Ezra Levant condemns How to Blow Up a Pipeline, a Canadian film (95% Rotten Tomatoes, 14A-rated) based on Andreas Malm’s book, for glorifying eco-terrorism—like vandalizing oil infrastructure and targeting SUVs—while critics like James Wilt warn of reckless classist violence. Levant contrasts this with ignored pipeline sabotage in BC and Trudeau’s selective crackdown on "violent extremism," excluding eco-terrorists despite their actions, like Environment Minister Stephen Guilbea’s alleged role in a home invasion. Meanwhile, he and Franco Terrazano mock PSAC’s 155,000-member strike demanding $9.3B in raises ($125K avg. salary), calling it "PSAC privilege" amid taxpayer struggles. The episode ties media bias to unchecked radicalism, questioning CBC’s future as Carlson’s firing looms over his O Canada documentary. [Automatically generated summary]
Did you know there's a new movie in Canadian theaters called How to Blow Up a Pipeline?
And no, that's not code for anything.
It is about how to blow up a pipeline.
It's an eco-terrorist movie, and I haven't heard a word against it.
I'll take you through it.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
And in today's episode, you really benefit from it because I want you to see this movie.
I'll play the full two-minute trailer of this movie.
And I want you to see it.
I mean, you'll hear it on the podcast and you'll get a lot from that, but I want you to see what this movie is promoting at your local Cineplex.
To get the video version, we call that Rebel News Plus.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month.
You get the video stuff.
And you know, we rely on that eight bucks a month because we don't get money from YouTube.
We don't get money from Trudeau, not that we would ever take it.
We rely on you.
Please go to RebelNewsPlus.com.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, how do you feel about a movie playing in Canadian theaters right now calling for eco-terrorism against oil companies?
It's April 25th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you sensorious bug.
Structural Damage Motivates00:03:27
Here's a thought experiment.
How would you feel about a movie playing in theaters in Canada called How to Blow Up an Abortion Clinic?
Or what about How to Shoot Up a Church, which, by the way, just happened a few weeks ago in Nashville, Tennessee?
What about a movie called How to Blow Up a Mosque?
I'm guessing you're not too comfortable with any of those, even if you are a free speech absolutist.
But right now, in theaters across Canada, there really is a movie called How to Blow Up a Pipeline.
Here's Cineplex's website.
As you can see, it's being marketed to teenagers.
There's ads for it everywhere on TikTok in particular.
It's rated 14A.
So teenagers can go to the movie by themselves if they're 14 or older.
Cineplex is so proud of that.
Here, watch the movie's trailer for two minutes yourself.
Hey, everyone.
Welcome back to Boom Talk.
Today, teaching myself to make a homemade blasting cap.
If this works, it'll be step one at making our own improvised explosive.
Might be headed to Texas for the winter.
Once in Texas, this project.
One kind of project trying to stop the pipeline from being built on my property.
Poisons here, water.
Damn, this place is sick.
You guys cooking match in here?
Ready to start working?
We have to show how vulnerable the oil industry is by hitting something big.
Michael, what do you think the odds are we blow ourselves up.
I don't really care He could blow the pipe at the hilltop.
Keep the awe from Lincoln.
You're not actually thinking.
I'm not thinking about it.
I'm doing it.
What if y'all do structural damage?
Structural damage is kind of the point.
This is destruction of federal property.
Terrorism.
American Empire calls us terrorists, then we're doing something right.
If you're seeing this, let those who profit from mass death know their properties will be trashed.
Three, two, one.
They went to fame us and claim this was violence or vandalism.
But this was justified.
This was an act of self-defense.
Obviously, there's no scientific basis to the underlying thesis here.
Pipelines do not poison the air despite what they said.
They're by far the safest way to move oil or natural gas around.
The eco-terrorists here are obviously hypocrites, just like Al Gore or John Kerry or David Suzuki or Leonardo DiCaprio and the rest of them.
They use oil and gas themselves for everything.
They use things made from oil and gas and coal plastic, steel, pretty much everything in modern life.
But this is not an intellectual movie.
Northern Pipeline Controversy00:06:04
It's an emotional movie motivating people to blow up a pipeline.
This movie is targeted at teenagers and 20-somethings.
You can see that by its style and its actors.
It could not be clearer.
It is pro-terrorism.
They actually say that word in the movie.
That YouTube trailer I just showed you has 1.5 million views alone.
And I saw little clips of it everywhere on social media.
I'm not sure how many people actually are going to go see the movie in a theater, but just the two-minute ad and all the social media clips, they pretty much do the job right there, don't they?
