Two new polls reveal stark Canadian and U.S. divisions on China: 72% of Canadians blame China for COVID-19, with Conservatives (81%) and Alberta leading calls for legal action (31%). Meanwhile, 66% of Americans view China unfavorably, citing trade, cyber threats, and human rights. Ezra Levant and Peter Lloyd debate Canada’s "wokeness," like rebranding a Toronto murder as "incel terrorism" to shift blame from systemic issues to young men, while Islamic extremism remains the primary terrorism label—highlighting a cultural war against masculinity in liberal societies. [Automatically generated summary]
One in Canada, one in the States, measuring support or lack thereof for China.
There are two very interesting polls.
Quirky questions in the Canadian one, basic questions in the American one.
I feel smarter for having read it, and hopefully you will too.
You'll be able to drop these stats with your friends with great authority.
Anyways, let me invite you to become a Rebel News Plus subscriber.
It's $8 a month or $80 if you pay the whole year in advance.
And you get the video version of the show where I will show you charts.
Okay, here's the podcast.
Tonight, two new polls ask people what they think of China.
Very interesting.
It's May 21st, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is government will walk publishing just because it's my bloody right to do so.
I've got two new polls for you about China.
The first is from a company called Research Co..
They're based in BC.
I hadn't heard of Research Co. before, but I had heard of their pollster, Mario Kenseo.
And he's always struck me as a very smart and very honest guy.
So I put a fair bit of stock in this poll.
There are some great pollsters in BC, including Angus Reid.
As usual, there are a ton of stats in a poll, so I'm only going to focus on a few questions that I think are the most interesting.
So you can see what they do is there's a list of statements that they read to people, and then Canadians were asked, from what you have seen, read, or heard, do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements?
All right.
I'm going to skip the first question.
I'll come back to it later.
So let's start with this one.
The government of the People's Republic of China should take responsibility for its role in the COVID-19 outbreak.
So then people are asked if they agree or disagree.
Pretty straightforward and to the point, isn't it?
And look at these amazing answers.
Strongly agree, 40%.
Moderately agree, another 32%.
So that's 72% who agree in some way.
That's overwhelming.
Only 9% of Canadians moderately disagree, and only 9% strongly disagree.
In the next column, you can see that men are slightly more critical of China than women are.
Women are slightly less sure, but the numbers are pretty similar by sex.
By age, there's a little bit more of a difference.
Let's compare millennials.
37% strongly agree.
People my age, Gen X, it's 46%.
But again, it's overwhelming in every age group.
And look by regions, British Columbians are likely to strongly agree that China's to blame.
42%.
That's more than any other region except the Atlantic.
It's interesting because there's such a large Chinese-Canadian population in BC.
I guess they know what China is really like.
Last point, by political persuasion.
So how people voted in the previous election.
Conservatives are the most hostile to China.
47% strongly agree.
But liberals aren't that far behind.
42% strongly agree with that statement.
Those are Canadians who say they strongly agree China's to blame.
Add in the moderately agree Canadians.
Liberals are at 73%, conservatives are at 81%.
So again, both are very high.
It's not unanimous, though, but I challenge you to show me something else so overwhelming like this, so lopsided like this in public opinion, other than the obvious and perhaps related question of restricting out-of-control immigration, which is also in this 80% range.
Now let me show you the next question on the poll, which is a bit radical, a bit cheeky, probably a legal non-starter, but so what?
It's a good barometer for public opinion, and that's what we're doing here.
From what you have seen, read, or heard, do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements?
The government of Canada should consider launching legal action against the People's Republic of China on account of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Like I said, we don't really sue countries.
Countries have something called sovereign immunity.
But it's not unprecedented.
And I think we can use suing countries as a proxy for other legal means like sanctions or taking away certain trade privileges from treaties with China.
So it's a bit radical, but let's look anyways.
20% of Canadians are strongly for this.
Another 11% are moderately for it.
So a total of 31%.
It's not a majority, but it's a sizable chunk.
