Ezra Levant critiques the BBC’s new Verify team, led by Marianna Spring (French/Russian studies background), for selectively targeting right-wing and independent narratives while ignoring leftist groups like Extinction Rebellion. The team’s undercover social media tactics—like fake accounts for AmeriCast—raise ethical concerns as they investigate UK conspiracy theories, including potential parallels to January 6th or a German-style coup. Meanwhile, Levant’s crowdfunded documentary, Church Under Fire, examines pastors jailed during COVID (e.g., Henry Hildebrandt, Archer Pavlowski) and contrasts their treatment with attacks on other faiths, alleging persecution under Trudeau’s policies. The episode highlights media bias and the struggle for impartial verification in an era of algorithmic manipulation and polarized reporting. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello my friends, today I'm going to show you a strange project by the BBC state broadcaster over in London.
They have this new anti-disinformation squad, 60 people strong, called BBC Verify.
I'll take you through it.
I think you'll get a kick out of it.
But first let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
It's the video version of this podcast.
I want you to do that because I'm going to have this video, two videos I play from this BBC Verified Tribe, and I want you to see them.
To get access, go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
It's $8 a month, which gives you this podcast in video form.
Every weekday I do a show, and my friend Sheila Gunri does one every week.
And by the way, the $8 a month, it might not seem like a lot to you, but it's a lot for us when it all adds up.
That's how we pay our bills.
So that's RebelNewsPlus.com.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, the BBC hires a 27-year-old TikTok star to tell you what's true and what's not true.
What could possibly go wrong?
It's May 24th, and this is the Ezra Levance Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Hey, look at this tweet from the United Kingdom's BBC state broadcasters from a show called BBC Breakfast.
BBC News has unveiled BBC Verify to address the growing threat of disinformation and build trust with audiences through transparency.
The BBC's disinformation correspondent, Marianna Spring, had more details on BBC Breakfast.
Okay.
Verify comes from the Latin word veritas, which means truth.
Isn't all journalism about uncovering the truth, trying to verify it?
Sometimes it's easy, like a sports score.
Sometimes, you know, it's subject to debate.
But isn't all journalism about verifying things?
How exactly is this different?
Here, take a look at this video that accompanies this tweet.
Welcome to BBC Verify.
Like you said, we are a team of investigative journalists here at the BBC.
We are also a new brand and we are a physical location above the newsroom in London.
And the point of the team, as you said, is to verify video, to fact check, to counter disinformation, and to analyze really complex stories so we can get to the truth of what's going on.
Why does this matter?
Well, mistruths can cause really serious harm to society and to the people in them.
And so we want to show you our workings and really help you understand how we get to the bottom of what's happening.
And I'm going to give you a bit of a flavor of the kind of work that the team are doing.
So we're able to look at maps to geolocate specific situations, stuff that's going on.
This is just a map of central London where we are now.
And this is New Broadcasting House where I'm speaking to you from.
And it's not so important perhaps for the centre of London, but it is when we're analyzing war zones or what's happening in hard to reach places.
And there's a story on the BBC website today.
It's looking at Russian fortifications on the front lines in Ukraine.
And you can read more about it there.
And there are other ways that we also are able to interrogate what's going on, including on social media.
I have some undercover accounts that I've set up for the BBC's AmeriCast podcast.
And we use these kinds of undercover accounts.
These are the characters that the accounts belong to to be able to really understand polarization online and how what's happening on our social media feeds and what we're being recommended and pushed to us can affect all of us.
And they don't offer us a totally exhaustive insight into what's going on, but they can help us understand just how social media works.
And then there's also investigating other mistruths and the real-world harm they can cause.
At the moment, I'm investigating the UK's conspiracy theory movement.
I'm trying to understand more about how it's evolved and intensified since the pandemic here in the UK.
I'm looking at the alternative media that finds itself at the heart of this movement and a conspiracy theory newspaper that's a part of that as well.
I'm looking at the way that alternative media is funded.
I'm looking at its impact on local communities.
I'm looking at its connections with far-right figures and also its foreign links.
That's for a podcast series that will be coming out in June.
It's called Mariana in Conspiracy Land and it will be available on BBC Sounds Radio 4 asking that question: could January the 6th or a German coup attempt like we saw there ever happen here in the UK?
So there's a real range of journalism BBC Verify will be doing and you'll be able to see it online, on iPlayer, across BBC News, on your televisions and radio, so do look out for it.
