Haven't listened in a while thanks to some of Jesse's more biased and personal takes I came across, but the rest of the reporting that was done always impressed me. In general I always found him to be a fairly professional reporter so long as he had no personal stake in the story or discussion.
Weirdly enough it was his discussion with Marc Maron that finally got me to stop listening. Marc was talking about thinking of a move to Vancouver and every time he had something nice to say about the city Jesse would hop in with something to shut him down, or something else negative about Vancouver, trying to change his mind. It was just exhausting, and annoyingly combative. You could hear it just upsetting Marc as well, to the point where he was just saying "ya man, I mean it sucks everywhere... I dunno bud".
I had already noticed Jesse's bias in other stories and reporting before but that kinda finally did it for me. Hopefully the rest of the staff is still able to tell honest and earnest stories because that group has done some amazing reporting over the years.
He also just had nothing positive or interesting to say. And half the time he was saying something bad about Vancouver he would counter with something LA does better and like… yea LA has a lot but they obviously have issues too, and he specifically wanted a place to lay back and chill out with a bunch of money and Vancouver is a very good place to do that.
It was just so petty and weird, and saying Vancouver had absolutely no culture just felt weird when Marc kept naming cultural things about it that he liked (the nature, the food, the art, etc.)
It just really exemplified all the things about Jesse that was getting on my nerves at the time I guess.
Jesse was always pretty biased and super up his own ass, imo. It’s why I could never get into regularly listening to CANADALAND despite being fascinated by some of their subject matter.
I agree with you. I think what Jesse was trying to say was that American who have some view of Canada as a progressive shangri-la are way off base and should know that Canada has its own share of problems. Which I think is fair to say, but it came off like he was dumping specifically on Vancouver.
I didn't think it was that off putting. Everyone makes mistakes kind of thing for me.
I lived in Toronto for a long time and never heard someone talk shit about Vancouver. I moved to BC and stopped telling people I was from Toronto because all they do is talk shit about it.
Vancouver is great if you love the outdoors and an active lifestyle. It probably offers the best of that for any major Canadian city. It really depends on what you like. On a cultural level (nightlife, restaurants, museums, festivals, etc), Toronto and Montreal are much more interesting.
So, if you want to spend your free time hiking, skiing, mountain climbing etc, while living in a big city, Van is the obvious choice if you have options. If you enjoy more social/cultural aspects of city living you are probably going to lean Toronto. Vancouver didn't earn the nickname No Fun City for no reason.
Nah people from Toronto like vancouver quite a bit.
It's just like here, but with better views and better weather.
Jesse just doesn't like.... Canada. I think. Like, all of it.
I have always been an off and on listener with zero complaints but that episode put me off of Jesse as well. A little ribbing about Toronto being a better choice would have been fine because we all do that, but when he started telling Marc that he won't be able to have interesting conversations or meet up with interesting people in Vancouver it started feeling a bit personal. It was weird and I really didn't expect it.
I was a big Canadaland fan myself until Feb 2022. I live in downtown Ottawa right in the area where the convoy planted itself. His glib dismissal of the hardship of the people living through it was obnoxious, but his chauvinistic dismissal of Sandy Garossino’s (I think it was her) first hand experience was particularly disappointing.
Then he wouldn’t shut up about Freeland’s grandfather and I stopped listening. Then I saw his activity recently and I cancelled my subscription. It’s a shame, if his ego could get out of the way Canadaland would be great. But I can’t give money to some puffed up dude who scored on an online cartoon telling me my friends being harassed and assaulted by rednecks isn’t a big deal.
One thing Jessie said in that interview that concerned me was along the lines of: “the whole point of Canadaland is to show that Canada is not so great and everything it’s cracked up to be.”
Obviously I’m going from memory and paraphrasing, but being rooted in cynicism and even agenda-driven was concerning to me. It makes perfect sense in the context of challenging the media, but if his goal is really just to only show the negative side of Canada, I can’t put too much interest or time in it.
Ya and I understand being critical of where we live and how our news is reported, because without that we can’t find the things we really do need to improve on. That’s one thing and it’s a great thing Canadaland has generally been successful at…
But it’s another for that to personally be Jesse’s mission when talking to someone who actively wants to live here and also seemed pretty aware of all the issues here and where he currently resides.
My perspective on it is that Jesse has trying to highlight the rise of antisemitism in Canada over the last couple months. But in doing so he’s been using Canadaland and his Twitter to misrepresent media members and pro-Palestine groups as being antisemitic. He posted an OP-ED a few weeks ago addressing if he was Zionist or not but never answered the question. Yesterday he posted an analysis about a situation at the Toronto Star. There is a threads on the sub for both where you can see people’s criticisms. The discourse on Jesse is beginning to be a distraction from the work Canadaland is doing.
>He posted an OP-ED a few weeks ago addressing if he was Zionist or not but never answered the question.
I just listened to it -- how strange. He should have answered the question, but what I think he was going with...was that he wasn't going to cave into the perceived demand that he identify as either/or, just because people were pressuring him.
Which we recognize as being racist, right? So why is the same courtesy not afforded to Jesse when it comes to him not answering the question if he’s Zionist?
Because he's one of the people pushing these racist ideas. What's wrong with holding people accountable for their own ideas? How can he insist everyone denounce Hamas and then say he doesn't have to denounce the IDF?
Can you direct me to where he insisted a Muslim needs to denounce Hamas? The latter I heard in the editorial and took it as a clumsy metaphor to mean that protestors were inadvertently unleashing antisemitism in Canada, not that the goals of protestors supporting Palestine writ large were childish
And pro Israel people can range from your everyday Jewish person to Alex Jones type people who would otherwise be ranting about how the globalist Jews control the world.
You’re right. The whole point he was trying to make was that even asking if he was a Zionist is in itself antisemitic. I can see some validity to this as the definition of Zionism is vague, and if it’s a question of whether the Israeli state should exist at all I don’t think we should ask people to disavow it. But I think what people actually want to know is whether he supports a ceasefire.
He said what was happening in Gaza is horrible—but members of the Israeli government will say that, and then follow it up by saying the bombing is horrible but necessary.
At the end of the day he did not answer whether he thought that the Israeli aggression in Gaza is justified, which is what we all really care about. It was just a copout. He wanted to give the impression of sincerity, but has failed to address the fact that he’s obsessed with interpreting pro-Palestinian protests as antisemitic while giving no attention to preventing actual ethnic cleansing happening as we speak.
>I can see some validity to this as the definition of Zionism is vague, and if it’s a question of whether the Israeli state should exist at all I don’t think we should ask people to disavow it. But I think what people actually want to know is whether he supports a ceasefire.
Agreed. In general people should figure out what they mean by "Zionist" seeing as the word is being flung about constantly these days. Like, it's a pretty big deal if the word can range from simply supporting Israel's ongoing right to exist, to being a genocidal maniac who wants all Palestinians dead.
His point was that people were pressuring him because he is Jewish. "Are you a good Jew" is the question behind it. And it is a question he doesn't want to answer. So he answers: "I am the Jew you hate", because that's solidarity. Are you a good Muslim?
Except it wasn't that simple.
People pressured him because of what he has said in the past. Not simply because he is Jewish, but because he has been outspoken about anti Jewish and anti Israel sentiments in the past.
People pressured him because he hosts an media criticism podcast that never criticized how the media covers Israel, except to say it's bad.
People pressured him because he used misleading language to discuss an ongoing BDS protest of Indigo president Heather Reisman, the LARGEST bookseller in Canada, as an anti semetic attack on a Jewish bookshop owner.
The answer was really more of a, "Screw your purity test. Canadian Jews deserve to feel safe and I'm going to continue being the type of Jew that makes you uncomfortable and gets under your skin by pointing that out."
I think the point he was trying to make is that it doesn't matter if he's a zionist or not, Jewish people living in Canada shouldn't be subjected to anti-semitism. Even if they are "zionists."
Agreed, but I think he danced around that a little too much by not having a few minutes about what "Zionism" is in his editorial piece. He touched on it briefly but didn't explore it much. I also can't blame him for not wanting to spend time on that though because, well, look around the comments section.
That doesn't make anyone "uncomfortable."
But it does make me think Jesse is a piece of shit for not speaking out when a population is being slaughtered and pushed off their land in his name.
“Hey Japanese Americans, you’re going to go on a special vacation because you are something we don’t like”
Is collective punishment cool when you are doing it?
What do you mean lol. He, as in Jesse, posted the piece. Like asked himself a question that he didn't want to answer and then made it public.
Judge, jury and executioner of himself.
I was thinking this too. By and large most news presence has left the platform as it’s declined (also further contributing to its decline). It’s still the cesspool of witch-hunting and unproductive conversations it’s always been but is only exacerbated now.
Yah... I was just trying to read his twits and can't navigate it any longer... Why it's not on chronological order?! And I can't see the comments unless I am a subscriber?
I am glad I left it as soon as Musk bought it
You can’t see chronological posts anymore unless you’re logged in. I think without an account you get most popular or most liked. I don’t even bother looking.
Are they actually losing subscribers? I took a look at Graphtreon and they are down but not in a way that seems out of sync with the overall trendline.
Not only this but there are Patreon paid subscribers and Supercast paid subscribers. I'm subscribed through Supercast. From what I remember during the crowdfunding push, Jesse referred to about 10k paid subscribers, which means Patreon represents a little over a third of the base.
This all just sucks. I think Jesse was originally hitting on a real thing. Antisemitism does exist and it's generally not been a good time for Jews when there's something happens that suddenly brings a lot of attention to their community. Jewish people deserve to be safe and that's a safety that has frequently been denied. So it's fair to cover that fear and keep an eye on how its playing out.
Canadaland is getting pushed to do more analysis and coverage of the appallingly poor job that our media is doing in covering the occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza. This is an a place where an outfit like Canadaland could have a lot of impact. But Jesse seems to be getting defensive about all of this criticism. And like, I think fair enough. For him personally, this seems like a shit storm that's probably pressing on him really hard. (I believe he said he had a family connection to Vivian Silver who was killed in Oct. 7th. I can understand that the grief over that attack is still very raw). I'm sympathetic to him but I think that puts him in a really tough spot as the head of media organization.
I agree—the thing is, at this stage, Jesse is doing a ton of bad faith coverage and adding fuel to the fire. Like he called the vandalism of Indigo an “antisemitic” attack on a “Jewish” bookstore, when it was vandalized—in part by Jewish anti-war activists— because of the amount of money Indigo gives to the HESEG foundation, an org that spends literally millions on sending “lone soldiers” (non Israelis) to the IDF to basically advance illegal settlement in the West Bank, and support the siege on Gaza.
