- Yeah. Yeah, I got multiple notifications on LinkedIn
that people working in the prime minister's office
were looking at my profile.
More than once I got these notifications.
And the first time I was like, "Okay, what does that mean?"
Then the second time and the third time.
And it was clear to me that I had said some things
that were not so good for their public relations team.
(suspenseful music)
- I'm Dave Rubin,
and joining me today is the Substack essayist
for "Noble Truths with Rav Arora" and journalist
who I don't have to put air quotes around.
It's quite lovely.
Rav Arora, welcome back to "The Rubin Report."
- Hey, Dave.
It's good to be on,
and it's good to get that formal
"Noble Truths with Rav Arora" introduction.
I'm still working on that branding,
but I like the way you said it, for sure. Appreciate it.
- "Noble Truths with Rav Arora," it sounds pleasant
and lofty and really the highest compliment
that I can give someone these days
the fact that I can call you a journalist
and I didn't have to do air quotes.
I mean, does it get any better than that?
- Yeah. Yeah.
And I don't have any formal education.
So, for some people that evokes a lot of skepticism
about who this weirdo writing in his mom's basement is,
but I think for a lot of people,
I just kind of just say what I wanna say.
And I'm just straight with the facts
and I don't try to spin it
according to any kind of precondition narrative.
I'm not working for anybody.
I'm just writing about issues that are important to me.
And I don't really identify as liberal or conservative,
just kind of trying to make sense of the world,
whatever comes my way.
And if that means I'm gonna sound a little left
on something or a little right, I just go for it.
- Well, Rav, I would rather have a weirdo
in his mom's basement than someone
that went to Columbia Journalism School,
so you are good to go.
Most of my audience probably recognizes you.
You've been on the show
for multiple Friday panel extravaganzas,
but you do find work as a journalist.
You are up in Canada.
And the reason I wanted to do
this condensed interview with you today,
and we're just sort of shooting this on the fly
is because you've gotten into some hot water
with your prime minister up there in Canada, Justin Trudeau.
In my estimation is the most authoritarian,
I would say world leader from a Western nation.
And you've been writing a bit about him
and what's going on in Canada.
And now the government is looking into you.
You scary person in your mom's basement.
- Yeah. Yeah.
I don't know why I'm so threatening.
I mean, I don't know, my mom has been funny about this
and I can talk about that in a second.
But yeah, I wrote an op-ed in the "New York Post"
calling Trudeau basically a horrible authoritarian leader
who's violated basic human rights, civil liberties
and constitutional rights,
specifically with respect to the vaccine mandates.
And I just talked about how
my family were immigrants from India
and we came to Canada in search for more freedom.
Whether that's financial, social, political, vocational.
We just wanted more opportunities.
And that was kind of the idea that my mom and my dad had,
is to give us more freedoms, right?
Give their kids more freedom,
so they can pursue what they wanna pursue.
And here we are during the COVID pandemic.
And, yes, there are many issues
surrounding keeping people safe,
keeping vulnerable people safe.
And there are various restrictions that perhaps make sense.
But when it came to just my freedom,
it was completely restricted.
I couldn't go to the gym for the longest time,
for several months.
Couldn't go out to a restaurant and dine in,
and I couldn't even travel by air.
I couldn't even fly or go on a train
anywhere in the country, let alone leave the country
for several months due to the travel vaccine mandates
that outright discriminated, outright banned
the unvaccinated from traveling anywhere,
other than if you wanna go in your car.
But even that you couldn't cross the US-Canada border.
And I missed out on a lot of opportunities.
Like in December, for example
I was talking to Ben Shapiro's team.
I've been on a show a couple times
and we were thinking about doing something in Florida
actually at the time in person.
And I just couldn't go because I was banned.
I was deemed as a second-class citizen
who was not able to travel.
And so, in this article that I wrote,
I just made that point of in many ways
my freedoms would've been more secured in India,
the country that I came from than here.
Even though we came here for more freedoms.
And that to me is just a total travesty
and really makes us reevaluate
what this supposedly free liberal democracy here in Canada,
where our freedoms are completely restricted.
- So, you write the piece in the "New York Post."
And of course, nothing you're saying
is coming as a surprise to my audience
because obviously we've covered a lot
of what's going on with Trudeau and Canada,
the trucker convoy and freezing of bank accounts,
and all of that stuff.
So, I think everyone watching this is on board.
They hear what you're saying.
But then how did this thing level up?
You suddenly found some government people
were doing a little digging on you.
- Yeah, yeah.
I got multiple notifications on LinkedIn
that people working in the prime minister's office
were looking at my profile.
More than once I got these notifications.
And the first time I was like, "Okay, what does that mean?"
And the second time and the third time.
And it was clear to me that I had said some things
that were not so good for their public relations team.
