Halifax Councillor Richard Zaroski proposes renaming lakes, streets, and even the city itself—including Edward Cornwallis’ legacy—due to colonial-era ties to Indigenous violence like Mi'kmaq scalp bounties. Ezra Levant warns this trend risks erasing history entirely, comparing it to statue removals and book burnings, while mocking Zaroski’s name as equally problematic under modern standards. Meanwhile, Gordon Chang details China-India tensions after a June 2020 border clash killing 20 Indian soldiers, India’s $600M freeze on Chinese deals, and Beijing’s "Wolf Warrior" aggression masking internal economic instability. Levant argues Western democracies should back India as a rising counterbalance to China, but critics blame conservatives for failing to defend historical integrity amid leftist revisionism and unchecked vandalism. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello rebels, I heard terrible news out of Halifax.
They're going to rename everything, everything that has a bad historical connotation.
I got to tell you, that includes everything from, well, Edward Cornwallis to Halifax itself to the name of the alderman who is leading this charge.
I'll take you through the bloody naming history of that whole place.
Before I do, let me invite you to become a Rebel News Plus subscriber.
Just go to RebelNews.com, sign up for $8 a month or $80 for the whole year, and you get the video version of this podcast plus other goodies.
Okay, here's the show.
Tonight, how big a step is it from tearing down statues to burning books?
It's June 23rd, 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 publisher is because it's my bloody right to do so.
They were trying to pull down statues in Lafayette Park, which is the lovely and lively park right across the street from the White House.
There's always peaceful protesters there, both from the left and the right, and a lot of tourists too.
It's the best vantage point to get a photo of the iconic White House.
You can't get as close as you used to do before 9-11, but it's still pretty exciting.
Alas, now it is a place of riots.
You know, the U.S. First Amendment is a wonderful law.
I'll read it to you.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or of the right of the people to peaceably, peaceably to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.
That's pretty amazing.
It's the First Amendment because it's the most important.
And as they say in the states, the Second Amendment, the right to have firearms is what protects the First Amendment.
I think it's true.
Here's the video I showed yesterday of black businessmen in Minneapolis using their Second Amendment to stop looters and riders from burning down their stores.
Stores and businesses are important.
People put their lives and hopes in them.
It's how they feed their families.
But even more important than that is the right to even speak and protest.
We have had those rights restricted in Canada.
And our little company, Rebel News, has been one of the perpetual targets of government censorship.
We're in court right now fighting Trudeau in two separate lawsuits to fight back against his media censorship.
And I note that other than our friends at True North, not a single other media company is in court with us.
Anyways, I point out that one key word in the First Amendment, the right of the people peaceably to assemble.
Pulling down statues is not peaceful.
It's a form of violence, violence against property.
It's not a protest when you're actually committing a crime.
The First Amendment says, chant and holler and shout all you like, but not riots.
Trouble is these rioters are doing the bidding of the hard left, and so the parties of the left abide it.
And the parties of the right are too terrifying, too terrified of being called racist, mainly, if they oppose the riots, as if rioting is an essential component of being black.
I'm serious, that's the implication.
I showed you yesterday how the Jewish chair of the board of governors of UBC was fired for simply liking a tweet by Donald Trump condemning violence.
I note that Trump is exceedingly careful never to criticize anything black.
I don't think I've ever heard him even say the words Black Lives Matters.
He criticizes Antifa and other rioters.
It was the racist mind of the woke mob who assumed that criticizing riots was being racist.
No.
In fact, thinking that riots are black and thus thinking that being against riots is being against blacks, that's racist thinking.
Oh, well, there's no reasoning with the mob, which is why it's called a mob.
It's like a colony of ants.
It has a mind of itself.
People lose their own minds and their own judgments to the mob, and they get lost in the mob.
Here's some street videos of the 2011 Vancouver Stanley Cup riots.
Vancouver lost the finals to Boston and fans rioted.
But it wasn't racial.
There wasn't a grievance.
They just lost a game.
It was just a mood that took over.