22% are against it.
27% of people are strongly against it.
So 49% of people are against this.
Not quite half, still more than those who want to sue China.
But the very question would have been unthinkable four months ago.
Don't you think?
This shows that Canadians are open to radical solutions to deal with China, even if this isn't the right solution.
It's very interesting to me.
The one group of Canadians that's ready to rumble is not surprisingly conservatives.
There are a total of 42% of conservative voters strongly or moderately support the idea, and 38% oppose it.
Here's a quirky BC style question that was thrown in.
Do you agree that more people will consider adopting vegetarian or vegan diets after the COVID-19 outbreak ends up?
That's sort of confusing to me.
I guess that implies that bats were at the root of this or the wet markets where people in China go to buy and eat wild animals and things like that.
That's a Vancouver question asking about vegetarianism, isn't it?
Not a lot of people say yes to that, but funny enough, the highest number is in Alberta and with conservatives.
Now, I said I'd come back to the first question, and here it is.
Do you agree or disagree with this?
It is acceptable to refer to COVID-19 as the Chinese virus or Chinese flu.
Well, overwhelmingly, people said no.
53% of people are strongly against that, and 22% more are moderately against that.
NDPers are the most adamant.
Quebecers and conservatives have the highest support for using those words.
I'm not too surprised by this.
First of all, most people just plain old say the virus or coronavirus or COVID-19.
So it has a name that's becoming commonplace.
And I think Chinese virus is a deliberate verbal weapon that was deployed by Donald Trump for political reasons only after and in specific reaction to China, incredibly when they tried to blame the U.S. for the virus.
They were doing that.
They were actually still doing that.
And the thing with Trump is if you poke him, oh, he's going to poke you back five times harder.
Why do you keep calling this the Chinese virus?
There are reports of dozens of incidents of bias against Chinese Americans in this country.
Your own aide, Secretary Azar, says he does not use this term.
He says ethnicity does not cause the virus.
Why do you keep using this?
Because it becomes a very important thing.
Because China is racist.
It's not racist at all.
No, not at all.
It comes from China.
That's why.
It comes from China.
I want to be accurate.
So yeah, I don't even think Trump says China virus very often, just when he wants to poke at China.
I think there's also a shyness effect in this poll.
People don't want to tell upholster an answer they think is politically incorrect or wrong.
So those are Canadian numbers, but you heard Gordon Chang on my show the other day.
He said Pew Research had new U.S. numbers out too, and indeed they do.
I didn't know that until Gordon said that on the show.
And Pew are real pros.
They tilt liberal, yes, but I actually really trust their methodology.
I think they put accuracy first.
They're very comprehensive.
So let me just show you some details from the new Pew Research Info just last month.
It's probably worse because this is in late April.
Let me read their headline.
U.S. views of China increasingly negative amid coronavirus outbreak.
Republicans more negative than Democrats towards China, though unfavorable ratings have climbed among both parties.
Okay.
So let's go through it.
It's so comprehensive.
I'm only going to touch on some highlights.
But if you're curious, you can find it pretty quick on the internet.
So this is the percent of people who say they have a positive or negative view of China.
Look at it during the Obama years.
It really rose high.
When Trump took over, it started to fall.
And this year, it just plunged.
66% of people are negative.
26% are positive.
That's the virus.
It's also trade wars.
It's also Huawei and 5G and hacking and spying and a Chinese aircraft carrier and human rights and Tibet and Uyghurs.
It's everything.
This graph breaks it down by party.
Red is Republican, blue is by Democrats.
So yeah, Republicans are and always have been more skeptical of communists.
But the Democrats seem to be moving in lock step a little bit lower, but they're moving the same trend.
62% of the Dems are still anti-China.
That's a big deal.
You could definitely call this a bipartisan issue.
Here it is by age.
Young people are more China friendly.
Really, no one else is.
And young people don't really vote.
This one's interesting.
What is it about China that you think are problems?
Very serious or somewhat serious?
So 91% say that the environment, isn't that interesting?