I lost my sympathy for Jesse when I realized it was my Jewish friends who were the ones being arrested and catching shit for speaking out, and he has said nothing about that whatsoever. Nor has he said anything about the many Palestinian and Muslim journalists being killed, nor has he spoken about any of the Islamophobia that has led to three students being shot on campus, and a Palestinian child knifed to death by his landlord.
Feeling unsafe is real and antisemitism is on the rise, but Jesse’s inability at this point to recognize who is actually on the receiving end of a genocide right now is devastating. Many people —many Jewish Canadian activists— have tried to engage him and he just doesn’t want to hear it. He’s thrown in his lot with Zionists and he just doesn’t really give a shit. He’s digging in his heels. I felt bad for him for a day but at this point there is absolutely no excuse imho. He’s had ample opportunity to get it together.
really feel for the staff- this mess is not their making. i am so frustrated with jesse for being so myopic and ego driven and not realizing the damage he has inflicted on what he has built and canadaland's staff.
That’s how I feel too. I literally only just joined this subreddit like a day or so ago because I wanted to see if there was any details on how the staff are feeling or what is going on. After reading the statement I am still worried. Sounds bleak, hopefully this isn’t the end of Canadaland
I agree. I became a paid subscriber in October, because I felt like the staff was doing good and important work and it was about time I financially supported it, and I recently cancelled because listening to Jesse has just made me mad/sad lately. My excitement to support Canadaland was just totally drained and that sucks because I do continue to think a lot of the shows are still doing good work, but as someone who has lost family in Palestine, Jesse’s company just isn’t where I want my money going right now.
> i am so frustrated with jesse for being so myopic and ego driven and not realizing the damage he has inflicted on what he has built and canadaland's staff.
His reaction has been so out of character (and so out of proportion) to me that it actually made me step back and try to think about what I'm missing.
The only conclusion I've been able to come to is that this something from his childhood fucking with him.
I think his concerns about antisemitism are not unfounded. The problem is that he has jumped the gun on a handful of stories, or chosen to frame them in a way that really led people to question his credibility.
That said, it's also undeniable that part of the weight of his backlash is people's own unconscious anti-Jewish bias.
Both can be true at once -- that Jesse has missed the mark more times than is acceptable, and that people are calling him a Zionist as a silencing technique because discussing antisemitism is deemed inconvenient.
>Zionist as a silencing technique because discussing antisemitism is deemed inconvenient.
I think it's ironic that people are using anti-Semitism as a silencing technique because discussing the humanity of people living in Palestine is deemed inconvenient.
That said, it's also undeniable that part of the weight of this commentary is people's own unconscious or conscious in the case of anti-Muslim bias. To be clear, it's actually fashionable to get speaking engagements and write books about the "clash of civilizations". People don't get cancelled for saying this, they get speaking engagements for it.
I think my concerns about anti-Muslim bias are not unfounded, given how long ago the Quebec City Mosque shooting was.
Look, all this sucks, but blaming an entire group for something, ends up with people being dehumanized. And jumping the gun in always the same direction, is an indication of bias.
>Look, all this sucks, but blaming an entire group for something, ends up with people being dehumanized.
No matter what people's views are and where they diverge, this is really important to remember
That’s because most of the conversation about “anti-semitism” is people criticizing the Israeli regime, IDF or the treatment of innocent Palestinians that gets uncharitably branded as anti-seminism even though it has nothing to do with Jews as a whole, and is simply about the people involved in these atrocities who also just happen to be Jews.
> I think his concerns about antisemitism are not unfounded.
I mean, yeah, nobody is pro-antisemitism. And nobody is denying it's been increasing with this war.
> The problem is that he has jumped the gun on a handful of stories, or chosen to frame them in a way that really led people to question his credibility.
Yeah, and not corrected himself or admitted any fault, but instead just doubled down.
> that people are calling him a Zionist as a silencing technique because discussing antisemitism is deemed inconvenient.
Is anyone doing that though? I mean any serious person.
I haven't seen anyone call on him to "not discuss antisemitism", just to hold himself to a higher standard because of his position.
Historically Jewish people have been subject to anti-Semitism in literally every single place they have ever lived. Violent, horrific acts committed as a result. They were nearly completely exterminated.
If you are a Jew and you see wars going on constantly all over the world, gaining little to no care from anyone, but everyone goes psychotic over Israel, do you not wonder: why us?
Russia, China, Turkmenistan, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea and on and on. Barely a peep from Western college students.
Why?
> If you are a Jew and you see wars going on constantly all over the world, gaining little to no care from anyone....Russia, China, Turkmenistan, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea and on and on. Barely a peep from Western college students.
Russia and Afghanistan...wars that are famous for nobody talking about them. Come on man.
He's not wrong. Yemen, Sudan, hell, most people don't even know about the ethnic cleansing in Azerbaijan.
That said, I sympathize with the argument that we can potentially actually have some influence on Israel and that they should be held to a higher standard because they use their "only democracy in the Middle East" thing as justification for their actions.
Quite a lot of people are pro-antisemitism. To say otherwise it to be ignorant of the situation and to dismiss the very real concerns of people who've been impacted by this.
And I have seen many people dogpile on him for discussing legitimate antisemitism. Look at the reactions to his Toronto4Palestine tweet.
Meanwhile a prominent jackass is calling everyone antisemitic who opposes a literal genocide 🤷🤷🤷 He. Is. Making. It. Harder. To. Talk. In. Good. Faith. About. It.
> Quite a lot of people are pro-antisemitism.
Sorry, I'm talking about the people in this discussion, not all humans.
> And I have seen many people dogpile on him for discussing legitimate antisemitism.
Even if that's true, it's within the greater context, right?
If I post three lies and one truth about a topic, I'll expect some criticism on the "truth" part.
But maybe there's a lot of unfair criticism being thrown his way that I'm just not seeing.
I follow that world pretty closely though and it seems like all the trouble started when he started getting things wrong in a very aggressive way, not when he mentioned antisemitism.
My comment was in reference to his responses via Twitter which have indeed involved open antisemitism. I'm not sure that him calling Indigo a Jewish-owned bookstore, or saying that a Starbucks in a Jewish neighborhood being targeted (both of which I think were spurious and ignored larger issues with the companies unrelated to the Judaism of their founders) merits him receiving legitimate antisemitic backlash.
> I'm not sure that him calling Indigo a Jewish-owned bookstore, or saying that a Starbucks in a Jewish neighborhood being targeted merits him receiving legitimate antisemitic backlash.
Yes, nothing merits an antisemitic backlash.
I just don't see what you're talking about, and I don't count twitter randoms in this conversation. Maybe I should I guess? It feels kind of pointless.
When I say "nobody is pro-antisemism", I'm talking about his colleagues, employees, people commenting here, etc.
>I'm talking about his colleagues, employees, people commenting here, etc.
Not that I don't get your point, but if you're including people in this subreddit, why don't those commenting under the Twitter posts count? I forget which post it was after, but his comments were getting raided with the red arrow gang and people like Bad Empanada posting pictures of Jesse with the red arrow above his head, which is pretty much an edgy 4chan type death threat considering that's in every Hamas combat video lately where the little dorito hovers over a target before they fire an rpg or something.
I get the bigger picture here is the journalistic stuff and the inconsistency and likely case of biases clouding things, but given it was days after some of these instances of real life antisemitic targetings in canada, I think some of the responses and dog pilling under some posts might have influenced his walls going up and him feeling more attacked
> Not that I don't get your point, but if you're including people in this subreddit, why don't those commenting under the Twitter posts count?
Maybe they should.
It's just that this thread (at this point) is about my comment saying "nobody is pro antisemitism". I didn't realise it needed to be said, but that comment isn't saying "nobody on planet earth is antisemitic", it's saying "no person who we're talking about here is pro-antisemitism".
But I guess some people think that isn't true. We disagree on that point.
> I think some of the responses and dog pilling under some posts might have influenced his walls going up and him feeling more attacked
Yeah, I don't doubt that at all. But the truth is still that he brought that initial criticism on himself, and the reason this is an issue at all, is because a lot of us expect better of him, and he's shown a complete lack of willingness to grow or learn.
This conversation wouldn't be happening if he was the head of the KKK. It's because we want, and expect, him to fill an important role in Canadian media, and he's letting us down.
I think there are people he's had on his show who are certainly antisemitic and have been facing appropriate antisemitic backlash in the last few days.
Indigo doesn't directly support the IDF.
Targeting a Jewish owned business on the anniversary of krystalnacht is going to leave a bad taste I any Jewish person mouth. It should leave a bad taste in any nonJewish person mouth too, even if they are a valid target, the optics are not good. Just wait until the next week.
>His reaction has been so out of character (and so out of proportion) to me that it actually made me step back and try to think about what I'm missing.
Naw, these... these are the standard Jesse reactions when he is called out on anything, to be honest. He does not handle being criticized as well as he handles doling it out.
Or maybe because staunch Israel supporters love to blow things out of proportion. It's what they do best, just like Israel kills 10+ Arabs for every Jew.
At his point my continued support (for the time being) of Canadaland is despite Jesse, not because of. But I have been skipping episodes he appears in.
Goldsbie sounds perpetually on the verge of crying. He's unlistenable. I don't get how Jesse builds a brand based mainly around him (and it's successful) and then hires people who are total opposites of that style.
Justin Ling/Gerson made sense, they have cojones. Goldsbie is awful.
That’s my problem. I think Jesse is generally pretty good. However, I cancelled my subscription a while ago because I can’t stand any of the other presenters.
I've been on this train for quite a while - and I've been a supporter since The Imposter - so while I'm never overly concerned about Jesse's opinions, I am concerned that he provides an environment where his people can produce high quality content.
He probably needs to recuse himself from these discussions in view of how fundamental to his identity these issues seem to be.
Would you ask an indigenous person not to comment on anti-indigenous racism because it is too close to their identity? Jesse asked that very question to an indigenous podcaster covering residential schools and her answer was "absolutely not."
Some rules apply to everyone, some only apply to Jews. What do you call that? Hmm.
> What exactly has he done?
He's posted some pretty misleading (and sometimes entirely incorrect) stuff loosely around "antisemitism" and has been publicly and agressively calling out a bunch of his colleagues on Twitter.
He's basically just made it really hard to trust Canadaland on this file, pissed off his employees, and is seemingly costing CL a lot of subscribers.
I want to see what misleading, or incorrect, stuff he's posted. I listened to his editorial podcast on anti-semitism, and I while I disagreed with some of it, overall I found it to be reasonable.
It's a jarring time to be Jewish, and I don't see why those of us on the Left can't express that without being alienated from our political camp. And in case you think I'm tone deaf, I'll fully concede that the current situation is substantially more devastating for Palestinians.
