:16.240 how about these different things and then then brown is south america and india like i couldn't

00:47:21.120 find two more different cultures if i tried between like brazil and india right but they're pocs and i'm

00:47:28.160 what like so you know it's it's me it's like we've dichotomized continuous variable and then if you commit

00:47:33.120 a a a a heresy uh from the church of poc well then you're kicked out right that happened to you

00:47:39.440 my most famous one is ian hersey ali right she she was kicked out of you know she lost the woman

00:47:45.440 muslim uh refugee all that because she took some heterodox viewpoints so she lost all of that type 0.98

00:47:52.080 of stuff and you and you have this uh really you know sort of again this toxic polarized environment

00:47:57.520 that we keep talking about if i could on this um there is a very perverse eagerness on the part of

00:48:06.880 um people who buy into this this viewpoint where they really like going after poc um to use that term 0.89

00:48:19.600 who don't align and finding the bad poc and making sure everybody knows who they are um so you know

00:48:28.000 an opportunity for self-examination on the part of these individuals why why that is something

00:48:35.600 they feel they should be weighing into first of all um in can i can i add theory like i've noticed this

00:48:43.680 it's it's sort of the heresy element this is like i think why are women get a lot more hate on 0.99

00:48:48.320 uh like when they step into the trans issue because they're supposed to be protected by this 0.96

00:48:53.840 thought thought of intersectionality so it's the heresy element to it it's sort of right if i do it 0.73

00:48:58.800 it's sort of expected i can you know i can ramble about washrooms all day and people might not like 0.57

00:49:03.840 it but no one's going to try and kill me um and then you know you add oh you're brown and you're a 0.57

00:49:08.560 woman and you've done this well you've done a even greater heresy we gave you so much we gave you 0.97

00:49:15.200 everything you could have been on the pedestal but you rejected it you were the chosen one

00:49:20.320 you were the chosen one karima why not i don't know why have you forsaken so i think it's an

00:49:25.440 extra level of viciousness you see it on the indigenous leader uh the inuit woman who backed 0.97

00:49:30.880 polyev saying i wasn't defended and then people just viciously like white liberals who are like we

00:49:35.600 need truth and reconciliation truth and reconciliation until an indigenous person has a 0.98

00:49:40.640 legitimate truth and reconciliation moment with the leader of the conservative party and then you

00:49:45.920 know all the gloves are off um you see that all the time so yeah that that's that's a real so 0.61

00:49:52.080 interesting and i use poc or person of color because it's my favorite phrase because it's so silly 1.00

00:49:56.800 because everyone who uses poc would would be if i called you if i called you a colored person

00:50:03.120 they would go ballistic and do that space but we've changed like the little way and now it's like

00:50:07.680 and now now you have to call them a colored person but like in a different way because i just know in

00:50:12.160 five years like poc is going to be like an offensive thing that like only a racist would say and you

00:50:17.920 could just see that coming so i'm just enjoying that you know in kind of if we're looking at recent

00:50:26.320 events um the way that the million person march for children or whatever it's it's framed as

00:50:33.840 um the way that that was covered really illustrates um some of the shortcomings in a binary dichotomized

00:50:42.720 approach um you had people screaming at muslims to go home um right and it's there is this tension

00:50:52.640 and hypocrisy and a framing that leaned heavily into the notion of hate um i was on the ground in the

00:51:01.840 durham region so you know i i only could be at the one particular protest um but it's it's a mix and

00:51:10.800 anytime you're painting an entire group with a single brush particularly a group that's kind of

00:51:17.360 nebulous and amorphous and doesn't really have gatekeeping uh in any meaningful sense um it just

00:51:24.720 cheapens the discourse and our ability to actually engage on the substantive matters it it you know

00:51:32.240 it it is very unfortunate well one of the things that you saw with a lot of people reporting on that

00:51:38.320 and one particular guy i'm actually having to deal with now but when you go through all their tweets