And it was when smartphones were just new.
So it was one of the first riots that was just filmed.
And most of it was in broad daylight.
Look at that one girl.
I remember reading about that girl.
Her name is Camille Cakneo.
She was a nice girl, if I recall.
I recall when she was arrested.
For some reason, she ran into a men's tuxedo store and just stole something, the first thing she could find.
And look at that smile on her face.
Why did she do it?
She wasn't poor.
She wasn't a criminal before that.
She wasn't in a man in need of a tuxedo.
She just grabbed something because in that moment, the madness took over.
The social contract was broken.
Social norms were abandoned.
It was madness and anarchy, and she lost her mind too, replaced it with the mind of the mob.
It is no excuse, of course, but it is an explanation.
She didn't have deep enough morals and a deep enough sense of herself and what she believed in to do the right thing.
As Rudyard Kipling said in his poem, If, if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, I'm blaming it on you.
And if you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue.
That's the kind of thing he's talking about, isn't it?
Keeping your wits about you in a mob.
Can you remember who you are when everyone else forgets who they are or who they're supposed to be?
That's what's happening everywhere now because no one is asserting our common values and rules, the social contract that Thomas Hobbes wrote about in his book Leviathan, where we all agree together to give up madness and violence, to give a monopoly on violence to a tightly controlled system of police with civilian oversight and a legal system based on the presumption of innocence.
So we don't all have to be armed police for ourselves all the time.
We don't have to rely on local warlords or gangsters to keep us safe, as they do in, say, Somalia, or, you know, that Chaz Autonomous Zone in Seattle, a lawless zone in the heart of the city of Seattle where police are banned and the mayor has given up and mobs of antifa rule the streets in anarchy.
As Hobbes said, life in such a world is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's a version of James Q. Wilson's broken windows theory.
You know, the experiment he talked about.
If you park a fancy car in a sketchy neighborhood, it can remain untouched for days.
But if you smash one window in the car and then leave it unfixed, well, the whole car will be stripped down to the bone within 24 hours.
Why?
Because people get the message.
The social contract doesn't apply here.
There may be the odd policeman wandering through, but he doesn't actually do anything, and the population itself abides the lawlessness.
You can get away with things here, in a mob for sure, but even on your own in such a neighborhood.
That's why Rudy Giuliani cracked down on jaywalking and graffiti and people jumping subway turnstiles without paying, not just because each of those things were in fact little crimes, but because they were small crimes, and so letting them fester was proof to the public that New York was a place where you could do what you want, even small crimes, and the community abided it.
So he stopped that and he saved the city.
So that's where we are now, like a child trying to find its limits.
These antifook crowds and their copycats are looking to find the new limits.
What's the new rules?
And so far, it seems, there are no rules.
It's spreading around the world as the same cowardly globalist leaders from London to New York to Toronto all have the same permissive reaction to the violence.
That's why Michael Korenberg was sacked in Vancouver for merely liking a Trump tweet.
No one's pushing back.
No one's reasserting sanity.
That's why our own David Menzies was physically attacked in Kingston on the weekend by a lame mob of people who went there to pelt the Johnny McDonald's statue with eggs.
They lacked the industriousness to actually tear it down for now.
So it's madness, but it's not just a momentary anonymous madness of the sort that made an otherwise sweet girl like Camille Cacneo steal some men's clothing in the middle of the evening.
It's madness that a generous community builder like Michael Korenberg caves into the mob and incredibly joins in the mob against himself.
It's exactly what went on in the Cultural Revolution in China.
I'll go much deeper into that for you another day.
I want to show you more pictures of that.
But it is a madness.
If you tear down a statue today, you will burn a book tomorrow.
Because what's the difference?
A book is actually worse by every measure.
A book actually contains ideas, not just symbols of ideas, which is what a statue is.
If you tear down a statue of a man, surely you would want to tear down all the words of that man and the thoughts of that man.
That's what a book is.
And as we learned from Adolf Hitler, who loved burning books, where books burn, soon men will also burn.