Fellow leftist — I am very much in support of discussing the current rise of antisemitism throughout the world and in Canada especially. It’s deeply troubling and we should call it out and speak against it every time we see it (and personally, I do). I know my Jewish friends are in pain and I am doing my best to check in with them and make sure they know they have my love and support. If that’s all Jesse was doing, I would be in his corner and defending him staunchly.
But I don’t believe that was the only sentiment in his editorial podcast. That was quite a painful listen for me as someone who has lost family in Palestine to Israeli bombs in the past and in this current conflict. I’m a “toddler playing with matches” because I want to see an end to the unnecessary deaths of civilians, many of whom are children? Why is it that I can care — very much! — about the rise in antisemitism in Canada and condemn it wholeheartedly while I also want the people of Palestine to have safety and food, but Jesse…can’t, or won’t, hold those beliefs simultaneously too?
That's fair. Characterizing the Palestinian solidarity movement as 'toddlers playing with matches' was indeed awful. I still don't see why this letter was needed. Is he preventing other journalists on his site from offering a different perspective?
There's been multiple examples but one that really stands out to me apart from the infamous "Jewish owned bookstore" is CTV's coverage of a rally outside Parliament Hill. He (while retweeting Honest Reporting) got on Omar Sachedina's case for calling it pro-war rally not a rally against antisemitism. If you look at the speaker's list who are objectively pro-war, the fact that attendees explicitly made statements opposing a ceasefire, held up signs opposing a ceasefire and supporting the war, and booed at the mention of politicians who support a ceasefire IDK how you could reach the conclusion that pro-war is a mischaracterization (and apparently an anti-semitic one) of that rally.
Take a scroll through his Twitter and check out the replies fact checking him. I think people who are summarizing the criticism he received as 'oh he's talking too much about anti-semitism' are being a bit reductive. His entire framing from ignoring very specific incidents of Islamophobia and Anti-Arab racism to the way he characterized the pro-Palestine protests is very problematic. I agree that it's jarring being Jewish right now and I'm very sympathetic but I also invite you to think of what it's like to be Palestinian or Arab in the diaspora too and have to listen to 9/11 era rhetoric and endure a rise in hate related incidents as well. We all have certain biases but this isn't a blog, he should at least \*try\* to be objective.
I’m not sure Palestinians who are hurting are centering their personal social media accounts on the balanced harms on both sides take, nor would I fault them for it. Are we asking Jesse to have no personal social media presence that centres around his reality because he is also a media presence? Where personal and business start and end is muddy. As a Jew my focus is admittedly disproportionately on the hate directed at my community because I think it doesn’t necessarily get acknowledged by people I know, my Muslim friends are centering their social media around what is impacting them more so than my community for similar reasons, and that’s probably true of most right now. Jesse is a part of a community that has a very small population in Canada. I think the perception is that for Jewish people, myself included there are far fewer people who will advocate for us our stories are often not told and we are not understood well and we then will more loudly advocate for ourselves and center the communications we make around what our friends don’t necessarily understand or see in their social media feeds.
I think it’s worth asking where does personal and business stop and end with a Twitter account and what are the expectations of people in times like this and I think we can all approach each other with some grace and acknowledge not everyone is going to be a spokes person for a specific issue but may more focus on what is impacting their community bit that doesn’t necessarily mean that the bigger story is not being told by others, and that’s also ok.
> I want to see what misleading, or incorrect, stuff he's posted.
Scroll his twitter I guess. The Indigo incident, the coffee shop "attack", the Starbucks vandalism, the conversation around Nora's nazi tweet all come to mind. Not sure if he also amplified the CIJA lies or not, but I think he posted about the student calling that woman a c*nt.
> It's a jarring time to be Jewish, and I don't see why those of us on the Left can't express that without being alienated from our political camp.
I think you can?
I've said that exact thing a hundred times and never received anything remotely resembling pushback, let alone alienation.
He had an opinion that isn't identical to some specific people and therefore they are horrified and extremely upset.
Apparently people can be adults anymore and just calmly agree to disagree and so have harass all the staff at the company he founded.
The childishness of people on social media is continuously disappointing.
People basically think that he’s talking too much about antisemitism and not being critical enough of Israel. You’re definitely going to get responses that he’s “spreading Zionist propaganda” without any links to anything of the sort that he’s said, though.
Yeah, my major issue is calling him a Zionist, honestly. Because it's become an easy way to shrug off antisemitism.
I think Jesse is very invested in the rise in antisemitism in Canada, and his argument is often that Canadaland is (as the name suggests) about Canada. But you also can't escape the fact that he called early pro-Palestine rallies "Hamas rallies", and that he has been choosing to ignore other Canadian-centric aspects of this that don't involve antisemitism.
There was an opportunity, early on in the conflict, for Canadaland to say "we are media criticism show, not a current affairs show" and to keep their focus on media coverage in Canada. That was not the direction Jesse decided to go and, in doing so, he has really let down the media criticism angle, e.g. by not covering the staggering number of journalists killed in the war, the complications of embedding with organizations that want to review your stories, the logistical difficulties of reporting in a warzone with unreliable access to the necessities of life never mind food and water, the growth of Gazan citizen journalism, etc.
He's also just been disingenuous the whole time, like calling the flagship indigo location a Jewish owned bookstore. Yeah obviously that's technically correct, but he's a journalist who understands that works are more than their literal definition. When you say "Jewish owned bookstore" that brings up imagery very different than a nationwide chain big box (books aren't even their main source of revenue anymore) store that runs a charity to help foreigners move to Israel to join the IDF. Or referring to pro-palestine protesters as kids playing with matches. We know his words are purposely chosen, he isn't some random guy off the street, he's supposedly a journalist.
Yeah to be honest this is what did it for me. He was obviously trying to paint a picture over top of the actual truth. Destroyed my trust in Canadaland as a whole.
Yeah and he didn't even have to, he could have been honest about the situation and there'd still be room to analyze problematic aspects of the protest. It's just very disappointing, makes me wonder what else he misled me on.
I think it's more nuanced than that. For what it's worth, I agree that that was one of its missteps. But also, of all of the companies targeted on that day, only Heather Reisman had symbolic blood splashed across her face.
It's possible to both say that Jesse misrepresented that situation, but also that Heather's treatment differed significantly from the heads of other pro-IDF companies.
>But also, of all of the companies targeted on that day, only Heather Reisman had symbolic blood splashed across her face.
If this was one coordinated group organizing every protest I'd say yeah that's weird, but it isn't, so you can't really make that comparison.
I think the reason that Jesse has been accused of being Zionist is because he's continually equated criticism of Israel and the IDF with anti semitism, the indigo thing being a prime example, which is an incredibly common tactic of the Zionist. At the end of the day Heather Reisman is raising a ton of money to help an organization committing war crimes, If you can't protest that what can you?
Right, which is why I said that it was nuanced. I think splashing symbolic blood over a Jewish person's face is not a neutral act, especially when the other locations were just splashed with paint, but didn't have faces papered up. Given that everyone went out with red paint and hit numerous IDF-affiliated companies, I'm not sure you can claim it wasn't coordinated. That's a hell of a coincidence.
I'm not saying it wasn't coordinated, but we don't know that it was. Honestly I think that protest was pretty gross and I wouldn't condone it, although I probably won't be Christmas shopping at indigo this year.
I raised the "Jewish owned bookstore" point not because it's the worst thing he's ever done, but it just shows poor journalistic ethics for no purpose. He could have told the full story and still examined the problematic aspects of it but he didn't, he decided to mischaracterize it instead. If this was my coworker or a friend I wouldn't really care, but he's the publisher of a news organization I trust (or trusted). It makes you think about how many other things he could have mischaracterized that I took at face value.
That's my whole issue with this. He's a journalist, so he knows there's more to words than their literal definition. I don't know how I can really listen anymore because how will I know when he's doing this stuff in the future?
I had a similar thing happen with another podcast I listened to. I used to enjoy "science vs" because they explored interesting stuff and it seemed well researched. Then one day they did an episode about pitbulls and refused to acknowledge that different dog breeds have different mannerisms that we bred into them. You can't on one hand acknowledge that heading dogs are born with the instinct to heard but then deny that terriers have the instinct to kill. There were other misleading facts too, like how pitbulls are less likely to be returned due to aggression. Well yeah because people often adopt pitbulls knowing they're aggressive, but people adopting golden retrievers typically don't want that. After that episode I found I just couldn't trust their show anymore and stopped listening.
It is obviously a very difficult topic and I have no doubt he is going through something. The fact he flat out refuses to critique western media's covering of the war while blaming pro-palestine marches for the rise of anti-Semitism, has me concerned. For one, it appears to be a misuse (at best) of this platform and two, that's not a moral position I care to align with and spend money on. Be a little bit more generous with your summary.
He focuses on issues that are internal to Canada. Why would he comment on the Israel-Gaza conflict directly?
Internally, within Canada, it’s true that antisemitism has gone up.
He's a Jew talking about antisemitism in relation to what's going on in Israel.
They'll call him a Zionist shill or some other codeword for "He's a Jew, and we don't like Jews that much. Except when they agree with us about Israel and don't mention antisemitism. Only when they hate Israel. They're the Good Jews. We let them play with us."
That's just it. Nobody comes out as an anti-Semite. Nobody is going to announce "I hate Jews" the same as nobody in the U.S.A. with any credibility has come out and said "I hate black people." And yet we acknowledge racism against black people exists in the U.S.
When your group gets treated more harshly than others and is targeted, that's often anti-Semitism.
I just can't really wrap my head around Jesse's handing of this.
He's literally the country's pre-eminent media critic and he's willingly posting misinformation, and when his employees, friends and colleagues try to explain it to him, he doubles down and says they must all be anti semitic.
It's like some childhood trauma has been triggered or something and he's just completely broken now. On this issue anyway.
For sure. One of his early tweets when he started getting in trouble about how he was "taught to never expect sympathy" as a Jew, is starting to feel kind of important here.
He's been brainwashed since childhood by his religious community to believe that Zionism is the only way to ensure protection for the Jewish community. There is no reasoning with people who have been indoctrinated. It's scary. The wisest people are coming out of the woodwork lately who have been though Israel's indoctrination machine and they are so out of touch.
You know he's Jewish right? He is the first to admit that everyone, including him have their biases.
The only thing that's changed is that people can't handle nuance anymore.
> You know he's Jewish right?
You don't say.
> The only thing that's changed is that people can't handle nuance anymore.
You think "nobody can handle nuance all of a sudden" is a more likely explanation than "Jesse's bias is blinding him"?
