Nigel Farage’s Coots Bank accounts were shut after 40 years—no financial risk, just a 40-page report branding him "xenophobic" and tied to Brexit (30 mentions) and Russia (22)—despite no convictions. The bank’s CEO, Dame Alison Rose, faced backlash for violating privacy laws, with media and politicians condemning the move, while Farage warns of a creeping UK social credit system. Meanwhile, Derek Dyckoff survived a brutal subway knife attack by Moses, a career criminal, after being taunted with "suck your mom" and ignored by fare inspectors; Sunnybrook Hospital staff initially restrained him, calling his survival a fight against systemic failures. Both cases expose how political agendas and institutional neglect can turn daily life into a battleground for free speech and safety. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, the other Coots, a British bank called Coots, debanks Nigel Farage for having the wrong political opinions, but he fights back.
What will this mean for Canada?
It's July 26th, and this is the Es with a Bant Show.
Shame on you, you sensorious bug.
Well, hi, everybody.
I am literally on the road.
Forgive me for the wind sound in the microphone, the fact that I'm not in the studio or really on location.
I'm traveling.
It's funny, for the last few days I've been in Coots, Alberta, well, actually in Lethbridge at the hearing of four men who were arrested for their role in the Coutz blockade a year and a half ago.
So Coots has been on my mind, and I've been searching the word Coots online, and it shows up for the case in Alberta.
But it also has been in the news because there's a bank in the United Kingdom called Coots.
Same exact spelling.
In fact, I was in London about a month or two ago.
It was walking by on the street and I saw this word Coots with no explanation of what it was.
I stood in front of it to take a selfie.
I thought that's sort of unusual.
Coots is not a common name.
I had no idea what it was at the time.
And then fairly recently, like within the last week or so, Nigel Farage, the conservative populist politician in the UK who led the Brexit movement, led a party called UKIP, the UK Independence Party, to a smashing success.
This was, if you recall, in early 2016, he won a national referendum for Britain to remove itself from the European Union.
The European Union, of course, is sort of a mini version of the UN, just for Europe, but it had much more power.
There was a European Union currency called the Euro.
Luckily, the Brits didn't give up their pound.
There's European Union courts and parliaments and budgets.
So it was an awful organization, sort of a little empire run out of Brussels.
And Nigel Farage fought and won, beating the entire establishment, the entire media, all the banks, of course.
Every institution and establishment in the UK was for the European Union, except Nigel and the people.
And he won.
And it was a shockwave.
And it was a premonition of what was to come in the United States a few months later when Donald Trump upended the establishment too.
2016 was quite a year for populist conservatives.
Anyways, it took years for that Brexit to take force.
And Nigel Farage was the man of the hour.
Anyway, since then, he has dabbled in politics, including with the Brexit Party, but he has found a home in one of my favorite TV networks in the world called GB News, which is a freedom-oriented TV station in the United Kingdom that's on real TV, as well as the internet, as well as radio.
And Nigel Farage has a show there, along with other amazing talent, including Neil Oliver, one of my favorite guys, our friend Calvin Robinson.
If you've never heard of GB News, you really should check it out.
You can watch it on their app or just on YouTube or whatever.
So Nigel Farage does a great job of his show.
Politically Exposed People00:15:42
And the other day, he, I'm going to say he admitted something because I imagine it was embarrassing to do so.
Because I went through something similar myself.
Nigel Farage said that his bank called Coots had written him a letter firing him as a client.
Nigel Farage had been a client of Coots for decades, he said, in good standing.
Nigel Farage is a wealthy man.
He was a successful stockbroker or other financial officer.
I don't know exactly what he did.
And then he was in politics and now he's making money in media and giving speeches.
He's not a poor man.
He's had his money with Coots.
He's been a customer in good standing.
And they debanked him.
Here, here's how he revealed the matter on GB News.
And I can imagine it was a little bit embarrassing for him to do so because there's an implication that he was wrong or morally wrong in some way.
And the fact that he has been marginalized from society, that must have hurt.
Here's Nigel Froze announcing the news.
Two months ago, I received a phone call from my bank.
Now, bear in mind, I'd been with the same banking group since 1980.
I've had my personal account there with that group ever since that date.
I ran my business through there when I worked in Mississippi in the 1990s into the noughties.
And today, I have my personal and business accounts there.
But two months ago, I get a phone call out of the blue from a personal manager, a new personal manager, not one I'd ever spoken to before, who simply says on a phone call, we are closing your accounts.
I asked why.
No reason was given.
I was told it would all be explained in a letter that would arrive in a couple of days' time.
The letter just told me the accounts are closing, and please, by the date they gave me, make sure you've moved to another bank.
I did inquire further within the group.
I sent an email to the chairman and I got someone ring me up and say it's purely a commercial decision.
Hmm, I thought.
So I've tried for two months to get another bank account and I've spoken to seven different banks and they've all said no.
And the reason is it would seem to be political.
I don't know precisely what the reason is, but there is a category of person called a PEP, a politically exposed person.
It was a term that came into our law as a result of our membership of the European Union.
I'm told that the city minister and the government are thinking about redefining it, but that may take some time.
So it could be purely political.
It could be, of course, prejudice.
After all, I'm pretty used to prejudice, prejudice that comes from the establishment against me.
