Ezra Levant interviews Ben Scallan of GRIPT, Ireland’s independent news outlet, exposing how 33,000 NGOs—funded with €6B annually—push anti-racism narratives to justify their existence, like the Cork summit falsely framing a 2020 police shooting as systemic. With 41% of Irish voters citing immigration as their top concern and independents polling at 25%, June 7th’s EU and local elections could reshape politics, fueled by public frustration over forced policies like automatic medical cards for asylum seekers while citizens face delays. Ireland’s unique voting system and recent referendum victories against establishment-backed changes hint at a growing resistance, suggesting a potential shift toward sovereignty-driven governance. [Automatically generated summary]
There's so many interesting things going on there.
You don't have to be Irish to be fascinated by it because so much of it is going on here in Canada, too.
I want you to see the video version of this, though.
So please download what we call Rebel News Plus.
It's eight bucks a month.
You get the video version of it.
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Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com.
Tonight, a feature interview with Ben Scallon from Gript.
That's the Irish independent news outlet.
Boy, have we got news for you.
It's May 30th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug!
Well, viewers will know, a few weeks ago, I went to Ireland for the first time in my life.
Our friends at Grip had told me that there was a large protest, a march, to challenge mass open borders immigration.
And I went there and it was incredible to see.
So many things reminded me of the challenges back here at home in Canada.
But there was one thing that struck me as an outsider looking with fresh eyes at Ireland, the reminder that the Irish are the indigenous people in Ireland.
So whereas other countries, the accusation of colonialism and imperialism and decolonization, that's a weapon to be used against the country to bash down institutions.
Ireland didn't invade anybody.
Ireland didn't enslave anybody.
In fact, you may know that Ireland itself was raided by slave catchers.
In fact, the entire town of Baltimore, Ireland, the entire village, every single man, woman, and child was kidnapped and taken to Arabia as slaves.
And so I saw placards saying things like Ireland for the Irish and Irish Lives Matter.
And if I were to see those in Canada, the United States, I know people would say, that's racist.
Stop appropriating our language.
But what do you do?
And what do you tell people in a country that has never picked on others, that does not have the stain of slavery on them?
Because these woke ideologies are being grafted onto Ireland in a way that just doesn't show it.
I thought it was fascinating.
And as you know, I'm very interested in Ireland, even though I have no personal or familial connection whatsoever.
I just find it such a fascinating place.
And it was delightful, as you know, to connect with Fatima Gunning, one of the reporters at Grippt.
Gripped.ie, that's the Irish domain, is my favorite broadcaster from there.
They do broadcast video, they do written stories, and they're completely independent.
And what a pleasure to meet in person one of their stars.
And so I'm delighted today to bring back to the show the senior political correspondent for Gripped, a man who actually gets to put tough questions to their cabinet.
He's part of the accredited press gallery, which is astonishing to us here in Canada.
One of the best journalists in Ireland, Ben Scallon, who joined us now.
Ben, great to see you again.
Great to be back, Ezra.
Thank you so much for having me.
Oh, it's a pleasure.
And I tell you, we spent a little bit of time with Fatima at the march, and people love Gripped.
The establishment doesn't like you much because you shine a light of scrutiny on them.
But watching the public come up to your reporter, Fatima Gunning, it reminded me of how people come up to rebel news reporters here in Canada because you're telling the other side of the story.
And it was a wonderful day, and I hope to get back to Ireland.
I want to talk about a few things.
One of them is your exclusive story.
You tweeted a few teasers.
You went to an anti-race, you learned about, you got leaked to you details of an anti-racism summit at Cork City Hall featuring government and opposition parties.
So they're all in it together.
And also from the Garda, which is your police force there.
I'll just quote one line and then I'll let you tell the rest of the story.
One Sinn Féin member of parliament said Ireland should be quote very ashamed as a country because of its failure to house quote darker-skinned asylum seekers.
There were even crazier things about a two-pack chance, which I never thought the Irish were big into Tupac, the late rapper.
Take it away, Ben.
