Ezra Levant critiques Trump’s July 7th Los Angeles deportation operation as a symbolic deterrent against migrant-driven crime, like MS-13’s attacks on transgender women, while questioning why Canada’s left opposes white Dutch refugees but not mass migration. Ireland’s 15K–50K indigenous protests mirror this pushback, yet officials like Taoiseach Martin and Minister O’Callaghan downplay economic migrants amid housing shortages and healthcare strain. Proposed hate speech laws—blocked in 2022 by Harris after backlash—now target dissent on migration and gender ideology, with the EU pressuring compliance despite America’s warnings. Levant warns such censorship risks punishing free speech while ignoring systemic failures, framing it as a clash between public resistance and elite control. [Automatically generated summary]
A very interesting showdown in Los Angeles today, a sanctuary city with a communist mayor, and I say that as a description, not an insult.
So she's on one hand, on the other is Donald Trump and his ICE immigration police.
It's quite a show.
I'll have lots of video for you.
And it takes part in part, takes place in MacArthur Park, I meant to say.
I want you to see it, not just hear me describe it.
I've got some video and photos I want you to see.
Please go to Rebel News Plus and subscribe to the Rebel News Plus, which is an $8 a month service so you get the video version of this podcast and the satisfaction of keeping Rebel News strong, by the way, because $8 may not sound like a lot to you, but it sure adds up.
So go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
I really want you to see the videos from MacArthur tonight, Trump digs into mass deportations in Los Angeles.
Will we ever see that in Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver?
It's July 7th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious who bug.
The big, beautiful bill that Donald Trump passed last week was about several things, but I think undoubtedly it was mainly about mass deportations, massive increases to the budget for both border police as well as ICE agents.
That stands for Immigration Customs Enforcement Police, who operate within the U.S., not just at the borders.
That budget is now larger than many independent countries' defense budgets, which is expressed as a complaint by people who are against it, but it is expressed as a boast by people who are for it, who would say that it matches the gravity of the moment, namely that America has been invaded and it takes an army of immigration police to expel the invaders.
In fact, let's be candid, they'll be very lucky to deport a million migrants a year over the course of Trump's term.
And there are at least a dozen 13 million migrants who came in under Joe Biden's watch alone.
This is an existential threat to America, Trump and his team would say.
I think that's correct.
People Replacing Itself00:10:16
The root word of nation is the Latin to be born, like natal or nascent.
A country isn't just a clump of land, it's a place connected to people, people born on it who carry with them a country's memory and traditions.
You replace that nation if you replace the people in it.
Pretty obvious point.
I'll give you Exhibit A as an example.
That mighty building, the Hadgia Sophia, one of the grandest in the world, the largest cathedral in the world for a thousand years.
Construction beginning in the year 360.
Not 1360, 360.
The greatest church in what was the greatest city in the world, the richest city in the world, obviously the most Christian city in the world, Constantinople.
Named after Constantine the Great, the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity.
I mean, Constantinople was for a time the capital of Rome, the empire.
The city of Rome wasn't.
Constantinople was.
Then it fell to the Muslim Turks who slaughtered and subdued the Christians and turned the Hadiyasophia into a mosque, the most beautiful mosque, but a mosque indeed.
During Turkey's liberalization about 100 years ago, it was turned into a museum, but Turkey's authoritarian ruler, Erdogan, has once again turned it into a mosque just to show he can.
So, yeah, a nation is more than an address, isn't it?
More than just some clods of soil.
It's people, the Christian people of Constantinople were massacred and swamped by the Muslim people of the Ottoman Turks, who made it their capital and obviously changed its name to Istanbul.
Did you know that Egypt used to be a Christian country?
So did Syria.
So did Lebanon.
You might have heard about a place called Nazareth.
It's now a Muslim town.
Telling this story reminds me of my visit to the neighborhood of Rosengard in Malmo, Sweden, when I visited there 10 years ago.
You know, a generation or so ago, Rosengard was nearly 100% Swedish.
Today, it's pretty much 100% Muslim migrants.
I spent the day there.
I had bodyguards because they don't much like white journalists from Canada asking questions.
I didn't see any ethnically Swedish people all day, other than a couple of security personnel.
Until the end of the day, when I spotted one native Swedish woman, the daughter of 100 generations of Vikings, there was one left.
