The Rebel, TNC & the Great Canadian Right-Wing Bullshit Machine
After Canada's French-Language Leader's debate, right-wing mouthpieces dominated the press conference afterwards. They're not journalists. They are impostors.
Canada is in the middle of a Federal Election and the leader’s debates are currently underway. If you live outside Canada, we have national debates in both official languages, English and French, and after last night’s debate,
Canadians were surprised that the question and answer press conference with the leaders after the debate was dominated by questions from right-wing organizations, The Rebel and True North Centre. Canada’s national broadcaster, the CBC, generously called them “right-wing media,” which gives them more credit than they deserve, because these are not actual media outlets or news organizations, and the people who work for them are not reporters or journalists.
Not only is The Rebel currently actively campaigning against Mark Carney, it is even federally registered as a third party to do so. Just being partisan is reason enough for disqualification, but the conflict is more serious than that, because there is a personal private financial incentive. They can, and do, fundraise off of it.
One of the Rebel’s whole lines of business is to act like such obnoxious bastards that they get chucked out, then act like a soccer player trying to draw a foul. They turn into Dennis the Peasant from Money Python and the Holy Grail and start shrieking “come and see the violence inherent in the system.”
Let’s be clear, if you were that obnoxious, anywhere in Canada, you would get chucked out.
Curiously, it’s also the whole story told by the JCCF, and the freedom convoy.
Act in a way that is so obnoxious and disruptive that people can’t do their jobs or live their lives, despite clear and legal warnings from authorities (occupy a city, block highways, jam 911 calls, ignore court orders)
Play the innocent victim (“Help, help, I’m being repressed” etc.)
For money: they are paid protestors.
The freedom convoy were, by definition, paid protestors. They were taking millions in foreign donations to occupy Canada’s capital, demand a change in government, and blockade border crossings.
If you’re wondering whether I am being unfair to Levant or the Rebel, please consider this quote from a Canadian court prosecution of Levant for breaking Canadian campaign finance laws.
“We're going to break this law,” was not the winning argument that Levant, a former lawyer, hoped it might be.
As for Keean Bexte, who was asking questions, he has shared broadcasts with two right-wing influencers accused of taking money from Russia to spread anti-Ukrainian propaganda. (See below)
The Rebel’s content is so incendiary that it was linked to the Christchurch Massacre in New Zealand, as reported by the Globe and Mail:
[I]n August and September of 2017, while [the killer] was making active plans for the rampage, he made a series of donations to a small circle of publications and organizations…
One of those organizations was Rebel Media, the Canadian right-wing publisher known for online video sites such as Rebel News. On Sept. 15, 2017, the future terrorist made a donation of $106.68 from his personal bank account to Rebel News Network Ltd. of Canada, using PayPal. Around the same time, he made donations to organizations such as the neo-Nazi publisher Daily Stormer and the white-supremacist organization Generation Identity.
Canadians may not be aware of this connection between the Christchurch massacre and their country’s fringe media – and that’s because Ezra Levant, the publisher of Rebel Media, went to great lengths to ensure that it stayed out of the press.. Mr. Levant launched a series of libel suits against journalists who had mentioned his organization’s possible influence on terrorists and violent individuals and groups.
That is why they are impostors posing as reporters. By pretending to be impartial, people are more likely to believe them, even while they spread information that is false, deceptive and distorted and dangerous, to the people who hear it and others. The Rebel and True North are just two of the bad faith actors who push distorted, misleading and often hateful stories for the benefit of far-right politicians and parties.
The reason they could be present was that during Canada’s 2019 and 2021 elections, Rebel News was part of a legal challenge that ultimately allowed it to obtain accreditation to cover the leadership debate.
“The two organizations went to court after learning their representatives had been denied access to the debate on the grounds that they engaged in advocacy”
Federal Court Justice Russel Zinn found that the the Commission in charge of organizing the debates “provides no rationale why some types of advocacy do not impact accreditation, while others do," Zinn said.
In the current age, we are facing a tsunami of disinformation side-by-side with corporate and government censorship, especially in the U.S., where the administration is running a campaign of revisionist history and intimidation that would turn Stalin green with envy.
