Ezra Levant critiques Jacinda Ardern’s 81-second dystopian video framing her government as New Zealand’s "Ministry of Truth," echoing 1984’s propaganda state, while dismissing COVID-19 info outside official channels. He ties her policies—zero-COVID lockdowns, gun bans, and alleged Five Eyes leaks—to socialist authoritarianism, warning Canada’s Trudeau could follow suit: excusing China’s Xinjiang oppression and Cuba’s crackdown on protesters while demonizing domestic conservatives. Levant argues Ardern’s "single source of truth" approach risks eroding democracy, citing Pitbull’s rare celebrity defense of freedom as a counterpoint to globalist silence. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello my friends, I have a crazy video I want to show you.
It is 81 seconds long.
That's not very long, is it?
But those 81 seconds should chill you to the bone and make your hair stand up like a porcupine.
It's five minutes into the future, what life is like when you allow your free country to become unfree.
It's a video from Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of New Zealand.
Now you won't be able to see the video.
Obviously, you'll just hear the audio because this is a podcast, but I want to invite you to become a subscriber to what we call Reb News Plus.
It's the video version of this podcast.
You can see the video and watch her rictus grin as she tells you what she wants you to know.
I'm going to spend today's monologue talking about this 81-second video and why you should be afraid.
Please consider subscribing to Rebel News Plus.
It's $8 a month or $80 for the whole year.
Just go to rebelnews.com and click subscribe.
You'll get my show, David Menzie's Show, Shield Gun Reed's Show, a show from Andrew Chapados, and you'll help keep Rebel News strong and independent at least until we're destroyed by the censors like Canada's version of Jacinda Ardern.
Here's today's podcast.
Tonight, I have a video that's like a time machine.
It'll show us what life in Canada will be like one day into the future.
It's July 15th, 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 to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I saw a movie once.
I don't remember what it was called.
It wasn't a very good movie, but the conceit, the concept of the movie was someone who could see the future, but only a few minutes into the future, not days or weeks or years.
And before the real adventure in the movie happened, he was wasting away his days in a casino where he worked as an entertainer, and during his breaks, he would play a little bit of blackjack because his magical power allowed him to see into the future just far enough to know what the dealer's cards would be.
Sharing Trustworthy Information00:11:14
So seeing into the future a few minutes was still pretty useful.
So let me show you a video that will show you a future so close that might already be here.
Or maybe it's just five minutes in our future.
It's a video from New Zealand.
It stars the Prime Minister of New Zealand, a woman who was named Jacinda Ardern.
She got her training in politics as the president of the International Socialist Youth.
She trained in New York City and London, and then she went back to New Zealand to make that country a little bit of an experiment, a lab experiment in socialism and globalism.
It won't shock you to know that the former president of a socialist international youth is a big fan of communist China.
Look at this story here.
Her party is funded by Chinese communists, which aren't too far away from New Zealand if you look at the globe.
Her government has been credibly accused of leaking Five Eyes security and intelligence secrets to China.
As you know, Five Eyes is the name given to the sort of the super friends of NATO, the closest allies, Canada and the U.S. and the UK, Australia and New Zealand, the five closest allies, even closer than France and Germany.
Here's a story in the Daily Mail just a couple months ago.
Let me read the first part.
Chinese communist regime celebrates Jacinda Ardern's attempts to drift away from the Five Eyes Intelligence Network as Beijing heaps praise on the cooperative New Zealand leader.
Communist Party mouthpiece heaps praise on New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern.
The Kiwi leader's government has publicly voiced concerns about Five Eyes.
China has been locked in a diplomatic spat with Australia.
Over the past year, New Zealand is the only Five Eyes nation not to condemn Hong Kong crackdown.
Yeah, so that's Jacinda Ardern's New Zealand.
They have the harshest gun control in the free world.
They have the harshest censorship in the free world now too, both of which Justin Trudeau is only too happy to follow.