I rushed up to her like she was an endangered species or something, like I had spotted, I don't know, a rare bird or a panda bear.
I want to show you my interview with her, the last Swedish woman in Rosengard.
And I put it to her: if Rosengard, if Sweden itself is no longer full of Swedes, is it still Sweden?
Can I play that interview for you again?
I did it 10 years ago, but maybe you don't remember it.
You'll be shocked at how young I look there more than 10 years ago.
I had hair and it wasn't gray.
10 years of fighting the good fight.
I think it's aged me probably 20 years, but I think I'm working out more now.
Anyways, let me make my point to you about a people replacing itself.
This is my trip to Malmo, the neighborhood of Rosengard.
Are you from Malmo?
Originally, no, no.
Where are you from originally?
Mid-Sweden.
One of the things we're talking about is migration to Europe.
And Malmo seems to have a lot of migrants, especially Muslim migrants.
What do you think of that?
I think maybe they should deal with it better, but still we need them.
For what?
What does Sweden need them for?
Because Swedish people just don't make any babies.
People will take care of us when we're old, if not immigrants.
And how will they take care of you?
You know, work at, you know, hospitals or, you know, old people homes, you know, stuff like that.
You know, Swedish people don't want to clean after other people, so if they don't do it, somebody have to do it.
How about the combination of Muslim culture and Swedish culture?
They seem pretty different on things like women's rights and gay rights and things like that.
Hopefully we can turn them around.
And how's that going so far?
I have some colleagues and it's doing fine.
No problem at all.
I was talking to some Somali men who tell me that they have a lot of kids, but they're on social assistance, so they're not working.
That's great.
It almost, I mean, I don't know, and I'm asking you.
It seems like some of the migrants are taking social services.
They're not going to provide social services to Swedes.
Do you think that economics is really going to work out?
Like, it's costing a lot of money to take care of the migrants, isn't it?
It does, but it's not easy for them to find a job either.
Why do you think they're coming to Sweden?
That's very far away.
Do you think it's because Sweden is so generous with welfare?
Are you trying to get me to answer your way?
You say whatever you want.
Tell me if I'm wrong.
Am I wrong?
I mean, of course, you read in the magazines all about, you know, they're taking our money and works and all that, but it's not easy to get work here.
And I think that most of them, if they want to have, they want to have a job.
But I mean, if you don't know the language and all that, it's not that easy.
Well, yeah, and especially if you're counting on them to take care of you when you're older, right?
But they will.
They will.
Because I don't think there will be enough Swedish people to do it.
Can you tell me the best way it's changing Sweden and the worst way it's changing Sweden?
The best way is, I think it's always good to have a mixed culture.
How otherwise would we have pizza and pasta in the first place in Sweden?
The worst way is probably that the politicians don't do it well.
They should have been provided them better.
I'm from Canada and we think of Sweden.
We think of a beautiful, progressive country and we think of women's rights.
But I understand that the number of rapes in Sweden is extremely high.
Is that true?
Not what I heard.
It's not more than before.
You know, during the summer, you can have drunk Swedish men as well to do stupid things.
And how about crime in general?
Is that a problem?
I don't know.
Maybe I'm lucky, but I'm fine.
I want to ask you a question.
Are you afraid of being called racist if you criticize migrants?
Are you afraid of that?
No, because I probably am not that aggressive when I criticize, but of course it can happen, but I always tell what I want to say.
And so far, no problems.
Have you followed the news out of Germany on New Year's Eve in Cologne?
A little bit.
What do you think of that?
It's not nice, but still, I think it's still the politicians, they don't do it well.
I mean, the police does what they're told.
And I think still, politicians, I mean, if they inform people better, I don't think we would have that problems.
So you think that rape and sexual assault, it's just Swedish, Sweden and Germany has to do a better job?
Yeah, because I mean, if you give them good values in school and whatever, I think it would have been better.
And still, it's easy to blow up because it happens with immigrants.
But it happens in, you know, in other cultures as well.
How do you feel when you see a woman wearing a nikab?
Like just a little slit for the eyes?
I mean, you're a modern Swedish woman.
How do you feel when you see another woman wearing that?
As long as it's by free choice, I have no problem with it.
And how would you know if it's by free choice?
I have no clue.
Does it bother you?
Do you have any children yourself?
Would you want your daughter to dress like that?
I don't have any children, but a lot of friends have children.