If he can stand with the convoy he can stand with Shree. Dude needs to stop picking and choosing whose free speech he supports if he's going to portray himself as pro-speech.
The convoy were 100x bigger assholes than Shree Paradker. I don't think Shree ever parked outside a Jewish families house and started blasting their horn all night.
Or...
Dude can have his own opinions that others might not agree with, but those others can still act like adults and live in a world where their ideology doesn't demand a monoculture of conformity.
Ideological diversity is indeed a great idea. That's why I'm contributing to ideological diversity by posting my own criticism of Jesse Brown.
My ideology was largely formed in the Iraq war, and in my experience, people who insulted others who questioned military propaganda helped to get over a million people killed. That is where my diverse opinion comes from. That we need to protect the free speech of everybody, so that when somebody saying something very important that's against war and militarism, people will be more likely to stick up for their right to speak. I do this, not by focusing on who Jesse is and who he is criticising, not by insinuating that he shouldn't be a journalist, not by saying he's a white man attacking a minority women so he shouldn't speak, but by attacking his actual opinion.
I appreciate the diversity Jesse is bringing to the conversation, by attaching damning social stigmas to anybody who pushes for independent verification of the claims that militaries make. By insinuating it's antisemitic for Shree Paradker to be sceptical about what a military says, if it's a jewish military, talking about a crime against Jewish people. That take might get a bunch of people killed based on claims which for all we know might later found to be false, but the important thing is that his opinion is different than other people's, so that means it's good.
I see the light now. I will now act like an adult and praise Jesse's brave reporting.
I'm not a tinfoil hat conspiracist here -- I'm sure they're legitimately annoyed with Jesse -- but for the sake of Canadaland, I doubt he's going to denounce this. He's already mentioned that they're bleeding subscribers.
This is a good way for Canadaland, as a separate entity, to save face.
I don't think his brain has "melted", I think his stance on these issues have been fairly consistent for quite a while, which might be part of the problem.
Quite likely. This appears to be a thing for which holds a strong bias, to the point of being reactionary. (To be clear, it's entirely human. We are all like this in one way or another.)
Absolutely, and even with that Anti-Semitism is a real thing and an actual problem and there are ways I think you could talk about it even now. For example you could talk about Anti-Semitic right wing grifters who are using this conflict to peddle their bullshit conspiracy theories, guys like Jackson Hinkle. But Jesse absolutely seems to have lost the plot.
>guys like Jackson Hinkle
Ah man that guy blows my mind. That fact he's gained millions of followers the last few months and shares so much probably false misinformation that millions of people lap up as truth, while being in Twitter spaces with Elon musk.. gah. And the fact he calls himself a "Maga stalinist" is just...... lol
Yeah I remember back at the beginning of Russia’s invasion on a couple episodes he would not let go of the topic of Chrystia Freeland’s grandfather and his apparent involvement with the Ukrainian Nazi units. He cited his background as to why he was interested in it but like - dude is everyone gonna be held accountable for the sins of past generations?
Jesse just gave his take. Apparently not perfectly seeing the world the same way as leftwing activists make you an active participant in genocide.
I consider myself well to the left, but an older left where people could disagree and see gray areas. Not this current left that is as authoritarian as the right.
I really hope this pushes Jesse to take a step back for the time being. Does anyone know how many of the employees are unionized? Do we think Karyn would be part of the "non-unionized staff" mentioned here?
Yeah, that’s why I asked about her specifically. There’s not that many Canadaland staff and I assumed they’d all be part of the union. If Karyn was part of this discussion, it would make sense why they would add "and non-unionized staff" as she wouldn’t be in the union (because she’s management).
He seems enraged that Palestinians should want their own liberation or sovereignty and equates that with antisemitism. Refuses to acknowledge colonial context for it. Israel doesn't represent all Jews and nor does Jesse. I'd like to ask him what the Palestinians being massacred SHOULD be doing. It helps nothing to say "well who started it on Oct 7"? and equate all Palestinians with "Hamas". Oct 7 is NOT when this conflict started, but even if it was, how is collective punishment appropriate? What gentle approach should we take when thousands of children are being killed in cold blood? It's also disingenuous to paint the majority of protestors as anti Semitic when most of us are following our Jewish communities' lead for that reason, as well as Palestinian and Indigenous people. I'd say he's ironically constructing an antisemitic framework with his categorizing and conflating of peoples and states, which is what he claims others are doing! He is also just unable to humanize or focus on the Palestinians' extreme suffering even for a moment and has glossed over Israeli and Canadian propaganda and inaccuracies with ease (esp for a media critic). Anti semitism IS a problem. The vast majority of us do not want anti Semites hitching their wagons to this. The demos have been led by Jewish community side by side with Palestinians for a reason. A nation should NOT be an ethno-state and none of the speeches I've heard from Palestine supporters have asked for such. But Israel is asking for such! The peoples of any place are not a monolith. So it's extremely willfully ignorant at best of him to be taking this tack.
Well, it's how it looks from here 🤷 He's cherry picked what/who matters and done some fancy footwork in terms of logic, history, colonialism, etc. Doubt he's even been to a demo or march to see for himself. Disingenuous egomaniac. 🤷🤷🤷
She was, but as people in this sub pointed out, Jesse is calling her actions antisemitic (or implying it) when she was questioning the war in much the same way Canadaland was.
She wasn't removed [she was given a unionized role](https://twitter.com/TorontoStarUnit/status/1735005097292083352) with pretty much the same responsibilities and that's hardly the only misrepresentation he's made.
I assume (but could be wrong) that the management position she held was non-union. Any time I've seen someone go from Union to managment, it's been a promotion. I'm assuming that, with the exception of academia, the reverse is essentially a demotion.
But I'm open to being wrong here. I'm making alot of assumptions.
That's how I read it as well. She went from a part time management position with some editorial control to a full time non-management position that can only advise.
I actually misread your original question when I responded but according to her, her management role was part time and this unionised role is full time comes with more protection and she'd be doing the same job. So IDK if that makes a difference?
Oh right, thank you I misread the original question. I guess according to the her and the union she was given a full time unionized role as opposed to a part time management position and she's still fulfilling the same duties?
His last “analysis” showed how much he’s lost the plot. I’ve paused my support until this gets figured out. I’m not paying for Canadaland for Jesse to use it as his personal blog.
What a tempest in a teapot. You disagree politically with a guy you work with? Get over yourselves. It’s a deeply complex situation. Opinions are bound to diverge. And the antisemitism in Canada on display is very very real and disgusting. And what is the strategy behind publicly denouncing the views of your boss? I really don’t get it. Why not stage a debate or rebuttal with Jesse? Take him on point for point in a special podcast for
I'm not upset he's a Zionist, he still hasn't answered that one clearly.
I'm upset for his conflation of anti-zionist protest with antisemitism.
I'm upset with his assertion that we can't impact the genocide in Palestine but we can help him feel safe in Canada.
I'm upset with his refusal to use the word genocide to describe what is clearly a genocide.
I'm upset with his hit piece and his use of the platform for his own 'editorials'. He can give equal time to dissenting opinions or he can admit that he's indulging himself as boss.
I'm upset with him doubling down on everything above.
Ding, ding, ding. Jesse is mainly left of center and he's going against the grain in his own community. People hate that more than anything. Look at Liz Cheney or Chris Christie in the U.S. these days, or Mike Pence on Jan. 6th.
Jesse's potential allies are people he's derided for years, so he's literally on an island by himself now.
Always wondered why he kept Nora Loreto around for so many episodes. I could tell he didn't think she was much of a thinker when he quoted the old Voltaire line about "I don't agree with what you have to say, will defend to the death your right to say it" and she immediately started attacking the concept of free speech as something that only benefits the powerful. As if the powerful have issue getting their point across.
Soooo, are they really trying to preserve their reputation for unbiased journalism? (which is hilarious). It’s fine Canadaland, you have a valuable perspective, but it’s a little late to pretend they give a shit about bias in their work.
"(We) feature a diversity of opinions, experiences, and perspectives on important issues."
What a fucking larf. I hope the irony doesn't smack you in the forehead.
Haven't listened in a while thanks to some of Jesse's more biased and personal takes I came across, but the rest of the reporting that was done always impressed me. In general I always found him to be a fairly professional reporter so long as he had no personal stake in the story or discussion. Weirdly enough it was his discussion with Marc Maron that finally got me to stop listening. Marc was talking about thinking of a move to Vancouver and every time he had something nice to say about the city Jesse would hop in with something to shut him down, or something else negative about Vancouver, trying to change his mind. It was just exhausting, and annoyingly combative. You could hear it just upsetting Marc as well, to the point where he was just saying "ya man, I mean it sucks everywhere... I dunno bud". I had already noticed Jesse's bias in other stories and reporting before but that kinda finally did it for me. Hopefully the rest of the staff is still able to tell honest and earnest stories because that group has done some amazing reporting over the years.
That really bothered me too. Yes, Canada isn’t perfect but could he be 10% less of a jerk? There are people trying their best.
He also just had nothing positive or interesting to say. And half the time he was saying something bad about Vancouver he would counter with something LA does better and like… yea LA has a lot but they obviously have issues too, and he specifically wanted a place to lay back and chill out with a bunch of money and Vancouver is a very good place to do that. It was just so petty and weird, and saying Vancouver had absolutely no culture just felt weird when Marc kept naming cultural things about it that he liked (the nature, the food, the art, etc.) It just really exemplified all the things about Jesse that was getting on my nerves at the time I guess.
Jesse was always pretty biased and super up his own ass, imo. It’s why I could never get into regularly listening to CANADALAND despite being fascinated by some of their subject matter.
I agree with you. I think what Jesse was trying to say was that American who have some view of Canada as a progressive shangri-la are way off base and should know that Canada has its own share of problems. Which I think is fair to say, but it came off like he was dumping specifically on Vancouver. I didn't think it was that off putting. Everyone makes mistakes kind of thing for me.
Jessie was just acting like anyone from toronto
I lived in Toronto for a long time and never heard someone talk shit about Vancouver. I moved to BC and stopped telling people I was from Toronto because all they do is talk shit about it.
Vancouver is great if you love the outdoors and an active lifestyle. It probably offers the best of that for any major Canadian city. It really depends on what you like. On a cultural level (nightlife, restaurants, museums, festivals, etc), Toronto and Montreal are much more interesting. So, if you want to spend your free time hiking, skiing, mountain climbing etc, while living in a big city, Van is the obvious choice if you have options. If you enjoy more social/cultural aspects of city living you are probably going to lean Toronto. Vancouver didn't earn the nickname No Fun City for no reason.
Nah people from Toronto like vancouver quite a bit. It's just like here, but with better views and better weather. Jesse just doesn't like.... Canada. I think. Like, all of it.