But I also worried, I also worried very much that what was said in the House of Commons last year by Chris Bryant, Member of Parliament for South Wales, Labour member, chairman of the Privilege Privilege Committee, who used parliamentary privilege to say that in a calendar year, I'd received half a million pounds from the Kremlin.
This was done under parliamentary privilege.
I appealed to the speaker.
I appealed to Mr. Bryant, but there'd been no retraction whatsoever.
There have also been extraordinary headlines written about me in all of the newspapers, some suggesting that on the night of the Brexit referendum, I engineered a coup along with the hedge funds where we pushed the pound up, shorted it, and we all made a fortune.
Well, I'm afraid that isn't true either.
But whatever reason, it's become clear to me that I cannot get a bank account.
What does that mean?
Well, it means that basically you've become a non-person.
It's rather like living in Germany or Russia 80 years ago, or perhaps even communist China today.
I wonder, are we living in communist China today in this country?
Are we akin to communist China?
Love your thoughts on that, please.
Farage at gbnews.com.
Well, all of this has been quite stressful and quite difficult because without a bank account, you simply can't exist.
You simply can't live.
But what's even worse is that over the course of the last few months, some of these ridiculous rules and closures have been extended to my immediate family.
And whilst I'm sad and annoyed about where I am, I'm absolutely incandescent that members of my family should be singled out and targeted just because I campaigned for and pushed a Brexit campaign for all of those years.
This is truly and utterly disgusting.
But it isn't just happening to me.
I know of people going back nearly 10 years who were UKIP candidates, UKIP MEPs.
others in prominent positions in the Brexit party who also had their bank accounts closed.
But none of them really had the voice to speak out.
And I feel that I do.
There are other people in media too who've had their media accounts closed down.
And it seems to be all one way.
It seems to be all against people who have traditionalist or conservative views.
There is something totally outrageous going on here.
So I've been considering over the course of the day my options.
I've spent time talking to lawyers.
I've been considering legal action.
I've been asking myself whether, frankly, it's even worth staying in this country.
I could go to one of the fintechs and I could get the ability of at least a payments mechanism, but it's not a bank account.
It doesn't have a debit card.
It wouldn't pay you interest on money.
And you certainly wouldn't be able to borrow any money or get a mortgage if you wanted one in the future.
So I've been seriously considering my options.
And I said earlier on today that at seven o'clock tonight, I'd tell you what my next steps were.
Well, you could knock me down with a feather because the phone rang at quarter to seven and it was the bank that wants to close me down completely in a few weeks' time.
They claim there's nothing political at all in what they're doing.
It's purely a commercial decision.
And it was said to me on the phone a few minutes ago, they could get me a personal account with another bank that is part of the same group, but that doesn't apply to the business account.
So frankly, isn't of much use to me.
I'm used to battling against the odds.
I'm used to being prejudiced against in the most extraordinary way.
And I'm generally pretty tough in fighting through these things.
But just for once, I'm really pretty thoughtful, pretty thoughtful about whether it's actually worth living in this country right at the moment.
So what I am going to do is take some time off, take a week or two off, maybe more, to consider what my next steps are going to be.
This is going on in our country.
It's happening to plenty of people.
I just happen to be one of them.
But you know what?
Unless this rot is stopped, in time to come, you at home may say things on Facebook or Twitter that may result in you losing your bank accounts too.
That, I think, is how scary this whole thing is.
Now, Coots is a very fancy bank.
I'm told it's the bank that Queen Elizabeth herself used to bank with.
They have a 1 million pound minimum, they say, to invest there.
That's quite something.
The hilarious thing is that their ad campaign features young kids and teenagers, none of whom would have a million pounds to invest.
It's sort of weird that way.
Coots is part of the NatWest banking group that got into financial trouble and had to be bailed out by the government, which still has a 40% stake in them.
So it's doubly wrong that a bank that is 40% owned by the government is now firing clients for having the wrong political views.
Now, the bank didn't talk about Nigel Farage's policies because that would be illegal.
A bank cannot blab about your confidential banking matters.
It's sort of like a doctor can't go on TV and talk about your ailments.
It's private.
But the BBC, the state broadcaster over there, ran a story saying their sources said the real reason Nigel Farage was debanked had nothing to do with his politics, but rather it was because Nigel Farage didn't have enough money.
And that was posted in the BBC.
But it was a lie.
Now, the world didn't know that.
And we had two competing stories.
You had Nigel Farage, who was the advocate, the protagonist of the story.
And then you had the state broadcaster saying, no, no, no, we know the truth.
That's a lie.
Oh, there goes Nigel again.
But Nigel says he had the money.
And I believe.
Remember, this is a woke bank.
They're deep into environmentalism, deep into climate change.
They're trying to get their DEI diversity, equity, and inclusion stats up.
And you could tell they sort of hate Nigel Farage by nature.
But in the United Kingdom, they have a law that allows people to request internal records about themselves from any institutions.
It's sort of like our access to information laws in Canada, except it applies to other agencies too.
So Nigel managed to get all the internal documents, including a lengthy report on his political hygiene.
Nigel Farage managed to get the internal bank report that basically condemned him, unpersoned him, said he was not worthy of having a bank account at Coots.
Here, take a look for yourself.
So I put in what's called a subject access request to Coots, the bank, who decided they wanted to close me out.
I wanted to find out why.
What was the reasoning behind them closing the account?