Tell me about this meeting and give me the crazy details, but then come back and tell me what it means.
Because I think this goes to what I was saying about they're trying to graft onto Ireland a dark history that just is not Ireland's history.
Take it away.
Yeah, so you've given a great kind of setting up of this fascinating story that I'm not going to say how I got my hands on the information that's in the article.
Many Organizations Openly Campaigning00:02:51
I'd really encourage everybody to go and check it out because it's funny, it's crazy, it's jaw-dropping.
And effectively what it is, is there was a meeting in Cork City Hall.
Cork is one of the biggest cities in Ireland.
And as you've said, there were politicians there.
There were academics from universities there.
There was TUSLA, which is kind of like child protective services.
They were there as an organization.
There were all these powerful state institutions.
And it was a meeting supposedly about anti-racism.
It was organized by one of our NGOs.
And as I've said on your show in the past, Ireland is effectively an NGO occracy.
We are run by the non-governmental sector.
And I've said this before on the show, so I don't want to bore viewers who might be regular listeners.
But just in a nutshell, to sum it up, we have about 33,000 different NGO organizations for a population of about 5 million people.
So that should give you some sort of sense of scale as to the behemoth that we're dealing with.
Which madness?
I don't know if you've shared that detail, that specific fact.
That would be like in Canada.
I'm just going to multiply by eight because I think our population is eight times as much.
That would be like a quarter million more than that.
That would be NGOs.
And they're all really like the Borg.
They're all aiming in the same direction, aren't they?
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
I'm just astonished by that statistic.
Keep going.
I didn't mean to interrupt.
No, no, no.
You're right, because this is kind of an important bit of preamble, I think, to get people's minds around.
I'm not going to say, by the way, that every single one of those NGOs is bad.
I mean, I haven't had time to look into 33,000 organizations.
I know some of them no doubt do good work with homeless people, for example.
There's all of that in there.
It's in that kind of milieu.
But when you're dealing with that many organizations, many of them are openly involved in campaigning.
The government has admitted that they only fund NGOs that are in kind of in line with the program for government, shall we say.
And so many of them are very openly ideological and partisan.
They receive the sector as a whole receives about 6 billion euros annually.
And for, again, a sense of scale there, Ireland's entire annual budget as a state is only about 100 billion.
So we spend more on this sector than we do on our entire justice system.
That's everything from the police to the courts to whatever else that entails.
So, anyway, the only reason I'm saying all of that before we get into the actual story itself is to show you the level of power that these NGOs have.
Anti-Racist NGOs Dominance00:06:38
So, this is not just a load of freaks in a room somewhere talking about crazy stuff who you can point and laugh at.
A lot of it is funny, but these are people with an enormous amount of sway and state resources at their disposal.
And so, the meeting, while it was ostensibly about anti-racism, it was effectively a massive grievance parade where it was all about how Ireland should be ashamed of itself because of its past.
They were talking about, there was an individual called Georgian Kencho who was shot by the police in 2020 in Ireland.
This guy, and all the facts I'm about to say are not disputed by anybody.
He was a black African guy.
He had hospitalized the shop employee and left him with face injuries.
He went on a rampage with a knife.
The police then cornered him, the armed response unit, basically the Irish version of SWAT.
They cornered him.
They told him to put the knife down that he had.
He refused.
They pepper sprayed him.
They tased him.
And he still ended up lunging at these armed officers.
So at that point, left with no other choice, they shot him.
They were trying to turn this into an incidence of racism.
They said that in Ireland, when you shoot a black man like George Nkencho, that's like an achievement.
And that's the reason why those officers weren't prosecuted or held accountable under law.
And so it just continued in this fashion with all of these various groups describing what a horrendous racist hellhole Ireland is based on no evidence really and effectively slandering the country at large.
That's so crazy in that story you tell.
And I just can see what they're doing because they do it in Canada to a lesser extent.
Canada, I don't know if you know this, Ben, but a lot of the slaves from the United States came on what they called the Underground Railway.