And let's say if I would have a friend with a daughter and she wants to convert and she truly believes it, I will be fine with it.
But if somebody forced her, I wouldn't be fine.
Do you feel like we're losing ground on gay rights and women's rights?
Hopefully not.
I have a lot of gay friends and They have the same problems that they had before.
I think it's better now.
I think the world is better now in the West, but I've talked to a number of Somali men here who and Macedonian Muslim.
They don't like gays at all.
No.
But they don't do an extreme about it.
I mean, look at Russia.
I think it's worse there because the Death regime is against it.
Here it's people.
So I think it's a big difference.
Is there a limit to the number of Muslim migrants Sweden can take?
No.
So a million a year?
I don't think that's what Germany's thinking.
I don't think it will happen.
Not a million per year.
What happens if there were more Muslim migrants than there are Swedes?
Is that okay?
As long as they know they follow the law and try to do the best and work hard, why not?
So you have no problem with Swedes being a minority in Sweden?
Mass Deportation Pressure00:08:20
No.
As long as it's a good country and you find work and the nature is still beautiful and the weather is like it is and you don't have any kids anyways, right?
That's someone else's problem.
No, no, it's not anybody else's problem.
As long as people are nice to each other, it doesn't matter where you live.
I mean, if there were 10 million Somalis here and then they brought in Somali-style law, it wouldn't be Sweden anymore if they brought in Sharia law.
I still don't think it will happen.
I'm quite sure.
Yeah, that makes me very sad.
I sort of wish I got to know Sweden while I was still Swedish.
It's not diversity when every country in the world is swamped and globalized.
I would love a Swedish Sweden and an Irish Ireland and an Italian Italy.
Those things are disappearing in the name of diversity.
What was interesting to me is that even she was making excuses for her own replacement.
I think that was the saddest part of it.
Just the inheritor of the Vikings, not out with a bang, but with a whimper.
Back to America, the country that has decided not to go quietly into that good night.
They're going to go fighting if they go.
They say they're going to have a mass deportation.
Trump uses the word remigration a lot now.
It's quite something, and he's putting together an army to do it here.
Take a look at that army today in the heart of Los Angeles in a large park called MacArthur Park.
It looks lovely, the park online.
At least back when LA was a safe, prosperous, entrepreneurial city, the city of the future, before its great decline.
I mean, look at this.
That's a photo from about 100 years ago.
And here's a postcard from around the same time.
I mean, LA looks like something very different in the past.
So, anyways, the reality of MacArthur Park today is: well, let me read to you from an LA Times story.
And this was: here's the headline: Attacks on transgender women expose MS-13 gangs' grip on MacArthur Park.
That is quite a headline.
Let me read to you the first paragraph.
It's almost unbelievable.
So, this is from 2021.
So, in Biden's term, when Trump's revival was regarded as an impossibility, this was the status quo in LA.
This is what was normal.
Remember, LA is a sanctuary city.
Night settled on a woman sitting alone on a bench in MacArthur Park.
Three people moved towards her.
One locked an arm around the woman's throat as the others pulled out knives and began to stab her.
The attack in October marked the second time in weeks that a transgender woman had been stabbed nearly to death in the Los Angeles Park by members of MS-13, a street gang that considers the park the heart of its territory.
The vicious assaults drew condemnation from advocacy groups and a heavy police presence to the park as a straightforward narrative emerged.
MS-13 had been motivated by a hateful, bigoted desire to rid its turf of transgender people.
Left unmentioned, however, were the tangled underworld economics that brought the women and the gang into contact in the first place.
Now, of course, you just have to understand the LA Times when they're saying women there.
They mean a man who is expressing himself as a woman.
But if I'm trying to understand that, gang members, foreign gang members, had human-trafficked transgender prostitutes into the park for prostitution to make money.
But MS-13, they are a brutal gang and they also hate them because they're trans.
I mean, it is a mess.
And that was just how L.A. is.
Here's a video of it during the daytime.
It reminds me of other places.
I've been to the Tenderloin District in San Francisco.
A lot of people on drugs, a lot of crime.
It's just a failed state.
It's not the California that the world fell in love with 50 years ago.
Now, this whole thing poses a moral dilemma for the left, don't they?
Because they love trans people.
They love sex workers.
They love migration.
They love MS-13.
So it's tough for them to criticize any of those groups.
But Trump, not so much.