Now, as you know, they had briefed the BBC that it was to do with lack of funds and nothing else.
Well, here's the document.
It isn't incredible.
40 pages.
It reads rather like a brief that you'd give to a barrister ahead of a serious criminal trial.
I mean, from the tone of this document, I must be one of the worst human beings ever to have inhabited this planet.
But I guess if you were, you know, upper middle class, wealthy, London, metropolitan elite, then that's perhaps how you would view me.
Although quite what this has to do with banking and commerce, I don't really know.
Let me give you just a few pointers as to what's in this document.
Word search is really interesting.
Brexit is mentioned 30 times.
Well, I think it's quite very easy to understand that.
I don't think the globalist establishment, I don't think the corporates ever forgave anybody directly involved in the Brexit movement.
They didn't accept the result of the referendum, and I guess they never ever will.
Russia is mentioned 22 times with links to a whole series of articles that appeared in The Guardian and elsewhere, attempting to link myself and Aaron Banks to Russia and indeed to Russian funding.
All of that has been disproved with Aaron Banks winning his court case, his libel action against Carol Cabwalla, the journalist involved who wrote these things.
But that's fine.
All these people do is take every negative press article about me they possibly can and collate it in this document.
Twice in this document, Sir Chris Bryant is mentioned.
I hinted a couple of weeks ago I thought this could be behind it.
And sure enough, twice the accusation made under parliamentary privilege that I'd received over half a million quid in one year from the Kremlin is mentioned in this document and constitutes quite a big part of their conclusions.
Donald Trump, well, of course, he gets a mention 14 times.
Donald Trump is mentioned.
The fact that I support Donald Trump is again part of this charge sheet.
Racist is mentioned nine times, what I thought it might be, and within the exposed person five times.
Let me just give you one or two quotes from this that might be instructive.
The client's financial position is now sufficient to retain on a commercial basis.
The decision to close me down was made at a meeting on November the 17th last year on the Wealth Reputational Risk Committee.
They got together and decided that once the small mortgage I had with them expired in 2023, they would get rid of me, even though I met the financial criteria on a commercial basis, contrary to what was spun to the BBC.
They haven't told the truth on this, and I'm pretty blooming angry about it.
But now we get into what this report's really all about.
One, it is accepted that no criminal convictions have resulted.
Gosh, they sound disappointed, don't they?
Commentary and behaviours that do not align with the bank's purpose and values have been demonstrated.
So the bank has a series of values.
The bank has a series of political positions.
And as for purpose, well, I thought the purpose of companies was to act ethically, yes, of course, but to return to their shareholders dividends.
And in this case, folks, do you know who the shareholders are?
It's you and me.
This bank is part of the RBS group.
It's 38.6% owned by us because we bailed them out in 2008 after their greed and short-sighted stupidity.
We are the shareholders, but they're more bothered.
They're more bothered about putting up rainbow flags and being popular at dinner parties in Chelsea than they are about actually making money.
When considering our stance, our stance, this is the bank stance, specifically on ESG, diversity and inclusion.
The comments and articles are not in line with our views or our purpose.
That word purpose coming back again.
I go on.
He is seen as xenophobic and racist.
Oh, charming.
That's nice, isn't it?
That really is lovely.
Thank you.
So very much indeed for that.
And here's the final one.
In making the decision, risk factors, including accusations of links to Russia and controversial public statements, which are felt to conflict with the bank's purpose.
So let's be clear.
The decision to get rid of me wasn't financial.
It was done because somehow I don't fit with their values.
They were bailed out by us.
They have a duty to run at a profit as a commercial business.
But no, they are to be the moral guardians of all.
And that's because the march through the public and private corporate sectors of left-wing institutions who want to change the way the world is, organizations like Stonewall, has led us exactly to where we are.
And I guess it's not just Coops because I've been refused by 10 other banks.
I will not get a UK bank account.
That is done, dusted over.
Nigel Farage's Pushback Against Cancel Culture00:14:49
Mercifully, in the modern world, there are fintech solutions where I can receive and pay money.
I won't be able to earn interest on that money.
I won't be able to borrow money.
It won't be a full bank account, but I will be able to exist and survive.
So is this all about me?
No.
Since I broke this story, the number of people who've been in touch with me who've been summarily closed down by the banks, because you see, the banks don't have to give any explanation.
There's something called the tipping off rule, which means they don't have to tell you, for example, if the police are investigating your affairs.
I'm not sure they've ever been challenged fully, publicly, over closure of bank accounts the way that I have done.
The number of people running little businesses, window cleaners, taking cash.
No, we don't want your business anymore as we move towards a cashless control society.
Worst of all is this.
Above our banks are a series of international agencies, the biggest of them being a firm being called Refinitive.
Banks go to that firm to see what our creditworthiness is, whether we are an acceptable risk to lend money to, for example.
Now, I don't blame the banks for protecting themselves, but Refinitive are now going to work with banks so they'll be able to check your social media posts.
What has happened to me can very soon happen to you.
And if it does, we start to move towards a China-style social credit system where our freedoms are gone, our liberty is gone, our ability to exist as ordinary human beings is gone unless we obey the accepted wisdom of the day.
This is completely against free speech, completely against liberty, completely against democracy.
And whilst I am absolutely fuming, at least with this document, I have got the truth.
The dossier proved that the BBC was lying, or at least that the BBC was lied to.