They sort of escaped to Canada because we were part of the British Empire at the time and where slavery had been banned.
So it was like a refuge.
We never really had a big black population in Canada until very recently.
But the attempt to bring Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd narrative to Canada, they're pushing because it worked in America.
They're trying to force it into Canada.
But we really never had slavery here.
It was banned before Canada was a country.
It feels like they're trying to force the George Floyd narrative on that one story, which is not the Irish story.
They're so excited about playing the same script in Ireland that they've used effectively in the United States.
I think that's what's going on.
Well, there was a very interesting tidbit during the whole meeting, and that was when they had one woman who was from the UK and she ran a kind of an anti-racist organization over there, sort of an NGO.
And she was one of the invited speakers that they had brought in to talk to the crowd about various issues.
And one of the things she touched on was NGO funding.
And she said that after the killing of George Floyd in America or the death of George Floyd in America, of course, there was fentanyl.
And, you know, we can get into whether that story is as people typically portray it, but that's a whole other issue.
The point being that after that event, there was a huge surge in funding for kind of anti-racist causes and anti-racist NGOs.
And she said that now that's massively tapered off because that was several years ago.
Now the conversation has kind of moved on.
And so now you have to work much harder in order to keep the funding flowing.
And so she said that it's important then that we keep racism and anti-racism on the agenda in order to keep, and this was the word she used, in order to keep tendrils going out into society.
So this, my jaw hit the floor when I heard that.
This is really astonishing that what I've been saying for several years now at this stage, particularly in the context of, for example, Ireland's hate speech bill, is that there are groups who directly benefit from the perception that a country like Ireland or like Canada or wherever is a horrible racist country.
Because the analogy I always make is: if you don't have leaky pipes, then you don't need a plumber.
And if you don't have a racist society, then you don't need professional anti-racist campaigners.
And so it is directly beneficial to an organization that is designed to fight these bogeymen to say, oh, Ireland is horrifically racist.
There's a rise in hate crime.
People are being attacked because of the color of their skin, blah, blah, blah.
And so I thought that was an stunning admission on the part of this one particular speaker.
That's incredible.
I mean, we see that everywhere with hoaxes because the demand for racism exceeds supply.
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I have no doubt that America 100 years ago or even not even that long ago had some dark remnants of a racist past.
And by the way, I'm not American.
I'm here not to defend America.
But there are so many, like the Jussie Samollette hoax.
There are so many hoaxes because, like you say, people need the grist for the meal.
I don't think America in 2024 is an inherently racist society.
Don't tell me the place that elected Barack Obama twice is racist.
I won't believe it.
Don't tell me that Canada, where we had two black governors general, or maybe I'm getting my, I mean, and we have an Inuit governor general now.
I'm getting my races mixed up, maybe, but don't tell me we're racist.
It's not true.
And actually, one of the problems, I think, Ben, is that you're almost teaching newcomers to be ungrateful and grievance-oriented.
Instead of teaching newcomers, you've made it to paradise.
Teaching Newcomers Grievance00:10:22
You've made it to the best place in the world.
You've made it away from danger towards freedom.
Now go and make the best.
I mean, the old version of the quote American dream.
It's not just quote white people who are being shamed without reason.
It's immigrants who are being told, be angry, be mad, focus on your differences, and you have reason to be upset.
Like it's almost harming newcomers as much as anything else.
Don't you think, Ben?
I think so.
I think it creates unnecessary tension in society that was never there and doesn't need to be there.
One of the things I've been thinking about recently in the context of Ireland's immigration debate and the fact that we have been an incredibly homogenous country for basically the entire existence of this nation.
And then suddenly we have this very recent influx of people from all different cultures and parts of the world.
I mean, my own mother is one of those, so I can hardly complain.
I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for immigration.
And my mother hadn't come here from Jamaica when she did to marry my father, who's Irish.
So I am part of that whole process.
And Irish people have been incredibly welcoming and tolerant.
And that's, I think, one of the best things about Irish people is that we are a very kind-hearted people.
We're very warm-hearted people.
