Zohran Mamdani, a radical socialist mayoral candidate in New York City, won the Democratic primary with 432,000 votes (43.5%) over Andrew Cuomo’s 361,000 (36.4%), backed by liberal white women and migrants in cities like Toronto (52% foreign-born) and Brampton (59%). His pro-Hamas stance—blaming Israel for violence while ignoring Hamas’ atrocities—and socialist policies (rent freezes, $30 minimum wage) reflect a UN-backed demographic shift fueling anti-capitalist sentiment. Meanwhile, Ballymena’s unified protests against a Roma Gypsy criminal gang reveal racial tensions, contrasting with Northern Ireland’s fragile peace post-Troubles, where sectarian violence once killed nine civilians in a 1993 bomb attack. Mamdani’s rise and immigration-driven unrest suggest a global clash between progressive policies and cultural cohesion, risking instability in urban strongholds. [Automatically generated summary]
Normally, I'm not interested in who's the mayor of a foreign city.
I mean, we've got our own terrible mayors here in Canada, but what's happening in New York City, I think, is a global news story.
A hardcore left-wing, I'd even say communist candidate who only came to America a few years ago, born overseas, pro-Hamas, is now leading the race to be the next mayor.
He won the Democratic primary.
I'll tell you all about him.
But first, please consider becoming a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
It's the video version of this podcast.
I want to show you what this guy, Zorhan Mamdani, looks like.
I want you to see how slick he is, and I want you to see how white his supporters are.
Migrants too, but those liberal white women can't get enough of this guy.
And I want to show that to you.
So why don't you get the video version?
We call it Rebel News Plus.
Go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
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You get all our shows in video and the satisfaction of supporting Rebel News.
Tonight, New York City is on the verge of electing an Islamic communist as mayor.
Will Zoran Mandami conquer the city that the 9-11 terrorists could not?
It's June 26th, and this is the Edge Levant show.
Shame on you, you sensorious bug.
Look at this guy.
He just won the Democratic Party primary in the New York City mayor's election.
Take a look.
Good morning, everyone.
We are approaching the dawn of a new era in New York City.
We are turning the page on the corrupt politics of the past that made this the most expensive city in the United States of America.
Today, I am filled with gratitude for the more than 50,000 volunteers that have powered this campaign for the last eight months, for the tens of thousands more who have already cast their ballots.
And I'm filled with conviction that we will win this race.
We've shown that by focusing on the issues of working and middle-class New Yorkers across this city, that by listening instead of lecturing, that by creating a politics of no translation, New Yorkers will join you in your fight for a new city.
What we offer is a way to sustain this city that I so deeply love.
What we offer is a vision to keep New Yorkers in the place that they call home and an antidote to the Trump administration and the hatred and the division that it spews.
We are showing people that hope is not something that is naive.
It is in fact righteous when it is built upon a plan and a vision.
We are showing New York City that a better day is possible.
And today is the first of many of them.
Handsome, well-spoken, high-energy, fresh-faced.
He's an actor.
His mom is a Disney filmmaker.
He's all about Pizzazz.
He's remade himself several times.
I mean, here's another version of him.
He's not always so smiley.
Here he is putting on a show when Trump's border czar, the man in charge of deportations, came to New York City.
I think he really wanted to get arrested.
But he is good at politics, similar in a way to Alexandria Orquezo-Cortez.
But he's, I think, smarter and more serious than she is.
People thought she was a joke because of her casual manner and childish style, but you have to understand that's what works in the modern American left.
New York's Political Landscape00:04:28
She's exotic enough to attract white liberals and ideological enough to pull the youth away from more moderate Democrats, and so is Mamdami.
And when you're dealing with a city like New York, where 36% of people are foreign-born, but I have to be fair, it's not just new immigrants, white liberals, especially white liberal women, love it too.
Look at Zorin's, I'm calling him Zorin, he goes by his first name.
I would too if my name was Zorin.
I mean, it's a powerful name showing that he's not part of the establishment.
But look at his victory party.