Oh boy, there's a lot in there.
Why is this team above the newsroom?
Why isn't it part of the newsroom?
Why isn't it just the rest of the newsroom?
Now, I've met some BBC journalists.
I like some, I dislike most.
But imagine the hubris of this young lady saying she is somehow above the other journalists with her massive experience.
So she will provide truth-telling abilities that, say, some 40-year veteran and some expert cannot.
By using Google Maps, she says.
Wow, looking at maps.
By the way, do you trust this young lady to tell you about war zones by her ability to look at Google Maps?
She's 27, and I looked her up.
She has a degree in speaking French and Russian, which are interesting.
But what exactly makes her an expert about anything other than, I suppose, the French and Russian languages?
Why is she more senior than other BBC journalists who have actually, say, done war reporting?
Wouldn't a war reporter for the BBC tell you better what the truth is than some social media TikTok star?
She says that myths' truths can cause harm, you see.
And you can rely on her to identify that harm.
The weird thing is that she immediately says she is deploying mistruths through fake Twitter accounts, fake social media accounts.
And weirdly, all these undercover fake accounts are in America.
This is the British BBC, but they're setting up fake accounts in the United States to be able to understand what's going on.
So they're using deceptive tactics to fight deception.
They're using inauthentic fakes to fight fake news.
And they say this is to improve trustworthiness.
By the way, it's against the terms of service of every social media company to set up fake accounts.
That's just against the rules.
They're breaking the rules.
I don't know if we care about the rules of Facebook or Twitter, but this is exactly what the left and the BBC and the CBC and PBS say is foreign meddling in America.
In fact, it's not just foreign meddling.
It's a foreign government.
The BBC is the state broadcaster.
Now, did you hear what young Marianna had to say?
That she will investigate the conspiracy theory movement.
All right, well, what's she talking about?
Is she talking about the conspiracy theory that Russia somehow colluded with Donald Trump?
That was proven to be a conspiracy, but the BBC reported is the truth.
How about the global warming theory that somehow people are causing the earth to bake and we only have 10 years left?
And that theory was proposed 20 years ago.
What about the various COVID hoaxes?
And I'm not talking about skeptics.
I'm talking about the government hoaxes, that the vaccine was safe and effective when we found out it wasn't very effective at all.
You had to keep taking it, which isn't really a vaccine, is it?
Or about the official hoaxes about the source of the vaccine?
Are any of these conspiracy theories going to be assessed or only the ones that the government doesn't like?
She says she's going to look at funding for alternative media, but not the funding for the BBC, which extracts billions of dollars from British taxpayers.
What does it matter how her competitors are funded?
Is that really to get to the truth, or is that really to actually attack her competitors?
And did you hear who she said she'd be looking at?
The far right.
Okay.
But what about the far left?
What about the green left?
What about Extinction Rebellion?
Is she going to look at Greta Tunberg?
Who's funding her?
Or how about Antifa, or I don't know, Islamic terrorism?
Why are none of those things of interest to her?
Only examining the right.
Did you hear her mention January 6th?
Do you even know what that is?
Canadians sort of know that's a great meandering, as it's called, where that one guy who dressed up like a Viking moose meandered through Congress.
And yeah, they broke some windows and they trespassed.
And I don't support them, but it wasn't really a riot.
It was a meandering that was led by cops, and it was certainly agitated by FBI agents' provocateurs.
Remember this clip of an FBI agent, or at least an accused FBI agent, exhorting the crowd?
We need to go into the Capitol!
Into the Capitol!
No!
No!
Oh!
Fed!
Tomorrow?
I don't even like to say it because I'll be arrested.
Well, let's not say it.
We need to go.
I'll say it.
All right.
We need to go in.
Shut the fuck up, Boomer.
To the Capitol.
These Fed posting?
We need to go into the Capitol.
I didn't see that coming in.
Okay.
Monument Hill.
We are going to the Capitol, where our problems are.
It's that direction.
We spread the word.
All right.
No, Dave, but one more thing.
Can we go out there?
No, when we go in.
Are we going to get arrested?
Can we go up there?
We don't need to get shot.
Is that the conspiracy theory they mean?
The FBI agent provocateur?
Because I would watch that.
But if this is just the BBC state broadcaster rehashing the U.S. Democrat line on about January 6th, how is that even interesting to Brits?
Does one in 100 Brits care about Marianna's views about January 6th?