So take a look at this.
This is what happened today look like military, but I don't think they're actual military.
I don't.
I don't think they're National Guard.
I think they're police, just dressed up in their most terrifying garb.
And those are riot horses, of course.
And you can hear a helicopter in the background.
Here's another shot where you can see they are marked as police.
You can see some of the inhabitants of the park gathering.
Here's another shot, which appears to be sped up of the police.
This is from Karen Bass, the communist mayor of LA.
Now, my theory is that the police are decked out that way to intimidate not actually the people they're going to try and arrest in the park, but would-be rioters who might think they would rush down to the park to fight the police.
So they did a few weeks ago.
I don't know if you saw those riots in LA.
So I think this police enforcement is looking like they could repulse even a huge riot, and I think that's what it's about.
I think it's about deterrence.
It's just my theory.
The folks who showed up to protest were typically, you know, wearing COVID masks and looking pretty anemic.
They didn't really look like they would be much of a battle, to be honest.
Now, I didn't actually see any photos or videos of any arrests.
I'm guessing that most people who would have been deported would have fled the scene unless they were very drugged out or something or just clueless.
Again, I think this might be for optics reasons.
I think the police actually had their own cameraman with them filming it.
Here's some still photos of the cops taken by a reporter, Bill Melugan.
Very interesting.
So you can see they're marked as cops.
Now, the mayor rushed down to the park for the cameras, too.
Very different from her response a few months ago when a wealthy neighborhood in LA burned in a fire, huge fire.
More than a thousand homes burned.
She chose to go to Ghana, Africa instead.
But today she was right there moments later as the boss of a sanctuary city, and she demanded to speak to the head of the cops.
So a cop lent her his cell phone and let her call his boss.
Here's how that went I like him.
Take back what I said to your voice over here.
All right, good for you.
Here's the tail end of that cell phone conversation.
I am going to say.
We're departing.
Mary Bass.
Mayor Bass.
Thank you.
What are you going to do?
Yes, my comment is they need to leave and they need to leave right now.
They need to leave because this is unacceptable.
You don't need to leave on the phone.
Who'd you speak with on the phone?
So Mayor Bass says she thinks the police need to leave right away.
Okay, I get it.
She's anti-cop, always has been.
Weirdly anti-fireman, too, which was a bit of a problem during the fires, but at least she wasn't doing her best to get herself arrested like a Democrat senator from California did the other day, storming into a press conference by Christy Noam, the Homeland Security Minister.
Here's how that went.
Senator Alex Hadilla, I have questions for the Secretary.
Democrats And Hate Speech00:16:35
Because the fact of the matter is, a half a dozen violent criminals that you're rotating on Europe.
I also want to talk about the pressure.
Hands off.
How many of our ice agents have been dots?
On the ground.
Hands behind your back.
Hands behind your back.
Go ahead.
All right.
Cool.
One hand.
Lay flat.
Lay flat.
Other hand, sir.
Other hand.
Recording loud right here.
I think the Democrats want to be arrested, maybe even shot.
They don't want to be killed, but I think they want a little bit of action.
They want the drama.
They want the crisis.
They want the chaos.
They want to kick off riots.
Here is Zorhan Mamdani, likely the next mayor of New York City, doing the same thing, doing his best to get arrested.
This was just a couple weeks ago.
How many more do you want to not talk about?
Do you believe in the boss of the building?
Do you believe in the voice of African John Morgan?
How many more do you want to go to that border?
They all know this is the most important battle they can have.
It's now or never for them.
Before under Joe Biden, the phrase demographics is destiny meant that the other side, the Democrats, just had to wait.
The longer things went on, the more the migrants would just change the country.
In Constantinople, it was an invasion with cannons.
In In California, it was an invasion too, just not really with weapons.
They just walked across the border.
I don't think the migrants wanted to be called an invasion because that might attract too much attention.
But Trump stopped the influx, and now he's working on the reflux, isn't he?
And everyone knows that's a disaster for the Democrats.
Everyone knows it.
It's so obvious.
It's clear the left, you know, pause for a second.
I mean, the only migrants I have seen in the last 20 years that the Democrats do not like, where I don't know if you saw, but a few weeks ago, the U.S. invited in, I think, 58 refugees from South Africa who were the white Dutch farmers called the Boers who are being targeted because they're white by the South African government.
