The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - The Quebec Cancel Culture Has Come for Me (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad

00:00:00.240 Hi everybody, this is Gatsad. I'm between shows, part of the media tour. I'm heading

00:00:07.980 out on an extensive media tour starting tomorrow, but I wanted to take a few

00:00:14.120 minutes to respond to a really big cancel culture tsunami that's come my way. I've

00:00:24.500 been fortunate enough that for much of my career I've been able to avoid some of

00:00:30.540 this stuff, but apparently it's caught up to me. So a few days ago, last week, I was

00:00:36.160 on Joe Rogan's show and we were talking about different accents and I mentioned

00:00:41.620 that we had just returned from Portugal and made a comment that, you know, the

00:00:48.260 Portuguese accent is not an attractive one and I can't remember if on the show or

00:00:52.980 not. I had said that, some comedian had said that, you know, when you speak

00:00:56.180 Portuguese, it's as if you're having a perpetual stroke. This is a comedian

00:01:01.880 saying this, joking about a language. And then I said that, you know, Hebrew, which

00:01:10.060 is one of my languages, I speak French, English, Arabic, and Hebrew. Hebrew less

00:01:15.780 well these days because I don't practice it much, but many of my family live in

00:01:19.360 Israel. I said Hebrew is a very unattractive language. My wife is, speaks

00:01:26.180 Armenian. We often joke with each other about Armenian being unattractive. Other

00:01:33.840 people joke about Arabic is like having a constant choking, right? And people will

00:01:39.400 joke with you about that. And then during my conversation, I said, oh, but Quebec

00:01:44.560 French, that's, that's an affront to human dignity. And so some Quebec

00:01:50.680 journalists picked that up. He's apparently, I don't know who he was, but he's

00:01:55.140 apparently the, the most super woke leftist journalist in Quebec, whom I've never

00:02:01.460 heard of before. He's never commented about me, but apparently it was a, a capital

00:02:07.800 crime to make a joke about the Quebec accent. And so he wrote a hit piece in La

00:02:13.180 Presse yesterday because there's nothing more important in Quebec society than to

00:02:17.720 spend all your energy rallying up the mob against a professor who's making a joke. By

00:02:27.620 the way, I'm Francophone, right? I learned French before I did English. My kids speak

00:02:32.100 French. I live in Quebec. I love Quebec culture. I haven't left, even though I had

00:02:37.140 opportunities to be in the U.S. But the auditory signature of Quebec French, I'm

00:02:43.740 hardly the first to say it is unattractive. Now, many people were uniquely upset by the

00:02:49.940 fact that I said, affront to human dignity. Well, that has become a phrase, a trademark

00:02:56.260 phrase that I use as part of my bombastic, hyperbolic humor. So for example, and I, I, I'm

00:03:03.360 going to read to you in a second, a thread in my response to the, to the gentleman, the

00:03:10.400 journalist from La Presse, where I took a screenshot of just a few of the cases where

00:03:17.680 I've talked about all sorts of banal things as affront to human dignity. In the same way

00:03:22.320 that I'll say, well, I'd rather, you know, inject Ebola in my eyes rather than, you know,

00:03:29.480 listen to this person speak. Or I'll say, you know, the Beatles are a form of auditory

00:03:35.860 jihad, right? I use the term jihad. And, you know, Muslims don't come after me and say, how

00:03:41.420 dare you say jihad? They understand that I'm using poetic prose. I'm using hyperbolic prose.

00:03:47.520 So the affront to human dignity, I've used it in saying the Beatles are an affront to human

00:03:52.940 dignity. I have the proof in the, in the tweets. Musicals are an affront to human dignity. Justin

00:04:01.500 Trudeau is an affront to human dignity. People who hate Messi, Lionel Messi, the soccer player,

00:04:08.720 are an affront to human dignity. Do I really mean that I am being, quote, racist against Messi

00:04:15.240 haters? People who love Ronaldo are an affront to human dignity. Okay? And on and on and on. It's,

00:04:24.240 it's a joke. Joe Rogan laughs. Many Quebecers have written to me and said, oh my God, it was funny.

00:04:30.960 It was hilarious. Hey, I'm Quebecer. I agree with you that our accent is not particularly attractive.

00:04:35.520 It's the most innocent thing possible. It's me making a three-second comment meant to be completely

00:04:42.660 a joke that then becomes a national tragedy. I've received many, many emails from Quebec media,

00:04:53.340 Quebec media that for 30 years has never found it interesting to ever speak to me about anything.

00:04:59.540 Okay? But I joked about the language. Now I am the biggest immigrant racist. Go back to your country,

00:05:07.740 Jew. So I'm going to read you my response to that gentleman and then we can go on. So I have been

00:05:17.640 a professor for nearly 30 years. I have published innumerable scientific papers and written many

00:05:22.200 best-selling books. None of my work has ever attracted the attention of La Presse or of the journalist

00:05:29.360 in question. His name is Marc Cassive, C-A-S-S-I-V-E, whose tweets are protected. He protects his tweets

00:05:37.260 and the article, you can't put comments on it. I have defended at great professional and personal

00:05:44.440 costs, the foundational values of Quebec and Canada, but this did not attract their attention.

