Ezra Levant critiques Canada’s Trudeau government’s Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization (QCJO) framework, where Pablo Rodriguez—replacing convicted eco-activist Stephen Gilbo—forces tech giants like Facebook and Google to subsidize approved media while risking $15M fines for "fake news." Rebel News, excluded from debates despite court rulings, faces suppression for dissenting on vaccine mandates and martial law-like policies. Levant contrasts Noam Chomsky’s inconsistent shift toward climate authoritarianism with RFK Jr.’s principled opposition to corporate fascism, while Roman Baber’s expulsion from Ontario’s PC for lockdown defiance highlights a growing demand for uncompromising leadership. The QCJO system risks silencing independent voices under financial and ideological pressure, reshaping media freedom in Canada. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I'm going to tell you about a ridiculous acronym, QCJO.
Doesn't exactly trip off the lips, does it?
That stands for Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization.
And who qualifies you?
Is there like some, I don't know, College of Physicians and Surgeons, but for journalists?
Is there some board of experts?
No, no, no.
Don't be silly.
It's Trudeau's government.
He's going to decide who's a qualified journalist or not.
That's the qualified part there.
I'll go into it with you and give you my thoughts on the subject.
I'd like you to see the video version of it.
I want you to see Pablo Rodriguez answer some questions.
He's the new heritage minister.
But to see it, obviously, you need the video version of this podcast.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
It's only $8 a month.
I say only because you get a lot of good stuff.
My daily show in video format, plus weekly shows from four of my colleagues.
So that's a lot of stuff for about half the price of Netflix.
I encourage you to go there.
Plus, I want you to know we rely on that money because we don't take a dime from Trudeau, which is one of the reasons he can't control us.
All right, here's to this podcast.
Tonight, the Trudeau government moves to regulate the news media.
And the only questions the reporters have are, what's in it for me?
It's April 6th, and this is the Answer of the Vance 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 the government.
But why publish them?
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
Do you know who Pablo Rodriguez is?
He's the new heritage minister taking over from Stephen Gilbo.
And what he shares with Stephen Gilbo is that he's a bit of a criminal.
I don't know if you know this, but whereas Stephen Gilbo was arrested and convicted of vandalism, hooliganism, a stunt at the CN Tower in the name of eco-activism, Pablo Rodriguez was actually never prosecuted for drunk driving.
He managed to slither his way out of it by playing the political card of a liberal.
Some headlines to this effect.
It reminds me of when Justin Trudeau said that there was a bit of a criminal charge in the family, and Trudeau's dad made a few phone calls, and the whole thing went away.
Remember that story?
Yeah, it pays to be a liberal.
You get out of the worst pickles, and before you know it, you're a drunk driver in cabinet.
That's not my main beef with Pablo Rodriguez, though, but it shows that Justin Trudeau leads by example.
I mean, he's been convicted more than any other prime minister in history of violating the Conflict of Interest Act, so he sort of set the moral tone.
If he's a lawbreaker, he can't very well keep out Stephen Gilbo and Pablo Rodriguez from cabinet for being lawbreakers, too.
And in fact, the fact that they're lawbreakers who are lawmakers is sort of the point is that these people don't see democracy itself as the end.
They see elected office as a means to their own end.
In the case of both men, it's radical.
Stephen Gilbo believed in censorship very deeply, and now he believes in shutting down the oil sands and all carbon dioxide use.
Here he is saying that he supports high prices.
There will be no more oil production in Canada.
He wants high prices and energy poverty because he wants you to stop using energy.
Let's finish on this.
Today, the Ontario government became the latest province to cut its share of provincial gas taxes.
Will drop by 11 cents a liter starting July 1st for six months to help Ontarians deal with the higher cost of living, and it will have an effect of effectively of blunting the increase in the federal carbon tax.
So do you support provinces cutting gasoline taxes or does that undermine the role of and the intent of higher carbon pricing it?
It it does, goes against um our efforts to to fight climate change and and we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that you know we've gone through a pandemic, there is a, there is a terrible crisis happening right now in Ukraine, we're seeing inflation, but all of these crises will will go and and climate change will still be there.
And climate change is killing people in Canada, 700 deaths last year in Bc alone related to the, the heat domes, a 200 increase in in heat relations.
So you, you wish provinces were not reducing their gas taxes exactly.
There are other things that provinces could, could do to both help customers uh, face it face inflation, as well as fighting climate change.
They're just going for the easy solution and probably the, a one that is short-term in in terms of political uh, political popularity.
So that's the environment minister, who used to be the heritage minister, but Pablo Rodriguez the drunk driver.
He is uh the heritage minister and besides, from a gorgeous head of hair, he shares Trudeau and Gilbo's belief in censoring the enemies of the government.
Trouble is, there's not a lot of enemies of the government left in Canada.
They've all been corrupted.
There's two ways to go after an enemy, I suppose one is the carrot and one is the stick.
And in the case of the stick, Trudeau and his heritage ministers have offered hundreds of millions of dollars in I don't know, I don't.
I don't think there's any problem calling them bribes to news organizations.
In fact, we revealed a few months ago that, prior to the last federal election, Trudeau made an emergency payment of 61 million dollars to different uh news media companies on the eve of the election, and none of those companies reported that they took the cash.
It took an access to information request to get the names of them.
We published the name dozens and dozens of pages.
It's hard to believe, but there are 1500 news media companies in Canada that took the payoff from Trudeau.
I didn't even know there were 1500 news companies in Canada, but they took the dough.
I think Trudeau's brilliant in that way.
He doesn't need to nationalize them like the CBC.
Have them pretend to be private, have them pretend to be independent and ask him tough questions and then just pay them a subsidy on an annual basis.
That's important too.
Keep them on their best behavior, because they know they'll have to make the grant request again and again.
Don't let them get out of line.
You know uh, it would have taken billions and billions of dollars to buy up and nationalize these media companies, but renting them is far cheaper and it can continues the illusion of opposition.
But you can't really oppose someone who you rely on for money.
We know that.