Which brings me to the foolish city of Halifax and their foolish city council named Richard Zarowsky.
He's pictured here.
And if I can quote Richard Zarowski about Richard Zarowski, he says about Richard Zaroski, Councillor Zaroski is an active promoter of evidence-based, conscientious decision-making.
If he does say so himself, he's not like those other guys who go off half-cocked.
Richard Zaroski is conscientious and he really thinks.
Just ask him.
Oh, here's today's newspaper.
Zaroski wants city staff to examine the possibility of changing offensive names.
He said the research will dovetail well with the work of a task force on the commemoration of Edward Cornwallis and Indigenous history.
Okay, got it.
Offensive names.
I'll read some of the story.
A Halifax council member wants City Hall staff to examine the possibility of name changes affecting municipal things due to the offensive nature of the names.
Councillor Richard Zaroski, Timberley Beachville, Clayton Park Wedgwood, said Monday he plans to present a notice of motion in Tuesday's council session regarding a proposed staff report.
There are a lot of offensive names, not only to our First Nations people, but also to blacks in the community.
And a lot of our names go back to colonialism.
Now, as you can see, Richard Zaroski is neither black nor First Nations himself.
But I guess he speaks for them.
He's the king of the blacks and king of the First Nations.
I missed the votes, but he's speaking for them.
Maybe he's appropriating their voices.
He's white-explaining to them that they ought to be offended, but he's enjoying this moment of anarchy where he gets to tear things down.
He wants to join in.
He wants not only to be in the mob, he wants to lead it.
I mean, there are so, so many offensive names.
Halifax itself was named after the Earl of Halifax, George Montague Dunk, a great man in terms of his impact on the world.
His courage and resourcefulness, he helped build Nova Scotia.
But do you really think all of his conduct could withstand the scrutiny of a woke faculty lounge at Dalhousie University in 2020 or Richard Zaroski?
I mean, for one thing, Halifax didn't even believe in gay marriage.
Richard Lionheart's Complex Legacy00:07:17
And then again, neither did Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama until about five minutes ago.
But still, I mean, who better to sit in judgment of historical figures like Halifax himself or Edward Cornwallis, the founder of the city that bears Halifax's name?
Edward Cornwallis came from a leading British family.
You may have heard of his nephew, I think it was his nephew, Charles Cornwallis, who led the unsuccessful British soldiers against George Washington in the Revolutionary War.
So these were men of action.
These were great men in the historical sense.
But look, action in those days was more than not.
It was bloody.
They were soldiers.
Cornwallis fought against the Indians in Nova Scotia, and he fought in a brutal way.
Some would say as brutally as the Indians fought him.
But he passed this proclamation that a reward of 10 guineas be granted for every Indian Mi'kmaq taken or killed.
So he paid a bounty, not a rare thing in war back then, but I can understand why this rankles people in 2020 and why Cornwallis' statue was dishonored by some people in light of our sentiments and beliefs in 2020.
But if you're going to do that, if you're going to go back 200 or 250 years and knock down people who don't meet your woke standard of manners and customs in 2020, you are not going to have any history at all.
I mean, I guess we'll have to knock down the pyramids themselves.
They were built by slaves.
Better empty out the great museums and destroy the hieroglyphics, some of which show slaves.
Guys, I just want to tell you now, if we're going to get rid of anyone who was cruel, who fought wars brutally, and especially anyone who had slaves, I've got to whisper this next part to you.
I want you to brace yourself.
Mohammed, as in the founder of Islam, he had slaves.
And if you're into book burnings these days, well, be careful, friends, because nothing less than the Quran itself blesses slavery.
Here's the Quran, Surah 4, verse 24 of the Quran, just one of the ton of passages outlining the rules for slavery.
So it doesn't ban slavery.
It prescribes it.
It describes it.
And also prohibited to you are all married women except those your right hands possess.
That means you can't have sex with a married woman other than your wife unless you take that married woman in war as your slave.
Then you can do what you want with her.
She's a rape slave.
That's what those your right hand possesses means.
