café snake - La quête de sens électorale

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, I'm Daphne. Oh, but I forgot I was watching a black movie on a bear. Plus, I was really frustrated. I don't watch that movie. It's coffee snake. Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne.

Starting point is 00:00:10 Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne.

Starting point is 00:00:18 Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello, I'm Daphne. Hello everyone! Hello everyone!

Starting point is 00:00:28 Today it's an episode that's available to everyone. Thanks for listening to Cafe Snake, for sharing in large numbers. The growth is there. To help us, just put 5 stars on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And don't forget, we have a Patreon where you can subscribe. So what are you going to talk about today, Daphné? I called my segment, Sementiser le monde, le devenir spirituel du Québec. I'm going to try to approach a change in attitude that I perceive, maybe I'm in the

Starting point is 00:00:54 field, even marginal, towards religions in Quebec, more particularly what we call religious conversions. And I'm going to do it through a thirst trap of sailors in Gaspésie, the Astrology, the Kentucky Fried Chicken, and my personal research on the great explorers during what we call the heroic age of exploration in Antarctica. And you, my dear, what are you going to talk about? As you may know, at the time you are listening to this episode, we are in federal election. We recorded this Sunday, the day of the elections.

Starting point is 00:01:25 So, normally, the elections haven't even been started yet. The vote should have been read on April 28th. So we're going to do a flyover of the starting line, of the aesthetics, of the slogans. So, without further ado, let's go to... DG News! Tadadum! DG News presents

Starting point is 00:01:40 DG News presents DG News presents If you think you believe in nothing, that you are até, but that you would sell your life to see a huge show, I apologize for teaching you that Ilima is your God. Honestly, I'm still sad that I'm St. Trudeau-Saint-N excited because the next Prime Minister won't be hot. Oh He's a broad James he's the best in the world on and off of the court and I can't help but to glaze No, I can't help but to glaze when I hear his name He's a tokyo back he felt for why I feel Fred sin man Because sin man peace is been correct on the last time I see no face a fast on the face or like last It's cold, it's the same, because it's the same And it's quite right, we have plenty of room

Starting point is 00:02:45 We live face to face, we make them on the ice We lick our feet and our heads, it's like Maurice Hi It's been a ceasefire that's held more or less since January the 19th. It has now been totally shattered by Israeli strikes during the course of the night. A whole sequence of strikes, the drone sounds were picking up during the course of the overnight period in the darkness. Then the explosions came and with them the parade of ambulances, people running in on foot, people coming in with rifles. It's a report on the fact that Israel broke the ceasefire in Palestine.

Starting point is 00:03:30 They bombed the Gaza Strip, killing more than 400 people in the last few days. It's a ceasefire that broke after the political discord within the Netanyahu coalition, which made sure that many members of the extreme right of his coalition left, including Yoav Galan, who was a prominent figure in his cabinet. And as soon as he broke the ceasefire, Yoav Galan returned to Netanyahu's cabinet. It's a very radical political frankness, an opinion on how we should solve the Palestinian question. It's their word to them. The genocide.

Starting point is 00:04:03 There has never really been a stop in the military manoeuvres or bombings in Palestine in general because the West Bank or the Cisjordani was bombarded without a halt. There are military manoeuvres, there is still a colonization that continues. A colonial occupation. We keep an eye on it, I mean we talk about it, it's the fire, negotiations, the buildings and and everything, but they just killed 400 people during the Ramadan. At the time when everyone wakes up at night to eat during the Ramadan.

Starting point is 00:04:31 It's voluntary. Stop humanitarian aid during Ramadan. It's voluntary. Yeah, we just wanted to mention it, but obviously we don't cover all the news that happens during the week. But you know that he has never been in prison. I'm really mad that I'm going to kiss your face in your face He has never been in jail, he has never been in jail, I'm honest with you Because I don't care if you look at me or not, I don't care My father has never been in jail, he has the electric bracelet and he will take it off very soon And those who want to take it off will pay, I tell you because it's fake It's really a stage play, I'm telling you honestly.

Starting point is 00:05:06 So, assholes. Little assholes. What's the problem with him? I don't know, it's just people who sell stuff just for... Jealousy. So we just heard from Julia Sarkozy, who is the daughter of the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni. She's a teenager, she's between 12 and 13 years old and she did live shows on TikTok. She did live shows on TikTok.

Starting point is 00:05:27 I don't know if she did them actively, but she did one for sure. There are clips of a live show she did on Wednesday, March 19th, which is still quite popular on TikTok. We hear her talking about the fact that her father wears the electronic bracelet. And that he would never really been jailed. And that all of this is the fault of Konar.

Starting point is 00:05:46 And then she also talks about Kadhafi. Kadhafi, stop messing with me please. All my respect. Rest in peace Kadhafi. I don't know if it's supposed to be like that, but really rest in peace. I don't know the story unfortunately, so I can't put my point of view on it. But yeah. Me, Kadhafi, I'm also a Libyan dictator. Nicolas Sarkozy still had a lot to do with his murder by so-called rebels.

Starting point is 00:06:09 Yes, and he is also suspected of having financed the presidential campaign of Sarkozy and Kadhafi. Well, that's why he's facing justice right now, Sarkozy. What I find interesting through this is that this media, which is very spontaneous, interactive, which is tiktok, generates discourses that are a bit the opposite of discourses of press relations that are well orchestrated, well planned by figures of authority. So it's like if through the discourse of Julia, it gives us a glimpse of the domestic discourse, so everything that is said inside the house of Bruni Sarkozy, a discourse that is not intended for the public, it's like something that is intimate.

Starting point is 00:06:45 The son of a Saint's mother had done that during the election campaign and made a joke on Kamala. At 12-13 years old, your opinions, your values, all that are very, very close to those of your parents. You haven't reached the point in your life where you have enough distance and critical view to become someone who is independent, who has his own values, and who has a certain detachment towards the home, the home, the family nest. It's like if through this live, we heard what was said in the house. How will these figures of power, of authority, explain or rationalize what is happening to them, for example, if they are prosecuted in court in front of their children. What you just heard is Joshua Block, aka World of T-Shirt,

Starting point is 00:07:33 who is a personality known on TikTok mainly, but also on Instagram or on the internet in general. That's what we could define as a LOL Cow, the concept that we examined in a coffee snick episode called the Law of Authenticity. What is a Lol Cow?

Starting point is 00:07:46 It's someone who is used by the public on the internet to generate Lol. Lollies. Lollies literally. It's not necessarily the person who makes people laugh voluntarily, but we will often laugh at this person, depending on it. She will make people laugh, but she will live a bad moment. Joshua Block, I don't know exactly his diagnosis on the autism spectrum, but it's a TSA that grew up without his mother who died at a young age.

Starting point is 00:08:15 It's in grandparents and there are problems with managing emotions, problems with alcoholism. Since 2019, he's been popular on TikTok. And there he was in Montreal. And what I want to say about that is that at the beginning everyone thought it was funny that he was coming to Montreal. It was like, he's going to crash out in Montreal. He was just crashing out in Boston. He was just having some crises.

Starting point is 00:08:36 There are triggers. He doesn't like it when people are messing around. There are like particular phrases. Yeah, if you want to see it and you say, put the fries in the bag. He's going some particular sentences. Yeah, if you want to see it and you say put the fries in the bag. Just put the fries in the bag Josh. No! He's going to fart. The meme was when you meet someone from your high school who works at McDo who's starting to tell you his life.