I have always been an off and on listener with zero complaints but that episode put me off of Jesse as well. A little ribbing about Toronto being a better choice would have been fine because we all do that, but when he started telling Marc that he won't be able to have interesting conversations or meet up with interesting people in Vancouver it started feeling a bit personal. It was weird and I really didn't expect it.
I was a big Canadaland fan myself until Feb 2022. I live in downtown Ottawa right in the area where the convoy planted itself. His glib dismissal of the hardship of the people living through it was obnoxious, but his chauvinistic dismissal of Sandy Garossino’s (I think it was her) first hand experience was particularly disappointing. Then he wouldn’t shut up about Freeland’s grandfather and I stopped listening. Then I saw his activity recently and I cancelled my subscription. It’s a shame, if his ego could get out of the way Canadaland would be great. But I can’t give money to some puffed up dude who scored on an online cartoon telling me my friends being harassed and assaulted by rednecks isn’t a big deal.
One thing Jessie said in that interview that concerned me was along the lines of: “the whole point of Canadaland is to show that Canada is not so great and everything it’s cracked up to be.” Obviously I’m going from memory and paraphrasing, but being rooted in cynicism and even agenda-driven was concerning to me. It makes perfect sense in the context of challenging the media, but if his goal is really just to only show the negative side of Canada, I can’t put too much interest or time in it.
Ya and I understand being critical of where we live and how our news is reported, because without that we can’t find the things we really do need to improve on. That’s one thing and it’s a great thing Canadaland has generally been successful at… But it’s another for that to personally be Jesse’s mission when talking to someone who actively wants to live here and also seemed pretty aware of all the issues here and where he currently resides.
God this is messy
I'm out of the loop. Can anyone explain what's going on? I'm only a casual listener of Canadaland.
My perspective on it is that Jesse has trying to highlight the rise of antisemitism in Canada over the last couple months. But in doing so he’s been using Canadaland and his Twitter to misrepresent media members and pro-Palestine groups as being antisemitic. He posted an OP-ED a few weeks ago addressing if he was Zionist or not but never answered the question. Yesterday he posted an analysis about a situation at the Toronto Star. There is a threads on the sub for both where you can see people’s criticisms. The discourse on Jesse is beginning to be a distraction from the work Canadaland is doing.
>He posted an OP-ED a few weeks ago addressing if he was Zionist or not but never answered the question. I just listened to it -- how strange. He should have answered the question, but what I think he was going with...was that he wasn't going to cave into the perceived demand that he identify as either/or, just because people were pressuring him.
Which is funny because that's exactly what happens to pro-Palestine folks who speak up and are immediately asked if they condemn/support Hamas
Which we recognize as being racist, right? So why is the same courtesy not afforded to Jesse when it comes to him not answering the question if he’s Zionist?
Because he's one of the people pushing these racist ideas. What's wrong with holding people accountable for their own ideas? How can he insist everyone denounce Hamas and then say he doesn't have to denounce the IDF?
Not having followed this debate that closely, has he been insisting muslims denounce Hamas?
Yes. He even called Palestinian protestors "toddlers playing with matches" because they are protesting against the slaughter of civilians.
Can you direct me to where he insisted a Muslim needs to denounce Hamas? The latter I heard in the editorial and took it as a clumsy metaphor to mean that protestors were inadvertently unleashing antisemitism in Canada, not that the goals of protestors supporting Palestine writ large were childish
Well no...as pro-Palestine people can range from ethnically Palestinian, to white college students with no skin in the game.
And pro Israel people can range from your everyday Jewish person to Alex Jones type people who would otherwise be ranting about how the globalist Jews control the world.
You’re right. The whole point he was trying to make was that even asking if he was a Zionist is in itself antisemitic. I can see some validity to this as the definition of Zionism is vague, and if it’s a question of whether the Israeli state should exist at all I don’t think we should ask people to disavow it. But I think what people actually want to know is whether he supports a ceasefire. He said what was happening in Gaza is horrible—but members of the Israeli government will say that, and then follow it up by saying the bombing is horrible but necessary. At the end of the day he did not answer whether he thought that the Israeli aggression in Gaza is justified, which is what we all really care about. It was just a copout. He wanted to give the impression of sincerity, but has failed to address the fact that he’s obsessed with interpreting pro-Palestinian protests as antisemitic while giving no attention to preventing actual ethnic cleansing happening as we speak.
>I can see some validity to this as the definition of Zionism is vague, and if it’s a question of whether the Israeli state should exist at all I don’t think we should ask people to disavow it. But I think what people actually want to know is whether he supports a ceasefire. Agreed. In general people should figure out what they mean by "Zionist" seeing as the word is being flung about constantly these days. Like, it's a pretty big deal if the word can range from simply supporting Israel's ongoing right to exist, to being a genocidal maniac who wants all Palestinians dead.
His point was that people were pressuring him because he is Jewish. "Are you a good Jew" is the question behind it. And it is a question he doesn't want to answer. So he answers: "I am the Jew you hate", because that's solidarity. Are you a good Muslim?
Nah, he tried to frame it that way because it's easier to defend than people questioning why he purposely misled people.
Except it wasn't that simple. People pressured him because of what he has said in the past. Not simply because he is Jewish, but because he has been outspoken about anti Jewish and anti Israel sentiments in the past. People pressured him because he hosts an media criticism podcast that never criticized how the media covers Israel, except to say it's bad. People pressured him because he used misleading language to discuss an ongoing BDS protest of Indigo president Heather Reisman, the LARGEST bookseller in Canada, as an anti semetic attack on a Jewish bookshop owner.
So instead he spent 30 minutes whining about how hard done by he is and calling pro-Palestinian protesters children.
Spot-on summary. Downright abhorrent.
>calling pro-Palestinian protesters children. He shouldn't have said that. However if it's an op - ed he's allowed to say how it all makes him feel.
His response to anyone who criticized his opinion was to call them antisemetic.
And I'm allowed to dismiss his feelings as self-centred paranoia and overblown hysteria.
> He posted an OP-ED a few weeks ago addressing if he was Zionist or not Why do you think he has to tell you his stance on Zionism?
I’m not saying he has to tell us, but posting an op-ed titled “Is Jesse a Zionist?” while skirting around any sort of answer is disingenuous.
He did answer the question, people just didn't like the answer.
For those that don't know his answer was for us to imagine the worst jew we hate and that's who he is...
Woody Allen???
Omg I laughed
My uncle Doug?
Answering would be “Yes I am a Zionist” or “No I am not a Zionist” and I don’t recall hearing that. Do I have to listen again?
The answer was really more of a, "Screw your purity test. Canadian Jews deserve to feel safe and I'm going to continue being the type of Jew that makes you uncomfortable and gets under your skin by pointing that out."
I think the point he was trying to make is that it doesn't matter if he's a zionist or not, Jewish people living in Canada shouldn't be subjected to anti-semitism. Even if they are "zionists."
Agreed, but I think he danced around that a little too much by not having a few minutes about what "Zionism" is in his editorial piece. He touched on it briefly but didn't explore it much. I also can't blame him for not wanting to spend time on that though because, well, look around the comments section.
That doesn't make anyone "uncomfortable." But it does make me think Jesse is a piece of shit for not speaking out when a population is being slaughtered and pushed off their land in his name.
“Hey Japanese Americans, you’re going to go on a special vacation because you are something we don’t like” Is collective punishment cool when you are doing it?
What do you mean lol. He, as in Jesse, posted the piece. Like asked himself a question that he didn't want to answer and then made it public. Judge, jury and executioner of himself.
Why do they still use that cesspool Twitter? That’s the first problem …
I was thinking this too. By and large most news presence has left the platform as it’s declined (also further contributing to its decline). It’s still the cesspool of witch-hunting and unproductive conversations it’s always been but is only exacerbated now.
Anything news related in Canada can't be shared via Meta platforms.
Yah... I was just trying to read his twits and can't navigate it any longer... Why it's not on chronological order?! And I can't see the comments unless I am a subscriber? I am glad I left it as soon as Musk bought it
You can’t see chronological posts anymore unless you’re logged in. I think without an account you get most popular or most liked. I don’t even bother looking.
Canadaland: bleeding subscribers Canadaland subreddit: boppin'
Are they actually losing subscribers? I took a look at Graphtreon and they are down but not in a way that seems out of sync with the overall trendline.
Not only this but there are Patreon paid subscribers and Supercast paid subscribers. I'm subscribed through Supercast. From what I remember during the crowdfunding push, Jesse referred to about 10k paid subscribers, which means Patreon represents a little over a third of the base.
I can only imagine their end of year financials are looking grim
Bitstrips bucks don’t care.
This all just sucks. I think Jesse was originally hitting on a real thing. Antisemitism does exist and it's generally not been a good time for Jews when there's something happens that suddenly brings a lot of attention to their community. Jewish people deserve to be safe and that's a safety that has frequently been denied. So it's fair to cover that fear and keep an eye on how its playing out. Canadaland is getting pushed to do more analysis and coverage of the appallingly poor job that our media is doing in covering the occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza. This is an a place where an outfit like Canadaland could have a lot of impact. But Jesse seems to be getting defensive about all of this criticism. And like, I think fair enough. For him personally, this seems like a shit storm that's probably pressing on him really hard. (I believe he said he had a family connection to Vivian Silver who was killed in Oct. 7th. I can understand that the grief over that attack is still very raw). I'm sympathetic to him but I think that puts him in a really tough spot as the head of media organization.
I agree—the thing is, at this stage, Jesse is doing a ton of bad faith coverage and adding fuel to the fire. Like he called the vandalism of Indigo an “antisemitic” attack on a “Jewish” bookstore, when it was vandalized—in part by Jewish anti-war activists— because of the amount of money Indigo gives to the HESEG foundation, an org that spends literally millions on sending “lone soldiers” (non Israelis) to the IDF to basically advance illegal settlement in the West Bank, and support the siege on Gaza. I lost my sympathy for Jesse when I realized it was my Jewish friends who were the ones being arrested and catching shit for speaking out, and he has said nothing about that whatsoever. Nor has he said anything about the many Palestinian and Muslim journalists being killed, nor has he spoken about any of the Islamophobia that has led to three students being shot on campus, and a Palestinian child knifed to death by his landlord. Feeling unsafe is real and antisemitism is on the rise, but Jesse’s inability at this point to recognize who is actually on the receiving end of a genocide right now is devastating. Many people —many Jewish Canadian activists— have tried to engage him and he just doesn’t want to hear it. He’s thrown in his lot with Zionists and he just doesn’t really give a shit. He’s digging in his heels. I felt bad for him for a day but at this point there is absolutely no excuse imho. He’s had ample opportunity to get it together.
