00:00:35.680I wanted to deny them the intellectual property of their own content so they could smear us and loop every day.
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00:02:44.540Our brilliant guest today is one of the leaders of the Canadian Freedom Convoy protests that we saw last year, which became a global news story.
00:02:51.860And he's written a book about his experiences called Honking for Freedom.
00:03:51.880And every year, things would get more and more extreme to the point that after four years, the students, you wouldn't recognize them.
00:03:59.020They would leave with this cynicism, victimization narrative, hating the world, and it just got progressively worse, and the faculty as well.
00:04:09.440So I ended up ultimately selling that business and getting into podcasting.
00:04:14.900Just because I couldn't be in that environment anymore.
00:04:16.740So this entire shift we've seen culturally is not new to me.
00:04:21.260And I guess that's what ultimately left to me being the spokesperson for one of the global uprisings against the shift in the narrative of our culture, which I think needs to stop.
00:05:19.440So you have these quiet, these secretive bureaucrats behind the scenes that are running the entire wheel of the country, and they just wheel him out.
00:06:00.380They tell him, Justin, go out and talk about these three, four issues.
00:06:04.120And that's why he seems so incongruent from what's actually going on to what he's actually saying.
00:06:11.640He has no clue, and I think I would argue we're seeing an element of that in the United States as well.
00:06:17.200So come back with me to wokeness and the connection between that and what you guys were protesting about.
00:06:23.740Okay, so the wokeness is the underlying philosophy of people like Justin Trudeau and the people within PMO.
00:06:31.300So they're all very postmodern in their worldview, all subjectivists, all the negative aspects of postmodernism, what you see within that team.
00:06:40.120And people who were protesting, and I think this is what scared the government so much, is those are your middle class people and your working class people and your small business owners.
00:06:52.300I was shocked during this protest the range of people from various demographics, political and socioeconomic, that I was dealing with.
00:07:01.800Everything from working class truckers, to billionaire hedge fund managers, to teachers, to people who worked in government, to police officers who privately would communicate with me.
00:07:13.620We had everybody at that protest, and that's what scared the bejesusers out of the political class.
00:07:20.440Sorry, Francis, I don't mean to interrogate.
00:07:22.880I'm just very curious about the thing that you said, which is how does wokeness connect to restrictions, mandates, etc.?
00:07:31.340Do you feel that that's what I'm getting at? Do you feel that there's a link there?
00:13:51.920I mean, first thing, when I discussed the whole uniparty scenario, that also applies to the lobby business that is running these political parties.
00:14:00.240You have this thing, what's a YouGov, where every poll is 73%.
00:14:07.480My old business was on a university campus where we were often producing and replicating theses for professors that were preparing these things for the provincial government or the municipal government.
00:14:21.560And, you know, not that you look through stuff, but you're going through it with the professors or the students and trying to format.
00:14:29.200And they would talk about their stuff.
00:14:30.520They'd be in the store for two, three hours.
00:14:32.360And they'd tell us what they're doing.
00:14:56.960Because in my life, in my frame, in the most lefty part of Toronto, I couldn't say 73% wanted.
00:15:06.600I know a lot of people didn't know what to do and couldn't make a decision.
00:15:10.760And they want leadership in government to make the decision because they have a better overall view of what's going on.
00:15:17.700I think that's a better representation.
00:15:19.740And I think you can add to that as well that those decisions and opinion polls weren't done in a neutral environment.
00:15:25.400If the government keeps shoving fear porn down your throat, people are going to get scared.
00:15:30.380And we actually saw during the pandemic that if you ask the average person in the street what the death rate from COVID is, they would generally overestimate it by a factor of 100 at least.
00:16:06.480It was just, you know, use hand cleaner, hand sanitizer, careful you talk to, you know, just don't, they didn't even do the social distancing, none of that.
00:17:11.160And we also have certain people in government that we know may have some ulterior motives.
00:17:15.380Political entryism is a problem in Canada, particularly from people, you know, and organizations, NGOs from outside of Canada.