So like 50 or 60 Boers were farmers came to America to farm, and that's what they do.
They're farmers.
The Democrats were universally against that.
Well, because obviously they would be rightward-leaning farmers and migrants.
The only time I've ever seen Democrats against migrants, because they know that the rest of them are going to vote Democrat.
Anyways, it's clear that the left wants their moment.
You know what I mean?
They want a George Floyd moment, maybe a police going too far or appearing to go too far.
You could call it the Hamas strategy, really.
The worse, the better, as communists say.
They really want the government to hurt a child or something.
They want to recast what's going on.
But I think the opposite is happening.
I think that the old California is waking up again and remembering what it could be like without the failed state overlords and their mass immigration troubles.
I see online some people are tweeting images of what they say are traffic apps in Los Angeles showing no traffic jams for the first time in memory.
Now, some people are ascribing that to mass deportations.
I'm a little bit skeptical.
I don't think the numbers are that big yet.
LA County has 10 million people in it.
I think you'd need, I don't know, hundreds of thousands gone before you would notice reliefs in traffic.
But maybe there is that much.
I mean, Trump's administration claims that a million people have self-deported just on the threat of muscular deportation, if you can believe it, and tens of thousands more being targeted, starting with the worst of the worst, who have been in some ways sent to the terrorist prison in El Salvador, and now comes Florida's alligator Alcatraz prison too.
So Trump is leaning into this.
I say again, I think the cameras accompanying the cops were from ICE itself.
I think Trump isn't being shy about this.
He's being the opposite of shy.
If there's going to be any war in Trump's term, that's his.
It's not going to be Ukraine or Syria or Iran.
It's going to be a war, hopefully with no bullet shot, to take back America from the invader.
That's a fight he wants, and he knows he can win, and it will have the support of most Americans.
It's going to be very interesting, isn't it?
I think it'll work, or it's certainly got a chance to work in the Build Better Beautiful Bowl Bill or whatever it's called.
I think that gives Trump the tools he didn't have in his first term.
My God, it's got to work.
And if it works in America, and I think it will, maybe the UK will be inspired to vote for a reform UK whose motto is freeze immigration, stop the boats.
And maybe UK will be encouraged to call for mass deportations too, despite Nigel Farage's wobbliness on that question.
And maybe our own cautious Canadian Conservative Party might wake up and realize that we are further down the road of mass immigration than either the UK or US, especially in the last five years.
And we have it much worse on our streets, by the way, and much worse economically, by the way.
Maybe the answer for Pier Polyev is not to try to woo migrants, but to call for them to be remigrated, too.
I don't know, fighting the carbon tax just doesn't seem to do it.
Stay with us for more.
Well, Rebel News is based in Canada.
We have Abiyamini in Australia.
And of course, we're quite interested in things going on in the United Kingdom.
But over the last year, I personally have been riveted by what's going on in the country of Ireland, a smallish country, 5 million people.
But it has become the focus of really two enormous forces.
On the one hand, globalist mass immigration that is in fast forward.
I've never seen it that fast anywhere in the world.
But on the other hand, a tightly knit community, the indigenous people of that island, coming out in protest against it.
I think it's such an interesting story.
And I know there's things we can learn about it here in Canada.
I want to throw you one quick fact before I introduce our next guest.
I recently attended a rally in Dublin, the city, the greater Dublin area, about a million or so people.
There was about 50,000 people there.
Even if that number is pumped up a bit, that's an enormous turnout.
And proportionately for Ireland, that would be like, oh, I don't know, that would be like 300,000 people marching in Canada.
Huge.
And by the way, no official political party support, no mainstream media supports.
It's organic in a way.
It's like Canadian truckers, except for they're not there with their trucks.
They're there with their tricolor flags.
And what stuns me every time, and Rebel News has gone to half a dozen of these, is how few other media are there.
There are some citizen journalists, but the regime media either ignores these marches or under-reports them.
An exception, of course, is my favorite news source in Ireland, which I encourage you to subscribe to.
It's called Gript.
You can find their website at gripped.ie.
And one of the reporters we love to bump into when we're over there is our guest today.
Her name is Fatima Gunning, and she's a reporter with Gript.
Fatima, great to see you again.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me on again.
Well, it's a pleasure.
I've fallen in love with the Irish accent.
I'm trying to learn as much about Irish history as I can.
And before we, I want to talk with you about the battle over online censorship in Ireland, because that's really coming to a head.