Starting point is 00:08:54 It's like just put the fries in the bag bro. Stop talking to me. I don't care. Just give me my fries. Wow. That's mean. So that's it. He's coming to Montreal. There are a lot of people who are trying to meet him, like the influencer Muffy Cooper who really wanted to meet him. To get to know him.

Starting point is 00:09:10 Yeah, that's it. Or the guys from Abs Fan TV who really wanted to meet him. I think they were lucky enough to meet him, they even gave him a Canadian shirt. People are talking about Joshua, it's funny too, about these lolcars. Through a day, they're a bit like Trump, he's always going to have some jittery photos, you can follow them live. Seeing him coming to Montreal, I even found a Discord who was following him in real time, like where he was. There are people who are really invested by this person, which is strange. What I'm doing is that in Montreal, there's no crash out, there's no video of him who's under St. Laurent, trying to fight with someone.

Starting point is 00:09:41 He was received by guys, I don't know who, but they made him live the beautiful experience, they brought him to the beautiful restaurant, they brought him to Carrefour Laval. What else does he need? Just Carrefour Laval, beautiful Canadian channel, he looked happy, he even did a political take at the end. Several actually. He said that he was in love with Quebec, he even spoke a little French. He wants to move here. And he said we were better than the United States, especially because we have free health care. That's it. Yes!

Starting point is 00:10:13 So I wanted to talk about Vivianne Jenna Wilson, the daughter of Elon Musk, a strange daughter, who recently covered Teen Vogue, the Vogue magazine for teenagers, which is about teenagers, and treats his father in the interview as a pathetic man-child. Elon Musk puts a lot into his life, he tells a lot about himself, he's perhaps one of his talents, and he places a bit of this rage against the Wokamind virus when his daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson, who was assigned man at birth,

Starting point is 00:10:51 lived through his transition. And he says she's dead for him. His son, my son, they call it deadnaming for a reason. Yeah, alright. Alright, so the reason it's called deadnaming is because your son is dead. So my son Xavier is dead. Killed by the walk-wind virus. I read the whole interview, I don't know if you've seen it, no? We asked her if she considers herself a celebrity.

Starting point is 00:11:23 She answered that she doesn't like to say she's famous because she feels that she needs to do something to deserve it. Of course, I knew she was going to say that. What does she want to do? She wants that celebrity to deserve it. She said, what is her craft? She writes poems, she makes movies, she wants to be an actress. I would like to be a streamer on Twitch.

Starting point is 00:11:44 And even if it's full of pathetic, my dream is to participate in a reality TV. I wanted to talk about this because in the American media universe or the universe of pop culture, Teen Vogue has really taken a very progressive direction. It's politicized right after the election, the first election of Trump. Surprisingly, there are really articles, files of funds, and it's super interesting to find this kind of coverage in a magazine for teenagers, whereas elsewhere, most media organizations either turn a little more to the right

Starting point is 00:12:20 or still declare that they are unpolitical to try to preserve a form of pseudo-neutrality. And I think that this example of a magazine that declares itself political, that takes a explicitly progressive turn, it's interesting and it works because it's been almost 10 years since this kind of positioning has been triggered. And I think that Teen Vogue has really a nice trajectory that should interest other press magazines. And I think Teen Vogue has a great trajectory that should interest other press magazines. And I think that today, we should be political. We should be explicitly political in covering events around the world.

Starting point is 00:12:55 Teen Vogue is still under Ana Wintour, under Vogue. Yeah, yeah, I'm not pro-Ana Wintour, but I think that this political direction is more of a tribute to journalists who work at Teen Vogue, who managed to rebrand the magazine. When I was doing research on topics that we would call progressive, I often found articles about Teen Vogue and I was like, oh, I see that's where I find my information. Interesting as a opposition in a world where social media as a state are more and more radicalized to the right in their

Starting point is 00:13:31 official or official discourse. At the level of the algorithm, they say that they defavor political content. So my segment, as I said, is to cement the world, the spiritual becoming of Quebec. And I'm going to talk about religion on a sticky subject. Sticky in the sense that when we talk about it, we have the impression of walking on eggs. It's part of culture. And I try to name or some kind of cultural movement that I see on my TikTok thread, for example. but still, is my thread representative of reality? I don't think so. Big revelation! Well no, that's it, it's that in a universe

Starting point is 00:14:10 where we are like Balkanized, we live in microcosms, you know, with algorithmic threads that send us a version of reality that is not the same for others, you know, so it's difficult to have a vision of the world that is shared at the moment, I think. So in short, that's it, I approach that and it's a reflection I started with in relation to religion in Quebec. A few months ago, in the crowd, I even published a newspaper called Christianism Sources Internet. I talked about a greater visibility on social networks of young

Starting point is 00:14:41 Quebeckers, especially people who are part of the Christian, evangelical confession, to be more precise. So there was a recrudescence of the discourse on religious conversion online. So people who weren't religious and then who converted. Guys, guys, live Quebec! Jesus Christ! Amen!

Starting point is 00:15:05 Amen! Life of Quebec, free! I wouldn't talk about a particular religion, but there seems to be a certain religious discourse that circulates online. There's this guy who walks around Saint-Loup-Une-L'Oise when everyone is in a rush, and he says that and films people.

Starting point is 00:15:24 It's become quite famous, meme, people recognize it, let's say. In addition to this dude who will see the feteurs on Saint-Lô for preaching the Good News, or even the kind of tradwaves movement that is heard mostly in the United States, I think that when we see religious discourse on, for example, when I go on TikTok, it's for sure that it's especially surprising especially in a Quebecois context. There really was a very bad refusal of religion here, and I think it informs our way of seeing this religious discourse. We really made a table with the Tranquille Revolution, and it's as if, for a long time at least, the way my father spoke to me about Quebec when I was little, it was like it was defining us culturally, this refusal of religion, in opposition to the rest of Canada.

Starting point is 00:16:09 My father used to tell me, we have a culture in Quebec, and one of the facets of that is the fact that we refused religion. We are secular, and when you go abroad in Canada, people are really much more religious, they were rhyming that with a form of... not of nationalism, but a more conservative position, even more on the right. My parents had me when they were in their early twenties, they were both in Egypt, you know, it was in the punk movement, New Wave, they met at the electric fan, so obviously they never got married and they had a very anti-religious discourse when I was little at home, especially among my father's people. And the church was considered a tool of oppression, it was anti-progressive. You know, we understood

Starting point is 00:16:58 that if we studied the history of Quebec, where the clergy was really the state, it was them who led. There was all kinds of abuse, in the clergy was really the state, they were the ones who led. There was still abuse in every possible way. As we said before, in a second episode, if a Quebecois nation still exists today, it's really because of the clergy. Because it's this division between the fact that the English are protestants and the French are Catholics, which has made sure that it created a distinct culture. So even in the existence of Quebec, the church has an impact. Exactly, but at the time when I grew up, in the 90s...