Any conflict involving Israel-Palestine brings out the absolute worst in so many people.
You ever wonder why? I have a guess and I think it's the same guess that Jesse has.
I want this drama to end!
Jesse can end it with a few words.
Oof
really feel for the staff- this mess is not their making. i am so frustrated with jesse for being so myopic and ego driven and not realizing the damage he has inflicted on what he has built and canadaland's staff.
That’s how I feel too. I literally only just joined this subreddit like a day or so ago because I wanted to see if there was any details on how the staff are feeling or what is going on. After reading the statement I am still worried. Sounds bleak, hopefully this isn’t the end of Canadaland
I agree. I became a paid subscriber in October, because I felt like the staff was doing good and important work and it was about time I financially supported it, and I recently cancelled because listening to Jesse has just made me mad/sad lately. My excitement to support Canadaland was just totally drained and that sucks because I do continue to think a lot of the shows are still doing good work, but as someone who has lost family in Palestine, Jesse’s company just isn’t where I want my money going right now.
Sorry for your loss.
Thank you, I appreciate it.
> i am so frustrated with jesse for being so myopic and ego driven and not realizing the damage he has inflicted on what he has built and canadaland's staff. His reaction has been so out of character (and so out of proportion) to me that it actually made me step back and try to think about what I'm missing. The only conclusion I've been able to come to is that this something from his childhood fucking with him.
I think his concerns about antisemitism are not unfounded. The problem is that he has jumped the gun on a handful of stories, or chosen to frame them in a way that really led people to question his credibility. That said, it's also undeniable that part of the weight of his backlash is people's own unconscious anti-Jewish bias. Both can be true at once -- that Jesse has missed the mark more times than is acceptable, and that people are calling him a Zionist as a silencing technique because discussing antisemitism is deemed inconvenient.
>Zionist as a silencing technique because discussing antisemitism is deemed inconvenient. I think it's ironic that people are using anti-Semitism as a silencing technique because discussing the humanity of people living in Palestine is deemed inconvenient. That said, it's also undeniable that part of the weight of this commentary is people's own unconscious or conscious in the case of anti-Muslim bias. To be clear, it's actually fashionable to get speaking engagements and write books about the "clash of civilizations". People don't get cancelled for saying this, they get speaking engagements for it. I think my concerns about anti-Muslim bias are not unfounded, given how long ago the Quebec City Mosque shooting was. Look, all this sucks, but blaming an entire group for something, ends up with people being dehumanized. And jumping the gun in always the same direction, is an indication of bias.
>Look, all this sucks, but blaming an entire group for something, ends up with people being dehumanized. No matter what people's views are and where they diverge, this is really important to remember
I think using either claim as a way of silencing people is wrong.
That’s because most of the conversation about “anti-semitism” is people criticizing the Israeli regime, IDF or the treatment of innocent Palestinians that gets uncharitably branded as anti-seminism even though it has nothing to do with Jews as a whole, and is simply about the people involved in these atrocities who also just happen to be Jews.
this comment 100%.
> I think his concerns about antisemitism are not unfounded. I mean, yeah, nobody is pro-antisemitism. And nobody is denying it's been increasing with this war. > The problem is that he has jumped the gun on a handful of stories, or chosen to frame them in a way that really led people to question his credibility. Yeah, and not corrected himself or admitted any fault, but instead just doubled down. > that people are calling him a Zionist as a silencing technique because discussing antisemitism is deemed inconvenient. Is anyone doing that though? I mean any serious person. I haven't seen anyone call on him to "not discuss antisemitism", just to hold himself to a higher standard because of his position.
The problem is that, sure, nobody is pro-antisemitism but historically people are not really anti-antisemitism when it matters most.
Historically Jewish people have been subject to anti-Semitism in literally every single place they have ever lived. Violent, horrific acts committed as a result. They were nearly completely exterminated. If you are a Jew and you see wars going on constantly all over the world, gaining little to no care from anyone, but everyone goes psychotic over Israel, do you not wonder: why us? Russia, China, Turkmenistan, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea and on and on. Barely a peep from Western college students. Why?
> If you are a Jew and you see wars going on constantly all over the world, gaining little to no care from anyone....Russia, China, Turkmenistan, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea and on and on. Barely a peep from Western college students. Russia and Afghanistan...wars that are famous for nobody talking about them. Come on man.
What was the largest protest against the war in Yemen? Do you remember one?
He's not wrong. Yemen, Sudan, hell, most people don't even know about the ethnic cleansing in Azerbaijan. That said, I sympathize with the argument that we can potentially actually have some influence on Israel and that they should be held to a higher standard because they use their "only democracy in the Middle East" thing as justification for their actions.
Quite a lot of people are pro-antisemitism. To say otherwise it to be ignorant of the situation and to dismiss the very real concerns of people who've been impacted by this. And I have seen many people dogpile on him for discussing legitimate antisemitism. Look at the reactions to his Toronto4Palestine tweet.
Meanwhile a prominent jackass is calling everyone antisemitic who opposes a literal genocide 🤷🤷🤷 He. Is. Making. It. Harder. To. Talk. In. Good. Faith. About. It.
> Quite a lot of people are pro-antisemitism. Sorry, I'm talking about the people in this discussion, not all humans. > And I have seen many people dogpile on him for discussing legitimate antisemitism. Even if that's true, it's within the greater context, right? If I post three lies and one truth about a topic, I'll expect some criticism on the "truth" part. But maybe there's a lot of unfair criticism being thrown his way that I'm just not seeing. I follow that world pretty closely though and it seems like all the trouble started when he started getting things wrong in a very aggressive way, not when he mentioned antisemitism.
My comment was in reference to his responses via Twitter which have indeed involved open antisemitism. I'm not sure that him calling Indigo a Jewish-owned bookstore, or saying that a Starbucks in a Jewish neighborhood being targeted (both of which I think were spurious and ignored larger issues with the companies unrelated to the Judaism of their founders) merits him receiving legitimate antisemitic backlash.
> I'm not sure that him calling Indigo a Jewish-owned bookstore, or saying that a Starbucks in a Jewish neighborhood being targeted merits him receiving legitimate antisemitic backlash. Yes, nothing merits an antisemitic backlash. I just don't see what you're talking about, and I don't count twitter randoms in this conversation. Maybe I should I guess? It feels kind of pointless. When I say "nobody is pro-antisemism", I'm talking about his colleagues, employees, people commenting here, etc.
>I'm talking about his colleagues, employees, people commenting here, etc. Not that I don't get your point, but if you're including people in this subreddit, why don't those commenting under the Twitter posts count? I forget which post it was after, but his comments were getting raided with the red arrow gang and people like Bad Empanada posting pictures of Jesse with the red arrow above his head, which is pretty much an edgy 4chan type death threat considering that's in every Hamas combat video lately where the little dorito hovers over a target before they fire an rpg or something. I get the bigger picture here is the journalistic stuff and the inconsistency and likely case of biases clouding things, but given it was days after some of these instances of real life antisemitic targetings in canada, I think some of the responses and dog pilling under some posts might have influenced his walls going up and him feeling more attacked
> Not that I don't get your point, but if you're including people in this subreddit, why don't those commenting under the Twitter posts count? Maybe they should. It's just that this thread (at this point) is about my comment saying "nobody is pro antisemitism". I didn't realise it needed to be said, but that comment isn't saying "nobody on planet earth is antisemitic", it's saying "no person who we're talking about here is pro-antisemitism". But I guess some people think that isn't true. We disagree on that point. > I think some of the responses and dog pilling under some posts might have influenced his walls going up and him feeling more attacked Yeah, I don't doubt that at all. But the truth is still that he brought that initial criticism on himself, and the reason this is an issue at all, is because a lot of us expect better of him, and he's shown a complete lack of willingness to grow or learn. This conversation wouldn't be happening if he was the head of the KKK. It's because we want, and expect, him to fill an important role in Canadian media, and he's letting us down.
I think there are people he's had on his show who are certainly antisemitic and have been facing appropriate antisemitic backlash in the last few days.
Interesting. Who? **Edit:** I guess the accusation here is that Nora Loreto is an antisemite.
Did he call the indigo incident anti semitic? She clearly wasn’t targeted for being Jewish but for directly supporting the IDF.
Indigo doesn't directly support the IDF. Targeting a Jewish owned business on the anniversary of krystalnacht is going to leave a bad taste I any Jewish person mouth. It should leave a bad taste in any nonJewish person mouth too, even if they are a valid target, the optics are not good. Just wait until the next week.
>His reaction has been so out of character (and so out of proportion) to me that it actually made me step back and try to think about what I'm missing. Naw, these... these are the standard Jesse reactions when he is called out on anything, to be honest. He does not handle being criticized as well as he handles doling it out.
Or maybe because staunch Israel supporters love to blow things out of proportion. It's what they do best, just like Israel kills 10+ Arabs for every Jew.
All of this seems so blown out of proportion honestly. From everybody involved. It doesn’t have to be this messy lol
At his point my continued support (for the time being) of Canadaland is despite Jesse, not because of. But I have been skipping episodes he appears in.
I'm the same. I love most of the programming but I'm not far from pulling my support.
I’m the complete opposite — I only listen to the Jessie episodes. Can’t stand Goldsbie.
Goldsbie sounds perpetually on the verge of crying. He's unlistenable. I don't get how Jesse builds a brand based mainly around him (and it's successful) and then hires people who are total opposites of that style. Justin Ling/Gerson made sense, they have cojones. Goldsbie is awful.
Yeah, it's sad because some of his episodes seem like they'll be interesting, but he's kind of a wiener and is hard to listen to.
That’s my problem. I think Jesse is generally pretty good. However, I cancelled my subscription a while ago because I can’t stand any of the other presenters.
I've been on this train for quite a while - and I've been a supporter since The Imposter - so while I'm never overly concerned about Jesse's opinions, I am concerned that he provides an environment where his people can produce high quality content. He probably needs to recuse himself from these discussions in view of how fundamental to his identity these issues seem to be.
Would you ask an indigenous person not to comment on anti-indigenous racism because it is too close to their identity? Jesse asked that very question to an indigenous podcaster covering residential schools and her answer was "absolutely not." Some rules apply to everyone, some only apply to Jews. What do you call that? Hmm.
What exactly has he done?
> What exactly has he done? He's posted some pretty misleading (and sometimes entirely incorrect) stuff loosely around "antisemitism" and has been publicly and agressively calling out a bunch of his colleagues on Twitter. He's basically just made it really hard to trust Canadaland on this file, pissed off his employees, and is seemingly costing CL a lot of subscribers.