The movie's playing across Canada, including, I checked, for example, in the heart of Calgary in Cineplex theaters there in the oil patch.
Oh, and just glowing reviews from movie critics.
The critics love it.
According to the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes, 95% of critics love this movie.
Now, only 73% of moviegoers do, which is still a lot.
But it shows you the ideology of the Hollywood industry, doesn't it?
Now, the movie was based on a book by this guy, Andreas Malm, who looks exactly like what you'd imagine he'd look like.
He's a Marxist professor in Sweden.
You know, I've been to Sweden.
It's a pretty northern country.
Its capital city, Stockholm, is one of the most northern capital cities in the world.
59 degrees north latitude.
For comparison, Whitehorse is 60 degrees latitude.
That's how far north Stockholm is.
Ottawa is practically tropical.
It's 45 degrees north latitude, and we like to think it's a northern city.
My point is, Andreas Maum and his whole country would freeze without fossil fuels.
You cannot power Sweden through the dark winter with solar power.
But he published a book called How to Blow Up a Pipeline, and now it's a movie.
And funny enough, it's set in the United States.
I mean, he's not stupid.
He's like his fellow Swedish propagandist, Greta Thunberg.
They're Marxists, but they like making money.
No one in America is going to pay to see a movie about Swedish teens blowing up something in Sweden.
And the regime media couldn't be more excited about it.
Here's the Globe and Mail, owned by Canada's richest oligarch.
Their headline is electric and gripping, eco-thriller.
How to blow up a pipeline is a fast and tight cinematic provocation.
You know, the Globe and Mail actually called it a courageous movie.
And they even complain that it's too politically soft.
They say you'll be a better person for watching it.
I'm serious.
Let me quote a little bit.
Is it controversial, even dangerous, to make a movie unambiguously urging illegal action?
No more so than the thousands of films that squeal over wholesale murder or whose politics push the agendas of the American military.
I'm not sure what the murder part he's referring to there.
There are a lot of people killed in Hollywood movies, but I'm not sure if squealing about murder is the same as encouraging it.
or the same as a two-hour propaganda course literally telling people to become terrorists.
And you can oppose the agendas of the American military, which would be new for the Globe and Mail, by the way.
They have been an unambiguous cheerleader for escalating war in Ukraine.
But at the end of the day, the U.S. military, like Canada's military, is a lawful organization directed by democratically elected civilian politicians.
So you can agree or disagree with foreign policy, and I disagree with a lot of foreign policy of both countries.
I can disagree with wars.
Again, I just have never seen that before from the Globe and Mail.
But that's different from encouraging young people to engage in violent terrorism in their own country against fellow citizens.
I say again, would the Globe and Mail rejoice about a movie called How to Blow Up a Church?
And why wouldn't they?
They could condemn the agendas of the Christian church.
In fact, they sure have, haven't they?
Especially with regards to residential schools.
I haven't seen any opprobrium in the Globe and Mail when more than 50 churches were torched or vandalized a year or two ago in Canada.
And really, as I mentioned in a monologue a couple of weeks ago, Canada really does have people trying to blow up pipelines.
Gas pipelines, not oil pipelines.
It's called Coastal Gas Link to Northern BC.
Even the CBC has reported on it.
They obviously support the terrorists.
But even the CBC points out that many of them are foreign terrorists of fortunes coming up to BC, either from out of province or even out of the country, hijacking the local Indian bands.
So yeah, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised if the government, the RCMP, the public safety minister, the prime minister, and the media are all fine with blowing up a gas pipeline.
Why shouldn't Hollywood cash in too?
And Cineplex, and why shouldn't they be able to make a few bucks off blowing up an oil pipeline?
I mean, we have a country where the environment minister, Stephen Gilbo, literally participated in an eco-terrorist home invasion himself, storming the home property of the former Premier of Alberta, Ralph Klein, when only his wife Colleen was at home by herself.
They literally came onto the property, climbed onto her roof, and terrorized her.
And now he's environment minister.
Why would a mere movie upset anyone if that doesn't?
Now, Trudeau and the censors talk about violent online extremism and radicalization.
And they never mean Islamic terrorism or eco-terrorism.
Mom's Claims Deflated00:06:34
They mean you.
They mean people like you and me who clap back at leftist journalists and leftist politicians.
They mean peaceful trucker protests.
They didn't put the country under martial law after 9-11 or after an al-Qaeda terrorist stormed Parliament Hill.
Remember that?
They put the whole country under martial law when some truckers parked illegally and honked their horns at Parliament Hill.
They don't mean what they say about violence and extremism.
As always, they're projecting.