Nigel Farage had the money to qualify to be in Coots.
It was the Coots internal political hygiene committee that stabbed them in the back.
And the BBC reporter had participated in the lie.
And then it came out that the night before the BBC ran that story, the reporter at the BBC had had dinner with the CEO of the bank, Allison Rose, who obviously leaked that banking smear or lied to the BBC.
This was incredible.
Not only did the bank fire Nigel Farage for political reasons, not only did they work up a dossier against him, but then they leaked internal talking points to the BBC that ran with it.
The bank was engaging in a smear.
And although the data they released to the BBC was obviously false, they were disparaging their own client, violating, surely, laws of banking privacy.
Now, obviously, Nigel Farage had the support of GB News.
And all of GB News started to weigh in on the subject.
That was very powerful because GB News is growing in popularity.
Here's a sample of some of the videos that they did.
GB News, do you think Nigel Farage should have a bank account with Coots?
Do you think it's bad that Coots has been briefed for BBC and FT News?
Do you think it's right that Nigel Farage doesn't have an account with Coots?
Do you think Nigel Farage should have a bank account with Coots?
Do you think Nigel Farage should have a bank account with Coots?
Do you think it's right that Coots have been briefing the press?
Are you aware of their slave trade links?
Thank you.
GB News, do you think Nigel Farage should have a bank account with Coots?
Hi, GB News, do you think Nigel Farage should have a bank account with Coots?
Do you think it's right that Coots have been briefing the BBC and FT?
A bank here, I don't work it.
I'm not working this.
Do you think that Nigel Farage should have a bank account with Coots?
I don't have an opinion on that.
Do you work for Coots?
Do you shove?
I don't have an opinion or whatever.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
GB News, do you think that Nigel Farage should have a bank account with Coots?
Do you think it's right that Coots have been briefing the press on Nigel Farage's personal bank information?
I have no idea at all.
I'm not confident.
Okay, thank you.
Are you aware of Coots' slave trade links?
Do you think Nigel Farage should have a bank account with Coots?
Any comment on that?
Thank you.
I think it's right that they've cancelled his bank account.
Thank you.
The thing is, it's a wider question.
We have cultural Marxism embedded in all of our institutions now.
This is the long march through the institutions that has been happening since the 60s.
It started with educational institutions, then political and media institutions.
Now it's got to the banking institutions.
So they are fully on board with the equality, diversity, and inclusion agenda.
The thing is, it's not inclusive to people like Nigel Farage and thousands of other people who don't have the right view.
So I would support a bank that says we are not going to follow the equality, diversity, inclusion, and environmental social governance ESG program that they've got going on.
We need something like that.
But here's where things got interesting from my point of view.
And here's what was very surprising to me.
Nigel Farage is a counter-establishment figure, an anti-establishment figure.
In a sense, he's part of the establishment.
He led a political party.
He won a campaign.
He's on TV, but he is.
I don't know if Maxine Bernier would be the equivalent because Maxine Bernier did not win a big electoral battle.
He would be more establishment than Bernier, more establishment than Preston Manning, but he's certainly an insurgent.
And a lot of people in the establishment hate Nigel Farage.
They hate what he achieved and they hate his style.
But here's what became incredible from my mind: various newspapers across the political spectrum in the UK, various media channels, various commentators took Nigel Farage's side in the matter.
Some of them prefaced their remarks by saying, well, I don't like Nigel, but, or whatever you think of Nigel, let me tell you.
But even with that disclaimer, they came to his aid.
I guess they could see that if you can de-bank Nigel Farage for his political friends, you can debank anybody.
And the pressure on the bank, the bank surely would have been able to withstand pressure just from Nigel Farage and even just from GB News.
But when the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail and other huge newspapers, both the tabloids and the respectable broadsheets, started literally doing front-page stories about this, the pressure on the bank ramped up.
And the bank was in trouble because they had obviously broken the law by disparaging their client and lying about him and tipping off the CBC.
Sorry, the BBC.
The BBC, by the way, ran an apology saying they were misled by their source.
Take a look at this.
Good evening.
I told the world about three weeks ago that Coots had closed my business and my personal accounts and had not given any reason whatsoever.
I also said that I'd struggled to open bank accounts literally anywhere else.
But this began to really matter on the 4th of July when the BBC ran this headline.
Now it came from their business editor, Simon Jack.
Nigel Farage bank account shut for falling below the wealth limit, which led of course to much hilarity among political commentators and the media.
And of course, me saying the whole thing was political was clearly some sort of crackpot conspiracy.
But once I got my subject access request back from Coots, and goodness me, I didn't really expect 36 pages of bile vitriol and actually quite a lot of it, frankly, just outright libelous.
The only way that I could disprove the BBC story was to publish it in full.
And there are many things in that report I did not want to put into the public domain, so vile were they, but I had to do it.
And this all emerged last Thursday when, of course, I got a letter of apology from Dame Alison Rose, who is the CEO of the entire Nat West Group.
I felt that the BBC, frankly, were being a little bit slow in correcting the story and changing the headline.
And I thought the hurt the story had caused me was such that actually I really, really, really wanted an apology.
Well, BBC apologies are very, very rare.
They only happen once every few years.
But today I got that apology.
And it began with Simon Schack, the BBC's business editor.
And he says, the information on which we based our reporting on Nigel Farage and his bank accounts came from a trusted and senior source.
