Ezra Levant exposes Canada’s $1.2M government-funded study by the Digital Media Research Network targeting conservative outlets like Rebel News, despite its 6.7% engagement dwarfed by CBC’s 11.2%. He critiques the research as flawed, possibly driven by grant-seeking, while comparing it to Dr. Daniel Pipes’ controversial book Israel Victory, arguing Israel must crush Hamas and defund the Palestinian Authority to break rejectionist narratives. Levant also questions suspicious church fires in 2024, linking them to perceived cultural shifts and media bias, suggesting deeper political motives behind unexplained incidents. [Automatically generated summary]
I can't believe it, but it's a government study, so it must be true.
Rebel News is the fifth busiest or fifth most engaged news website in Canada.
Well, the government says that it must be true.
I'll show you the report.
That's ahead.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
I encourage you to get it because there's lots of things to see, but also because the eight bucks a month, that might not sound like a lot of money to you, but boy, it adds up for us.
That's how we keep the lights on here because we don't take any money from Trudeau and it shows.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, the Canadian government pays academics to, you know, spy on Rebel News and other conservative news outlets.
I'll give you the details.
It's June 12th, and this is the Esther Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
You know, the government spies on us all the time.
Sometimes they acknowledge that they're doing it.
Sometimes they sort of keep it in the gray areas.
Remember during the lockdowns when they basically compelled the cell phone companies to give the government data on where their users were to track us using GPS.
We know, of course, that the government regularly pressures social media companies to throttle or suspend accounts they don't like.
I don't think anything I'm saying here is controversial that it's happening.
It's a controversial thing they're doing, but I don't think anyone disputes that it's happening.
Of course, they can outright spy on you and your personal matters.
That's what the ArriveCan app was, a giant piece of spyware, malware, as they say.
You had to tell the government or anyone in a uniform really at an airport what your personal health details were.
What an outrage.
But they've actually codified and institutionalized this spying when it comes to conservative or populist media.
Now, they don't call it spying, and I suppose in some ways it could be research, but they fund so-called misinformation and disinformation experts to spy on the websites they don't like, including Rebel News.
I don't know what a misinformation or disinformation expert is.
That's basically another way of saying figuring out what's true or not.
I think all of us go through life trying to figure out what's true.
And sometimes we're wrong accidentally, and sometimes some people lie on purpose.
I've never heard a government-funded disinformation or misinformation expert ever fact-check a government source, though.
And that tells you everything you need to know.
The fact-checkers only check facts one way.
And much of the time, when they say they're checking facts, they're actually checking opinions.
Nonetheless, I want to bring to your attention a study that I saw today.
It was actually highlighted by one of my favorite independent news sources called Blacklocks.
It's a study published by the Canadian Digital Media Research Network.
Doesn't that sound fancy and authoritative, as if that's even a thing?
Well, they have something they publish called a situation report.
Canadian Information Ecosystem Situation Report, technical briefing on the state of the information ecosystem.
And you can see on the screen, their May report.
Of course, all of that is BS.
They have the dramatic language situation report as if it's like a military briefing, as if there's some true scholarship underneath it.
They do that, I think, because that's how they get funding.
They know the buzzwords to say when they write to bureaucrats looking for huge grants.
And just as five, 10 years ago, you could get any money you wanted just by parenting a global warming or climate change line.
And now you can do so when you talk about transgenderism or Islamophobia.
You'll just back up the dump truck and fill up with taxpayer cash.
The new hot area of scholarship is misinformation and disinformation.
And so universities, whose main job, as you can tell, is raising funds.
That's why they bring in so many foreign students.
They charge them a premium and make a profit.
It's not about scholarship.
University presidents that are always hunting for cash have realized that if they set up these disinformation observatories, they'll get cash, especially if they study Trudeau's enemies.
Which brings me to the latest report of the Situation Report.
Let me point out right on the front page, key findings.
Ecosystem influence is highly concentrated in a number of voices.
Do you think that's true?
Do you think that online where everyone has a Facebook account, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, whatever you're on, do you really think the voices are more concentrated now than ever?
Or do you actually think, as I do, that opinions are more diffuse than ever?
In the past, we only had CTV, Global, and CBC, and we all had to tune in at the same time.
We couldn't seek our own news.
I think there's more news choices now than ever in history.
