TRIGGERnometry - Leader Of Canadian Freedom Convoy SPEAKS OUT - BJ Dichter

00:00:00.520 We had everybody at that protest, and that's what scared the bejesers out of the political class. 1.00

00:00:08.080 It was both of them, conservatives and liberals, lockstep, that put forward these lockdowns.

00:00:15.800 We became the official opposition.

00:00:18.380 Not only was it your personal, but also your business account.

00:00:21.520 So they were effectively trying to make you go bust.

00:00:24.760 The government was trying to make you go bust.

00:00:27.680 We didn't do it, you know, for myself.

00:00:30.740 We did it for all of us, because we've got to put an end to clown world.

00:00:34.400 You know how media works?

00:00:35.680 I wanted to deny them the intellectual property of their own content so they could smear us and loop every day.

00:00:42.820 I 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.

00:00:53.980 We learned about the Holocaust all the time.

00:00:56.280 What did I learn in all those years in school?

00:00:58.940 Bingo.

00:00:59.400 What I learned was that was the government.

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00:02:34.320 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry.

00:02:37.060 I'm Francis Foster.

00:02:38.260 I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:02:39.260 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:02:44.540 Our 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.

00:02:51.860 And he's written a book about his experiences called Honking for Freedom.

00:02:54.960 What a great title.

00:02:56.140 Benjamin Dicta, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:02:57.500 It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

00:02:59.280 This is the book. Look forward to talking to you about it.

00:03:01.820 Before we get into all of this, and it was such an interesting and massive story at the time, the way it was covered.

00:03:09.960 That was interesting.

00:03:12.180 But before we do all of that, tell us who are you?

00:03:14.820 How are you, where you are?

00:03:15.560 What's been the journey that leads you to be sitting here talking to us?

00:03:18.920 It's been a long journey.

00:03:20.420 So my name is Benjamin Dicta.

00:03:23.140 I am a trucker in Canada or have been for a few years.

00:03:27.180 I really got into it during COVID to escape what Canada had become.

00:03:33.300 But I've been a serial entrepreneur.

00:03:35.180 I've been a diamond grader.

00:03:36.440 I've been a corporate sales director, ran my own business on a university campus for almost 10 years.

00:03:42.580 And I saw wokeism enter the university space.

00:03:47.640 It really started around 2012, 2013.

00:03:51.880 And every year, things would get more and more extreme to the point that after four years, the students, you wouldn't recognize them.

00:03:59.020 They would leave with this cynicism, victimization narrative, hating the world, and it just got progressively worse, and the faculty as well.

00:04:09.440 So I ended up ultimately selling that business and getting into podcasting.

00:04:14.900 Just because I couldn't be in that environment anymore.

00:04:16.740 So this entire shift we've seen culturally is not new to me.

00:04:21.260 And 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.

00:04:35.100 And so here we are.

00:04:36.440 So you see a link between wokeness and what you experienced in Canada during COVID?

00:04:43.900 Oh, yeah.

00:04:44.700 What's that link?

00:04:45.700 Because some people will say, well, Justin Trudeau is just an authoritarian, or everybody was scared, or it was about safety, or whatever.

00:04:53.060 But why do you say there's a link?

00:04:55.720 So I'll qualify this by I've also run for the Conservative Party in Canada in the past.

00:05:01.520 So I know the behind-the-scenes mechanism, how everything works.

00:05:05.720 Justin Trudeau is a symptom.

00:05:07.500 He's not the cause.

00:05:09.280 And Justin Trudeau really, everybody on Parliament Hill knows, he doesn't make any decisions.

00:05:15.220 He has no idea what's going on.

00:05:17.400 The PMO runs the country.

00:05:19.440 So 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.

00:05:28.580 Sorry, can I just pause you there?

00:05:29.980 What does PMO mean?

00:05:31.500 Oh, sorry, Prime Minister's Office.

00:05:32.900 Okay, got it.

00:05:33.460 So the Prime Minister's Office is running the country, and so they don't have any scrutiny in the media.

00:05:39.320 He's just the puppet that they roll out to be the punching bag.

00:05:44.260 He doesn't read the news.

00:05:45.040 This is from a former Liberal Cabinet member who's told me this.

00:05:48.800 He doesn't read the news.

00:05:50.300 He doesn't know what's going on.

00:05:51.780 The deal was he's going to be the relationships manager, and he let that slip one time when he first got elected.

00:05:58.780 So they run the country.

00:06:00.380 They tell him, Justin, go out and talk about these three, four issues.

00:06:04.120 And that's why he seems so incongruent from what's actually going on to what he's actually saying.

00:06:11.640 He has no clue, and I think I would argue we're seeing an element of that in the United States as well.

00:06:17.200 So come back with me to wokeness and the connection between that and what you guys were protesting about.

00:06:23.740 Okay, so the wokeness is the underlying philosophy of people like Justin Trudeau and the people within PMO.

00:06:31.300 So they're all very postmodern in their worldview, all subjectivists, all the negative aspects of postmodernism, what you see within that team.

00:06:40.120 And 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.

00:06:52.300 I was shocked during this protest the range of people from various demographics, political and socioeconomic, that I was dealing with.

00:07:01.800 Everything 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.

00:07:13.620 We had everybody at that protest, and that's what scared the bejesusers out of the political class. 1.00

00:07:20.440 Sorry, Francis, I don't mean to interrogate.

00:07:22.880 I'm just very curious about the thing that you said, which is how does wokeness connect to restrictions, mandates, etc.?

00:07:31.340 Do you feel that that's what I'm getting at? Do you feel that there's a link there?

00:07:35.320 Oh yeah, 100%.

00:07:36.200 So tell me about that, because I'm curious what exactly you mean. What is the connection?

00:07:40.380 The connection is the authoritarian nature of wokeness. What does wokeness do?

00:07:44.700 It restricts your speech, it restricts what you can say, and it restricts what you can think.

00:07:50.460 Well, that's what we're seeing within our governments as well, and that's why we protested.

00:07:54.960 I mean, it's a great point. I guess my question is, so when I was growing up, I used to look at Canada.

00:08:01.340 And it seemed to me like America, but not mental.

00:08:05.040 The un-American Americans. 1.00

00:08:06.180 Yeah, exactly. You know, and it was just, and I knew people who went to live in Canada,

00:08:10.460 and it always kind of seemed like this sort of lefty paradise, a lefty paradise that worked.

00:08:16.720 And then over COVID, I just saw them descend into insanity.

00:08:23.740 How has this happened? Because obviously it didn't just happen with COVID.

00:08:26.800 There were things brewing for a while.

00:08:29.460 Well, once again, Justin Trudeau is a symptom.

00:08:32.420 So I think it's been in rapid decline for generations.

00:08:36.120 Here's an example. My dad was a teacher.

00:08:38.360 So my dad is very egalitarian and, you know, somewhere in the center, maybe fiscally conservative,

00:08:45.000 because he came from a business background.

00:08:46.680 And I remember one time, if I remember it was 1989, he came home from work,

00:08:52.900 and he would always talk to us about work and what's going on.

00:08:56.320 And he was very frustrated.

00:08:58.400 And he was frustrated at the fact that they had a new policy at the Board of Education.

00:09:03.600 You can only be hired to a senior position as a teacher or in, you know, the ministry or the board if you're a woman. 0.62

00:09:11.420 Now, again, my dad is very egalitarian, doesn't have a problem with women in roles. 0.88

00:09:17.220 So I said to him, well, what's the problem with that?

00:09:19.300 He said, the problem is they just have to be women. 1.00

00:09:22.840 They don't have to be qualified.

00:09:24.840 So I walked into my school this year and found out our secretaries from last year are now the principals.

00:09:32.000 And when I asked them, what are we going to do for the budget,

00:09:34.300 they didn't understand that that is their responsibility,

00:09:36.520 and they know nothing about how to read a balance sheet.

00:09:39.560 And this was in the late 80s that you started to see this.

00:09:43.960 So this has been my entire life you've seen a little bit over time.

00:09:48.660 You know, in terms of postmodern theory, look, I'm no philosophy professor, but we all have our ideas.

00:09:54.440 If you take it, my historical view is you've seen postmodernism encroach into the arts starting in the 60s.

00:10:01.440 It then got into education, at least in Canada, in the 80s and 90s.

00:10:06.300 And now it's dominated politics.

00:10:09.200 And that's part of the chaos, what's causing the chaos right now.

00:10:12.340 Because it's interesting that you say that it went into education,

00:10:15.080 because I could not believe for the life of me that they re-elected Trudeau after everything he did.

00:10:21.920 I genuinely thought to myself, who is voting for this man? 0.99

00:10:25.620 Well, is this when I explain why the conservatives suck? 1.00

00:10:28.020 Take the floor. 0.99

00:10:31.140 That's the moment everyone switches off.

00:10:32.840 And this is why everybody gets angry at me and there's activists online that are targeting me and trying to smear me,

00:10:38.820 because I'm not going to engage in team play.

00:10:42.040 There's no philosophy that's always correct.

00:10:44.860 And the problem with conservative politics, there's two things.

00:10:48.760 Firstly, they're weak.

00:10:50.220 They're never going to challenge anything.

00:10:52.280 They always cede ground to the other side.

00:10:54.720 And the problem with that is if you're going to promise conservative policies, but all you get is rhetoric,

00:11:02.040 their base, the next election around, decides, you know what, I'm just not voting for them again,

00:11:07.720 because they didn't do what I wanted.

00:11:09.580 So that allows the left-wing parties to go even further to the left, right?

00:11:14.260 So that's why we have this progressive fall off a cliff from the political left.

00:11:19.440 But the other problem is the uniparty issue, which I was just on Lotus Eaters the other day,

00:11:25.700 and we were discussing this very fact that's happening in the UK as well.

00:11:30.380 It's scary.

00:11:31.280 You can almost copy and paste the UK political structure onto Canada.

00:11:37.320 In the case of Canada, we have our conservative party, Pierre Polyev, who's the new leader,

00:11:42.940 and the deputy leader of the conservative party is a woke supremacist who used to target me and other people.

00:11:52.260 We're very pro-gay, pro, you know, people.