And it won't surprise you to hear that the harshest lockdowns in the world are New Zealand too.
I know that Canada has the longest lockdowns, especially in Toronto, which I would call the stupidest lockdowns, but New Zealand's are the most insane.
They have what they call a zero COVID approach, which means a single case.
Not even someone with a cough, certainly not anyone in the hospital, just anyone who tests positive, well, they lock down the whole place.
I mean, it won't work.
It can't work.
You can never defeat viruses down to zero.
It's been a million-year battle between humans and viruses, and our immune system generally wins.
You can't take viruses down to zero.
They will always exist.
People have to be people.
We have to talk to each other, meet each other, travel, live, unless you're a kooky Maoist.
But the thing about Maoism, especially being funded by China and praising China and not condemning China and generally being colonized politically by China, is that in the end you have to adopt China's brutal ways to shut down dissidents because not everyone in a country, even one as quirky and socialist as New Zealand, not everyone wants to live unfree.
Some Kiwi still love, the legacy of freedom inherited from the UK and Western civilization.
So what do you do about people who just don't listen and more importantly, who say things you don't like?
What do you do with people who disagree with you?
Well you silence them, you censor them and you set up a Ministry of Truth, as it was called in Orwell's book 1984.
And here is my five minutes into the future time machine.
I want to show you a video of our future five minutes from now.
It's a short video.
It's just 80 seconds long.
I think it's incredible.
I'm going to play it, then I'm going to talk about it, then I'm going to play it again.
Watch your life five minutes into the future.
We will share with you the most up-to-date information daily.
You can trust us as a source of that information.
You can also trust the Director General of Health and the Ministry of Health.
For that information, do feel free to visit at any time to clarify any rumour you may hear, covid19.gobt.nz.
Otherwise, dismiss anything else.
We will continue to be your single source of truth.
We will provide information frequently.
We will share everything we can, everything you are, else you see a grain of salt.
And so I really ask people to focus.
The gracious example of that appears to be this text which originated in Malaysia and has kind of become a viral hope in Australia and in New Zealand.
How irresponsible is it the people that are sharing that news of a lockdown imminent in New Zealand?
Yeah, and look, that's the kind of thing that adds to the anxiety that people feel.
So I continue to share the message.
New Zealanders must prepare, but do not panic.
Prepare.
And when you see those messages, remember that unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth.
And I really ask people, just visit covid19.govt.enz.
It has all of the up-to-date information.
And we will continue to provide everything you need to know.
Wow, let's go through that slowly.
The New Zealand government will give you the most up-to-date information daily.
That's not really that controversial a statement, but even that really isn't true, is it?
I have no beef with New Zealand, but it's a small country far away from everything else.
It has five million people in it, so it's smaller than the greater Toronto area.
It's famous for sheep and for its beautiful empty wilderness.
You can see why the Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed there.
But I'm not sure if Little New Zealand really is the cutting edge of COVID-19 information.
I'm not saying that the World Health Organization or the CDC or the FDA are trustworthy, but they are more authoritative.
They're a bit more leading edge, but that's not what Comrade Jacinda says.
She says, you can trust us as a source of that information.
Is that true?
Can you really trust any politician, any government?
I'm skeptical of any and all governments, but I'm especially skeptical of those who say, trust me.
Do you trust her?
The Five Eyes Security Alliance don't seem to trust her, and she doesn't trust them.
In the past 18 months, has New Zealand's government got everything right?
No government has.
So when she says you can trust her, that's not quite right, is it?
She'll clarify any rumor you may hear.
Really?
But what is a rumor?
Sometimes it's false.
Sometimes it's true.
Sometimes it takes a while to figure it out.
Did that Wuhan Institute of Virology cause the pandemic?
Which category would you put that in?
A rumor?
True, false, still being proven?
And of course, all the people, of all the people to clarify that rumor for you, would you really let Comrade Jacinda be the decider?
Otherwise, dismiss anything else, she said.