It's liberal white girls.
Well, he is handsome.
So, yeah, New York is 36% foreign-born, and I think you saw some of that power in Mam Dami's win.
By the way, the number of foreign-born citizens, 35-36% in New York, that number is 52% in Toronto.
In places like Brampton, Ontario, it's even higher, 59%.
Everything you think is wrong in New York and London is worse here in Canada.
Vancouver's 49%.
Montreal's 41%.
Even Calgary and Edmonton are at 35% foreign-born.
That answers quite a few questions, doesn't it?
You know, it brings to mind the United Nations study called Replacement Migration.
That's what's going on.
I mean, the Democrats are proud to say it.
Normally, the Democratic primary is all you have to do in New York City to run for mayor.
Since the city is overwhelmingly Democrat, whoever is the Democrat usually wins.
There's been a few exceptions to that.
When billionaire Michael Bloomberg ran, he ran as a Republican, just like Rudy Giuliani before him.
And Bloomberg then ran as an independent, again, mainly so he could avoid that primary that he surely would have lost because it was just the hardcore leftists.
He ran in the general.
Bloomberg really spent his way into victory.
He's a billionaire.
It's tricky right now, the situation.
The incumbent mayor is an ex-cop named Eric Adams.
He's a black man, and that is an important constituency in New York City.
He's an ex-cop, which speaks to the increasing worries about crime.
But he is not far left.
In fact, he has said supportive things about Trump dealing with illegal migrants who have overrun New York City.
I think that's one of the reasons why Mamdami ran.
He's pro-illegal immigration.
I think Eric Adams would likely have been challenged in the primary, so he did a Bloomberg and became an independent and was planning to run for re-election as an independent.
So in stepped to the Democratic primary the other day, the former governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, he's 67 years old compared to Zoran's 33 years old.
And Cuomo sure feels like the establishment personified.
I mean, I don't know if you remember, but his father, Mario Cuomo, was governor about 40 years ago.
And Andrew Cuomo himself was governor for about a decade, too.
I mean, he's moderate as New Yorkers go.
He's old school.
Zoran is the candidate of socialists, environmentalists, activists, and Islamists.
So it was quite a contrast generationally.
And in the end, Zoran got 43.5% of the primary vote, and Cuomo just got 36.4%.
In raw numbers, it was 432,000 votes for the upstart and 361,000 for the old man.
I think, though, that the Democrats are all now coalescing against Zoran.
Everyone is excited about him.
He's the new AOC.
So you see everyone from Bill and Hillary Clinton on down are endorsing him.
They see he's the next AOC, but more likely to be a leader of a movement, not just a backbench pundit, which is sort of what AOC has turned into.
Now, Andrew Cuomo says he might run as an independent.
We'll see about that.
I think all these big establishment types backing Zoran are trying to convince Cuomo not to run.
And Eric Adams, the incumbent, said he would run as an independent.
And then there's the Republican candidate for mayor, Curtis Sleeway.
You might have heard of him.
Student Debt Crisis00:15:49
He was the founder of sort of the street paramilitary anti-crime force called the Guardian Angels, famous for being in those New York City subway cars when there was so much crime.
So you could potentially see three centrist candidates against Zoran.
Eric Adams, the ex-cop mayor who is black, Andrew Cuomo, the former governor who is Italian, and Curtis Sleeway, the activist.
And I mention the ethnicity because that is part of New York politics.
Those three candidates would all split the vote on the right.
And if that happens, I think it's almost a certainty that Zoran will win the general election on November 4th.
Now, normally who's running for mayor is not much concern outside the city involved.
And even then, it's not that much, it's not that momentous a position.
But that's not actually true for some cities that are more like countries in terms of their size and importance.
I mean, the New York City Police Department is larger than most countries' armies.
So it is, and it's a counterterrorism force.
So in many ways, being the mayor of New York is really like being the president of a small but important country.
And it's not even small economically.
London, England, that mayor, Sadiq Ken, is one of the most powerful politicians in the UK.