Hmm, interesting.
However, the information turned out to be incomplete and inaccurate.
Therefore, I would like to apologize to Mr. Farage.
On top of that, I got a letter this afternoon, which I was pleased to get, and it came from Deborah Turness, the CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs.
And I'm going to put the letter up on your screen now.
And let's go through what is significant.
Made very, very clear that, repeated, that the information turned out to be inaccurate.
And at the bottom of that paragraph, she says, I would therefore like to apologize to you on behalf of BBC News.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Simon Jack.
Thank you, Deborah Turness.
I know some will say it took too long, but thank you.
A fulsome apology from the BBC is not something that happens very often.
I'm delighted to get it.
But when we go into the detail of this letter, it's really, really interesting because, again, she repeats that a senior and trusted source had put this information out.
But what was really interesting, and what I learned from this letter was that she says, we went back to the source to check.
They were happy for us to publish the information.
They said that they were.
Now, the BBC have apologised.
They are now out of it.
Which points the finger back to Coots and Manat West Banking Group.
Well, things started to pile up.
The great political interrogator Andrew Neal started publishing lists of questions that he felt that the bank had to answer.
And Andrew Neal, there is no equivalent to him in Canada.
He would be sort of like Peter Mansbridge, but if Peter Mansbridge was universally respected by left and right alike as an interrogative journalist, Andrew Neal, probably the most senior journalist in all of the United Kingdom, started really putting specific questions to the bank, which clammed up.
It was incredible to watch the entire journalistic community ask tough questions of the most prestigious bank in the UK and of Alison Rose, who incredibly was making £5 million a year, even though the bank was 40% owned by the government.
Now, Alison Rose put out a non-apology apology.
Here it is.
And she thought this would be enough, but she didn't say the Coots would take Nigel Farage back.
And she didn't admit to doing anything wrong.
It wasn't enough.
The board of directors had an emergency meeting and they said, we stand by Alison Rose.
Alas, she later resigned.
Can that board stay the board if they said they had confidence in her, but she obviously broke the banking laws and obviously felt she had to resign.
During this whole process, Facebook groups popped up of other people saying they were debanked.
Other political candidates said they were debinked.
10,000 people came forward from various banks saying it was happening to them.
And soon you started to see members of parliament and even cabinet ministers tweeting their support for Nigel, condemning the bank.
How long could that last?
And then the prime minister himself, Rishi Sunak, tweeted the same thing.
And then just today, the leader of the Labour Party, who must hate Nigel Farage with every fiber of his body, tweeted the same thing that whatever you think of Nigel Farage, it is wrong to have a political hygiene test for banking.
This is the most astonishing thing I've ever seen.
And it's not even done yet.
I think by the time this is done, the entire board of the bank will be sacked.
That's unthinkable in Canada that a bank CEO twits or is fired or torsed or a bit of that.
Now, this is happening in Canada too.
As you might recall, Rebel News applied for a mortgage.
We were approved by the Royal Bank of Canada, their Calgary branch.
They told me that.
But then their National Office said that we failed their political hygiene test.
Here's my recording of the Calgary mortgage officers telling me that.
I knew something was fishy.
I knew I had one chance to capture it.
Remember this?
The Royal Bank, with whom I have personally banked for my entire adult life, said my credit was fine, but they wouldn't give us the mortgage for political reasons.
Remember this?
Yeah, it's just about the nature of the business altogether.
Because the bank has been, I'll be blunt with you, the bank has been, you know, trying to pry away from certain clients where they're kind of out there in the media and very strong opinionated, you know, which is your business in a way.
So we're just clearing some internal hurdles to make sure that the bank is okay to kind of onboard you as a client internally.
My hands are tied as well.
I tried defending it.
We went back and forth, but that was their decision.
So what's the difference?
Why is Canada fine with de-banking people?
Even our government debanked over 200 people during the trucker convoy.
Why did the entire British political media establishment stand by Nigel Farage?
But in Canada, there's a general shrug, not just in my case, but of the 200 people who were debanked because they were trucker convoy supporters.
I think there's a few reasons for that.
First of all, our banks are few in number, and they're completely colonized by the government, highly regulated.
And there's sort of a revolving door between our banks and the government.
Debanked Canadians00:04:31
So I think they're really effectively government agencies.
They're highly political.
I think cancel culture is really the Canadian way, a passive, aggressive way of silencing people without debating them.
I think also our media has been undermined and colonized by Justin Trudeau and his subsidies.
Whereas in the UK, the British press, especially the newspapers, are still very independent.
I think Nigel Farage fighting back against the Coots bank political blacklist and the fact that other media and other politicians got on board is one of the most significant pushbacks against cancel culture in years, perhaps even eclipsing Jordan Peterson resisting the attempt to silence him.
In fact, I think it is much more important because it goes to these banking institutions.
Who would have thought that when Coots Bank bad-mouthed and blacklisted Nigel Farage, that they would actually be firing their own CEO?
And it's not done yet.
We have this debanking problem in Canada, not just the truckers, but I bet there are thousands of people who have been debanked like they are in the UK.
I understand that there is consideration in the British Parliament to bring in a law banning this political test for banking.
I hope that happens, and I hope that becomes the new norm for banking, and it applies to banks here.
It's a very exciting story, and it's a victory, and it's just fascinating to me that it all happens at a place called Coots.
