Ezra Levánt exposes Ireland’s 2024 censorship laws—like the Electoral Commission’s power to force social media removals during elections—ignoring public opposition and past misinformation failures, such as COVID claims. Reporter Ben Scallon from GRIPT challenges vague definitions, like election-harming disinformation, and highlights mainstream media’s silence on these policies, even as some push stricter hate speech bills. Levánt compares GRIPT to Canada’s Rebel News, praising its defiance of political correctness, while noting Ireland’s constitutional push to erase women’s traditional roles as mothers. The episode underscores how governments and media collude to suppress dissent under the guise of protection, with GRIPT standing as a rare counterforce. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, perhaps the most terrifying plan for censorship I've heard yet.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Ireland is a country of about five million souls, and it has, I think, a disproportionate number of people who use the English language as a weapon.
Some of my favorite poets are Irish.
I think of Yeats and his incredible poem, The Second Coming.
You know, the one where he talks about the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
I think of that phrase a lot when I think of, well, for example, the pandemic, that the worst people among us were motivated by the best were, well, they lacked all conviction.
I just can't imagine any of the hundreds of Irish poets and playwrights and lyricists and musicians.
I think of Sinead O'Connor.
I think of so many artists who marshal the English language in a way that is prickly.
I think there's something about the Irish personality.
And then for Ireland's government to say we are now going to crack down on speech that we, the politicians, find undesirable, I can't think of anything more un-Irish than that.
That's my view sitting over on this side of the pond.
But I have started to follow a new source in Ireland very closely.
In fact, I've become a subscriber to them.
I'm a big fan.
In some ways, they remind me of what Rebel News is doing here in Canada.
The name of the organization, we've interviewed one or two of their reporters before, is called GRIPT, G-R-I-P-T.
I don't know exactly what it means, but that's the name gripped.ie.
And they are firing on all pistons.
And one of the big projects they do is talk about the war on free speech in Ireland.
Joining us now from Dublin City is Ben Scallon, one of the reporters at Grip.ie.
He joins us now via Scribe.
Ben, great to meet you.
I just, I've never been to Ireland other than passing through the airport, but the idea of censorship in Ireland, that's like oil and water to me.
I just can't imagine any self-respecting Irishman believes that someone else should tell them what they can or can't hear, say, or do.
Am I wrong on that?
Have I misunderstood the Irish culture?
No, you're absolutely right about that.
I mean, there's been a lot of laws that have been drafted and either passed or presented for imminent passage by the government in the last couple of years in relation to censorship, be it stamping out so-called misinformation and disinformation or so-called hate speech.
And there's really no evidence been provided by the government that there's any public outcry for this.
In fact, quite the opposite.
All of the polling and their own public consultations, I think you guys might call it a comment period in North America.
All of the evidence we have available shows that the public are overwhelmingly opposed to this stuff, and yet they're driving ahead with it anyway.
So it's very inexplicable.
At least insofar as what you would expect a politician to do, which is to pursue, you know, one of the interesting things is people always say, oh, sure, politicians, they're only in it for the votes.
They only do what makes them popular.
It seems like the Irish government is determined to do everything that makes it unpopular and do the exact opposite of what the general public is actually asking it to do.
You know, I just got back from New Zealand, which in some ways is similar to Ireland.
Hear me out.
I mean, you might be thinking, what on earth could those two countries have in common?
Well, they're about the same size in terms of population.
They're both led, in the case of Jacinda Ardern, who just finished as the prime minister down there.
And if I'm not mistaken, am I pronouncing it right, Leo Varadkar in Ireland?
Both are globalist World Economic Forum, young leaders, and both of them use identical language about misinformation and malinformation.
I feel like I'm watching, and then I suppose Trudeau, you could throw him in there.
I feel like I'm watching three triplets who are doing this as part of some higher ideological calling.
There's no demand in any of the three countries, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, for censorship.
In fact, I've never heard of any country in history call out for censorship.
But I feel like the three leaders I've just mentioned are sort of cut from the same cloth and that this is their mission to enlighten their country by censoring it.
What do you think of my analogy?