But before we do, give me one word on your thoughts on this rolling protest.
It's in Dublin.
It's in Cork.
It's in different towns and cities almost every other week or so.
Is it the organic movement that I think it is?
Well, I think it has to be.
I mean, as you said, there's no real big party push behind it.
There's no big ad campaigns.
As you mentioned there, the numbers are disputed, but in the last few weeks, there was that very, very large protest, which look at least at least 15,000 people, I would say, took to the streets.
Although the national broadcaster called it five, I think.
And that was all put together essentially by a, yes, not single-handedly, but the power behind that was Councillor Malchie Steenson, who is an independent councillor.
So again, a lot of the power behind this movement is coming from more grassroots sources.
So yes, I mean, it does seem to be growing.
That two years ago, anybody who wanted to participate in a protest like that would have been perhaps shamed out of doing so by being called racist, far-right, Nazi, whatever you know, kind of slur the people who consider themselves to have the moral superiority when it comes to issues of interest in Ireland would have called people names like that.
But I think that that has waned to the point where more and more people are feeling comfortable with actually saying, I don't agree with open borders, I don't agree with Irish people becoming a minority in some towns and villages, and I just don't agree with the level of largely male migrants who are unvetted, they're criminally unvetted when they come here, coming into our country, which is already screaming for lack of housing, lack of health care resources, you name it.
We're not in a good place.
Yeah, you know, I believe in diversity in that I would love to visit an Italy that is Italian and a France that is French.
And the idea that Ireland would be de-Irishified is sort of sad.
I love the Irishness of it.
And I know you can find an Irish pub in any city in America.
There's 30 million descendants of Irish in America.
But I think Ireland should be Irish.
I'm not saying immigration should be zero, but this mass helter-skelter, unvetted immigration, it doesn't make economic sense.
It doesn't make cultural sense.
It doesn't make political sense.
Last question on the migrants before we get to the free speech.
Is it having any penetration into the official parties?
Because you mentioned Malachi Steenson, who's a city councillor, which is really no disrespect, but it's the bottom rung on the political ladder.
He's not a member of the parliament or the senate.
He's certainly not a party leader.
He's one guy, and I think he's a good egg.
But are any of the established parties, either in the government or the opposition, are they starting to say, wow, there's a big parade mustering.
Let me go to the front of it.
Like, that's the politicians' move is to see a parade and then run to the front and take credit.
Is there any of that?
Like, surely some of these establishment parties are realizing there is some energy with the anti-migration side.
I don't think there's anybody running to the front.
You know, I don't think there's anybody trying to get ahead of the movement from the official parties.
I know that AIN2, which has two TDs, two members of parliament at the moment, are more critical of migration than the other ones, like Sinn Féin, Fine Fall, and Fine Gael.
Also, there's Independent Ireland.
But, you know, just to focus on the larger, more established parties, for example, we had recently our Taoiseach, Michal Martin, admitting really what everyone else has known for the last three years, that the majority of these people coming in and claiming asylum are in fact economic migrants who are just skipping the queue.
And those sentiments were also echoed by the new-ish Minister for Justice, Jim O'Callaghan, who, you know, I think credit where credit is due has been a lot more common sense in his approach towards this issue since taking office than his predecessor, Helen McIntyre, who was basically, I don't know, just the cheerleader for all of this, really.
This and hate speech, I should say.
Well, we'll keep an eye on it, and I really enjoy my visits there.
I do make the case to my Canadian viewers that it is newsworthy for Canadians too.
But it's a delight to see so many Irish people who now tell me they follow our reports because GRIPT is there.
That's your company.
And there's a handful of private citizen journalists who live stream it.
But I have to say, it's a huge news story that the state broadcaster RTE and some of the more established newspapers, I really feel like they're deliberately downplaying it because they don't want that effect you were talking about earlier with people getting more confident.
Oh, it's okay, it's socially acceptable to have those opinions.
There's a huge rally.
I'm not alone.
I think the official media point of view is don't.
It's a kind of censorship in a way that they don't want the ideas to spread.
We'll see.
I look forward to seeing how the story ends.
But you just alluded to a hate speech proposal.
And I think it is tied to immigration in that one of the things so many censorship regimes are designed to do is to stop criticism of global migration in the name of racism and extremism and disinformation.
I think a lot of censorship is put on that.