Certainly more so than, say, the conservative leader of the opposition there.
Sadiq Khan is a hard left-wing extremist who has spent his life as a sympathizer for Islamic terrorism.
And so he turns a blind eye to the anti-Semitic crime wave in his city, just like they do in Toronto.
But he's much more than just an Islamist.
He's built a coalition with white left-wingers in the UK, including the old communist fringe, government sector unions, environmentalists, and LGBTQ extremists.
London leads the way in things like environmental spyware.
They have this system that combines surveillance cameras and 15-minute cities so that if you dare to drive when and where the government says you can't drive at that time, you're sent a fine.
It's like photo radar, except you've done nothing wrong except for driving at all.
These 15-minute cities are called ULES, ultra-low emission zones, as if they'll somehow counteract China building a coal-fired power plant every week.
But really, it's all about controlling people, whatever the excuse is.
Censorship, environment.
They don't care.
It's the control.
They're after, the power.
I have to say, I have a forbidden affection for the band of so-called blade runners in London.
Those are people who go around and immobilize those U.S. spy cameras.
They come in, typically on a motorbike.
They have a metal-cutting saw, and they do their work in less than a minute.
Look at this.
Timber!
See you fucking later.
There you go.
Didn't last very long, did it, folks?
Didn't last very long at all.
See you fucking later.
You list down on the deck.
Look some of that.
Boys ain't messing around around there.
Boys ain't messing around around here.
Anyways, so Sadiq Khan of London, he's presided over an incredible crime wave where knives are the weapon of choice, where petty lawlessness is ubiquitous.
I mean, don't walk down the street holding your cell phone because someone might snatch it on a bike going by.
Anti-Semitism is, of course, normalized, just like in Toronto.
I mean, you can't blame everything on Sadiq Khan.
He's not in charge of mass immigration.
That's at the feet of both the current Labour government and the Conservative government that ran the UK for 14 years before that.
Khan is actually a product of that.
There's no doubt that mass immigration to London, which is now a majority-minority city, is why such a radical has won and why a truly conservative, Indigenous British person will likely never be elected again.
It's the same story in Toronto, of course.
I mean, Olivia Chow would have been unthinkable a generation ago.
I hesitate to use the word communist to describe her and Sadiq Khan because it seems so overheated, like I'm trying to insult them or something.
But I think it actually really is an accurate descriptor.
Crime, homelessness, Islamic extremists on the street, crazy taxes, absurd anti-car regulations, LGBTQ kookiness.
I think this video sums up her politics perfectly.
Here's her police force giving Toronto homeowners advice on how to respond to the new crime wave of home invasion robberies in Toronto, where foreign gangs break into your house to get the keys to your fancy cars to steal them.
This is Olivia Chow's failed state called Toronto.
To prevent the possibility of being attacked in your home, leave your fobs at your front door.
Because they're breaking into your home to steal your car.
They don't want anything else.
A lot of them that they're arresting have guns on them and they're not toy guns.
They're real guns.
That's real, folks.
You don't want your car stolen to begin with, but if your car is stolen and you have to use the subway in Toronto, both Toronto and New York force you into an even more dangerous situation, their subways.
I mean, Toronto's subway is crazy.
And if it's not violent, it's mentally ill.
London is an enormously consequential city with a population and economy of a small country.
Toronto is less prominent in a global sense, but it's the London of Canada, right?
The largest city, the biggest economy, the most corporate head offices, etc.
It affects more than just itself, is what I'm saying.
It really is a shame.
If you've been to Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., you'll see once great cities in steep decline.
And it's 100% due to politics.
I mean, I think of Detroit, which was one of America's wealthiest and most successful cities.
It had the highest industrial wage in America.
It was the place to go and get rich.
Ha, what a joke now.
It's just destroyed by left-wing politics.
Now, next up, perhaps the greatest city in the world, New York City, city of 9-11, where two jets hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists flew into the World Trade Center, killing thousands.
So that wasn't even 25 years ago.