Rape slaves.
It's why the Islamic State renewed the practice of wartime rape slaves and had slave markets in the Islamic State.
Hey, let me know when the Koran is deplatformed.
I won't wait up for Richard Zarovsky.
But seriously, is all of history to be deleted because it doesn't meet our fashion?
Of course, it's contrary to all our modern beliefs because that's how we define our superiority.
But those who want to build a new utopia must first destroy everything of the old way.
Mao Zedong in China destroyed everything from the old system, art, music, words.
He had to to create his new utopia.
He even contemplated giving people numbers, not names.
He wanted to raise everything to the ground, to bring it to zero, to start everything again, destroy everything.
Just like the Taliban destroys things.
If you destroy every other idea, you don't have to convince people your idea is better.
Just destroy the other idea.
It's what tyrants do.
Richard Zarovsky.
He's named Richard, surely named after the greatest Richard in history, Richard the Lionheart.
That's him outside Britain's parliament, so glorious.
He ruled from 1189 to 1199.
Do you think he was gentle?
He wasn't called Richard the Gentleheart.
Do you think he wasn't as rough as Cornwallis, or even frankly, as rough as Muhammad?
Well, he wasn't that rough because his Christianity limited his violence.
But he was certainly violent.
He was a crusader, of course.
That was to repulse Muslim invaders who were more violent than him.
The Crusades were not an offensive war.
It was a defensive war to recapture Jerusalem.
Richard the Lionheart was a crusader.
He also fought against France.
In one of his wars against the Muslims, he kept 2,700 Muslim soldiers that he captured.
He kept them as hostages to enforce a treaty against the Muslim warrior Saladin.
They called him Richard the Lionheart because he fought like a lion.
Lions don't just fight, though.
They kill.
And Richard led a trail of blood.
Good.
Better that England rule than its rivals.
Better that Richard the Lionheart win than Saladin.
You don't want to know what he would do when he took over a town.
This wasn't a model parliament or a United Nations talk shop.
It was a brutal world.
And I'm glad Richard the Lionheart won.
Should we tear down Richard's statue from the British Parliament because of all that?
Maybe Richard Zarovsky should change his own name or at least have Halifax bureaucrats study it because they've got nothing better to do.
I mean, why should only Halifax and Cornwallis be shameful names?
What about Richard Zarovsky's own name, soaked in blood?
I know Richard Zarovsky is not a great man.
He doesn't even sound like a good man, really.
He sounds like the perfect 2020 man, though, doesn't he?
Look at this.
Look at this story here.
Halifax West Green Party candidate on hunger strike to force action on climate change.
In a thousand years, we went from Richard the Lionheart, who went to free Jerusalem from invaders, to Richard the Mouseheart, who skipped lunch and put out a press release about it for Greta.
On Tuesday, Jaros Zarovsky announced on Facebook that he will consume only water and coffee until Election Day on October 21 to force action on climate change.
Loser.
But hang on, just a minute.
Hold the line.
What's this?
What am I hearing?
Richard Zawaski, who still goes by the murderous name Richard, and still sits on the murderously named Halifax Council in a town by the murderer Cornwallis.
Did Richard Zarovsky say what I thought he said?
Oh my God, look at this.
I would like to see some equity.
It's a lot of money.
I can appreciate Councillor Mason working for this on behalf of his constituents.
And I do appreciate that it probably is needed there, but I'm going to respectfully ask him to get to the back of the bus while we get our rec center first.
Delinking India and China Economically00:08:50
Thank you.
Richard Mousehart, did you just tell someone to go to the back of the bus?
I'm literally shaking right now.
You literally just said, back of the bus, the apartheid-style, deep South-style Jim Crow-style rule that black people have to go to the back of the bus.
You just said that, Richard Mousehart.
Well, look, Richard, you served your moment when you condemned Cornwallis.
But now you too stand condemned, not just of having a terrible first name, but of what you just said, you racist.
And now you must be deplatformed and canceled too.
You've served your purpose.
You've denounced others, but now it is your term.