Journalists and Reporters vs. Paid Impostors
Just to start - this is not criteria for whether someone gets to express themselves. Everyone gets to do that. It’s about whether whether that expression is honest and in good faith, or they are being deceptive about the their motive as well as their message.
So here goes:
When it comes to their stories: Are they factually accurate? Is there evidence to back up what is being said?
Are they accountable? Is there a named person willing to stand by the story? If they make a mistake, do they accept responsibility, set the record straight, and, if necessary, apologize?
Are they fair, in the sense that they hold everyone to the same standard for their wrongdoing? Or do they have different moral standards based on partisanship?
Are they doing original reporting, or just expressing opinions? Is it about sharing facts, or telling people how they should interpret facts?
When reporting about facts or incidents, do they include or omit important context that, if available, would lead a viewer or reader to change their mind?
Does the publication have editorial freedom? Or are they willing to remain silent on certain subjects if they are paid to?
I think those are some useful grounds to be able to tell the difference between the kind of things you expect from:
a reporter who is acting in good faith to convey accurate information to the public versus
a paid propagandist acting in bad faith whose only goal is only to undermine their political opponents through any means possible, including setting up a fake media outlet and posing as a reporter in order to persuade people through deception.
Part of the point here is to recognize that bias exists, and it is the nature of life that different people have different values and interests.
The issue of deception has a direct impact on whether you find someone credibile. It’s the difference between the trust and confidence you have in someone encouraging you to consume something they loved and want to share that joy with you, or if they are secretly a salesman who is being paid to tell you a sales pitch from which they are benefiting.
And yes, “Astroturf” fake citizen’s groups and media outlets, whisper campaigns, false accusations, running fake candidates and elaborate confidence-type schemes have been part of politics for decades, though more so in the U.S., but they occur in Canada from the municipal level on up. Information technology has led to crimes and scams on a scale never before imagined.
It’s not an exhaustive list, but I think it is a fair way to separate reporting that is committed to accuracy, and has standards on the one hand, as opposed to a “media organization” that has been expressly set up for the purpose of manipulating opinion, not in the public interest, but in the private interest of a very select constituency.
Because I think this information makes it clear why the Rebel and True North are propaganda outlets operating in bad faith and it’s perfectly legitimate to treat them as an extension of the Conservative Party under Pierre Poilievre.
The Dismal Record of the Rebel & Ezra Levant
I want to make the point that the Rebel would have been disqualified as an illegitimate news outlet without having more obvious criteria, like, “Has a court of law ever determined that you (Ezra Levant) have no respect for the truth?”
In fact, when the Rebel applied to qualify for Canada’s journalism tax breaks, Canada’s Federal Courts denied it. An “advisory board had assessed that Rebel News does not produce original news content, “on the basis that the content was found to be largely opinion-based and focused on the promotion of one particular perspective.”
That is an understatement.
The Role of The Rebel in Spreading Misinformation Through Far-Right and Conservative Networks
For years, The Rebel has been weaponizing and inciting division for profit and political gain. It is a global source of radical right-wing views, and its ties with conservative politicians across Canada are deep and long-standing.
It was founded by Ezra Levant, a former Sun Media personality, and Hamish Marshall, who worked as consultant to Stephen Harper, Andrew Scheer and the Manitoba PCs in 2016, as well as the 2019 CPC Campaign. Marshall’s wife, Kathryn Marshall worked together with Ezra Levant on Ethical Oil, while Hamish worked in Harper’s PMO.
Rebel News has had a revolving door between Sun Media, the Proud Boys, far-right white nationalists, and advisors and members of Canada’s Conservative and PC Parties.
From 2015 to 2017, Hamish Marshall was one of 3 board members for The Rebel.
The Rebel’s correspondents have included: Gavin McInnes, who founded the Proud Boys in 2016, a far-right militia group that has been part of running street violence in the U.S. McInnes grew up in Ottawa & founded Vice Magazine with a government grant. McInnes left Vice in 2008. After an un successful attempt at shock comedy, McInnes was correspondent for a series of right-wing outlets. As a Rebel Media correspondent, McInnes posted a video called “Ten things I hate about Jews.”