Who is she?
Well, she studied French and Russian and she bounced around different newspapers.
She's the ripe old age of 27 and she does both disinformation and TikTok.
She sort of reminds me of Canada's Rachel Gilmore, you know, the one who said, should we even sit with our family at Christmas dinner?
Remember that one?
Are you going to invite your unvaccinated relatives to sit at the dinner table with you this Thanksgiving?
Forensic Truth: Kremlin's Dome Mystery00:11:58
Experts are saying you might not want to risk it.
Here's why.
According to one expert from McMaster University, vaccines are super effective, but they're most effective when you're surrounded by other vaccinated people.
If you invite someone who isn't vaccinated, there's a risk of having a breakthrough case.
Now, breakthrough cases are pretty rare.
There's only ever been about 8,000 in Ontario.
But kids can't get vaccinated yet.
So part of keeping those kids as safe as possible is telling that one uncle who chooses not to get vaccinated that he might have to sit this one out.
And like Canada's Rachel Gilmore, she has the same sense of victimology.
She says that you're not allowed to criticize her.
Let me read this tweet from her.
After that first tweet went out, she was widely ridiculed.
And she said this.
I've been traveling for my next Radio 4 podcast.
And brilliant to see positive response about BBC Verify.
I've also been bombarded with abuse, misogyny, defamatory claims, misunderstanding my investigations into harm caused by mistruths and trolling.
Here's a taste from past year.
But I went to the tweet and there was nothing there.
I don't know if she knows how to use social media.
Well, I don't get it.
She says, check out this post for a flavor, but a lot worse via message.
No one should have to experience this level of abuse.
I am not in charge of every bit of the BBC you don't like.
I investigate the real-world harm of what happens on social media.
Disinformation, hate, algorithms.
But what's she even referring to?
And you see what happens so quickly here.
If you clap back at her, if you mock her, or if you merely misunderstand her, she'll say that that's exactly what she's here to fight.
People who misunderstand her and people who don't like her, people who are mean to her.
That's nothing to do with the word verify, is it?
It's about marginalizing and canceling people she doesn't like.
She's showing what she really means by truth and untruth.
She's just mad about opinions and expression of opinions, including rudeness.
None of that has anything to do with Veritas.
Look, truth can be rude or it can be cruel.
That's the thing about the truth.
She's about silencing alternative voices by denormalizing and defaming them.
She told you she's going to investigate independent journalism.
How about investigate the BBC?
Here's her boss, the boss of the BBC, a lot like Canada's CBC boss, explaining the how, the launch of BBC Verify by Deborah Turnas, CEO of BBC News.
I'm going to take you through this and I'm going to give you my thoughts as we go through.
And you're probably saying, Ezra, why are you focused so much on the BBC?
Well, it's interesting, but I think the BBC is often a model, a template for the CBC.
It's sort of like the bigger brother of state broadcasters and they do a lot of things together, including this whole trust initiative.
It starts actually interesting.
In the early hours of Wednesday, the 3rd of May, video footage emerged showing what appeared to be two drones crashing into a dome of the Kremlin complex in Moscow.
But was the video real or fake?
Did this attack actually happen?
And how could we tell?
The exponential growth of manipulated and distorted video means that seeing is no longer believing.
Okay, but then she doesn't actually answer that interesting question.
Then she talks about herself a bit.
Consumers tell us they can no longer trust that the video in the news feeds is real, which is why we at the BBC must urgently begin to show and share the work we do behind the scenes to check and verify information and video content before it appears on our platforms.
Okay, right.
But Marianna said that her project is about criticizing independent journalists, going after conspiracy theorists, going after the right wing.
She didn't say anything about examining the BBC's own work.
Now that I would pay to watch.
I'll keep reading.
And as AI, artificial intelligence, weaponizes and turbocharges the impact and consequences of disinformation, this work has never been more important.
Take it from her.
It's very important.
All day, every day, the BBC's news teams are using ever more sophisticated tools, techniques, and technology to check and verify videos like the Kremlin drone footage, as well as images and information.
They do this to ensure our journalism meets the rigorous editorial standards the BBC is proud to uphold.
Okay, but I say again, nothing Mariana said was about criticizing the BBC.
It was all about criticizing her critics, wasn't it?
By the way, I'm glad that the BBC says they're going to fact-check the Kremlin.
The Kremlin is run by an authoritarian regime.