Starting point is 00:17:34 It was the real bag of that. It wasn't anti-religion. It was also to place oneself on the side of reason, on the side of rationalism, and it's also against against abuse, against the power that the church institution had represented. I also grew up with my grandmother because my grandmother lived upstairs from my house and she was a religious practicing. She did penitence, as I explained yesterday. Let's say my father, he broke up with me. I was very young, and for a long time he was mother was a single father, and she would eat chocolate and chips,

Starting point is 00:18:07 she would make pacts with God, so that my father would meet love. And we would laugh at her. My grandmother was a bit like the laughter of the family because of that. So, anyway, that's it. We went from depression to a form of liberation, and then, what's put forward, I think, in the modern Quebec society, is this idea of being able to choose, to self-determine as an individual, against something that would be, for example...

Starting point is 00:18:34 Imposed. Exactly, yes. There are so many ways to envision religion, and there are so many positions, because we all have different experiences, but there is this effort of laicity of the state, which I don't contest, but which is quite instrumentalized in the discourse to legitimize a form of ambient xenophobia. We're talking about, in particular, prohibiting the integral veil for students. For me, having a teacher, let's say, who wears the veil or, let's say, a cross in his neck, it doesn't mean that the state institution of teaching is governed by religion, it remains a secular institution.

Starting point is 00:19:09 So in short, what I also notice is that for people like me, millennials or maybe even younger, the fact that my parents rejected religion in a block, but it's like we threw the baby in the water of the bath, in the sense that we lost the spiritual dimension that religion brought us, and there's a search for spirituality at the moment. And that's this spiritual swamp, I don't really limit it to Quebec. I think it comes out in all kinds of different ways, even in the world. And recently, I saw that there was quite a bit of discourse around two advertising campaigns

Starting point is 00:19:44 of the Kentucky Fried Chicken, which came out in England. The first came out about 8-9 months ago, and the second came out during last week. They are staging a kind of cult around chicken. It's like a staging of a post-apocalyptic world, where everyone seems half dead, half alive, so zombies. And we hear someone on TV saying, and I put the extract. In the world we live in, we wonder what we believe in or who we believe in. What's true, what is false? There is this kind of parallel between faith and the kind of confidence we could have towards the information,

Starting point is 00:20:34 the information content we receive, the disinformation, to whom we trust. To whom we even give up having total trust, as if we had faith. They tell us, the world is crazy, disillusionment is embarrassing you, blah blah blah, they give examples. Don't lose hope, there's still something to be proud of, something to believe in, the chicken. It's always good, always there, and always crispy.

Starting point is 00:20:59 Believe in chicken. Yeah! Part two of this campaign came out about a week ago and now it's dividing a little more, it creates more controversy and it's called All Hell Gravy. It takes up the codes of the bathym by immersion, so you know when we're going to dive people in the water, and that's still content that I see circulating a lot on the networks. We're in the forest, there's like a lot of people dancing too. They're lifting a giant egg in gold. And then we see two people moving forward in the water,

Starting point is 00:21:30 the water which is a brown water spread. Like a pudding. Yes, that's it. A human will be baptized, put in the gravy. And then when he gets plunged into the sauce, we take it out and it's turned into chicken croquette. He's dead! You don't understand it either. He looks dead.

Starting point is 00:21:51 He got fresh too. He got turned into a croquette. In the comments, you have a lot of people who are like OMG! Not only does it use the iconography of the cult of the religion, the sect, but also cannibalistic glances. There's like a cannibal subtext in there. the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult of the cult we are creating our own cult of fandom. It's like he's making a connection between fandom and religion, as it is considered in a modern, contemporary way. And he says, the Gravy's Putt, this ad on the brown sauce,

Starting point is 00:22:36 it continues the lore of the Kentucky fried chicken. And for him, the lore is an interpretation, a modern reinterpretation a cult should be. So he has this whole idea with the participation online of people in a kind of lore, and the approach in the mirror, what it is to be part of a religion, let's say. He also has this idea of the community dimension in a religion, when you join a cult, when you join a confession, we also join a community. And then it's like if through the admiration of a company, of a brand of free chicken, we recreate a little the codes of religion. And it makes me think,

Starting point is 00:23:14 that's it, in the article I wrote for the press, I had the chance to interview three researchers in science and religion, including Jean-Philippe Perrault, who is a professor at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Sciences at the University of Laval. I already said that in a previous episode, but he said that in the end there is religion outside of religion. I think that what we find on platforms like personal growth gurus, the universe of wellness, the industry of well-being, life coaches, multi-faceted marketing, network marketing, the ethosbeing industry, but life coaches, multi-level marketing, network marketing, the strenuous philosophies of entrepreneurs,

Starting point is 00:23:49 risky capitalists, even conspiracy theories, quannons, fandoms, all of that can be considered as religious outside of religion. In my 20th year, it was embodied in particular by the tarot. As I learned to read the tarot, I was part of this kind of... I was talking about tarot with my friends, I did circles of tarot. I also had several people in my surroundings, be it friends, exes, who were retired, vipassana.

Starting point is 00:24:16 So it's a meditation center where you're going to journey, you're going to be in silence. It's in Montebello, Quebec, but there are a little bit everywhere in the world. Otherwise, there is all this kind of effervescent monté of astrology that has been addressed over the last few years. There is even a text in Liberté that I had read, that I recommend to you, it's called Les Firmaments Suspets, Little Apologie de la Croyance Astrologique, which was written by Maryse Andraos and Myriam de Gaspé. It was published in 2020, so it's still a bit old, but I'll put the link in the notes of the show. She talks about our relationship to the stars, and she says that astrology actually comes to question our rationalist era, and is obsessed with proofs, justifications, and there I forgot an excerpt. The strength

Starting point is 00:24:59 of astrology does not reside in its ability to denounce truths about the being, but in the fact that she expresses, through archetypes, the great conflicts and desires that animate the human psyche. So there is still this desire to explain what we live, to cement the world, to give meaning. And often this desire also coincides with a context of uncertainty. We don't know, we have some misery to project in the future, we are already in a very precarious universe, and it's a desire to have a grip on the real or even a certain control. One of the otherists says I came to astrology in a period of uncertainty.

Starting point is 00:25:37 And there I continue, it was one of those turning points where we imagine ending it with the intellectual life, moving to the countryside and becoming a hebenist, horticulturist or marraiser, while we are all as talented for that as a dog in a chess game. There is a fairly common initiation story, we enter astrology when we try to explain what affects us when we need guidance. The last time I came to the Vertu River was to drink NSE with a guy in Newfoundland who ended up putting a 38 in front of me for a for a buzz. And today I'm here preaching the word of God. Amen to that. Hello guys! We're getting ready to go to church. I hope you have a good Sunday. Even if I see a religious return on my TikTok feed, it's still marginal and according to the statistics

Starting point is 00:26:25 we have, it's not necessarily the only global trend. Globally, in fact, we leave religion more than we join it. But I still wonder if what I see appearing, it wouldn't be the embryo of something that is not yet measured in numbers, a kind of change of attitude that is difficult to measure, but which is still present in the zeitgeist. I have seen a lot of content on social networks that is evangelical, through figures like JNT, who was an influencer at the base, who converted. It's an example that is more visible, I think. There is even the daughter of Lucame recently. It's maybe more visible in the evangelical confession, because evangelical Christianity encourages the fact of mediaizing his faith and of doing proselytism, so converting other people. It's encouraged, it's almost