00:51:43.120 they keep saying it's it's a hate march oh it's a hate rally it's it's the anti-lgbt rally even though

00:51:48.240 it's like it they're standing up for one of the most oddly widely held beliefs in canada of believing

00:51:55.040 in parental rights but they're just pushing back on the minority of people in government and other

00:51:58.960 institutions that seem to demonize people for like wanting to know what goes on in the classroom and

00:52:03.440 whatnot not even demanding that this must be done in the classroom just saying i'd like to know what's

00:52:07.200 going on and that's it but i would say that what highlights is that just the word hate or hateful or

00:52:13.120 bigoted has become a pejorative in and of itself is that you'd rather be called anything you'd rather

00:52:18.800 be called any slur than hateful because if you're as soon as you're hateful people just imagine things

00:52:23.680 that you might have done and it's deliberately vague and this is exactly the type of the person

00:52:27.920 i'm thinking of right now and the tweets that they put out they're not from they're not from the

00:52:31.600 anti-hate network they're not connected to them or press progress or any of these uh individual

00:52:35.920 organizations but they have the same tactics they'll never specifically say that you're a racist or you'll

00:52:42.320 that you're this or that they'll just label the thing that you're part of a hate movement and then

00:52:46.640 they'll often just post subtle vague stuff hoping that then the bot accounts the anonymous accounts

00:52:52.880 in their replies fill in the gaps and fill in the kind of uh slurs down there for them but even then

00:52:59.920 these even these people who are scared to ever directly say something about you because they don't

00:53:04.400 want to be like sued or anything like that even though usually i find the people that they're

00:53:08.240 criticizing are not litigious people they tend to be litigious people and they

00:53:12.000 project their litigiousness onto you uh is that uh is that like they just they still are these 0.90

00:53:18.320 same people are still comfortable saying hateful because that's the acceptable way of of going 0.86

00:53:23.200 after someone that nobody you're never ever going to be able to successfully sue someone for defamation

00:53:28.240 for calling you hateful even though it's probably far worse than calling you like a nazi because that's 0.83

00:53:33.120 such a ridiculous label most people won't believe it but people believe hateful 0.78

00:53:36.640 yeah it um is a convenient vehicle um to transport a lot of assumptions and kind of uh 0.69

00:53:52.000 create a particular perception um and if that's the first thing someone hears about you that you're

00:53:58.560 hateful uh it colors the way that they interpret any subsequent action um and there will be a

00:54:07.120 projection of malice or nefarious intent where perhaps there is none um and it could be based on

00:54:17.680 a figment of something you've never actually said or you hit retweet on someone who has other tweets that

00:54:25.120 you know are problematic but that's not what you were talking about in the retweet but it doesn't

00:54:30.320 matter because it's all the same cesspool or i was on a podcast um last week where you know i'm lambasted

00:54:39.840 because this person has said this other thing but okay how about we engage with what conversation or

00:54:48.160 dialogue i actually had um and and there's an unwillingness to to do that or i found over the

00:54:57.600 years it's a mental trick that a lot of people will use who want to like be political but don't

00:55:02.720 want to think too deeply or get into conversations and don't want to go to the side of the echo chamber

00:55:07.040 it's like so i always like people ask me like advice back in a facebook article so i'm like don't

00:55:11.520 write 14 paragraphs right because if you write 14 paragraphs so you have a long podcast someone's going

00:55:16.880 to find one little line in there where you misspelled or get something and ignore the wider point on a

00:55:22.160 technicality right so my advice when people ask me how to argue with losers on the internet is like

00:55:27.680 keep it short and just make a point and don't get sidetracked and then like but the best advice

00:55:31.680 to give you is just like don't do that all day like go outside you know like if someone says something

00:55:37.120 silly and you can think of something funny to say right away okay that but like i wouldn't get

00:55:41.840 caught in paragraphs long facebook arguments is is is but i go there all right there's there 0.69