00:11:54.580 We have a lot of friends in the gay community.

00:11:56.880 And she was also a lobbyist for a lobby firm that was co-founded by Justin Truro's chief of staff.

00:12:04.080 And who was her last client?

00:12:06.660 Her last client was Walmart, where she lobbied for Walmart during COVID to be able to stay open

00:12:13.740 and other businesses, small businesses should be shut down and to reinforce the COVID lockdowns.

00:12:20.660 And what's really frustrating for all of us involved in the trucker protests,

00:12:25.440 it was both of them, conservatives and liberals, lockstep that put forward these lockdowns.

00:12:32.080 You know, we have a federal system.

00:12:35.720 So we have federal and provincial parliaments, which you guys don't have.

00:12:40.320 What frustrates me is people want to talk about Justin Truro, how bad he is.

00:12:44.140 And he is.

00:12:44.740 He's got to go.

00:12:45.460 There's no question.

00:12:46.940 But guess what?

00:12:47.580 The passports in my province came from the Ontario Conservative Party.

00:12:52.220 Remember Rob Ford?

00:12:53.780 His brother, Doug Ford, is the premier.

00:12:56.320 And he's the one who imposed the passports.

00:12:59.540 And just before the trucker protest, reinstituted mask mandates and was contemplating,

00:13:08.320 do we have to, should we have passports for grocery stores and pharmacies?

00:13:14.060 Those were conservatives doing that.

00:13:16.340 So I'm not going to engage in team play of, oh, team blue is good and team bad is red. 1.00

00:13:21.100 No, they all suck. 0.99

00:13:22.380 I mean, hard to argue with that. 1.00

00:13:25.600 It's not.

00:13:26.180 Yeah.

00:13:26.720 Yeah.

00:13:27.000 You've got.

00:13:27.480 Yeah.

00:13:27.620 You can't argue with that because that is unfortunately the truth.

00:13:31.740 They might say and push back on me on this.

00:13:34.340 Look, hang on a second.

00:13:35.860 Like BJ.

00:13:36.780 Most people wanted lockdowns.

00:13:38.940 Most people were demanding it.

00:13:40.680 Sometimes I felt that.

00:13:42.360 In this country that we were a part of a select minority of people who didn't want lockdowns.

00:13:50.180 Yeah, it's interesting.

00:13:51.920 I mean, first thing, when I discussed the whole uniparty scenario, that also applies to the lobby business that is running these political parties.

00:14:00.240 You have this thing, what's a YouGov, where every poll is 73%.

00:14:04.320 And I saw it in my old business.

00:14:07.480 My 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.

00:14:21.560 And, you know, not that you look through stuff, but you're going through it with the professors or the students and trying to format.

00:14:29.200 And they would talk about their stuff.

00:14:30.520 They'd be in the store for two, three hours.

00:14:32.360 And they'd tell us what they're doing.

00:14:33.840 They'd show us their reports.

00:14:36.060 And they'd show us their surveys.

00:14:37.560 All of them were leading questions.

00:14:39.780 The data is wrong.

00:14:40.780 That's why I love Scott Adams so much.

00:14:42.300 We've gotten to know each other a little bit because the data is always wrong.

00:14:46.100 If you don't know the presuppositions, then you can't trust the data.

00:14:49.820 So when people say 73% or YouGov, 73% of people wanted lockdowns.

00:14:56.560 Really?

00:14:56.960 Because in my life, in my frame, in the most lefty part of Toronto, I couldn't say 73% wanted.

00:15:06.600 I know a lot of people didn't know what to do and couldn't make a decision.

00:15:10.760 And they want leadership in government to make the decision because they have a better overall view of what's going on.

00:15:17.700 I think that's a better representation.

00:15:19.740 And I think you can add to that as well that those decisions and opinion polls weren't done in a neutral environment.

00:15:25.400 If the government keeps shoving fear porn down your throat, people are going to get scared.

00:15:30.380 And 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.

00:15:40.360 They'd say it's 50%?

00:15:41.680 Many people.

00:15:42.420 So if you think COVID has a 50% death rate, yeah, locking people in the home starts to look a bit more reasonable at that point.

00:15:48.560 I'm not saying it is reasonable.

00:15:49.600 No, no, for sure.

00:15:50.020 But we didn't do this during SARS.

00:15:52.380 Remember, Toronto was particularly hit during the SARS outbreak.

00:15:57.500 And what was the death rate of SARS was 34%.

00:16:00.080 We didn't do any of these measures during SARS.

00:16:03.900 Yeah, you wash your hands.

00:16:05.420 We didn't even have masks.

00:16:06.480 It 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.

00:16:15.400 And you know what?

00:16:15.980 We got out of that.

00:16:16.740 And that was a 34% death rate.

00:16:18.520 I'm guessing it's probably something to do with the contagiousness of it, right?

00:16:21.580 It didn't, maybe because it was so deadly, it didn't spread as much.

00:16:24.320 But anyway.

00:16:24.740 And the other thing is, sorry, I'm going to cut you off.

00:16:26.780 Very, look, we were all scared.

00:16:28.980 I'm vaccinated as well.

00:16:30.300 I waited as long as I could.

00:16:31.320 I had no choice.

00:16:32.140 Cuck.

00:16:34.760 I knew you were going to say that.

00:16:35.700 It's just a joke.

00:16:37.080 I'm just joking.

00:16:38.080 It's not a joke.

00:16:38.960 It's a fact.

00:16:40.680 And, you know.

00:16:43.600 This is what people say to you, to vaccinate people online. 0.99

00:16:46.340 You're a cuck for getting. 0.98

00:16:47.300 And what happened to, it's your decision, you do what you want. 0.99

00:16:50.100 Well, exactly.

00:16:50.840 And that was the whole tenor of the Freedom Convoy, is freedom.

00:16:54.840 You get to choose.

00:16:55.920 Exactly.

00:16:56.340 My body, my choice, right?

00:16:57.900 Right.

00:16:58.240 Yeah.

00:16:58.700 And Scott's going to yell at me for saying that.

00:17:00.860 But anyways, I remember in the first couple of weeks, everybody's trying to explore what's

00:17:05.460 going on.

00:17:06.140 This doesn't sound right.

00:17:07.420 It's so different than SARS.

00:17:09.700 The behavior is not what we've seen.

00:17:11.160 And we also have certain people in government that we know may have some ulterior motives.

00:17:15.380 Political entryism is a problem in Canada, particularly from people, you know, and organizations, NGOs from outside of Canada.

00:17:23.960 And 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.

00:17:38.320 And 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.

00:17:46.280 Just between you and I, none of this makes sense.

00:17:48.700 We've spoken, this is the Conservatives, we've spoken to Doug, the leader.

00:17:51.640 He won't listen to any of us. 0.94

00:17:53.640 The senior health officials are completely incompetent. 0.76

00:17:56.600 They're trying to cover for themselves. 0.66

00:17:58.400 Said, don't believe any of what you're saying. 0.85

00:18:00.120 This is all nonsense.

00:18:01.680 And he said to me, you know how our parties work.

00:18:03.480 I'm like, yeah, yeah, I know how the parties work.

00:18:05.000 So 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.

00:18:12.980 And that was, in my opinion, that was the case.

00:18:15.800 This became an opportunity for governments, for changes in public policy.

00:18:21.400 In my city particularly, like, for example, local issues.

00:18:24.920 They want to put bicycle lanes on every street in the city of Toronto.

00:18:28.700 Because, you know, when it's minus 20 degrees, everybody wants to ride a bicycle, right?

00:18:32.620 And they did it.

00:18:33.560 You can't drive in the city anymore.

00:18:37.000 Same in London.

00:18:37.760 Bus lanes used to be only during certain hours.

00:18:40.120 Now they're permanent.

00:18:41.060 And so you've got a traffic jam in one lane and an empty bus lane 24-7.

00:18:45.740 Yeah, exactly.

00:18:46.980 Bicycle lanes everywhere.

00:18:48.320 Listen, 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.

00:18:57.440 How did the protest start?

00:18:59.400 Who formed it?

00:19:00.620 Why, you know, what was the central theme of it?

00:19:03.640 Just give us the background to how the actual Freedom Convoy began.

00:19:07.460 Okay.

00:19:07.720 So, well, now that we know a lot more since the convoy, a lot has come out since the POEC Commission and Diverge Media.

00:19:16.280 I encourage everybody to check out Diverge Media.

00:19:19.560 Independent journalists have been digging into some of the evidence that was provided.

00:19:23.780 What I learned in writing my book was there was a team of 11, ended up being 11 truckers.

00:19:30.720 It 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.

00:19:40.300 She had one particular issue.

00:19:42.720 She was basically harassed by CBSA, our border control.

00:19:46.560 And she got online and started saying, we have to have a convoy.

00:19:49.460 Other people in the trucking industry were getting very frustrated as well.

00:19:52.860 They saw their livelihoods were about to evaporate because they could no longer cross the border.

00:19:57.580 And they just found each other online and decided, okay, we're going to do a convoy.

00:20:02.220 They initially wanted to do what's called slow rolls.

00:20:04.880 You have a convoy, trucks driving slowly just, you know, causes disruptions to get attention from the government.

00:20:10.160 And then some people with political ties got involved and I think ultimately co-opted it.

00:20:16.440 But Diverge Media's documentary that's coming out soon will explain a lot of that.

00:20:20.240 But I was eventually contacted by people who I knew.

00:20:23.980 One was Tamara Leach to ask to be the spokesperson and to do, well, to do media, spokesperson, press releases, all that sort of stuff. 1.00

00:20:33.620 And 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.

00:20:40.680 She said, hey, listen, my friends and I or a bunch of us have started a convoy.

00:20:44.920 And 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?

00:20:53.280 And she knew I was media trained in the past.

00:20:56.160 I produce a bunch of podcasts, not on record, Stephen Hicks' podcast, whatever.

00:21:00.960 So she knew I was comfortable in this domain.

00:21:02.620 And she said, would you be willing to be the spokesperson?

00:21:06.080 And I said, yeah, sure.

00:21:07.400 I agree with the cause.

00:21:08.700 I'm getting frustrated as well.