The number one issue, the environment.
It's amazing that people know that, though, because Greta Tunberg and the United Nations, they never criticize China.
That's a hopeful result, isn't it?
We're not all fooled, unlike, say, Justin Trudeau.
There's a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say we need to go green as fast as we need to start investing in solar.
Yeah, you have to be dumb as Trudeau to believe China is good on the environment.
Cyber attacks are in second place, followed by trade and jobs, then China's military, then human rights.
Isn't that all very interesting?
Here's one more.
This is the question.
Who is the world's leading economic power?
Blue is China, green is the U.S. Look at that.
Almost immediately after Obama became president, remember he was elected in 2008, inaugurated in January 2009, America said that China pulled ahead.
But that started to change in the dying days of Obama's administration.
And then America has zoomed under Trump, according to Americans.
Seriously, in 2013, only 40% of Americans said America was number one.
Wokeness and Masculinity00:14:07
Now 59% do.
That is not an accident, is it?
And this chart shows that both Republicans and Democrats generally agree.
Last question.
The first question is, is the United States the world's leading military power?
83% say yes.
6% say China is.
I don't even think that's a matter of opinion, at least for now.
Obviously, America has the superior army quantitatively and qualitatively.
But the second bar is this.
Is it better for the world if the U.S. is the leading power or if China would be?
Now that's 91% to 4%.
Couldn't be more lopsided.
And you know what?
I bet if you ask Canadians that same question, they'd more or less answer the same way.
Stay with us for more.
Peter, I just want to get one final thought from you.
Are there words that are used to describe men that offend you?
Not particularly.
And if there were some I don't like, I certainly wouldn't want them banned.
But it always goes back to that old adage, sticks and stones may break my bones, but there will always be something to offend a feminist.
Peter Laura.
No, that's just abnormal.
Peter Laura, you have to let you carry on this.
That is ridiculous.
No, hang on, I won't do your show again if you don't let me respond to it.
Come on, Kate.
Have a word.
Come on, that's ridiculous.
You know what?
I watch that at least once a month.
It just puts a smile on my face.
And it's a reminder that the battle of the sexes has been going on forever.
As, you know, someone in a different, less politically correct generation would say, women, you can't live with them.
You can't live without them.
It's been a challenge for every young man and young woman to figure things out.
In the past, they were called hopeless romantics or in the 80s or 90s, maybe emo, short for emotional.
But now, young men and women who are having trouble finding a mate, they're called incels, involuntary celibates.
All right, fair enough.
But now it seems that political activists are trying to turn that into some sort of ideology, some sort of terror group.
And in fact, here in the city of Toronto, there has been terror charges laid against a 17-year-old man for murder in a, quote, erotic massage parlor.
He killed a 24-year-old woman, allegedly.
Is that a crime of passion, a hopeless person wrestling with his own demons?
Or is it a terrorist act?
Well, joining us now is the man you saw in that clip.
Peter Lloyd is his name.
He's an author and journalist in the UK, and he joins us now.
Vice Guy, Peter, it's great to see you.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Right.
Thanks for finally having me.
This is my debut on Rebel, so it's great to be here.
Well, it's a pleasure.
And I saw you were published in RT.
You had a great column on this subject.
And the very fact that you were in RT, I want to remark on that because your point of view is considered, I mean, I would call you a, I don't know, a men's rights activist might be too much.
I'll let you describe yourself.
But your point of view is generally pushed out of mainstream media in the West.
It doesn't surprise me that you have to go to a foreign outlet like RT to say the things you say.
Right.
I mean, that is a telling sign of the state of journalism.
I've worked for a number of newspapers and magazines in my time.
I'm nearly 40 now, and I've reached the point where I just no longer want to try and fight to get column inches in a paper where my view isn't going to be kind of respected or treated with any kind of reverence.
So now I've gone to one of the outlets that will give me the freedom to say what I believe is true and to let the audience decide for themselves.
That's one of the great things about RT, which allows people to do that.