Shame on you, you racist man.
And as your last act before you leave, will you now please denounce yourself?
Stay with us for more.
Welcome back.
Well, while the world has been focused on so many other things, the Black Lives Matter and antifa protests and riots across the United States and in the UK, and of course the coronavirus pandemic, India and China have had a military clash.
Let me quote to you from CNN, which talks about the clash which left 20 Indian soldiers dead and how that's spiraling into an economic war between the two countries too.
Here's a story in CNN.
Authorities in India are hitting pause on more than $600 million in deals with Chinese companies in the wake of a deadly border clash with India.
Officials in the western Indian state of Maharashtra said Monday they were reviewing agreements with three Chinese companies as they seek clarity from the Indian government on how or whether to proceed.
And I also see that on social media, many Indian celebrities are making little videos telling ordinary Indians to start taking Chinese products out of their life, bit by bit, Chinese cell phones, Chinese apps, to unhook from that country that is now engaged in a kind of war with them.
Finally, I see China's own propaganda industry shaming India for even quarreling with China and this menacing tweet published by Global Times, an official outlet of the Chinese Communist Party, that implies China could crush India in a war.
It has more nuclear weapons as well as more conventional weapons.
This is extremely bellicose talk that has actually turned into a shooting battle, if not a war.
Joining us now to try to make sense of it is our friend Gordon Chang, an author, a columnist, and I encourage you to follow him on Twitter at Gordon G. Chang.
Gordon, great to see you again.
I don't think the world has paid enough attention to this battle of the Titans.
Certainly not, because you had the 20 Indian soldiers killed.
We don't know how many Chinese were killed, but it could very well be 35.
And you've got to remember that this is not just a contest between India and China.
This is very close to Pakistan, so we could have three nuclear-armed neighbors involved in a conflict.
This is terrifying to me.
Can you give us a little bit about the background of the border?
There are border issues everywhere with China these days.
You've talked before about the sea disputes for territory in the Scarborough Shoals and places like that.
Tell us about this boundary between India and China.
Yeah, this boundary is the line of actual control, but it is not demarked on the ground.
And so there are these disputes as to where China ends and India begins.
But we know that this clash took place south of the line of actual control.
In other words, in Indian-controlled territory.
And also over the last weeks, since basically the beginning of May, Chinese troops have moved into areas that are not disputed.
So this is an aggressive move.
And of course, India is pushing back.
We had that June 15th clash and could very well have more to come.
There are more talks now between China and India to try to disengage, but the Chinese are reinforcing their side of the border.
So this doesn't look good, Ezra.
You know, what's the rationale here?
You would think that President Xi Jinping has his hands full.
The economy is slowing down.
Massive American tariffs.
The coronavirus seems like it's having a second wave in China.
There's so many things flashing on his dashboard.
Why would he open up a new front?
Or is that precisely it, to distract from the other troubles?
Yeah, this is like one of the most important questions that the world must ask.
And I don't really know the answer to it, but I do think that this shows fragility in the Chinese system because they are seeing a closing window of opportunity for the reasons you mentioned.
And the Chinese economy is actually much worse than most people think.
It's probably not going to recover this quarter.
That would mean a technical recession because they had a contraction in the first quarter.
This is something that Chinese people are not used to.
And it's, I think, having political implications.
So we see China with this Wolf Warrior diplomacy really lashing out at not just India, but the South China Sea, East China Sea neighbors.
Also, increased tempo of dangerous intercepts of the U.S. Navy in the global commons, threats to take over Kazakhstan.
This is really, really dangerous.
You know, Narendra Modi and Donald Trump seem to have a political rapport.
I remember when Modi, the leader of India, was in Texas and they had a big howdy-modi rally.
And then Modi returned the favor, namaste Trump.
Trump flew all the way there for a huge rally.
The two men seem to be trying very hard to get along.
I don't think I've heard Trump weigh in on this.
Maybe I missed it.
But you would think his number one regional ally, big democracy, and there's domestic political reasons.
Where has Trump been, if at all?