00:21:10.360 And then I said to her, by the way, did you know I have a truck?

00:21:12.940 And she said, no, get out. 0.97

00:21:14.100 What do you mean?

00:21:14.920 I said, well, during COVID, I got my license just before because my brother suggested it.

00:21:20.360 And, well, we saw everything being locked down and we needed a taste of freedom.

00:21:26.860 And so we both bought trucks and started going cross-border when I wasn't producing podcasts, working on other stuff.

00:21:34.420 Became 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.

00:21:44.020 So that's what I did drink COVID.

00:21:47.900 That's very interesting.

00:21:49.080 So you got the truck and then you became a spokesman for the truckers. 0.96

00:21:53.640 The thing that I found horrifying, but almost depressingly predictable, was how quickly the racist, racist, racist, racist, racist. 0.93

00:22:05.040 That's racist in its own way. 0.92

00:22:06.380 Yeah, it is, mate. 0.98

00:22:08.060 Racist.

00:22:08.640 Prejudice against people who like rice, which.

00:22:11.180 Yeah, exactly.

00:22:12.340 It's a specific demographic. 1.00

00:22:13.880 But racist, white supremacist. 0.98

00:22:17.640 And that was just smeared against all these people. 0.98

00:22:21.620 And I found that so depressing.

00:22:24.140 I found it amazing.

00:22:25.540 They did exactly what I thought they would do and what I wanted them to do.

00:22:29.220 So in the early stages, the legacy media wasn't really talking about us.

00:22:33.540 They were trying to ignore it.

00:22:34.920 So I thought, firstly, they were starting to post a bunch of stuff of us being Nazis, cartoons here and there, very slight.

00:22:43.480 And I started putting statements online that the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, CBC, you're now banned from our press conferences.

00:22:51.780 I made a point to ban them for a couple of reasons.

00:22:55.800 Because I've been in media scrums before.

00:22:57.760 I know how they operate.

00:22:58.620 What they're going to do is they're going to come into a space like this.

00:23:00.800 So this is much larger than the space that we had for our press conferences.

00:23:05.180 They come in with a massive camera and a crew of three people that take up half the space.

00:23:09.820 They'll call us names when there's a Q&A.

00:23:13.100 And then guess what?

00:23:14.460 They won't get any views.

00:23:16.360 Where's the upside?

00:23:17.880 There's no upside in that.

00:23:19.660 And then the other thing that some of the people there didn't understand what I was trying to do,

00:23:24.020 I wanted to deny them the intellectual property.

00:23:27.540 You know how media works.

00:23:28.600 I 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.

00:23:38.220 And Angelo from the Postmillennial laughed.

00:23:40.480 He told me and we did a podcast together.

00:23:42.980 He 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.

00:23:53.740 And what I was trying to do is a couple of things.

00:23:55.860 I 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.

00:24:07.340 And I think it worked.

00:24:09.860 And the other thing is I was going for 100 million views the first week.

00:24:13.560 I thought if I could capture amongst all of those platforms 100 million views, I will dwarf all of legacy media.

00:24:22.120 And then they'll have no choice, especially since the vibe and the framing that I was trying to build around it.

00:24:28.240 So when Tamara called me, said, you know, let's think about a way to present this.

00:24:34.480 She's going to be on the road with them crossing the country.

00:24:37.620 And 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.

00:24:56.580 And that's what I thought, you know, that's what we need.

00:24:58.720 We need to have Woodstock right in front of Parliament Hill.

00:25:02.680 And I think that's what we ended up having.

00:25:04.860 And when did you know that this was going big, that this was starting to become not only a national story, but an international one?

00:25:13.260 The specific moment, I remember one of the things that had a dramatic impact.

00:25:19.660 You saw, you know, line go up with analytics.

00:25:23.060 I was putting a bunch of messaging out and I called every contact that I had.

00:25:29.160 Because there's some, you know, very influential people who I know who I never asked for any favors or just friends.

00:25:36.080 And this was the one time I tried to reach out to everybody just to add, to collect on a favor.

00:25:41.500 Do me a favor.

00:25:42.100 Can you talk about this?

00:25:43.040 Whatever.

00:25:44.440 And one of the first people I reached out to was Gad Saad to do an interview with him and to talk about it and whatever.

00:25:50.080 And I remember one day early on in January before we left or when the trucks were on the road.

00:25:58.220 I don't remember the exact day.

00:25:59.480 One of the podcasts that I produce, I put a tweet out after talking to Chris Guerra, who was on the ground.

00:26:06.160 He was the first person working with the Ottawa police who were telling us where to park the trucks.

00:26:12.460 Very important.

00:26:13.340 And he said, our server crashed.

00:26:17.300 We got up to 36,000 trucks registered.

00:26:21.260 He said, we're now estimating like 50,000 trucks.

00:26:25.620 Maybe we're trying to get all the data and they're struggling with it.

00:26:30.520 And we may have up to half a million people coming this weekend.

00:26:35.440 So I put out on a tweet on one of my platforms, well, Justin Truro is going to have a difficult week.

00:26:41.040 50,000 trucks and a half a million people.

00:26:45.200 And Jordan Peterson retweeted it, did us the favor.

00:26:49.440 And then when that happened, boom, everybody started to jump on.

00:26:53.780 But only within the alternative legacy media framing.

00:26:59.060 And 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.

00:27:09.000 Because I was dealing with censorship, right?

00:27:12.300 That was right in the heart of massive censorship.

00:27:14.780 So what can we do?

00:27:16.160 All right, I guess we can use hashtags.

00:27:18.120 And we'll use different hashtags and change them up periodically so it'll be all that much more difficult to censor.

00:27:25.480 And I think it worked.

00:27:26.180 So I ended up managing a bunch of different Twitter accounts from platforms that I have.

00:27:30.760 But myself and Tamara Leach's personal account, both was me.

00:27:34.840 And it was going great.

00:27:37.780 It was, you know, there was, I was following it and I was really, really invigorated by what you were doing.

00:27:44.400 It just made me so happy that there was pushback, that it was done peacefully, that it was done in the right way.

00:27:51.640 And it wasn't partisan.

00:27:52.940 And it wasn't partisan.

00:27:54.200 And it was great.

00:27:55.280 And that made me so happy.

00:27:57.340 Awesome.

00:27:58.580 And then, and then.

00:28:00.540 This is Francis.

00:28:01.520 When he gets happy, he always goes down at the end.

00:28:06.440 We're going to go off a cliff now.

00:28:07.240 No, it never ends on a high with you, mate.

00:28:09.540 No, it doesn't.

00:28:09.840 It doesn't.

00:28:10.840 Just then there.

00:28:11.600 Okay, next question.

00:28:13.340 It was so great.

00:28:14.760 But then it got really bad.

00:28:16.640 Yeah.

00:28:17.100 And then that made me happy.

00:28:18.420 No, it doesn't.

00:28:18.880 And then things started to happen.

00:28:22.700 So tell us what happened at that point where you started to feel the chilly, icy hand of authoritarianism on your shoulder.

00:28:31.200 Well, before that happened, look, explain how politics works.

00:28:37.580 I think this is just common knowledge.

00:28:39.560 There was a movement of over half a million people who joined a Facebook group.

00:28:44.860 We were raising record money.

00:28:47.560 And just to give you some framework, in Canada, it took the Liberals four years to raise $40 million to get Justin Trudeau elected.

00:28:56.080 We raised $23 million in three weeks cumulatively.

00:28:59.380 Wow. 0.99

00:29:00.800 Holy shit. 1.00

00:29:02.180 That's crazy, man. 1.00

00:29:03.720 Are we talking about the fact that Justin Trudeau got $40 million?

00:29:05.940 No, no, no.

00:29:06.840 It's two Jews talking about money, mate. 1.00

00:29:10.420 That's why we're excited.

00:29:11.900 Just let us have a, let us enjoy a moment.

00:29:14.900 So you, 23 million, see, I can't even say it.

00:29:19.660 Yeah.

00:29:20.400 $23 million in three weeks.

00:29:22.580 In three weeks.

00:29:23.420 So those weren't dollars.

00:29:25.460 Those were votes.

00:29:26.640 Yes.

00:29:26.880 Because remember I discussed the Uniparty?

00:29:29.420 We became the official opposition.

00:29:32.200 So what is the political class going to do? 0.95

00:29:35.000 And 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. 0.96

00:29:47.600 Right? 0.97

00:29:47.780 They needed to prevent us.

00:29:50.160 I guess what their fear was.

00:29:52.000 You 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.

00:30:03.000 But they need to put an end to it.

00:30:04.880 Benjamin, can I just stop you there?

00:30:06.340 I want to come back to this because what we're talking about is super important and Francis' question is really important.

00:30:11.660 There's something you said there that bugs me so much in the way, which is, it's not you.

00:30:16.840 It's the way we talk is freedom has become a conservative issue.

00:30:22.360 Do you not find that incredibly weird?

00:30:24.560 It's frustrating.

00:30:25.140 Because when you, I don't know if we're the same age, but I think we're close.

00:30:28.780 When I was growing up, freedom was definitely not a conservative issue.

00:30:32.160 Listen.

00:30:32.780 It was the conservatives that wanted to shut down your freedom.

00:30:35.580 It was the conservatives who wanted to ban my video games.

00:30:38.760 Yes.

00:30:38.900 Wanted to ban my music.

00:30:40.380 Yes.

00:30:40.500 They wanted to ban anything I like because of, you know, religious Puritan reasons.

00:30:44.600 Right.

00:30:45.140 Yeah.

00:30:45.280 Whereas during the convoy, I'm talking to pastors who are talking to me about, yeah, we have to be, you know, freedom.

00:30:51.640 And, you know, they're very, okay, they don't agree with me on certain LGBT issues, whatever. 0.99

00:30:57.300 Okay, fine.

00:30:57.700 But that they're at least willing to listen and have the conversation and focus on more important issues.

00:31:02.780 Right.

00:31:03.160 Like they've evolved.

00:31:05.040 You know, it's people like Justin Trudeau and the rhetoric from the extreme left that have brought myself and religious social conservatives together.