We have no axe to grind with anybody.
But one of the things that we've been doing as a society in the last few years and the policy that's been pursued is to give certain privileges to people who have just arrived in the country that we don't afford to citizens.
So, for example, if you receive a medical card, this is a kind of a medical benefit that we give out to some people.
That is a thing that many people struggle to get here.
If you turn on Irish radio at any point during the week, you'll hear every single day people complaining about how they can't get a medical card and they seriously need it because they're just under a certain threshold or over a certain threshold, or this bureaucracy causes them to be just slightly ineligible and so they can't get it, even though their child has a debilitating medical problem or whatever it might be.
You hear about these stories all the time.
And yet, anybody who comes to Ireland and claims asylum automatically receives a medical card.
And that was told to us by the Minister for Health just last year.
And so, while, of course, you would never begrudge somebody who needed medical assistance, particularly somebody who maybe is fleeing a war-torn country, let's say, of course, you want to help those people.
I think to simplify it and to make an analogy that people can easily digest, it would almost be like if you have children and you're a parent, and then you were to do the wonderful and humane thing of adopting a new child, which we all agree is a wonderful thing to do, and then you proceed to shower that child in all kinds of special privileges and benefits that none of your other children receive.
It is an unfortunate but inevitable consequence of such an approach that you're going to create resentment within that household.
You're going to create conflict and strife and division within that household.
And that's something that I think we run the risk of by pursuing things in such an obviously unfair way that people have an inherent sense of justice that's offended by that.
Where you think, I'm a citizen of this country, I pay taxes my whole life.
I was born here, I was raised here, my parents and my grandparents are from here, and yet I feel like I am less favored than somebody who showed up five minutes ago.
This isn't fair.
I mean, and it's not fair.
And so I want to continue living in a country where people are open to strangers and are hospitable.
I mean, the Irish unofficial slogan, if we had a slogan as a nation, it would be Cade Mila Falcia, which in Irish means 100,000 welcomes.
That's kind of our natural inclination as a people.
I feel like we're at risk of diminishing that and like people's welcome and their sense of welcome is quickly evaporating the more we proceed the way we are.
One of the things I've noticed, and I follow your account on Twitter and your colleagues, and I follow the main gripped account.
And again, they're spelled G-R-I-P-T dot IE, which is sort of an old-fashioned way of saying grip, you know, to grip something.
I didn't know what that word meant.
You learn something new every day.
One of the things I learned from following Grip is the way in which asylum seekers are housed has got to be the worst community relations I've ever seen in my life.
It's almost like it's a ta-da, surprise.
Hello, town of 500 citizens who have been cohesive and coherent for centuries.
We've got news for you.
We're bringing in 200 migrants and we're putting them in the local hotel and we're telling you this after the fact it's been decided and we're having police there and don't you and we'll and don't like the.
It's just so it, unless I'm reading it wrong the way that communities are sort of secretly selected because it doesn't seem like there's a kind of consultation process that you would normally expect, like you build a, you build an overpass, you build a school, you build a parking lot, you have consultations.
How's it going to affect traffic, how's it going to affect crime?
I mean just how's, it going to affect schooling?
There's a hundred things you ask.
When we were in Dublin a few weeks ago, there was this huge warehouse that they were proposing to to put in modular homes inside this warehouse, in an already poor part of town where people are already concerned about lack of social services, and it's right across the street from a bunch of kids stuff, kids movie theater, kids play places, and people are saying this is insane, it's not even zoned for that, and I just think of all the other kind of community relations.
If you know, they're digging up the street in my neighborhood ben, and the city comes like months in advance.
Here's our plan.
Do you have any feedback?
Here's a phone number that we're gonna take this tree out, don't worry.
Like like there's so much consultation, enough already, whereas it sounds like there's almost no consultation and towns that are that.
It's a shock treatment, like New Town, Mount Kennedy.
Tell me if i've got my facts wrong or, or or or give me more facts to help paint a fuller picture on that.
No, that's exactly right.