And now New York appears set to elect a mayor who, by some measures, is on the same side as those terrorists.
Now, I don't say that merely because he's Muslim.
There are moderate Muslims and there are tolerant Muslims, of course.
Mamdani is an avidly anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, and pro-terrorist candidate.
I mean, the day after Hamas terrorists massacred more than a thousand Jews and took hundreds hostage, here's what Mamdani said.
No mention of Hamas or terrorism.
He wrote this.
He said, I mourn the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours.
Netanyahu's declaration of war, the Israeli government's decision to cut electricity to Gaza, and Knesset members calling for another nakba will undoubtedly lead to more violence and suffering in the days and weeks to come.
The path toward a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid.
Look, not a word about the terrorists, the hostages, putting everything on Israel, calling it an apartheid state.
What a joke that is.
I mean, he does come by it honestly, though.
Here's his dad, an extremist professor at Columbia University, saying Israel as a country must be dismantled.
The Palestinian challenge is to persuade the Jewish population of Israel and the world that just as in South Africa, the long-term security of a Jewish homeland in historic Palestine requires the dismantling of the Jewish state.
The South African lesson for Palestine and Israel is that historic Palestine can be a homeland for Jews, but not for Jews only.
Jews can have a homeland in historic Palestine, but not a state.
I can only imagine what he would have said after 9-11.
And this is from someone in New York City, the place of 9-11.
I'm not going to focus solely or even mainly on his pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic extremism.
Again, he's running for mayor, not running for president, though it wouldn't surprise me if one day he does run for higher office.
He's for rent freezes, basically four years of no rent increases, which will kill any construction of apartments.
Why would you build an apartment if you can't recoup your costs?
He's for free public transit.
You know, just throw another taxpayer bail of $100 bills on the fire.
He's for universal childcare.
He's gone full communist on this next one.
He's for city-owned grocery stores.
What would those be like?
I mean, in New York City, if you've ever been to Manhattan, there's a bodega.
There's like a small grocery store, convenience store that often has prepared foods on every block.
They're independently run typically.
What would a government-owned grocery store be like?
Imagine if the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Post Office and the TSA airport security ran a grocery store.
I think that's what it would look like.
What do you think the prices would be like at such a store?
But that's not the point.
See, the point is the socialism itself.
The point is to attack the capitalist grocers.
And the point is to get lots of government jobs for his friends.
Speaking of which, he proposes to raise the minimum wage to $30 an hour.
Really?
And will this be in your grocery store, cashiers, bad boy, you know, people, bus boys?
Get ready for a lot more of stores with self-checkouts and a lot more automated restaurants and the like.
If you're making people pay $30 U.S. per hour minimum wage for entry-level jobs, those entry-level jobs will be replaced by robots or by illegal immigrants who work under the table.
And of course, his central plank is to stop the enforcement of immigration laws.
He's no dummy.
He needs the socialist vote for sure, but he really, really needs the foreign vote.
But that all sounds good to new immigrants, to illegals, to socialists.
And Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley sage, he was the founder of PayPal, he made this excellent point a few years ago.
It's a terrifying point.
He said this about 2020 when Bernie Sanders was, his name was floated.
Why are so many young New Yorkers and young people everywhere, why are they socialists now?
Like other than just it's cool, is there a reason?
Take a listen to his explanation.
It's a couple minutes, man.
Take a look.
And there is a problem that we have.
We don't have a very well-functioning capitalist society.
There's a generational problem where it is difficult for young people to acquire capital.
And I'd say there's sort of two, if I had to give sort of, and that's the young people that are supporting Bernie Sanders.
The two simple political things that one should really think about are the runaway student debt in colleges.
It was $300 billion in student debt in 2000.
It's up to $1.7 trillion today.
And if you start your life in debt that can never be discharged in bankruptcy, it'll be much harder to accumulate capital and you might be less friendly to capitalism.
So that is a big problem.
And I don't think we should socialize the student debt, but we should deal with it in a non-socialist way.
We should internalize the costs onto the universities.