00:31:15.080 And there's a lot of people that are, like somebody I've become close with during this period is Megan Murphy.

00:31:20.820 Megan used to be what she would identify as a third wave feminist, socialist, whatever. 1.00

00:31:25.280 She's been on trigonometry with big, big fans.

00:31:27.540 She's wonderful.

00:31:28.000 She's wonderful.

00:31:28.700 Great person as well.

00:31:29.560 And so now, you know, five years ago, we wouldn't have been able to talk to each other.

00:31:33.620 Now we've become friends and we're trying to find common ground to help everybody else.

00:31:38.480 Yeah.

00:31:38.700 You know, so, yeah, it's really frustrating.

00:31:41.720 We'll be back to our interview with Benjamin in a second.

00:31:44.440 But first, we wanted to take a minute to tell you about Give, Send, Go.

00:31:47.440 Give, 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.

00:31:59.760 If you don't know about Give, Send, Go, it's a crowdfunding platform that allows people to raise money online.

00:32:05.580 Give, Send, Go can be used to raise money for medical purposes, business venture, personal needs, and all sorts of other causes that people have.

00:32:13.260 Give, Send, Go support freedom of speech.

00:32:16.280 They don't cave to the mob.

00:32:17.960 And that's why we're a proud partner with them.

00:32:20.820 Go to givesendgo.com and support people who support freedom.

00:32:25.540 But anyway, so come back to both the parties are talking about how to shut you guys down.

00:32:30.140 So they both saw that we had this massive Facebook group.

00:32:34.440 We're building our own database because, you know, they only look at life through political goggles.

00:32:38.620 And they needed to shut it down.

00:32:41.480 So I knew something was up.

00:32:45.120 And me and a few other people realized there's something up.

00:32:48.060 We didn't know who, what, how it, what specifically how it was operating.

00:32:53.020 But we saw there was something happening.

00:32:55.780 And 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.

00:33:06.660 They wanted to make it just about, like, they're arguing with me.

00:33:09.540 They came in one by one screaming at me and yelling at me.

00:33:11.860 I'm like, I got three interviews to do.

00:33:14.080 And I had a little bit of a media team under me.

00:33:16.100 There were five of us working on it.

00:33:17.560 Like, I don't want to hear the political nonsense.

00:33:20.420 Go do your thing.

00:33:21.560 And I remember before a GB News interview was exactly that conversation.

00:33:26.500 They wanted to make everything about vaccines, for example.

00:33:29.600 It has to be about the vaccines and the data and whatever.

00:33:32.900 What do we discuss about data?

00:33:33.980 You can't trust it, right?

00:33:34.960 I said, we need Canadians together.

00:33:39.900 We 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.

00:33:55.100 But if you want to devolve this into your little, you know, anti-vaccine program, you know what's going to happen?

00:34:03.000 That's going to kill all the positive sentiment we're getting from people who disagree.

00:34:08.640 And I think it was the previous night that I had that conversation.

00:34:11.500 I was in a Twitter space that I tried to do them when I could, but it was bonkers every day.

00:34:18.160 And this particular person was a former school trustee from a party we call the NDP, which is very, very left wing.

00:34:26.500 And 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.

00:34:40.760 And 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.

00:34:49.360 And even they started to realize things are going a little bit far.

00:34:53.260 But the uniparty political apparatus was doing the best, their best they could every minute to tear it apart from the inside.

00:35:02.540 So 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.

00:35:10.500 Some of them have their kids in there.

00:35:12.140 Oh, they blocked the fuel truck now.

00:35:14.040 Okay, I guess we'll have to get jerry cans.

00:35:15.900 Oh, they're seizing jerry cans now.

00:35:17.860 Great.

00:35:18.160 Oh, some people are running out of food.

00:35:19.880 Oh, we have a thousand trucks in a farmer's field.

00:35:22.000 We need to put them somewhere.

00:35:23.300 Just to stop you there, when you use the word they, what do you mean by that?

00:35:27.240 Who would they be, Jay?

00:35:29.820 The 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.

00:35:44.840 Okay.

00:35:45.180 Does that make sense?

00:35:45.800 Oh, I see.

00:35:46.460 Oh, I see.

00:35:47.540 So just to clarify, I think you've picked it up in exactly the right place, Francis.

00:35:53.240 There were, it sounds like there were two things happening.

00:35:56.320 Many, two.

00:35:57.360 There's like 50 things happening.

00:35:58.880 50 things happening.

00:35:59.780 But in terms of the broad movement, on the one hand, you had Justin Trudeau and his government trying to shut you guys down.

00:36:07.480 And we'll talk about debanking and, you know, police, et cetera, in a second.

00:36:11.720 But 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.

00:36:29.120 Exactly.

00:36:29.300 And they wanted to capture this for the conservative cause, basically.

00:36:32.080 Is that fair?

00:36:32.800 That's right.

00:36:33.440 Okay. 0.98

00:36:33.960 And 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.

00:36:45.780 And, 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.

00:36:57.660 And I said, we're not doing this.

00:37:00.060 No politicians.

00:37:01.240 This is not for political parties, Tamara.

00:37:03.620 Like, I'll do it as long as you agree to this, that we are there to end mandates and to end the arrive can.

00:37:10.480 Nothing more, nothing less.

00:37:12.800 And we're staying.

00:37:13.580 And she said she agreed.

00:37:15.160 And said, and we're staying there until we get something from the government, right?

00:37:19.520 She agreed.

00:37:20.580 So, yeah, it was.

00:37:21.640 Okay.

00:37:22.080 So, all of this stuff is going on.

00:37:24.200 Yeah.

00:37:24.540 But 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.

00:37:34.840 And I also, the thing that I think oddly, I mean, we're so used to violence now for some reason.

00:37:40.300 The thing that really shocked the world was when people had their bank accounts taken away.

00:37:44.480 And I saw this not only through on the media.

00:37:48.040 We have fans of the show.

00:37:49.340 We do these monthly calls with our top supporters.

00:37:51.460 And one of them is in Canada.

00:37:52.680 And she was saying, I sent money to the truckers.

00:37:55.840 And she's a pensioner living alone. 1.00

00:37:58.180 She says, I'm terrified.

00:37:59.500 I don't know what will happen to me if I don't have any money.

00:38:03.120 Yeah.

00:38:03.280 Right.

00:38:03.640 So, this is where it quickly went to, isn't it?

00:38:08.000 Yeah, it did.

00:38:09.140 So, 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.

00:38:18.640 The political nerds will say, no, it's not different.

00:38:20.760 No, that's basically what it was.

00:38:22.140 Right.

00:38:22.240 So, they froze mine and the bank accounts of several other people.

00:38:27.200 There's 200 or 300 people that had their accounts frozen.

00:38:31.100 It's not just your bank account.

00:38:32.660 It's your bank account, your credit cards, your lines of credit, your corporate accounts, corporate lines of credit.

00:38:37.300 Everything you have to transact was frozen.

00:38:40.320 And 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.

00:38:50.180 The one saving grace that I had was I'm a Bitcoiner.

00:38:54.140 And I've been a Bitcoiner since many, many years.

00:38:58.180 And during the protest, the Bitcoiners were raising a lot.

00:39:03.020 They ended up raising something like $1.2 million for us.

00:39:06.840 Or 21 Bitcoin, I think is what it was.

00:39:08.680 And so, they originally tried to contact the protest through Tamara.

00:39:15.400 They got nothing but resistance and they were not going to support the convoy.

00:39:19.760 And then somebody saw me on one of the news programs or an interview somewhere, a podcast, whatever it was.

00:39:26.880 And they looked me up on Twitter.

00:39:28.980 Sorry, X.

00:39:30.640 Elon, it's X.

00:39:32.220 And they saw hashtag Bitcoin.

00:39:34.760 So, they started sending me DMs.

00:39:38.140 And you can see they were testing me.

00:39:39.420 They're like, you're a Bitcoiner.

00:39:40.480 And I'm like, yeah.

00:39:41.440 How long have you been in Bitcoin?

00:39:42.640 What do you know?

00:39:43.180 What wallet you use?

00:39:44.100 Blah, all that sort of stuff.

00:39:44.920 So, they realized, okay, I'm the real deal.

00:39:47.260 And they said, this is Caribou, by the way.

00:39:51.320 Caribou is the one who distributed all the Bitcoin to the truckers and was raided by the police, which is another issue.

00:39:58.760 But they ended up raising $1.2 million.

00:40:02.600 They came to me the next day and said, we're raising Bitcoin.

00:40:04.900 I said, great, I got your back.

00:40:08.060 We'll get it to the truckers.

00:40:09.620 I went to the board, of which some of them were, you know, Conservative Party loyalists.

00:40:15.300 And I said, we got a bunch of Bitcoiners raising money for us.

00:40:18.640 The response I got was, well, that's for criminal money.

00:40:21.580 I'm like, okay, fine.

00:40:22.540 Forget it.

00:40:23.040 And so, I just kind of helped them and thank God because Bitcoin was the only money that got through to the truckers.

00:40:32.020 It's the only money that was directly distributed.

00:40:33.980 And I tell that story in the book.

00:40:36.180 And what happened to all the money that you raised?

00:40:37.900 Because 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.

00:40:46.260 What happened there?

00:40:47.040 It's really interesting because according to the treasurer, it's neither.

00:40:50.960 But that's his account.

00:40:52.660 What happened?

00:40:53.600 First, we had GoFundMe.

00:40:55.040 Yes.

00:40:55.440 And GoFundMe raised 10-something million dollars, $10.1 million.

00:41:01.560 And frustratingly, that money was transferred into Tamara's account and she didn't return their phone call for six days.

00:41:11.780 I don't understand that.

00:41:12.620 That doesn't make sense to me.

00:41:14.180 Because you can't transfer stuff for a nonprofit into a personal account.

00:41:19.580 So, okay, fine.

00:41:20.920 Well, that we'll figure out over time.

00:41:23.740 And there's some investigative journalists, Diverge Media, that's looking into that.

00:41:27.820 But on February 5th – and there's a series of events that happened.

00:41:32.120 And this is what I was dealing with behind the scenes.

00:41:33.700 So, the mood and behavior was peace, love, unity, and freedom.

