Western Standard - May 11, 2023


Alberta NDP candidate marched in Communist Party delegation...


Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

152.02913

Word count

974

Sentence count

56

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Two-term Alberta MP Rod Loyola was spotted marching in a communist party parade with a red banner with the communist party of Canada's red banner. Is this a good or bad thing? And what does the party have to say about it?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 a sitting MLA from Edmonton, Rod Loyola. You've obtained exclusive photographs of him
00:00:08.160 marching in a communist party parade. Tell us about this comrade.
00:00:14.880 So I obtained from a source a photo of Rod Loyola marching in a communist party of Canada
00:00:22.160 delegation. It was part of their Edmonton club. There's no set specific date or time when this
00:00:28.720 happened. In the photo Loyola is in the front of the delegation. He's wearing a black hat, black
00:00:35.440 jacket and black track pants and he's facing forward and there's about a few other people
00:00:41.040 behind him looking to the side. There's one lady strumming a ukulele and you can clearly see
00:00:46.960 the banner showing that it is a communist party delegation. Are we confirmed this is Rod Loyola?
00:00:52.000 Yes it is. According to my source they obtained it through research and Loyola himself, even though
00:01:01.040 I did contact him, he didn't get back to us. Yeah. Okay, so this is not Mr. Loyola's first dabbling
00:01:10.720 with the Reds. It came out either right before or right after the 2015 election. A video of him,
00:01:21.760 it was taken just after Hugo Chavez died, the communist dictator of Venezuela, where he was holding a strange
00:01:31.280 kind of pseudo-religious ceremony for him, almost offering a prayers of a weird secular Marxist kind,
00:01:42.000 praying for Hugo Chavez and the great things he's done for the workers revolution and things like that.
00:01:48.160 But now just right, I suppose some lefties say, well, he's not really a communist.
00:01:58.080 Well, he was, he was a communist, but I suppose I could try and dismiss it. But here he is with a
00:02:03.840 communist party of Canada banner near feet away from him. He appears to be leading at least the delegation
00:02:11.360 part of that parade. It's not a good look, Nigel, but let's, I just, how much of a problem is this for
00:02:22.000 the NDP to have one of their candidates, a two-term MLA, caught, no pun, red-handed with the red banner?
00:02:29.760 Red-handed? My word. You know, of course it's a problem. You don't want people
00:02:34.880 bringing up an unsavory past. And let's face it, communism is unsavory. It's killed.
00:02:40.160 That's a controversial view.
00:02:43.680 How many million people have died in the name of communism? So, you know, that's not a word that
00:02:49.680 anybody who wants to get elected really wants associated with. We all have the sort of the
00:02:54.720 peccadilloes of youth and do silly things and so forth and so on. But I haven't heard that he's
00:02:59.600 recanted on this. And I find it somewhat alarming that when he decided to go into serious politics,
00:03:05.840 the closest thing that he could find to a communist party was Rachel Notley's NDP. So not a good look
00:03:13.680 for the NDP. Corey, the NDP ran a communist, an open communist in the last election, Anne McGrath.
00:03:21.600 She was a senior NDP strategist for the NDP for some time, both federally and in Alberta.
00:03:25.520 And she ran as a communist party candidate herself, actually, but in the 80s.
00:03:32.720 NDP never really addressed it then, but just try to dismiss it. It was the 80s.
00:03:37.200 You know, Ronald Reagan and cocaine. It was a long time ago.
00:03:40.000 But this is not a long time ago. And this is a sitting current MLA.
00:03:49.120 I just got to wonder, I think it's pretty fair to make an equivalency between national socialism
00:03:56.240 and international socialism between communists and national socialists.
00:04:00.880 I just got to wonder, like, what would be the equivalent reaction if there was a two term UCP MLA
00:04:10.160 running for reelection? And a photo emerged with them marching beside a swastika and a banner
00:04:18.880 clearly associating with it saying Nazi Party of Canada or National Socialist Party of Canada?
00:04:24.800 It would be immediate cancellation, apologies, damage controlled on by the party,
00:04:29.280 it would make national news, and probably kill the election for the party that had that person
00:04:33.680 walking with them. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, communism that Nigel was looking for that
00:04:38.640 number, I looked at the most recent one estimate of strong was 96 million people in the last century
00:04:43.840 killed by that vile ideology. And it should be looked down upon just as harshly when somebody is
00:04:50.400 openly flirting with that sick ideology as with with Nazism, but they they seem to get a pass with it. 0.83
00:04:56.240 I don't think the NDP want this association. They're not thrilled to see that popping up there.
00:05:00.320 But it won't devastate them nearly as much as as it should.
00:05:04.800 Jonathan, you reached out to Mr Loyola for for comment and the NDP, but no response. Have they
00:05:10.960 issued at least any, even if not to you have, as far as you've seen, have they issued any kind of public
00:05:15.760 statement, apologizing for Mr Loyola's affiliations with the Communist Party and previous, I'm assuming they would say
00:05:26.320 previous support for communism. I have not yet to date seen him repudiate communism in any way, just not openly talk about communism.
00:05:36.400 Has there been any kind of statement whatsoever from the NDP disavowing or distancing themselves from this
00:05:45.360 not very distant picture of him supporting the Communist Party?
00:05:49.280 Nothing. I mean, when I reached out to Rod Loyola for comment, he didn't get back to me like the majority of the NDP people
00:05:55.920 who I've interacted with. But I do find it kind of, well, I don't find it surprising because Mr Loyola has a history of communism.
00:06:04.400 You mentioned the event that he held with Hugo Chavez, but in 2007, he used to perform as a rapper where he sang songs.
00:06:12.400 Well, he rapped about pro communist, like communist leaders like Che Guevara and Fidel Castro and how much he admired them
00:06:19.360 and how he wanted revolution. So to see this go along with it, isn't that surprising?