That's my monologue for today.
I am traveling, so a colleague of mine will provide the guest interview for today.
Thanks for your patience as I'm on the road.
And I was on the road in Hungary, Romania before that.
But I'll be back home tomorrow.
David Menzies for Rebel News here in Toronto.
And, folks, I'm standing near North York Center subway station.
This was the beginning of a shocking story.
Indeed, it shocked the entire city.
It shocked the world thanks to a video going viral.
I am with the victim depicted in that video.
That would be Derek Dyckoff.
And before we get into his story and show you the now viral footage, I want to ask a favor of you.
Can you please go to our new website, fixourcities.com?
That's fixourcities.com.
So many wonderful cities in our great dominion are just devolving into hell holes, and we have to take a stand.
Please go to fixourcities.com, sign the petition, and if you're able to kindly make a small donation.
Now, before I get into the nitty-gritty with what happened to Derek last month, let's throw to that now viral YouTube video.
I caution you, it is very disturbing, it is very violent, it is disgraceful.
But check out the video evidence of what happened to Derek on a TTC subway car that day.
Oh, the train's got stuck.
Oh my god, I can't get over it.
Struggling to Breathe00:10:11
Now, Derek, first of all, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you for joining us.
Before we get into deconstructing that incident, I want to ask you, you were just released from hospital a few days ago.
I see the extent of your injuries.
How is your recovery coming?
Well, you know, I'm happy to be alive.
I mean, I'm in a bit of pain.
I'm not really on any pain meds.
I'm not really much of a pill guy.
Everything is pretty much feeling good around.
My lungs are good, but this is going to be a while to heal the severed nerve in my pinky and ring finger.
And that's important because you are a construction worker, you are a musician.
You need your arms and hands to be in top function, don't you?
Oh no, absolutely.
I'm also an amateur arm wrestler.
I mean, my hands are my life.
And yeah, without this, I can't do what I love and I can't make a living.
Now, let's go back to analyzing the video we just took a look at.
I know there must have been some storyline leading up to the point where you throw that punch at the assailant.
Can you tell us what happened just before the video begins?
Yep, so I entered the subway here at North York Center.
I was on my way to the beach.
He got on at Lawrence Station.
I was facing the front of the train, so I saw him walk on to my left, and he looked up and down, looked me right in the eyes, and started to walk right towards me.
He was playing rap music on his cell phone, holding it right to his ear at full blast.
It was quite a loud phone, very trebly and annoying.
And he sat right behind me, and it was playing right in my ear.
So I just turned and I said, hey, man, do you mind turning that off?
You're not supposed to be playing that on the subway, and I don't think the people around really appreciate it.
And he ignored me at first, so I asked him again, and he basically said, I can't hear you.
So I said, well, maybe if you turned it down, you could, right?
I'm just trying to have a dialogue with him.
I can tell he's being, you know, trying to be a tough guy.
I felt like he was trying to antagonize me right off the bat, just for the sake that he met eyes with me as he walked up and then sat directly behind me.
So I just went on to ask him again, look, buddy, there's rules against this stuff on the train.
You're not supposed to be playing it.
Would you turn it off?
And he looked at me and he said, suck your mom.
My mom actually just passed away in May, on May 21st.
She was my last surviving close family member.
It was really hard for me.
And I had just finished taking care of all the stuff in terms of cremation and clearing out her apartment.
It was one of my first days.
I finally had some freedom, actually.
July 4th is when I had finished with all those things, and this occurred on July 6th.
So that really hit me hard.
And I said to him, what?
And he repeated it.
And the both times he said it, he just gave me the biggest, most sinister grin you've ever seen.
Can you explain why you found it necessary to slug him?
So after he said, suck your mom twice, I knew, wow, this guy's really trying to instigate a fight here.
I didn't feel safe.
And so I stood up to take a look at him.
And as I looked, his hands were reaching into his pockets.
So at that point, I decided, do I let him pull out whatever he's got?
Who knows if it was a gun or a knife or whatever?
Or do I start trying to defend myself before I get injured?
So I did.
I threw the first punches.
And at first, he pulled his hands out and didn't have a knife in his hand.
So I thought he was bluffing.
He has no knife.
So I gave him some space so we could have a fair fight.
And sure enough, that's when he pulled out the knife.
Wow.
Is that a regrettable moment in the incident?
The fact that you backed off, allowing him to arm himself?
Absolutely.
I should have just stayed on him.
The whole thing is the Canadian law system is atrocious when it comes to self-defense or anything like that.
So, you know, I have knockout power, but I didn't want to use it because what if I killed him, right?
I don't want to go to jail.
So I was kind of just trying to pepper him until the train would come to the next station and I could run out.
And Derek, the fight turns from a fist fight into a knife fight, although you're not armed with a knife.
And he stabs you several times.
What were the extent of those stabbing injuries?
Yeah, so I mean, one of the first ones I got, probably during throwing a punch, he must have raised the knife and he cut my forearm really deep.
I'd say it was about two inches deep, two inches wide.
I could see right through my forearm to the ground.
It was a gaping wound.
He severed my nerve in my forearm.
So once I saw that, I knew I can't continue fighting.
Also, he had stabbed me in my back of my left lung, which you can see in the video, the blood started to soak through my shirt.
At that point, I still didn't even know I'd been stabbed.