That's why ads in a newspaper are marked as ads so that the reader is aware that someone paid to have you read that.
I don't know why we're similarly not marking journalistic reports paid for by Trudeau with that same disclaimer.
How can you trust a journalist to report on Trudeau when he's paid by Trudeau?
We didn't have an answer to that ever.
Well, this has been going on for years, and you can see the effect slowly, slowly, slowly.
You saw it, for example, during the Trucker Rebellion when the bulk of the mainstream media took the Trudeau narrative that these were violent domestic extremist terrorists who had to be denounced.
And the media party, instead of talking about Trudeau's first ever invocation of the Emergencies Act, agreed with them and were the shrillest voices demanding harsher crackdowns.
I've never seen so-called liberal journalists call for police violence before like I did then.
But yesterday, Pablo Rodriguez, the drunk driver, announced the next phase of the government regulation of the industry.
And again, if this had been done five years ago, as a shock, we're going to nationalize and regulate the industry, you would have seen journalists be appalled.
But they've been trained and conditioned over the last few years to be obedient clients of the liberal government.
So yesterday when Pablo Rodriguez had his press conference, he did two things.
First of all, he only allowed questions from approved lists of journalists.
So any skeptics or critics weren't allowed in.
And second of all, I mean, the questions were all technical questions.
How will you do this?
How will you do that?
These were journalists curious about their new workplace rules.
It would be like the boss saying, hey, we've got a new staff manual.
And staff saying, well, what are the vacation policies?
And what's the lunch break policy?
They were just asking for technical details.
None of them, not one, expressed shock that the government would dare to regulate the news media, would dare to tell them what the rules are and who is or isn't a journalist.
We've long passed that moment.
These are people who are embracing their role as de facto employees of Ottawa.
Here's just one clip from the QA just showing, I mean, you've just announced, and I'll get into the details, you've just announced media accreditation done by the government in the country.
And these journalists just have technical questions.
Now, let me tell you about this new entity, this new acronym that the government has invented.
They actually started using this a few years ago.
It's alphabet soup like so many government red tape programs.
It's called the QCJO.
That really rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?
That stands for Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization.
And who qualifies them?
Well, in Canada, journalism is not a formal profession like doctors or engineers or accountants are.
And you want your doctors and engineers and your pilots to be accredited.
You don't want just anyone flying a plane or engaging in surgery.
So there really is a qualification, an exam, standards, professional conduct.
There is none for journalism.
Journalism isn't a profession.
It's an activity.
It's like saying you're going jogging.
What are your credentials?
No, there's no credential to going jogging.
It's someone who jogs is a jogger, just to come up with an example.
Journalism is the same way.
There's no, I mean, there are journalism schools, just the way the same way there's training camps and, you know, you can get a coach to help you run better.
But journalism is someone who just writes down what happens during the day.
That's the root of the word.
You can see it in French, jour, to journalize on the happenings of the day.
There is no profession.
You can get as many qualifications as you like if that's important to you, if you think you'll learn something.
But anyone who reports is a reporter.
Anyone who has an opinion is an opinion writer.
That's how it is.
In fact, every single one of us is a publisher now since the age of the internet and social media.
If you're writing something on your Facebook page, on your LinkedIn page, on your Instagram page, you are a journalist.
In fact, quite a lot of stories are broken from people who just happen to have a cell phone in their pocket.
In the past, only professionals had video cameras on them.
It was a very rare thing.
You had to run out to get the news.
These days, every single one of us is a news reporter.
So what does the drunk driver Pablo Rodriguez mean when he says a QCJO, a qualified Canadian journalism organization?
Well, he means qualified with the qualities that Trudeau chooses.
In other words, he will make a list of who's qualified or not.
A politician will do that.
Now, one of the first questions that came up, and you can see what's on their mind, one of the accredited journalists said, uh-oh, what are you going to do if rebel news applies to be a qualified journalist?
Here, take a look at that.
What are the criteria going to be to determine who is and who isn't a news organization and would say something like rebel news qualify?
Well, I don't decide who qualifies and who doesn't.
Of course, that would be terrible in our democracy.
It's not up to the minister to say, hey, that wouldn't, yeah, that's a good idea.
This one, no, no.
Not up to the minister or the government to decide who qualifies.
There are those criteria that you refer to.
Of course, the organizations are already benefiting from the QCGO, so they're engaged in the production of original news content.
They employ two or more journalists, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Those criteria are defined there.
Gee, we're living rent-free in their head.
I'm not sure what journalists that was, but yeah, they all know they want to keep rebel news out.
I mean, it's a perfectly reasonable question because Trudeau is obsessed with banning rebel news from anything he can.
You'll remember in 2019, Trudeau banned rebel news from sending reporters to the election leadership debates in 2019.
We rushed to court.
It was an enormous victory.
And we asked these questions, which he did not like.
Remember these?
Have you, your campaign, or any other agents secured non-disclosure agreements from anyone about inappropriate sexual personal conduct?
No.
Follow-up.
The 2001 yearbook from West Point Gray Academy says that you and convicted sex offender Christopher Ingvoldson made a young student's, quote, life at WPGA a lot more interesting/slash amusing, end quote.
How did you two keep her amused?
We were teachers.
Yeah, you can see why he wanted to ban rebel news because none of the trained, you know, obedient media would dare ask those questions.
And I don't care if you like those questions or not.
They were all fair and they were put fairly.
And actually, frankly, Trudeau answered all the questions to his credit.
That was in 2019 he answered them.
You would just never have those kind of questions because you would never ask someone who's giving you an allowance prickly questions like that.
Federal Court Victory00:07:26
It's just contrary to your own survival as journalists.
So that was in 2019.
And we had a great victory in the federal court when they tried to keep us out.
But that also gave the government two years to sort of study how to keep us out.
They read the court ruling in 2019 where the federal court explained why he wasn't going to obey Trudeau and ban us, how he was going to overturn Trudeau's decision.
The judge said a number of things, that the decision was delegated to an outside party, that proper reasons weren't given, the rules weren't published in advance, we didn't have an opportunity to appeal.
