Type of site | Politics |
---|---|
Available in | Canadian English |
Headquarters | Toronto, Ontario[1] |
Owner | Ezra Levant |
Founder(s) | Ezra Levant, Brian Lilley |
CEO | Ezra Levant |
Key people | Lawrence Solomon, Raheel Raza (Advisory Board) |
URL | RebelNews.com |
Commercial | Yes |
Registration | Optional |
Launched | 16 February 2015 |
Current status | Active |
This article is part of a series on |
Conservatism in Canada |
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Rebel News (also known as The Rebel Media and The Rebel) is a Canadian far-right[2] political and social commentary media website operated by Rebel News Network Ltd. It has been described as a "global platform" for the anti-Muslim ideology known as counter-jihad.[3][4] It was founded in February 2015 by former Sun News Network personalities Ezra Levant and Brian Lilley.
Rebel News broadcasts its content only on the internet and has been compared to Breitbart News of the US.[5][6][7][8] Rebel News has been described as being part of the alt-right movement.[9][10][11]
Former Sun News reporter Faith Goldy joined Rebel News after its launch,[12] but was fired for her coverage of the 2017 Charlottesville rally and for conducting an interview with The Daily Stormer.[13] A co-founder and two freelancers resigned in protest of the coverage.[14] Gavin McInnes, founder of the far-right neo-fascist[15][16][17] organization Proud Boys, was a contributor. McInnes departed in 2017, then temporarily rejoined the site for a period in 2019.[18][19] In the midst of the 2021 Canadian federal election, Justin Trudeau accused Rebel News of spreading misinformation, especially with regards to COVID-19 vaccines.[20][21][22] Rebel News has promoted climate change denial and oil sands extraction in Alberta.[23]
In 2015, he established Rebel Media, a far-right outlet that regularly features global and domestic "stars" of the nationalist movement.
Far-right Twitter accounts come and go, often generating significant traction without any obvious relation to organised movements. As a stage of his reinvention of self after the EDL, its leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon ('Tommy Robinson') reinvented himself as a journalist, working for the Canadian far-right media company Rebel Media.
The Rebel Media, a far-right news organization, published articles by Canadian alt-right propagandists such as: "Want to sop cultural Marxist indoctrination? Cut public funding of universities" (Nicholas 2017); "Social justice is socialism in disguise" (Goldy 2016); and "How progressives use our kids for Marxist social experiments" (Goldy 2017).
Far-right Canadian media outlets, for instance, have bombarded its subscribers with all kinds of pro-Trump, racist and xenophobic dialogue, both before and after Trump's victory. Rebel Media, a popular far-right online media platform run by Ezra Levant, a controversial Canadian far-right political activist, writer and broadcaster, has been an outright supporter of Trump, publishing countless extreme-right leaning articles on why to support him.
Beyond US-based far-right news websites such as Breitbart, Infowars and Epoch Times, other alternative online media outlets include Australia-based XYZ and The Unshackled, Canada-based Rebel News and UK-based Politicalite.com and PoliticalUK.co.uk, just to name a few, which operate as far-right metapolitical channels and counter-publics that strive to influence mainstream culture and discourse (Holt, 2019).
All four, including Robinson himself, were employees of The Rebel Media, a Toronto-based far-right website
The Rebel Media has more than one million subscribers on YouTube, and is often described as the home of an anti-Muslim ideology it calls "counter-jihad".
The theory, that the pandemic is a global conspiracy to allow world leaders to reset the planet, remained niche until picked up by Rebel News, a Canadian equivalent of Breitbart News.
Key alt-right media players, such as Ezra Levant, moved to social media, where their online audience is comparable to those of legacy media such as CBC, CTV, and Global. Levant's network, Rebel News, has launched numerous alt-right figures, becoming an incubator for a certain kind of media celebrity status important to the alt-right globally.
In June 2017, he was fired from Rebel Media, a Canadian alt-right media outlet...
The reality is, organizations — organizations like yours — that continue to spread misinformation and disinformation on the science around vaccines … is part of why we're seeing such unfortunate anger and lack of understanding of basic science," he said. "Frankly, your — I won't call it a media organization — your group of individuals need to take accountability for some of the polarization that we're seeing in this country.
Laurie 2019 p. 176
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