00:17:23.960And I remember I had a, you know, despite the fact that I'm a little bit of a rabble rouser, I have people who are supportive and try to get me information, who are elected officials in both, in many parties, not just the Conservative Party, who feel the same way as us.
00:17:38.320And one of them told me in a private conversation a couple of weeks in, they said, I don't understand why we're doing any of this.
00:17:46.280Just between you and I, none of this makes sense.
00:17:48.700We've spoken, this is the Conservatives, we've spoken to Doug, the leader.
00:18:01.680And he said to me, you know how our parties work.
00:18:03.480I'm like, yeah, yeah, I know how the parties work.
00:18:05.000So once I heard that, then I realized, okay, let's be a little bit more, let's step back a little bit, and maybe it's not quite as bad as we think.
00:18:12.980And that was, in my opinion, that was the case.
00:18:15.800This became an opportunity for governments, for changes in public policy.
00:18:21.400In my city particularly, like, for example, local issues.
00:18:24.920They want to put bicycle lanes on every street in the city of Toronto.
00:18:28.700Because, you know, when it's minus 20 degrees, everybody wants to ride a bicycle, right?
00:18:48.320Listen, we've talked a lot about the background, which gives everybody a perspective on where you were coming from when you decided to get involved and actually do something.
00:19:07.720So, well, now that we know a lot more since the convoy, a lot has come out since the POEC Commission and Diverge Media.
00:19:16.280I encourage everybody to check out Diverge Media.
00:19:19.560Independent journalists have been digging into some of the evidence that was provided.
00:19:23.780What I learned in writing my book was there was a team of 11, ended up being 11 truckers.
00:19:30.720It started with Bridget Belton and a couple of others communicating over TikTok and saying, we need to have a convoy because they're already starting to have problems at the border.
00:19:42.720She was basically harassed by CBSA, our border control.
00:19:46.560And she got online and started saying, we have to have a convoy.
00:19:49.460Other people in the trucking industry were getting very frustrated as well.
00:19:52.860They saw their livelihoods were about to evaporate because they could no longer cross the border.
00:19:57.580And they just found each other online and decided, okay, we're going to do a convoy.
00:20:02.220They initially wanted to do what's called slow rolls.
00:20:04.880You have a convoy, trucks driving slowly just, you know, causes disruptions to get attention from the government.
00:20:10.160And then some people with political ties got involved and I think ultimately co-opted it.
00:20:16.440But Diverge Media's documentary that's coming out soon will explain a lot of that.
00:20:20.240But I was eventually contacted by people who I knew.
00:20:23.980One was Tamara Leach to ask to be the spokesperson and to do, well, to do media, spokesperson, press releases, all that sort of stuff.
00:20:33.620And I remember I said this many times that in the very first call when she called me out of the blue, I haven't spoken to her in like a month or maybe six weeks.
00:20:40.680She said, hey, listen, my friends and I or a bunch of us have started a convoy.
00:20:44.920And she said, I love these truckers and all, but I can't have any of them go in front of the media because we all know the media traps, right?
00:20:53.280And she knew I was media trained in the past.
00:20:56.160I produce a bunch of podcasts, not on record, Stephen Hicks' podcast, whatever.
00:21:00.960So she knew I was comfortable in this domain.
00:21:02.620And she said, would you be willing to be the spokesperson?
00:21:14.920I said, well, during COVID, I got my license just before because my brother suggested it.
00:21:20.360And, well, we saw everything being locked down and we needed a taste of freedom.
00:21:26.860And so we both bought trucks and started going cross-border when I wasn't producing podcasts, working on other stuff.
00:21:34.420Became an owner-operator and went to the U.S. to have a little taste of freedom to get to know my, by the way, biological brother, who I only met a few years prior.
00:23:28.600I wanted to deny them the intellectual property of their own content so they could smear us and loop every day like they did during January 6th.
00:23:38.220And Angelo from the Postmillennial laughed.
00:23:40.480He told me and we did a podcast together.
00:23:42.980He said, yeah, all the legacy media, CBC, CTV, whatever, they had to log on to the Postmillennial's feed to get content of what's going on in Ottawa.
00:23:53.740And what I was trying to do is a couple of things.