Starting point is 00:27:12 like asking, it's part of their religious status. And I'm going to quote Jean-Marc Gagné, who is one of the researchers I had asked for the article. He says that we must say that for the moment, the increase is an increase in visibility and not a real growing tendency, because according to the statistics, it is the 100 religions that increase the most among millennials and Generation Z. Speaking of the adjustment to the evangelical religion, he underlines that this religion has long focused on the stories of conversion, even before the advent of social media. And these people are often distinguished by a logic of a fort before, so I was in

Starting point is 00:27:50 shit or whatever, and a fort after. Now my life has changed dramatically. What is also important, I think, and that's what I want to insist on, is that in these conversion stories, the individual experiences the feeling of having freely met God or Jesus, of having really chosen himself to follow him. So there's really the power of self-determination, which I was talking about, that's what's very present. And it's a narrative mode that generates a feeling of common belonging to a new church, and that also manifests a break with their past, their old network, even their old friends for example. And he says that the more the history of this transformation

Starting point is 00:28:30 is radical, similar to the logic of a dark past, which some baby boomers have applied to their old Catholic religion when there was the quiet revolution, the more the individual gets a symbolic power within the church, the more authority he will have. In Quebec, one of the problems, especially in political discourse, is that we see the atheist position not as a belief, but as the basic position. Atheism is not a belief as much as a pocron. That's it. So in a Quebec, post-revolution, we don't want a religion that would impose or dictate a way of being. It's the personal choice that is put forward even in the conversion stories. We want individuals who are free, who are able to think for themselves. You know when I say think for themselves,

Starting point is 00:29:13 what does that make you think? The Contrarian playbook, that's what they say. And it's the personal choice that is at the heart of our way of thinking about modernity at large. It's from him that we forge a subjectivity, a game. It's also our spirituality that must be formed by this choice. So we see stories of Christian converts, but we also see stories of converts from all denominations, including Muslim converts. I wanted to analyze a bit the story of a Gaspési sailor on whom I fell this week on my feed. I wanted to analyze a bit like the story of a Gaspési sailor I came across on my feed this week. And I wanted to mention that right after this video of a Muslim convert, I came across another video of another young man who was a Christian convert. Let's go!

Starting point is 00:29:58 I come across this guy, a handsome, articulate guy who does plein air he has a little mustache. His name on TikTok is the real Jake Golden. He describes himself as an artist, a sailor who lives in Gaspezie, he's 28 years old. According to my research, he's been living in Gaspezie for about two years. So he's not necessarily a native of Gaspezie. Ok. Alright guys, I'm being asked why I'm doing the Ramadan. Basically, I converted myself. I'm 4 years old. Alright guys, on me le monde pourquoi je fais le ramadan. Dans le fond, je me suis converti là 4 ans. C'est arrivé d'une façon assez spéciale. Le côté de ma famille québécoise,

Starting point is 00:30:32 tout le monde aïe de la religion. Le côté de la famille qui vient de l'Iran, mon père, dans le fond, tout le monde aïe de la religion aussi. Et moi, je vais juste faire un commentaire. Il décrit pas mal ce que je viens de te décrire juste avant. C'est la position que moi et mes parents occupaient. Il y a personne à l'entour de moi qui était musulman. Jusqu'à He describes a lot of what I just described to you just before. It's the position that my parents occupied. There is no one around me who was Muslim until I meet two guys in a pizzeria where I worked at night. Then we started to debate. I really found nice, really sharp, good values.

Starting point is 00:31:01 And it's the first time in my life that I was told that I had nothing to say. I was going to do some research, I was going to confirm what they were telling me. I was like, facing the wall, and I was like, ok, I can't say it's until now, but I gotta sell out. They're right, it's logical, well, it's time I convert. With the muslims, I have an uncle who asks me, no matter who he's going to catch, it's going to be different to understand that Islam is the true way. It's the real religion, it's the most scientifically accurate. He gave us a book when we were young called The Quran, The Bible and Science.

Starting point is 00:31:32 My uncle would say that in the Quran it's written only the Big Bang. He would say shit like that. That's interesting because it's a discourse that is adapted to contemporary sensibility. We value reason a lot, rationality. It comes to religion religion through rational questions. Yeah, but that's it. It's all his thing. It's all scientific stuff.

Starting point is 00:31:52 Whatever. It's written in the Quran, it proves the photosynthesis. It's a scientific thing that we discovered much later. And from there, I want you to keep in mind that there is a lot of propaganda in Quebec. It's terrible. The moment I say I don't eat pork and that after that I say I'm a Muslim, I want you to keep in mind that there is a lot of propaganda in Quebec. It's terrible. The moment I say that I don't eat pork, and that after that I say that I'm Muslim, it's the death of the hand.

Starting point is 00:32:11 And for many other different contexts, every time it comes out here with the people of Quebec, I get pissed off. And it's okay, it's part of the game. After 15-20 minutes, they realize that it's not necessarily the propaganda they heard from TVA Nouvelle and all the kids. I love that even him, I don't know his background but the classic reference, the cause of Islamophobia is like Quebecart. It's like directly. Well, it's not true.

Starting point is 00:32:39 There would be a lot of factors to do but like in the zeitgeist, in the poor creature. Well, let's say that in Quebec, it's still... There are driving factors. It's sad to say, but it's intense. There's pain in everything. What could we consider, a new term I learned, the neo-Muslim? It doesn't exist, but I come from Quebec, I'm born here. I'm going to throw up, smoke my cigarette,

Starting point is 00:33:04 but I'm not the kind of guy who's going to tell the guy next to me who is gay that you don't have the right to live and that you have to pay. I'm not the kind of guy who wants to have 7 wives and who wants to have a wife who just makes food and have 6-7 children. There are a lot of aspects that I don't accept and that I find that that Quran is a great book, but I live in another world today and I know that Allah respects the world where I come from. And then you have all the time the world that says, yeah, but you don't have the right to do this, you don't have the right to be such an thing. It's a non-ovial business. Religion for Islam, because I don't know too much about others it's only God can judge me and when it comes to your practice it's your relationship with that's why I say it's really private and I don't talk about it a lot

Starting point is 00:33:53 I talk about it because people ask me and I have to say it out loud and I'm not like I'll never convert from the world I'll be Christmantly uncomfortable it's still intense as a commitment and I talk about it but I respect the freedom of the world. It's Satanism, you're Christian, you're atheist, whatever the fuck. As long as it makes you happy and you don't piss people off, you respect the people around you, for me, man, you can do whatever you want and be whoever you want, and it makes me happy.

Starting point is 00:34:21 I found that it was the testimony of a spirituality that was adapted in the contemporary context, finally, his speech. Really adapted to the individualism of our society, and to the state of personal choice, because he really speaks that it is a personal choice, but also a personal relationship that we maintain with God. But that's it, but I don't think it necessarily relates to individualism. Because what really turned me off when I was younger,

Starting point is 00:34:46 no matter what religion or Islam in general, which I came back around in older times, is that I personally found that a lot of religious practice was done so as not to be judged by others. Like, if the world, what are they going to think? And that, it annoyed me so much, I don't know, but we don't give a damn what people think. Like, if it's between God and me, he knows my heart. I was so angry at Commune but we don't care what people think.