McInnes was at the storming of the U.S. Capitol. Proud Boys in Washington, DC were wearing shirts that read “6MWE” - Six Million Wasn’t Enough, suggesting that even more Jews should have been killed in the Holocaust.
Keean Bexte (more about him below)
Other Rebel correspondents include Katie Hopkins, banned by multiple platforms for hate, but hired by The Rebel; Tommy Robinson, a far-right convicted criminal from the UK.
The Rebel’s conservative connections are deep. In the 1990s and 2000s, Ezra Levant worked with a who’s-who of conservatives: Preston Manning, David Frum, Stockwell Day.
When Levant gave up his nomination bid for a by-election in 2002 so Stephen Harper could run, current Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre was working for him.
Ezra Levant, then a Calgary lawyer and Stockwell Day's communications director, began campaigning to win Manning's safe seat. According to Alberta Report, Levant pledged "the Alliance party can win Calgary South on its own without working with the Tories" who, he warned, would threaten the Alliance's "fiscal and social conservatism." Poilievre joined Levant's campaign as a spokesperson.
He stuck with the "Ezra Express" until Levant stood aside to give soon-tobe Alliance leader Stephen Harper a safe seat. Soon, Poilievre himself was seeking office alongside Harper.
Levant was successfully sued on a number of occasions. He had to apologize for defaming George Soros in a column for the Sun newspapers; in another case, a court found that Levant “spoke in reckless disregard of the truth.”
Levant also went on an extended rant against Roma on Sun TV for which he had to apologize.
It’s also worth noting that the anti-semitic attacks on George Soros all began in an election in Hungary, where Viktor Orban raised the spectre of anti-semitic tropes against Soros. There was also a partnership between the Harper Conservative Government and Hungary to portray Roma refugees as a problem.
As an article in Business Insider noted:
“Soros is nevertheless portrayed as a Hungarian who would betray Hungary, a financier rich with dirty money, an American, and, critically, a Jew. Soros’s face has been plastered in profile at bus stops along with the tagline “Stop Soros,” as part of a government campaign. His mug is on ads for the national consultation in a variety of Hungarian papers. On Monday, parliamentarian Andras Aradszki delivered an address titled, “The Christian duty to fight against the Satan/Soros Plan.””
Levant worked for Sun TV, which was headed up by Korey Teneycke - Stephen Harper’s Director of Communications. Teneycke maintained close contacts with Levant, mediating a dispute between Levant and a UK correspondent.
Here’s the correspondent when he went public about the way the Rebel operates:
Now, Teneycke is the Conservative strategist and advisor to Doug Ford.
Levant was also a guest a number of times on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News in 2021.
In 2018, a lawyer named John Carpay spoke at a Rebel Media event where Carpay said “whether it's a hammer and sickle for communism, or whether it's the swastika for Nazi Germany or whether it's a rainbow flag, the underlying thing is a hostility to individual freedoms.” Carpay then went on to head up yet another potemkin organization, the Canadian Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (CCCF), whose mysterious business model consists in advancing unsuccessful arguments about the law and constitutional rights.
The organization, which claims to promote freedom, was in the midst of challenging Manitoba’s public health laws as unconstitutional when it was discovered that Carpay had hired a private investigator to follow Manitoba’s Chief Justice, Glenn Joyal. Michael Spratt described it as "an odious act that strikes at the very heart of the Canadian justice system.”
Carpay and another CCCF lawyer were both arrested and charged with a number of crimes, which they plea bargained out of, but have still been barred from practising law.
Keean Bexte
Here’s a picture from Keean Bexte’s twitter profile,
(L to R)
Tucker Carlson, who was fired from Fox costing them hundreds of millions of dollars, knowingly lying about the 2020 U.S. election results;
Bexte
Dr. Jordan Peterson, the alt-right’s favourite beef-eating Benzo-Shaman; and
Danielle Smith, Premier of Alberta, who appears to want to separate from Canada before the police have the time to lay charges in the current Alberta health scandal
Keean Bexte, was one of the individuals asking questions after the leader’s debate. He runs a blog, the Countersignal, and has worked with the Rebel.