And did I get the Irish leader's name right?
Yeah, Leo Varadkar, absolutely.
You did surprisingly well there.
Yeah, I think that it's kind of amazing the uniformity of governments across the Western world at this point and how all of these unrelated politicians are pushing almost identical policies using almost identical language at the exact same time.
I mean, we've done many compilations on GRIPT.
I think you guys probably do similar stuff in Canada and in the United States and other places where we'll cut together compilations of politicians from different political parties, parties who ostensibly oppose one another, all using the exact same language.
Like, for example, during the Ukrainian refugee crisis that's going on in Europe at the minute, we've taken in an absolutely alarming amount of asylum seekers from abroad, from all over the world.
Some towns and villages up and down the west coast of Ireland have literally had their populations more than doubled overnight, where the town will have a population of 800 and suddenly there's a thousand asylum seekers there.
You know, it's these kinds of numbers.
And when justifying the policy, politicians from across the political spectrum all have said on loop like a beating drum, we need to abide by our international obligations.
You know, it's our international obligations that have required us to take in all of these people and so on.
And they all use the exact same word.
So I don't know what to make of that or what to infer from that.
I think if anything, it just shows the lack of imagination, if you want to put it in the most benign terms possible, that they are chronically short on new ideas.
That might be the culprit.
Well, I think that is too benign an explanation.
It reminds me of when all the leaders around the world on Q started using the phrase build back better.
It was bizarre to see that phrase just emanating from everywhere as if everyone just got the same central memo.
I have a theory that, of course, there are local democracies and local parliaments and congresses, but there is no denying that these masters of the universe do gather together without the same scrutiny and disclosure that they have in their national parliaments in Davos, at the UN, at other supranational meetings.
And there are some dissenters.
Trump was the biggest dissenter.
But, you know, the Jacinda Arderns, the Leo Varadkars, the Justin Trudeau's, they hammer it out amongst themselves and without any opposition, without any disclosure of who's there, who's lobbying, and then they go back to their lowly countries where the peasants don't like it.
They don't know what's good for them.
I think it's identical how Leo Varadkar has pushed these things in Ireland and Justin Trudeau has in Canada.
But listen, all this is just a preamble.
I want to show some comments by your these, this is from the Electoral Commission, if I'm not mistaken, including a member of the Irish Supreme Court.
I found this absolutely terrifying.
You were asking questions about how their Electoral Commission is now arrogating unto itself the power to censor the debate during an election.
Why don't you set this clip up for us?
And I want to play a few minutes of it because it's astonishing to me some of the phrases.
Give us one minute.
Where was this?
When was this?
Who are these people?
And then we'll play the clip.
So, yeah, the Electoral Commission was just established in February of this year.
And it was set up by the government.
And it has a load of different functions that are most of which are mundane.
So it'll be things like redrawing new constituency boundaries as the population changes and getting people on the electoral register.
Just kind of run-in-the-mill logistical stuff, nothing too controversial.
But one of their functions is also to regulate misinformation and disinformation during election time.
And so they will have the legal power, they do have the legal power, to, if you post something during a campaign, let's say when you're running for public office, they can order Twitter, they can order Facebook, they can order any publication they want to take it down and correct the quote-unquote error if that is indeed what they determine it to be.
Now, of course, as any sensible person knows, there is no possible way to determine in an objective way what is true and what is false.
You know, these kinds of things are inevitably going to end up just being a matter of opinion.
And we've seen that so many times over the last couple of years.
I mean, COVID is the most prime example of that, where how many times did the establishment say that X was the truth?
And then it turns out it was the exact opposite.
And things that had been labeled as so-called misinformation turned out to be absolutely correct, like the Wuhan lab leak theory, just to pull one example out of the half.
So this kind of thing is absolutely just waiting to be abused.
And I mean, it hasn't been in force yet for an Irish election.
We've got a local election coming up next year.
So it'll be very interesting to see how it plays out.
But that's basically who this group are, and that's their modus operandi going forward.
All right, we're talking to Ben Scallon, and here's the question he put to these high priests of the ultimate truth.