I mean, three years ago, it would have been COVID.
Now, I think it really is migration.
Give us the update on the battle for free speech in Ireland.
Because, like I say, you've got the regime, which is frankly fairly censorious in its attitude.
And now you've got the European Union saying, hey, Ireland, you've got to get tougher with censorship.
But on the other hand, America, who has always had a fondness for Ireland, I think, is saying, no, don't go down that path.
So it's quite a showdown.
And Ireland is like the hot potato in the middle.
Tell us what the latest is.
Yeah, I mean, I think that the then interim minister for justice, Simon Harris, who is now the Taunish, the Deputy Prime Minister, really let the cat out of the bag on why this hate speech bill is so important to the establishment when he tried to add migration status as a protected characteristic a couple of years ago.
Now, that didn't go through, but it, you know, tells you a lot about the priorities there, I think.
So, yeah, we had a pretty fierce fight over this hate speech bill.
2022 was when the new bill was drafted.
And the then Minister for Justice, Helen McIntyre, who I just mentioned, was very gung-ho on this, like, you know, willing to pass it at any means, it seemed.
But because of the pushback, and there was, you know, some, you know, they were small in numbers, but very fierce, the political pushback from the chambers of power.
But the speech element eventually was dropped, and they came back with a new one from 2024, which basically was essentially the same thing, only that the speech element had been taken out of it, which, you know, seems a bit silly since Ireland has had incitement to hatred laws since 1989, which everyone seems to want to forget.
And those laws deal with incitement to violence against specific groups, also with the publication of materials that could lead people to be incited towards violence and also broadcasts.
So, you know, I think that that existing law, which is older than a lot of people that may be watching this, is fine.
I think it's a bit weird that any move to update that was made if it wasn't just to censor speech.
But yes, the EU Council is not happy with us because they say we have not implemented a framework which dates back to 2008, I believe, with the focus, as you mentioned there, on prohibition of tracks that would make people perhaps have certain undesired thoughts about certain races, certain religions, certain ideologies, gender ideology, anything like that.
Laws Against Inciting Violence00:08:05
Like the EU just does not want to see that kind of discourse taking place.
And it just so happens that those issues are the big issues at play in Ireland today.
But people want to talk about them and I think people have a right to talk about them.
Yeah, when I've traveled around Ireland, the downtowns, the government buildings, there's a real big LGBTQ show of force, at least in terms of flags and signs and things like that.
So I can imagine that that and mass migration are what people are talking about.
How could they not?
And, you know, you mentioned the laws that have been in place for, you know, more than 30 years.
But incitement to violence is a very different thing than incitement to a feeling.
A feeling is not violent.
If you're upset, if you're hateful, if you're a dissident, that's not hurting someone else.
I believe in laws against inciting violence.
I guess that's almost a cousin of the law against uttering a death threat.
That's a very different thing than telling people not to have hard feelings.
Hard feelings come from a sense of grievance, that there's an injustice in the world.
And in Ireland, there is some injustice.
I mean, the housing prices are so high in part because they brought in a million newcomers in the last 10 or so years.
I don't know.
I think it's very interesting.
How's it all going to end?
Is Ireland going to pull back from some of its excesses?
Or do you think the current political class is going to go down with the ship?
Is something going to break?
Is what I'm saying.
Well, there is a suggestion from sources within the Department of Justice that they're actually going to push back against this and tell the EU basically, look, we've done what you've asked us insofar as we're willing to go with it.
Now, how serious that is and if it will actually happen and if they'll actually stick to it, because again, Ireland does face being sent for basically like punishment.
You know, if you don't implement the framework, the frameworks that the EU lays down in their diktats, they do refer you to disciplinary action.
And I believe that we're already paying fines for some stuff.
So perhaps the government might not care about spending more of the taxpayers' money on fines for this too.
But I do think that we're in a better position now to push back against it under the auspices of Jim O'Callaghan, Minister for Justice, than we ever were with his predecessor, Helen McIntyre, who, as I said a few minutes ago, was a cheerleader for all this kind of stuff.
Last question for you.
I remember a few weeks ago, Secretary of State for the United States, Marco Rubio, issued a tweet that I think was astonishing.
And it said that the United States would put a kind of sanction on any officials, even with friendly countries, who engage in censorship.
And it wouldn't be an economic sanction, but it would deny them the right to travel to America, which is embarrassing at least and disruptive.