I thought it was just a really hard punch.
But then I saw the knife in his hand, so I decided, well, I can't continue.
I tried to run to the driver, hoping that he would open the door, let me in.
Maybe he had seen what was happening on the cameras.
But he was right on my ass, so I understand why the driver didn't open it for his own safety sake.
And when he caught up, he had stabbed me several more times, and I just remember looking at my left rib, and there was two stab wounds, and blood was just pouring out like a fountain.
So I had to beg, beg for somebody to put pressure on my wound.
There was one gentleman, looked to be a white male, brown hair, you know, about my age.
I'm 37.
And he was quite hesitant.
He was like, I don't know what to do.
And I just said, put pressure, pressure.
He's like, I don't have anything.
I actually have to take off my own t-shirt while I'm bleeding out and give it to him.
And he wasn't really putting pressure at all.
And I'm like, harder, harder, harder, right?
And then at that point, I started to go to the ground.
I didn't know, but I actually had two collapsed lungs.
Oh.
Because, yeah, he punctured both my lungs.
So I was just on the ground trying to breathe for my life.
And I felt so dehydrated.
You wouldn't believe how dehydrated you get when you lose that much blood.
Worst dehydration feeling you could imagine.
And I started to beg for water.
Someone did come with a bottle of Aquafina and poured water.
And I was able to stick my tongue out and just get a, it was the sweetest taste in the world.
And meanwhile, Moses is casually walking off the subway train at the next stop.
Backpack.
Oh, insult to injury.
He stole your backpack.
Yeah, so after he stabbed me, I'm sure he thought I was going to die with all the blood pouring out of me.
So once he figured he finished me off, he walked back casually, took my bag, and walked off the train with it.
And you know, I can't state this anymore vehemently, Derek.
This is a career criminal, as I understand it, out on bail.
He was supposed to be on that very day going to Milton for a court hearing.
Obviously, he had no intention on doing that.
Why is a reprobate like him a free man in the first place?
Well, obviously, he doesn't take our legal system seriously.
I mean, he's clearly gotten away with potentially murder a million times before, and he feels very comfortable going out in broad daylight.
I mean, this was at noon hour on a train with tons of witnesses, tons of cameras, and he has no regard at all for anything.
Despicable, I think you're right, by the way.
Now, I guess the paramedics show up finally and tell us what happens then.
Yeah, so as I'm on the ground bleeding out, some woman came who said she was a doctor or a nurse.
She's like, well, you're going to be okay with your name?
I could barely answer her questions.
But I did just to let her know I'm not dead and I'm still coherent.
And she basically just comforted me saying paramedics are on the way.
The driver also came out and said paramedics are on the way.
And I just, every breath in was the hardest thing I've ever done.
And I just continued to fight to breathe.
And paramedics showed up just in time.
You rushed to Sunnybrook Hospital.
And at the hospital, you are essentially re-victimized.
What happened there?
I had to fight for my life in the hospital, actually.
I mean, I got to thank the paramedics and the hospital for saving me because they did.
But there were certain nurses there expressing their opinions that I was the one in the wrong.
I had attacked this guy for no reason and he defended himself with a knife.
I had a nurse, Michelle is actually her name, a blonde with glasses, white, quite slim, maybe about my age.
And she was outside my room as I'm, you know, coming to explaining to another colleague how, yeah, so basically he just started beating up on this guy for no reason and he had to pull out a knife to defend himself.
And a lot of them there were against me, you could tell.
I mean, the first time I woke up in the hospital was I was being choked by a suction tube because they put the tube down your lungs to breathe and then they put a suction tube in your mouth.
So they had placed that tube right on the back of my throat.
And that's what had woke me up is that I couldn't breathe.
And I woke up saying, I can't breathe.
You got to move it.
You got to move it.
And I was about to die.
And they're saying, no, it's fine, whatever.
And I had six surgeons, nurses holding me down.
And I had to rip up out of all of their grips and pull it right out of my mouth.
One of the things was I don't eat microwave food, right?
The first day I was there, they gave me a meal with fish, and my friend had said, how that fish looks kind of fishy.
Probably don't want to eat that.
So I said, hey, can I get the veggie meals from now on?
They said, sure.
I didn't know the veggie meals are outsourced.
They explained to me later.
So they're all microwaved, right?
I don't eat out of a microwave.
So I kept turning the food away.
So they'd send psych people to talk to me.
One of their questions was, do you think we're trying to poison you here in the food?
And I'm like, no, it's just gross.
And then they're like, you know, they asked me a few more questions because people, essentially in the hospital, when you pull a tube out, they give you an observer to watch you because they think that you're going to jeopardize your own process, right?
But after three days, and I didn't have any more incidences like that, they took my observer away.
And then weird things would happen to me in the middle of the night.
Like the room that they put me in to recover in was the nurses would come and tell me, this is the stuffiest, hottest room in the hospital.
Meditation and Microwaved Meals00:06:12
No one with lung injuries should be in here.
They also had me in there with a roommate who was 95 and deaf.
So he yelled when he spoke and everyone yelled at him and they were with him all in the middle of the night.
So I couldn't sleep.
And that's another question the psych ward had for me.
The psychiatrics there had for me was that, like, why aren't I sleeping?
They think I'm paranoid, schizophrenic, or something, I can't sleep.
I'm like, no, I've got people yelling in my room all day and night.