Now, by the way, Ben, I know that you believe that there are some objective truths, especially if we were talking about things like mathematics.
Two plus two is four.
There's no other way around it.
But when we were talking about political differences of opinion, that's the reason we have an election, because we don't all agree on what the truth is.
The thought that these commissioners would be the arbiters, it's terrifying.
Here, enough from me.
Let's watch the clip.
Our work is focused on the protection and enhancement of democracy in the broad sense.
And the main function purpose is so that we ensure that people have trust and continue to have trust in the election system, our democratic system generally.
Mr. O'Leary, of course, one of your Electoral Commission's purposes is shutting down alleged disinformation on election time.
And in June of this year, you told the media that the scale of disinformation around elections is, quote, enormous.
I'm just wondering if you could give an example of this information that was spread during an Irish election that materially harmed that election in some way.
Okay, Ben, we're here to talk about the constituency review, but I'll make a brief remark, and we will return to this subject into the future.
As you know, for anyone who heard me speak in June, what I actually said was having, we spent 20 minutes with a panel of people who gave many, many examples of electoral misinformation and disinformation.
And what I actually said was, well, as you have heard from the panel, the scale of this challenge is enormous.
The Commission was established in February, and our job is to look forward.
But we can't ignore the fact that there is weighty international evidence that electoral misinformation and disinformation carries on online.
In a survey or the research that was done between 2016 and 2021, 53 countries were examined, and in 92% of those cases there was found to be examples of misinformation, disinformation.
Ireland wasn't one of those countries, but I think there is no reason to assume that we'll be exempt from this into the future as well.
We're really looking forward to getting stuck into this part of our brief, and we will be speaking to you all about our approach to misinformation and disinformation as we get to grips with the subject in the autumn.
Do you have a kind of a specific criteria for how you would determine whether something is true or false?
Like if you're presented with a piece of information, how do you distinguish something that's disinformation as opposed to just a difference of opinion, that's a well the they're defined very clearly in the legislation, Ben.
So if you go back and have a look at how they are both defined, that's the standard at which the Commission, or me as chief executive, will make a determination in that regard.
I should say to those of you who haven't read the very long Electoral Act that we have very extensive powers to research the general topic of information and the way in which advertising happens around elections, but also we have powers to require the correction or removal of information we believe to be incorrect.
And they are very extensive powers, not found, in fact, in that many other European countries.
We're all going to have to become philosophers in a sense.
We're all going to have to learn how to test truth.
And the Commission is going to have to learn A, what the tools are and how to explain them and how to teach them, really.
But we're also going to have to deal with the balance between the right of freedom of expression on the one hand and on the other hand, the right of persons not to be misinformed.
It will be a difficult exercise, but it's fundamental to the protection of democracy.
Absolutely fundamental.
And it's regarded as such by all international bodies, I think.
I don't think I've seen a scarier three minutes in my life.
So many strange things.
It's an enormous problem, Ben.
Such an enormous problem.
He can't think of one example.
Every Politician's Dilemma00:04:30
There are studies in other countries of which Ireland was not one.
I think the worst part was when your Supreme Court judge there was saying we're all going to have to become philosophers.
We have an enormous power to determine the truth.
Well, but that's not quite true because what I think and what you think as philosophers doesn't count.
It's just what she thinks.
Imagine a government agency saying we have an enormous power and the law sets out how to find the truth.
Oh, that's all we have to do.
It's write down a law and then we can all just know the truth because it's right there in the law, Ben, don't you know?
Why are you making trouble, Ben?
She says at once that this is an almost unique legislation.
Then she says everyone's doing it.
And we're going to find out all together in this messy way.
I find that terrifying.
I'm glad that GRIPT is on the case.
That's your media outlet.
What about the rest of Ireland?
Is this just, oh, okay, that's how it is?
Or are Irish people standing up?
I'm really confused by the fact that the media has not really even bothered to inquire about some of this stuff.
In fact, we have this hate speech bill, which is coming down the tracks.
It's not in effect yet.
The government is yet to pass it, but it could really go either way at this point.
There is a substantial amount of backlash from the general public.