It's so unusual that we have to go to foreign press to have the freedom to say things in our own countries.
Well, Peter, let me know what you think about this Toronto case.
You're in the UK, but it looks like you've done a lot of research into it.
I mean, being a teenager is a phase.
It's hormones.
It's figuring things out.
It's how do I relate to women?
Or am I gay?
Or what's going on?
There's a lot of questions.
To turn that into some sort of terrorist ideology seems a bit of a stretch to me.
Yeah, and me too.
I'm totally with you on that.
I mean, my first reaction when I heard of this case, if I'm honest, was to cringe.
I thought, my God, just when you think Canada can't get any more woke, it surprises you.
I mean, obviously, look, this crime was terrible.
It was a brutal homicide.
It was made worse by the fact that this woman was young.
She was an innocent victim, and she was also the mother to a young child.
So it's terrible on all fronts.
Nobody would disagree with that.
But it's clearly not terrorism.
I mean, I've witnessed terrorism firsthand.
I was 12 when the IRA detonated bombs in my local town center.
I was on the London Underground when 7-7 happened.
And about two years ago, my niece was at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, where an Islamic extremist detonated a bomb and killed more than 20 youngsters.
So I know to some degree what terrorism looked like and what it resembles.
And this was not it.
It wasn't nowhere near on the same scale, 9-11 as the Battaclan massacre, or any of those other atrocities which are performed crucially with a political motive.
As you said earlier, what happened in this case is clearly either some kind of derangement or mental illness crossed with a crime of passion.
I think it's really important that we maintain the integrity of the word terrorism because the West is going to experience a lot more of it over the next few decades.
And we need to be able to have a term that accurately describes it and does those events justice.
Yeah.
You know, my theory for why they're trying to rebrand a young emotional man's violence, sexual frustration, as right-wing.
They're trying to brand it as terrorism so they can have another cudgel to go after right-wingers.
I don't see anything right-wing or left-wing about, in this case, a 17-year-old guy, crime of passion, confusion.
I don't know if he was right-wing or left-wing.
I think people of all political stripes and no political stripes have curiosity and frustration and hope and sorrow and are figuring things out.
I think it's sort of a trick to try and say we're going to brand all young, emotionally brooding men as right-wing to demonize all right-wingers.
That's my theory.
Yeah, I actually think it's broader than just right-wing men.
I think it's just young men in general, specifically young white, straight men.
I think that is really the target group.
I mean, if this charge of terrorism is successful in Canada, it will be the first time that that code of criminal conduct has been used against someone who wasn't an Islamic extremist.
So I think it's two-pronged.
I think really they want to try and find a new category to criminalize straight, white, young men.
And I also think they want to try and make terrorism look less connected to Islam than it actually is.
I mean, if we face reality, all of the major events that have been terror-related have all been connected to Islam.
You know, that's a very good point.
You're right.
It's not even right-wing, left-wing.
It's just men.
And as you say, I don't think we know the identity of this 17-year-old because his identity is shielded.
Although there was another case of an in-cell attack in Toronto, it looked like a Muslim man of age 30.
But I think you're right.
I think they're trying to de-Islamify the crime of terrorism, and they're trying to take a swipe at all men, at masculinity itself.
I think they're trying to turn masculinity into a political ideology and say if you're too masculine, your toxic masculinity is a form of extremism.
I think that's where they're going here.
That's exactly what it is.
And I view it as a form of kind of almost chemical castration.
It's like the social castration of a way.
It's saying, well, you're only allowed to be so masculine, and you're only allowed to have certain views about feminism, and you're only allowed to have certain views about certain women in your life.
And if you violate those boundaries, then we're going to define you as a terrorist.
Meanwhile, women can say whatever they like about men.
Women can attack their boyfriends and their husbands, and they say whatever they like on social media or in person.
And they are beyond reproach.
Nothing happens to them.
So that alone is proof that this is clearly driven by some gender agenda, as I would say.
Now, I follow you because I think you're a very entertaining and articulate speaker.