00:41:37.280 And 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.

00:41:53.580 Justin Truro is tyrannical.

00:41:54.920 He's destroying the country.

00:41:55.880 You're not going to have a future left.

00:41:57.740 Come down here and come down here, support the truckers and whatever.

00:42:02.600 And I lost my mind.

00:42:04.120 That's not freedom, peace, love, and unity and freedom.

00:42:06.960 That's not the mood and behavior we were trying to build.

00:42:09.300 But it's because a series of events already happened.

00:42:12.340 On February 3rd, the Conservative Party leader, who everybody wanted to get rid of, he resigned.

00:42:18.460 The next day, Candace Bergen, the new interim leader of the Conservatives, tried to bait us into joining her for a press conference.

00:42:30.280 And she wanted to meet us at the ANW to do, I don't know, whatever it was.

00:42:35.660 She wanted to do a photo op with the truckers.

00:42:38.820 Everybody else, I'm the one who, I was the stinker in the room.

00:42:41.740 I said, no, absolutely not.

00:42:43.720 She's going to bait us and she's going to tell us we all have to go home and then we'll have zero political capital and it'll be over. 0.52

00:42:50.240 And I was right.

00:42:51.280 She came out of parliament that night instead in a late session of parliament.

00:42:54.760 And she said, the Conservative Party is here for working people, truckers, blah, blah, blah.

00:42:59.420 And it's time all the truckers go home.

00:43:01.720 And there were some people in my room.

00:43:02.800 I said, ha, you see, I told you.

00:43:04.560 What would happen if we were there?

00:43:06.260 So clearly, I could see right at that point they were not in our favor.

00:43:10.980 And then the next day, the lawyers show up, do the video.

00:43:13.980 I go into, I storm into the Ark Hotel where they all have like a meeting room.

00:43:20.000 This is before I broke my ankle, about an hour before.

00:43:23.420 And I said, what are you doing?

00:43:26.480 I used a few expletives and it was quite aggressive for the first time.

00:43:30.440 Everybody was shocked that I could get so angry.

00:43:33.500 And he responds with, oh, OK, I'm sorry.

00:43:36.260 Here, 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.

00:43:54.240 So clearly, there was way more collusion going on behind the scenes than we realized.

00:43:59.600 Both parties wanted us out of there as quickly as possible, which we understand.

00:44:05.380 But we just wanted to talk to somebody in the government.

00:44:08.100 And they also were going behind our backs, which I didn't know, to meet with the city of Ottawa to condense the protest.

00:44:16.800 And 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.

00:44:22.620 I'm like, excuse me.

00:44:23.780 They told us where to park.

00:44:25.500 The city of Ottawa and the Ottawa police gave us our parking spots.

00:44:30.460 We haven't spoken with blackface yet.

00:44:33.380 Right.

00:44:34.020 And I was actually trying to, we know who runs the party.

00:44:37.280 So I know the people.

00:44:38.140 I know the procedures.

00:44:38.960 I know how they would have talked to us.

00:44:41.640 And I tried to tell them, these are people in government.

00:44:44.880 My dad had an entire career in government.

00:44:47.600 Everybody's going to be pointing the finger at each other, trying to defer blame to somebody else or another department.

00:44:53.920 They'll do that for a week.

00:44:55.480 And then at some point, they'll figure out who to talk to.

00:44:58.240 But if you go to meet with them now and start to acquiesce to demands nobody has made, you're a lawyer.

00:45:06.080 You've never negotiated before.

00:45:07.600 Like, what's wrong with you people?

00:45:09.400 It's because they were trying to end the protest.

00:45:12.120 It's, you know, listening to this story, it's, on the one hand, it's really inspiring.

00:45:19.080 It's a classical, you know, the little guy stands up against tyrannical, oppressive regimes.

00:45:24.980 On the other hand, it's really dispiriting because it's not just you against government.

00:45:31.340 It's you against the entire political class.

00:45:34.700 And the fact that the bank, your bank accounts were frozen.

00:45:37.620 And you said, not only was it your personal, but also your business account.

00:45:41.700 So they were effectively trying to put, trying to make you go bust.

00:45:46.020 The government was trying to make you go bust.

00:45:49.520 And you know what's interesting?

00:45:50.660 On that topic, what I did was I sent a,

00:45:54.660 an email to the presidents of the two banks that I work with saying,

00:45:58.740 hey, my name is Benjamin.

00:45:59.960 Why do you have my bank account frozen?

00:46:01.680 Just out of curiosity, CC a bunch of lawyers.

00:46:04.580 Yeah.

00:46:05.200 And, which is one of the podcasts I produce, not on record.

00:46:08.900 And I finally got a response in March.

00:46:12.540 So after the protest was done, after I tried to avoid arrest,

00:46:15.900 which was a whole crazy week, which is another issue.

00:46:19.560 And I got a response.

00:46:22.820 And the response, this response letter, I held on to it.

00:46:26.700 I held on to it because I knew there was going to be some sort of

00:46:29.720 parliamentary investigation into the bank account freezing.

00:46:33.900 Because the first lesson you learn in politics,

00:46:36.200 everybody cares about their money,

00:46:38.220 especially those who say they don't.

00:46:39.940 They teach everybody that in politics.

00:46:41.600 And Krista Friedland, who is somehow, somehow,

00:46:47.200 both the finance minister and the deputy prime minister at the same time.

00:46:52.480 I'd never heard of that before, but whatever.

00:46:54.560 And on the advisory board of the WEF, the World Economic Forum.

00:46:58.740 She was in this parliamentary session trying to evade questions.

00:47:02.440 And she let it slip to suggest that the bank accounts and financial institutions

00:47:09.180 took it on their own accord to freeze bank accounts.

00:47:12.800 Like, really?

00:47:13.860 Really?

00:47:14.300 Because I have an email that says the opposite.

00:47:16.680 So I have a very large substack.

00:47:19.220 I reached out to a journalist, a very experienced journalist I know, Mark Petroni,

00:47:23.880 and said, hey, Mark, check out this email that I haven't told anybody about.

00:47:27.540 And Krista Friedland, he's like, oh, that's great.

00:47:30.000 Do you want to write an article about it?

00:47:31.520 So he did.

00:47:33.100 Zero Hedge picked it up.

00:47:34.720 And I guess effectively nuked that line of narrative that the government

00:47:39.620 was trying to perpetuate, that it was the financial institutions.

00:47:43.140 And what people didn't understand, what I was trying to explain to people,

00:47:45.980 was, you know, this is maybe, not to, like, side with banks,

00:47:51.040 but is this the inevitability of the excessive over-regulation of banks

00:47:57.380 that they always complain about?

00:48:00.360 Is this is where we're going to converge, that the government can now,

00:48:03.900 in a very fascistic manner, dictate who gets a bank account and who doesn't,

00:48:09.540 which is why hashtag Bitcoin.

00:48:11.520 And what was really interesting about the case is the first time that I'd ever heard

00:48:15.940 about debanking, bank accounts being frozen.

00:48:18.840 And now we're seeing it happen more and more.

00:48:21.680 In Brazil.

00:48:22.380 It happened two months later.

00:48:23.860 Yeah.

00:48:24.160 They had a trucker protest after the elections.

00:48:26.860 What's the first thing they did?

00:48:28.060 They froze all the bank accounts of the truckers.

00:48:30.320 So do you think this is something that we're going to see happening?

00:48:32.980 We saw it with Nigel Farage in this country.

00:48:34.780 That's right.

00:48:35.060 Nigel as well had the same thing.

00:48:36.120 We've had one of our accounts suspended.

00:48:37.780 We're still investigating what happened there as well.

00:48:40.300 Listen, irrespective of whether you agree or not politically,

00:48:43.640 before the convoy, what happened to Abramovich here?

00:48:48.240 They froze every, all his assets in the United Kingdoms and essentially stole his soccer team.

00:48:53.320 So, and I think that's why we had people from all demographics reaching out to us,

00:48:58.240 because they realized this is not a rich or poor issue.

00:49:01.760 This is not a blue versus red issue.

00:49:05.480 This is the political class who've gotten a little bit drunk with power versus everybody else

00:49:12.300 who just wants to get on with their lives.

00:49:13.720 And the thing that I find really worrying is that, for me, is foreshadowing a world

00:49:22.400 that we're going to be going into, where cash is going to become obsolete.

00:49:27.100 There's my little conspiracy theory that they use COVID as a way to eliminate cash.

00:49:32.320 Cash is going to become obsolete, and this is going to be the way of controlling the populace.

00:49:37.000 I, you know, yes, yes and no.

00:49:42.380 Like, I'm of two minds about this, which is, by the way, a skill.

00:49:46.020 I think we all have to start developing, is going back to where we can simultaneously hold two world beliefs.

00:49:52.800 People have forgotten that.

00:49:54.520 I comment a lot of this because I go in a lot of Bitcoin spaces.

00:49:58.340 I'm going to be speaking in El Salvador and Florida on Bitcoin stages and stuff.

00:50:02.900 I don't know that we're going to get a CBDC.

00:50:04.760 That's what everybody's concerned with, central bank digital currency,

00:50:07.880 because that's what that would allow the political class to do. 1.00

00:50:12.780 I think what people misread about how the political class behaves,

00:50:18.100 because I've seen, I've interacted with a lot of these people,

00:50:21.740 some of the wealthiest people in the world,

00:50:23.660 and we get this impression that they are these authoritarian controlling hawks.

00:50:29.880 And there's no question some people on, I would call it the authoritarian left,

00:50:34.500 have that sort of vision.

00:50:36.260 But not all wealthy, billionaire, influential, industrial people, they're not a group.

00:50:43.380 They all have different competing interests.

00:50:46.680 And many of the people that I've met within that demographic, they're just scared.

00:50:52.880 Fear is what's driving so much of this.

00:50:57.160 And I think when we understand that it's fear, not this over-inflated sense of control

00:51:04.620 that some mid-level political bureaucrat thinks they have,

00:51:09.540 but the really top people, they're worried about this collapsing as much as we are.

00:51:14.500 Elon Musk is a good example of that.

00:51:16.340 Whether you agree with him or not, I happen to.