It's just that so many of those that are out there don't happen to toe the line of the government.
I'll keep reading.
The Canadian information ecosystem, could you imagine using that language with a straight face?
That's how you get grants, folks.
Remains highly unequal.
Is that what you say?
Unequal?
Are you talking about the CBC getting all the money?
No, they're talking about people like you and me.
With a small number of accounts receiving a supermajority of engagement.
Is that really true that a handful of accounts get more engagement than the rest of people combined?
That's what supermajority means.
Or again, are they just using these buzzwords to get grants?
This inequality remains even more extreme for media outlets with the top five media organizations, CTB, Global News, CBC, the Postmillennial, and Rebel News, receiving approximately 65% of all news engagement across social media platforms.
Is that true?
I mean, I like to boast about Rebel News.
It's sort of my job.
But are we really that big?
I mean, I'd like to think we are, but come on, most Canadians actually haven't even heard of us.
I don't know if you remember, we took a poll a couple of years ago.
Now, half of Canadians had heard of us, but to say that we're one of the top five dominant sources, I want to believe it.
But these folks have a purpose.
A purpose is to scare the government into A, passing censorship laws, and B, most importantly, giving them more money.
I'll continue.
They say misinformation producing websites receive significant attention.
While overall volume of misinformation content in the ecosystem is low, there is high engagement with content linking to known misinformation producing websites.
Hey, does it count as misinformation when, for example, the CBC state broadcaster talks at length about how vaccines are 100% safe?
They used to say that.
Safe and effective.
They used to say that too.
Is that ever considered misinformation?
Or is only things that criticize the government considered misinformation?
I want to flip ahead to the part where they focus on rebel news, because, of course, in some ways, I'm flattered that someone is earning millions of dollars to invest to watch rebel news for a living.
Wouldn't that be nice?
They talk about their findings as if this was some sort of investigation.
Engagement with Canadian news outlets is more unequal than the overall ecosystem with a Gini coefficient of 0.955.
That's a mathematical statistics formula.
We find the top five Canadian outlets that attract the most engagement are CTV, Global News, CBC, the Postmillennial, and Rebel News.
Well, of course, I'm flattered, but I don't quite believe it.
And one of the reasons I don't believe it is because they have the post-millennial on there.
Now, I like the post-millennial just fine.
Some of them are my friends for a while.
I was a subscriber.
But about a year or two ago, they were bought by a U.S. website called Human Events.
And they have maybe one full-time Canadian reporter left, but the vast majority of their work is American.
And they're very good at it, by the way.
I read their stuff every day.
But to put that in a list of Canadian websites shows that these folks are working on some outdated enemies list.
The Postmillennial was founded in Canada, for sure.
And they were an ardent critic of Trudeau, for sure.
But that really hasn't been the case for years.
I think their office is in the States now.
It shows that these academics don't really care about getting out of their office and doing investigations.
They just want to pander to the biases of the grant givers.
Trudeau.
I'll keep reading.
Collectively, they receive 64.9% of all engagement with news content.
Do you believe it?
Do you believe that those five news sites I've just listed to you have the majority of all news interactions in the country?
I'm sorry, I just don't believe it.
I think they're lying.
I think they're engaged in misinformation.
Local news outlets receive just 24.6% of all engagement with news content.
Now, why do you think they might lie?
Can you sort of pick it up there?
Oh, five, you know, these five companies dominate and local news coverage isn't followed.
Can you see where they're going with this?
I can.
This is to justify giving grants to local media.
That's what this is all about.
But look at that chart there, just for one last moment.
Top five Canadian news outlets.
What are the top five Canadian news outlets?
What is their share of total engagement?
You can see CTV has 25.1%.
Global news has 11.8%.
CBC has 11.2%, which is astonishing, given that they get, what, $1.5 billion a year?
You would think they were bigger than all else combined.
10% for the post-millennial.
And there we are, Rebel News at 6.7%.
Now, again, I'm a skeptic, but just for a moment, put away your disbelief.
I mean, never trust these experts, but just for a moment, accept it on face value.
Rebel News right now has, I think, 41 staff, including me.
41.
The CBC has thousands.
The CBC budget from government money alone is $1.5 billion.
It's more than 100 times bigger than Rebel News.
They got 100 times more money, and they have more than 100 times more staff.