I get a kick out of your video appearances, and I just...
Ezra, I have a mouth like a sailor sometimes.
Well, that's half the reason I like you.
No, I'm kidding around.
So when I saw that you were talking about something Canadian, I thought, well, we got to get Peter Lloyd on.
Let me ask you, you're in the UK, which is a very politically correct place.
I mean, in some ways, it's worse than Canada.
Have you ever seen this kind of thing?
I think you hinted at it before that this is new.
Have you seen this in the UK or in other jurisdictions?
Maybe in Holland, maybe in France, maybe in the European Union.
Is this new?
Like, is Canada on the leading edge of this, this wokeness, or is this coming from somewhere else?
I think it's maybe slightly ahead.
I mean, you know, you've got Trudeau, so that's a pretty powerful workforce you've got there.
But I know that here in Britain, there have been politicians who've been trying to make misogyny a hate crime, which is kind of a very similar category to what we're talking about, what's happening in Canada.
They're literally trying to make a dislike of feminism a criminal offense, which is punishable by a custodial sentence.
I mean, it's all well-ended.
You just wouldn't believe that this was a potential reality.
And what really scares me is that in my lifetime, I fully expect that it will be.
Women and feminists will be allowed to say whatever they want about men.
They will have complete free speech.
But men will not have free speech, and they will have their actions ruled by legislation, which essentially castrates them.
It will just it will curtail their opinions and their thought.
It's like the thought beliefs that Orwa used to wrote about.
It really is.
We are approaching that situation.
Let me ask you one more thing, because one thing I would say, you mentioned Islam, and I don't think that wokeness has affected Muslims, at least not en masse, at least not those who identify as Muslim, certainly not the ones that I have come into contact with in the UK or Canada.
It's typically a post-modern Western, post-liberal, like it just feels like it's the residue of a decaying Western liberal empire.
Is there something about the fact that Muslim men are confident, maybe physical, certainly not emasculated, and the Western man is not allowed to show any manly traits?
How do those I mean, obviously we don't want certain manly traits.
We want violence to be channeled and governed and used only properly.
I mean, there are crimes that have an aggressive masculine hue to them.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
Because this, I think you're right that this is targeting meek male feminists who up talk and who are woke and who take women's studies degrees.
And I think there's something there.
I don't know quite what it is.
Have you done any thinking on that?
I mean, it's hard to analyze and to kind of quantify those theories, but I think you're definitely onto something.
Men who exist within the religion of Islam and the community of fellow Muslims, that society still respects men and masculinity, whether that be as fathers or as sons or as people in the workforce or in the mosques or the faith.
Men are still respected and they aren't subjected to the same level of kind of miscendry and man-hating that I think a lot of Western men are.
Christian and Jewish men.
And I think that is the crucial difference is because really the venom that we see in the press from a lot of feminist columnists and celebrities, most of their venom is directed at straight white men, which is what I was saying before, and that they are now the one demographic that it's okay to kind of abuse.
And this is what I was going to say as well: is that, yeah, a lot of people are talking about the existence of these so-called incels, but really, maybe we should be asking, why do these people exist in the first place?
I mean, it's clearly some kind of mental derangement.
But what is driving people, young men, to that level of despair where they are feeling that level of hatred to women, and they're acting out on it to the point where they're killing somebody, they're committing homicide.
Maybe we should be asking ourselves the question culturally: what is leading men down that path?
What is forcing them to feel so disenfranchised and so resentful of women that they would do those things?
I mean, I would suggest perhaps it's the level of man-hating that the media and society.
Maybe that has got a role to play.
Why Do Incels Exist?00:04:55
You know, that's a great question.
If there was another terrorism, if there was another ideology that was manifesting itself in terrorist violence, we would say, what are the root causes?
Where has society done wrong?
Who pushed them away?
Could we have been more welcoming?
Could we have a day of the year, a week of the year to celebrate their masculinity?
There would have been some way to include them in the vibrant rainbow of society.