The president of Russia is really a lifelong dictator.
The elections there are neither fair nor free.
And let's not forget that Vladimir Putin used to be a KGB agent, absolutely fact-checked the Kremlin.
But I hate to be a stickler.
Shouldn't we fact-check NATO too?
I mean, I'm a proud Canadian and Canada's part of NATO, but shouldn't we fact-check our own side of the battle?
Shouldn't we check and verify what our generals and propagandists say too?
BBC doesn't even think of that.
I'll keep reading.
But until now, that work has largely gone on in the background, unseen by audiences.
These same audiences are constantly bombarded with myths and disinformation and with fake images, including those generated by AI.
And they are telling us that amid this noise and sensationalism, they need to see our workings so we can maintain the trust people have put in the BBC for the last hundred years.
People want to know not just what we know and don't know, but how we know it.
And this is how our new brand, BBC Verify, has come into being.
Okay, but she still hasn't done any introspection.
The BBC is very good at criticizing everyone else.
But will they put that same lens, that same magnifying glass on their own work?
I haven't seen it yet.
But you know, it's actually worse.
Young Mariana is just their mascot.
They've hired apparently 60 of these Ministry of Truth bureaucrats.
Let me read a little more.
We've brought together forensic journalists.
What's that?
I know what a forensic accountant is.
What's a forensic journalist?
Is that a thing?
An expert talent from across the BBC, including our analysis editor, Ross Atkins, and disinformation correspondent Mariana Spring and their teams.
I didn't know Mariana had a team.
In all, BBC Verify comprises about 60 journalists who will form a highly specialized operation with a range of forensic investigative skills and open source intelligence, OSINT capabilities at their fingertips.
I still wonder what that open source intelligence and forensic tools means.
I think it just means Google and Google Maps.
That's what open source intelligence is.
It's just, so they're going to Google things.
Isn't that what, isn't that what all journalists do or supposed to do?
I'll keep reading.
They'll be fact-checking, verifying video, countering disinformation, analyzing data, and crucially, this is the important part, folks, explaining complex stories in the pursuit of truth.
Yeah, it's the explaining part that I'm worried about, isn't it?
Let me keep reading.
This is a different way of doing our journalism.
Why?
Have you not been fact-checking until now?
We've built a physical space in the London newsroom with a studio that BBC Verify correspondents and experts will report from, transparently sharing their evidence gathering with our audiences.
They will contribute to news online, radio and TV, including the news channel and our live and breaking streaming operation, both in the UK and internationally.
That's those fake American accounts.
And trust them.
They're not trying to interfere with the election.
But like I say, that is not actually doing journalism differently.
That's just some attempt at creating some new club, some new caste that we should really, really believe this time, because Canadians and Brits and Americans don't believe the current mainstream media, so they're creating this new special forces of journalists.
BBC Verify will be home to very specific expertise and technology.
They keep saying that.
I just don't know if it's true because they haven't given any evidence of it.
What is a forensic journalist?
Is it a thing?
when they say experts, do they just mean the same experts we've been listening to about the pandemic?
Because they weren't really, some experts really didn't know anything, did they?
But I want the principle of transparently explaining the how behind our journalism to be shared by every journalist in the BBC.
And thank you to those who are experimenting with new ways to do that.
If you know how it's made, you can trust what it says.
That's what our audiences have told us.
Trust is earned and transparency will help us earn it.
And as for that drone, there are a few answers on Ross Atkinson's Explainer video, which has had more than a million views on our website and will give people a taste of what Verify will be doing day in, day out.
Oh, okay.
So I went on YouTube and I googled that guy's name in drone video and here it is.
I'll just play it for you.
It's just two minutes long.
Watch the video.
This is what she's very proud of.
Take a look.
Russia claims that Ukraine tried to kill Vladimir Putin in the early hours of Wednesday.
This is the first video we have.
It's in Moscow.
We see an object fly in from the left and explode.
Now, let's play it again and pause here.
We know this is Moscow because this is Red Square.
Here's a recent picture of the same place with the Kremlin wall in the background and stands for next week's Victory Parade.
You can see those stands in the video too, meaning it's also recent.
And if we play the video on and pause again, there's the object flying towards the dome of the Senate Palace.
Moments before it explodes, we can see people on the dome.
We don't know who they are or what they're doing.
Now, Russia says it was attacked by two unmanned aerial vehicles.
In other words, drones.
We can't confirm that.
