Mocha Bezirgan, a Turkish-Canadian satirist and documentarian, rose to fame in Turkey as a teen with viral anti-establishment shorts like "The Drug of Ideology," mocking Erdogan’s divisive policies. After fleeing Turkey due to 4x-car taxes and the lira’s collapse (1:1 USD to 10:1 in a decade), he joined Rebel News in Canada, facing 10x more police harassment—ticketed for recording protests, punched during a pro-Israel event, and targeted in Montreal for filming lockdowns. Police tactics included confiscating equipment, flashing lights to obstruct footage, and weaponizing mask rules against media, while authorities ignored systemic violations. Bezirgan warns Canada’s free-speech legacy is eroding under policies risking permanent overreach, as citizens prioritize short-term comfort over long-term consequences, mirroring Turkey’s authoritarian drift. [Automatically generated summary]
The funny thing is, just so that I don't have to deal with the police and their their nonsense in Turkey, I decided to move to Canada.
And I went to broadcasting school at Hamburg College here in Toronto.
And then I ended up here at Rebel.
Efron found me.
I was working on a documentary.
And I ended up dealing with the police 10 times more than I was dealing in Turkey.
Dusalem, a.k.a. Mocha Bezergin, is an actor, videographer, documentarian, and editor, I could go on, who had vaulted into fame as a teenager for his anti-establishment comedy short films.
And he is currently videographer in chief at Rebel News.
And we are happy to have him here.
Thank you, Mocha, for joining me on this episode.
No problem.
Bring up the energy level, man.
Let's see.
It's just next door to my editing suit, so I just walked in.
He's just yelling all day, he can't take it anymore.
I want to go back to when, before you were in Canada to start, because I don't think a lot of people who are Rebel News fans know you got your start doing short comedic films online.
Can you tell us a bit about that, what it was like, how you got such a big reception from people in Turkey?
Well, I started around 2016 and I met with two other individuals in Turkey who were very funny people, but they lacked the technical skills to put together a video or a script or record it and then you know the social media.
They did have the social media skills.
So basically we came together, three men, and we, with our skills coming together, something great happened.
With our ideas and scenarios, our short films, we reached millions and millions of Turkish audience in Turkey.
Of course, at that time I was around the age of 16 or 17, so I was young.
And with all this attention, we also attracted attention from the police.
People, in Turkey, it's very easy to just fill a complaint that you got offended on the internet.
Really?
Yeah.
And claim that, oh, this video is insulting my religious belief.
And then I went to the police station twice on two occasions.
The first occasion was I was, one of my video, I was being accused of creating division and hate in society.
Yeah, I know that's a charge there, isn't it?
That it's against the law to insult somebody's religion and I think it was even to cause offense, I believe.
Yes, offense, exactly.
But the video itself was actually the opposite of the claim that was brought against me.
Because in the video, we were actually promoting unity and peace.
The video's name was the drug of ideology.
And in the video, you see a man selling drugs and then this guy buys the drug, he takes the drug, and then he goes high.
And then as he's walking down the street, he sees three Muslim men.
And they're like, oh, how are you, my Muslim brother?
Oh, we're going to the mosque.
How are you doing?
And because this guy is high on ideology, he interprets that as a, you know, oh, you ISIS, you, you know, this and that.
What are you doing in this country?
You're never gonna and And they are shocked because in reality they are just normal human beings who happen to be Muslim and they're not terrorists or anything.
And then he goes on to another guy who is speaking Kurdish.
And in Turkey there is that division between Turkish and Kurdish.
There are the separatists who want to separate from Turkey.
But that's a challenge because in the constitution of Turkey it says that even an MP democratically cannot bring up the idea of separation.
So there's that problem and then he says he just asks him how to get to taxi, how to get to a location.
But because he's on high on ideology pill, he interprets that as well, we're gonna divide the country, we're gonna have our own country, goddamn Turkish Republic, and so on and so on.
But we were just showing, you know, we were trying to show unity.
We were trying to spread that message that, hey guys, don't take it too seriously.