Together with the Rebel, Bexte promoted the 2019 “Yellow Vests Convoy” in Ottawa, which was run by the same organizers as the “Freedom Convoy” three years later, including Pat King. Yellow Vests Canada’s Facebook page in 2019 had to be shut down for rampant death threats against politicians, especially Trudeau.
Bexte called for ending birthright citizenship in Canada at a CPC policy convention. Bexte ran “FireForce Ventures” a website that sold Rhodesian military paraphernalia from a time when Zimbabwe was ruled by a white supremacist government.
Bexte’s FireForce partners included Canadian Military & another CPC staffer, Adam Strashok. Strashok ran Jason Kenney’s call centre during his United Conservative Party (UCP) leadership run.
Aside from those sterling journalistic credentials, Bexte is featured on a podcast with two of the people who were accused of receiving Russian money to spread anti-Ukrainian messaging.
Here is Bexte on the Timcast - another “influencer” who was being paid by Russia, and was raging against Ukraine.
Bexte lately accosted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a family vacation. Surprisingly, Trudeau did not have security remove him immediately.
Canadians - including the media - like to pretend that Canada’s politics are centrist and that US Democrats are to the right of Canadian conservatives. This has not been true in a generation. Most parties that were once of the left are centre right and the idea that Canada is moderate ignores the extreme content of outlets like the Rebel, and its ties with Conservative parties across Canada.
At the yellow vest protest in Ottawa, a Conservative Senator called for Liberals to be run over by truckers.
True North Centre & Andrew Lawton
Press Progress recently reported that during the Freedom Convoy, there was a Signal chat involving “dozens of far-right social media influencers and right-wing alternative media personalities from outlets like True North, Western Standard and Rebel Media” as well as Andrew Lawton, a Conservative candidate for Member of Parliament and convoy organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber who were recently found guilty of criminal charges for their role.
(Yes, Press Progress is owned by the Broadbent Institute, and it is not particularly critical of the NDP. However, it does do original, accurate investigative reporting).
Eva Chipiuk, a former Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms lawyer who represented convoy leaders at the Emergencies Act Inquiry, and Bethan Nodwell, a convoy organizer with ties to neo-Nazis and European far-right political actors.
The member list also includes the names of key Freedom Convoy figures, including convoy leaders Tamara Lich, Chris Barber and Tom Marazzo, as well as convoy lawyer Keith Wilson.
It also includes the names of dozens of far-right social media influencers and right-wing alternative media personalities from outlets like True North, Western Standard and Rebel Media.
Another name that appears on the list is currently running for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives in the Southwestern Ontario riding of Elgin – St. Thomas – London South: Andrew Lawton.
Federal corporate records show the network of connections between True North’s board members as well as other organizations all registered at one of a couple of addresses -
1811 4 Street SW, Calgary, AB T2S 1W2.
That includes Civitas, whose directors include “Maria Robson, Stephen Perrot, Michael Demczur, Andrea Mrozek, David Livingstone, Andy Crooks, Travis Smith, Scott Hennig, Fred Litwin and Bill Bewick.”
Scott Hennig is the leader of the Canadian Taxpayers federation, and clicking on his name leads to a similar concentration of board members and addresses at office complex in Saskatchewan.
Hennig is also on the board of SecondStreet.Org, along with Tracy Johnson, Adam Daifallah, Steven Muchnik, Adam Allouba and Walter Robinson.
SecondStreet.org shares an address, 4246 Albert Street in Regina, Saskatchewan, with the “National Citizens Inquiry” a Preston-Manning led exercise about pandemic response with all the scientific credibility of a meeting of the flat-earth society. The Inquiry’s board includes Ted Kuntz, who is also on the board of “Vaccine Choice Canada” and board members of businesses like “Canadians for Homeopathy” and “Nurture Nature Education.