And if that's one video, here are three more.
This is a map of Russia with Moscow in the west, and all of these videos show this part of the city.
Here's the second.
The BBC's verification team has confirmed it was posted at 3.16 Moscow time on Wednesday morning.
We see the same dome with smoke rising from it.
The words are the name of a local Telegram channel that posted the video.
This next video shows the Senate Palace dome with fire clearly visible.
And then this shows an object flying in from the right.
Again, we see an explosion.
Russia says all of this was a planned terrorist act and an assassination attempt on the president, but has provided no evidence to back that up.
Ukraine says it's all staged by Russia.
As for Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin says he wasn't there at the time of the incident.
And these pictures from Reuters on Wednesday show the dome looking undamaged.
And while we try and work out what exactly it is these videos show, both sides say the other carried it out.
Yeah, I don't, maybe that's not the video she means, but it sure seems like it.
He doesn't actually explain anything, does he?
What exactly is all this then?
It's the same as the CBC and Trudeau.
They just don't want you to believe anyone else.
They don't want you to listen to anyone else.
They don't want you to especially listen to independent journalists.
Or as Jacinda Ardern, the disgraced former Prime Minister of New Zealand, recently put it, only believe what the government says.
Gerald And The True North00:10:37
The government will tell you everything you need to know.
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.
COVID-19.govt.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.
Yeah, no, thanks, mate.
I'll find the truth myself.
stay with us for more well hello again from our temporary studio in the boardroom of our world headquarters here at rebel news Behind me, of course, is one of the plaques or a couple of the plaques we have commemorating donors to Rebel News over the years.
I think I've shown you before, the hallways of our office have symbolic bricks, bricks for donors who have donated for different campaigns.
We have cornerstones and headstones.
And it's just basically the entire office is dedicated to our Rebel News supporters because unlike 99% of Canadian media, we don't take any money from the government.
So we rely on our viewers.
Anyways, I mentioned that because that is what you see behind me.
We are refurbishing and rebuilding our studio.
And I'll tell you about that in another video.
But our work continues, and I do the show every day, whether it's from here or the other studio.
And I see news from our friends at True North that two men have been charged with a shocking arson that burned a 120-year-old Alberta church to the ground over a year ago.
And I found this news in True North, and I had it sent to me by email as well.
I put it to you that if this were not a Christian church, but rather if it was a Jewish synagogue or a Muslim mosque or a Sikh temple or any other religious faith, if it were a gay pride community center of some sort, if it were any other identity group, this would be not just national news, but international news.
Justin Trudeau would be doing his very serious, fespian face and having a moment of silence.
And the CBC would be talking about extremist hate and violence and who radicalized people.
But no, it's just the Catholic Church.
And Justin Trudeau's right-hand man, Gerald Butts, said it was understandable anyways.
Joining me now to talk about this news and what Rebel News is doing to fight this Christophobia is my friend and colleague Kian Simoni, the chief documentary filmmaker for Rebel News, who joins us now from Calgary.
Kian, great to see you again.
Thanks for having me on, boss.
Oh, it's my pleasure.
I want to talk in a little bit about the documentary that you are working on.
And it's been an enormous project, and we're coming close to unspooling it, as they would say in Hollywood.
But first, give me a little bit of info about these charges for a church that was just torn.
And this is an old church.
I mean, 120 years old might not sound old if you're thinking about Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris or St. Paul's in London.
But there really aren't any, I mean, this is a really a pioneer era church that was torched.
Tell me what you know about it.
Well, like you said earlier, when you said that it would be not just national news, but international news if it was a Jewish synagogue or what have you.
It's the same sentiment.
If it was anything short of a Catholic church, it wouldn't just be news.
It would be domestic terrorism designated by the government.
And I think that's just the exact, I don't know, what. symbol of exactly what we're doing with this government, what this government is doing to the Catholics.
And it wasn't just Gerald Buddz who said it was understandable.
It was Justin Trudeau himself as well.
He said, given the history of the Catholic Church, it's totally understandable, the pain and why someone would come to do to that.
And he didn't really denounce it by saying that at all.
Everyone's got to get vaccinated if we're going to get through this as a community, as a country.
Canada.
Canada needs to recognize that the shame of our past is echoed today in continuing injustices, intolerance, and unfairness towards Indigenous peoples.
You talked about Canada's last wrongs, the past things they haven't done right.
When will you speak out about the 20 vandalized churches?