Don't get you know, dive into foxholes, so to speak.
Pressure Points00:06:31
But someone interpreted that wrong, and I had to go to the police station and explain that this is not the case.
And on a second occasion, this time our whole, oh, sorry, our whole YouTube channel was being accused of insulting the president of Turkey, insulting religious beliefs of the public, and so on and so on.
Hate crime, so forth.
But there is, it's like nonsense.
Now, here in Canada, we face censorship all the time.
Videos are taken off for certain subjects, especially in the last 16 months.
Was it just public pressure that you faced, or did people actually censor you?
Did any of your videos get taken down?
Did the government demand anything?
Anything like that?
YouTube took down that particular video and gave us a strike, I believe.
But because this is three years ago, I don't really remember.
But then they turned, they let it be.
They monetized it again.
They left it.
And there was no lawsuit after these allegations.
The prosecutor didn't go with it because I defended myself.
I said, these are baseless claims.
And I said, whoever made this claim against me is stupid.
I said that in the police report.
And the police said, are you sure you want to say that?
I said, yes.
So I'm saying that because being at that age and I'm also, you know, facing all that stress from the police because when you're, because who wants to, you know, think of the point of view of your family.
Who wants their children to get into trouble with the police, the government, and when you especially have a lot large following and then maybe go to jail because one of my friends he is facing four years in jail now.
It's a court decision because he made a music video, a parody music video, of a rapper who made a music video about weed.
So the rapper himself already got into jail.
So yeah, so I didn't face pressure from the public.
The pressure was coming within the family.
And that pressure, combined with the pressure of my friends, their motivation was being damaged, their willingness, because me, I'm dual citizen.
If anything goes wrong, I can just come to Canada.
My friends, they are there.
They are Turkish citizens.
If anything goes wrong, they're going to suffer.
So with all that stress, I said, you know what, why am I dealing with this?
Why shouldn't I go back to Canada?
That's what I was going to ask.
So you're a young guy, you're famous, assumingly you're making at least some enough money to survive on your own.
Is that fair to say?
In Turkey?
Yeah.
Well, because I was at that age, I was living with my family, so I wasn't paying rent, but I was making enough money to sustain myself.
So that's the reason you come to Canada then?
all the nonsense you have to deal with in Turkey?
Yeah, all the nonsense.
And I said, you know, in Canada, you have free speech, you have the police is not, like, the police doesn't ask your ID every day when you're on the subway or walking to a major park or something.
So I said, I'm not going to deal with it.
And also there's a difference of consciousness levels between nations.
For example, I was interviewed, I was in Armenia, I was interviewing an intellectual there, and he was doing some research about Armenian genocide.
And he goes back and forth to Turkey.
And in Turkey, that's a hot topic.
So he didn't want the interview to be released because he thought I was just doing for schoolwork.
But this was in 2017 and I was young.
So I asked him, why are you scared?
Why are you getting death threats in Turkey for even just talking about this?
I said, aren't we in the 21st century?
And he said, well, yeah, we might be in the 21st century, but not every country is in 21st century.
That is right.
That is so true.
I want to ask you about the difference between Canada and Turkey.
Canada now, during all these lockdowns you mentioned, the police might not harass you before, but they certainly are legally allowed to right now.
We see it with our own producer Efron getting ticketed for handshakes and David Menzies.
So they're allowed to ID you for whatever they ought.
It's funny.
So how do you compare Canada as it is now to Turkey as it was when you left?
The funny thing is, just so that I don't have to deal with the police and their nonsense in Turkey, I decided to move to Canada.
And I went to broadcasting school at Hamburg College here in Toronto.
And then I ended up here at Rebel.
Efron found me.
I was working on a documentary.
And I ended up dealing with the police ten times more than I was dealing in Turkey.
But here in Canada, I embrace it.
Do you still feel like it's a more free place?
In terms of economical freedom, yes.
But right now, the direction it's going, it's not going, you know, more free and more free every day.
It's going less free and less free every day.
And that will have very bad con right now.
We're just suffering the immediate consequences of these lockdowns and these acts of the police.
We're going to suffer the real consequences later because some effects just don't happen right away.
It takes some time.
Now, moving forward to when you first start working with Rebel News, one of your first videos, and I think we started around the same time, one of your first things was working with David Menzies at, I think, a Sir John A. McDonald statue, which we're still dealing with right now, everybody.
There's still tons of controversy around our first prime minister, even though that's really crazy.
Getting Punched and Reacting00:04:13
And I got a turn, you know, when I speak to the camera.
So you were attacked that day, not to make light of it.
You want to recap that a little bit while we show the highlights of it?
Somebody's throwing stuff at you guys and they hit you with a Gatorade, I think.
Yeah, it was actually, David was more attacked than I was because I kind of, when all that thing started happening, I immediately, I'm like, okay, this is no longer a video, this is no longer an interview.
Now I have to use my camera in a way to collect evidence.
And the gang members were coming towards us and they I'm not talking about the police and they started to they have their umbrellas as a tactic to block the camera so that you won't be able to collect evidence of their crimes.
But I'm physically gifted.
I'm a tall individual and I have long arms and I was materially gifted too.
I had a long tripod.
So what did I do?
I used my brain.
I pull up the camera like this all the way up so that their umbrellas won't be able to block it.
Now when this sort of stuff is happening and obviously it's not the first time, what's going through your head?
Because me, I mean there's like the one video I have where they're all surrounding me, the native black identitarian group and they're all surrounding me and they're trying to intimidate me.
And if one of them like attacks me like that, I can't say that I would be as calm as you are.
What's going through your mind when that stuff happens?
Just get it all on tape because it's a story and you want to expose these people?
Are you mad?
How do you feel when that's happening?
I feel, you know, like I asked, first I asked to myself, you know, I'm a somewhat Turkish superstar in Turkey.
Why am I getting punched here or pushed around here?
But at the same time, it is, you put me in any other country on earth, anywhere.
And if there's something that disturbs me in that country or in the way the government is doing things or anyone who claims power over me, I'm going to get obviously active, politically active.
As anyone would, because we, as individuals, we all have values, we all have convictions, we all have, you know, our moral, what do you call it, point of views.
So as I was active against the government in Turkey and the people who were trying to have more control over me, I'm going to be like that in Canada as well.
So I embrace that and I'm not afraid or like in my mind, it's not like, oh shit, I'm going to get, sorry, I'm going to get punched or something.
I mean, in what my reaction was, not towards them, because they're violent, everybody knows that.
My reaction was to the police who choose not to be there because the protesters demanded that they stand down.
Why do they stand down when those particular protesters want them to stand down, but not for other protesters?
And as you know, recently I was punched in the face in a Israel protest, pro-Israel protest.
And you can see my reaction there right after getting punched.
I'm like, what's going on?
What is this?
What is this child-minded, low-character piece of human flesh is trying to do?
Like, he was such a low character, such a despicable human being that he wouldn't even look me in the eye when I was chasing him around.
He denied that he punched me.
He wouldn't say it to the police.
He wouldn't acknowledge it.
And his low-character friends wouldn't even acknowledge it.
So that's what I expose.
I like to, if he was proud of what he did, he would have looked me in the eye and he would say, yeah, I punched you, you know.
Exposing Low-Character Moments00:03:40
But no.
So.
You're really exposing these people's characters, I gotta say.
There are so many love characters walking around.
I want to move on to another form of protest, which was all the anti-lockdown protests that happened.
And again, you were one of the first people to go to these things.
I'm reminded of the one at Cherry Beach.
Maybe we can flash to that one, where it's basically just a party we're seeing on screen here, and all these people that would soon become characters.
What was your feeling when that happened?
Did you think that all this would last so long as it has and it's still going on?
We're still having protests just for basic freedoms.
Did you think in the moment at that time that this was going to last that long?
Well, I wouldn't want to think like that, so I didn't think like that.
But I knew that just like how the Canadian government introduced the income tax to fund World War II, it was introduced as a temporary measure, right?
But look, World War II is over and yet we still have income tax and it's increasing and it's increasing.
And so I think it was Milton Friedman who said, or was it Hayek who said, there is nothing more permanent than a temporary measure or a temporary government policy.
And so when all this COVID stuff started happening, yeah, you know, there was that quote behind my mind.
But of course I didn't want that to be true.
So.
Now I want to get to some of the characters that are at these lockdown events.
You've got your Chris Sky's, you've got your Adam Skellies, you even got some of the reporters who are at a bunch of these.
Is there a way that you can predict?
I mean, you've been in the media for several years.
I'm sure you're able to predict some of the trends and who's got talent.
As your friends, you saw that they have talent, but they just didn't have the technical means.
Did you see this coming that there would be anti-lockdown superstars?
I mean, Chris Sky has hundreds of thousands of followers.
Adam Skelly's at least 100,000.
Was it going to be anybody, I guess I'm asking?
Or do you think that these people have specific talents or personality traits that make them so popular?
I did not predict that because...
Is it sort of the same as you, though?
I think I do have the prediction talent, because I was at a secret comedy club yesterday night in a garage and there were very talented underground comedians there and when I look at them I'm like yeah, they are going good, they're gonna, they're gonna be the next generation of real comedians.
Does every counter culture inevitably have these people that are gonna be popularized in the forefront, just like you were, because the way you described your comedy to me and your videos to me was it was bringing a style of comedy and video that literally didn't exist there.
So in here, where we were not used to having lockdowns and Not having communist style rules, As soon as somebody goes against that and starts a counterculture against that, are they bound to become launched into the spotlight?
Well, if they just keep doing it and keep getting better at it, of course, fame and fortune will find them.
But I didn't predict Chris Sky and Adam Skelly getting this much popular.
In fact, Chris Sky got so much popular, his video with you in this studio got translated into Turkish and got thousands and thousands of views in Turkey.
Counterculture Under Siege00:07:45
And I'm also a translator.
I worked as a translator.
I translated, you know, I translated not only for personal stuff, I like translating books, music, words, and everything, also humor, sense of humor.
So in Turkey, that's what I was doing.
I was kind of bringing the Western sense of humor to Turkey.
And I believe that's why it also gained a lot of attention because the youth in Turkey is very westernized.
Like, how can you not be?
Because on the internet, the TV and everything.
And the counterculture is not us.
The counterculture is the rulers of Turkey, the dominant ideology, the dominant belief in Turkey.
They are the counter-culture.
They are countering the youth.
We're not countering them.
And right now they are dominant, but they're not dominant if you don't allow them to be dominant in your mind and in your surrounding with your friends.
Anyways, I'm just mumbling.
No, that's very interesting because to have people in power who aren't really supported by the youth, which appears to be sadly how it is, at least in Canada right now.
If you talk to young people, they're very confused.
But at the same time, obviously, as I'm sure they are in Turkey, they might be super liberal in one way, but they don't necessarily support, they don't know what they're supporting.
Look, just imagine yourself as a Turkish youth, okay?
I do every day.
Yeah, let's say you're a 15-year-old Turkish youth.
And let's say when you were five years old, which is 10 years ago, the Turkish currency, lira, was equivalent to the United States dollar.
One US dollar would make one Turkish, I'm sorry, yes, 1.17 Turkish liras.
Yeah, okay.
It was almost similar.
So now, but one dollar now makes almost 10 liras.
Within the 10 years, Turkish currency has devalued so much.
Not only that, but also the government taxes have increased so much.
When you're buying an Xbox or a PlayStation, as if the currency difference wasn't enough, you also have to buy the same device for the government when you pay taxes.
The taxes, it's actually, the taxes itself cost more than the product.
And let's say you're a young man like me, 21, 20 years old, and you want to buy a car.
And you have to buy the same car, four of the same car, to the government.
So the car itself costs four more times because of the taxes.
If Turkey can destroy its currency like that, and you know Erdogan blames, you know, foreign actors.
He blames, oh, it's the West.
Oh, they're coming onto us because they are jealous of our new bridge, our new airport, and so on.
And this is all nonsense.
You are the guy who is appointing the central bank.
What's his position called?
Whatever.
So it's actually him destroying the currency itself.
It's the government doing it.
If Turkish government can't do it, and if the Turkish population can submit it, why can't it not happen in Canada?
And with the lockdowns, it's kind of happening.
We see the same submission.
We see the similar rules and same reasoning.
So anyways, I don't want to deviate from my point.
That's fine.
No, I see a lot of it happening as well.
And I wonder if this is just something that happens naturally when a government grants itself power.
All these chips start falling where they might not necessarily be doing it on purpose, but their actions towards other things, like valuing gender pronouns, for example, over hiring somebody who's really good at economics.
Or when you look at the environment minister, she's not a bright woman.
She has a fake voice.
She literally has a pretend voice.
She's not the person I would put in charge to control environmental regulations and a carbon tax and what have you and everything else that they try to implement.
Other things are more important to them.
So I'm sure that I'm wondering if all this stuff just comes together as a failing government, whether or not they do it on purpose or not.
Do you have any opinion on that?
Well, as you know, in Canada, almost half of the population doesn't even vote.
And if I'm not wrong, the first federal election in Canada only had, but we should fact check this, only had around 15% participation.
So 85% of the population didn't even vote.
And in Turkey, it's almost half-half, I think maybe more than half, to voting participation.
And when Erdogan expanded his power and became omnipotent in Turkey, it happened with a referendum.
And the referendum result was 51% in favor, 49% not in favor.
And so what?
Does that justify him having all that power over 100% of the population?
In my opinion, no.
I think we have a population that is not very much aware the government is and the police is acting on their behalf, at their expense.
But we need to be aware of this and not let the government and the enforcers act in contrary to our values and our beliefs, our convictions.
I think a lot of it is people not looking at the long run and the logic of a lot of the policies that get into place.
I mean, I mentioned it a bit, but when you look at things, it comes from the term immediate gratification.
Oh, right now we're putting this bill into place where we're going to stop people from saying bad medical advice on the internet, for example, is the rationale.
They don't think about five years later when who decides what the bad information is, who decides who gets to be censored.
And when you're putting it into the hands of a small group of people, you're really letting other people decide for you.
And I also think in that sense it's a form of laziness.
The same thing about gun control.
Oh, I don't want me or you to have a gun, but I entrust in this other man who went to a college police foundation program for two years.
Most people don't have the capability of thinking beyond stage one.
Thomas Sall has a book on it.
I forgot the name of the book, but he explains the policies that were introduced in Canada.
I'm sorry, in the United States, that were, you know, how it was like stage one.
You know, oh, we're gonna rescue the poor by building housing, for example.
And then, but this is just stage one thinking.
And then if you have the stage two thinking, you would know the economic consequences of that.
And then the stage three thinking would be the, you know, you know, there are like stages of thinking.
You can't just operate with stage one thinking.
You have to think beyond, you have to think long term.
Masked Arrests00:12:21
I was talking to one of our editors, cameramen, everything.
Everybody's everything now at this company.
Matt Brevner, and about how sometimes he gets questioned about his ideology versus his, you know, his ethnic background and his appearance.
Do you ever get people criticizing you saying, hey, you're Turkish, you're non-white, how come you work for this company?
How come you believe these things?
Does that even happen to you?
Does the opportunity ever come up?
That happened to me at Kingston when those gang members were attacking us.
And it happened at the city hall when other gang members were attacking us.
They were saying, yeah, you're not even white.
I'm like, what does that have to do with anything?
I think because in their mind, in their eco-bubble, in their small, closed mind, they think that everybody acts according to the benefit of their group.
And that's how it ought to be.
Everybody should stick with their group.
But what group?
Like, what are you talking about?
You know, me, I have like Turkish blood, I have Armenian blood, I have Slavic blood, and so on and so forth.
I'm all over the place.
And then I got, you know, I live in Canada, I'm dual citizen, my family background is Muslim, I'm not Muslim, I kind of quit.
So like there's all that, and then, you know, like, how are you going to put me in a box?
How are you going to classify me?
You know, you're not going to accurately classify me.
I can't accurately classify you or anybody, any other individual, because we're all individuals.
That's a good point.
Now, when we talk about individuals and classifying people, I want to segue that to the Montreal police, who have no problem doing that.
They've shown to our cameramen and our reporters that they have no problem saying you're Jew media, no problem saying what do you think you're doing out here, what's your reasoning for doing out there.
So I want to quickly cut to some of the coverage we had because it's been crazy, the lockdown/slash curfew coverage in Montreal, which Mocha was a huge part of.
So let's cut to that for a moment.
What's going on?
Are you just taking me?
This is why we're documenting what's happening here, guys.
So this is what's going on.
They love shining the lights at me.
So a lot of that stuff, Mocha, the police are flashing lights in your guys' eyes so you can't record stuff.
Again, making like, and I'm not one to throw around anti-Semitism, but like calling people Jew media is not exactly something that's becoming of a police officer.
So they're doing anything they can to criticize you guys and stop you from filming.
Why is that in your opinion?
And have you ever experienced anything like that before with curfews?
As if the 8.30 to 9.30 difference really does anything.
What's your thoughts on all of that?
Montreal, Quebec, is really something different in terms of when you compare to other cities and provinces in Canada.
It's not only the building structure, the city planning is European looking, the police is also a little bit like that.
In fact, the police acts like Turkish police in Turkey.
In Turkey, the police doesn't also like being recorded, whether you're a journalist or not.
And just you pulled me to the studio.
I was actually editing my interview with Alex Bose, the man who was choked for not wearing a mask by the Montreal police.
And he was just standing there recording them.
And they grabbed him using not wearing a mask in a demonstration as an excuse to assault him.
And when I shared that video around on Twitter, it reached to an international audience.
And Americans who have no idea what's going on in Canada, they said, there must be more to this.
There must be something you're not showing to us.
He must have done something.
He must have said something to deserve that kind of arrest, let alone, you know, reason being the mask.
So they just almost can't believe that we're actually going through this thing where police can.
It's like what people complain about in major cities in the U.S. where people randomly being pulled over.
Whether you agree with that or not, it's I'm going to find something to charge you with, essentially, isn't it?
Yeah, but I think he attracted police station out of thousands of other people who were not wearing masks there because he was recording.
I 100% believe that.
And I will attest to that because when I first come to Montreal to cover a lockdown protest, while I was recording the police detaining a gentleman for not wearing a mask, and I was recording this from afar from the protest and afar from the police.
I was like in the middle.
And there are like hundreds of people passing by, just ordinary people not wearing masks.
The sergeant itself, who later raided our boat, the same sergeant, he came all the way up to me, like we were foot to foot.
He came so close to me.
And I said, hey, can you step two meters apart?
So I move backwards and then he grabs my arm.
And then when I start recording with my phone, because I had the zoom lens on my camera, so with my phone, it's like you can't see everything.
And I'm telling him that he's assaulting me, he's pulling me.
He pulled me to the police area and then gave me a ticket.
And then later on that day, there was another camera person, not with Rebel News, but he was wearing his mask.
But later on, I found out that he was getting arrested now.
And I've seen him at other protests later on.
He's not a violent person.
And the police made him wear his mask with their hands.
They put the mask on him, which is not okay because his hands were handcuffed.
So if you're not able to remove your mask or put your mask or adjust your mask, you are not supposed to wear it.
It's true.
And there's a clip of you as well.
I think it's the French police there trying to give you a mask.
And you take it from their police officers.
As always, they do that to all the people who they find.
I don't know if it makes any sense.
I think it's a policy that if they find someone, they have to give them a mask.
But this is not just, you know, can you please wear it?