Really?
Then that's a bit closed-minded, isn't it?
Isn't science and in fact all learning, really the clash of ideas, testing a hypothesis, checking it out against the facts, hearing new ideas, revising your theories in light of new information?
If Comrade Jacinda doesn't say it, we have to dismiss it.
Anything else?
We have to ignore anything else?
That's a bit imperious, isn't it?
That's a bit incurious.
It's actually not science, is it?
That's more like a religion or at least a superstition.
Priestess Jacinda tells you not to listen to anyone else.
But if she were so sure that she was right, why would she be so nervous about you hearing any other views?
But then she just comes out and says it.
We will continue to be your single source of truth, she said.
You know, I don't think there's anyone in the world, let alone a politician or a government, that can say that.
I don't think there's anyone with that level of perfection.
That's something Jesus would say.
And of course, even he had his disbelievers, and he still does to this day.
Imagine a mortal, a politician, no less, any sinning human, imperfect in every way, claiming not only to be the perfect proprietor of the facts, but also the knowledge about what those facts mean, the wisdom about to handle that knowledge, and finally the truth.
Those are all different things, knowledge, wisdom, facts, truth.
You can have facts, but not the true truth, because you might misunderstand them and misinterpret them or not put them in proper context.
But not Priestess Jacinda.
She knows the deep truth, and only she does.
But just to be safe, don't listen to anyone else, okay?
Everything else you see, a grain of salt, she said.
It's not just that she's so sure she's right, she's so sure everyone else is wrong.
Now that was quite a performance.
But what did the journalists say to all that?
You know, people who are skeptical for a living, journalists, people who are curious for a living, who, what, where, why, when, how, people who engage in a form of science, namely they test things, they measure things, who look at things and test theories by comparing them to the facts that they find.
People who try to get more than one point of view, knowing that the truth is a bit of a process to find.
People who challenge authority by nature, actually.
People who try to poke holes in certainty, people who like to deflate pompous blowhards.
So what did the journalist say to all that?
She asked for the high priestess to wax eloquent about just how irresponsible everyone else is.
Hey, way to speak truth to power, sister.
Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth, said the high priestess.
No, only Jesus could say that.
And he's not here right now in the pandemic debate.
And I'm not in your cult.
Watch the whole clip again now with those ideas in mind.
We will share with you the most up-to-date information daily.
You can trust us as a source of that information.
You can also trust the Director General of Health and the Ministry of Health.
For that information, do feel free to visit at any time to clarify any rumor you may hear, covid19.gobt.nz.
Otherwise, dismiss anything else.
We will continue to be your single source of truth.
We will provide information frequently.
We will share everything we can, everything you are, else you see a grain of salt.
And so I really ask people to focus.
Although the greatest example of that appears to be this text which originated in Malaysia and has kind of become a viral hope in Australia and in New Zealand.
Demonizing Cuba's History00:09:08
How irresponsible is it the people that are sharing that news of a lockdown imminent in New Zealand?
Yeah, and look, that's the kind of thing that adds to the anxiety that people feel.
So I continue to share the message.
New Zealanders must prepare, but do not panic.
Prepare.
And when you see those messages, remember that unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth.
And I really ask people, just visit covid19.gobt.ng.
It has all of the up-to-date information.
And we will continue to provide everything you need to know.
Saw how she ended it.
We will continue to provide everything you need to know.
Well, that could be true if you look at it in a certain way.
We really do now know all we need to know about this creepy little communist Jacinda Ardern, don't we?
Cuba has made a mass arrest and appears to have shut down on the island after people took to the streets in unprecedented numbers to denounce the government.
Will Canada condemn the communist regime's oppression of dissent, or do you agree with President Diaz-Canal that the U.S. embargo and Miami-funded mercenaries are to blame for the crisis?
We, as a country, Canada, has always stood in friendship with the Cuban people.
We have always called for greater freedoms and more defense of human rights in Cuba.