And to to give you uh, an extra shocking detail uh, Leo Varadkar, who up until very recently was the Taoisuck, basically the prime minister of Ireland, and he he recently resigned and has been replaced by his successor, Simon Harris.
But when Varadgar was the Taoisuck just a few months ago, he actually said that, you know, we we've heard people are complaining about a lack of consultation when it comes to these asylum centers and we've heard the people loud and clear.
So we've got these community engagement teams who are going to be sending out and they're going to be speaking to people about what's happening.
But he says I also want to be very clear that it's not about seeking permission when we send out these community engagement teams.
It's really just about giving you information and dispelling misinformation that might arise about the situation so effectively the the?
It's not.
It's less of a negotiation, it's less of a asking you, hey, is this something you're comfortable with?
Do you have any objection to what we're doing?
They're more sitting you down at a table and saying, this is what's going to happen to You and the people who live around you, you don't have any say in it whatsoever.
We're just letting you know in advance.
And if you have any kind of alternative takes on the situation, we'll be happy to tell you why you're wrong and explain to you like you're an idiot how you've completely misunderstood the situation.
So I think when you look at situations like that and that style of governance, is it any wonder why tensions are sky high in a country like this?
You know, I'm just thinking of, I used to do a lot of journalism about oil and gas and other fossil fuels, and that involves mining and drilling.
And sometimes a farmer's field has deep underneath it oil and gas.
And how do you, you know, protect everyone's interests and treat everyone fairly?
Because if you don't, you're going to have, and I'm familiar with how they do it in different jurisdictions.
The amount of notice, the amount of, you know, friendly chats and town hall meetings, and here's the plan, and should we change it?
Like the astonishing lengths that we go to for other development, how much parking, who's coming there.
Like to put a thousand military-aged men, like that's bizarre to begin with, that they're refugees.
I mean, in my mind, refugees are women and children.
I'm not saying there can be no men as refugees, but I went to one of these tent encampments in downtown Dublin.
They're all guys.
One of them told me he was from Palestine.
Okay, maybe.
Another guy told me he was from Pakistan.
These are military-aged guys.
Just plunked there.
I don't know.
I find it astonishing.
And no other industry or project would be so hostile to the host community.
Like, I just think of if the oil and gas industry said, we're just going to start drilling in your neighborhood to hell with you.
It's just unthinkable.
Like, there's years of, you know, how's it going to affect the economy?
How's it going to affect the environment?
In Canada, we even have gender studies.
How will this pipeline have a gender impact?
Now, that's insanity, but compare that to what's happening in Ireland.
Sorry, I'm ranting about it.
We were going to drive to Newtown Mount Kennedy, one of the towns that is having a migrant center built there.
We were told, don't bother.
They've got a barrier on the road.
They won't let you through.
I said, who's they?
The police.
I don't know if that's accurate anymore, but I was told, do not drive there.
They will not let you through, even to take pictures.
Voting for Independents in Europe00:12:56
Yep, I wouldn't be surprised.
Fateh has been going down there quite a bit.
My colleague Fatima Gunning, who's been doing a lot of coverage on that story in particular, because that's become kind of a focal point.
This town of Newtown, Mount Kennedy, which is in the county of Wicklow, which just so happens to be the Taoiseach, the prime minister's constituency.
So this is all unfolding on his front lawn, effectively, metaphorically speaking.
And we have an election coming up.
And so I think the government lately are in panic mode when it comes to the immigration issue because the word on the street is that they're being slaughtered on the doors every time they knock on a door to canvas.
It's just immigration, immigration, immigration.
Because unfortunately for them, one of the net consequences when you airdrop, you know, dozens, hundreds of asylum centers all over the country in every town and village is you suddenly bring the immigration issue in a very real and tangible way into the homes of people who maybe never would have thought about it.
You know, I think about a couple of years ago in, I believe it was 2022, there was a poll done where they asked Irish people, where do you, what is the most important issue to you, the number one top issue.
And I think something like 5% of people said immigration.