And it's a stigma.
The idea that the United States would sanction a bureaucrat or a politician in a friendly country for censorship is actually an incredible thing.
I don't know if it's been done to anyone yet.
Is that in the background?
Is the United States and their more recent commitment to free speech and backing Twitter and backing Facebook against censorship?
Was that on the minds of any Irish political people?
Do you think?
Like, do you think the Prime Minister or the Foreign Minister thought, well, if I go along with this, I might get banned from America?
Was that a factor?
I mean, they do love their wee trip to the White House to hand over the bowl of shamrock every year, which, you know, sometimes it reminds me of that episode of South Park where they suddenly get rid of all the Peruvian panpipe bans and then these like feral guinea pigs like burst through the ether.
And then now everybody knows why the panpipe bans were so important.
That reminds me of the whole like the shamrock thing.
But you know, I think it has something to do with the fact that there are so many huge American multinationals based in Dublin.
Because if they want to exit here because we're essentially a bastion of censorship, that's going to ruin our economy.
So I think that it's a big pull factor there for them to maybe get a little bit real about this this time and stop with the virtue signaling.
Because when it comes to many issues, particularly like the war in the Middle East, Ireland, Irish politicians, I should say, more specifically, are essentially just virtue signaling day and night when we have Irish people dying on hospital trolleys because our hospitals are a mess.
We have Irish people who have jobs sleeping in cars and on friends' sofas for months and years on end because our housing system is a mess.
And people like Sinn Féin are staging walkouts because of something that's happening thousands of miles away, which like Ireland has absolutely nothing got to do with and nothing to contribute to in any meaningful way.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's very interesting, the politics of Israel and Gaza.
We won't get into the details of it, but I mean, it really is.
I think it's a distraction from proper affairs.
I mean, Ireland has some crises going on, but if you can get everyone to look at the problem thousands of miles away instead, I suppose that's better politics.
A topic for another day.
Fatima, great to see you.
Before you go, tell our viewers in Canada and America, how do we follow GRIPT?
What's the best way to follow you?
What's the best way to support your independent journalism?
If you want to follow GRIPT, we are on all major social media platforms, especially X.
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It's Fatima underscore gunning, I believe.
I haven't thought about my own handle in a while.
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That's great.
Well, I love it.
It is my number one source of news about Ireland.
And hopefully I'll have a chance to bump into you in my next visit there.
Fatima Gunning of Gript.ie.
Great to see you again.
Thank you so much.
Cheers.
Stay with us.
more ahead hey welcome back Your letters to me on Evan Blackman getting a court order to get the records from TD Bank and the police.
Wally Bartfey says, critical to note that Kearney was the one who recommended freezing bank accounts of Canadians illegally.
I know he supported it.
I don't know if he came up with the idea.
It wouldn't surprise me if he did, him being a banker and all.
I remember he wrote an op-ed in the Globe and Mail saying the government wasn't going hard enough on the protesters.
He really is an authoritarian.
Millie Mean says, the RCMP being involved in this just adds another stain on their record.
I think you're right.
And I'm still hearing stories about police misconduct during the lockdowns.
The Democracy Fund is still fighting cases from three years ago, if you can believe it.
Ken Shorny says, when will Freeland and the bank execs be charged?
Well, I don't know if they'll be charged.
To be charged is a very high standard.
Charges And Damages00:01:24
Bad ideas, you know, causing damages, yes, yes.
Did they do something that reaches a criminal level?
I don't know.
And we don't want to criminalize bad political choices because we don't want all public political disputes to be settled in courts.
That would replace the voter with the elite cabal of judges.
I think that what Christia Freeland and the banks did was wrong.
We know it was unconstitutional and illegal, but being illegal is a little bit different than being a crime.
I think the happy ending here would be for the bank and the government to have to pay compensation and punitive damages to the hundreds of people they targeted.
So, you know, when you sue something for something they did wrong to you, which is called a tort in law, you get your damages back.
Let's say they smashed your window and it cost you 800 bucks.
You'll get the 800 bucks back.
You might get your legal costs back, but the court has the power to give you punitive damages or exemplary damages to punish the other side, to make an example of the other side.
Wouldn't it be something if the banks had to pay a million bucks each to everyone whose bank account they shut down illegally?
Wouldn't it be something if the cops had to do so too?