Starting point is 00:35:05 If it's between God and me, he knows my heart. I hate that kind of speech. Like 15-16 years old. I want to be more with his shit. I don't think it's necessarily individualist or whatever. Yeah, I didn't want to use that term in a pejorative way. I just wanted to say that we live in a society like modern society, which is centered on the individual, from the light. So it influences our way of perceiving ourselves and our relationship with spirituality.

Starting point is 00:35:32 And I think that's the idea of having a personal relationship with God. It's not only seen in his discourse, but in other Christian discourses on which I came across, etc. These changes are recorded in the history of the media in general. The advent of printing, the fact that we could go through an intermediary like a priest or whatever to have the sacred text and we could interpret it ourselves, it's a sensibility that is quite modern. It's a relatively recent world relationship, it's been counted for hundreds of years, not thousands of years. I think what was put in the video was representative of a new discourse on spirituality,

Starting point is 00:36:10 which is a bit surprising with the one I heard when I was little, in the 90s, where we criticized religion a lot as an institution, and now we put it forward as a personal choice. We place religion and the relationship with God in the domain of the intimate and the private, which is consistent with the change of the Cape of Quebec in the Tranquille Revolution. It's my relationship with Allah, and my relationship with Allah is linked to Christ,

Starting point is 00:36:33 and I speak to him every day, and it's the best. It's me who made this choice to come to Islam. It's not anyone who encouraged me. It's me, my heart, my research. It's me, me, me, me, me, myself and I, it's me. We're going through a pandemic, we're evolving into a world that's pretty unstable, we're also facing a climate crisis, and for more than a year, we've been bombarded with videos of images of corpses in a genocidal that is mediatized. So even I, who don't consider myself so spiritual at the base, I reserved a space in my room to light incense, to pray and

Starting point is 00:37:12 to receive myself for Palestine. And I thought that maybe the spiritual pulse we're going through right now, it's a bit like the pulse of the writer. We have no end in the story to give meaning to what there is not a priori. So we want to cement the world, but above all I think cement death. And it's that, I said in my notes, it's what brings me to explorers. And I think that was just a parenthesis because I wanted to talk about explorers. So that's it, there are people who already know, but I studied the explorers of Antarctica from the last century. So it was often the extension of colonial companies that had taken place all over the world.

Starting point is 00:37:54 And it was the last place to explore that had never been swept by the foot of a man. Recently, I was reading a book that is quite interesting by historian Stefanie Bargewski, who is interested in the changing media discourse around two British explorers, Scott and Shackleton. In 1911, the first person to get to the geographic North Pole with his team, with his men, is the Norwegian explorer, Anne Munsen. And he was in a race, literally like a race against the watch, against the British expedition of Scott.

Starting point is 00:38:35 And Scott, when he arrived at the North Pole, at the South Pole, sorry, at the South Pole geographic, he saw a note from Anne Munsen saying, sorry, I'm already here. After going through a lot of obstacles, you get there and you know you're not even the first. You're the second. Not only that, but in your return journey, you and all your men will die of hunger and cold. When they discovered the corpses of these men, they discovered their personal log, the letters they had addressed. And the Scots' notes, the expedition captain,

Starting point is 00:39:14 they were very patriotic. So it was really an event in the British press. We talked about it, we made a national hero. This Scots, we even talked more about it, we made a national hero, this Scott, we even talked more about it than the Titanic's shipwreck. Then Shackleton, who was his rival, a few years later he decided, ok the South Pole Geographic has already been reached, what can I do? Well he proposed to be the first to cross it from side to side, like the Antarctic. He led an expedition called the Endurance Expedition between 1914 and 1917,

Starting point is 00:39:52 in the middle of the First World War. And this expedition has not the same media echo as Scott's expedition. Even if not only he survived with all his sailors, but he literally lived a real odyssey. So as I told you, he tried to cross the continent from port to port, so to cross Antarctica, and during this expedition, he lost his boat. The boat sank because he didn't hesitate to press the ice in the icebox. They survived for 22 months in the thousands of miles of all inhabited land, with limited supply and temperatures that could go up to minus 45 degrees Celsius.

Starting point is 00:40:37 Not only that, but Shackleton, the captain, took with him some sailors he had sorted out on the this mountainous and glacial island. He resisted the blizzard to go to a balanier station to finally find help and to launch a rescue expedition to save his other sailors. So he did literally heroic things but he didn't have the same cover at all. He wasn't transformed into a hero at least at the beginning. Stéphanie Bargzski, I don't know how I say her name, she put forward several reasons to explain the difference in media coverage between the two men, but there is one that interested me particularly. At that time, in the middle of the first world war, people in England had a need to understand death. Because most of them knew people,

Starting point is 00:41:49 friends or even family members who died during that war. And for them, the tragic conclusion that Scott's expedition had, that explorer who died frozen and died of hunger in a small tent with her men. She had a deeper echo than the story of Shackleton who survived and saved his crew. In the context of the war, the British reinterpreted Scott's death as proof that death had a meaning. They saw it as an heroic example of sacrifice that echoes the human sacrifice of the war. They really had an appetite for tragedy, for death, the stories of death, because they needed to find a meaning through the stories, the mythologies, the archetypal figures, to death. In a cultural context,

Starting point is 00:42:45 where we have a quest for meaning, where we are witnessing massive deaths, whether it is during the pandemic or during a genocide and all that, we have a quest for meaning that transcends, I think, the left-right compas, whatever, and the omnipresence of death in a context where the sacred is denied, because we are like fuck religion, but it doesn't give us the possibility to make sense of death. There's a technological ontological crisis that I often addressed in the podcast because through artificial intelligence, we ask ourselves all sorts of questions. What differentiates man from machine? What is intelligence? What is life? What is it to be a human being. So we have all these questions that cross the discourse. All of this, I think,

Starting point is 00:43:30 brings a sense of meaning and I think it pushes a spiritualistic region that is deinstitutionalized. Because as I said earlier, we have access to the institution to the abuse of power. And even in American political discourses, there is a great criticism of institutions, like through Doge, for example. So there's a big criticism of institutions, like through Doge, for example. So it's a bit of a picking-choose. We eliminate intermediaries, we have a personal relationship with God, and we decide how we're going to live this religion or this relationship with God. It also depends. Like the Gospels, yes, it's on paper, maybe it's an individual relationship,

Starting point is 00:44:04 but also the pastors who are going to play full-time, the people in the church who have been there for a long time. There are still figures of authority who are, you know, even the case of JNT, you know, the guy with whom he does his podcast, it's like his guru. You know, I don't want to generalize, it's just case by case, but that's what makes it, how do you call it, Benjamin Gagné, a researcher I interviewed, said, when I was told that being an evangelist is not a religion, but that it's a relationship with God, I would rather say that the religious institution is hidden, is invisible behind the testimony of the individual who, in quotes, criticizes religion in an irreligious way, irreligious, for religious purposes. The institution is still present, but it may be more invisible in these discourses. irreligious, irreligious, to religious ends.

Starting point is 00:44:45 The institution is still present, but it may be more invisible in these speeches. Thank you very much. We are in the election. When we recorded this, the elections had just been started. I just saw this in my cell. So Mark Kearney launched the elections. The vote will have it. I didn't have time to see the date, but I think it's April 28th, I should go see it.