It was just a two-line explanation.
The judge said, here's five reasons why we're not keeping out rebel news.
I'm ordering them in.
So, for two years, Trudeau hired expensive law firms to study that ruling and to come up with a new way to keep rebel news out in 2021.
And as sure as night follows day, we were kept out in 2021 and we went to court again.
And I was a little pessimistic because, of course, they didn't have a two-line explanation.
They had an 11-page explanation why we weren't allowed in.
They had a detailed set of rules they applied.
They studied the reasons, but it was a bit of a legal miracle, and we won and we were allowed in again.
This time, Trudeau was so furious, he refused to even acknowledge that we were journalists, even though the federal court said we were mere hours before.
Remember this when Tamara Ugalini asked a question?
Trudeau hates women who get on his wrong side.
I don't know if you noticed that, whether it's Jody Wilson-Raybould or Selena Cesar Chervanis.
Here's Tamara Ugalini.
Oh, Trudeau was furious that he was embarrassed by a woman.
Take a look.
Mr. Trudeau, the only reason that I'm allowed to ask you this question is because today the federal court ruled that the government doesn't have the right to determine who is or is not a journalist.
This is the second election in a row that the court has to overturn your government.
Do you still insist on being able to make that decision and why?
First of all, questions around accreditation were handled by the press gallery and the consortium of networks who have strong perspectives on quality journalism and the important information that is shared with Canadians.
The reality is, organizations, organizations like yours that continue to spread misinformation and disinformation on the science around vaccines,
around how we're going to actually get through this pandemic and be there for each other and keep our kids safe, is part of why we're seeing such unfortunate anger and lack of understanding of basic science.
And quite frankly, your, I won't call it a media organization, your group of individuals need to take accountability for some of the polarization that we're seeing in this country.
And I think Canadians are cluing into the fact that there is a really important decision we take about the kind of country we want to see.
And I salute all extraordinary, hardworking journalists that put science and facts at the heart of what they do and ask me tough questions every day, but make sure that they are educating and informing Canadians from a broad range of perspectives, which is the last thing that you guys do.
That was great by Tamara.
Another strong woman, Alexa Lavoie, was actually there and asked Trudeau this question, en français.
Here it is translated.
Wonderful question.
The most important question tonight, the only real question of the night, by the way, asking why the government will not accept natural immunity, people who get sick from the virus and recover naturally and have strong natural immunity, why that doesn't count in vaccine passports.
It's a great question because it counts in other countries from Israel to the United Kingdom.
That was the only interesting question that night, really, because the rest were from bought and paid for journalists.
And Trudeau refused to answer.
Remember this?
Je vais revenir rapidement sur ce qui s'est passé hier.
Vous avez déabolisé l'un des rares médias qui ne reçoit pas d'argent du gouvernement.
Vous avez exprimé votre opinion en disant que nous propageons la désinformation.
If it was, if it was the case, the supreme federal court allowed me to do it.
I am scientifically, and I surrounded.
But Israel and more vaccines au monde.
They are not rappelled vaccine.
They consider that what two vaccine are plain vaccines.
My question is that Canadien desert a rappelle de vaccine.
The privilege relies on vaccinal pension.
And to review the obligations of the prime minister, or abolition.
Yeah, again, just hours after a federal court said we are indeed journalists, Trudeau said we're not.
So here we are again with Pablo Rodriguez saying that he has invented something called the Qualified Canadian Journalist Organization and the Journalism Organization.
Again, that was actually a status that was developed a couple of years ago.
You can see that the media are obsessed with keeping rebel news out of the club.
But did you see the answer from Pablo Rodriguez?
Let me play that again for you.
It's very clear, very quick.
Take a look.
Well, I don't decide who qualifies and who doesn't.
Of course, that would be terrible in our democracy.
It's not up to the minister to say, hey, that wouldn't, yeah, that's a good idea.
This one, no, no.
Not up to the minister or the government to decide who qualifies.
There are those criteria that you refer to.
Of course, the organizations are already benefit from the QCGO, so they're engaged in the production of original news content.
They employ two or more journalists, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Those criteria are defined there.
Pablo Rodriguez is shocked, shocked that you would think the liberal government would get involved in keeping out rebel news.
Oh, that's crazy.
That's crazy.
No, they're just going to delegate that decision to their hand-picked committee.
How dare you say that the hand-picked committee, hand-picked by Trudeau, will make a decision that Trudeau would want them to do?
It's such a laugh.
But you can see that the journalists are just obediently writing it down.
They're not actual journalists anymore.
If you are a journalist who takes government money, there's an adjective in front of your name.
There's a qualifier.
You're a conditional journalist.
You're a government journalist, a rented journalist, a paid journalist, a subsidized journalist, a qualified journalist.
You put an adjective in front of the word journalist, and you've pretty much negated journalists because the essence of a journalist is independence.
Otherwise, you're not into journalism.
Government Money Adjective00:09:46
You're into advertising.
And we know you mark an ad as an ad.
So, what will all this QCJO business mean?
Now, I'll tell you a little bit more tomorrow.
I got a story for you I'm going to keep till tomorrow.
But for today, it means that Pablo Rodriguez and Justin Trudeau are going to take two big American companies, Facebook and Google, and force them to subsidize these QCJOs.
The thinking being that a lot of advertising these days is not done in newspapers or TV stations.
It's done on the internet because you can very much target people.
It's really what's for sale.
The reason Facebook is free to you as a user is because you're the product being sold.
Facebook knows everything about you, knows who your friends are, knows what you write in private messages, knows the bands you like, the food you like, sees your photos.
Facebook knows more than you about you because you've forgotten some things about you.
You've forgotten what you wrote five years ago.
You've forgotten what you read five years ago.
Facebook never forgets and has this mass of data about you, so it can sell things to you.
That's why Facebook and Google make so much money and people prefer to advertise there because they know all your secrets.
So the Liberals are going to commandeer these companies and force them to subsidize news companies, which for the privilege of linking to them, which is weird because as a news publisher myself, I can tell you you like when you're ranked highly on Google.