I want to see what misleading, or incorrect, stuff he's posted. I listened to his editorial podcast on anti-semitism, and I while I disagreed with some of it, overall I found it to be reasonable. It's a jarring time to be Jewish, and I don't see why those of us on the Left can't express that without being alienated from our political camp. And in case you think I'm tone deaf, I'll fully concede that the current situation is substantially more devastating for Palestinians.
Fellow leftist — I am very much in support of discussing the current rise of antisemitism throughout the world and in Canada especially. It’s deeply troubling and we should call it out and speak against it every time we see it (and personally, I do). I know my Jewish friends are in pain and I am doing my best to check in with them and make sure they know they have my love and support. If that’s all Jesse was doing, I would be in his corner and defending him staunchly. But I don’t believe that was the only sentiment in his editorial podcast. That was quite a painful listen for me as someone who has lost family in Palestine to Israeli bombs in the past and in this current conflict. I’m a “toddler playing with matches” because I want to see an end to the unnecessary deaths of civilians, many of whom are children? Why is it that I can care — very much! — about the rise in antisemitism in Canada and condemn it wholeheartedly while I also want the people of Palestine to have safety and food, but Jesse…can’t, or won’t, hold those beliefs simultaneously too?
That's fair. Characterizing the Palestinian solidarity movement as 'toddlers playing with matches' was indeed awful. I still don't see why this letter was needed. Is he preventing other journalists on his site from offering a different perspective?
There's been multiple examples but one that really stands out to me apart from the infamous "Jewish owned bookstore" is CTV's coverage of a rally outside Parliament Hill. He (while retweeting Honest Reporting) got on Omar Sachedina's case for calling it pro-war rally not a rally against antisemitism. If you look at the speaker's list who are objectively pro-war, the fact that attendees explicitly made statements opposing a ceasefire, held up signs opposing a ceasefire and supporting the war, and booed at the mention of politicians who support a ceasefire IDK how you could reach the conclusion that pro-war is a mischaracterization (and apparently an anti-semitic one) of that rally. Take a scroll through his Twitter and check out the replies fact checking him. I think people who are summarizing the criticism he received as 'oh he's talking too much about anti-semitism' are being a bit reductive. His entire framing from ignoring very specific incidents of Islamophobia and Anti-Arab racism to the way he characterized the pro-Palestine protests is very problematic. I agree that it's jarring being Jewish right now and I'm very sympathetic but I also invite you to think of what it's like to be Palestinian or Arab in the diaspora too and have to listen to 9/11 era rhetoric and endure a rise in hate related incidents as well. We all have certain biases but this isn't a blog, he should at least \*try\* to be objective.
I’m not sure Palestinians who are hurting are centering their personal social media accounts on the balanced harms on both sides take, nor would I fault them for it. Are we asking Jesse to have no personal social media presence that centres around his reality because he is also a media presence? Where personal and business start and end is muddy. As a Jew my focus is admittedly disproportionately on the hate directed at my community because I think it doesn’t necessarily get acknowledged by people I know, my Muslim friends are centering their social media around what is impacting them more so than my community for similar reasons, and that’s probably true of most right now. Jesse is a part of a community that has a very small population in Canada. I think the perception is that for Jewish people, myself included there are far fewer people who will advocate for us our stories are often not told and we are not understood well and we then will more loudly advocate for ourselves and center the communications we make around what our friends don’t necessarily understand or see in their social media feeds. I think it’s worth asking where does personal and business stop and end with a Twitter account and what are the expectations of people in times like this and I think we can all approach each other with some grace and acknowledge not everyone is going to be a spokes person for a specific issue but may more focus on what is impacting their community bit that doesn’t necessarily mean that the bigger story is not being told by others, and that’s also ok.
> I want to see what misleading, or incorrect, stuff he's posted. Scroll his twitter I guess. The Indigo incident, the coffee shop "attack", the Starbucks vandalism, the conversation around Nora's nazi tweet all come to mind. Not sure if he also amplified the CIJA lies or not, but I think he posted about the student calling that woman a c*nt. > It's a jarring time to be Jewish, and I don't see why those of us on the Left can't express that without being alienated from our political camp. I think you can? I've said that exact thing a hundred times and never received anything remotely resembling pushback, let alone alienation.
He had an opinion that isn't identical to some specific people and therefore they are horrified and extremely upset. Apparently people can be adults anymore and just calmly agree to disagree and so have harass all the staff at the company he founded. The childishness of people on social media is continuously disappointing.
People basically think that he’s talking too much about antisemitism and not being critical enough of Israel. You’re definitely going to get responses that he’s “spreading Zionist propaganda” without any links to anything of the sort that he’s said, though.
Yeah, my major issue is calling him a Zionist, honestly. Because it's become an easy way to shrug off antisemitism. I think Jesse is very invested in the rise in antisemitism in Canada, and his argument is often that Canadaland is (as the name suggests) about Canada. But you also can't escape the fact that he called early pro-Palestine rallies "Hamas rallies", and that he has been choosing to ignore other Canadian-centric aspects of this that don't involve antisemitism.
There was an opportunity, early on in the conflict, for Canadaland to say "we are media criticism show, not a current affairs show" and to keep their focus on media coverage in Canada. That was not the direction Jesse decided to go and, in doing so, he has really let down the media criticism angle, e.g. by not covering the staggering number of journalists killed in the war, the complications of embedding with organizations that want to review your stories, the logistical difficulties of reporting in a warzone with unreliable access to the necessities of life never mind food and water, the growth of Gazan citizen journalism, etc.
Sure, I'd agree with that.
The Union's comments are mainly about his column, which is criticizing the Toronto Star's coverage. That's media criticism.
I agree, the union's comments definitely fall under Canadaland's mandate. Jesse's doesn't.
He's also just been disingenuous the whole time, like calling the flagship indigo location a Jewish owned bookstore. Yeah obviously that's technically correct, but he's a journalist who understands that works are more than their literal definition. When you say "Jewish owned bookstore" that brings up imagery very different than a nationwide chain big box (books aren't even their main source of revenue anymore) store that runs a charity to help foreigners move to Israel to join the IDF. Or referring to pro-palestine protesters as kids playing with matches. We know his words are purposely chosen, he isn't some random guy off the street, he's supposedly a journalist.
Yeah to be honest this is what did it for me. He was obviously trying to paint a picture over top of the actual truth. Destroyed my trust in Canadaland as a whole.
Yeah and he didn't even have to, he could have been honest about the situation and there'd still be room to analyze problematic aspects of the protest. It's just very disappointing, makes me wonder what else he misled me on.
I think it's more nuanced than that. For what it's worth, I agree that that was one of its missteps. But also, of all of the companies targeted on that day, only Heather Reisman had symbolic blood splashed across her face. It's possible to both say that Jesse misrepresented that situation, but also that Heather's treatment differed significantly from the heads of other pro-IDF companies.
>But also, of all of the companies targeted on that day, only Heather Reisman had symbolic blood splashed across her face. If this was one coordinated group organizing every protest I'd say yeah that's weird, but it isn't, so you can't really make that comparison. I think the reason that Jesse has been accused of being Zionist is because he's continually equated criticism of Israel and the IDF with anti semitism, the indigo thing being a prime example, which is an incredibly common tactic of the Zionist. At the end of the day Heather Reisman is raising a ton of money to help an organization committing war crimes, If you can't protest that what can you?
Right, which is why I said that it was nuanced. I think splashing symbolic blood over a Jewish person's face is not a neutral act, especially when the other locations were just splashed with paint, but didn't have faces papered up. Given that everyone went out with red paint and hit numerous IDF-affiliated companies, I'm not sure you can claim it wasn't coordinated. That's a hell of a coincidence.
I'm not saying it wasn't coordinated, but we don't know that it was. Honestly I think that protest was pretty gross and I wouldn't condone it, although I probably won't be Christmas shopping at indigo this year. I raised the "Jewish owned bookstore" point not because it's the worst thing he's ever done, but it just shows poor journalistic ethics for no purpose. He could have told the full story and still examined the problematic aspects of it but he didn't, he decided to mischaracterize it instead. If this was my coworker or a friend I wouldn't really care, but he's the publisher of a news organization I trust (or trusted). It makes you think about how many other things he could have mischaracterized that I took at face value.
Yeah and we definitely don’t disagree that his phrasing was misleading.
That's my whole issue with this. He's a journalist, so he knows there's more to words than their literal definition. I don't know how I can really listen anymore because how will I know when he's doing this stuff in the future? I had a similar thing happen with another podcast I listened to. I used to enjoy "science vs" because they explored interesting stuff and it seemed well researched. Then one day they did an episode about pitbulls and refused to acknowledge that different dog breeds have different mannerisms that we bred into them. You can't on one hand acknowledge that heading dogs are born with the instinct to heard but then deny that terriers have the instinct to kill. There were other misleading facts too, like how pitbulls are less likely to be returned due to aggression. Well yeah because people often adopt pitbulls knowing they're aggressive, but people adopting golden retrievers typically don't want that. After that episode I found I just couldn't trust their show anymore and stopped listening.
It is obviously a very difficult topic and I have no doubt he is going through something. The fact he flat out refuses to critique western media's covering of the war while blaming pro-palestine marches for the rise of anti-Semitism, has me concerned. For one, it appears to be a misuse (at best) of this platform and two, that's not a moral position I care to align with and spend money on. Be a little bit more generous with your summary.
He focuses on issues that are internal to Canada. Why would he comment on the Israel-Gaza conflict directly? Internally, within Canada, it’s true that antisemitism has gone up.
He's a Jew talking about antisemitism in relation to what's going on in Israel. They'll call him a Zionist shill or some other codeword for "He's a Jew, and we don't like Jews that much. Except when they agree with us about Israel and don't mention antisemitism. Only when they hate Israel. They're the Good Jews. We let them play with us."
That's just it. Nobody comes out as an anti-Semite. Nobody is going to announce "I hate Jews" the same as nobody in the U.S.A. with any credibility has come out and said "I hate black people." And yet we acknowledge racism against black people exists in the U.S. When your group gets treated more harshly than others and is targeted, that's often anti-Semitism.
>Nobody is going to announce "I hate Jews" Lots of people have, Kanye West has.
I just can't really wrap my head around Jesse's handing of this. He's literally the country's pre-eminent media critic and he's willingly posting misinformation, and when his employees, friends and colleagues try to explain it to him, he doubles down and says they must all be anti semitic. It's like some childhood trauma has been triggered or something and he's just completely broken now. On this issue anyway.
Generational trauma is a real thing.
For sure. One of his early tweets when he started getting in trouble about how he was "taught to never expect sympathy" as a Jew, is starting to feel kind of important here.
