Western Standard

00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show.

00:00:21.000 I'm Nigel Hannaford. It is Thursday, June 26, and my guest today is Simon Hankinson, a senior

00:00:28.360 research fellow in border security and immigration at Washington's Heritage Foundation. Welcome again

00:00:35.700 to the show, Simon. Thanks for having me. Simon, we usually turn to you for what's happening on the

00:00:41.280 border, and I do have a question on that for you in a few moments. But first, you've left your

00:00:49.540 track. You've written a book, and it's called Ten Woke Commandments You Must Not Obey. Interesting

00:00:56.220 way of putting it. I think we all know what woke is, even if we can't define it. It's sort of like

00:01:02.880 pornography. We know it when we see it. It's something silly that makes normal people roll

00:01:06.880 their eyes. But it's dangerous, all right? And you're telling people to fight back by 0.96

00:01:11.580 not obeying the woke commandments. Like what? Well, as you say, it's a whole package. We know

00:01:20.020 what woke is when we hear it. It, I think, used to have a pretty innocuous and a positive meaning

00:01:25.460 about being aware of injustice when it's out there. But now, it's a series of things that you

00:01:30.840 are instructed to believe. And if you don't believe them, you're going to be canceled. You might lose

00:01:36.620 your job. You might lose your friends. You might have members of your own family turn on you. And I've

00:01:42.100 never, I'm only pushing 60, but I've never seen this before in my lifetime when you had this raft of

00:01:48.660 beliefs. It reminds me very much of what the communist world was like, what life was like

00:01:53.820 in fascist dictatorships. So if you read history books, do you give just a couple examples? You're

00:02:01.000 not supposed to have a nation. You shall reject your nation. You have to reject your history.

00:02:07.360 The United States is a bad, you know, white supremacist, horrible place that wasn't founded in 0.65

00:02:13.060 1776 with the Declaration of Independence, but back in 1619 with the first arrival of 0.91

00:02:18.560 chattel slaves. You must not know what a woman is. You must not know what a man is, even though we 0.98

00:02:24.880 all know what those things are and can define them very simply. You must trust the media and

00:02:30.420 institutions, even though we can watch those institutions crumble in front of us. And the

00:02:35.460 media has never had lower credibility and lower trust in my lifetime. So you're expected to believe

00:02:42.600 all of these things, even if your own eyes tell you that they are false. And I'm saying that you have

00:02:49.640 to fight. This is the time to stand up for what you believe in and to stand up for truth.

00:02:54.460 Well, I think you're talking our language, but a lot of people say, well, all right,

00:02:57.680 yeah, you know, this has happened to me or it's happened to my neighbor. And in fact, I know several

00:03:03.280 people who are in private business, never mind in government, who have had to go and listen to the

00:03:11.680 DEI presentation and sign off that they've got it. And, you know, any pushback is not appreciated.

00:03:19.720 So how did we go from this being something that happened in left-wing governments to something

00:03:29.000 that happens in fairly non-political or even slightly conservative-minded businesses?

00:03:38.200 That's a fascinating sociological, historical question that we're going to have to answer in

00:03:44.040 the future, I hope, when we vanquish this thing, like the Salem witch trials. You know, at the time, 0.52

00:03:48.840 it must have made sense. I mean, the Spanish Inquisition, if you look at medieval Europe,

00:03:53.760 Henry VIII and burning heretics and the Thirty Years' War in Germany, it was a madness that burned

00:03:59.880 over the country that in retrospect looks absolutely insane, but at the time swept along most of the

00:04:05.980 population with it. Look, for companies, it's clear. They're trying to make money. Why did they put

00:04:11.560 Dylan Mulvaney, this man who wants to be a woman, as their spokesperson very briefly for Bud Light

00:04:18.460 beer? Because they wanted to sell more beer.

00:04:21.260 You didn't think that worked, did it? Didn't they lose about $5 billion?

00:04:25.780 It backfired spectacularly, but that was the motive. The reason why they put DEI and there's a,

00:04:32.940 you know, a Pride Month and about 15 other special days set aside for sexual minorities, let's say,

00:04:38.920 is because they're trying to sell more product. So I want to say their hearts aren't really in it.