They're burning churches and vandalizing them, and you're not calling it a hate crime.
Sir, will you acknowledge religious persecution of Abrahamic faiths in Canada?
You're dropping.
You know, I think recently in Calgary, there's a Christian pastor named Derek Reimer, who for merely peacefully protesting outside drag queen story hours for children at libraries, he's been jailed.
So jailed for that.
And they're looking at hate crime charges against him.
I don't know if they've been filed yet.
This is clearly a hate crime.
And no, it's, I can guarantee you that they'll get bail.
And I can guarantee you that if they are in any way charged, they're appearing in court in High Prairie on May 29th.
I'm not sure if they're out on bail.
I don't see that detail in the report.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, let's say the names of the accused.
There's no reason why we shouldn't say them.
56-year-old Kenneth Ferguson and 50-year-old Gerald Capote are believed to be from High River.
I'm very curious.
Why would, I mean, 50 years old, I mean, I'm 51 years old, so it's not old.
It's just the beginning of life.
But like, that's not some rash youth who got drunk with some buddies and went out for, you know, a crazy night.
If you're in your 50s, you've considered things.
You're no longer ruled by your passions, hopefully.
And to do something so deliberate and diabolical points towards a premeditated political act of, I'll say it, of act of political terrorism.
Again, I don't have all the facts.
I'm just going off this news story from True North.
But it is very strange that there are two people in their 50s.
Who are they?
What did they do?
Why did they do it?
Do they have any affiliation with the other?
Because there were dozens of churches that were either torched, most of them were just vandalized, but not burnt to the ground.
Like it's a string of them, like literally dozens.
And no one in authority, no one in the established media seems to care.
What I'm seeing with this one is that it was in a place called Gruard.
I'm definitely pronouncing that wrong, but it's a hamlet of only 160 people who live there.
And I guess it was that Hamlet was in charge of the St. Bernard Mission Residential School.
So it seemed like there was history at that place and that might have led them to burn that particular one down.
But I just think it is insane that that is a place that only 160 people live.
I just thought that was a fascinating point.
Yeah, well, it sounds like it may be that.
And I wonder who put them up to it.
Because of course, in that same article, you know, and I've seen this all over the place, a lot of Indigenous people, even those who criticized the Catholic Church's role in residential schools, they still love their church.
The church is a community center on many reserves.
It's a place for a lot of social services.
So I'm very curious to know.
And I wonder if the police of the prosecution will just paper this over.
Again, if this was an attack on a Muslim mosque or a Jewish synagogue, we would already by now have the entire social media feed, every manifesto, everything the person said or did, and we would have proof that it was a right-wing terrorist attack.
And yet we know very little about this.
I'm curious to know about him.
Well, listen, Kian, thank you very much for talking about that.
The reason I wanted to talk to you, not just because you're in Alberta and you care about the story, is because, as I mentioned earlier, you're our documentary boss at Rebel News, and you have been working on our crowdfunded gold-plated, like this is the best effort we've ever put into a documentary.
We've really gone the extra mile.
We got new equipment for it.
We traveled around for it.
Why don't you tell us about the Christian documentary?
For folks who want to know more, they can go to savethechristians.com, which is a special website we set up.
That's just the name of the website, savethechristians.com.
Kian, why don't you tell me about the name of the documentary that people can find there, the status of it, some of the work you've been doing with it, who's the narrator, the host of the doc, and what's your rough sense or timing of when that documentary opens?
That's a lot to cover, boss.
So the name is Church Under Fire, Canada's War on Christianity.
I'm actually doing it with Sheila.
We traveled Canada last month, probably about three weeks on and off of going to all the pastors around Canada who either had hefty fines or were jailed for opening their church during COVID-19.
The documentary itself, it kind of opens up of the last, I'd say, nine or 10 years of Justin Trudeau's.
It's more focused on Justin Trudeau's war on Christianity.
So we kind of do a little layover of that.
And then we go into, I believe it's seven pastors who agreed to come on and tell their story of, you know, what's their congregation like?
What's their church like?
Church Under Fire00:03:00
What made them make that decision?
And I won't spoil too much, but it was tough to edit because all their answers were the same.
And these pastors aren't pastors who talk to each other.
It was all the same.
And so telling a story for an hour and a half when everybody's saying the same thing, it was a big challenge, but it was so fascinating because we asked the same pastors the same questions because whether it's Henry Hildebrandt in Ontario or Archer Pavlowski out here in Calgary, everybody's so different.