No, it's like, you will wear this mask or we're going to write you another $15-50 ticket or we're going to jail you.
So it's an upfront threat.
And that happened when on, I think it was March 27, when me, Lincoln, and Efron were headed to another lockdown protest in Montreal.
And there was a lot of traffic, so we were a little late.
But the protest didn't start yet.
Lincoln drops us off in front of the protest.
We don't even get into the protest yet.
It's been just two minutes.
And we're just recording from afar from the protest.
Two police officers walking towards us.
And we're recording them because they're looking for someone who's not wearing a mask.
Well, they didn't dive into the protest area given that they were only two police officers and they have a, I believe, quota to fill.
So they came all the way up to us when they saw us recording them.
And then they came up to us, they grabbed us and gave us tickets.
And then with their naked hands, they tried to basically give us contaminated masks.
And what do we have?
A police force.
And you know, I asked the police, I emailed the media relations and they wouldn't respond to me.
They said, we don't comment on these issues.
There's just so much hypocrisy and they obviously target people who are recording.
And I might, if I might add, you might just say, hey, why don't you just wear the mask?
You know, just wear the mask and record it.
I did that.
I wore my gas mask, which doesn't protect you from COVID, but it passes through.
You know, the police doesn't care.
They don't even know.
The mask they're wearing outside doesn't even protect them.
But this time, later on that day, after we were, I didn't wear the mask that they gave me because I'm saying, you touched that with your naked hands.
But later on, as we were recording someone getting arrested, Efron got arrested.
And then, so they made their threats.
So if we were to wear those contaminated masks, there wouldn't be a problem.
He got arrested.
And then Lincoln got arrested.
And then all the while I was wearing my mask.
And because it's a big mask that I was wearing, because the police uses pepper spray and tear gas at those protests, I removed the mask like this down to my chin so that I can speak.
And I said, why are you arrested?
Why are you arresting two members of the media?
Because it's outrageous.
And who appeared to be in charge of the riot police there, the cop came up to me and said, put back your mask.
Put up your mask back.
And for two seconds, I did it.
And then psychologically, I'm like, no, you're not obedient.
What are you doing?
So I removed it.
I said, no, I'm not doing it because there's no one around me.
I'm on the sidewalk.
The protest has passed, has long passed.
And I'm trying to ask a question.
I just put down the mask so that I can speak.
And you're not going to just come up to me and say, put the mask up.
I don't care if you're a police officer or whoever you, I don't care if you're Justin Schruder.
I don't care if you're, you know, whoever you are.
And so I said, what are you going to do?
Are you going to arrest me?
Come and arrest me.
Go ahead.
Go ahead and arrest me.
Why?
Because I put my mask two seconds to talk.
I don't listen to you.
Come on, coerc me.
Come arrest me.
Go ahead.
Come.
Go ahead.
And you're going to arrest me over there?
I don't obey you.
Come and arrest me, I said.
And that's what they did.
And they threw away my phone so that I wouldn't be able to record afterwards while they were coercing me to put my hands on top of the police cruiser while one officer is holding my arm and he threw away my phone.
And that officer was speaking in French, blah, blah, blah, rebel news.
And then he started speaking in English.
told me a real journalist if you were a real journalist you wouldn't be arguing with the police and then he looked at my trespass like this he said you know anyone can print that and and and then as they were letting me go I said can I just say one thing they said yeah I said remember your oath and then I won it's not it's not and you know one officer was asking me what's your postal code And I'm like, I don't remember, I have to check.
And he said, oh, how old are you?
You know, trying to make a joke that I don't remember the postal code.
I wish I said this, but I didn't.
I should have, right there and then said, well, how old are you?
You look like 35 years old, yet you don't remember your oath.
It's a very scary situation when an adult man just thinks that he has an innate power over you.
I don't agree with that.
I can get into my opinions on that at all.
Yes, I believe in respecting the law to a degree, but when it comes to things like that, like do what I say, even though it makes no sense, or else you're going to get arrested.