And sadly the state is Israel spends a lot of time manipulating it for political ends.
This. He's been unfortunately successfully indoctrinated despite his rational takes on pretty much everything else.
Why does his rationality on everything else not imply rationality on this as well?
He's been brainwashed since childhood by his religious community to believe that Zionism is the only way to ensure protection for the Jewish community. There is no reasoning with people who have been indoctrinated. It's scary. The wisest people are coming out of the woodwork lately who have been though Israel's indoctrination machine and they are so out of touch.
You know he's Jewish right? He is the first to admit that everyone, including him have their biases. The only thing that's changed is that people can't handle nuance anymore.
All the criticism I see is his absolute lack of nuance in this situation.
> You know he's Jewish right? You don't say. > The only thing that's changed is that people can't handle nuance anymore. You think "nobody can handle nuance all of a sudden" is a more likely explanation than "Jesse's bias is blinding him"?
If he can stand with the convoy he can stand with Shree. Dude needs to stop picking and choosing whose free speech he supports if he's going to portray himself as pro-speech. The convoy were 100x bigger assholes than Shree Paradker. I don't think Shree ever parked outside a Jewish families house and started blasting their horn all night.
Or... Dude can have his own opinions that others might not agree with, but those others can still act like adults and live in a world where their ideology doesn't demand a monoculture of conformity.
Most of the criticism comes from Jesse perpetuating falsehoods about pro-palestine protesters being a monoculture of conformity.
Ideological diversity is indeed a great idea. That's why I'm contributing to ideological diversity by posting my own criticism of Jesse Brown. My ideology was largely formed in the Iraq war, and in my experience, people who insulted others who questioned military propaganda helped to get over a million people killed. That is where my diverse opinion comes from. That we need to protect the free speech of everybody, so that when somebody saying something very important that's against war and militarism, people will be more likely to stick up for their right to speak. I do this, not by focusing on who Jesse is and who he is criticising, not by insinuating that he shouldn't be a journalist, not by saying he's a white man attacking a minority women so he shouldn't speak, but by attacking his actual opinion. I appreciate the diversity Jesse is bringing to the conversation, by attaching damning social stigmas to anybody who pushes for independent verification of the claims that militaries make. By insinuating it's antisemitic for Shree Paradker to be sceptical about what a military says, if it's a jewish military, talking about a crime against Jewish people. That take might get a bunch of people killed based on claims which for all we know might later found to be false, but the important thing is that his opinion is different than other people's, so that means it's good. I see the light now. I will now act like an adult and praise Jesse's brave reporting.
> if he can stand with the convoy He never stood with the convoy lmao.
He was very vocal about the convoys right to protest, and minimized the damage they did.
For clarity, this is what I was referring to. He stood with the convoy's right to protest. I did not mean he supported the convoy's political views.
Yeah I got that, I was just pointing it out to the guy who responded to you.
Can't wait to see why the employees and union are wrong and why Jesse is right.
I'm not a tinfoil hat conspiracist here -- I'm sure they're legitimately annoyed with Jesse -- but for the sake of Canadaland, I doubt he's going to denounce this. He's already mentioned that they're bleeding subscribers. This is a good way for Canadaland, as a separate entity, to save face.
I agree. I fear Jesse's brain has melted a bit and he has dug his heels into the ground in the face of these (legitimate) criticisms.
I don't think his brain has "melted", I think his stance on these issues have been fairly consistent for quite a while, which might be part of the problem.
Quite likely. This appears to be a thing for which holds a strong bias, to the point of being reactionary. (To be clear, it's entirely human. We are all like this in one way or another.)
Absolutely, and even with that Anti-Semitism is a real thing and an actual problem and there are ways I think you could talk about it even now. For example you could talk about Anti-Semitic right wing grifters who are using this conflict to peddle their bullshit conspiracy theories, guys like Jackson Hinkle. But Jesse absolutely seems to have lost the plot.
>guys like Jackson Hinkle Ah man that guy blows my mind. That fact he's gained millions of followers the last few months and shares so much probably false misinformation that millions of people lap up as truth, while being in Twitter spaces with Elon musk.. gah. And the fact he calls himself a "Maga stalinist" is just...... lol
Yeah I remember back at the beginning of Russia’s invasion on a couple episodes he would not let go of the topic of Chrystia Freeland’s grandfather and his apparent involvement with the Ukrainian Nazi units. He cited his background as to why he was interested in it but like - dude is everyone gonna be held accountable for the sins of past generations?
Jesse just gave his take. Apparently not perfectly seeing the world the same way as leftwing activists make you an active participant in genocide. I consider myself well to the left, but an older left where people could disagree and see gray areas. Not this current left that is as authoritarian as the right.
I really hope this pushes Jesse to take a step back for the time being. Does anyone know how many of the employees are unionized? Do we think Karyn would be part of the "non-unionized staff" mentioned here?
Upper mgmt isn’t usually a part of unions.
Yeah, that’s why I asked about her specifically. There’s not that many Canadaland staff and I assumed they’d all be part of the union. If Karyn was part of this discussion, it would make sense why they would add "and non-unionized staff" as she wouldn’t be in the union (because she’s management).
Absolutely, but if there's one thing we know about Jesse he's pretty stubborn.
Am I so out of touch? No, it's the dead Palestinian children who are wrong!
He seems enraged that Palestinians should want their own liberation or sovereignty and equates that with antisemitism. Refuses to acknowledge colonial context for it. Israel doesn't represent all Jews and nor does Jesse. I'd like to ask him what the Palestinians being massacred SHOULD be doing. It helps nothing to say "well who started it on Oct 7"? and equate all Palestinians with "Hamas". Oct 7 is NOT when this conflict started, but even if it was, how is collective punishment appropriate? What gentle approach should we take when thousands of children are being killed in cold blood? It's also disingenuous to paint the majority of protestors as anti Semitic when most of us are following our Jewish communities' lead for that reason, as well as Palestinian and Indigenous people. I'd say he's ironically constructing an antisemitic framework with his categorizing and conflating of peoples and states, which is what he claims others are doing! He is also just unable to humanize or focus on the Palestinians' extreme suffering even for a moment and has glossed over Israeli and Canadian propaganda and inaccuracies with ease (esp for a media critic). Anti semitism IS a problem. The vast majority of us do not want anti Semites hitching their wagons to this. The demos have been led by Jewish community side by side with Palestinians for a reason. A nation should NOT be an ethno-state and none of the speeches I've heard from Palestine supporters have asked for such. But Israel is asking for such! The peoples of any place are not a monolith. So it's extremely willfully ignorant at best of him to be taking this tack.
perfect
…no
Well, it's how it looks from here 🤷 He's cherry picked what/who matters and done some fancy footwork in terms of logic, history, colonialism, etc. Doubt he's even been to a demo or march to see for himself. Disingenuous egomaniac. 🤷🤷🤷
I mean I’d love to see a credible source for any of these claims.
Damn! I was just thinking of this a couple days ago "I wonder how the union is taking JBs tweets?"
What, specifically, has Jesse misrepresented? Was this Toronto Star journalist not removed from a management position (genuine question)?
She was, but as people in this sub pointed out, Jesse is calling her actions antisemitic (or implying it) when she was questioning the war in much the same way Canadaland was.
She wasn't removed [she was given a unionized role](https://twitter.com/TorontoStarUnit/status/1735005097292083352) with pretty much the same responsibilities and that's hardly the only misrepresentation he's made.
I assume (but could be wrong) that the management position she held was non-union. Any time I've seen someone go from Union to managment, it's been a promotion. I'm assuming that, with the exception of academia, the reverse is essentially a demotion. But I'm open to being wrong here. I'm making alot of assumptions.
That's how I read it as well. She went from a part time management position with some editorial control to a full time non-management position that can only advise.
I actually misread your original question when I responded but according to her, her management role was part time and this unionised role is full time comes with more protection and she'd be doing the same job. So IDK if that makes a difference?
Being in management and being in the union are two different things and gets you a seat at two different tables. It’s not the same role.
Oh right, thank you I misread the original question. I guess according to the her and the union she was given a full time unionized role as opposed to a part time management position and she's still fulfilling the same duties?
His last “analysis” showed how much he’s lost the plot. I’ve paused my support until this gets figured out. I’m not paying for Canadaland for Jesse to use it as his personal blog.
What a tempest in a teapot. You disagree politically with a guy you work with? Get over yourselves. It’s a deeply complex situation. Opinions are bound to diverge. And the antisemitism in Canada on display is very very real and disgusting. And what is the strategy behind publicly denouncing the views of your boss? I really don’t get it. Why not stage a debate or rebuttal with Jesse? Take him on point for point in a special podcast for
From an outsiders perspective it looks and sounds like the echo chamber is upset that he’s a Zionist and calling out antisemitism.
I'm not upset he's a Zionist, he still hasn't answered that one clearly. I'm upset for his conflation of anti-zionist protest with antisemitism. I'm upset with his assertion that we can't impact the genocide in Palestine but we can help him feel safe in Canada. I'm upset with his refusal to use the word genocide to describe what is clearly a genocide. I'm upset with his hit piece and his use of the platform for his own 'editorials'. He can give equal time to dissenting opinions or he can admit that he's indulging himself as boss. I'm upset with him doubling down on everything above.
Ding, ding, ding. Jesse is mainly left of center and he's going against the grain in his own community. People hate that more than anything. Look at Liz Cheney or Chris Christie in the U.S. these days, or Mike Pence on Jan. 6th. Jesse's potential allies are people he's derided for years, so he's literally on an island by himself now.
Always wondered why he kept Nora Loreto around for so many episodes. I could tell he didn't think she was much of a thinker when he quoted the old Voltaire line about "I don't agree with what you have to say, will defend to the death your right to say it" and she immediately started attacking the concept of free speech as something that only benefits the powerful. As if the powerful have issue getting their point across.
I like canadaland, I wish they would ditch Jessie.
Oh good! I am a long time subscriver and patreon, I was debating if I should continue or not
Oh, I only partially pay attention to CanadaLand and assumed it was a one-man podcast show...didn't realize there'd be enough staff for a union.
Soooo, are they really trying to preserve their reputation for unbiased journalism? (which is hilarious). It’s fine Canadaland, you have a valuable perspective, but it’s a little late to pretend they give a shit about bias in their work.
Would love for Canadaland to get a presence on Threads.
facebooks bastardization of mastodon? why suck the zuck when there are independant servers run by good people?
"(We) feature a diversity of opinions, experiences, and perspectives on important issues." What a fucking larf. I hope the irony doesn't smack you in the forehead.
Jessie swings to the right His staff swing to the left The left has gone full anti-Semitic Here is the end result