You like when you're shared on Facebook.
That's what drives traffic to you.
That's what gives you advertising and eyeballs.
So although Facebook and YouTube do presumably make some money by sending traffic to you, you're the main beneficiary, and we know that because most media advertise, paid advertise on YouTube and Google and Facebook.
Anyway, so this QCJO system is Justin Trudeau and Pablo Rodriguez forcing Facebook, YouTube, Google to pay money to Canadian journalists, but only to the qualified Canadian journalists.
And there's this whole complex system.
I mean, imagine trying to regulate the media.
Imagine how intricate and arcane and like a Rube Goldberg machine that is.
Just listen to this for a minute.
The complexity, the red tape, the room for corruption, the room for subjectivity, the number of people who are going to make a living being barnacles, being a kind of parasite on the actual system.
It's incredible.
Only a government could come up with something so baffling.
Take a look.
Oh, we had many discussions with Google and Facebook.
I personally met with them and there were very open, frank discussions now that the bill is table.
They all will have all the details.
I'm really looking forward to subsequent conversations with them.
They know my door is always open.
They were open to regulations.
Now, are there things they agree or disagree on the bill?
We'll know in future conversations.
But I have to say that those conversations were very frank, honest, and very, I would say, nice.
Yeah, so instead of journalists being morally outraged that Pablo Rodriguez and Justin Trudeau are nationalizing not just the news media industry, but the social media industry, they've got technical questions.
They really, really care about it.
Of course not.
It's like they're employees of the government already.
They're just curious what the new employment rules are.
I want to show you something, though, because not only are Trudeau and Rodriguez and others trying to basically have a great train robbery and take hundreds of millions or billions of dollars out of YouTube and Google and Facebook.
And by the way, I mean, I despise those companies.
They're oligarchs.
They violate your privacy.
They're very woke.
They're censors.
Of course I despise them.
But I don't believe in robbing them to pay my reporter friends.
But look at this.
I think this is perhaps one of the scariest things yesterday.
Pablo Rodriguez will let the CRTC manage and regulate these tech companies, which is terrible.
They don't have the skills.
All they know is a hammer.
They're very censorious.
But if these social media companies, Facebook, YouTube, Google, Twitter, whatever, if they publish fake news, they're subject to a fine by the government of Canada.
So now the government isn't just determining who is or isn't a journalist.
The government of Canada is now determining what is or isn't true, what is or isn't a reasonable opinion.
And they're not just coming up with an opinion on it.
They will punish these social media companies with up to a $15 million fine.
Take a look.
As a follow-up to that, I would love to hear you expand on the kind of disciplinary action they would face if they do, in fact, favor those kinds of content over news.
But I do have actually a separate question.
I was hoping that you could speak a little bit more to the decision to put the CRTC in the role of regulator.
I know you told Boris that it's because of their experience in sort of the broadcasting world, but one thing that we've heard repeatedly from experts, including a former CRTC vice chair, is that they are not really that well equipped to regulate social media as their expertise more so lies in the broadcast realm.
So how do you respond to those criticisms, especially in light of the fairly significant role that this legislation gives them?
Okay, Rachel, the first answer to the first question is $15 million when they do something like that.
So that's the clear penalty and it's written in the law.
The second one, about the CRTC, as I said, they do have experience in arbitration and in the broadcasting space.
We've seen them in the past between big companies negotiating.
But even in this case, their role is very soft compared to what they do elsewhere, because whenever they go to final arbitration, it's not the CRTC that will be the arbitrator.
There will be a group of people, experts, arbitrators, that are chosen, accepted by the two sides, and three of them will be chosen to arbitrate the discussion.
So it's really, really, really independent.
So you've got these QCJOs, these government journalists, and they're going to get the hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from Facebook, Google, YouTube, et cetera.
But that's not enough, because if something slips through from some unqualified journalist, red independent journalist, well, that's even worse.
If you dare to have an opinion that's not qualified, YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram will smash you.
Because if they don't smash you, they will be smashed.
Let's say you're some intern working for Facebook and someone writes a post on the pandemic and says something they shouldn't, says, maybe ivermectin could work or maybe the vaccines don't work or maybe we should look more into the Wuhan lab.
Those are all real questions.
Whatever the answers are, they're questions.
But you're not allowed to have a narrative contrary to the official one.
That's fake news according to the official fact checkers.
Will Facebook really allow that on their page if it means a $15 million risk?
Put yourself in the position of a junior staffer looking over some post.
Are you going to risk a $15 million fine if you get it wrong by putting it up?
Or if you're just going to take it down and what's the harm?
Some grassroots citizen is silenced?
What do you care?
That's what's terrifying.
If Stephen Harper did this, if Stephen Harper decided to regulate the internet and punish wrongthink with $15 million fines, do you think the media questions would have been the way they are?
If Trump had done that, do you think it would be the way they are?
Hey, I got another question for you, and I'll tell you more about this in the days ahead.
Do you think when they crafted this, this attack on social media, and social media basically means the sharing sites, the user-generated sites like YouTube is a big one.
Twitter is a big one.
You know, I counted up the other day amongst all the different social media platforms, including Twitter and Instagram and some of the smaller ones like Getter and Gab and Parlor and all that.
I'm not sure if we're on Gab, but we're on a lot of these sites.
Between our official company accounts and our journalists, we have more than 5 million followers on social media, a million and a half on YouTube alone.
Hundreds of thousands, I have a third of a million followers on Twitter.
Do you think, Just maybe there's a chance that we were on the politicians' minds when they crafted this rule.
We saw from the question in the scrum that we're certainly on the minds of rival journalists.
They hate us.
They're excited to see us be banned.
But do you think we're on the minds of Trudeau too?
Well, here's a little flashback, Trudeau talking about us on the floor of the House of Commons.
Mr. Speaker, in a question about sensitizing journalists, he's quoting rebel media talking points.
Mr. Speaker, we are going to continue to stand up for immigration, knowing that defending diversity as a source of strength and welcoming people through a rigorous immigration system from around the world is what has made Canada strong and indeed something the world needs more of, not less of, like they want to bring in.