They've got about 200 times as much staff.
And we're 60% as large as them in terms of engagement.
Why Palestinians Aren't Wrong00:14:15
If that's true, and again, I don't believe a thing these guys say.
If that's true, imagine how awful the government propaganda has to be that people would come to us in such numbers and avoid them in such numbers.
It's maybe not astonishing that we're popular, but it's astonishing given how much money there is behind the CBC, how unpopular they are.
They're still forced into every cable package in Canada.
You cannot get a cable package in Canada without being forced to subscribe to and pay for the CBC.
What I'm getting from this study is no one believes them.
No one even pays attention to them.
People are thirsty for alternative points of view.
And the government and any greedy professor looking for a handout is only too happy to smear independent news as a threat.
Stay with us for more.
By some measures, the Hamas terrorist attack on southern Israel on October 7th was a failure.
They didn't hold any land.
All the terrorists who went into Israel were killed, at least the ones who didn't retreat quickly back into Gaza.
Gaza itself has been flattened, utterly destroyed.
Hamas has lost many of its commanders.
And yet, there's a jubilation from Hamas and its supporters around the world, especially in the West.
Why would that be?
It's not enough simply to point to the slaughter of over 1,200 Jews on the day of and 200 hostages later.
I think that it was a starter pistol.
It was a moment where Muslim extremists around the world thought, we can do it.
We can actually win this battle, even though by every military measure, it was a loss.
There's a psychological win.
I saw some people use the phrase that day that Gaza broke out of jail.
There was a feeling of victory in the air that the Palestinians have not had in decades.
Contrary wise, when Israel liberated four hostages just a few days ago, that was much more than a rescuing of four Jews to the Hamas side.
You could tell it deflated them because they saw that their likelihood of a total victory was not as assured as they convinced itself it might be.
And so I'm very interested in a new book that talks about the psychology of this.
The book is by our friend Dr. Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum.
It's called Israel Victory: How Zionists Win Acceptance and Palestinians Get Liberated.
It's for sale now on Amazon.
Dr. Pipes joins us now.
Well, great to see you again.
Help me understand the point of your book.
Is it a psychological point?
Is it the psychology of winning and losing?
Well, I'm a historian, so there's a good bit of history in it.
The first half explains how we got into this mess, and the second half suggests a way to get out of it.
And the first half, the mess, how we got into it, goes back to the 1880s and argues that on the two sides, Palestinian and Israeli, mind you, Palestinian, not Arab state, Palestinian.
What one finds 140 years, 140 years of eccentric, unique, counterproductive, and bizarre mentalities.
On the Palestinian side, you have a mentality of rejectionism.
No, no, no.
Note everything Jewish, Israeli, Zionist.
No.
This made sense in the 1880s when the Palestinians were very large in number compared to the Zionists.
It is absurd at present when the roles are reversed and Israel has the F-35s and the high-rises and the Palestinians have neither.
And yet it remains in place essentially unchanged through all this time.
On the Israeli side, in contrast, you have an approach of conciliation, which again made sense in the 1880s.
Hey, Palestinians, we will help you get richer.
You'll be better off by cooperating with us.
Accept us.
It's win-win.
We'll all be better off.
This made sense in the 1880s when the Zionists were weak and few.
It does not make sense today when they are strong.
And yet these two strange, and I say unique, I don't see them anywhere else in the world, mentalities continue.
What to do about it?
Well, I think it's up to the Israelis to recognize the error of their ways and to help the Palestinians find a way to end rejectionism.
It's up to the Israelis to break rejectionism.
It is up to the Israelis to win by inflicting a sense of defeat upon the Palestinians.
You know, I think it was Kissinger who said the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
And you can understand if that was him.
Others have used that phrase, too.
I mean, when Bill Clinton...
Abba Eben.
Abba Eben, thank you.
Thank you.
The Israeli diplomat and political leader.
When Bill Clinton was the president, there was no more frequent guest to the White House than Yasser Arafat.
And Clinton went to great lengths to twist the arm of Israel to give not just everything the Palestinians demanded, but plus, there were certain square miles here and there that Israel would reserve, but Palestinians were given more elsewhere in recompense.
And at the last minute, Arafat said, there's no way I can accept this win because I'll be killed for not rejecting anything and everything.