Starting point is 00:45:07 Just to say that I was really close. And this is what it is, I said April 22nd in August. When everyone was saying the autumn, winter, elections during Christmas, I was like no, it's going to be April 22nd. We can see that there are still plenty of media, political strategies, and even realities of the media crisis that are at stake at the moment, so I wanted to talk about that. First, Quebec Ouvre announced that to organize its famous face-to-face TVA,

Starting point is 00:45:30 they would ask each party to pay the $75,000 for a total of $300,000 to do this debate. So if one party refused to provide the $75,000, there would be no face-to-face TVA. I find that interesting and I'm just going to read a quote from a director at TVA. It says, Because of the difficult financial, economic and competition situation that has made Group TVA, just like the entire industry, except for the Radio-Canada society, the only option we have to present the FASFAZ TVA is to ask the parties to contribute to the cost of production of such a show.

Starting point is 00:46:04 It's weird because it seems to me that these kinds of issues will generate a lot of listening codes. Yes, because they can't sell advertising, there is no advertising during a debate. TVA has cited the four main political parties, the Liberal Party, the Conservative Bloc, the NPD. The $300,000 would be used to pay for the development of studios, the management, the production and other services. Later in the article it says that it's a part, it's not even in total.

Starting point is 00:46:27 I mean, my first criticism about the media crisis, it's not normal that 2 hours of television cost 300 million dollars. I think one of the big problems is the cost that inflates media production because they still work with old technologies and not micro technologies. It's with old cameras, old rigs, old diffusers. All of that, yes, it requires equipment that is more expensive, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the quality will be less. To justify, Quebecer said that $75,000 is the price it costs to be first page advertising

Starting point is 00:46:58 in the McLean's edition on Saturday, which is a newspaper from the rest of Canada, the McLean newspaper. That's why they wouldn't say that one advertising in a newspaper from the rest of Canada, the McLean Journal. You know, it's not worth mentioning that one ad in a journal from the rest of Canada is $75,000. I think that all this industry, especially in Canada, is in a... I just have the word in English, but... inflamed, inflamed, inflamed. The prices are inflamed in a bubble. It's not normal that...

Starting point is 00:47:21 A speculative bubble? Not speculative, just a bubble. Because they are so used to making requests to the Sodec or government-funded companies to fund TV shows or movies that prices have quietly increased. But it's not necessarily...

Starting point is 00:47:36 Money is not directly invested in the product we make, I think. And I think that... The McLean newspaper says it costs 75 000$ to have an ad on it, it makes no sense. But I think that the McLean Journal said it costs 75 000$, having an ad on it doesn't make any sense. But I think your return on investment shouldn't be top. I don't know how many copies they'll pull out, how many millions of subscribers and everything,

Starting point is 00:47:54 but the Conservative Party accepted, the Bloc accepted, there's no news about the NPD and the Liberals, I think they should all accept it. Normally there's one debate in French on Radio-Canada, one debate in English on Radio-Can one debate in English in Radio Canada, and one debate in TVA for Quebec. I think that CTV is doing another debate in English

Starting point is 00:48:10 for the rest of Canada. But I just wanted to tell you, if you've made it this far, I will stream in the elections 2 to 3 times a week, and I will stream the debates. Also, what's interesting with a campaign start, the slogans, for the Liberal Party, the Party of Power, the slogan is a strong Canada.

Starting point is 00:48:27 So we see all the time what happened with the Liberal Party and how the media of heritage talk about this election. The primary issue of this election would be our relationship with the United States. And that would be the question of the ballot. And I find that it shows so much how, I use this term, it's been 12 episodes, I use the word disconnection But to think that everyone you would run into in the street, you would do a Vox Pop And they would say what is your concern?

Starting point is 00:48:53 Everyone would say, oh yeah, our relationship with the US for real... I don't think that's the question of the world For me, the question of the world is inflation, it's housing Is our relationship with the US going to have an impact on that? Yes. But the average voter won't say, I'm worried about Donald Trump. And I think the liberals are trying to make us fall into that. Yes, it's Trump.

Starting point is 00:49:17 Oh my god, we need Carney because he's so strong. And it's also shown by the campaign that came out yesterday. We can see Mark Carney, I'll put it in the description of the episode. It's Mark Carney who is around a skateboarder who wears a team Canada shirt. Mike Myers, former SNL actor that you saw in Winds World, he plays Austin Powers. He arrives, he's a Canadian who lives in the US. He gives us a speech about whether we're going to become the 51st state. Are you really Canadian? I didn't know you were Canadian.

Starting point is 00:49:46 And you know, Mark Carney is good at delivering lines, it was scripted by himself, but I thought he was a good comedian. But then he finishes with a rally cry, or a symbol, or I don't know how to say it, Gang Sang. It's in English, it doesn't relate to Quebec at all. And I find it funny because we don't talk about it all in Quebec, that Canadians have this slogan,

Starting point is 00:50:03 it's Canada's elbows up. And they show their elbows. Have you ever seen that happen? No, it's new or? No, it's new. Like a month and a half in Canada, to fight the war you have to deal with the United States and the threats of annexation. It's Canada's elbows up.

Starting point is 00:50:20 And they show their elbows. I don't have videos of Quebecers revert the excesses converted to this. Liberals everywhere in Canada elbows up, and then they show their elbows. I don't know, I'm just watching videos of Quebecers revert like they've converted to Lysia. Liberals everywhere in Canada are like, we're going to lift our elbows. But it's a hockey thing. When you lift your elbow,

Starting point is 00:50:35 you're like, you're hitting it. An acolyte? No, you hit it. An elbow. An adversity? Yeah, it's like we're going to fight with our elbows up. Got it. It's us Canadians.

Starting point is 00:50:48 And that's really the guy who... And he tried to translate it into English. In French he said, In Canada, we raise our elbows, but in Canada, we take our elbows out. That's it. I can't wait to see what the strategy of communication of Mike Eulens during the campaign is going to be. Because right now, we don't know him at all.

Starting point is 00:51:03 We haven't heard from him for more than 5-10 minutes. And all. We didn't hear him for more than 5-10 minutes. And the only time we heard him for more than 5-10 minutes was with an American. I don't count the points of view like that. We saw him at moments that were questioned by journalists because he was losing his patience. I put him in the DJ mix yesterday, but there was a really funny clip where he gets asked...

Starting point is 00:51:20 Because he's a business man who... You put him in the DJ mix last week? Yeah, but I put him in the DJ mix because we didn't explain it because it happened the day I did the Digimix. He's asked by a journalist how can we be sure that there is no conflict of interest? Can he tell us what his assets are? Which company is holding the shares? How is he the Prime Minister of Canada and we have no idea what his personal interests are? Then he looks at the journalist and he's like,

Starting point is 00:51:43 You need to look inside yourself. He's like, no, but your question is biased, blah blah blah. And he literally answers that. He says his first name. He's like, you need to look inside. And you know, it's full condescending. He was frustrated. So I think he... But to what extent is this question biased? Because she kept on answering. She was like, me, but we have to trust you.

Starting point is 00:52:00 We have to... You know, but she wasn't... I don't think she was biased. I think that's a good question. I think that's crazy. Because basically, the law is not made for someone to become a prime minister and represent themselves to be a prime minister, as short. Long-term election value means that we will know the results of all these audits after the election. That's all that triggers you. Maybe he's going to have assets in some American partner or whatever.