Conformity Under Pressure00:03:03
Ahmed Hassan read literally word for word the same thing.
It's almost like they're obsessed.
I think they are obsessed because as we learned from the ash conformity tests in the 60s and 70s, I'm not sure when that test was.
If the whole world says you're crazy, it's hard to say, no, I'm not.
But if there's a single other person who says, no, no, I'm with you.
We're not crazy.
They are.
Your pressure to conform plummets.
Let me just show you a quick clip from the ash conformity tests.
Here's this video.
I'm going to let it play for about a minute and a half just to remind you of the power of seeing a single other person agreeing with you.
Take a look.
Taking part in today involves the perception of lengths of lines.
As you can see here, I have a number of cards, and on each card, there are several lines.
Your task is a very simple one.
You're to look at the line on the left and determine which of the three lines on the right is equal to it in length.
All right, we'll proceed in this order.
You'll give your answer.
Only one of the people in the group is a real subject, the fifth person with the white t-shirt.
The others are confederates of the experimenter and have been told to give wrong answers on some of the trials.
The experiment begins uneventfully as subjects give their judgments.
Two, three, But on the third trial, something happens.
Two. Two. Two. Two. Two.
The subject denies the evidence of his own eyes and yields to group influence.
Ash found subjects went along with the group on 37% of the critical trials.
But he found through interviews that they went along with the group for different reasons.
One.
One.
They must be right.
There are four of them, and one of me, one.
This subject's yielding is based on a distortion of his judgment.
He genuinely believes that the group is correct.
One.
Two.
One.
Two.
Two.
Why should I make waves?
Two.
In this case, the subject knows he is right, but goes along to avoid the discomfort of disagreeing with the group.
I love that video so much, and both that ash conformity test and the Milgram experiment, where people in a lab coat tell others to inflict pain on someone.
And most people say, okay, if you'll take responsibility, but that's the Milgram experiment.
But that ash conformity test, I think, is so powerful.
Did you catch that part?
Conformity's Cost00:03:30
37% of people Say a lie that they know to be a lie just to go along if everyone else is going along with it.
But if you have one other person in the room who says, no, no, no, that's a lie, the conformity falls to 5%.
Nothing is more powerful to pushing back against a dominant narrative that's a lie other than even just a single other person.
And that's my theory about why Justin Trudeau and Pablo Rodriguez and Stephen Gilbo and frankly the rest of the media party hate rebel news so much.
Although I think we're big and mighty and we had an amazing coverage of the Trucker Rebellion, we had a year's worth of traffic in one month.
We're still small compared to the CBC and CTV and Global.
We're not in every household like they are.
We're not forced into every basic cable package in Canada.
We don't have a press run of a million a day like the Toronto Star does.
So why would they be worried about little old us?
We're not that little anymore.
But compared to the other guys, we're a drop in the bucket.
Well, it's the ash conformity test.
Because our wonderful team of 60 staff, we've got 60 people now.
About half of them are journalists.
The other half do video editing and it's a lot of behind-the-scenes work.
But every time a rebel news video goes up, it's saying to Canadians, you're not alone.
You're not crazy.
We are going down a bad path.
Whether it's the lockdownism or censorship or Trudeau's imposition of the form of martial law, when Rebel News says, no, this is wrong, millions of Canadians can say, okay, good.
I know I'm not alone.
It's the ash conformity test.
And that is why they must destroy us.
Do you think Rebel News is considered a qualified Canadian journalism organization?
Well, we're an organization.
We're Canadian.
We're journalistic.
We do a lot of journalism.
But that Q part, do you think Trudeau would qualify us as a QCJO?
Think about that, and I'll have more to say on this subject in the days ahead.
Stay with us.
An interview with Mark Morano is next.
Noam Chomsky is an American icon of the left.
Certainly when I was growing up, his books like Manufacturing Consent, he was a little bit of a conspiracy theorist, but a lot of his conspiracies sort of became true and got worse, actually, media concentration.
He was worried about the U.S. military-industrial complex and the CIA, condemned American foreign policy, but you could tell he was a passionate believer in the democratic system.
He was a man of the far left, that's for sure.
One of the things I admire about him, even though I think that he is so far to the left, I think he's wrong how extreme he is.
I'll give him this.
He's a debater.
He's for free speech.
And even in the early days of Rebel News, before we were even in an office, we were working out of a hotel boardroom, he spent a half hour with me in a kind of interview debate.
Approaching the Most Dangerous Point00:03:07
You can still find that on our Rebel News site.
Whereas today's liberals and leftists wouldn't give a platform to anyone.
They don't believe in debate.
They believe in destroying their opponents.
So I have a bit of a soft spot for Noam Chomsky, even though he is, I think, by some measures a communist.
But he said a very interesting thing in a video that the New Statesman published, and we'll show it to you in a second.
And he says that we are the greatest risk in world history.
Our safety and survival is never at a greater risk.
And I assume he was talking about the war in Ukraine.
Well, here, take a look at Noam Chomsky.
Look at this.
We're approaching the most dangerous point in human history.
The first article I wrote, at least that I can remember, was in fifth grade.
I was 10 years old.
I can date it very easily because of the time and the topic.
It was an article about the fall of Barcelona.
It was an article for the elementary school newspaper.
I was the editor, probably the only reader, maybe my mother.
The article I partly remember was about the fall of Austria, fall of Czechoslovakia, fall of Toledo.
Now the fall of Barcelona looks like the grim cloud of fascism is spreading over the whole world.
Inexorable.
Well, that was 9th February, 1939.
Haven't changed my opinion since.
It's just gotten worse.
The doomsday clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists under Trump, they abandoned minutes, moved to seconds, 100 seconds to midnight.
That's where it is now, because the threats are accumulating.
We're approaching the most dangerous point in human history.
Nothing like it before.
We are now facing the prospect of destruction of organized human life on Earth from environmental destruction and not in the remote future.
We are approaching irreversible turning points, which turning points which will not be, cannot be dealt with any longer.