00:55:47.040 i'm going to transition to a question i really want to ask you before we hit the hour mark because i

00:55:50.240 think we talked about this beforehand and we never really got into it and it's part of the national

00:55:54.240 issue so one of the things that we talked about hate gate is this sort of how it has worked in the

00:56:00.640 past with the canadian intelligence agencies to create sort of a let's say a false intelligence

00:56:05.440 report because this is a big thing a current geopolitical thing i know the nazi in parliament but

00:56:10.560 we currently started a major geopolitical um fight with an ally in india and we're claiming to have

00:56:16.720 an intelligence report in the bag that's top secret and you know i have made the point publicly that

00:56:24.000 i've seen the government you know lie about uh an intelligence report before so you're gonna have

00:56:29.680 to show me what you have before i believe uh justin trudeau's government is my position like if i see

00:56:34.800 something concrete i will believe it but i'm i'm not taking anything at face value and you're a lawyer in

00:56:39.840 this case and a journalist so you have a sort of an extra close to the ground point of view here so

00:56:45.200 i'd like to i'd like you to sort of explain to the people what what you can on this topic well if

00:56:53.120 the information is top secret then why introduce the idea or the accusation or the allegation

00:57:04.160 in public in the way that it was done without anything to corroborate it because with india we've

00:57:11.120 seen real consequences flow from that um and was this political grandstanding is it domestic power play

00:57:19.360 is it you what what we don't know right we don't know um but if i could i'll i'll refer to um a sequence

00:57:28.400 of events that came out of the freedom of information documents that we looked at um and

00:57:34.400 this was happening during the freedom convoy minister of public safety marco mendicino made

00:57:42.080 public statements that hey there's this weapons cache in coots and there are strong connections

00:57:48.480 to organizers of this far-right extremist group who are in ottawa and when pressed by reporters at

00:57:57.120 the conference for further details he essentially pushes them off to law enforcement and law

00:58:06.000 enforcement in this chain of emails are going back and forth to say well what do we do with this how do

00:58:12.640 we um how do we respond how do we substantiate his claims um and what they ended up doing was quoting

00:58:21.280 uh from a global news article i believe it was that quoted the anti-hate network and they they basically

00:58:30.320 presented a media story back to the media to answer questions that a government official um likely drew his

00:58:40.560 thoughts from the media um so a very like it's a backwards system um and i would not be surprised

00:58:51.280 if that's kind of what we're looking at with this india situation if that comes out at some point down

00:58:58.320 the line that government official made these statements based on maybe something but you know

00:59:06.400 we're doing work after the fact to try and substantiate can i ask yeah i mean by rachel gilmore

00:59:14.080 yeah rachel gilmore noted calistani expert like because i i've i've i'm one of the few people

00:59:19.840 who's so no she's talking about the other one for the uh for the freedom convoy one i was

00:59:23.600 still worked there at the time yeah i'm just saying like i i wouldn't be surprised because i like i like

00:59:28.320 it's an open source report parts of it like and it makes sense why i'm like one i can get like i can

00:59:33.760 pretty much guarantee the indian government was following this guy right we have reports in the

00:59:38.800 vancouver sun that he might have been running a terrorist training camp like our own media was reporting that

00:59:42.480 i got videos of him ak-47 saying things like he was openly advocating for violent secessionist

00:59:47.760 behavior um and and a renewal of hostilities in the punjab region so yeah if you know it's like if we

00:59:54.640 had a major flq cell that existed in belgium and and someone in belgium was just screaming about

01:00:00.320 destroying canada and like you know finding all the english-speaking people canadians in belgium and 0.95

01:00:06.880 and kill like yeah i think cesus would try and follow this guy so you probably have something

01:00:11.680 in the thing of like yes we know the nia was monitoring him and yes we know he was receiving

01:00:16.400 threats yeah because there's videos of him we even have info that cesus was meeting with najjar on