You know, it was a concern, but it was not a big concern relative to other things like housing and so on.
That number in a more recent version of that poll had jumped to 41% in just a couple of years, and it's only on the rise still to this day.
So the only reason I say that is just that they have successfully, I don't want to say radicalized, because there's nothing radical about wanting to control your borders as a country, but they have successfully accelerated the immigration debate that other European and American, North American countries have been having for years now.
They've accelerated it greatly here and truncated that whole decades-long conversation into about a year.
Yeah, it was something.
Well, let me refer again to my one.
I was only in Ireland for 25 hours, Ben.
I don't want to come across as an expert at all, but I certainly saw a week's worth of stuff in that 25 hours, and I met some very interesting people.
I met a candidate for the European Parliament because Ireland is still in.
Ireland was not part of Brexit, even though I know there's some people in Ireland who want to get out.
I've forgotten his name, Malachi.
What is his first name?
I've just forgotten his name.
Malachi Stevenson.
That's exactly right.
I was walking in the march next to him, and I thought, here's a handsome gentleman who seems very nice.
And I started chatting with him.
He told me a few things.
A few days later, an antiphotype was arrested planning to assassinate him.
I heard something about that.
I don't know the details.
And obviously, I would assume it's an ongoing legal.
Yeah, there's a lot of drama there.
I guess the reason I mentioned that she's a candidate.
I think he's running for European Parliament.
Sorry, I'm going off the fly here without checking my notes.
I met a number of candidates for the European Parliament and other candidates for local elections.
But here's the thing about all of them, Ben.
They all felt sort of independent.
They all felt, some of them felt a little bit fringe, to be honest.
I mean, they had a lot of heart and a lot of passion, but I thought, no, that guy's not going to win.
I can tell that right now.
And the reason I say that is not to be disparaging.
It's that all the established parties with the political machinery behind them seem to be in sync on this.
Sinn Féin, I'm not even sure.
I don't want to mispronounce the names of some of the other parties.
All the parties in power, correct me if I'm wrong, are unanimous that they're for this immigration approach.
If I've missed something in my 25-hour visit to Dublin, let me know.
But I see, you mentioned the 41% of the Irish say this is a big problem.
I've seen some of these very passionate independent...
By the way, sorry to interrupt you because I don't want to minimize the issue.
41% of people said it was the number one issue for them.
There are a lot more people than that who are seriously concerned about it, but they might say, oh, housing is number one and then immigration number two.
And by the way, those are LinkedIn.
Exactly, yeah.
So when they do polling on it, about 80% of the country says that immigration is too high.
So way, we're getting near unanimous agreement at this point.
Except for in the political class.
And that's, I guess, the question I want to ask you, because I felt some energy there.
I felt real people, like mums who had never done anything political in their life, scared because there were kids being stabbed by migrants.
And maybe that's an anecdote they shouldn't expand beyond a rare few cases, but people feel how they feel.
You can't tell people stop feeling that way.
That makes them feel it even more.
And if you shame people for being far right, like I saw some of the insults by the establishment thrown at the marshers and they were insane.
I mean, we had the same thing here in Canada.
You're called racist.
You're called whatever.
I had never seen the insult of, oh, you're working with British intelligence.
I thought, okay, right.
I don't know enough about the Irish-British conflict, but that seems like the kind of insult you throw at anyone to shut them up.
I mean, I didn't see any British MI5 or MI6 there, but what do I know?
I'm from Canada.
It just.
What I love about that particular angle that they sometimes tried to bring out is you go, okay, in your scenario, are you trying to say that it's only because of alleged MI5 propaganda that Irish people have a problem with 150 tents popping up right in front of their house while they're trying to leave for work?
And that there's all these adult men from, you know, who are largely unvetted, who we know very little about, who have destroyed their documents, and they've all moved into your area and there's no accommodation for them and they're living there in front of your house in a tent with no even like a portal or something.
There's no toilet facilities, there's no anything.
The only reason somebody would have a problem with that is if there was some kind of nefarious foreign intelligence operation to tell them that that's bad.