00:23:55.860I was trying to show the world you don't need legacy media, that alternative media platforms like this have way more viability than legacy media.
00:24:09.860And the other thing is I was going for 100 million views the first week.
00:24:13.560I thought if I could capture amongst all of those platforms 100 million views, I will dwarf all of legacy media.
00:24:22.120And then they'll have no choice, especially since the vibe and the framing that I was trying to build around it.
00:24:28.240So when Tamara called me, said, you know, let's think about a way to present this.
00:24:34.480She's going to be on the road with them crossing the country.
00:24:37.620And what I hearkened back to, this is when they call me left-wing Pico, when I was a teenager going to Grateful Dead concerts and Fish concerts and Allman Brothers, that sort of vibe where you had all people from different demographics come together around music and just focusing on peace and love and all that sort.
00:24:56.580And that's what I thought, you know, that's what we need.
00:24:58.720We need to have Woodstock right in front of Parliament Hill.
00:25:02.680And I think that's what we ended up having.
00:25:04.860And when did you know that this was going big, that this was starting to become not only a national story, but an international one?
00:25:13.260The specific moment, I remember one of the things that had a dramatic impact.
00:25:19.660You saw, you know, line go up with analytics.
00:25:23.060I was putting a bunch of messaging out and I called every contact that I had.
00:25:29.160Because there's some, you know, very influential people who I know who I never asked for any favors or just friends.
00:25:36.080And this was the one time I tried to reach out to everybody just to add, to collect on a favor.
00:26:17.300We got up to 36,000 trucks registered.
00:26:21.260He said, we're now estimating like 50,000 trucks.
00:26:25.620Maybe we're trying to get all the data and they're struggling with it.
00:26:30.520And we may have up to half a million people coming this weekend.
00:26:35.440So I put out on a tweet on one of my platforms, well, Justin Truro is going to have a difficult week.
00:26:41.04050,000 trucks and a half a million people.
00:26:45.200And Jordan Peterson retweeted it, did us the favor.
00:26:49.440And then when that happened, boom, everybody started to jump on.
00:26:53.780But only within the alternative legacy media framing.
00:26:59.060And the other problem is, which I explain the strategy in the book, is I couldn't do a Freedom Convoy Twitter account or a Freedom Convoy Facebook account.
00:27:09.000Because I was dealing with censorship, right?
00:27:12.300That was right in the heart of massive censorship.
00:29:32.200So what is the political class going to do?
00:29:35.000And we saw that in the POAC testimony when the interim leader, the conservatives, after the previous idiot resigned, and Justin Trudeau were emailing and talking to each other how they need to end the protest.
00:29:52.000You see this group of a half a million people who are maybe largely but not exclusively conservative or freedom minded, raising record amounts of money they can only dream of.
00:31:05.040You know, it's people like Justin Trudeau and the rhetoric from the extreme left that have brought myself and religious social conservatives together.
00:31:15.080And there's a lot of people that are, like somebody I've become close with during this period is Megan Murphy.
00:31:20.820Megan used to be what she would identify as a third wave feminist, socialist, whatever.
00:31:25.280She's been on trigonometry with big, big fans.
00:31:38.700You know, so, yeah, it's really frustrating.
00:31:41.720We'll be back to our interview with Benjamin in a second.
00:31:44.440But first, we wanted to take a minute to tell you about Give, Send, Go.
00:31:47.440Give, Send, Go played an integral part in the trucker's story, helping them to stand up against an authoritarian government, oppressive banks, and a funding platform that abandoned them.
00:31:59.760If you don't know about Give, Send, Go, it's a crowdfunding platform that allows people to raise money online.
00:32:05.580Give, Send, Go can be used to raise money for medical purposes, business venture, personal needs, and all sorts of other causes that people have.
00:32:13.260Give, Send, Go support freedom of speech.
00:32:45.120And me and a few other people realized there's something up.
00:32:48.060We didn't know who, what, how it, what specifically how it was operating.
00:32:53.020But we saw there was something happening.
00:32:55.780And it was essentially people that were aligned with the Conservative Party infrastructure or, sorry, the Uniparty infrastructure that were trying to do their best to co-opt it.