00:04:44.240 With academia, unfortunately, it is what they are taught from kindergarten through 12th grade.

00:04:51.480 And then when they go to teachers' colleges and even our best universities, our formerly best

00:04:56.160 universities in the Ivy Leagues, they are constantly fed a diet of intersectionality and critical theory

00:05:03.860 and critical race theory and gender ideology so that they have to be pretty tough and have a pretty

00:05:09.840 strong spine to emerge unscathed. So you have these schools feeding into companies and the government

00:05:16.640 in particular, non-governmental organizations, people who are already completely indoctrinated.

00:05:21.640 If you look at the way, and one of my chapters that talk about communist China and the cultural

00:05:26.880 revolution, the way they punished people for thinking independently and freely, and they had these

00:05:32.580 mobs of students running around literally beating up teachers and parents who didn't do what they were

00:05:38.500 told, this is the way it happens. It captures a culture slowly, it creeps up on you, and then all

00:05:44.520 of a sudden, it's out. And then the person who stands up like a J.K. Rowling and says, well, hang on a

00:05:50.360 minute, it isn't right to put a full-grown male rapist in a women's prison. They're the ones who are

00:05:56.700 looked at as the bad guys, and they're the ones who are supposedly speaking hate speech.

00:06:00.840 Looked at by whom? I have anybody who, I mean, okay, I'm a conservative and I run in conservative

00:06:08.980 circles, so I'm probably not going to be exposed to the kind of people who would jump on J.K. Rowling.

00:06:16.080 But, you know, I have a feeling that most people say, well, yeah, you know, and yet she is still

00:06:23.180 criticized by who? People in the media. So, the media have gone woke. I think, I don't think that's

00:06:31.160 news, but again, it goes against common sense and the evidence of your own eyes. And I like to think

00:06:38.720 that people in the media, although some of them are a bit strange, nevertheless believe in truth.

00:06:46.600 That's what gets you into the business in the first place.

00:06:48.980 So, what happens to them? How do they pick it up?

00:06:54.060 Yeah, chapter seven of my book is called You Will Bear False Witness, Trust the Media. And I used to

00:06:59.900 read the New York Times regularly. I used to read the Washington Post. I still kind of do, but it's

00:07:05.740 a painful experience. And these are not the same newspapers that they were 30 years ago. Newspapers

00:07:12.280 are obviously made up of editors and writers, and the culture has shifted. There was a famous meeting,

00:07:17.320 I think it was around 2016, where the editor of the New York Times was meeting with a bunch of younger

00:07:22.180 journalists, and they were essentially telling him, look, we should not be objective as reporters. We

00:07:28.040 should cover every story through a lens of racial justice, social justice, gender ideology, so that

00:07:35.980 we say the right thing. And instead of having an editorial page, and then people who just wrote

00:07:40.880 what they felt was the objective truth and thought and allowed readers to make up their own minds,

00:07:46.180 we now have headlines that essentially are opinion pieces. They're not analysis. And we have articles

00:07:54.600 that are so biased that they should not appear in a straight news section. And I've got example after

00:08:01.340 example in my book from CNN, from the Washington Post, from the New York Times, from USA Today,

00:08:07.400 all of our legacy media, sort of 90% of the media that people consume has lost credibility, which is

00:08:15.340 why they're turning to alternative sites in the United States, like, you know, the Daily Caller and

00:08:20.900 the Daily Signal and the Daily Wire. I don't know why daily is such a popular title, but they're turning

00:08:26.940 to sites where they think they can get something that it may be ideologically based, but at least they're

00:08:33.080 not pretending to be objective. And the objective old school media like CNN are just losing viewers and

00:08:40.680 readers by the Legion. Well, now there's a current example of that. I'd like you to comment on this.

00:08:46.620 A week ago, the U.S. Air Force bombed the Fordow site in Iran. And from what we can tell and from what

00:08:57.380 the Israelis on the ground have reported, did significant damage, enough to set back the Iranian

00:09:03.840 nuclear program for a very long time, if not forever. Then a source, an unnamed source, and

00:09:12.060 therefore completely unaccountable, is supposed to have appeared, which said, no, no, we didn't do that

00:09:18.080 at all. Trump's overblowing what he's done. And it gets picked up by the two institutions that you just

00:09:25.440 mentioned, CNN and the New York Times. I look at that, and I say, that's obviously just sowing a lie

00:09:35.940 so that there is some doubt, so that President Trump cannot be given any credit for anything.