00:51:18.320 But he's a good example.

00:51:20.380 He's not an authoritarian looking for control.

00:51:24.260 It's fear of everything collapsing.

00:51:26.780 So I think because of that and because of the weakness of politicians,

00:51:32.380 that politicians are always looking for one thing very, very vigorously,

00:51:39.000 which is plausible deniability.

00:51:40.920 And a CBDC pulls away the curtain of everybody,

00:51:44.900 including politicians who will have a CBDC.

00:51:47.840 And if it's centralized, I can promise you the world's hackers will start doing their best

00:51:53.940 to hack centralized wallets of politicians to see where all their money comes from.

00:52:00.000 And that's, once they get a win of that, all right, it's over.

00:52:03.140 And where it goes, because you're going to find some very interesting things on both ends of that spectrum.

00:52:07.120 Exactly. So it exposes them as much as the rest of us.

00:52:09.420 So I'm actually quite positive on, and this is also why I advocate for Bitcoin.

00:52:14.780 And then many of the Bitcoiners will say, well, we're going to have exclusively Bitcoin.

00:52:19.780 No, I think we're going to have a fiat system that works with Bitcoin, this new asset,

00:52:25.740 this protocol that never existed before.

00:52:28.140 And I think things are going to work out.

00:52:30.460 It's just going to be some bumpy roads for the next few years.

00:52:33.960 Sorry to be too optimistic.

00:52:35.380 No, that's great.

00:52:36.480 It's great.

00:52:37.140 France is disappointed.

00:52:38.400 Yeah.

00:52:38.780 Exactly.

00:52:38.860 Why aren't you telling me that I'm going to have no freedom?

00:52:41.940 But you know what's really interesting talking to you, because, you know, your family lineage to Venezuela,

00:52:47.680 and we discussed this prior, you know, my experience in Latin America,

00:52:52.620 I'm sure you're getting the same feeling that my friends who live in Canada now are telling me

00:52:58.480 were living in Caracas in 2002.

00:53:02.000 I'm sure you have those same sort of sentiments as well, don't you?

00:53:05.200 There were times during COVID where I could feel almost like a PTSD response to what is happening.

00:53:13.580 And also as well, the thing that I found even more worrying wasn't what the government were doing.

00:53:19.660 It was looking around and people who I thought were sane and rational and reasonable behaving in a manner that was quite clearly irrational.

00:53:27.980 All right, mate.

00:53:28.280 It was just one day and I was very upset.

00:53:30.640 You know, but you know what was really, really disappointing?

00:53:33.180 You know, during, firstly, the political stuff in the convoy, I want to make this clear.

00:53:37.360 Yeah.

00:53:38.060 All the political attempts to co-opt and destroy it from the inside, that's to be expected.

00:53:44.880 We just didn't know where it was coming from and how it was working.

00:53:48.060 None of that takes away from this beautiful moment where we all came together.

00:53:54.020 You know, the second interview I did when I was there, it was with a journalist working for a French publication.

00:53:59.520 She's from Quebec, but we did an hour-long publication.

00:54:04.100 She translated into French for it to go out here.

00:54:06.780 And I asked her, I always ask people after the interviews, and I'll do the same with you, what do you guys think?

00:54:13.060 And I asked her, what do you think about what I just discussed in our conversation and what's going on?

00:54:18.140 And she said to me, you know, my whole life, I've been a Quebec separatist.

00:54:24.580 Until I saw the trucks driving across the country and that everybody's starting to unify and support each other despite our differences.

00:54:33.460 She said, I bought my first Canadian flag ever.

00:54:36.660 Wow.

00:54:36.960 And I now consider myself Canadian.

00:54:38.480 That's the type of power that we achieved with all of this.

00:54:42.980 So all the noise and the nonsense I tell people in my live streams, that's just the noise.

00:54:49.780 Turn it on and off and engage when you want to and focus on your life.

00:54:55.360 And 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,

00:55:04.480 I think we're going to be a lot better off.

00:55:06.760 No, I couldn't agree with you more and it's increasingly how I feel about everything as well.

00:55:12.020 We'll be back with Benjamin in a minute, but first we wanted to tell you about our friends at EZDNS.

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00:55:46.400 One of the things I wanted to ask you very much along those lines is, what were the key objectives of the convoy?

00:55:56.460 And do you feel that the impact ultimately was positive?

00:56:00.000 And what are some of the downstream effects?

00:56:02.720 What have we seen?

00:56:03.340 I know you've had all sorts of investigations into aspects of this going on in Canada.

00:56:08.600 So, you know, are you happy with what was achieved?

00:56:11.560 What are some of the takeaways, etc.?

00:56:14.020 Yeah, I'm happy with what was achieved.

00:56:15.860 I'm not happy in the way it was achieved.

00:56:18.000 So the first thing is we, look, we were there for two reasons, despite what the fake news wants to tell people.

00:56:23.420 We were there to end mandates and we were there to end the Arrive Can app,

00:56:27.940 which is the data tracking app that Canadians would have to have on their phone to re-enter the country, right?

00:56:34.800 Okay, so that's what we were there for.

00:56:36.580 And you could see in the first week, I mean, it's a good thing I had experience with politics

00:56:40.600 and I'd been in, run campaigns and stuff.

00:56:43.140 I could see them message testing on the provincial level in the first week.

00:56:47.220 You see that a lot.

00:56:48.120 When a politician will say one thing and say the opposite the next day,

00:56:51.540 they're just testing messaging to see how people are responding.

00:56:54.440 And I think it was five days into it, six days into it, the Ontario Premier, Doug Ford, who I mentioned,

00:57:02.240 who is the one, by the way, who sought the injunction of the $9 million that was in Give, Send, Go.

00:57:08.080 That wasn't Justin Trudeau.

00:57:09.260 That was the Conservatives.

00:57:10.380 Again, it's not red versus blue.

00:57:12.200 But you can see he was testing messages, suggested we should take, we end mask mandates and all that sort of stuff.

00:57:17.320 Once I saw that, I knew, all right, we're going to win.

00:57:20.140 We're going to get rid of the mandates.

00:57:21.680 It's just going to take some time.

00:57:22.740 The ones that held on the longest were the extremists, which were Justin Trudeau, Omar Al-Gabra, and the PMO.

00:57:32.720 And they took, if I remember correctly, was it six months, seven months, something like that,

00:57:36.920 to finally lift mandates for travel within Canada.

00:57:42.280 So, and, you know, we know how politics works.

00:57:45.900 They have to do it, but they have to have plausible deniability, which I was ready for.

00:57:51.300 However, 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.

00:58:02.180 Because all I wanted to do was have what the United Kingdom had and what England had, right? 0.91

00:58:07.380 You guys started opening up and dropping all your mandates.

00:58:10.680 And I said that in our first press conference.

00:58:13.080 We just want to go the direction of the United Kingdom.

00:58:15.880 Why are we holding on to this sort of thing?

00:58:19.380 But anyways, you know, he definitely doesn't have the strength of his father, who he's not a fan of.

00:58:24.820 But there's no question his father would have been out there to talk to us and say, okay, what do you guys want, right?

00:58:31.180 And sort of thing.

00:58:31.880 So I'm happy with that we achieved that particular goal.

00:58:37.180 There were convoys in 30 plus countries around the world that had the same frustration.

00:58:45.020 And the Dutch farmers, Jordan Peterson was telling me in a private conversation about this, that they were looking at what was happening in Canada.

00:58:53.580 They were looking at kind of the weak points that the government or the authorities were able to exploit.

00:59:00.700 And they adjusted their protest accordingly.

00:59:03.460 And what happened?

00:59:04.740 They ended up forming a political party.

00:59:06.880 They got 20% of the vote in parliament. 0.64

00:59:08.940 And now they can block all the ridiculous nonsense that may or may not come from the World Economic Forum, right?

00:59:15.340 Which is what the political class colluded to prevent us from doing.

00:59:18.300 What was very frustrating was we had a public order emergency commission is what it's called.

00:59:25.180 That was the commission to investigate all the circumstances around the Freedom Convoy.

00:59:30.280 And you could tell it was all always rigged.

00:59:34.260 But there was definitely some sort of setup behind the scene negotiating deals.

00:59:38.940 Same sort of thing as we saw, you know, those emails.

00:59:42.520 Where there were two narratives going into this.

00:59:45.840 I didn't have standing.

00:59:47.080 I was denied standing.

00:59:48.860 And if I had standing, I would have cross-examined people on both sides.

00:59:52.600 Which is, I guess, why they didn't want me to have standing, right?

00:59:56.080 But there are two narratives going into the Public Order Emergency Commission.

00:59:59.700 One was the liberal narrative that it was Mad Max, pandemonium in the streets, dead bodies flying around, whatever.

01:00:08.060 Which obviously wasn't true.

01:00:09.820 And then there was the conservative side narrative.

01:00:12.800 Which was, oh, it was peaceful, but it got out of hand.

01:00:16.380 And both of those things were not true.

01:00:18.720 It was peaceful.

01:00:19.680 They got out of their leader.

01:00:20.860 They co-opted enough of the vote as they thought they would.

01:00:23.240 And they wanted to end it.

01:00:24.480 That's the truth of it.

01:00:25.960 And then there's one guy who came in.

01:00:28.560 There was a couple of us as well.

01:00:29.620 But, you know, I did a little more legal approach.

01:00:32.120 Who, I guess, is a little bit mouthy and is not going along with either party.

01:00:37.140 Who told the truth?

01:00:38.880 Which was, no, both these people are lying.

01:00:41.760 But I, or both these parties are lying.

01:00:43.600 But I couldn't go up and do a vlog, right?

01:00:46.120 It was Q&A.

01:00:47.400 It was very rigid, very scripted, very, you know.

01:00:50.420 And I had to do my best to insert the truth of what went on there.

01:00:56.680 And I think over time, people will understand my testimony.

01:01:00.100 A lot of people still don't understand it.

01:01:01.920 So that was the frustrating part of what came from it.

01:01:06.140 But I've been traveling, you know, in my truck.

01:01:08.460 When I'm driving, I'm in the States.

01:01:10.040 I'm all over the U.S.