They're the ones who support violence against their enemies, against churches, against oil and gas companies.
But if you're a peaceful protester, they'll say you engage in hate speech and extremism, and you need to be shut down.
Interestingly, the one critic I've seen about this movie, or actually about the book that inspired it, was a Marxist who I've met a few times.
His name is James Wilt.
He's actually sort of a nice guy as a person.
Here's what he wrote about the book, and it's in the left-wing magazine Canadian Dimension.
He said, how to blow up a movement.
Andreas Maum's new book, Dreams of Sabotage, But Ignores Consequences.
That's the title of his essay.
Look at this.
Let me quote a bit.
I find it odd quoting a communist, but he had an interesting take on things.
He's talking about the book's author, Andreas Maum, and he says this.
Mom specifically advocates for the destruction of luxury commodities like SUVs and super yachts, along with fossil fuel infrastructure like gas stations, petroleum refineries, and pipelines.
Yeah, SUVs and super yachts.
Those really aren't two things that go together.
SUVs are driven by families, by moms taking their kids to school or to the hockey rink after school.
They're not as cheap as regular cars, I guess, but they're really not luxury.
You can get a luxury SUV, but, you know, if you're attacking an SUV, odds are you're attacking your neighbor, which bizarrely is something that mom himself claims to have done.
Super yachts, yeah, show me a super yacht in Sweden.
They're in elite places like the Mediterranean.
They're guarded by private security.
Anyone who calls for an attack on SUVs and super yachts is really just calling for attacks on SUVs, or really his neighbors and families in his neighborhood.
How gross and classist in a way, which is what my communist buddy James Wilt points out.
He also said this, Mom is a scholar, not a cop, but this book veers awfully close to entrapment.
Could be, but look, like Greta Tunberg, he just loves the publicity.
Other people can pay the price for actually living out his ideas.
I mean, you don't think that these leftists are actually going to give up fossil fuels in chilly Sweden, do you?
Here, read this.
A fiery deterrent.
Mom's claims to authority on the subject are twofold.
A lengthy involvement in the climate movement dating back to COP1 in 1995, and more recent experience with relatively minor property destruction.
In 2007, Mom participated in deflating tires of luxury SUVs in a wealthy Swedish community as part of a group called Indians of the Concrete Jungle, an appallingly offensive name that he continues invoking throughout the course of the book following a half apology.
More recently in 2016, Mom was part of rogue Ende Galande faction that tore down a few fences and sprayed a slogan at a coal mine before police forces arrived and chased us away with their batons and spray.
Deflating tires, you know, could be dangerous.
You could, I suppose, cause someone to be killed if they got in a car accident, but it's pretty timid, you might say even cowardly, to encourage other people, especially teenagers, to go around and commit violent crimes or dangerous crimes or blow up pipelines when the most you've done is deflate someone's tires and then run away.
Here's James Wilt again, the communist.
He says, these examples supposedly point to a key argument in the text.
Property destruction should be strategically targeted.
And part of a much broader struggle for social change, Maum derides actions like extinction rebellions, blockading of a London subway in 2019, and tens of thousands of sabotages between 1973 and 2010 by Earth First, Earth Liberation Front, and Animal Liberation Front as insufficiently strategic due to obstructing working class mobility and failing to engage in a broader mass movement, respectively.
Let me just read you one last story from James Wilt.
He talks about when he himself was a protester, a peaceful protester, who was trespassing on company land.
I just got to read this to you.
So this is James Wilt talking about himself.
The encampment, led by Indigenous land defenders, stood up to increasingly escalating tactics by the owner that included setting up floodlights to inhibit sleep, 24-7 security, and private investigators following people from the property.
The developer eventually won an injunction and the encampment fell under threat of police crackdown.
Soon after, we received notice that close to 50 of us were being sued by the developer for millions or tens of millions of dollars in alleged damages.
We scrambled to find legal representation and funds for a retainer.
Many lawyers turned us down given the scope and nature of the case, but we struck lucky with a firm that specialized in construction law.
It took us years of legal proceedings and scraping together money and resources before a settlement was eventually reached.
We paid out tens of thousands in legal fees and tens of thousands more to the developer in the process.
Many members of the group experienced severe mental health distress during this time, including suicidal thoughts.
All momentum and militancy behind the action was neutralized as intended by the lawsuit.
Popular support evaporated.
The forest was clear-cut.
We unequivocally lost.
Okay, let me just quote one more sentence.
If pipelines and petrol stations start to explode across Canada, as Malm is calling for, October crisis-inspired martial law will be introduced within weeks.
All right, well, you see, that's where I disagree with James Wilt.