01:00:21.120 like a weekly basis and it wasn't even specifically to warn him about security threats it was just to

01:00:25.360 you know first warn him about security threats and then they kept meeting with him every single

01:00:29.520 week so it's like well there's a big opening there for someone like najjar to say when they're like

01:00:33.760 well who could be threatening you and then he just starts basically feeding them bad information

01:00:36.960 with the indian government because his whole life they could have been meeting with him because

01:00:40.400 people complained about him threatening to kill hindu people like it could have been both ways you could

01:00:45.040 have been like listen you're getting death threats from this community um because you're sending death

01:00:50.720 threats to this community so they could be meeting him for multiple reasons of hey there's some

01:00:54.640 credible threats against your life also you're threatening everyone else's life please stop like it could

01:00:59.360 have been it could have been we don't really know but it kind of you can there's like an

01:01:03.520 an occam's razor sort of like why would there be indian intelligence around this guy okay look at

01:01:08.240 what he's saying and doing why are the threats against his life look at the video content he makes

01:01:13.280 and you know how are we here so and then you know we have this top secret canadian intelligence report

01:01:19.520 the bc guy gets it it's just an open source report there might be something else in the hole we know

01:01:24.560 there's something with the five eyes potentially do they wiretap indian diplomats we don't know like

01:01:29.760 so yeah it's it's a massive cluster but again i'd be much more willing to trust the canadian

01:01:34.560 institutions if i hadn't seen the canadian institution systematically lie on important issues

01:01:39.760 um for a period of a few years now so i'm i'm fully in the you have to show me something something

01:01:45.440 concrete the liberals have to show me something concrete for me to believe it i i'm not taking

01:01:49.600 anything on face value yeah maybe to go back to kareema now on something specifically about you

01:01:54.720 because i uh we are past the hour mark so we'll keep this pretty fast and sort of two more things

01:01:59.440 one question i'll have a bit of a wrap-up question too that i think that people often misunderstand that

01:02:05.680 when when you once as soon as you label an organization like anti-hate or any even legacy

01:02:10.400 media publication people always have this sort of myth in their head that this person is sort of like

01:02:16.160 a 1960s style journalist pounding the pavement with their like you know with their like uh notepad going

01:02:22.240 around collecting clues and figuring stuff out it's just really not how it works these days the

01:02:26.320 internet's fantastic for research but kareema do you perceive that a lot of people don't realize just

01:02:32.400 how shallow most of the information people work with these days in order to do that as we are literally

01:02:37.920 seeing that weekly content do three articles a week and something that should be taking a month

01:02:43.120 and there is that and there's also this tendency to kind of copy paste or accept or replicate the

01:02:54.960 source finding but the source finding itself you know without going to the original document or the

01:03:01.760 original podcast so you take a line that someone else has found you don't bother to check the original

01:03:08.720 context of it and then you repeat that and then it gets repeated again and you know the repetition um

01:03:16.800 it it it makes something fact um and yeah so the the there's a lot that can be done with internet

01:03:25.520 research um but that in my view is only part of what an investigation should entail um and the rest of

01:03:36.160 it is hard work and i don't know who well i guess that's why you're hated as well is because going

01:03:45.680 with your cameraman down to these protests and filming is always the other side of the story that

01:03:51.120 even if they're trying to build up someone as a particularly dangerous figure this person needs

01:03:55.440 to be looked out for this person's crazy don't go anywhere near chris sky he's gonna hurt your family

01:04:00.800 and then you guys go to uh go and film them at public areas yeah you might not agree with everything

01:04:06.080 they say yeah you might not like their rhetoric yeah they might believe some things that are maybe

01:04:09.680 like maybe don't think that maybe let's slowly convince them that that's not true but if once as

01:04:15.040 soon as the camera comes out and you start filming you're like oh it's a person it's not literally a

01:04:19.840 demon that we have to all like you know get the rcmp involved and start trying to take down these