We should redo the bankruptcy laws.
Yes, you can discharge the student debt.
And when you discharge it, it's the college that gave you a bad education that gets stuck with a bill.
There's a sort of a non-socialist alternative.
And then, you know, I think the other basic problem of a lack of capital or inequality is that it's very hard for people to get onto the housing ladder.
The main way that the people in the middle class in this country accumulate capital is through owning real estate, through owning your house.
And if through a series of urban zoning laws and bad planning, an impossibility of building things, it has become impossible for people to get onto that.
And if you could find ways for people to own more houses, you would have much less of these sort of millennial craze socialism.
So I think we should try to understand where it's coming from.
We need to try to solve it.
But at the end of the day, I think it will be pretty weak because it's mainly a critique.
It's a critique of bad institutions.
And if Sanders becomes serious, I think it'll be as scary as Corbyn was in the UK.
And obviously, We'll be talking about the post office and the DMV, and it'll just be ridiculous.
There's a lot of wisdom in there.
Young people in the states borrow a lot of money to get useless university degrees.
And if you go to these fancy schools like Columbia or Harvard, you could end up with $100,000, $200,000 in debt for a degree that's sort of useless.
And that debt follows them around forever.
It's not the kind of debt that gets wiped out in a bankruptcy.
Peter Thiel says the universities themselves should be forced to eat that debt.
They're the ones who are pumping out the useless degrees.
But his point about not being able to afford a home is very important, not just for college-educated people, but for any young people.
And it applies in Canada too, where student debt isn't as big a problem.
Peter Thiel didn't mention the big driver of high housing prices, immigration.
So in New York City, you have all of this.
Vanity degrees that saddle young people with debt and no chance of buying a home, no good jobs, people having a tough time.
So of course, if you're shut out of the capitalist economy, you don't care about capitalism.
You sort of hate it.
Of course, you want free stuff, even if you never actually get it.
In fact, even if you never actually get it, you like the fact that the capitalists are getting punched in the teeth.
It's not like you're going to pay for any of this.
And those liberal white women who voted for Zoran to get a bit of excitement for voting for someone who's exotic and Islamist that speaks very good English.
I'm not sure if Zoran himself is an Islamist.
I'm not sure his wife does not wear a burqa, for example, but I think he sees the political uses of it.
Snap Back Plans00:03:30
You can have you eat cheese down there.
It's hair, it's dish.
I'm going to have equality down there.
Respect down there.
Those things are not given.
They have to be won.
And the way that win them, add the ballot box.
So this June 24th, in a city with a million Muslims, in a city with 200,000 of them registered as Democrats, I ask that we tell everyone to vote.
So yeah, migrants know he's an ally.
Socialists know he's an ally.
The anti-Semitism works in both camps, doesn't it?
The one thing that Peter Thiel gets wrong, I think, is that when this becomes a disaster, when New York City lapses back to its worst state, like in the 1970s, he thinks people will back away.
He was talking about Bernie Sanders back then, but I think it applies to Zoran or Kamala Harris or whomever.
The idea that things get so bad and then they snap back, the pendulum swings back.
But I'm not sure if that happens.
Like, when's that going to happen in Detroit or Baltimore?
The city of Baltimore, Maryland is, what, two-thirds the size of what it was 75 years ago?
The productive, conservative, capable, citizenship-oriented people, they've all left.
Detroit, you can buy a house in Detroit for $10.
It's a run-down house.
Their population is shrinking.
When's California going to snap back?
When's Los Angeles or San Francisco in particular?
How about Chicago or D.C.?
Great cities can, in fact, be ruined.
And there's no guarantee they're going to come back.
New York City is amazing.
And in some ways, it always has been amazing, but the 1970s were a very dark time there.
Extreme crime and discord.
Oh, yeah.
I forgot to mention Zoran wants to defund the police too.
Imagine adding that to the mix.
Another problem is people are already moving out of New York City.
So many have moved out of New York during COVID times.
They moved to Florida or Texas where there weren't lockdowns, where things are freer.