It doesn't mean everybody's going to die, but it's going to mean moving to a future in which the lucky ones will be those who die quick more quickly.
Wow, there's a lot in there.
The first thing, and I was thinking about it for half the time, was that he was writing in grade five, when I think he said he was 10 years old, about the fall of Barcelona and the rise of fascism across Europe.
That would have been a very interesting grade five child.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Climate Dilemma00:13:20
And when he says that he was the only one who read his paper other than his mom, I agree with him there.
He's a character.
He's a pessimist.
He's a skeptic.
I would even say he's an expert on certain things.
But of all the things he said we're going to die from, and the lucky will be the ones who die quickly, you look around the world today, whether it's global corporations, big pharma, surveillance, state, social credit, Chinese style, de-banking, de-platforming, possible nuclear war in Ukraine, of all those things.
The thing that Noam Chomsky, expert on, I don't know, information and global politics, the thing he chooses to be the most scared of is global warming.
Joining us now to talk about this is our friend Mark Morano, the boss of climatepot.com.
Mark, I did not expect that.
I thought he was going to talk about NATO or a post-American world or the emerging corporate surveillance state.
But he's worried about global warming.
Yes, and he has been actually for quite some time, Ezra.
First of all, most of his favorite intellectual left and in the media and in sort of progressives has been since the Vietnam War.
He's a protest guy, hated Reagan, hated the Vietnam War, hated drafts, was a hero to many of those anti-war protesters, which is all fine and good.
He billed himself as an anti-fascist, as a, you know, fighting the powers that be.
The problem now, and I see the same problem that runs through Robert F. Kennedy Jr., it just baffles my mind.
The guy's phenomenal, recognizes the World Health Organization, recognizes all that stuff.
But then when it comes to climate, there's a blind spot.
And somehow, all the criticism they gave of everything, they somehow accept Green New Deal style, United Nations, all the same stuff.
So what Noam Chowsky has said, first of all, just on COVID, he said wearing a mask, refusing to wear a mask is the equivalent of taking an assault rifle to a grocery store.
He said Trump's denial of climate change was worse threat to humanity than Hitler.
He said this.
These are some of the things Noam Chomsky is known for.
He said that Biden on climate is further left than any Democratic candidate in memory.
And that's absolutely true because Biden is much further to the left than that.
But what's interesting about Noam Chomsky is he's had that same blind spot.
He will tell you that we're going to die from climate change.
He will tell you that unmaskers are essentially committing assault.
He will tell you Trump is Hitler for climate denial.
But at the same time, he wants to empower this sort of permanent one-party state that's going to strip away all of our freedoms.
And it just doesn't make sense for a guy who was against the powers that be, against the Pentagon, against the man, against the draft, against the Pentagon, Pentagon war machine.
This is where he's come to.
It doesn't make any sense.
Yeah, I find it very strange.
I mean, I look around the world today and there are some very dangerous things.
I mean, I am worried about Ukraine spilling over into something larger.
I think cooler heads will prevail, but not for the lack of drumbeats of war.
You'd think that that would be Noam Chomsky's key thing.
You'd think the concentration.
I mean, forget, he wrote a book called Manufacturing Consent about the concentration of TV and radio newspapers.
And I get it, and there's something to be said about it.
But now we don't have dozens of newspapers.
We have like three companies, Google YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
And I'm pretty much done.
So you would think that if he was alarmed about, you know, a handful of companies controlling newspapers, well, what about the panopticon of these social media companies owned by oligarchs who have a messiah conflict?
He's not worried about Bill Gates.
He's not worried about big data.
That's the fear.
That's where, if we need a Noam Chomsky, and I don't know if we do, but if we do, we need it to fight back against the total surveillance state, total censorship machine.
You want to talk about fascism.
One of the definitions of fascism is the merger of big government and big business.
That's an element to it.
State control of corporations.
Oh my God, we've never had it worse.
And he wants to talk about global warming.
I just find that bizarre.
And I'm not saying stick in your lane.
I'm just saying it's weird that he's not sticking in his lane.
He's not.
And here's the thing is, everything you just said, if this were Noam Chomsky of consistent of the old Noam Chomsky going after the military-industrial complex or the war machine, he would have come out.
And first of all, he would have been against the code lockdowns and the mandates.
He would have been against emergency declarations.
Because any student of history, you can go back to the Roman Republic and the descent of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire happened to abuse of emergency power declarations.
Emergency declarations used in the Middle Ages to further crush people.
Emergency declarations used in 1933 Germany.
Emergency declaration used after 9-11 to give us the Patriot Act and the mass surveillance state.
Any big tech censorship is government censorship.
And this is what's missing from Noam Chomsky.
He just wants sort of like this big government style crushing of industry and civil liberties and freedom because we have to fight global warming.
And the Republican Party, he said, is the greatest threat because of their view on climate.
So he doesn't make any sense.
And if you actually were a progressive, worried about the old classic liberal anyway, worried about human freedom, Noam Chomsky is tone deaf.
Noam Chomsky has changed channels years ago.
And even left-wing figures like Jimmy Dore, a former comedian, but he's also from the Young Turks, has done a whole show with Max Blumenthal on this.
And they talked about the Noam Chomsky of old was against the power, but they speculated that it's not really he's against the power.
He's against the power that he's not aligned with.
And if you think back, his rise to fame was during the Nixon administration, the chief rise to fame, and that was a Republican war machine Pentagon.
And I think part of it now is the reason he doesn't oppose this corporate fascism is because the progressive left that he's a member of controls corporate America.
I would argue that it's actually corporate America controlling government and the woke activists controlling corporate America.
And you're absolutely right, Ezra.
As we were protecting against big government these last 40 years, they slipped in essentially the collusion of big government and corporation.
And that's what we're dealing with now.
And that's our greatest threat through emergency declarations.
They want to declare a climate emergency.
They want to declare, they've already declared the COVID emergency.
We've already seen the terrorism.
Every time this emergency comes, our freedoms go out the drain.