And would you believe that one of our biggest newspapers was actually writing submissions to the government, urging them to implement it?
They were on the side of the censorship law, which to me, if you're a journalist who speaks and thinks for a living and that's your job, words are your profession, then you supporting a hate speech law is a bit like a butcher supporting a ban on meat.
You're literally shooting yourself in the foot.
Even aside from the moral questions that that would raise as to is it right for the government to be regulating what people can say and think, that's all a separate issue.
Just from a self-preservation perspective, you would expect the media to be leading the charge against this thing.
But at this press event, which just took place recently, I was the only journalist in the room who asked that question.
And I don't think that's because I'm special or I'm Superman.
I just think there's a critical dereliction of duty on the part of the press here.
I mean, one of the things that the CEO of the organization said was he goes, oh, yeah, well, there was a study done and about 50-something countries were examined during the course of this research.
And they found that there was misinformation during their election.
Okay, well, first of all, what are the 50 countries?
I mean, there's hundreds of countries in the world, so that's not meaningful in and of itself if these are all in parts of the world where democracy is not particularly their strong suit, let's say.
And also, what kind of disinformation, what impact did it have?
Like, if, you know, every single election in the history of humanity has had somebody talking nonsense and telling lies and making stuff up.
That's a part of politics.
It's a very unfortunate part of politics, but we expect that from politicians.
What I would want to know is, did any of this disinformation actually have a tangible impact on any election?
Can you show me an election in the Western world that was won on the basis of lies?
I mean, if anything, you could say that, for example, here in Ireland, we have a coalition government of several different political parties.
And one of the parties, the leader of this party, said he would under no circumstances go into coalition with this other group.
And then he did exactly that as soon as he was elected.
He said that literally a couple of weeks before the election.
So I'd like to know, does that count as electoral misinformation?
I mean, there's probably people who voted for him and his party on the basis of that promise, which didn't even last a few weeks after everybody's votes had been cast.
But when I asked the Electoral Commission via email, would something like that count as misinformation?
They refused to say, which I think kind of says it all as to what sort of game they're playing here.
Well, every single politician deals in misinformation because every single politician does not have all of the information and has an opinion and makes a conclusion, just like every other human being.
Every human being gets things wrong.
Sometimes it's deliberate.
Sometimes it's accidental.
Journalists Excluded00:06:38
The idea and that, and the most astonishing thing was the judge there, that lady who said, We have enormous power.
We're all going to have to become philosophers.
She was embracing her role as the person to whom all Irish people would delegate their faculties.
The whole point of getting out of the hands of experts and giving it back to the people is because the whole system, including the judge, as if she has some unique insight into humanity, as if she has some unique brain and heart and moral code and scientific knowledge that no other people have, that she has more wisdom than the wisdom of the people.
I'm just blown away by this, but I got a question for you.
I was jealous of your ability to put those questions because in Canada, journalists like you, and there are a handful of them, I think some of them work at Rebel News, are simply no longer allowed to attend government press conferences.
Because the questions you asked, you asked them very politely, and they were not unfair.
They were not gotcha questions.
I think they were good, basic questions.
Over here, those questions would either yield complete fog, like a fog machine would just endless, meaningless word salad.
That would probably be it.
And if someone kept asking prickly questions, they would find themselves disinvited to press conferences.
You're not the first gripped journalist I've seen put really good questions to power.
I don't want to tempt fate by asking, but how is it that you're allowed to do that?
Because in Canada, you're not.
Well, we joined last year the Press Council of Ireland, which is like a big kind of media representative body.
And so that gave sort of a strength in numbers, I think, that while the government isn't obliged by law to let us attend press conferences, if they wanted to, they could disinvite us tomorrow.
I think that it would be very difficult for them and it would cause more problems than it's probably worth.
I think they've probably made a calculation and said, look, it's better, it's less dramatic if we just let them do their thing and, you know, grin and bear it.
That's my suspicion anyway.
And I think that, you know, obviously being polite, being respectful, I always shake ministers' hands, refer to them by their proper title and so on, make sure to comport myself with decorum, that kind of thing is, of course, I don't know how far that would necessarily get in Canada.