01:01:11.040 Or at least the eastern part of the U.S.

01:01:13.720 When people realize who I am, because that does happen from time to time,

01:01:18.080 they feel, the Americans are funny.

01:01:20.520 They feel like jealous.

01:01:21.620 They can't believe Canada did it.

01:01:23.200 You guys beat us to it sort of thing.

01:01:24.840 But just overwhelming love and support here as well.

01:01:29.700 That's why, you know, Carl and the guys had me at Lotus Eaters to sit in with them.

01:01:35.500 Just all over the world, everybody has been so warm and loving and appreciative

01:01:40.880 that we stuck our necks out.

01:01:43.140 And we didn't do it, you know, for myself.

01:01:45.620 We did for all of us.

01:01:46.700 Because we got to put an end to clown world.

01:01:48.460 And this was just one element of clown world that showed the world, A, how bad it can get.

01:01:55.620 And what I'm trying to show people is the mechanics of what goes on behind the scenes

01:02:01.060 and why you should not trust anything that comes out of a mouthpiece of a political actor

01:02:07.360 or people aligned with a political class.

01:02:09.200 We're going to wrap up in a second.

01:02:11.160 But there's a couple of questions I want to ask you, one trickier than the other.

01:02:14.480 I suppose the real test, this is the less tricky one,

01:02:17.140 the real test of whether you guys made an impact is if we have another pandemic,

01:02:22.840 are we going to go down the same route?

01:02:25.460 And I wonder about that.

01:02:27.180 I don't know what lessons politicians have learned.

01:02:29.360 Because I look around and I think they will be more hesitant

01:02:35.460 about taking some of the more authoritarian measures on the one hand.

01:02:39.840 On the other hand, they've also applied a methodology that did actually work,

01:02:45.060 which was you scare the public and then the public will demand action

01:02:49.920 and then you do the action, right?

01:02:52.640 So I suppose the question is, in terms of impact,

01:02:56.440 do you feel that we are in a healthier position if another pandemic happens

01:03:02.460 or another public health emergency occurs of some kind?

01:03:05.660 Are they going to be less likely to go down this authoritarian route?

01:03:10.000 I don't know.

01:03:10.620 I think it's going to be different in every jurisdiction

01:03:13.280 because what we did is we showed the political class,

01:03:16.140 there is a line in the sand and you best not ever cross it ever again.

01:03:20.540 Now, will everybody listen to it?

01:03:22.560 I know a lot of them will.

01:03:24.080 I know a lot of them in power are fearful.

01:03:26.440 Of going through the same thing and being on the wrong side of it.

01:03:30.260 But this is also why I think it's very important.

01:03:33.640 I tell people who are conservative,

01:03:35.940 if you have progressive neighbourhoods or classically liberal neighbourhoods,

01:03:40.040 they're easier, classically liberal neighbours, talk to them.

01:03:44.360 And don't talk about politics.

01:03:46.600 Talk about your car, your grass, your lawn.

01:03:49.400 Just start to redevelop relationships with people

01:03:52.640 who don't share a political framework.

01:03:55.720 Because if not, what happens?

01:03:58.360 We turn on each other.

01:03:59.380 One of the negative things that's really disappointing through all of this,

01:04:04.320 you know, I'm sure you had a lot of this indoctrination,

01:04:06.680 not indoctrination, but education on the Holocaust

01:04:09.200 and what happened in Europe in the 1930s.

01:04:13.200 And I know some people who work at constituency offices,

01:04:16.920 work for members of parliament or whatever,

01:04:18.580 and the number of people that were calling in to the government

01:04:23.300 to rat on their neighbours or their family members or whatever,

01:04:29.040 that is not acceptable.

01:04:32.300 We cannot be, if we are that way as a society,

01:04:36.100 society will crumble.

01:04:37.860 We need to start building friendships and relationships

01:04:40.540 with people across the board.

01:04:42.100 I told you one of my best friends is a Brit.

01:04:45.440 What he doesn't like about London,

01:04:47.380 he says everybody's very cold, people won't talk to you.

01:04:50.720 But I was charmed to see on the tube

01:04:53.540 a sign saying a little kindness goes a long way.

01:04:57.640 That's why I try to focus on positive framing

01:05:00.340 and focusing on the good in people. 0.99

01:05:03.180 Even people who we know are garbage. 1.00

01:05:05.400 We all know them. 1.00

01:05:07.140 Try to find a little bit of good,

01:05:08.700 because if not, we're going to start throwing each other

01:05:11.520 under the bus.

01:05:12.800 And that's what the political class needs, 0.99

01:05:15.120 to have another authoritarian lockdown like we had.

01:05:18.800 So if you start shutting out everybody in your community,

01:05:22.140 that divide and conquer is what they will exploit.

01:05:25.280 That's what they tried to exploit during the trekker convoy.

01:05:28.520 They tried to get us all fighting with each other.

01:05:30.580 It worked with some cases, didn't work in others.

01:05:33.200 But if we don't allow, if we resist that temptation,

01:05:36.680 then I think we'll be better off

01:05:37.840 and they won't be able to.

01:05:39.320 That's a really important message.

01:05:40.800 And I think one of the things that people did learn,

01:05:43.720 and Francis and I know through our family backgrounds,

01:05:46.540 is no matter how liberal or, you know,

01:05:49.880 whatever, the government's not your friend.

01:05:52.220 That's right.

01:05:52.760 They're not your friend.

01:05:53.980 And they will use you against each other

01:05:56.160 if they want to fulfill their political ambitions in that way.

01:06:00.640 The government does not, by definition,

01:06:03.080 they can't have your best interests at heart

01:06:05.140 because they have their own goals,

01:06:06.940 their own objectives.

01:06:07.640 They're looking after a country of different people.

01:06:09.900 They cannot possibly have your interests at heart,

01:06:12.020 by definition.

01:06:13.200 And I think we saw that.

01:06:14.860 The question that is more tricky that I want to ask you,

01:06:17.380 and I'm asking you because I wrestle with it,

01:06:20.060 we have the situation, particularly here,

01:06:23.000 I don't know how prominent they are in Canada,

01:06:24.940 where we have Extinction Rebellion protesters

01:06:27.960 who block ambulances from getting to hospitals.

01:06:32.860 They stop people getting to work.

01:06:36.220 They block roads and trains and so on and so forth.

01:06:39.460 And I disagree with that

01:06:44.060 because I think the cause that they're advocating for,

01:06:46.920 they completely misunderstand 0.92

01:06:47.960 and the solutions they're offering are ridiculous, etc. 0.90

01:06:50.920 But on the other hand,

01:06:52.580 when truckers block a thing for a cause that I do agree with,

01:06:55.600 I have less hesitation about that, right?

01:06:58.340 So how do we square that?

01:06:59.520 What is legitimate protest?

01:07:01.400 And when are you taking the piss,

01:07:02.980 as we say, in this country?

01:07:03.860 Well, I think, firstly,

01:07:06.700 in the case of the trucker protest,

01:07:09.140 we were trying to make demands to remove it.

01:07:11.920 What we were told was a temporary policy, right?

01:07:15.540 It was not some ambiguous, you know, concern,

01:07:19.500 some dark, scary thing in the future.

01:07:21.800 You know, Scott, I'm sure, talked to you.

01:07:23.800 I haven't watched the whole interview yet,

01:07:25.220 but he talks about the Adams Law of slow-moving disasters.

01:07:29.340 That's where climate change goes into.

01:07:31.660 When I was a kid, it was acid rain

01:07:33.400 was the big thing, and we solved that, too.

01:07:35.280 And before you were a kid,

01:07:36.360 it was global cooling, by the way.

01:07:37.760 Global cooling as well.

01:07:38.740 That's right, exactly.

01:07:40.760 So I think there's,

01:07:42.460 what we're seeing with the Extinction Rebellion stuff,

01:07:44.760 that's part of the,

01:07:46.000 that's a political tactic, right?

01:07:47.920 And people argue,

01:07:49.620 you know, trucker convoy is a political tactic.

01:07:51.600 I don't know, talk to those guys.

01:07:52.600 You see how political they are.

01:07:53.680 They don't care about politics.

01:07:55.060 They just want to get to work, sort of thing.

01:07:57.060 So, you know, I take your point,

01:07:59.020 but I think a lot of things

01:08:01.120 sometimes get lost in the nuance,

01:08:02.960 because we always want to talk about

01:08:04.500 things in broad, simplistic manners.

01:08:07.300 But I think they're quite distinct for that reason.

01:08:11.160 The other thing is,

01:08:11.860 when we had our protest,

01:08:13.580 despite what the fake news will tell you,

01:08:15.660 and I have many pictures I can share with you,

01:08:18.880 we had every street,

01:08:21.300 because remember,

01:08:21.880 we worked with the city of Ottawa.

01:08:23.860 So every street had a laneway that was open

01:08:26.220 for emergency vehicles.

01:08:27.820 We had a command center,

01:08:29.860 two command centers,

01:08:30.740 one was security,

01:08:31.560 one was liaising with the city of Ottawa,

01:08:34.780 in case there were emergencies,

01:08:36.600 ambulance needed to get through, whatever.

01:08:38.580 We had a coordinated team,

01:08:40.160 mainly ex-police officers and some ex-military,

01:08:43.160 that were ensuring emergency vehicles

01:08:45.920 were not disrupted.

01:08:48.160 So, you know,

01:08:49.220 people see the picture of Wellington Street.

01:08:51.960 That was the main street

01:08:53.160 where all the trucks were in every lane.

01:08:55.820 But all the other surrounding streets in Ottawa,

01:08:59.760 the trucks were occupying half the street,

01:09:03.000 kind of like the bicycle lanes are doing now.

01:09:05.460 And then the other half was free for emergency vehicles

01:09:10.160 and for people if they needed to drive.

01:09:12.720 And I actually had to leave Ottawa a couple of times

01:09:15.240 and I have video of me driving back into Ottawa.

01:09:19.920 And it was, I don't know,

01:09:21.200 as quick as any other day.

01:09:22.420 In Ottawa traffic, it was no different.