Everyone who moves to Florida says they love it.
They love the lower taxes.
They love the crackdown on crime.
They love the end of the shenanigans, the wokeness.
So all these good folks, typically entrepreneurial folks, conservative folks, with each passing year, they're moving from New York, from California to better places in the U.S.
And so what happens is the remaining people in New York and California will become more concentrated in their political malaise.
Sure, you're always going to have the public sector workers, but you're going to have fewer and fewer makers taking care of all those takers because those who could have fought to save New York instead chose to look after themselves, leave for greener pastures with their family.
You can't blame them.
New York has a lot of staying power, that's for sure, but no city is forever, especially if you replace its people with other people.
I mean, the future of New York as a crime-ridden, you know, socialist paradise might sound awful to you and me, but someone from Pakistan might say it's the best they could ever dream of, and they love it just fine.
Now, it's possible to stop Zoran in the next few months, but I sort of doubt it.
I mean, I told you what's happening electorally.
You've got a lot of big egos there.
You've got Curtis Sliwa, Andrew Cuomo, Eric Adams.
Sectarian Divides and Community Unity00:12:31
Are they all going to get out and back one alternative?
Remember, it's the Democratic primary, which is the dominant party there.
Are they going to look at other options?
Or it looks like they're all circling the wagons around Zoran.
The only hope in the long term, I think, is Trump's plans for mass deportation.
Stay with us.
Up next, a couple of fascinating interviews done by my friends Lincoln Jay and Efra Monsanto when they were in Northern Ireland last week.
As you know, I was on the cruise, so I couldn't go, but they went.
I've never been to Northern Ireland before.
That's, of course, part of the United Kingdom.
It's the six counties on the north part of the island of Ireland.
Here's what those lads heard.
So we've been walking around this area.
Why don't you tell our viewers where exactly we are right now, what this divide is all about, what the purpose of these gates are, and what they were used for.
Yeah, so we're in West Belfast.
To my left, we've got the Shankle Road.
To my right, we've got the Falls Road, the Springfield area.
And back during the Troubles, this was a flashpoint.
It was what's called an interface area.
So you had rioting, disturbances, sectarian murder.
So this street would have been used for vehicles to go and attack people on the Catholic side and go and attack people on the Loyalist side.
So it was a real flashpoint.
So the gates there that you see behind us, they were put in place to stop the rioting and to stop the sectarian attacks going down this part of the town.
This went on for years.
Those gates probably were there for about 30 years.
And it did obviously stop a lot of violence, but it just shows what happens when a community becomes very, very polarized and divided, like Northern Ireland did.
You have to put these measures in place.
These areas as well would have been heavily patrolled by the RUC in armoured Land Rovers, the British Army, heavily armed soldiers from the British Army would have been here.
And in that area, if you were a British soldier and you're in the Springfield Falls area, your life would have been in danger.
If you're on the Shankle Road, you would have been safe because obviously the Loyalist people basically had affinity with the British Army and the British soldiers, whereas the Irish Republicans and the Nationalists would have seen British soldiers as occupying forces.
Now, the divide is getting less and less as time goes on, but one of the issues we've got at the minute, like we've just seen in Balamena, is the muscle memory of people in these areas and these very tight-knit communities is not the sort of place that you want to put gypsy Roma, gypsy mafia into the mix.
And that's really, we're going to go to Balamina tomorrow.
That's really what happened in Balamina.
So very, very tight-knit communities.
These communities, everybody knows each other.
If I walked into the Springfield Road, people were saying, who are you?
What are you doing here?
If I walked around the Shanklub Road, they'd be saying exactly the same thing.
In my hometown, I pretty much know anyone.
That's what Northern Ireland's like.
It's still a community.
And what we've had since the peace process, there's been a lot of mixing between people, between the different groups and between different people that were involved in the violence.
You know, I know a lot of people on the Republican side, a lot of people on the loyal side, a lot of British soldiers and ex-policemen.
So there's been a very solid base of peace put down here.