Notably, one of the board members of the inquiry is Shawn Buckley, who is President of the “National Health Products Protection Association” who is interviewed here on website of Children’s Health Defense Canada Chapter of RFK Jr.s organization that spreads deadly disinformation about infectious diseases and led to the deaths of dozens of children in American Samoa.
The directors of the “True North Wire Service” include William McBeath, Barbara Kay (mother of Jonathan Kay), who was also a contributor to the Rebel, as well as Candice Malcolm.
William McBeath is also the director of the “True North Centre for Public Policy” at the same address. Directors also include Kasra Nejatian, a former Director of Communications for Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, and husband to Candice Malcolm, and Jessica Kuredjian, who is part of the Canada Strong & Free Network.
McBeath is also a director of the “Independent Press Gallery of Canada” registered at the same Calgary address.
Candice Malcolm’s pocket CV also lays out the connections:
She was Ontario Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation from 2013 until 2015.
She was Director of Research at Sun Media from May 2012 until February 2013.
She was Press Secretary for the Parliament of Canada from May 2011 until April 2012.
She was Special Assistant to the Wildrose Alliance Party from December 2010 until May 2011.
She was also an “Atlas Fellow at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in 2010 and Project Coordinator for The Center for a Secure Free Society, as well as a Koch Summer Fellow at Atlas Economic Research and the Institute for Humane Studies.”
This is notable - the “Atlas Network” is an American libertarian organization that takes money from oil and tobacco companies and operate as “merchants of doubt.” Here’s a list of the Canadian think tanks and organizations supported by this American organization:
Alberta Enterprise Group; Alberta Institute; Alberta Policy Research Centre; Atlantic Institute For Market Studies; Canada Strong And Free Network; Canadian Constitution Foundation; Canadian Tax Foundation; Canadian Taxpayers Federation; Canadians For Democracy & Prosperity; Centre For Cultural Renewal; Centre For The Study Of Civic Renewal; Civitas Canada; Fraser Institute; Free Thinking Film Society; Frontier Center For Public Policy; Institut Économique De Montréal (Montreal Economic Institute); Institute For Liberal Studies; Institute For Social And Economic Analysis; Joseph Howe Institute; Justice Centre For Constitutional Freedoms; Ludwig Von Mises Institute Of Canada; Macdonald-Laurier Institute For Public Policy; Manning Centre For Building Democracy; Manning Foundation; National Foundation For Family Research Education; Secondstreet.Org; Society For Quality Education; Walter Scott Centre; World Taxpayers Associations
Notably, representatives from these organizations love to accuse reporters of being compromised or partisan for reporting factual information that places their favoured ideas or politicians in a bad light. They also rail against public funding or tax breaks to support Canadian journalism, even as conservative media outlets accept them, with the utterly fraudulent “Ottawa Declaration on Canadian Journalism”.
The question goes back to credibility, transparency, and whether there are any strings attached to the funding. As the old saying goes, every accusation is a confession, because one of the conditions placed by certain funders of these think tanks and supposed media outlets is silence.
The Hunter Family Foundation is a Calgary-based foundation that funds several of these organizations. They place certain conditions on what they fund. At the top of that list, that make it clear that “WE DO NOT SUPPORT Anti-Fossil Fuel Initiatives.”
Of course, they’re entitled to do that, but the question is what that means for the organizations they support, which include the Fraser Institute, the Montreal Economic Institute, the Institute for Liberal Studies, the Frontier Centre, the MacDonald Laurier Institute, and The Hub.ca.
The Hub also partnered with Meta, in a paid promotion that was supposedly about “the future of news” to attack the Canadian government’s efforts to have American tech companies follow Canadian law. It’s no secret that Meta and Facebook in particular have played a huge role in spreading dangerous misinformation around the world in ways that their former employees have called out and condemned as a “threat to democracy” even before Zuckerberg announced he would scrap fact checking and align Meta with the Trump administration.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and that vigilance includes calling out bullshit artists. It’s long overdue.
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This is important research that I’m glad you have shared. Thank you.
We do like to think that we’re more moderate here in Canada. But I think those days are behind us. Sadly.
MR. Lamont your articles have quickly become my favourite substack. Thank you!