Maybe you guys are a little bit more, as in the government, are a little bit more capricious.
But at least here, my thinking is, obviously, one, you want to be a polite person in general, but two, you don't want to give them any excuse that they could say, oh, well, we're kicking him out because he's belligerent, not because we don't like his questions, you know, whereas now it could only be because they're not happy with the line of questioning, because I'm never anything civil.
Well, Ben, I'll tell you, the actual reason we're kept out of parliament is because access to our parliament is controlled by the parliamentary press gallery, which is other reporters.
And they are granted their power delegated to them by the Speaker of the House.
So it's actually our fellow journalists, our competitors, you might say, who have blocked us in the first instance.
And they're given legal immunity because they are under the protection of the government.
So it's actually a merger between the politicians and other journalists to keep us out.
That's just our situation here in Canada.
And I don't mean to be talking about us, but I want to ask you, how do other reporters in Ireland deal with you and your company?
And I know this is turning into an interview about GRIPT, not just your questions, but I'm fascinated by this.
Do other journalists, do they harumph when they, oh, there's gripped again?
Do they roll their eyes?
Do they say, are they, is there what I call a media party?
Are the journalists in Ireland part of the regime?
Or do they maybe even admire your critical questions?
How are you treated by other journalists?
I think there's a couple of them, obviously.
I mean, everybody knows that the press skews left in the Western world, and that's just the way it is, you know.
So I don't think many of them agree with us probably on a broad swathe of issues.
But I do think there's a level of respect and it wasn't there at the beginning when we first started out.
I remember a couple of years ago, we broke a big story and one of the other papers kind of had to give us credit for it because it was just too big to ignore.
So they had to say that their way of kind of fobbing us off and dismissing us was saying, the story came from Gript, a right-wing blog, and that was sort of their subtle distos.
Nobody talks like that anymore.
Now, when I go to these things, they're friendly.
I mean, I'll put it this way.
The other day we had audio issues with one of our videos and a journalist from another mainstream publication agreed to send me her audio to help me out, you know?
So I think it's gotten to the point where they've sort of accepted we're part of the media ecosystem and that even though they might not like it all the time and they don't agree with us on certain issues, the fact of the matter is, you know, we are here to stay and we speak for a large portion of the population.
That's sort of what I try to do when I'm at these things is to ask the question that ordinary people on the street who aren't convinced about all of this woke direction that society is going, I want to ask what those people are thinking, you know, because so often those questions just never get asked or addressed by anybody.
So I'm trying to be sort of a representative for that section of the public in the actual room.
Well, that's such a great report.
I'm so glad to hear that.
And I hope you remain in the fray, in the arena.
I hope you're not ejected from it.
I mean, we still manage to do creditable journalism from the outside.
In fact, in Canada, like I say, politicians are often fog machines.
You can put a great question, but you just hear blather, you know, it's of no use to put a good question because they don't actually answer them.
But I'm glad to hear that, and I'm glad that GRIPT is growing and is having a success.
I want to close by throwing one more clip again, you asking questions.
This is a question that Matt Walsh of Daily Wire has perfected.
What's a Woman?00:04:02
It's a question so simple a child can get it.
But that's the thing.
There's something so stupid only a PhD would believe them.
It's the question, what's a woman?
And here, I want to show your version of it.
Take a look.
It's appalling as a woman and a woman, as a female sports minister that's trying to promote women in sport.
I think it's just really regrettable.
Minister, an article in the Irish Times this week by Pat Lee, he outlined some fears within government that the so-called women in the home referendum might raise some uncomfortable questions for politicians.
For example, how do you define a family and what is a woman in the context of the gender debate?
So on foot of that article, I'm just wondering, what is a woman in your view?
This is something that the government are discussing, Ben, and it's very important that we get that wording correct.
So in relation to the actual wording of the referendum, I should hope that we'd come to agreement on that wording in the coming weeks.
I think it's a really important referendum.
It's something that I advocated for when I was chair of the Women's Caucus, that this would lead to a referendum.