And this is where I say the eco-terrorists actually have the upper hand.
Petrol stations, gas stations haven't exploded across Canada, but churches have.
50 of them torched or vandalized.
Pipelines haven't been blown up, but they've been deeply vandalized by other means.
And nothing.
Government Worker's Strike00:10:10
Not a word from Trudeau or Gilbo.
Not a word from Brenda Lucky, Trudeau's woman at the RCMP.
You know, my commie friend is wrong.
Other than his sorry example of being sued, absolutely nothing has happened to actual eco-terrorists in Canada, other than one of them became Trudeau's environment minister.
I think that this is a terrorist provocation.
And all the censors in the world, they love it.
I think they want it.
Stay with us for more.
Well, you might not notice the difference, but 155,000 public service employees are on strike.
The reason I say might not know the difference is that when they were working, were they really working?
An enormous number of government workers still work from home, even though the rest of the world has moved on from the pandemic.
If you had a passport that needed renewed, there was a period of time when you had to wait half a year for that.
And the airports were a mess.
And I hear from my friends in the industry, it's going to be even more of a mess.
All of these things were things that Justin Trudeau's federal government were in charge of, and the union called PSAC.
Well, they've been on strike for a few days now.
And sometimes their comments are just, you know, they're their own worst enemy.
Here's some clips of that.
We're not taking over the streets.
We're not shutting down airports or borders yet.
We're not inconveniencing the public today.
We're here on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
The public don't care about us being up here.
We're not inconveniencing the public by being on Parliament Hill.
And that is our strategy.
We have strategic picket lines right across the country.
And as I said, we haven't set up picket lines at airports or borders or anything like that to inconvenience the public.
But the longer we're out, the public are going to see more and more inconvenience.
We don't want to do that.
It's up to this government.
How long does strike last?
Oh, and I've just got to show you this video.
I just, it popped up on my feed.
It felt like those videos by the Twitter employees before Elon Musk bought the place, where they would talk about they went to the coffee shop at Twitter and then the spa at Twitter and they got to work at the crack of 10 and they left at four.
Tell me this video by a PSAC worker, a government worker, doesn't feel exactly like the bloated staff Twitter selfie videos before Elon Musk fired 80% of that company.
Take a look at this.
We proved ourselves that we can work efficiently and more productively from home.
And the fact that they're mandating us going back to work two days a week just doesn't make sense.
I believe that we made the transition during the pandemic to work from home.
I still believe that the pandemic is not over.
Going to work is risking getting sick.
I feel like working at home, you are still completing your day-to-day tasks.
So I think as public servants, we should have the option to choose.
Well, listen, obviously, there are some good people who work for the government.
I'm not saying they're all bad, but the chutzpah in demanding that they get a raise and work from home is just too much.
But that's just my point of view.
Let's talk to a guy who crunches the numbers for a living and who is an advocate for all taxpayers.
You know who I'm talking about.
It's one of our favorite guys.
Franco Terrazano joins me live from Ottawa via Skype.
Franco, great to see you.
What do you make of this strike?
One word comes to mind, privilege.
Yeah.
Privileged federal bureaucrats who took pay raises during the pandemic, who never had to worry about losing their job.
And now they want to take billions more from taxpayers who are worried about their mortgage payments going up, who are worried about the price of gasoline, the price of ground beef.
So the word that comes to mind to me, Ezra, is privilege.
Yeah.
You know, you're so right.
And I've probably watched 20 interviews with strikers, and there's no rage.
There's no sense that they've been wronged or harmed.
They're not facing massive layoffs.
They're just, oh, well, well, you know, I don't really want to come back to work.
Oh, well, I'd like to get more.
In fact, a lot of them have this strange talking point.
If I get a raise, that's actually good for everyone else because their employees will have to give them raises too, because that's how it works.
Like it's, it's, I have never heard of a more pathetic excuse for a strike in my life.
There's no passion there.
Like these folks have not been wronged.
And JJ McCullough, the cheeky YouTuber from out west, he points out the flag of PSAC, these big industrial gears, as if most of these workers are toiling in some factory in dangerous conditions.
They're paper pushers.
And they've had a two or three years staycation during the lockdowns.
I know I'm generalizing, but my God, is there any public sympathy for these strikers?
No, I don't think so.
And why should there be?
Because outside of the bubble of Ottawa, outside of those golden gates of government, people have been struggling.
Now, Ezra, I'm talking fast because you fired me up with that statement that they made saying it's going to benefit all workers.
Where do they think they're going to be getting that extra money?
They're going to be taking it from the pockets of their neighbors, those who work for a business, those who work for themselves, those who hire employees in their own business, right?