Starting point is 00:52:20 But anyway, that's for Mark Carney. But it's still interesting, this rhetoric of when you take responsibility for certain authorities, their reflexes or their way of facing this responsibility, it's to deflect. Well yes. It's to do as if you're the one who should be doing a conscious examination. It's one who should be ashamed. Exactly, that's literally it. And that was in his first points of view.

Starting point is 00:52:49 I think he's going to work on that, but I think he's impatient. And he takes a lot of patience in being a politician, because you have to repeat yourself all the time. You have to stay on the same line. And you look like a kid or whatever, but it is what it is. You're not going to take me in a verbal error. I'm going to stick to the program. I'm going to keep saying the same thing.

Starting point is 00:53:08 You have to be a writer and be unwavering when you're a politician. That's what I was telling you this week. I think Trump is going to end up with a crash out during the next four years. I think he's going to blow up a home-lender's shell in the buisness. There are already considerations, especially regarding his health. Trump's health? Yes, recently last week, while he was talking, his team closed the cameras, the microphones,

Starting point is 00:53:34 because they were too fast. I didn't see that. Ok, let's meditate. So the block, we're going to talk about their slogan, and their aesthetics, because they have the most aesthetic part in the front. I choose Quebec. All the signs are polaroid photos with candidates who have a candid look, but who don't look at the

Starting point is 00:53:51 camera, who smile, who are a little embarrassed. And that's it, the slogan is, I choose Quebec. So we're really trying to put the fact that the Quebec block is the part that understands us, it's the part that is authentic, it's the part that is close to us. Behind the photos, we can see, they are not in an empty, aseptic background, we see trees behind them. In nature. The staging is really like, it was the weekend at the chalet

Starting point is 00:54:16 and we took polaroid photos of our beautiful moments this summer. But you know what this kind of retro mania makes me think of? Of what? I remember. That's it. It's a look at the past, a form of nostalgia. And I find it interesting because while the boss is an old game, but the Quebec Bloc as such, my very subjective position on the Quebec Bloc is that everyone says it's useless,

Starting point is 00:54:38 but I remember when I was on Twitch and we literally just watched live streams of parliamentary or municipal sessions. And if there wasn't a Quebec block in those parliamentary sessions, we would never have talked about Quebec. It's like in English, we get along, and then we talk about whatever, law projects on fishermen, whatever, and then it's in English, it's in English, and then it comes to the beginning of the block, and it's like, yes, but for my fellow citizens, and then there's a nice little big accent, and then it's like, ok, at least Quebec is in the House of Commons.

Starting point is 00:55:08 So yes, like, as long as I have the other provinces that are on the Quebec block, all the provinces should have their Quebec block. All the provinces should be represented. Like, this would be a real confederation. Because we have deputies who work for national parties, who are losing in

Starting point is 00:55:24 their own circumstancesscription. If that's really the case. You know, I received, at the end of the winter, two or three years ago, Madeleine Dalfond-Giral, who is a founding member of the Quebec Bloc. She had been part of the Quebec Bloc when the Bloc fell second in the elections. And it was the official opposition.

Starting point is 00:55:39 It was just after the referendum. It was really one of the moments when the Quebec nationalist was at its peak. I said to her, it was like being the official opposition in Ottawa. She said to me, it's the natural place of the Quebec Bloc because we are the opposition to the Canadian federalist. The Quebec Bloc is the official opposition. Otherwise, it's all the same for her. That's what she said. I thought that the way she formulated it was full poetic.

Starting point is 00:56:03 I should have found that that in the interview. But François Blanchet, I found it cringe, to try to boast that he went to meet Democrats leaders at the DNC last year with his selfie. He's like weird. He's like weird. He blocks a lot of people on Twitter. He's like weird.

Starting point is 00:56:23 He's like weird. He blocks a lot of people on Twitter. It's like a meme. He blocks a lot of people. Oh yeah, but well... To move on to the NPD, their slogan is heart for sale. I want to do it. They launched an ad yesterday. I want you to react to the ad. That's NPD. This one looks so much like me. Like him, I didn't have it easy. But I never lowered my arms. Jagmeet, he much like me. Like him, I didn't have an easy time, but I never gave up.

Starting point is 00:56:46 Jagmeet, he looks like me. Yeah, me too. Some try to intimidate me, but like him, I don't let myself be trampled on. Him and me, we're not afraid to work hard. And we step back from nothing to achieve our goals. Too many people are being pulled out. That's enough to lower your bills

Starting point is 00:57:02 and stop giving gifts to the PDG. It takes heart to the stomach. And that, I have. Well... I find it interesting that it's the idea of it looks like us. Well, basically, yes, because despite maybe a different religion that remains, it's the values, we have similar values. But I find it funny, I, it's like you put a classic Quebec boomerang

Starting point is 00:57:28 with a big accent, and he's like, Jagmeet, he looks like me! I just want to put the emphasis on resemblance. What are the most important resemblances? Do we share similar dreams, common dreams, if we have similar

Starting point is 00:57:44 or common goals, if we have similar goals or common values, I think that it's the real resemblance, it's not a matter of religion, skin color... No, I know, but it's like, he will never be white, Caucasian, Christian, junk-medicine, never. So I think that trying to make it sound like the word resembles, I think it's like... I think he should have gone deeper, more meta and said no, he doesn't look like me. Physically. We're not the same. He's like no, he'll never look like all those whites you put in the video. He doesn't look like me, he says he looks like me. I'm not saying he doesn't look like me, with the values and everything.

Starting point is 00:58:20 I'm just saying that the visual is really important and he's a big seller. I think it goes in the whole strategy that we saw that has been deployed in the last few weeks. We talked about him going to podcasts that tell his life. He makes the video and tells his journey in comparison with Pierre Poiliev. And then he says in this video that he too has a difficult childhood and that he is a big seller. There is a strategy that's like, coordinated. But it's a parasocial link that has developed and what is characteristic of the parasocial link? It's this kind of distance that we shorten between your, you know, that you want to make as small as possible or at least the perception of the distance. You have to get closer. You also have to,

Starting point is 00:59:00 the person, you know, often the influencers, what is sold is the position I occupy. Mediatically, you too, it could be you. You too, you're close to that. You're in 2 or 3 videos, you're in a YouTube account of help. This strategy is really, you know, what gave gains to the NPD in the last 20 years. It's the 2011 wave, I think. It's when they formed the official position with the chief, Jack Layton, who unfortunately died.

Starting point is 00:59:28 But that too, it happened in one campaign. I think they're trying to emulate what happened with that. In the sense that they want what works with the NPD to be the chief, who must be a not only charismatic figure, but also a caring and relatable figure. What Jack Layton often won before he started going on the polls, is that he always asked which politician he wanted to have a beer with. And it was always Jack Leighton who won. I think he's trying to go back to that.