If Noam Chomsky were relevant, that would be his topic today, not going on like it's, you know, the year 2000 about global warming, which, you know, frankly, by the way, this new UN report, the UK Guardian is lamenting.
There's literally almost zero media coverage of it.
The new UN report saying now or never, which my answer was, great, never.
We'll never fight.
Let's never fight global warming.
You know, it's funny you mentioned RFK Jr., the Democracy Fund, which is sort of our friends and it's a nonprofit, hosted RFK Jr. just last week.
And to hear him talk about how emergency laws and rules and regulations were imposed on America, it was actually beautiful to hear in the best tradition of what a Kennedy is.
You know, democratic processes, checks and balances, public hearings.
You know, to listen to RFK Jr. describe how democracy is supposed to work, regs are supposed to work, and how none of them, like, he gave the example of a kayak company ordered to put masks on its customers and say, well, yeah, they're going to drown if they're wearing masks.
And he just said the absurdity and there was no chance to publish the regs and oppose them.
Like just to listen to RFK Jr. talk about how the democracy that he and his family have been a part of for 70 years is violated.
I found it actually inspiring.
And I never thought I would say that in my life about a Kennedy.
Now, you're right.
I mean, he's an environmentalist, but frankly, most of his environmental work has been very specific, clean water and things like that, as opposed to abstractions and scientific absurdities like let's stop the entire earth from extremely gradually emerging from the last ice age.
So I'm not here as an RFK defender, but to spend an hour with him as we did last week, he gets it about democracy.
He loves democracy.
I'm going to say this.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he's to my left, obviously.
But my God, he sees that democracy is in crisis.
And he used the word turnkey totalitarianism.
He said, once all these big government, big business systems are in place, they lock together.
You can't get out.
I see a lot more in common with RFK Jr. Than Noam Chomsky, who just feels like he hasn't caught up with the threat of our generation.
Yes, actually, I have publicly forgiven Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
When I interviewed him at 2014 at the New York Climate City Climate March, he actually said he wanted to jail CEOs, climate skeptic politicians at The Hague with all other war criminals with three square meals in a cot.
Because of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s outspokenness on the vax mandates and lockdowns and masks, I publicly forgave him and said all is forgiven.
But I still wonder, he talks about bureaucratic capture at the EPA, but doesn't he doesn't he see the essentially the bureaucratic the capture of our government agencies by a woke mob, by acadea, by foundation funding, and by this narrative that they put together.
And all the solutions to climate change are all the United Nations Green New Deal, government control, regulations in our life, mimicking the COVID lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, limiting travels, freedom of movement, telling you what you can and can't eat.
So I think at some point, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. needs to delineate his climate position from his COVID, because I think he has to either have evolved or he's got a position I don't fully understand, you know, calling for the jailing of climate skeptic CEOs.
Yeah, I think you're right.
I think a lot.
Sorry, and you mentioned some other people who are historically on the left, Jimmy Doerr, Max Blumenthal, who I think probably called himself a communist before.
You're right.
I've been talking on COVID.
He called him the lockdown left.
He's featured in my book.
Very impressive.
Some of these figures on the left.
You would never have expected to step up like this.
Yeah, it's a reorientation of the political spectrum.
I don't even know what right-wing means anymore.
Some of the worst lockdown politicians in Canada are nominally conservatives.
It really has scrambled things.
I mean, it's uncanny, but when you think about it, it makes total sense that many of the pandemic scaremongers are also in the same climate business.
Look at Bill Gates.
He just published a book about the threat of global warming.
He's the guy who wanted to put billions of tons of dust particles in the sky to blot out the sun.
And you have BlackRock buying up real estate.
You have Bill Gates, the biggest American farm owner, landowner, according to NBC News.
And Bill Gates is not posting synthetic meat.
So imagine if he gets more control of farms, the single biggest farm owner.
He's going to have direct influence on what we eat, how we eat it, how often, the price of it.
This is what people like Noam Chomsky should be focusing on.
And RFK Jr. gets this, but in many respects, but I still don't understand his climate position.
And again, I know I sound like I'm defending the guy.
It's just that I went to this event and I thought I'm ready to disagree.
And I found myself agreeing much more than I thought.
I think, you know, it's funny, I said, I spoke briefly at the RFK event and I said, there's a saying, when you've got nothing left to lose, you're free and you're powerful.
And that's true.
And people who have been fired because they didn't take the vaccine, for example, terrible things have happened to them, but they're liberated and they can speak truthfully.
But in a way, RFK Jr., he has a lot to lose, his position on the constellation of the left.
And yet he has dissented.
Like, I think Noam Chomsky, the crazy thing about Noam Chomsky, and I'll end on this note, is that he is supposed to be the ultimate dissenter, the ultimate contrarian, the ultimate objector, the refusenik.
And yet he's in league with the big tech, the big government, the big media, the United Nations, the global government, the Bill Gates of the world.
RFK Jr., who comes from American royalty, you know, the Kennedy family, who's part of the establishment, even if he's on the left wing of it, he's the one who's acting as the dissenter at great personal cost, I might add.
We've certainly seen a lot of character people revealed.
Character People Revealed00:02:17
Last word to you, Mark.
You're absolutely right.
RFK Jr.'s wife, Cheryl Hines, who's a Hollywood actress.
She's on the curb your enthusiasm with Larry David in a lot of other movies.
So Robert F.K. Jr. is a great personal risk.
The problem with someone now like Noam Chomsky, all his anti-Trump rhetoric, his promotion, he's like he would fit in perfectly on MSNBC.
There's nothing controversial about Noam Chomsky anymore.
And many of his old supporters on the left now acknowledge it.
Interesting stuff.
Well, listen, great to see you again, Mark.
Thanks for joining us.
And we'll keep watching climate.com for all the news.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
All right.
Stay with us more ahead.
Come back.
Liberate the Forks says, you forgot about Prince Edward Island.
They extended mask mandates until April 31st.
Well, thank you for that.
I'm sorry I didn't know that.
I didn't mean to leave PEI out.
Of course, Quebec has extended it too.