So since this, you know, I don't have to say alleged, this terrible alleged assault that took place, sexual assault, you've seen people from both sides come together.
Absolutely.
I mean, Balamina, that's one of the things that's happened in Balamina.
People are saying that the writing up there is about racism.
It's not.
Basically what happened was a criminal gang came into the area.
We're not going to talk about the actual case because we don't want to risk collapsing the case.
But there's allegations of sexual assault, not just one, a number of sexual assaults.
There's been serious criminality.
There's been brothels in the area.
There's been drug dealing.
There's been money laundering.
There's been people trafficking.
And it's all been carried out by this one section of the community, this Roma Gypsy mafia who moved into the town.
The whole community, Protestant and Catholic, joined together in that area and basically marched down to the streets where those Roma Gypsies have been living.
Now, they'd already been moved out of the area before the people got there.
But what then happened was there was some very, very targeted violence.
And we're not going to condone that.
Violence is always wrong.
Criminality is always wrong.
But there was violence targeting the houses that allegedly belonged to some of these Roma Gypsy mafia that had basically moved into the area.
So a place like Ballymina, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just trying to get my bearings straight.
In that town, is there also sort of a dividing line?
Well, absolutely.
Yeah, the south of the city is Protestant, the North of the City's Catholic.
But they all came together.
You know, they've got an amazing sense of you.
And they come together because the mainstream politicians of all sides condemn them as racists and thugs and all the rest of it when really all they wanted was to get rid of the mafia.
Last night saw significant sustained disorder in Balamina.
This violence was clearly racially motivated and targeted at our minority ethnic community and the police.
It was racist, thuggary, pure and simply.
And any attempt to justify or explain it as something else is misplaced.
I mean, I was, you know, I was joking with some of the guys when they said, look, I says, everybody loves to go to the cinema and watch equalizer movies where the gangsters are put out by the good guys.
Well, that's pretty much what happened in Balamina.
The gangsters were put out by the good guys, and yet everyone's been condemned as racists and thugs and scum and all the rest of it.
And nothing could be further to do.
Again, I'm not condoning the writing.
The writing is not what I'm talking about.
It was people power and people saying, we're going to march on this area and we want to make sure that these people are not in this area when we get down there.
The people had been moved out.
They were gone from the area by the time the march got down there.
But again, obviously, like, always happens in these situations.
The police come in, then skirmishers start with the police, and then the rioting starts and it gets out of control.
But again, the rioting was not...
There's been a lot worse rioting in this area in the past few years than there was in Ballymena, you know, because it's been kind of sectarian rioting.
Even though the peace process is, you still have kids that were put together for a scrap.
But so in terms of why we're showing you this and why this is important, this shows how divided this community was and how it's come together.
And actually, instead of the community being driven apart by what happened in Balamina, and this is really unique, came wholly together.
And there is no divide between Protestant and Catholic in that town now.
And, you know, they still have cultural differences.
The Catholics would cast themselves as Irish and the Protestants would class themselves as British.
But on the issue of mass, uncontrolled, illegal migration into their town that's causing so many social issues and so many issues in terms of healthcare and school places.
One of the people I was talking to said that one of the schools in Balamena, which is pretty much, you know, the most British town you can probably get to in Northern Ireland, one of the schools in that town, 60% of the pupils don't speak English.
Yeah, it's crazy.
It's mad.
We're here in what's known as the Shangle Memorial Garden.
And the reason why that have brought you here is that this place is very, very symbolic to what's known as the Northern Ireland peace process.
Just across the road where I've already taken you, on the 23rd of October in 1993, before the peace process began, there was a bomb just across the road there.
Now, in this area, it was a sectarian divide between ourselves here on the Shankill Road, the Falls Road, and just up this way.
There was more sectarian divides where there was peace walls.
Now, you have people here within this general Belfast area who want to align with Ireland.
And here on the Unionist side, we want to remain part of the United Kingdom.
And that's the reason why the divide actually occurred.