We will continue to be there to support Cubans in their desire for greater peace, greater stability, and greater voice in how things are going.
Well, there you have it.
Justin Trudeau asked to make a statement about the brutal crackdown on Cuban democracy protesters, the biggest Cuban democracy protest, well, ever, I think.
To my pleasant surprise, Joe Biden has actually been firmer on the subject than I thought he would be, firmer than Barack Obama was as president.
But Justin Trudeau, you know him.
He's in love with the Castros, and the most he could muster was he stands with the Cuban people.
But that doesn't say anything about getting rid of the totalitarian regime under which they live or their brutal suppression of these democracy protests.
Tony is down to talk about it is our friend Spencer Fernando from spencerfernando.com.
And I got to tell you, he's got a great article on this.
You've got to read it.
It's called We Wouldn't Put Up with Pro-Fascist Leaders.
So why do those who support communists get a free pass?
Spencer, great article.
And you really do us a favor by reminding us of how obsequious Justin Trudeau is towards the Castro family in particular.
He's just got the soft spot for tyrants, doesn't he?
Yeah, especially communists, right?
I mean, Trudeau has no problem, and the liberals in general have no problem accusing people of being fascists or totalitarian.
But when it comes to communists, all of a sudden it's somewhat different, right?
I mean, we saw the statement he issued when Fidel Castro died, and it was like, it looked like it was written by, you know, the communist propaganda department.
It was just absurd.
So yeah, a total soft spot.
I mean, obviously his family has a real history with the Castros.
You know, we've seen all the photos of his father and his mother, you know, visiting Fidel Castro.
So, you know, it's quite disturbing.
And it's such a double standard, right?
Because, you know, say like a right-wing government in the European Union, like Hungary does something, right?
And even though if it's Democratic, people voted for it, but it's like a crackdown on immigration or something.
All of a sudden, you know, all the leaders, oh, this is terrible.
This is unacceptable.
And all right-wing, blah, blah, blah.
But then when it comes to, you know, an actual authoritarian communist state, just look at how few people even are willing to say communism, right?
You almost in many of the media reports, you don't even see people calling it the communist government of Cuba, right?
It's all just the Cuban government, right?
So it's very interesting how they treat this.
Yeah.
You know, I'm glad you mentioned Hungary, which, by the way, is not a fascist country.
Exactly.
I recall that when Yair Bolsonaro won in Brazil, Trudeau did not even make a statement of congratulations.
I mean, normally you just say we congratulate President Bolsonaro and look forward to working with him.
No mention, no shout-out, no even diplomatic bare minimum there.
So Trudeau knows how to put conservatives in the icebox.
But by God, let me, you know, I'm reading from your article here.
I was just looking through your great piece on this.
And you reprinted Trudeau's statement when Fidel Castro died.
I just got to read two lines.
This is from Trudeau himself.
The Cuban people had a deep and lasting affection for El Comandante.
We join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader.
So it's not enough that Trudeau himself slobbers his affection on the tyrant.
He gaslights the Cuban people to say, oh, you love him.
The people love him.
The people had a deep and lasting affection for him.
The people are mourning for him.
Yeah, I suppose those who aren't killed in prisons, under house arrest, or living in misery, that, I mean, that feels like a press release by some Stalinist regime itself.
Oh, the Cuban people loved you, El Comandante.
I think he fancies himself a Comandante.
Yeah, and it's so interesting, you know, when you talk about communist states.
Why don't they have free elections?
I mean, if it's such a great system and the people must love their leaders so much, surely a free and fair election would reveal the truth of that love and that popularity, right?
But of course, it doesn't happen, right?
I mean, Cuba obviously had to keep people from fleeing the country, right?
I mean, that tells you a lot about how great your system is.
You know what's going to desperately try to flee?
Oh, you're right.
And I don't know if I would use the word genocide in Cuba.
I would just say totalitarian.
I call it a prison island sometimes.