00:09:44.660 It's a little bit like the Russia hoax. There was nothing to it, but it served the purpose of 0.99

00:09:53.140 this discrediting him in the eyes of many at a significant time. How do you see this particular

00:10:02.180 story about the, no, we didn't do any damage line that they're taking?

00:10:08.660 Well, first of all, it's very distressing to me as someone who formerly had a top secret

00:10:14.340 clearance and never leaked anything, to have people whose job it is to keep our nation's secrets

00:10:21.440 leaking them for partisan purposes. That disgusts me. I don't care if you agree with it or not.

00:10:26.840 It is your job to keep those secrets. That's why you get paid and why you get a pension.

00:10:30.780 So that's a very distressing phenomenon that now we can't trust some people who are in positions

00:10:36.660 of extreme sensitivity, even in the White House.

00:10:40.080 So you think there really is a source here, and this is not just completely fabricated?

00:10:44.480 I don't know. I don't know. But I do know that there have been a lot of leaks,

00:10:48.260 particularly under the Trump administration, that probably are coming from legitimate sources.

00:10:54.140 And I think that is disgraceful, and anyone who does that should be severely punished.

00:10:58.240 Now, let's look at CNN. In my book, I look at one case. There was a hostage whose name was

00:11:05.800 Hirsch Goldberg-Pollen, and he was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7th. He was kept in captivity. I think

00:11:12.360 his arm had been half blown off, and eventually he was killed. And the headline from CNN, the first

00:11:18.560 headline they had was that Hirsch Goldberg-Pollen has died, as if somehow he had caught an illness and

00:11:27.760 passed away. They took the action verb, they took the responsibility away. And I don't believe that

00:11:33.840 that was accidental, that maybe they just didn't have all the information. Give you another example,

00:11:38.240 in the New York Times, on one day, their headline page, and I wanted to have a picture of this in

00:11:43.520 the book, but they wanted $1,500 for the privilege, so I decided not to. And they had a picture of Kamala

00:11:49.840 Harris sort of looking like this, you know, staring like George Washington off into the distance,

00:11:53.920 looking beautiful and nicely dressed. And then below it, they had a cartoon of Donald Trump as

00:11:59.600 a claymation sort of orange balloon floating in the sky with ridiculous yellow hair, you know?

00:12:06.000 So it's ways like that that they bias the reader. They cover Trump, whether you like him or not,

00:12:12.320 they do not cover him objectively. Every single article on that page was critical of Trump and

00:12:18.160 positive toward Harris. So I'm afraid they start with an agenda, and it's inductive reasoning.

00:12:23.840 They try to prove the point that they want to make. So with this CNN story, I frankly don't know.

00:12:29.760 We obviously, you and I, do not have access to the classified intelligence that the Israelis have, 0.97

00:12:34.880 and that hopefully our guys have, that will tell us what really happened. And it may be true that we

00:12:40.000 don't even have accurate reports, because these places, a lot of them were underground,

00:12:44.400 they were extremely well protected, at least as far as the Iranians could protect them. 0.72

00:12:48.880 So maybe we don't have incredibly accurate intelligence about what happened. I don't know.

00:12:53.680 But what I don't ever do is believe what I hear coming off the battlefield or the first report after

00:13:00.320 a mass shooting or a bombing or an international event. So it's a twin phenomenon of bad things here.

00:13:08.000 We've got one, people potentially leaking or at least trying to spin things in a way for political

00:13:13.680 advantage and not for the national interest. And then we have media that is deliberately trying

00:13:19.440 to cover it in a way that will minimize any possible advantage to President Trump and maximize

00:13:26.320 criticism. Because look, Trump will make mistakes in foreign policy. Every president does, and he will

00:13:30.800 win some and he will lose some. But when I remember he went to the Middle East, the article was something

00:13:36.320 like, Trump is going to the Middle East. It's all about his family business. And then I looked and two

00:13:40.960 years ago in 2022, Joe Biden went to the Middle East to Saudi Arabia. And the article is about

00:13:45.680 all the good things that Biden was planning to do in the Middle East. And then they allowed Biden to

00:13:50.080 write an opinion piece in their newspaper saying, why I'm going to the Middle East. So the coverage

00:13:56.240 was just, in Trump's case, set up deliberately to make it fail with no interest in the things that

00:14:02.160 he might have done that were positive. And in Biden's case, it was giving him every opportunity to

00:14:07.440 succeed. You know, that's so true. And Simon, I also noticed that in what you've just said,

00:14:15.680 you did something that we all do. You said whether you like Trump or not. And it seems like we have

00:14:23.520 been so conditioned that we have to say that in order to give ourselves permission to say something

00:14:29.840 positive about him, like conceding that, well, really, you know, he's a controversial character.

00:14:34.560 But in this case, you know, like him or not, he may have done a good thing. So it's an unfortunate

00:14:40.720 thing that's been imposed on us. And I guess this is the success of wokeism, that it makes us do those

00:14:48.400 kinds of concessions to an orthodoxy that we don't even subscribe to. I want to take you back to where

00:14:54.400 this comes from. You talked about how it's taught in teachers' training colleges. Well, as a matter of

00:15:03.920 fact, we have corroborative evidence right here in Alberta that that is the case in this conservative

00:15:09.920 province with a conservative government. And yet the teachers' training colleges do use

00:15:20.160 textbooks that basically are awoken in their concept and teach this whole business that you

00:15:28.240 refer to of intersectionality, DEI. Now, OK, we elect politicians. Politicians, we think, control their

00:15:37.200 departments. So should we blame the politicians for this?

00:15:44.720 We can blame politicians who don't make an effort to correct it. But the rod is very deep. There was a

00:15:49.920 Brazilian Marxist or at least far left educator named Paulo Freire who wrote a book, I think,

00:15:56.880 called The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. And this book is sort of...

00:15:59.680 Well, that's actually in there. I gather they use that in Alberta. So...

00:16:03.120 It's required reading in teachers' colleges. And they teach a lot more about leftist theory

00:16:10.080 than they do about how to teach English and math and the sciences and the things that they're actually

00:16:14.640 going to teach to the students. And so it's a rare student that comes out of a teacher's college

00:16:20.080 without this indoctrination. And they have to be exceptionally smart. There are some of them out

00:16:25.280 there and a few of them have websites and podcasts and things. But let's take Florida, for example.

00:16:29.840 You had Governor DeSantis in Florida. There was a part of the University of Florida called New College,

00:16:35.760 which had gone so far down the left wing rabbit hole that they were losing students. They couldn't even

00:16:41.280 recruit enough far left rainbow flag carrying students who were willing to take these ridiculous 0.63

00:16:47.600 courses because presumably some of them wanted an education. And even the kids who believed in all

00:16:52.720 that theory felt unsafe on campus because they... Or at least they felt they couldn't express themselves

00:16:57.840 and have conversations. It was like a French Revolution or Chinese Revolution style purity test

00:17:03.600 every time they went out and opened their mouths. So the governor said, all right, well, we can either ditch

00:17:08.400 this or fix it. He decided to fix it. He appointed a new president and a new board and they turned it

00:17:15.200 around. In a couple of years, they got recruitment way above what they wanted. They brought in money.

00:17:20.720 They introduced a sports program. And did it turn conservative overnight? No. And that was never the

00:17:25.600 purpose. We don't want to do the opposite of what they do and have everything be conservative or right

00:17:30.560 wing. We want to have free speech and free expression and create a balance in the universe again,

00:17:36.800 instead of a 95 or 98% left wing bias on our campuses. So I would only fault those politicians

00:17:43.760 who don't even make the effort. We know what the battle is. There's plenty of people out there

00:17:48.240 fighting the fight in the courts, on gender ideology, on parents rights. And we just need to have those

00:17:54.560 politicians support it like they do in Florida and Ohio and in a lot of our states. And like they

00:18:00.240 obviously don't in places like New York and California and Massachusetts.