Now, people were really so patriotic about what they believed in that they ended up fighting with each other.
You know, people would have been fighting to stay aligned with Ireland, people would have been fighting to stay aligned with the United Kingdom.
And it ended up in 1969 in a bitter sectarian campaign, which lasted for 30 years.
Now, in the early days, 1972, I'm giving you an overview here.
They say that 1972 was probably one of the most brutal years in the history of the Troubles.
But I differ from that.
I'm going to transport you till 1993 and what happened just across the road here in a happening known as the Shangle bomb.
On the 23rd of October 1993, people from the Ardoyne area, they came with a bomb in a car just across the road here behind us into a place called Berlin Street.
They got out of the car with a hold with a bomb in it.
They walked around past a church that is here in the corner where there was young BB guys standing, you know, Boys Brigade.
They were on their way to a football match.
They walked up a few shops and they placed the bomb inside a fish shop.
They sold fish and shell fish and so on.
Now, it is later learned that that bomb was doctored in some way by whom.
We do not know, but there is a suggestion that that bomb went off prematurely and it killed not only the guys who were transporting the bomb, but it killed nine innocent men, women and children.
Now, when I say nine innocent men, women and children, I mean nine innocent men, women and children that were in no way involved in the sectarian conflict which existed here for years.
Now, as a person, I stood on that bomb site 15 minutes after that bomb went off.
And what I witnessed and what I seen, I will remember from now to the day I die.
I mean, I witnessed body parts strewn all over the road.
I witnessed people carrying mutilated bodies out of that rubble.
And as a person who would have supported remaining in the United Kingdom and who had a deep hatred for the people on the other side of that peace wall, well, you know, I began to change my mind about what was going on in terms of the fighting, the bombing and the shooting.
And I began to realize that this isn't affecting the people who are involved in the fighting.
This isn't affecting, you know, the paramilitaries on the Republican side or the paramilitaries on the loyalist side.
This is affecting ordinary people.
And it was only innocent people in both sides that were being slaughtered.
And I'm going to say that 1993 was one of the most brutal years of our troubles because of why?
Because that warning factions were recognizing no boundaries on the depths that they were prepared to stoop to get one over on the other community.
And only innocent men, women and children were the people that actually suffered.
Now, this creates a perfect segue into what is happening in our country today.
Now, what do I mean?
Well, we don't want to see another repeat of what happened in this country in 1993.
Now, I was listening to Ezra on one of his podcasts just a few days ago.
And Ezra was 100% right whenever he said that if there is a place not to place people that is capable of causing trouble and causing fighting and creating community tensions, if there's a place not to place them, it is Northern Ireland.
Now, why do I say that?
Because we are trying to reconcile with another community on the other side of that divide, which we showed you earlier.
Another Happening In This Country00:02:01
And now what you have is that you have a situation in where that there is another happening in this country, where there is other trouble happening in this country.
And there's the potential for more of that to happen in where, well, if I'm honest, brutally honest, it could pull both sections of that divide into standing up for their communities.
And what happens to the years of work for the so-called peace process that has been, you know, worked at and attempted to reconcile those two warring factions.
Now, that's something to remember about what's happening in this country.
You know, I am at a loss why a government, why those that are meant, are they put in power to serve and protect us, they say that the peace process is sank.
They say that, but yet they're happy enough to put people into our communities, into the nationalist communities, which could create that Tinderbox situation here in Northern Ireland once again.
Thank you.
Well, that's our show for today.
Boy, it's great to be back in Toronto, in Canada, on dry land.
I was on the high seas and I was a little bit seasick, but it was wonderful to spend some great time with almost 150 rebels.
And we had Tamara Leach and other speakers there.
I hope you'll join us on a future event, whether it's a conference on the ground.
We've had four of them lately in Calgary, Red Tier, Edmonton and Regina.
At sea, as we just did off the coast of Alaska.
Or I have to tell you, I'm planning an international educational seminar tour.
I'll tell you more about it probably in a week when it's finalized.
So I hope one day you can join us on an adventure like that.