And New York City, the way they're going after the toddlers is the craziest thing ever.
But thank you for reminding me that.
I'm sorry I didn't know that.
Someone with a nickname, EverythingIsFine, says, considering it's New York City, masks are the least of their worries.
Well, I guess you could say that there's a lot of problems in that city.
In fact, that city had the highest net out-migration in America last year.
Florida had half a million people move into it from other U.S. states.
That's actually more than the number of people who moved to Canada last year.
Half a million net in-migration to Florida.
New York City itself, a quarter million net out-migration.
New York City, the most amazing city in the world by most measures.
People are fleeing.
There's so many problems there, but the government is the main one.
That city has everything you could possibly imagine.
That city is like a world unto itself.
It's like the old saying about London.
It's impossible to be bored with London.
You would be bored with life itself.
You can say the same thing about New York.
So why are a quarter million people leaving?
Hospitals And The Old Ones00:06:41
It's because of the politics and the political rules and forcing masks on toddlers, on two-year-olds, three-year-olds.
That would be enough to make someone move to the free state of Florida, don't you think?
Dallas Afosier, if I'm saying that right, says fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.
Benito Mussolini.
This is what we have been witnessing throughout the pandemic, a merger of government with corporations, especially on the big tech platforms.
Oh, yeah, you're so right.
And throw big pharma in there, obviously, and big data.
I'm just using the word big a lot, but they are big.
And the thing they all have in common is that they're not, they don't respect local democratic voices.
I mean, all of these health decisions were made at the World Health Organization, and then they just, it was a game of Simon Says.
Everyone copied.
None of them were put through proper regulatory debates, sorry, regulatory hearings or parliamentary debates.
There was no debate in parliament about a mask mandate.
Did you see one?
There was no debate about locking you in your home or locking your loved ones out of your home.
There was no debate on that.
That's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.
Good night.
And keep fighting for freedom and live.
We leave you with our video today from Lincoln Jay, who has a question.
Can Roman Baber handle being the next Prime Minister of Canada?
Supporters weigh in on the question.
All right, that's it.
I'll see you tomorrow, everybody.
Lincoln Jay for Rebel News here in Mississauga, where Roman Babber is hosting an event this evening promoting his leadership conservative campaign.
The MPP for York Centre has been one of the most, if not the most, outspoken politicians in Ontario when it comes to speaking out against the negative impacts of lockdowns and COVID-19 restrictions.
We're told that we must go into lockdown, keep kids out of school, close business, delay surgeries, and disrupt normal life because COVID will overwhelm our hospitals.
The most important metric was the effect of COVID on our hospitals.
For two years, this government and this minister were not telling Ontarians the actual toll of COVID on our hospitals.
Instead, they were inflating COVID hospitalizations by combining patients hospitalized as a result of COVID with patients tested for COVID but hospitalized for a whole other reason.
In fact, he was so outspoken that he lost his seat in the Progressive Conservative Party.
It took little time for the Premier to issue his response.
Effective immediately, Mr. Babber will no longer be sitting as a member of the PC caucus and will not be permitted to seek re-election as a PC member, calling Bamber's remarks irresponsible, that by spreading misinformation, he is undermining the tireless efforts of frontline health care workers and putting people at risk.
After Mr. Baber wrapped up speaking to the crowd, he hosted a meet and greet.
Now, unfortunately, he declined to take any of my questions on camera, which I did find quite surprising.
I can't say for sure if he simply did not want to speak with Rebel News or if he was short for time.
But with a million and a half subscribers on YouTube alone, you would think Mr. Baber would be happy to take the opportunity to spread his message to such a large audience.
If he potentially doesn't want to take straightforward questions for myself, will he be able to handle being the next Prime Minister of Canada?
In any event, I did speak with some of his supporters to see why they came out to support Roman Baber here in Mississauga.
Let's check it out.
And I promise you, my very first piece of legislation when I enter office is to eliminate any hint, any memory of any passports or any mandates.
I will do that on day one.
What brought you out here today?
I've never been interested in politics since day one.
I only really started to get interested in it at the beginning of the pandemic when I noticed that Roman was saying everything that was opposite to the mainstream media.
I want to bring back human rights.
That's why I believe in Roman Baba.
Really wasn't into politics, but I saw him on Facebook and he speaks for the people.
So basically, that's what I'm here to support him and to give my support.
He's been the light through all of this darkness and I will do anything that I can to support him as he's supporting Canadians and I'm going to fight for him all the way just as he's been fighting for us.
My point of view kind of very close to his point of view.
So I think he's like-minded.
I started hearing of Roman over a year ago and it's like there's someone else out there that feels the same way as I do.
I think I share a lot of the same views and someone that's not scared to go against what I think they're trying to ram down our throats.
His principles and what he stands for is pretty much true and what I believe in.
I couldn't help but continue to follow him and now that he's running for Conservative Party leader, I want to hear more from him and that's why I'm here today to see if he's really what we all need.
Why do you think Canadians should trust him to stick to his word?
I think because he was expelled from Conservative parties here in Ontario.
So it's obviously he has something different.
I've seen so many politicians say one thing and then once they're in power they just completely do a 180 shift and That's kind of why I'm here today, to see if he would re-impose these lockdowns after he gets the power.
I think it's for the people.
It's the people.
If they fight for what is right, like what Babur do during those lockdowns and things, if we all have the initiative, what he has done, I think we will go there.
Well, as he's been saying pretty much all along, his opinion has been an unpopular one, and he's been fighting for what he thinks is right all along, rather than going with the more popular opinion as Aaron O'Toole did.
So I trust him.
So from humble beginnings, and I think you need to, because someone like Justin, who has been pampered all his life, I don't think he's in touch with anything that really goes on and it changes your character and your inability to see what's really needed.
He represented people really who voted for him and he will do whatever people want.
Well, I think Canadians, first of all, should trust him because he's taking the strong stand on basically against lockdowns.
And the other politicians have not done that.
Certainly the Conservatives, he didn't mention.
O'Toole went left, went right, said there were lockdowns to come, less vaccines, more vaccines.