But I think even the word incel is a disparaging way of saying a guy who's having trouble with the opposite sex.
It's loaded in a negative way from the outset.
Last word to you, Peter.
It's been great to catch up with you.
Do you think we're going to see more of this?
Do you think we'll see more personal crimes of passion rebranded as incel terrorism?
Yeah, I do.
Unfortunately, I think so.
I think this is a war that's being waged by politicians on the left.
And unfortunately, masculinity in men are the quarry.
They are in the crosshairs of their gun.
And I think we're just going to see more and more of it.
It could be scaled back.
Maybe we could try and avoid it and we could limit these kind of instances.
But I think we have to have a bit of a cultural revolution where we start treating men and boys with a little bit more common decency and not humiliating them and degrading them at every given opportunity.
All right.
Well said.
Well, Peter Lloyd, what a pleasure to catch up with you.
Great to see you.
We hope to have you back on again.
Yeah, I'll bet you a pint next time you're in London, Ezra.
Hey, that sounds great.
Hopefully that'll be soon.
Well, there you have it.
Peter Lloyd, an author and journalist, and he goes by the nickname the suffragentleman, which I get a kick out of.
And you should follow him on Twitter on the handle on your screen.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about temporary foreign workers.
Guy writes: there's a shortage of work.
Canadians deserve these jobs.
Yeah, and you know what?
The excuses that were in the Global Mail felt like reheated leftovers, like excuses that they'd been using when unemployment was 6 or 7%, not when unemployment was 15 or 20%.
You know, it's time to hire Canadians.
We don't need to bring in foreign workers in the middle of a recession.
That's just crazy, especially deliberately underpaid foreign workers.
Ian writes, there are plenty of Canadians who are willing to do this work.
I'm a veteran on a pension, and I would have no problem going out and picking fruit and vegetables.
You know, I think some people would like physical labor, especially young people.
I mean, when I was in college, it was a thing to go out and tree plant.
That's back-breaking work.
You know, there's a lot of young people.
I bet you youth unemployment, because all the waiters and waitresses and bartenders and retail clerks, they're all hit the hardest.
I bet you, I mean, I haven't seen the youth unemployment stats yet, but I bet you it's 25, 30%.
Of course, some of them would like to work on a farm.
On my interview with Jim Karahalios, Harry writes, I'm thoroughly disgusted at what the Conservatives and you did to Jim.
I also find it cringeworthy when you told Jim to his face that he could not win.
With these kinds of actions, my opinion of the Conservatives and the Rebel has changed.
With your influence, do you realize how many people you could have discouraged to vote for Jim and how Jim must have felt when you said that?
I think you need to apologize to Jim and your audience.
Wow.
Okay.
You know what?
I see your point.
I guess I should have kept that thought to myself.
But you know what?
I mean, I like Jim, if it's not obvious.
I like his issues.
I like his style.
But do I not owe you, the viewer, my candid thoughts?
I don't think Jim can win.
I think he's a small, you know, army of one kind of thing.
He doesn't have a big network or a team that I can detect.
Now, he says he has people working here and there, and he did raise the third largest amount of money.
So he is in that, you know, he's third out of five, I suppose.
I don't know.
I mean, if my affection for Jim was not evident, let me clarify that I feel affection for him.
And I'm rooting for him.
And that's what, my third or fourth interview with him on this subject.
But I suppose I could have been a little bit more polite in person, though I didn't feel rude saying it.
I just want to be honest to you, the viewer.
I don't think Jim can win because of how the rules are.
I don't think they're going to let Jim win.
And whoever wins, I don't see them beating Trudeau.
I'm sorry, that's just how I feel.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Lawn Sign Affection00:00:20
Hopefully I'm wrong.
Dave writes, I thought you guys may like the lawn sign I had made up.
Enjoy.
Take a look at that.
Good for you.
You know, I should get back in the lawn sign business.
We had some fun lawn signs ourselves in the day, didn't we?
Well, folks, that's our show for today.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rubber World Headquarters, take you at home.