00:18:05.120 So you just said, we don't want to do what they do. And I'm going to be playing the devil's advocate

00:18:14.000 here a little bit, because actually I agree with you, but we allow, we promote, we appreciate free

00:18:21.360 speech. So the left uses the free speech that we are happy to have, you know, let's have the debate.

00:18:30.800 But once they achieve power, then it stops. And then we are faced with the woke commandments

00:18:39.200 that you're telling us to reject. That's what happens when the left takes over.

00:18:44.320 Sure. So is it actually the smart thing for us to do to not reverse what the left has done?

00:18:56.400 Is it really possible to have a free speech campus, a free speech society?

00:19:03.600 Well, I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to reverse what they've done. I do want to reverse

00:19:07.600 what they've done. I'm just saying if you have a university, for example, where, and there's some,

00:19:11.840 you know, not one single faculty member identifies as a conservative or Republican,

00:19:16.720 then you're not going to get to 50% overnight. You know, you're not going to get to 100% ever.

00:19:22.640 You have to try to fight incrementally in the same with our businesses. You know,

00:19:26.800 you can't replace the entire executive suite overnight. You can't destroy entire institution.

00:19:34.160 Well, you can, but, but that's, you know, in many cases, you're killing the golden goose there.

00:19:38.480 Some of these institutions are worth saving, not all by any means. But I don't see why,

00:19:43.760 for example, the Budweiser beer company, not that it's my favorite beer, but I don't see why they

00:19:48.480 can't, Anheuser-Busch can't get past this and decide that they want to be a company that makes beer

00:19:54.320 people want to drink as opposed to a company that promotes woke ideology. And you're actually seeing

00:20:00.560 many companies pulling back from their subsidies for pride parades and gender ideology because they

00:20:08.240 realize that's not their core business interests. The Los Angeles Dodgers should be playing baseball.

00:20:15.120 They should be fielding a great team and providing a great family experience at a reasonable cost.

00:20:20.640 They should leave immigration enforcement to the federal government as the constitution empowers it.

00:20:25.760 So that's all I'm saying is not that we shouldn't, you know, go for it, but that we have to be

00:20:29.920 realistic in what we can achieve in a short time. This is a generational, it took us a generation

00:20:35.520 to lose this battle to the left. I think we were kind of asleep when all the sixties radicals,

00:20:41.600 you know, the Bill Ayers types and the Bernadine Dorns, you know, they, they went off from throwing

00:20:45.920 hand grenades and trying to kill people to college campuses where they started indoctrinating our, 0.61

00:20:52.240 our youth of the time. And now those youth are in their, in their sixties and they've educated

00:20:57.600 two generations. So it's going to take us some time to undo this.

00:21:01.760 So I think a lot of what you've said about the corporate, corporate America, and by the way,

00:21:06.160 corporate Canada too, rolling back their support for woke causes has been attributable to one man,

00:21:14.720 Robbie Starbuck, who's really taken that show on the road and done incredibly well with it.

00:21:19.440 But, uh, the courage of one individual, uh, in a sense of purpose is obviously one of the,

00:21:26.880 one of, one of the takeaways from this discussion is that each individual has to fight this battle.

00:21:32.560 But let me give you a, we're almost out of time, but what can, what encouragement can you give to

00:21:37.760 somebody in this situation? You're, you're working for a bank and, uh, you're at a middle management

00:21:44.880 position. They like you, you're probably going to go further and they pull you in one day and they

00:21:49.200 tell you, well, you need to go to this course. And at the end of the, at the end of the course,

00:21:54.320 we're going to ask you to just, uh, uh, agree on the following suite of, of, uh, uh, woke values,

00:22:02.240 all of which you've enumerated in your book.

00:22:05.440 So there he sits, the kids need braces. The mortgage is not paid off. The, um, the, the,

00:22:14.000 the future is kind of his to grasp, but there is this test of conscience.

00:22:20.720 Do you have any advice for a man or a woman in that position?

00:22:25.200 I did. I had to, I had to be gender equivalent man or woman. Yes. Um, they're in a tough spot.