00:33:06.660They wanted to make it just about, like, they're arguing with me.
00:33:09.540They came in one by one screaming at me and yelling at me.
00:33:11.860I'm like, I got three interviews to do.
00:33:14.080And I had a little bit of a media team under me.
00:33:39.900We need the world to come together, which means we need people who we disagree with on many issues to come together on the right for free speech, the right of free assembly and to protest and to talk to each other.
00:33:55.100But if you want to devolve this into your little, you know, anti-vaccine program, you know what's going to happen?
00:34:03.000That's going to kill all the positive sentiment we're getting from people who disagree.
00:34:08.640And I think it was the previous night that I had that conversation.
00:34:11.500I was in a Twitter space that I tried to do them when I could, but it was bonkers every day.
00:34:18.160And this particular person was a former school trustee from a party we call the NDP, which is very, very left wing.
00:34:26.500And I don't know if there's anything we would agree on policy wise, but we had a wonderful conversation about the importance of listening to each other and talking to people we disagree with and freedom.
00:34:40.760And she's, I'm vaccinated, but you should have the right, my body, my choice, you should have the right to make choices for yourself.
00:34:49.360And even they started to realize things are going a little bit far.
00:34:53.260But the uniparty political apparatus was doing the best, their best they could every minute to tear it apart from the inside.
00:35:02.540So all, aside from all the other garbage we were dealing with, which was we needed to get fuel to the truckers or they're going to freeze.
00:35:10.500Some of them have their kids in there.
00:35:29.820The people that were trying to, the political class that were doing their best to try to capture the freedom convoy and turn it into a voting bloc.
00:35:59.780But in terms of the broad movement, on the one hand, you had Justin Trudeau and his government trying to shut you guys down.
00:36:07.480And we'll talk about debanking and, you know, police, et cetera, in a second.
00:36:11.720But also, I think what I'm hearing you say is there were people who wanted to capture this protest against mandates and all of this and to turn it into a strictly one-sided party political engine to drive their vote where they wanted it to go.
00:36:33.960And when they saw a guy who was acting as a spokesperson who all of a sudden he's saying, we all suck, then I became the devil in the eyes of conservative partisan politics.
00:36:45.780And, you know, Tamara and I had that conversation when she first called me because there was a 2019 convoy for oil and gas that was also co-opted that she got involved with.
00:37:24.540But quite quickly, I mean, I remember seeing, it wasn't maybe as bad as Australia, but I do remember scenes of violence, people being attacked.
00:37:34.840And I also, the thing that I think oddly, I mean, we're so used to violence now for some reason.
00:37:40.300The thing that really shocked the world was when people had their bank accounts taken away.
00:37:44.480And I saw this not only through on the media.
00:38:09.140So, first, when they did the Emergency Measures Act, so I try to explain to my American supporters, that is Canada's equivalent of martial law.
00:38:18.640The political nerds will say, no, it's not different.
00:38:32.660It's your bank account, your credit cards, your lines of credit, your corporate accounts, corporate lines of credit.
00:38:37.300Everything you have to transact was frozen.
00:38:40.320And when I logged on to my bank account, I saw this message that when you begin to transact, your transaction, or when you begin to use your account, your transactions will appear here.
00:38:50.180The one saving grace that I had was I'm a Bitcoiner.
00:38:54.140And I've been a Bitcoiner since many, many years.
00:38:58.180And during the protest, the Bitcoiners were raising a lot.
00:39:03.020They ended up raising something like $1.2 million for us.
00:39:06.840Or 21 Bitcoin, I think is what it was.
00:39:08.680And so, they originally tried to contact the protest through Tamara.
00:39:15.400They got nothing but resistance and they were not going to support the convoy.
00:39:19.760And then somebody saw me on one of the news programs or an interview somewhere, a podcast, whatever it was.
00:40:36.180And what happened to all the money that you raised?
00:40:37.900Because one of the platforms you raised it on, that was – I can't remember if they prevented or if the government forced them to not give you the money.
00:41:20.920Well, that we'll figure out over time.