They're completely different people, completely different pastors in completely different congregations.
So why did they make that decision?
And it was such a fascinating thing.
I forgot your last two questions there.
Where's the status of it?
Yeah.
How's it coming?
Yeah.
So we just got picture locked, which is a fancy nerd word for all the edits are done.
So I have the whole story laid out.
And right now I'm color grading it.
So it's basically just adding when we shoot it in raw, it kind of comes out looking dull.
And then I would add in some skin color and stuff like that.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome aboard.
Monster located your seat.
We ask it at you, please step.
Thank you.
And we couldn't stand by and watch.
We had to do something.
It was our obligation and our call from God to do something as shepherds.
So we did.
We got arrested with my brother David in the middle of the highway, inciting people to come to church, participating in illegal gathering, officiating in illegal gathering, and off we went to prison.
Three days and two nights we spend on concrete.
We've waited,
and waited, and waited, and waited for months and months.
And they just keep pushing it away, pushing.
There's an agenda.
I said, there's an agenda.
And I said, we won't fall for it.
Actually, I have a pretty cool story about that.
Dreaming Big: Producing Film00:04:02
If you'd care to hear it's a little curious how movies are made.
And I myself am sort of new to it.
So yeah, tell us what color grading is.
So the cool story of color grading is actually my least favorite part about filmmaking.
It was at least.
It's hard.
It takes a lot of time and effort to make sure that you have the shadows and the blacks and the whites, everything correct.
So it was two days ago when I first started color grading where I was just kind of getting it all put into play, kind of see what kind of vibe I wanted.
And I had this beautiful cinematic color.
It looked like straight out of a Marvel movie or something.
And my finger slipped.
And I put on this weird, hazy glow by accident.
And I just sat there and looked at it.
It had to have been five minutes where it looked like it was a dream.
It looked like it was like a bad dream.
And then I kind of just started applying that to everything.
And my thought process now is that if this comes out, so this is going to be probably coming out this summer in theaters.
And we'll do some events and we can get into that later.
But if we start putting it to film festivals, that means we'll have a public release later on this year or early next year.
And by then, COVID will be out of our minds.
It will only be a bad dream.
Interesting.
Very interesting.
And it doesn't look over the top.
It doesn't look like you're really in a dream, but there's a certain glow to let's say Sheila's face when she's walking.
And you can see a shimmer.
And that looks like a dream.
Wow.
Well, I'm very excited.
I know you've put a lot of effort into it.
And Sheila Gunread is the narrator of the documentary.
It is a perfect fit.
Of course, she's been on that issue really since the beginning.
And this whole effort, you mentioned you travel the country with Sheila talking to different pastors.
This really is a crowdfunded effort because there's no other way you would produce a film like this.
The CBC would never produce a film like this.
They would produce a film championing the police who shut down the churches.
They wouldn't take the side of the churches.
And, you know, other people may try and do this, but we needed the dough to do it right.
And we explained some of those costs.
And folks can learn more about that.
And by the way, I think we still have our crowdfunding page open at savethechristians.com.
And if you go there, you'll see there's some neat things.
If you chip in a certain amount, you can get a credit in the film.
And if you chip in a certain amount, you can like there's fun goodies there to make you part of the team.
And I think it's a really good way to do a documentary because we wouldn't have the budget otherwise to do it.
So listen, listen, great to catch up with you.
I'm excited.
That dream feeling sounds very interesting.
You piqued my curiosity.
And it is true we are planning to release this.
Like the whole idea was to do a theater quality, you know, Netflix quality movie and try and get this thing seen by a wider distribution than merely what we put on YouTube and Rumble every day.
And I'm proud of what we put on YouTube, Rumble, Twitter, Odyssey, the other channels we're on.
But the idea of doing something that's really Hollywood level is a stretch for us.
And we'll see if we can do.
And you're the right man to achieve that for us.
Keen, great to catch up with you.
Thanks for the heads up about these charges in High Prairie.
We'll have to check that out.
And I can hardly wait to see the movie.
Thanks for having me on, Ezra.
All right.
My pleasure.
There you have it.
Key and Simoni, our head of documentaries.
And if you want to learn more, go to savethechristians.com.
There's still time to get those perks if you want them.
All right, stay with us.
letters to me next hey welcome back By the way, I've got a video coming out soon about why what we're cooking up in the studio instead of the boardroom.