01:09:24.020 So we weren't, we weren't,

01:09:26.600 if Instinction Rebellion got on a street,

01:09:30.240 and well, I mean, the cause is an issue,

01:09:32.440 but it would be the same of them blocking

01:09:35.480 one lane of roadway on a major street,

01:09:39.180 not the entire thing.

01:09:40.900 We live in the UK, that is the major street.

01:09:43.260 Well, yeah, that's true.

01:09:44.280 You know what I mean?

01:09:45.380 Yeah, of course, of course we do.

01:09:46.680 And also, you know,

01:09:47.240 I wanted just to double back to a point

01:09:48.800 that you mentioned,

01:09:50.280 and it's so frustrating for me,

01:09:51.680 because the first organization within,

01:09:55.260 I think it was 13 minutes,

01:09:56.560 that smeared us as racist, bigot, Nazis, 0.96

01:09:59.720 white supremacists, whatever, 0.97

01:10:01.320 was a Jewish organization in Canada

01:10:03.900 tied to the Liberal Party called Sijia.

01:10:07.340 They're the ones who released the press release

01:10:10.640 on behalf of the Prime Minister

01:10:12.680 to say that we're white supremacists.

01:10:15.020 Now, I don't know,

01:10:16.100 I didn't learn much white supremacy

01:10:17.320 in the first 13 years of Hebrew school,

01:10:19.360 but you know what I did learn?

01:10:22.040 We learned about the Holocaust all the time.

01:10:24.480 And this is where I get so frustrated

01:10:26.100 with these organizations,

01:10:27.960 because from my perspective,

01:10:29.800 what did I learn in all those years in school?

01:10:33.080 Bingo.

01:10:33.400 What I learned was that was the government

01:10:36.180 in the 1930s that did that.

01:10:38.620 It wasn't some random dude, you know?

01:10:40.940 And that is so lost amongst people.

01:10:43.080 Not just the government,

01:10:43.940 it's the point you made earlier,

01:10:45.180 and then the Soviet Union was the same.

01:10:46.540 It was the government getting people brainwashed

01:10:49.840 in a particular worldview,

01:10:51.600 and then getting ordinary people

01:10:53.280 to tell on each other,

01:10:55.120 to report each other to the secret police,

01:10:57.600 to hand people in for wrongdoing, etc., etc.

01:11:01.280 And one of the things that I found incredible

01:11:03.600 during the whole thing was like,

01:11:05.880 my position on all of this was,

01:11:08.060 I'm against mandates,

01:11:09.180 and I'm against mandated vaccination, right?

01:11:12.300 People are free to have the vaccination,

01:11:14.200 people are free to wear a mask,

01:11:15.340 people are free to do whatever they want, right?

01:11:17.500 But I think, if you look back,

01:11:20.660 the idea that people shouldn't be forcibly injected

01:11:22.960 with medical things that they don't wish to have

01:11:24.880 came out in 1945 0.98

01:11:27.840 for very good fucking reason. 0.99

01:11:31.500 Very good reason. 0.99

01:11:32.960 And the fact that that became

01:11:34.600 like a controversial thing to say,

01:11:36.640 no, no, no, no,

01:11:37.620 people came together in Nuremberg

01:11:39.800 for a very good reason

01:11:41.100 and decided,

01:11:42.460 we're not going to let this happen again.

01:11:44.240 And the fact that people were willing

01:11:45.600 to just completely overlook that,

01:11:47.260 this is the thing,

01:11:48.180 is they flip everything on its head,

01:11:49.540 like you say.

01:11:50.920 And you know,

01:11:51.760 we always hear about the white truckers

01:11:53.920 in Ottawa, whatever.

01:11:55.940 You know, they're all,

01:11:56.780 not all,

01:11:58.040 but a very sizable minority,

01:12:00.960 maybe even half of them,

01:12:02.420 were from Eastern Europe.

01:12:03.320 Oh, I bet.

01:12:04.840 And you know,

01:12:05.440 the last person standing,

01:12:07.500 the last trucker who was arrested,

01:12:09.000 was Chaba Vizi.

01:12:10.680 And Chaba is from Romania. 0.88

01:12:13.660 And he was telling me,

01:12:15.100 I took him to Boston

01:12:16.300 to a Bitcoin Freedom event,

01:12:19.120 Bitcoin Freedom Festival.

01:12:21.160 And you know,

01:12:21.980 I talked on stage about the convoy,

01:12:24.780 as we just discussed right now.

01:12:26.900 And I handed the mic over to him.

01:12:29.220 And then he brought the audience into tears,

01:12:31.820 telling him what his family went through

01:12:34.020 under Soviet Union control,

01:12:37.560 that the government was always listening to them.

01:12:42.100 Their children couldn't hear their conversations.

01:12:45.460 Because if their children said the wrong thing

01:12:48.100 by accident in school,

01:12:50.520 then you were taken away.

01:12:51.840 You may never see your family ever again.

01:12:54.040 So the first chapter of my book,

01:12:54.980 I talk about the talk

01:12:56.480 that people would have with their kids.

01:12:58.560 That's right.

01:12:59.000 And we have lost all concept

01:13:01.920 in the Western world

01:13:03.660 of how truly bad it is

01:13:06.020 through this collective brainwashing in academia.

01:13:09.900 Trying to convince kids.

01:13:11.100 I mean, I saw it on campus with my business.

01:13:13.540 That they're,

01:13:13.960 oh yeah, communism ain't so bad.

01:13:15.580 Really?

01:13:16.020 Okay, why don't you go?

01:13:16.800 It's okay, go to China. 0.88

01:13:18.420 Just go.

01:13:18.940 Go, get out of here. 1.00

01:13:19.600 We don't need you here.

01:13:20.300 Leave. 0.99

01:13:20.560 Like, if it's so good sort of thing.

01:13:23.220 And I know your experience,

01:13:25.880 you know,

01:13:26.240 my heart bleeds for,

01:13:27.780 I love Latin America.

01:13:28.840 I really do.

01:13:29.900 And I see what they've done

01:13:31.160 to such a beautiful country.

01:13:34.360 And I hope they come out of it.

01:13:37.680 But we need to be vocal about this.

01:13:39.440 And we're not going to change the world

01:13:40.960 and better it and free people

01:13:43.540 if we just sit back and let it happen.

01:13:46.680 Some of us have to speak up,

01:13:48.260 which is what the Freedom Convoy was about.

01:13:50.000 You know, the whole thing

01:13:51.120 that I found so ironic about COVID

01:13:53.060 is that Hitler was actually

01:13:54.560 against mandated vaccination.

01:13:56.780 He thought it was a bit too far.

01:13:59.200 He's like, no, I cannot do this.

01:14:01.100 No, it's too far.

01:14:02.640 So like, even for, anyway.

01:14:04.600 But there we go.

01:14:05.640 Thank you so much for coming on, BJ.

01:14:07.620 It's been a wonderful, wonderful chat.

01:14:10.060 The final question is always,

01:14:11.680 what is the one thing

01:14:12.640 we're not talking about as a society

01:14:14.600 that we really should be?

01:14:17.120 Well, I'm talking about everything.

01:14:18.500 So there's nothing,

01:14:20.160 there's no topic I will shy away from personally.

01:14:23.660 But broadly, as a society.

01:14:26.700 What do you think needs more attention

01:14:28.200 than it gets to us,

01:14:29.040 I guess is the question.

01:14:31.180 You know, we all have our own frame.

01:14:33.840 And, you know, I stepped into this frame

01:14:35.940 where I'm regularly in Twitter spaces

01:14:39.260 talking about freedom,

01:14:40.720 talking about many of the issues

01:14:42.640 we discussed right here.

01:14:43.900 From my perspective,

01:14:46.660 it's,

01:14:47.860 this is going to get spicy,

01:14:49.960 the Islamic,

01:14:51.860 the Islamist organizations

01:14:53.820 engaged in political entryism.

01:14:56.380 And nobody will talk about it

01:14:57.920 because they're afraid of the money

01:14:59.000 that's going to come at them

01:15:00.040 in the form of lawfare.

01:15:01.560 But what we're seeing,

01:15:03.140 and, you know,

01:15:03.840 it was,

01:15:04.660 the Freedom Convoy

01:15:05.900 was pretty much immune to it.

01:15:07.400 But on the political level,

01:15:09.720 we see a very,

01:15:11.080 very high degree

01:15:11.840 of entryism

01:15:13.120 from what's called

01:15:13.900 the Red-Green Alliance.

01:15:15.580 It's not a formal alliance,

01:15:17.200 but, you know,

01:15:17.700 they'll play off one another,

01:15:19.740 which is CCP money

01:15:21.680 and activists

01:15:22.480 and Islamist organizations

01:15:24.700 and their activists

01:15:26.160 engaged in political entryism

01:15:28.800 to co-opt

01:15:29.700 our entire political system

01:15:32.540 to restrict freedoms.

01:15:34.140 And look what we're seeing.

01:15:35.160 Is that the source of it?

01:15:37.160 Is that who's funding

01:15:38.160 all the wokeism?

01:15:40.040 I don't know.

01:15:40.860 But maybe we should talk

01:15:41.800 more about that

01:15:42.560 and not be so afraid 0.98

01:15:43.900 about what some religious lunatic 0.98

01:15:45.540 might call us. 0.94

01:15:46.580 I don't really care

01:15:47.200 about what names

01:15:47.740 people call me anymore.

01:15:49.720 Well, there you go.

01:15:50.640 The book is called

01:15:51.720 Honking for Freedom.

01:15:52.820 Grab it wherever you grab it

01:15:54.440 and head on over to Locals

01:15:56.020 where we continue the conversation,

01:15:57.540 including with many

01:15:58.320 of your questions.

01:16:00.380 Does BJ think the liberals

01:16:02.120 can be defeated

01:16:02.940 at the next elections?

01:16:03.940 And should we trust

01:16:05.420 the conservatives

01:16:06.160 given their failure

01:16:07.060 to challenge the government

01:16:08.100 on COVID,

01:16:09.200 trans nuttiness, etc? 0.97

TRIGGERnometry - September 27, 2023

Leader Of Canadian Freedom Convoy SPEAKS OUT - BJ Dichter

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