The percentage of his own population that Castro has killed or imprisoned is remarkably high.
But let's switch gears from one communist regime to another.
China.
I suppose you could say it's a sort of fascist capitalist system.
I mean, they call themselves communists.
They have the hammer and sickle.
It's called the Communist Party, but it doesn't have a lot of the tenets of economic communism, but it has the political communism, the one-party state, the tyranny.
And Trudeau not only will not criticize China, he continues to send China foreign aid, which is baffling to me.
But you could say there is a genocide going on in real time in China right now.
I don't know if you could use that word for Cuba, but you certainly can for the Xinjiang province in China where the Uyghur Muslim minority is.
You could probably say the same about Tibet.
Trudeau is so bold about calling Canada a genocidal country, but he won't actually say anything to the true tyrannies that are actively trying to ethnically cleanse their populations.
Why is he so soft on tyranny, but so hard on Canada?
It's that duality that just gets me because he's mean to his own country, but slobbering to foreign tyrants.
Yeah, well, it's, you know, in a way, it's kind of like what a lot of Marxists are really pushing, and you see it in society increasingly today, which is really the idea that you have to demoralize and demonize, you know, the history of a country and demonize the people, you know, of a country.
And then you can create a political vacuum and fill it with, obviously, you know, in many people's, what the Marxists want is, you know, a more communist state, right?
So I think Trudeau, whether he believes that personally or not, he certainly feeds into it.
I don't know if it's wittingly or unwittingly, but it's certainly something he goes along with.
And it's very interesting.
You know, I mentioned in another article kind of the needle he's threading and he and many of the political elites, which is that they're basically, you know, tearing up the foundation of Canada, you know, our history, our values, and demonizing it, and really kind of, you know, destroying faith in institutions, but at the same time, still wanting to run those institutions and still wanting those institutions to be powerful, right?
It's interesting.
Like, you don't see anyone talk about residential schools and say, well, hey, maybe this is a really good argument for why we should have limited government, right?
Maybe we should cut the size of the government and support individual freedom and let people make their own choices, right?
I mean, there's a very strong libertarian case to be made, you know, against residential schools, but you don't see people say that, right?
It's people like Justin Trudeau, Jiang Min Sing, saying, oh, look how terrible the government was.
Justin Trudeau's Paranoia00:06:45
Look at all the terrible things that happened.
Of course, they're often directing attention to the Catholic Church for political reasons.
But they say all this and then they say, oh, but the answer is to give the government more power and we'll fix it this time, right?
It's very odd to see that.
And then, of course, you talk about how they treat China, how they treat Cuba.
And it's this attitude of basically anything outside of Canada is nice and exotic and good and innocent.
And anything within Canada, oh, it's Western and European and colonialist and terrible.
And it's just, it's such a stupid way of thinking, but unfortunately, it's quite common these days.
Anything outside the country is good.
Anything inside the country is bad.
And obviously, you can't really sustain a country on that kind of thinking.
You know, Cuba is so close geographically to the United States.
And of course, there were Cuban refugees, especially after Castro took over.
The Cuban-American community is amazing for so many ways.
And they're one of the immigrant communities to America that's conservative.
And so it was interesting to me to see Biden's immigration boss say that Cuban refugees will be turned back.
Biden, who's opened the southern border with Mexico to record levels of people just walking across the one group of migrants they're against are Cubans, and I think it's because they're conservative.
Not necessarily conservative, but just they know they're anti-communist.
I think that's slightly different.
The Cuban-American community is so interesting, so artistic, so vibrant.
There's this young Cuban American, he's not that young anymore.
His stage name is Pitbull.
He's a Cuban-American rapper.
I know I'm too old to be listening to Pitbull, Spencer, but I get a kick out of him.
I want to play for you an excerpt from his Twitter rant that he did this week.
And my favorite line is when he says politics and politrix.
He says the word freedom about 10 times, but you can sense his frustration, pardon me, with politicians who aren't actually doing anything.