Thanks for your patience on that.
I'm actually pretty excited.
It's the first time we refreshed our studio since coming to our world headquarters in January 1st, 2017.
Glad Watching Rebel News00:05:14
So we've been here for, what, six and a half years.
And as I mentioned the other day, computer and video equipment is sort of like dog years.
You know, one year for a person is like seven years for a dog.
I think it's sort of similar for computer equipment.
So we've had our studio for six and a half years.
It's time to freshen things up.
So I'll tell you about that later and I'll show you some video later.
But let's come to your letters.
Free West Guy says the commies are guarding the hen house.
Just like when the RCMP investigates itself.
You know, it's weird because, of course, the Chinese Communist Party and they have the hammer and sickle in their flag.
They are communist in terms of being authoritarian and violating civil liberties, but they're very capitalist in their communist way.
They call it capitalism with Chinese characteristics, I think is the phrase they use.
And they learned that they can bribe just about anyone.
And the bribe doesn't have to be explicit.
It can be, you know, doing business.
It can be giving access to their market.
I mean, there's a lot of ways that a country can be corrupted and cash is a big one.
I mean, Justin Trudeau is sort of grubby.
He'll take $140,000 gift from the CCP.
It's that explicit.
But I mean, if you know anything about David Johnson, his whole family is intertwined with the Chinese establishment, including sending his children to university in China.
I mean, listen, I believe in giving your kids the best, but David Johnson could have sent his kids to any university in the world, really.
I mean, he was the president of a university himself.
There's no way he couldn't get his kids into Harvard or Yale or MIT or Oxford to deliberately choose to send his children to China.
It was not about getting them a classical education.
It was about integrating them into the Chinese establishment.
That is not some, and obviously everything would have been directed, approved, and managed by the Chinese Communist Party.
David Johnston is even more compromised than Trudeau.
It's so sad.
H1R 086 says it is not racist to oppose communism because communism breeds racism.
Listen, my only point was Gordon Chang is such a good man with a good heart.
He believes in freedom.
His wife Lydia too.
And when he says he walks through Chinatown in San Francisco and sees the Chinese communist flag and he says it's disloyal, it's stunning to hear that.
And it's a little nerve-wracking to hear that.
And I suppose it's one of the privileges of being a Chinese person ethnically is you can criticize in a way that I wouldn't feel comfortable doing.
It's like black people can say tougher things about black culture.
Jewish people can say tougher things about Jewish culture.
You can be a critic of your own tribe in a way that others might be, you know, afraid to do.
And I'm not a politically correct person, but it's quite something to hear Gordon Chang say what he says, and he believes it.
He loves freedom very much.
And it gives me tremendous hope because I know, I don't care what race or ethnicity you are, yearning to be free.
I believe that's the human condition.
And, you know, they used to say the Confucian ethic, the stoic nature of Chinese people means they are not suited to democracy.
This was something that was said 50 years ago.
But if you look at Taiwan, you can see how wrong that is.
Taiwan is incredibly vibrant and free and rambunctious.
It is a rambunctious political culture.
And South Korea, obviously ethnically different.
But again, proof that freedom is for everyone.
And I hate it when people sort of have an assumption.
And Hong Kong.
Hong Kong loves to be free.
I don't know.
I feel like it's dark times.
There was this moment when Hong Kong was rising up against Beijing that I was quite hopeful, but that's being crushed and the West didn't say or do anything.
Got a little bit of hate mail coming in.
It's always refreshing.
Reeve DeSantis says our narrative is the gaslighting that rebel news and the sinner Christians constantly create with no peer-reviewed source in sight.
Look, I don't know exactly what you're referring to there, but I'm glad you're watching something you disagree with.
I'm glad you have a diversity of sources of information and opinions, and you can check yourself against other views.
You know, it's funny, there's certain little tools on Twitter that you can get the Twitter accounts that you follow ranked on a spectrum, right-wing or left-wing.
It's sort of how diverse is your Twitter media diet.
And I'm very pleased that I follow as many accounts on the left as I do on the right.
Not because I obey them or believe them.
I just want to hear what the other side is saying.
And by the way, every once in a while, there's a good point on the left.
Not enough to convert me necessarily, but I'm glad that you're watching Rebel News because we do represent a swath of society.
I think we are more open to different views here than, say, the BBC or the CBC are, don't you think?