01:04:25.040 people are just people at the end of the day and like canada does not have the like frankly a violent

01:04:32.080 crime rate to justify thinking that anyone who has some sort of eccentric alternative view needs to be

01:04:38.320 like you know closely watched and monitored the way that a lot of these organizations are almost advocating

01:04:43.680 for yes um i think part of the flack i get is because in catching people in their sort of natural

01:04:53.520 environment if we put it that way um sometimes where they may not be paying attention to the fact

01:04:58.960 that they're like they're exposing themselves just by being right and and we capture that and you know

01:05:06.640 there's obviously editorializing that goes into anything um but i try not to be unfair about the way

01:05:16.400 we portray clips and it it makes people and their humanity their imperfections um shine through right

01:05:26.480 uh and yes we are all kind of ordinary folks at the end of the day and have to coexist unless we are

01:05:35.920 looking for a society that's very carceral and okay bad opinions means you are exiled or caged or

01:05:43.920 whatever um and that's not the world that i want to live in and that doesn't mean compromising on

01:05:50.240 key or core values it means actually standing up with conviction for those values and confronting

01:05:57.200 things head on um and if there's not a willingness to do that uh it's cowardice and the loudest voices

01:06:06.160 will continue to dominate the conversation and that will be the extremes on either end

01:06:10.560 yeah i couldn't agree more yeah that's that's pretty good i mean we've done an hour five is

01:06:16.720 there anything the last question i made was just going to field you quickly was just the uh the a

01:06:22.800 question about uh what you think that people should take i guess the what people should take away from

01:06:29.680 all the reporting that you've done on the anti-hate network hate gate and all this other stuff like

01:06:33.760 what should the average person not that like go and march in the streets and you know storm the palace

01:06:38.400 kind of stuff but the kind of the mood and attitude that people should have when it comes to this

01:06:43.920 information because i assume that your response is not go out and make up stuff and smear the anti-hate

01:06:49.520 people back because as silly as that sounds that's a that's a natural human tendency to want to do it

01:06:54.640 back and that's a race to the bottom um so it sucks when people aren't playing fair uh because

01:07:02.320 the way that we operate and the reason we have laws is to kind of maintain a semblance of order right

01:07:10.320 peace order good governance um but yeah descending to kind of the same level or using the same tactics

01:07:18.400 i don't think that that is helpful um you know call to action like maintain a healthy dose of skepticism

01:07:26.080 um but don't be um as you put it a reflexive contrarian just for the sake of it right um

01:07:33.840 right yeah i mean the media is is low quality but not a hundred percent of what's said on cbc

01:07:40.000 is wrong like and i used to do a thing where i'd watch an hour of cbc and i'd break down what's right

01:07:44.080 and wrong and like i've seen cbc outright lie like just outright i remember 2019 they were covering the

01:07:50.320 iran revolution they were showing protests in the streets people chanting maghbar from hori islami i speak

01:07:55.200 very little farsi i know that means death to or down with the islamic republic so hannah marchand 0.89

01:07:59.920 says what they're saying is they want no more corrupt politicians and weapons deals that's not

01:08:05.600 what they're saying right so that was an outright falsehood lie in this representation but sometimes

01:08:11.040 they give you a story you know story and you know it's mostly true but there's some slanting here

01:08:15.840 and they omit a little bit there so it's not like you know if you just base your opinion and say

01:08:20.720 a hundred percent of that is wrong i'm going to do the opposite well you're also coming to

01:08:24.560 something that's also wrong like it's not perfect yeah no one's you know no one's thinking and

01:08:29.600 sometimes the story is 100 true but you're like why am i even seeing this story like the one day

01:08:33.920 where you freaked out when the cbc covered the fact that shocked gasped teenage boys playing hockey

01:08:39.440 sometimes chirp each other oh yes teenage boys playing hockey used used some dangerous rhetoric oh

01:08:45.360 no you know i mean the the things the things we said in like on the high school hockey team like

01:08:51.600 to like the other teams things they said to us whatever like and it wasn't even like like there

01:08:56.960 there's sometimes maybe a racial homophobic component to it but it like wasn't even that like

01:09:02.000 i remember i had a friend who would like if he got hit he would like threaten the other guy to to 0.95

01:09:06.960 give him a blowjob and then like confuse them like he would just go really homoerotic and like 0.96

01:09:12.160 that's how he would get in their heads like because it's hockey and you say crazy things and you're 0.99

01:09:16.000 fun with them and it's like right it and and then the cbs can article oh the the toxic culture of

01:09:21.280 hockey it's like like can we can we not have anything fun anymore can people just not live

01:09:26.320 their lives like yeah if i got up on the stage and said the things that i would that that we said

01:09:31.920 like on the ice okay yeah cancel me but that's not gonna make a good bit yeah that'd be a good bit

01:09:40.240 like it was funny it was funny and we were having fun it's fun it's also fun in the ice like some guy

01:09:44.720 hits you and he says something and then you say something like it's like and you don't like you

01:09:49.120 know it it's fun it's competitive like and i mean yeah i can't speak to the hockey culture i don't

01:09:54.880 know what that is like and i probably wouldn't enjoy it myself um but you know it's context like so

01:10:01.520 context playing football like it's it's just like it's it's a lot of it's like teenage male stuff like

01:10:06.800 that i think our society is pretending like is like the worst thing ever and it's like i mean a lot

01:10:12.560 it's happening anti-hate stories these days it's just like someone said something that you might

01:10:17.280 not say in front of your grandmother it's like i wouldn't say it either and like no like polite

01:10:22.320 company or even privately also why is this a story but uh yeah but it's like it's more the sports

01:10:28.560 culture and like of like trash talk right you say things you have your team the boys like you work

01:10:33.200 together you get competitive like you put it on the floor you lay it on the ice and then you go back

01:10:37.280 like and it's but like yeah and then we're like we're pretending like this is oh my god where did

01:10:42.480 this come from i don't know 100 000 years of human history like there are certain cultures that probably

01:10:47.920 should be challenged right so police culture for example yes that's the way it's always been done

01:10:52.640 this is the status quo there are aspects of that that are i think harmful um so being critical of a

01:11:00.880 culture is one thing but yes the blanket statements and particularly sort of in civil society like

01:11:09.840 they're i don't know if everyone could just be cool i guess that's my that's my send off message yeah

01:11:16.480 everyone be cool um or try harder to be cool um and it's an actual call to action i mentioned this

01:11:24.640 five million dollar bid i strongly encourage people to reach out to their federal mps their

01:11:31.360 representatives um it's one way to participate in democracy it's not the only way it's not determinative

01:11:38.000 um but write in and share what your concerns may be do it in a respectful way lodge your complaint

01:11:46.000 use the processes that exist and it's hard because there aren't a lot of levers

01:11:52.240 that can be pulled to actually make change or hold our politicians to account but if we give up

01:12:01.280 entirely and these processes atrophy it doesn't get better yeah well that's a fantastic play the way to

01:12:08.880 end this whole thing off so to sum it all up if you're a cool of new uh if you're a cool enough dude

01:12:14.880 follow karima uh said on twitter i will link her in the uh in the description or in the feed the

01:12:22.080 comments ah i'm getting bad people are asking for our social media why it um yeah okay follow us on

01:12:29.200 twitter follow karima on twitter support us through the support links and everything like that

01:12:35.680 and if you're looking for our contact literally type our names into google or twitter or whatever

01:12:39.920 you're looking for if it's our name and our face that's us and then you can dm us there

01:12:44.400 it's not our faces it might not be us yes anyways have a great day everyone

01:12:49.520 you

The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - October 02, 2023

What is #HateGate？ (ft. Caryma Sa’d)

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