Because they're going to have to take that money from taxpayers.
And here's what's so crazy: the demands coming from these union negotiators in Ottawa who are pushing for up to a 47% compensation increase over three years, up to 47% compensation increase over three years.
Now, let's talk about that private sector worker because those demands would cost taxpayers $9.3 billion.
Yeah, that's crazy.
You know, you're exactly right to say it's privilege, PSAC privilege.
The privilege of never having to worry about making a budget because the government just runs a deficit.
The privilege of knowing the government only gets bigger, never smaller.
The privilege of having the slackest.
I mean, you were telling us the other day: what's the average income of these folks?
Like, look at six figures.
These are, these are the one percenters that they told us about.
What's the average pay of a PSAC privilege worker?
The average compensation for the privileged PSAC workers who don't deserve a penny more from taxpayers.
Now, I don't have PSAC specifically, but we have the entire federal bureaucracy.
Are you ready for it?
Let's remember: PSAC is representing the largest union.
We have about 150,000 people on strike.
So, the average compensation of all the federal bureaucrats is $125,000.
Let me give you some more numbers.
And this is why people should be so fired up, okay?
Because during the pandemic years, since 2020, over the last three years, the federal government has handed out more than 800,000 raises.
Listen to that, folks.
Over the last three years, the government has handed out over 800,000 raises.
We already know that more than 90% of all federal employees took at least one pay raise during the pandemic.
The Feds handed out $559 million in bonuses since 2020.
The Feds hired more than 31,000 new bureaucrats over the last two years.
So here's what happened: taxpayers paid for hundreds of thousands of pay raises, hundreds of millions in bonuses, and for tens of thousands of new employees.
And now these privileged bureaucrats are going on strike, demanding to take billions more from their struggling neighbors across Canada.
You know, I'm thinking of that one guy who said, I mean, a lot of them say this: well, if I get a raise, that'll have a domino effect for everyone else.
That's just, that's just not real life.
I mean, I think of the guy a block or two away from my house who opened a restaurant that was shut down by the pandemic.
Who's he going to get this raise from?
I mean, he lost everything, by the way, because of the government.
And you open a restaurant, who do you get a raise from?
Who do you ask for a raise and say, hey, PSAC got a raise?
Can I get a raise?
It just shows this strange bubble they're in.
Well, you're getting me revved up in turn, Franco.
People can learn more at taxpayer.com.
Am I right?
Yes.
Well, thank you for having me on.
Please go to taxpayer.com.
One last comment I want to leave your list, your viewers with, Ezra, is: hey, pay raises are for when you do a good job.
Yeah.
But has this federal government really been doing a good job?
Why do they think that they deserve a raise with your money?
That's the question, folks.
That is, you nailed it.
You know, people talk about white privilege or male privilege.
There is a government privilege when it comes to salaries, and these folks want more.
And that is not how the world should be.
Franco Terrazano, taxpayer.com.
Good egg.
Keep up the fight.
Thanks, Ezra.
All right.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Diane Sanger says, Tucker always lets us know when he's expressing his own opinion and always tries to find common ground.
Fox's Growing Controversy00:01:56
Democracy cannot function without debate and coming to an agreed settlement so that society can move forward.
Yeah, you know, if someone is saying things that challenge you, I think better that they be said and hashed out than silenced or hidden.
I don't know exactly what's going on.
I mean, news is trickling out, but it's really rumors.
Why did they fire Tucker and how does firing him solve the problem for Fox?
I don't quite know.
But that's less important to me than hoping that he has a journalistic future.
I think we'll hear from him soon enough.
The Holistic Surrogate says, so what happens to Tucker's documentary, O Canada now?
I'm guessing Fox was paying the bill for that.
Think it had anything to do with his release, Ezra?
I'm so curious.
No, I don't think that the O Canada documentary was the turning point.
I think it was other things, either his monologues on the deep state or the Ukraine war, January 6th, or who knows if there were legal matters.
Fox News just signed a huge settlement with Dominion Voting.
So I think that was the issue.
I'm really sad.
We were one week away from seeing that O Canada documentary.
Ray Fraser says, Canada needs the CBC once they become neutral and represent the views of all Canadians, which was their original mandate.
Why does Canada need that outlet any more than it needed the Sun News Network, which I was a part of a decade ago, or CTV or Global or CNN or Fox?
I don't understand why CBC is needed.
That's certainly not what Canadians seem to say in terms of voting with their remote control, voting with their web browser.
CBC's viewership is falling, even though Canada's population is growing and CBC's budget is growing.