But do you have a definition of what you referred earlier to being proud of being a female sport minister and how important it is to promote women in sport and so on?
So I'm just wondering, do you have a personal definition of what a woman means?
I think, you know, the question is not relevant to the referendum itself, because as in the issue that is pressing at the minute in relation to the exact wording of a referendum and having the referendum is absolutely essential for us in Ireland.
You know, if there's a referendum on a women's issue and if you're the Minister of Women's Sport, but you refuse to answer what a woman is, that sort of answers it, doesn't it?
I mean, here in Canada, in the United States, you have biological men just crushing female athletes and with the approval, in fact, sometimes the support of born women.
I think that I think that's an astonishing evasion, but better than some of the attempts we've seen lately to answer that question.
What did you make of that?
I thought that was quite something.
What do you make of that?
Yeah, I was kind of amazed by the whole thing because what my follow-up was going to be before her press secretary jumped in and quickly went on to the next person.
We need to kybosh on this right now because he could tell which way it was going.
Because the referendum, I'm not going to bore people by going into detail, but long story short, there's a clause in the Irish Constitution which says that women have a very important role in society as mothers and homemakers.
And so no woman should be forced by economic necessity to have to work, that the state should support women if they want to stay at home and be a stay-at-home mom, that they should be able to do that.
That's basically what it says.
And there was a push recently to get rid of this from the Constitution because they say it's sexist and outdated.
Basically, the government's position is that it's almost like you're saying, oh, women belong in the kitchen and they should stay home, which is really not what it's saying if you read the actual text of it.
But that's sort of the narrative around it.
So naturally enough, if you're going to have a referendum on the role of women in society and what is the proper role that women should fulfill, you're probably going to want to know what a woman is.
So I thought it would be a pretty reasonable question.
And apparently, according to the minister, that's not relevant at all.
We're going to have legislation to remove a word from the Constitution without even knowing what that word means.
Yeah.
I read that Irish Constitution recently when I was going through some of the hate speech laws.
And it's quite incredible to see that hardwired right into the basic law of Ireland, the protection for women.
And I thought it was actually beautiful and poetic.
And I thought it was actually quite Irish.
Battles Over Protection00:02:14
And I really like that.
And I don't know, that's something that has to be ripped out, I guess.
Ben, what a pleasure to catch up with you.
Thanks for letting us keep you so long.
I really admire the work you're doing.
And as you can see, I'm a super fan of Gripped.ie.
And folks, if you want a news source, I mean, you might think you have no connection to Ireland.
I mean, really, I don't.
But the issues they're facing are the same issues we're facing.
And the battles they're fighting are the same battles we're fighting.
And I really look up to GRIPT, and I see them having some of the same hallmarks that Rebel News does.
I think they're slightly better behaved, which, as we've heard from Ben.
Ben, great to meet you.
And congratulations on your whole team.
And hopefully we'll keep in touch with you.
I find this fascinating and I can hardly wait to see how it ends.
So thanks for taking the time with us.
Thank you so much, Ezra.
Great talking to you.
All right.
You too.
Well, there you have it.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Well, that's our show for today.
What do you think about Gripped?
I don't even know what that word gripped means, G-R-I-P-T.IE.
That's the Irish URL, the Irish domain name.
I like that.
I want to go over and visit them.
I want to find some excuse to go over.
They seem like a great team, and they get great access, and they ask great questions, and I really like their work.
And they're interested in a lot of the same things we are, including freedom.
I enjoyed talking to young Ben there, and he made me chuckle when he said he's been watching me since he was in high school.
I don't know.
I thought he looked a little more grown up than that, but maybe he's pretty young, or maybe I'm just getting old.
But I like him, and I want to do more things with Gript.
I want to interview their journalists when they have interesting stories.
And maybe there's some way we can cooperate.
I don't think we'd ever be in a position where we would have a full-time reporter in Ireland.
I just don't think the market's big enough.
But maybe we can have some sort of friendly partnership with Gript.
I'm just daydreaming out loud.
That's all.
Well, that's our show for today.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, actually, I'm in Israel when this goes to air.