There was also another patient there.
Poor guy suffered a brain injury, so he's yelling at the top of his lungs all night.
There was no rest.
Yeah, so police actually came in the next day that I was conscious and awake and this nice officer came in.
I can't remember his name, but he basically explained to me that there was a bit of a foot pursuit.
They had located him the next day and he ran and made them chase him and they tackled him down real good and caught him and now he's in jail.
Sadly, it's not news that the TTC is a very dangerous venue these days in Toronto.
We've even had murders on the TTC.
Briefly, law enforcement made a presence.
They came and they went.
I guess it's a budgetary issue.
What would you like to see happen, Derek, moving forward?
I mean, is it too much to ask that one, at least one or two trained security personnel are on subway cars to ensure the safety of people who are just minding their own business and commuting?
No, it's not too much to ask at all.
I mean, I'm actually an ex-TTC busker.
I used to play guitar in the subways for a living, so I know their security system.
They had about 10 guards back then, explained to me by one of the head constables at the time.
Bill was his name.
I don't know if he's retired now.
But yeah, I mean, you go on a streetcar at any given day.
They'll have up to three fare inspectors on there.
So TTC will pay them to cover their own revenues.
But they can't afford to put one security guard on each train.
I mean, it is atrocious and disgusting.
You have a theory that back in the winter time, you two had an accidental bumping into one another and he maybe recognized you and that's why he was trying to instigate something?
Absolutely, it wasn't an accidental bump in at all.
He intentionally shoulder checked me.
I was actually on Delaware Avenue near Osington in college and I was going to check an apartment out.
I'm not usually in that neighborhood.
It was winter time, the sidewalks were plowed, there wasn't much room in the sidewalk.
I moved to the right as far as I could as he was approaching.
Again, holding the same cell phone right up to his ear, blasting gangster app, same black frame glasses, same guy.
It was the same guy.
So he stayed dead center in the sidewalk, and I knew he wanted to shoulder check me.
I couldn't move over any further.
So I said, I'm game, right?
So boom, we check shoulders.
I turn around, I say, buddy, what's your problem?
You walk on that side, I walk on this side.
Like, do you want to go or something?
What's your problem?
And all he did was just smile at me with that same sinister smile, just a big cheeky grin.
Who are you most upset with?
This career criminal who almost killed you?
Or I guess the justice system taking its direction from the Justin Trudeau liberals to grant parole, grant bail to some of the most heinous criminals out there.
Where does most of your anger reside right now?
Clearly, Moses is criminally insane, right?
I mean, at this point, this guy's, he is what he is, and it doesn't look like he's ever going to change.
It is up to the legal system to keep the public safe and make sure that these people are off the streets, and they have failed miserably at that.
And definitely my resentment and my anger is towards the system.
I'm sure you've reflected on this.
If you had to live that day over again, what would you do differently?
Well, I mean, you know, I'm not much of a person who likes to back down from people who are trying to cause confrontation with me.
But unfortunately, when you're on a subway car, you're trapped, right?
That's one of the longest stops between Lawrence and Eglinton on the subway.
You know, looking back, of course, it would have been better to just get up and leave.
But the situation was that there was a lot of women around, and they looked very uncomfortable and nervous about him being there, too.
And I just didn't feel like much of a man if I were to get up and abandon them there with this psycho criminal basically taunting everybody.
Yeah.
And Derek, has anyone with the city of Toronto reached out to you?
Has anyone with the Toronto Transit Commission reached out to you?
Nobody.
To me, that's appalling.
And I guess it's all about liability.
They're probably worried you're going to commence legal action.
And that's my next question.
Are you pondering that?
Of course I am.
I need to get anything I can get out of this at this point because I don't know when or if I'll ever be able to work again.
I mean, my friends have set up a GoFundMe for me and it's been going pretty well.
That won't last forever.
And any compensation I can get for what's happened here, I'm going to pursue.
I mean, I did take the TTC the first day I was out of hospital.
I went to the beach, tried to enjoy my life.
I had a friend with me, so it made me feel a little more comforted.
But yeah, no, I don't ever want to take the TTC again.
I think as few people should take it as possible until they do something about taking care of their passengers.
I mean, they're more worried about their profits than they are their patrons.
And it just goes to show, you know, why protect the peasants when we can put a few extra shekels in our pocket?
I'm just really thankful to be here.
I want to thank God for giving me the strength to survive that.
I don't think I would have done it with some meditation training that I've received as well from this Gnostic meditation group.
I really owe them.
I don't think my lungs would have been strong enough to endure double punctures if I hadn't had that type of training.
So I just strongly recommend people get into meditation.
You know, it's a real exercise.
It's very difficult.
Trying to relax your body while doing deep breathing.
It's one of the hardest things you could ever try to do.
So I really owe a lot of what helped me survive that day to that.
Derek, I wish you well.
I'm sure all our viewers wish you well.
Godspeed on your recovery.
And, you know, please stay in touch with us.
Tell us how you're making out, both with your recovery, with your financial situation.
What happened to you was egregious and outrageous.
It should never have happened.
This guy should have been behind bars from the get-go, but we've got a hug-a-thug mentality.
This is outrageous.
Derek, good luck in the months and years ahead.
Thanks a lot, David.
Appreciate it.
Beth our show for today until tomorrow when I'm back in our main office.