And I don't know who it was that looked at me,
whether it was just some 27-year-old intern
at the public relations office,
or whether it was somebody higher up.
A lot of people think it's somebody perhaps higher up,
who for them, like this is really bad press, right?
And that's obviously not my goal.
My goal is not to just shit on Trudeau.
My goal is to just say what I honestly wanna say
and talk about some of the disturbing authoritarian trends
in this country.
And it seemed to have rung an alarm for them
and they wanted to look into me,
and I don't know what the implications of that is,
other than I'm on the prime minister's radar.
And I should probably put that on my Twitter bio.
(Dave laughing)
- It should be on your Twitter bio
for as long as you're allowed to be on Twitter.
I know a little something about how tenuous that can be.
But can you just talk like joking aside for a second?
Can you just talk about the chilling effect of that?
I mean, look, you're outspoken publicly.
You're a young person trying to make your bones,
make your career.
You are publicly unvaxxed,
so you could not leave the country.
You're critical of the government.
And now you have government agents in essence
looking closely at your work.
I mean, you're in your mom's basement, as you said.
It's not the most fun thing in the world.
- Yeah, yeah, no, some people have mentioned to me
that I should take this a bit more seriously than I am.
And I think that's just my personality
is like, I don't take these things super, super seriously
and lose sleep over them.
I mean, if Trudeau's losing sleep over me,
that's fine enough.
(Dave laughing)
I don't wanna lose sleep over making Trudeau lose sleep.
But no, in all seriousness, it is very chilling
that one article can have that kind of effect,
especially given that I don't really have
like a massive platform yet.
I'm still growing.
I'm still a young person.
And I mean, even just on Twitter too
with that article that I posted,
there were so many journalists,
government-funded journalists by the way,
working for the CBC, working for Global News,
the Toronto Star that were pointing out that this op-ed
is total balderdash and he should just get vaccinated,
and he just whining about his freedoms.
And a lot of people, by the way, weirdly enough were saying,
"Oh, he should just go back to India.
Why is he even here?"
Like people like that were saying and it's like,
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Why did we just go like Trumpian suddenly?
Like, why?
Like I thought this was the rhetoric
that was associated with Trump.
And then that was one of the points of that essay
and a couple of other essays that I've written before too.
It's like the direction we went in, in the name of safety,
diversity, inclusivity.
It's exactly what we feared would be of the other side.
Like Trudeau genuinely has become this monstrous,
discriminatory authoritarian leader
that we all feared Trump would be.
And I'm no Trump defender.
I'm not gonna defend him or openly support him,
or just any of that.
But what Trudeau is displaying is true authoritarianism.
It's true stripping people away
from their constitutional rights and their civil liberties.
And it's, when you're a young journalist,
I'm definitely not part of the conventional narrative,
because I'm not writing for the "CBC."
I'm not writing for any of these traditional outlets.
I'm just an independent writer.
And it seems to be,
there's a weird shortage of that here in Canada.
Otherwise it's mysterious why I've risen,
whereas other journalists haven't.
It's like there aren't enough independent journalists
who are willing to say what I'm willing to say
because they rather get their journalism degree
and work for the CBC and get paid a certain salary
and spew out the same political narrative
over and over again.
But for me, it's like I don't want to be
anything close to that.
I want to be my own independent voice
and raise these concerns about my country.
- Yeah.
I mean, you bring up a couple interesting things.
I mean, first this idea that Trudeau in essence
has become what they purported Trump to be.
Trump, it turned out not to really be those things
for all his faults.
And now you've got Trudeau,
who's actually doing many of those things
and he exercising that state power,
but to your latter point about these journalists
that go work for the CBC and everything else.
You guys have a major problem right now in Canada
that we don't necessarily have here yet
or at least so obviously, which is that the government
not only does fund a huge amount of your journalism overtly.
Here, they do it more subtly.
But now independent journalists like you
and Ezra Levant over at the Rebel,
and a bunch of other people
that are trying to do some interesting things in Canada
are gonna be held to sort of untenable standards
when it comes to your work, right?
- Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
There's a very small minority of journalists
who are doing what would me and Ezra.
And I'm trying to think who else
I would put in that category.
I mean, Rex Murphy writes for the "National Post."
So, he writes for an established outlet.
that's conservative leaning,
and he's been on Jordan's podcast a bunch
to talk about Canadian politics.
But I think the incentives are so stacked.
Like if you're a young journalist, right?
My age or a bit older,
and you're conservative leaning or libertarian leaning,
and you're really dissatisfied with what
the government is doing right now.
It's like why would you ever want to do this?