Is that the position that we're supposed to believe?
Because it's so self-evidently absurd what's happening.
I don't think we need Russia or the UK or the CIA or anyone else to influence things to make people upset with what Irish.
I know it's so nuts to me.
I'm just, it was funny as a Canadian to discover that card to play because it reminded me of how stupid the insults here are in Canada.
By the way, I don't know almost anything about Sinn Féin, but I would have thought that they want Ireland for the Irish.
That would be sort of a motto of theirs.
I mean, if you're fighting to get the Brits out, but you're fine with 100,000 migrants a year and a population of 5 million, I don't know how that fits.
Like, I don't know how it's in the Irish national interest, but I'm not sophisticated in my Irish history.
But to come back to my long-winded point, you have all this passion, you have all this energy, people are speaking out about it.
You see marches, you see lads taking things into their own hands sometimes.
there are protests that turn into fisticuffs and you have, which is not good by the way.
I know.
But that's what happens when people say, I no longer believe in all the institutions, including the Garda, including the police.
I no longer trust anything.
Who's there to help me?
Because the political system isn't working for these folks.
And how is that going to change?
Is a political opportunity seeker going to say, I'm an entrepreneur.
I'm going to start a political party or I'm going to change my existing political party to get in front of this parade that's marching.
Because if the entire political class locks out the people, the people will get more desperate.
And Ireland has a history of taking things into their own hands.
Is there a political path out of this or are all the establishment parties saying no?
We're going to tell you how it is and we'll explain how you're a bigot if you disagree.
There's most certainly, I mean, the fact of the matter is, as it stands, independents are polling higher than any political party.
About a quarter of the public, when they're asked, we've got an election coming up in about a week, and about a quarter of people when they're asked, who are you going to give your first preference vote to?
Because we have a very unique voting system in Ireland where instead of, you know, in America, let's say you vote one time and then that's it, you're done.
In Ireland, you vote in order of your preference.
So hypothetically, to put it in an American context, so people might understand from abroad, you could hypothetically vote for libertarian number one and then Donald Trump number two.
And then if the libertarian got the libertarian guy gets your vote, but then if he loses, then your vote goes to Trump, that kind of thing.
And so there's benefits and there's downsides to that system.
I personally quite like it because it means that smaller parties, one of the biggest things that stops people in countries like America from starting a third party or putting their weight behind a third party is because you feel like you're wasting your vote.
In the Irish system, you can vote for total no-hopers, a guy who you like his ideas, you'd like if he did well, but you expect him to bomb and go nowhere.
You can still justify voting for him, knowing that your vote will then transfer to somebody who's a bit more serious down the ballot.
So that's a whole other conversation.
But the only point I'm making is independents, people who don't subscribe to any party, are making up 25% of the vote, according to the latest polling.
Wow.
And that's bigger than all of the other parties.
And think about how astonishing that is.
Think about that in an American context where independents were outstripping the Republicans and the Democrats and the Greens and the Libertarians.
And the only people who were getting any kind of political traction were people who said, I'm not with the party.
I'm just some guy.
That's the level of dissatisfaction people have with the establishment of this.
I did not know that's how Ireland shows.
What level of office is the election being held for?
Is it the European Parliament alone or are there other votes?
It's the European Parliament and it's the local election.
So that's for like city councils and town councils.
I met a few candidates for well, that's very what's the date of that?
Is it both on the same day?
Yeah, both on the same day.
There'll be two different ballots, but it'll be, it'll, the vote will be held concurrently, and that's going to be on the 7th of June, I believe.
And so this is not, it's not hugely practically important because councils have relatively limited power.
The European Parliament, I mean, we're a drop in the ocean when it comes to the massive behemoth that is the European Parliament.
So kind of no matter what happens at these elections, not a lot is going to change tangibly.
It's not like they're going to start lashing through amazing policies or terrible policies.
Things will probably not be impacted in that way.
But the difference it will make is hypothetically, let's say all of the major parties get completely crushed and independents nationwide surge to the top.
