By now I suspect most readers have at least heard of the controversy over The Rebel's Gavin McInnes saying anti-semitic comments in a vlog post last weekend, while the right-wing media organization was doing a tour in Israel. In the now infamous video, McInnes asserts the trip was "basically a brainwashing" exercise funded by the Israeli government and Jewish donors expecting McInnes to believe their "shit." McInnes then went on to say how it's had the opposite effect, making him become anti-semitic. He then goes on to trivialize the holocaust and spout crackpot Nazi revisionist history. Throughout the YouTube video McInnes chuckles at himself and twice tells the audience to not take him out of context, using this lame caveat to set up his lame escape hatch, so he could later deny any culpability in the words he'd just spewed.
Then while McInnes was flying back home, white supremacists like David Duke and Richard Spencer sang his praises on Twitter and Canadian journalists rightfully condemned his despicable comments.
When McInnes landed he acted stunned by the reaction, but don't be fooled by a media maverick with decades of experiences in the industry. The original editor of Vice magazine, McInnes invented crafty and juvenile ways to stir up controversy, helping create a media juggernaut now worth billions of dollars. He knew exactly what he was doing when he went on this mock anti-semitic rant.
"While I was on the plane I had a Justine Sacco moment apparently. I landed hereremember 'wait 'til she lands?' And she said 'I'm going to Africa. I hope I don't get AIDs.' I landed here and I got a bunch of Nazi friends. David Duke and all the Nazis think I totally rock. No offence Nazis, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I don't like you. I like Jews," said McInnes in a follow-up video shortly after getting off the plane at Pearson Airport.
Yet unlike an unwitting Sacco (the woman pilloried around the world and fired from her job after tweeting a politically incorrect and unfunny joke that went viral, also costing her her job), McInnes intentionally courted controversy for the precious clicks. His half-hearted and ambivalent follow-up video allowed him to still woo the alt-right/white supremacist crowd to his paywalled Gavin McInnes American show, while simultaneously projecting an image of him being an innocent jokester to his Rebel crowd.
On top of this, he knew that the mainstream media would freak out, giving him free publicity. When not much coverage was forthcoming from his original anti-semitic rant, he doubled-down with a video originally entitled "10 Things I Hate about the Jews", where he criticizes certain relatively trivial things he noticed in Israeli culture.
Predictably and understandably, progressive publications Canadaland and The Walrus shortly thereafter published pieces condemning The Rebel for hitting a new low and questioning why Rebel founder Ezra Levant — himself a proud Jew — was allowing this vitriolic rhetoric to be published on his media outlet. Canadaland creator Jesse Brown then spent 20 minutes of his Thursday podcast breaking down the manufactured controversy. All of this coverage results in the Streisand effect, where condemning The Rebel inadvertently drives more traffic to Rebel videos (I guess I'm now doing the same).
The reason Levant allows for McInnes's shenanigans is that his media company relies on viral videos to make his business profitable, and he knows McInnes was doing a cheap tongue in cheek, rickrolling routine to induce a firestorm reaction from the mainstream press and social media, which in turn generates more clicks and eyeballs. It's proven a successful business model. The Rebel garners tens-of-millions of views monthly and recently did another round of hiring.
But at what cost? Canadian conservatives are woefully underrepresented in the Canadian media landscape. The National Post has become a shell of its former self, with most of its younger writers expressing an ideology more aligned with the Toronto Star. The Sun News Network is defunct and the Toronto Sun doesn't reach anyone outside of its blue collar conservative audience. The Rebel has entered to fill a void in this country, but do we really want it to be our standard bearer?
With stunts like the one above, The Rebel runs the risk of smearing all Canadian conservatives as a bunch of anti-semitic crazed loons. Canadian conservatives interested in promoting and furthering conservative principles — like reducing bloated socialist governments, absurdly high taxes, ballooning debt, freedom of speech, etc. — would do best to distance themselves from this firebrand organization willing to say anything for attention.
Written by Graeme C. Gordon