00:41:23.740And there's some investigative journalists, Diverge Media, that's looking into that.
00:41:27.820But on February 5th – and there's a series of events that happened.
00:41:32.120And this is what I was dealing with behind the scenes.
00:41:33.700So, the mood and behavior was peace, love, unity, and freedom.
00:41:37.280And then I explain in the book where all of a sudden on February 5th, one of the lawyers came in and just decided to upload a video to Twitter to say, you know, your freedoms are being eroded.
00:43:26.480I used a few expletives and it was quite aggressive for the first time.
00:43:30.440Everybody was shocked that I could get so angry.
00:43:33.500And he responds with, oh, OK, I'm sorry.
00:43:36.260Here, you have a $5 million lawsuit now, a class action lawsuit, which has now swelled to $450 million in damages that a few small businesses with ties to the Liberal Party are dragging us through the court system ongoing right now that we're dealing with.
00:43:54.240So clearly, there was way more collusion going on behind the scenes than we realized.
00:43:59.600Both parties wanted us out of there as quickly as possible, which we understand.
00:44:05.380But we just wanted to talk to somebody in the government.
00:44:08.100And they also were going behind our backs, which I didn't know, to meet with the city of Ottawa to condense the protest.
00:44:16.800And they brought this to me and said, we're going to go meet with the Ottawa, the city of Ottawa and work at a deal.
00:53:02.000I'm sure you have those same sort of sentiments as well, don't you?
00:53:05.200There were times during COVID where I could feel almost like a PTSD response to what is happening.
00:53:13.580And also as well, the thing that I found even more worrying wasn't what the government were doing.
00:53:19.660It was looking around and people who I thought were sane and rational and reasonable behaving in a manner that was quite clearly irrational.
00:54:38.480That's the type of power that we achieved with all of this.
00:54:42.980So all the noise and the nonsense I tell people in my live streams, that's just the noise.
00:54:49.780Turn it on and off and engage when you want to and focus on your life.
00:54:55.360And I think if we all start to do that, we resist the regular dopamine hits of the negativity of social media, at least regulate it,
00:55:04.480I think we're going to be a lot better off.
00:55:06.760No, I couldn't agree with you more and it's increasingly how I feel about everything as well.
00:55:12.020We'll be back with Benjamin in a minute, but first we wanted to tell you about our friends at EZDNS.
00:55:18.240EZDNS is a domain name registrar and host.
00:55:21.260They have a track record of standing up for their clients, whether it be cancel culture, de-platform attacks, or overzealous government agencies.
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00:55:33.880All you have to do is go to EZDNS.com slash triggered.
00:57:22.740The ones that held on the longest were the extremists, which were Justin Trudeau, Omar Al-Gabra, and the PMO.
00:57:32.720And they took, if I remember correctly, was it six months, seven months, something like that,
00:57:36.920to finally lift mandates for travel within Canada.
00:57:42.280So, and, you know, we know how politics works.
00:57:45.900They have to do it, but they have to have plausible deniability, which I was ready for.
00:57:51.300However, if Justin Trudeau had any sense of wisdom, he would have sat down with us because I had an out for him and a home run that everybody would look good.
00:58:02.180Because all I wanted to do was have what the United Kingdom had and what England had, right?
00:58:07.380You guys started opening up and dropping all your mandates.
00:58:10.680And I said that in our first press conference.
00:58:13.080We just want to go the direction of the United Kingdom.
00:58:15.880Why are we holding on to this sort of thing?
00:58:19.380But anyways, you know, he definitely doesn't have the strength of his father, who he's not a fan of.
00:58:24.820But there's no question his father would have been out there to talk to us and say, okay, what do you guys want, right?
00:58:31.880So I'm happy with that we achieved that particular goal.
00:58:37.180There were convoys in 30 plus countries around the world that had the same frustration.
00:58:45.020And the Dutch farmers, Jordan Peterson was telling me in a private conversation about this, that they were looking at what was happening in Canada.
00:58:53.580They were looking at kind of the weak points that the government or the authorities were able to exploit.
00:59:00.700And they adjusted their protest accordingly.