Wow.
That's going to send the political system into chaos, potentially in a good way, because next year we've got the general elections.
They have to be held legally by March or possibly even a little bit earlier than that.
And so this, I think the government are holding this one as a kind of a feeling out process to see how bad is the damage going to be or will it be bad?
You know, could they maybe salvage it?
And so if independents do well here, that will completely change the complexion of the general election coming up.
And who knows whether that'll be good or bad or what the impact of that might be.
Isn't that amazing?
Well, I'm so excited because although there's a lot of terrible things happening, I think it sounds like Irish folks are waking up, little green shoots of hope.
And it sounds like my concern about, well, there's no real force behind these independents.
What you're telling me is that the transferable ballot actually allows independent people a chance.
And from what you say, they're doing strongly in the polls.
Very exciting.
That's not far away, June 7th.
Ben, I don't want to take up any more of your time, but it's so internic or I have no connection to Ireland at all.
Encouraging Rebel News Viewers00:03:36
But I find it so interesting.
And I so enjoyed my visit there.
And I was surprised by people who, I mean, of course, everyone loves Gripped, but I was also surprised that people there follow Rebel News, even though we really haven't focused on Ireland in a very long time.
So I'm grateful to you for teaching me and teaching our viewers along with me what's going on there.
And I'm hopeful for Ireland.
I know that sounds crazy because it's bad news every day.
But, you know, they do say it's darkest before the dawn.
And maybe June 7th, I mean, first, when the referendums happened a few weeks ago, when that crazy referendum to take the motherhood, literally to take the word mother, out of the Constitution, when those were slapped down by three quarters of the population, when the entire establishment was behind it, I thought Ireland is waking up.
They're not buying the BS anymore.
And by the way, Ben, I really think grip is part of the reason people are waking up because finally they can hear the other side of the story from Irish people they can trust.
I really think you guys are making a big difference there.
And I'm not just saying that to be friendly.
I really saw it when I was there.
People trust Grip because you're not part of the regime.
Well, I really, really appreciate that.
I mean, it's not my job to, and I'm not suggesting that you're saying I should, but, you know, I feel like my job is just to tell the truth as I see it and then let the people make up their own minds.
And hopefully in the democracy, people make good decisions.
That's all.
That's all we can do, isn't it?
Yeah, you're making, well, you're doing that very well.
And we have a motto here at Rebel News telling the other side of the story.
You guys, I think, are one standard deviation less hot-headed than us.
I'm joking around.
I mean, we love what we do here and we do it for a reason.
But watching you engage one-on-one with the cabinet ministers, it's very impressive.
And I think that goes to the authoritative and credible journalistic, high-quality, ethical journalism that you do.
And it really pays off.
We're out of time, which is too bad, because I was going to ask you about this one line in your tweet about that anti-racism conference, quote, attendees running around in a circle, silently wearing COVID masks with their fists raised while two-pack rap music played in remembrance of George Floyd.
And that's just such a crazy image.
And the COVID-19 mask is just the chef's kiss to that whole thing.
We'll have to talk about that another day.
Ben, thank you so much for joining us.
And when I'm praising Grip, I mean, I praised some of our guests yesterday.
We had the Taxpayers Federation on, and I love those guys, but I really, really mean it.
My two favorite news outlets in the whole world, I love GB News in the UK.
I think they need to strengthen their Irish department.
And I love gripped.ie.
And maybe it's because I see some kinship there, the issues we're covering, the fact that we're the underdogs.
And so I really encourage all of our Rebel News viewers to take a look at Gripped, G-R-I-P-T.ie.
There are so few good guys out there that when you find them, you got to support them.
And it's just a few Euros.
I mean, most of their stuff is free, but you can sign up to be a paid subscriber to support them.
And I encourage it.
Ben, we'll let you go.
Thanks, Emilian, for making us smarter.
Thank you so much, Ezra.
Great talking to you.
All right.
There you have it.
Ben Scallon.
He's the senior political correspondent for Gripped.ie.