Starting point is 00:59:58 There's another video of him that was released a little earlier, where you see him practicing MMA, doing mixed martial arts, training, singing. You see him practicing MMA, he's someone who does mixed martial arts, who trains, who has interesting songs. But as you say, it's relatable. You want to be able to project yourself in him. So obviously, to project yourself, you have to think that he looks like a bad guy. That's it. And as I forgot to say, Mark Carney went skating with the Oilers in Edmonton, which is in

Starting point is 01:00:21 the National Hockey League, the best team in Canada at the moment, which made it to the final of the Coupe Saint-Lené last year, with Connor Mcdavid, the best Canadian player. Skating there was like a publicity stunt. I find it still surprising that the Oilers from Edmonton are accepted to politicize themselves like that. Because the Liberal Party is not the most popular party in Alberta at all. So it's still interesting. If you're an old hockey player. He's native to the Edmonton region.

Starting point is 01:00:48 He played hockey in Harvard for one game. So he seems to be a hockey player. He knew how to play. He had a great kick but his shot was a little bad. But it's interesting that he did that. It's like Barack Obama who will play basketball before the elections. He's been here for years. And now he's making us that he is the most Canadian.

Starting point is 01:01:07 At the beginning, the conservatives had a lot of slogans. Their slogan at the beginning was tax hax, but then Mark Carney stole their tax carbon measures. So now their new slogan is Canada First, which is to be put in parallel with the United States, the America First of Trump. And even America First is the slogan not only of Trump, but which was really recovered by Trump at the beginning, but more of the French, you know,

Starting point is 01:01:34 Nick Fuentes, all the time saying America First. I don't want to put in parallel the polio with that, but just to say that let's say one of the media adjacent to the group we talked about in Café Snake, one of their most more important on Twitter is called AF post for America First Post. So this slogan comes from the geopolitical posture of the United States. We are America First. We don't want to intervene in Israel.

Starting point is 01:02:00 We don't want to intervene in Ukraine because we are America First. Well, it's not true. They want to intervene in Ukraine because we are America first. Well, it's not true. They want to intervene in the US. Not the Grippers, no. So do you think it's like a kind of Doug Whistle? No, I don't think so. I really think it's just the Fikachi. And then, what happened this week and in the last two weeks, is that Mark Carney is trying to re-center by removing the strong measures from Pierre Poiliev. So he abolished the carbon tax, he will remove the sales tax not only on the new houses,

Starting point is 01:02:31 but on all the houses sold to the first buyers. He announced that he would abolish the tax on the capital gains, which had been announced by Ruchitin Trudeau, but which had not even been implemented. He takes all the measures that Pierre Poiliev put forward. The remixes, Pierre Poiliev is caught improvising. He's been calling for an election for two years. Right now, it feels like he's going back in this election. It's supposed to be a home run, easy breezy election for Poiliev.

Starting point is 01:02:55 And now he's down in the polls. He's not even a favorite to win on Polymarket. Polymarket is really in the consequences of Trump's victory and the triumph of Poly triumph over the polls. Right now, the poll is so much in the loop. Every little variation and the tweets on Twitter are like, Pierre Poliet just talked about immigration and we won 3%. They have to keep talking about immigration.

Starting point is 01:03:18 We're in a time where speculation is really going to guide the electoral platforms. That's right. And it's not like Polymarket can be completely manipulated. The transactions are in crypto currency, the transactions are not transparent. Anyone can put a lot of money on Carney or on Polyev. If I were a Liberal Party advisor, I would be like, well, we're going to put a lot of money on Polymarket to give you the impression that there was a change in the population. That's what's interesting too, is that it goes through an analysis of the politics method. I would be like, well we're going to put a lot of money on Polymarket to give you an impression that there was a change in the population. That's what's interesting too, is that you go through an analysis of the politics.

Starting point is 01:03:48 It's not about who I'm going to vote for, it's who I think is going to win. It's like, it changes the relationship. It becomes like a almost journalistic relationship. I rarely think about who I want to win, more than what's going on. You want to take the lead of trends? Yeah. That happens, but how does it work? There's a change in the relationship? I think it was already present in the media,

Starting point is 01:04:10 where they show statistics, polls, but now it's different because there's the speculative dimension of casino type where there's money at stake. It would be that money that would allow Polymarket, where they say it's the platform's discourse, to be more precise than the polls. Because there's money at stake, so we're not going to lie.

Starting point is 01:04:31 I know, and I really advise you to listen to the speculative reality episodes, because Daphne explains really how Polymarket works. And it's based a little on the authority people who put the predictions and odds for sports bets have. But it's not the odds for sports parents. But it's not the same system at all. And people in Vegas who make this kind of odds for... what's the line going to be? The plus minus for a Canadian game? Well, they have algorithm to predict,

Starting point is 01:04:58 to see who's injured, who's on a spear. Whatever, to make predictions that are close to reality or hockey. But it's not the same technology used for the Polymarket. So everyone thinks when they talk about it on Twitter that it's the odds of a sports game. Oh yes, the people who really know what's going on, it's the people who are in the bet. No, it's the chance that an event predicts this product, yes or no. So it's a bit like we're playing on foot or face. And Pierre Volliev, it's that there is a with fire. Pierre Pauliev is a vote-based

Starting point is 01:05:26 that is getting bigger than before, I think. Maybe it's my perception of Twitter and FIER. What happens is that MAGA's ideas were less popular in Canada in the last elections. That's why I think that Maxime Bernier, from the People's Party of Canada, only had 1 or 2% of the votes.

Starting point is 01:05:42 But I think that the American right, MAGA's right, will vote for him algorithmically. But it will make sure that it will remove support from Pierre Poliev. Everyone is blaming him for his communication strategy, which has not yet gone to podcasts. Who is not going to Canadian podcasts? There is even the professor of the University, Gad Saad, who tweeted several times this week. He was talking about suicidal empathy, which we talked about last week. He is a teacher in Concordia, very close with Elon Musk.

Starting point is 01:06:06 Elon is always in his book, Parasitic Mind. He tweeted a long time ago saying that Pierre Poiliev had to stop following consultants and just start going to podcasts. And that's it, everyone is angry because they can't have an interview with Pierre Poiliev. I think he's taking Macron's strategy in 2022 of I'm at the top of the polls, I'm not going to do interviews or podcasts. Like that, I won't have a chance to lose. But now we see with the changes in polls, maybe he's going to change his strategy. I'm not going to talk about the elections next week.

Starting point is 01:06:35 I'll talk about it later, but listen to my streams on Twitch. It's twitch.tv slash Mère de Laval. Well, thank you, my dear. Do we have a cultural recommendation? Yes, we watched a movie, it was really good. It talks about the origins of an American woman who, like us, took an obsession with the media world and started recording all the news broadcasts, all the TV broadcasts on VHS. On VHS for almost 30 years. From 1977, I think, to 2012, that's what they say in the documentary. So what's the name of the film?

Starting point is 01:07:06 Recorder, by Marian Stokes Project. It's on the Canopy platform. And by the way, if you're registered at the National Library, you have a free Canopy account through this. And you have like 3 or 4 films that you can watch for free per month. And I find that interesting, and it gives a sort of validation to see that there are people who are obsessed with media analysis. Yeah, that's exactly it.

Starting point is 01:07:32 It's a meta-discourse, if we can say so. So thank you for listening to the episode, we'll see you next week. And thank you to everyone who listens, everyone who shares. The propaganda continues. We're really... It's us who's gonna take the lead. Thank you everyone. And on that note, the intro music is always from Aslow, A-Z-L-O. And be careful with yourselves. See you next time. Bye!

café snake - La quête de sens électorale

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