Have you seen any statements by Trump or Secretary Pompeo on this matter?
I think Secretary Pompeo raised this issue in his meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jia Shir, in Honolulu.
Also, it appears that, you know, Trump hasn't said anything, but that the State Department has been working behind the scenes.
But we need, as you point out, we need to be much more open about this.
We need to be public in our support for India because India is moving toward the United States and towards the democracies in the region.
And so therefore, you know, China is seeing itself basically being contained.
It's actually containing itself.
I know you're so busy.
I see you on all the leading cable shows and talk shows.
So we're always so grateful that you stopped by us at Little Rebel News.
Let me ask just one question, and it's how I began it, too.
I see there's three big business deals in India that are now on ice.
As people are just figuring out, okay, well, should we really do a deal with China if we're de facto at war with them?
Again, this might be an opportunity for the West.
If Western companies, America, but also Canada, UK, Australia, are looking to pull out of China, maybe this is the opportunity to go into India, to displace China there, to invest there, because China and India are so integrated.
Maybe this is actually an opening for an alliance of democracies.
I'd love to see more American investment.
And if you have to have a factory offshore, shouldn't it be in a democracy and an ally versus a dictatorship and an enemy?
I couldn't agree with you more, Ezra.
You know, companies have been moving into India now for several years.
Part of it triggered by Modi, who has really been friendly toward business and trying to open up the Indian economy.
But India itself, we see now this movement to boycott Chinese goods, as you point out.
Also, this idea that they should get Chinese telecom equipment out of their networks.
So they're talking about rip and replace.
And as you mentioned, there's that CNN story of a number of big Chinese deals really now in jeopardy.
So there is going to be a delinking of India and China, at least in the economy.
Well, I sure hope that Canada, we have a very large Indo-Canadian population in Canada.
I sure hope that we try and fill that void.
Even if Trudeau still doesn't know which side he's on, I hope that a million Indo-Canadian citizens say, hey, that's our motherland.
Let's strengthen ties.
That's my personal hope.
Delinking India and China00:02:26
Gordon, it's great to see you again.
I recommend again to our viewers who still aren't following to go to Gordon G. Chang on Twitter, and you'll get a constant stream of thoughtful updates.
Take care, my friend, and thanks for stopping by.
Oh, well, thank you so much, Ezra.
All right, there you have it, Gordon G. Chang joining us with the latest on China and India.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back to my monologue last night.
Gary writes, the left believes in the Ministry of Truth, their truth.
They want to control what people read and how they think.
They're pushing their narrative, which is supposed to represent the truth, but it's only their truth they want everyone to accept.
When we bend a knee to their bullying, it only empowers them.
We should stand up against them, but we don't out of fear.
I agree with every word you said, but look, easier said than done.
When it's your job or your reputation on the line, will you lean into the hurricane or will you be blown back?
Susannah Simpson writes, I was very disappointed by Michael Kornberg's apology.
It's fueling the fire of the mob.
You know, I learned after the monologue last night that Kornberg actually helped raise $20 million, including for the woman who denounced him and fired him.
There's no gratitude there, is there?
On my interview with Joel Pollock on removing statues, Mike writes, when they're done with the statues and monuments and they come for the people, and the law will be on their side.
Well, there really isn't any law, is there?
Because there are laws against tearing down statues, vandalism, mischief, trespass to property, et cetera.
They're not being enforced.
We see even on our own country violence against our reporters.
Please don't lift a finger.
So people get the message.
It's what I said earlier about Camille Cacneo, that girl who just ran into a tuxedo store and stole something just because she didn't need it.
What's she going to do with that?
Well, that's the spirit.
That's the mood.
That is what your place is like now.
Except for not just for a mad moment in the Stanley Cup riot.
That's how it is all the time now.
And who's standing up for?
Where are the conservatives in this country?
Where are the conservatives in America?
Donald Trump tweets law and order.
Thanks for the tweet.
You actually didn't do anything, though, mate.
Well, we're in tough times.
Well, that's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel News World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.