The whole thing was a dance, and Bill Clinton was appalled by that.
He was, even for a president, he was naive about that.
And I think that even though Gaza is rubble, they still believe that from that they can get success.
And by the way, maybe they're not wrong.
Ireland, Spain, Norway have all said they recognize Palestine as a state.
At the United Nations, even Canada has turned against Israel.
Maybe the Palestinians aren't wrong.
Maybe they should keep rejecting things forever.
I mean, how would you tell a Palestinian not to keep rejecting things forever if they're getting things from it?
Well, I was hoping you would ask.
My policy recommendation is twofold.
First, I want the Israelis, with our support, to destroy Hamas, which it's trying to do, and to eliminate the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas has to be fought and defeated violently, but the Palestinian Authority can be made to disappear simply by stop being funded.
It would be quite simple.
The Israelis, however, are not in the mood to do that, but I think they should.
And secondly, here's the key point, and I think the original point.
I believe there is, at this point, after all these decades, a substantial body of West bankers and Gazans who've had enough.
But the problem is the Israelis don't focus on them.
The Israelis tend to assume that the Palestinians are an inherent enemy.
They have always been and will always be.
They make no effort.
I draw the comparison to lions and hyenas, permanent enemies.
And I'm saying no.
I think if you look closely, if you look at the intellectuals, if you look at the religious people and others, you see that there are voices, significant voices, Israeli Muslim citizens, Arabs of Jerusalem, West bankers, Gaza, residents who have had enough, especially Gaza.
They've had enough.
And I do believe that the Israelis, through intelligent, persistent, determined work, can find allies among the Palestinians.
And the first place will be in Gaza.
I believe a day after scenario should be Israel working with Gaza to create what I call a decent Gaza.
I believe that's possible.
You don't need the Palestine Authority.
You don't need Arab states.
You don't need United Nations.
You don't need Western armies.
Israel on its own, working with the right Gazans, can set up an administration, police force, educational system, and the like that will be decent.
Not great, not a place where you or I would want to live, but a place like, say, Egypt or Jordan, where if you keep your nose clean and stay out of politics, don't insult the rulers, you can leave a perfectly fine life.
That's, I believe, the aspiration Israel should have.
And it's a radical difference from what they've done in the past.
They have not tried this at all.
I believe the time has come for them to try to work with the right Palestinians against the wrong Palestinians.
There are 20, 25% of Palestinians who are ready to work with Israel.
Well, I'm not quite as optimistic as you are.
Let me put it that way.
Although I note that there was a period of years when a terrorist group called ISIS, the Islamic State, not only was ascendant, they had territory.
They could say, we have a state, we have cities, we have social services, we do infrastructure.
They were not granted political recognition like Norway, Spain, and Ireland did, but they actually had a bit of a country.
They had a sort of a border.
Yes.
And the size of Great Britain, by the way.
Yeah.
And but my point is, they were an inspiration to Islamists around the world.
When I went to the Nineveh Plain in Iraq, when ISIS was on the retreat, I saw Islamic graffiti in a Christian church that had been desecrated.
That graffiti was in German.
And the reason I mention that is that Islamists from the entire world were so enthused and excited.
They all went to Raqqa.
They all went to Mosul to be part of this project.
They thought it's finally here.
We're on the march.
And for a few years, they could actually claim they were.
Now, no one would even mention the word ISIS because they were defeated and ground into powder and no one is inspired by them.
I think that would and will happen when Hamas is finally extinguished.
If its total boss is killed or captured, then I think you would see the deflation and demoralization, at least among some quarters.
Is that the thinking here?
And is that why Joe Biden seems to be doing everything he can to delay Israel from extinguishing Hamas?
Well, two points there.
First, I think we're in agreement.
You do, by drawing the comparison with ISIS, see the possibility of a similar such process in Gaza.
Good.
You don't think I'm more optimistic?
You're optimistic too.
Secondly, about Joe Biden, Joe Biden, his innate sympathy is with Israel.
But as you're probably aware, there's an election coming up for presidency of the United States in five months.
And he has a wing of his party that's vociferous and despises Israel.
So he's trying to find a combination that will both be true to himself and win and keep him the votes of this left wing.
The result is an oxymoronic policy that makes no sense and it's an absurdity.
But I don't think he has malign intentions.