00:05:48.920 I defend la laïcité. I defend le droit d'expression. I defend les droits de la femme. I'm about as socially

00:05:59.840 liberal defending the values that should really matter to Quebecers at great personal and professional

00:06:06.220 costs that didn't get their attention. But making fun of an accent, that was a capital crime. I'm

00:06:14.360 arguably the best known globally Quebec-based author, but this is immaterial to them. I don't

00:06:20.280 say that to be immodest. I say that because it's a demonstrable reality. But that didn't matter to

00:06:27.120 my fellow Quebecers. But when I made a hyperbolic flipping joke about the Quebec French accent on

00:06:35.000 Joe Rogan's show, this finally drew their ire. Mr. Cassive just wrote a hit piece about me and

00:06:40.540 contacted my university, Concordia. He did not appreciate an immigrant, you know, an Arabic Jew

00:06:46.440 joking about the accent, which many French Canadians will make fun of as well. By the way, I've made fun

00:06:53.060 of southern drawl, right, where I start saying, you know, I'm going down shopping with my dog Roscoe,

00:07:00.460 going down fishing. I didn't get any southerners coming after me. I've made fun of the Castilian or

00:07:07.060 Catalan. I can't remember which one. The Lisp. I have a whole clip on that.

00:07:12.740 Nobody ever came after me. Okay. I make fun of myself. When I was overweight, I used to call

00:07:19.820 myself a beached whale. I didn't come after me. It's called humor. It's called sarcasm. It's called

00:07:26.700 satire. It's called hyperbolic prose. It's called that's why I've got millions of followers because I

00:07:32.080 provide knowledge. I have fun. I'm playful. I can make fun of others. I can make fun of myself

00:07:39.280 all in an innocent, playful way. But it is now deserving of 24 straight hours of some of the most

00:07:47.800 incredible hate mail that you can imagine that a person could receive. My children are afraid.

00:07:55.180 this is the kind of society you want to live in. Anyways, let's go on. He did not appreciate my

00:08:02.560 stating that the accent is an affront to human dignity, a hyperbolic jocular sentence that has

00:08:08.520 become one of my humorous trademark phrases that I use on innumerable occasions. I've referred to

00:08:15.200 messy haters in this manner. I've referred to musicals in this manner. I've referred to the Beatles in this

00:08:20.240 manner. And then I included a screenshot with all of the tweets that I've written, just a subsample

00:08:26.560 where I'm saying this is an affront to human dignity. This is an affront. That's what hyperbolic prose is.

00:08:32.520 That's what makes it funny. You exaggerate how much you're disliking something. This meal that you made

00:08:39.560 for me, dear wife, is an affront to human decency. I have a friend who told me he loves when I say that.

00:08:45.820 But that's what humor is. But it isn't when your entire identity is rooted in one particular metric.

00:08:53.760 Then it becomes a capital crime. All right, let's go on.

00:08:58.580 Mr. Mark Cassivi is a journalist. He could have written about endless topics of substance,

00:09:03.320 many of which I cover in my books and public lectures. But no, he chose to write a hit piece

00:09:07.720 about my unacceptable opinion of the Quebec accent. By the way, I didn't say anything about Quebec

00:09:13.300 culture, which I love. I didn't say anything about Quebec society, which I love. I didn't say anything

00:09:17.740 about some of the culture, Quebec cuisine, some of which I love. I made fun of the most extreme form

00:09:24.920 of joal. That's it. It's like saying you're making fun of the Appalachian accent that it's jarring to

00:09:32.040 the ear. That's it. Nothing more. Go watch it on Joe Rogan. That becomes, that requires a investigation

00:09:39.880 with all journalists coming after me and sending thousands of people to say, go back to your

00:09:47.620 shithole, Arab. That's nice.

00:09:54.380 Let's go on. But no, he chose to, okay. In doing so, he has unleashed a torrent of threats and hate

00:10:00.140 messages from many unhinged people. Let me alert the, and I tag the police, about the very real danger

00:10:05.500 that Marc Cassivi and La Presse have unleashed. Incidentally, Mr. Cassivi quoted our private

00:10:11.460 email exchange in the article, and in doing so, violated journalistic ethics.

00:10:16.700 The authoritarian reflex is an indelible part of the human condition. In some cultures,

00:10:22.020 you are killed if you criticize a religion. In other cultures, you are reported to your university

00:10:28.240 if you make fun of an accent, and then you spend 24 hours receiving the most unbelievably

00:10:35.880 hateful, insulting, racist comments. Both stem from the same insecure dark reflex. Instead,

00:10:45.600 be secure, be playful, have a sense of personal dignity, be happy rather than being mired in endless

00:10:52.940 emotional incontinence. And now, lest I be dragged to the gulags, let me say this in French.

00:11:01.140 Monsieur Marc Cassivi, votre article est un affront à la dignité humaine. Salut.

00:11:07.980 I only wish that La Presse would publish this rebuttal in their paper. A strong culture should

00:11:12.720 be able to withstand humorous mockery, as I explained in my international bestseller,

00:11:18.340 The Parasitic Mind, which I'm going to read from in a second, which the newspaper and the journalist

00:11:22.860 in question did not see fit to ever cover. I had a book that was, you know, one of the top

00:11:28.380 best-selling Canadian-based, Quebec-based books around the world. The Quebec media wasn't interested

00:11:35.020 in it. I was defending all of the cultural values that make Quebec a great society. They weren't

00:11:41.560 interested in that. I made fun of the accent as a francophone, and I was the biggest racist who ever

00:11:48.600 existed. Arab Jew, go back to your land. I should also mention that Marc Cassivi mentioned in a

00:11:56.620 completely irrelevant manner my links to Jordan Peterson, Tucker Carlson, and Fox News in the

00:12:01.980 article in an attempt to make me guilty by association. Oh no, I'm friends with Jordan and

00:12:08.160 Tucker. I must be a Jewish Nazi. Salut. And here what I'm saying is that this super woke

00:12:14.840 journalist who apparently, you know, hates the, you know, the guys like Tucker Carlson and Jordan

00:12:21.760 Peterson is basically saying, hey, if you don't hate him enough because he joked about the accent,

00:12:29.320 then you should hate him because he's associated with the evil dark overlord Jordan Peterson and

00:12:35.780 Tucker Carlson. Now, before I go on, I just want to read something from, this is from this book right

00:12:43.820 here, which the Quebec media never saw fit to ever, this is international best-selling, number one

00:12:53.740 best-selling book that talks about Western values, that talks about the defense of Quebec values. They

00:12:59.240 didn't find that interesting to talk about, but I made fun about Quebec accent, French accent, not the

00:13:05.620 people, not the culture, not the society, the accent, okay, which many Quebecers themselves make fun of.

00:13:11.740 That was unacceptable. No Jew is going to make fun of our accent. So let me read you something here.

00:13:19.680 This is from Peter Stolterjig. He's a philosopher. Quote, how much truth is contained in something can be

00:13:28.240 best determined by making it thoroughly laughable and then watching to see how much joking around it

00:13:34.920 can take. For truth is a matter that can stand mockery, that is freshened by ironic gesture directed

00:13:43.000 at it. Whatever cannot stand satire is false. All of the people who are sending me those hateful messages

00:13:50.980 should remember that quote. The La Presse should be ashamed of itself. Mach Cassivi should be ashamed of

00:14:00.120 himself. In a proud culture, people are not driven to genocidal hate. Again, you should see some of the

00:14:09.860 stuff that I've been receiving because someone made a joke about your accent. Here's what you do with my

00:14:16.100 joke. We don't care what Gadsad thinks of our accent. Just like I receive endless comments that are much

00:14:24.900 more offensive and I move on because I'm strong in my personhood because I fight for real things that

00:14:32.780 matter. Individual dignity, freedom of speech, a culture where you don't have to run and hide because

00:14:39.600 you've made some silly joke that you've made in a million other contexts for a million other issues

00:14:46.200 on the Joe Rogan show in Texas. But apparently making a joke in Texas, I'm still responsible for having

00:14:54.820 hurt the feelings of Mach Cassivi and some of his independentist friends. This is not the way to

00:15:02.360 organize a society. I ran away from this in the Middle East precisely because if you said something

00:15:09.100 that wasn't right, if you weren't of the right religion, then you would be ended. Well, do we want

00:15:15.700 to live in a society where someone makes a joke and their career can be ended? They're afraid to go

00:15:21.280 outside. Is this the kind of society you want to live in? Because today they come after me. Tomorrow

00:15:26.360 they come after you. And then we stop joking. And then we stop saying our ideas. And then we stop

00:15:32.380 communicating with each other. Okay? This is not a healthy reflex to have. Quebec society is a proud

00:15:40.500 society. The way that it should demonstrate its pride is to say, hey, some people love our accent.

00:15:46.220 Some people think our accent is an affront to human dignity, which I said jokingly. And they go,

00:15:51.860 haha, funny. Well, we think that Gadsad's accent is silly. And then they move on. And then we hug it

00:15:57.980 out and go for a beer or for a coffee. But instead, on a day when I should be fielding a million media,

00:16:05.620 which I am now. I have one in probably 15 minutes, media about my latest book, The Sad Truth,

00:16:11.360 about happiness, being happy, being joyful, leading a meaningful life. Instead, I get people,

00:16:20.640 I mean, you can't believe the things they're calling me. You can't believe the things they're

00:16:24.220 saying about my children. This is because I make a joke about your accent. That's what a proud society

00:16:29.480 does. KEL HONT. Take care, everybody.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - August 02, 2023

The Quebec Cancel Culture Has Come for Me (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_581)

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