Like, why would you ever want get into this career path
where the odds are so stacked against you,
that you, if you wanna have a well-paying job,
if you wanna put food on the table for your family,
you have to apply to the CBC, the Toronto star
and you have to continually perpetuate
and regurgitate these same narratives,
otherwise you're not gonna be making a lot of money.
I mean, even with local outlets here,
like I live in a small city called Chilliwack,
about an hour away from Vancouver.
And the editor of the "Chilliwack Progress."
He's openly called me like an alt-right conspiracy theorist,
right-winger, somebody who's covering for white people.
Like, he's openly blocked me on all platforms.
He's called me alt-right and the horrible names.
And it's like our local newspaper, which is thankfully dying
and it's not doing that well.
Even there, there's a very established,
deep established narrative,
even though we live in a fairly conservative area, actually.
But even the local media outlets.
Let alone the national, the federal,
the provincial level outlets.
They've also established this given narrative.
And so, you have a lot of people
who might be interested in becoming journalists,
but they just see that
that this is not gonna be financially sustainable,
so then they become professors, they become accountants,
or lawyers or doctors or whatever.
That's just kind of where it's at.
But so, it's very rare for people like me who are young,
who have kind of taken this risk.
And maybe because I'm young,
I'm more able to take a bit of that risk
because I have certain freedoms living with my parents still
and doing these kind of things,
where I can take these big risks
and speak out for what I wanna say,
whereas other people just financially,
given the media ecosystem, just aren't able to.
- How much longer do you think the situation
in Canada is sustainable?
I mean, look, you've got people like Jordan Peterson,
who are outspoken critics of the government.
And I think Jordan is at least considering
leaving Canada all together.
Gad Saad, who of course, professor at Concordia.
One of my best friends.
He is often talking about leaving Canada.
Viva Frei, another big actual journalist lawyer.
He just left.
He moved to Florida this week.
I mean, the brain drain on a society like that
can't last forever.
- No, no.
Again, I've already talked about journalism,
but it's same with academia.
You go, like even my local university.
I've already mentioned my local newspaper.
They hate me, the local university.
There's also professors there who...
There was one, a think tank that I wanted to be part of
that was about having young people talk
about real political issues, particularly about race.
And I wanted to get into this.
And the professor openly said to me like,
"No, no, you're not welcome."
Like, "We don't want any of your views here."
The dominant narrative within universities
it's so centralized.
It's so narrow-minded that people who even
are outside of the norm, they're immediately excluded
and they're immediately marginalized.
So, there's this big intellectual dominant force
that's very left-leaning here in Canada
across universities.
And I'm not gonna say like all universities
or everybody's like that.
There are wonderful professors that I work with,
although more about like religion or psychology,
or other things that aren't as politically affected,
you might say.
But for journalists who are coming up right now
and for people in academia, in the humanities
and the liberal arts,
it's like there's an increasing ideological monoculture
where you have to abide by these certain religious precepts
with regards to gender, with regards to race,
with regards to inequality,
with regards to vaccination status.
And if you don't tow that line,
then you're immediately an outsider.
And it's making people like myself
think about potentially moving too.
I don't know what will happen
but I think I'll definitely wanna move here
at some point in the future. - I don't know if you've heard
but the sun is always shining here
in the free state of Florida.
- Hey, I would consider it.
I would genuinely consider that.
- All right.
We'll take this offline.
All right. Well, I wanted to do this quickly with you,
just so that people could hear about this
because you are fighting the good fight up there.
I didn't know you were doing it from your mom's basement.
Now, it seems doubly cool what you're doing.
So, keep fighting
and we'll link to your Substack down below,
so people can find you.
- Hey, it's a nice basement here.
It's a nice basement.
- You got a window in the basement.
I mean, that's pretty good. - [Rav] I got a window.
- It's not like she's just throwing fish heads
down there once a week.
- By the way, I'll just quickly it say too,
like my mom has been very fearful and discouraging me
from ever writing anything bad about Trudeau.
She's been like, "Rav, do we need bodyguards outside?"
Like, "You have little siblings, Rav who go to school."
Like, "Don't ruin their reputation
by being this like supposed scary right-winger."
She's like, "Maybe we have to move places
or change addresses."
Like, "Don't write anything bad about Trudeau,"
in her very Indian mom kind of way.
I'm like, "Mom, I'm gonna move out."
And she's like, "Fine, do it."
And I'm like, "I'll move with Dave Rubin
and look after his kids in August maybe."
(Dave laughing)
- The only thing is we don't have basements in Florida
because of the storms, the flooding.
So, let me see what I can do.
I get back down that one.
- Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
You gotta expose to some racial diversity.
They need to see some brown.
They need to see some brown faces.
(Dave laughing)
- Indeed. Indeed.
All right, Rav. Keep up the good work, man.
- [Rav] All right. Thanks.
(suspenseful music)
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