I think he just has a conflict between his own personal approach and what he perceives as the needs for his reelection.
And the result is a mishmash that is incomprehensible and ineffectual and a failure.
Let me ask you one last question because I hear what you're saying about people in Gaza or the West Bank just saying, we got to move on.
We have to live our lives.
Although there is a bit of a death cult, certainly in some quarters.
But a lot of the decisions I would imagine are not being made in Gaza, but by Iran, which is as implacable as ever.
And I think that the most audacious protests in support of Hamas are in the West or in London.
These days are even in New York and Toronto.
And again, I think those are orchestrated and funded by external forces, including Iran.
So let's say you extinguish Hamas in Gaza.
I don't think you're going to stop the funders, the organizers, the trainers, the strategists on this.
I think they're still going to be active.
What do you say about that?
Let me just give you a pertinent example from today to make your point about the West versus the Muslim world.
As you're aware, in graduation ceremonies throughout the West, there'll be disruptions by the anti-Israel types.
Well, at the NYU, New York University campus in Abu Dhabi, the Kafiya and other symbols were banned just today, yesterday.
So in Abu Dhabi, they're banned.
In New York, they're fine.
Trans Flags and Firemen00:04:00
Isn't that interviewing?
You know, by the way, that the Kafir is known as the hipster swastika.
Yeah, I've heard that phrase.
Well, it's very interesting.
Daniel Pipes, it's great to catch up.
We're talking about your new book called Israel Victory: How Zionists Win Acceptance and Palestinians Get Liberated.
And we'll have a link to that book if people want to buy it on Amazon.
Listen, I sure hope you're right.
There are flickers of hope in the region.
I've had the pleasure of being in United Arab Emirates myself, and I was blown away by the true peace between them and Israel.
And I hope that can get back on track.
I think that was the greatest, one of the greatest victories that Hamas achieved is stalling the Abraham Accords.
And I sure hope that can be revived.
I hope you and I can keep in touch on this subject in the months ahead because I don't think it's going to be gone anytime soon.
There you have it.
Dr. Daniel Pipes, the boss of the Middle East Forum.
Once again, his book is called Israel Victory: How Zionists Win Acceptance and Palestinians Get Liberated.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me about my report from the St. Anne's Anglican Church.
Force Real says anything being torched other than a church would be instantly declared a hate crime.
You're so right.
They wouldn't wait for the facts.
What's weird here is that the media pre-judged saying, oh, there's nothing suspicious.
While the investigation was underway, I literally talked to the firemen on scene.
They said, we're not done investigating.
How could people say there was nothing suspicious when they were still looking?
Multipass says churches are solid structural buildings.
Most are built in the days where a lot of effort and detail and solid materials went into it, unlike today when buildings are made like matchboxes.
All these years, some hundreds of years, and all the candles lit and no fires until now.
Most definitely a who rather than what.
Oh, yeah, I do not for a second believe that the cathedral at Notre Dame was an electrical fire.
Those timbers were 800 years old.
That's practically petrified.
You have a thousand-year-old tree trunk.
You think that's going to catch fire?
You hold a lighter to that thing.
You'll burn the lighter fluid up before that.
It's not going to burn.
In fact, the Notre Dame Cathedral had a full-time fire brigade stationed in the church.
You'll never get me to believe that it was not human-caused.
I think that for it to be published as such would have been such a crisis in French politics that the president simply ordered the result to be faked.
I'm sorry, I believe that if that's a conspiracy theory, so be it.
I think the actual conspiracy theory is pretending that an electrical fire brought down a church with petrified timbers that stood for 800 years and that was announced before the investigation was done.
Tagusman says, notice the flags on the church and firetrucks.
Ever wonder what country you actually live in?
You know, I didn't emphasize that in my comments, but all the trucks had a trans flag on them.
They all did.
And the church had a rainbow flag on it too, by the way.
I chatted with some of the firemen off camera, and some of them were big rebel supporters.
And I pointed out that they had a trans flag on the firetruck.
I would be surprised if there's a single trans fireman in Toronto, but they no longer have the solidarity yellow ribbon with 9-11.
You know, for the longest time, firemen in Canada had symbolic solidarity stickers with the great number of firemen who died on 9-11.
Those are gone, but the trans sticker is on there.
That's Canada in 2024.
That's our show for today until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters.