Doug Ford Appointed a Far-Right Former Rebel Media Host to Run as an Ontario PC Candidate

Doug Ford upended a local Ontario PC nomination process and appointed an ex-host from the alt-right Rebel Media website to run in London, Ontario.

Even though he told his own party members “every single riding nomination is going to be 100 percent transparent,” Ford moved to unilaterally appoint 11 Ontario PC candidates last weekend.

In London West, Ford ousted an aspiring PC candidate who had spent the last two years campaigning for the nomination – the would-be nominee called Ford’s move a “brazen abuse of power” and a “sad day for the grassroots of our Ontario PC party.”

In their place, Ford installed radio host Andrew Lawton, who previously hosted a podcast on Ezra Levant’s alt-right Rebel Media between 2015 and 2017 in addition to a right-wing talk radio program on London’s AM980.

Rebel Media has been variously denounced for promoting anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and white supremacist views and is financed in part through foreign organizations connected to the global alt-right.

Rebel Media’s controversies are numerous. One former host created an international firestorm after publishing videos questioning the Holocaust and listing “10 things I hate about Jews.” Another host caused the company to implode after praising white supremacists at last year’s deadly Charlottesville rally. The website has also pushed conspiracy theories and fundraised off a white nationalist terror attack on a Québec City mosque and more recently attempted to raise money off the Humboldt Broncos bus crash, which left 16 people dead.

On his Rebel Media podcast, titled “Lawton Online,” the newly appointed Ontario PC candidate for London West routinely riffed on far-right themes, including women, Muslims and climate change.

Here’s a quick sample of Lawton’s work at Rebel Media:

Climate change science is “a lot of nonsense”

During a 2015 interview with far-right author Mark Steyn – promoting Steyn’s book titled “Climate Change: The Facts,” featuring “essays and articles from a range of climate change skeptics” – Lawton dismissed climate change science as “a lot of conjecture, a lot of nonsense”:

“‘Climate Change: The Facts’. And it’s a very bold title and I think what I like the most about it is that we don’t actually hear a lot of discussion about the actual facts of climate change. It’s a lot of conjecture, a lot of nonsense, it’s a lot of marketing and branding. So how significant is it that this book is coming out that’s really going to show something that I would say a lot of people probably don’t even know are even facts. I think a lot of people have just accepted that, oh well, yes, global warming is happening, it’s a bad thing, I don’t like it and this is because I’ve been told not to like it and I’ve been told that it’s a bad thing.”

Manliness and “the pussification of the West” 

In a February 2016 interview, Lawton discussed women’s issues with then-Rebel Media host Faith Goldy, someone who later made headlines appearing on neo-Nazi podcasts, reciting a white supremacist’s creed and promoting a 1930s fascist book calling for “the elimination of Jews.”

During the interview, Goldy discusses topics like feminism, the gender pay gap and a so-called “testosterone recession.” Lawton suggests it could be characterized as “the pussification of the West” before doubling-down, arguing why he is not “sexist” for using the word pussy:

“You know what, people would obviously say that’s sexist that you use that word, but ultimately you can call it whatever you want. The fact of the matter is it’s happening. Men no longer feel they can be men.”

Women “deserve” to be raped because of German refugee policies

In a January 2016 podcast episode titled “Why Mein Kampf is flying off German bookshelves,” Lawton reacts to reports of widespread sexual assaults in Germany committed by refugees (a false claim that was wildly distorted for propaganda purposes by alt-right media like Breitbart News).

Lawton says he isn’t saying “Muslim men exist to rape women,” but “if you bring in enough to dilute your demographic, you’re going to have a few bad apples.”

He adds that although “a part of me feels bad for the women,” when he looks at German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee policies, it seems clear to him they “deserve to have something happen”:

“Once the writing is on the wall, once you have as Mark Steyn calls it the ‘Auld Lang rape fest’ taking place over the new year holiday it becomes painfully apparent what everyone else could have seen quite easily before then. And this is not an assertion that Muslim men exist to rape women. It is an assertion that in a culture, the culture of some of these countries, misogyny runs rampant. If you bring in enough to dilute your demographic you’re going to have a few bad apples … And a part of me feels bad for the women, obviously. And then I look at Angela Merkel and say: ‘you deserve to have something happen in your country’.”

This is the guy Doug Ford wants to represent him in London, Ontario?