Here, I won't play the whole thing, but here's a minute of Pitbull saying the word freedom over and over again.
Oh my God, I wish more Hollywood types talked like this.
Here, take a listen.
And this is my way of talking to the world.
All world allies get together to help.
Global businesses get together to help.
People that we're so proud of, people such as Jeff Bezos, Cuban-American, graduated from a high school in Miami, built one of the biggest companies in the world, the richest man in the world.
He's somebody that can get involved and really help us on what we got.
All we can do is create awareness, but politics are going to be pile of tricks.
And while they figure out what they figure out, we need to figure out how to really help.
We need to get creative.
We need to figure out solutions while they're losing their lives over there literally for something that we wake up every day and appreciate, which is freedom.
So to everybody out there, stand up, step up, and if you don't understand, get with the motherfucking program and wake up.
Because this is about freedom and it's about human rights.
And to everybody in Cuba, keep the fight up.
Paratolo Cuano que tanaya yaya yaya ya afue dera a todo lo que tapasano uncuba aramijo.
Listen, he doesn't have a lot of specifics there, but I like the fact that he's saying freedom more than you hear often in showbiz.
And I respect the fact that he thinks politicians are more about tricks and tricksters than getting things done.
I don't know.
I just wish there were more people in showbiz in Canada or the U.S. that cared about freedom.
So much of Hollywood is on bended knee towards communist China these days.
Yeah, and it's kind of, there's a history of that, right?
I mean, you saw, you know, a lot of, I guess you could call them, you know, activists or intellectuals or celebrities in the past have always been very much, you know, pro-Marxist or pro-communist.
Of course, not to actually live in those systems, right?
I mean, they are glad to make a ton of money in the capitalist system, become very rich, enjoy their freedom and their wealth.
But for other people, yeah, communism must be a great system.
It seems to be how they think, right?
And so it's, yeah, it's been like that for a long time.
We see a lot of it in Canada, too.
I mean, politicians kind of flirting with Marxism who, you know, they don't want to live in that kind of system and they're glad to succeed in a capitalist society.
But for other people, yeah, let's impose that on other people seems to be kind of gratitude.
So yeah, there's very few celebrities who are actually willing to defend freedom and openly criticize communism.
Yeah, you see a lot more of the John Cena types who's blubbering his apologies to the communist regime for offending them.
Well, Spencer, I just want to salute you for your article.
I'll just read the headline again for our folks who haven't read it yet.
You can get this at spencerfernando.com.
I recommend you sign up for Spencer's emails.
They're great.
This article is called We Wouldn't Put Up with Pro-Fascist Leaders.
So why do those who support communists get a free pass?
Alas, there's so few differences between communists and fascists.
It's remarkable.
Great article, Spencer.
Thanks for being with us today.
Look forward to talking to you again soon.
You're welcome.
Take care.
All right.
There you have it, Spencer.
Fernando, stay with us.
more happening.
What did you think of that video I showed of Jacinda Ardern?
It's like Justin Trudeau as a female form, except for I think Jacinda Ardern is a little smarter than Trudeau, a little bit more gripped by the details.
She's actually accomplished things in life.
She was the boss of the international socialist movement.
So she's a bit of an organizer, and she has absolutely pulled New Zealand away from the rest of the free countries and has put it into China's orbit.
I fear, and the reason I called it a five-minute time machine, is I fear that's what Trudeau wants to do.
I fear that Trudeau wants to pull us away from America's orbit and the orbit of the Free West and to continue to crack down on our freedoms and to be the source of truth and the only source of truth and to tell us not to listen to anyone else and to continue to ally with China.
You might think everything we say about Justin Trudeau is a wild and paranoid fantasy.
I suppose it could be.
But seeing five minutes in the future, what Jacinda Ardern's actually doing, no, I don't think we're paranoid, or if we are, that doesn't mean Trudeau is also not out to get our freedoms.
That's the show for today until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home.