00:22:33.040 Look, I worked for the federal government for 23 years and I got out, um, just as this was becoming

00:22:38.400 really, really toxic. Um, the pronouns in the bio, it was a suggestion when I retired in 2022,

00:22:45.120 it was a commandment, uh, a year later. And if you are in that position, I fully understand why

00:22:51.280 you can't speak out. You know, we have, um, this thing called the Ben Franklin fellowship,

00:22:55.040 where retired people like me who were in positions in the state department and foreign policy,

00:23:00.000 we could speak freely, but people who support us, uh, who may even support the administration's

00:23:04.800 policies, um, they have to keep quiet and they have to do their, their jobs. If you work in a company

00:23:10.640 and that company has a policy of putting pronouns in the bio and you kind of buck that trend,

00:23:14.880 it might make your life difficult. Like you say, you got bills to pay, but here's what I advise.

00:23:18.640 Every one of my chapters ends with, uh, somebody to follow on social media, uh, with a good book to

00:23:24.080 read and with an organization that's working in, in a field. Um, and I think advancing the cause in

00:23:29.520 the right direction. Those are just some suggestions. You talked about Robbie Starbuck.

00:23:33.600 I think he's actually associated with the heritage foundation now too. Uh, Chris Rufo from the

00:23:37.680 Manhattan Institute has done incredible work. Um, and there are other, um, whistleblowers out

00:23:42.400 there and people writing about it. Lior Sapir at Manhattan Institute, writing about gender ideology.

00:23:47.040 Um, you should blow that whistle. You should let those guys know, shine the light of public interest

00:23:53.200 on your company. If they're doing something that's illegal, for example, they have scholarships open

00:23:58.320 or internships only to people of one color or one sex. Once people find out about that,

00:24:03.600 uh, that company might change their minds. The department of justice has gone from suing fire

00:24:08.640 departments for not hiring enough women, uh, and, and police departments for not hiring enough people

00:24:13.280 of color to actually enforcing civil rights law. And they are going after under Harmeet Dillon,

00:24:19.600 uh, companies that are the discriminate against people for reasons that are illegal. So I think

00:24:25.840 the way to go, if you're in that company is maybe not always to stand up and, and, you know, put your,

00:24:31.280 your hand in the air and maybe get struck by corporate lightning. Uh, but to let somebody know

00:24:37.120 and make the company defend that policy. And if it's defensible, great. Uh, but if it's illegal,

00:24:42.560 then people will find out and they may have to experience some, uh, some litigation.

00:24:48.160 Okay. Now I did say that I would come back to you for, uh, uh, a quick progress check on Canadian,

00:24:54.640 uh, border administration. Are we doing any better?

00:24:59.200 I, I have not heard anything about the Northern border in weeks.

00:25:04.560 Um, I would say that's pretty good. I would say no news is good news. Um,

00:25:10.160 I will say this purely personally, I don't meddle in other countries politics. Um,

00:25:14.400 but I was very impressed by, uh, Pierre Poilievre. Uh, I will never forget his, uh,

00:25:19.440 his destruction of a reporter while he was eating an apple. And I thought he would have been a fantastic,

00:25:24.800 um, counterpart to have North of the border, especially after you've experimented with what,

00:25:29.520 10, 12 years of, uh, uh, Justin Trudeau's liberal government. Uh, but Hey, you guys get to pick your,

00:25:35.040 your leaders and I wish you all the best with that. Um, on the border,

00:25:39.120 I sense that things have improved, uh, on the Southern border. Things are 90 plus percent

00:25:44.480 better in terms of illegal crossers. And we have enforcement in the interior of people who are 1.00

00:25:49.760 here illegally. And fortunately they're not Canadians because you guys can come here under 1.00

00:25:54.080 so many legal ways. Um, and we have so much positive trade with Canada. So I don't want to,

00:25:58.720 I'm going to touch wood as I say this, but I feel like, uh, between the U S and Canada,

00:26:02.320 things are looking better. That's wonderful news, Simon. Look, it's always a pleasure to have you

00:26:08.560 on the show. So thank you again. I think this is your third time. It's a, it's really good to see

00:26:13.440 us. Uh, so, uh, so God bless. And for the Western standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.

HANNAFORD： Fighting woke, see something, say something

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