The Ben Mulroney Show - "The Hidden Hand" -- a conversation about the rise in antisemitic propaganda

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

WARREN KINSELLA / author “the hidden hand” If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Actually, we talked to just a couple of weeks ago at the launch of his new documentary, the campaign. And now the book, which it tackles very, very similar topics, is that if you are somebody who's been living in the West since October 7th, 2023, and wondered, what am I watching? What am I living through? Am I witnessing a transformation of the country that I live in? The one that I thought was tolerant, the one that I thought we, in which we had conversation, instead of shouting at each other.

and issuing threats of violence towards each other. If you have wondered what was happening, then the explanation may be in the pages of this new book called The Hidden Hand by Warren Kinsella. Warren, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. So let's go back to the film, which I loved. I thought it was such an important movie to make.

And in it, you talk about an orchestrated campaign that probably started a long time before October 20, October 7th, 2023. I'm sort of activated on that day. So yeah. Well, I mean, guys like you and me have been around campaigns for a long time, right? And the one thing you learn being around campaigns is how to spot one. Yeah.

And, you know, the elements of a campaign is money, messages, um, volunteers, leadership, strategy. tactics, all of that stuff. And what I saw after October 7th, 2023, so this terrible day where 1,200 Israeli men, women, and children, babies were slaughtered by

Hamas, Israeli women and girls sexually assaulted, hundreds kidnapped, hundreds more assaulted and grievously wounded. On this terrible day, you know, far from Israel being, sympathized with and regarded properly as a victim around the world where these protests happening

like in the first 10 days after October 7th there were 2,500 protests. And when I was struck by, again, as a campaign guy, I said, wow, they're using the same messaging. They're using the same signage. They're pretty disciplined. And I spoke to political people and said, this looks like a campaign. And they're all like, yeah, that's a campaign. Yeah, well, I remember seeing, an article that you had written in the Toronto Sun, which you posted the article and then you added to the top. You said, you know, as a lawyer, I believe if these people have broken the law, they should be prosecuted.

And if they're not Canadian citizens, they should be deported. Which I then reposted that with the header. I co-signed this. And then I went to bed. And speaking of a campaign of being organized, a group of people online took that. jumped on it like a fat kid on cake and they looked at my bio and the only thing in my bio that they could latch on to

was that I was a national ambassador for CNIB, the Canadian National Institute of the Blind. And, you know, we're raising money for people who have to navigate a world that wasn't designed for them. And they just absolutely docks that company. A shame. And they were losing money. And this happened overnight.

I'm not even paying attention. And next thing, you know, this poor organization that doesn't have a crisis team had to say, look, we've got to suspend our relationship with you. And I got on the microphone a few days later. I was like, listen, you guys are thinking this is a victory. All you've done is made it harder for this organization to raise money. So congratulations.

You took money away from the blind. But that was a level of coordination and sophistication. It was a blitzkriek. It was a blitzkriek to how fast that happened. And that, as you said, that doesn't happen by accident. They were ready. They were organized. They were mobilized.

Yeah, I mean another example of that, full disclosure. So I've helped and been associated with and advocated for Jewish National Fund for a long time. They're like one of the oldest charities in this country. Been around for more than 100 years. And they do terrible awful things like plant trees and make parks and help people out with their medical bills. And they got decertified by CRA wrongly, inappropriately in my opinion, a couple years ago. So they decided to set up a new charity called Friends of JNF. Before Friends of JNF even existed, Ben,

like before they even did anything, 13,000 complaints to CRA. The woman who handles CRA, the charity division, her mailbox was full. Yeah. So that's the point of the hidden hand is that, you know, the people on the other side, Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran and China and,

and Russia, they are evil and malevolent, the message they're putting out there. But man, are they organized? Man, are they effective? And do they ever have a lot of money and people? And we've got to take that seriously. We have to take it seriously. But before we continue it, like, let's take one moment to address

probably the most annoying part of this kind of debate, which is when you and I sit here talking about the defense of innocent Jews. and the defense of the Jewish community in Canada, to live their lives free of intimidation. That is a statement unto itself. And yet there are forces out there that want to inject into that statement, all sorts of inference.

They want to say, well, that means that you stand against these people. That means you hate this group. That means you believe in X, Y, and Z. I don't know what happened to public discourse where making one statement automatically means a raft of other things that you never said before. And it's so frustrating because I don't feel like things, we can't communicate if what I say automatically implies a raft of things I didn't. How many times in the past two F years have you been called a baby killer?

Yeah. How many times have you been accused of genocide? Right. And this is what it's happened. And, you know, these people are not interested. in a debate, and by these people, I mean, those who are anti-Semitic. Yeah. It's not just anti-Israel.

Like, it's not anti-Semitic. This is a really important point. It's not anti-Semitic to be against the decisions of the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. They make, go to Israel, as you and I have both done. You meet lots and lots and lots of people. We're very angry Benjamin Netanyahu too. Yeah. But, you know, accusing individual Jews, like happens in this city, every single

weekend at the corner of Bathurst and Shepherd where terrible, awful things are being screamed and yelled and horrible signs are being held up to blame individual Jews who just live in that neighborhood for the decisions of the Netanyahu, uh, government. That's classic anti-Semitism. Yeah. And accusing them of killing babies and accusing them a genocide. And not only is it a lie, it's just completely and manifestly wrong and all of us have to stand up against it. It's also, there's a great irony that the belief that Jews control the media. And yet when it comes to what we've witnessed since October 7th, it's decidedly not that. If the Jews controlled the media, the narrative that we would be seeing on CTV, on CBC, on the BBC, and the garbage.

Like, it would not be what we've been reading and watching. Yeah, that's one of the points I make in the hidden hand right at the start. You know, it's like the gods played this enormous practical joke joke on the Jewish people. is where these, they get accused routinely of running the media and technology and governments, the Zionist occupation government and their globalists and their international bankers, but then robbing them of whatever power they have.

So that now what they're experiencing is, you know, schools for little Jewish kids being shot up in this city, one, two, three times, and synagogues fire bombed and neighborhoods being terrorized. Like that's stuff that's happening right here in this city, and to suggest that, you know, those people have any power, it must feel like a cruel joke to them because really they don't have much power.

If you look at how the police and prosecutors and politicians have dealt with them, they're not getting much sympathy or support at all. Well, we're going to delve into the book of a lot more in the next segment. It's such an important book. And again, I want to be clear, to read this book and to support the Jewish people

in no way means you are against anybody. else. It's a false binary that seems to have been foisted on people. I really wish there was more pushback on that because if there was, there would be so much more coming together because I don't want anybody to feel marginalized or unsafe at all ever.

And to come to someone's defense does not mean that you are looking to burn somebody else down. But we've got much more with the author of The Hidden Hand after the break right here on the Ben Maloney show. Very happy to continue my conversation with good friend Warren Kinsella, his new book, The Hidden

The Information War and the rise of anti-Semitic propaganda. Is it out now? It is out. Tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning. Congratulations. Thank you. We were talking during the break. He said of all the books you've ever written, this one was one of the hardest to get published.

Yeah. There is a lot of organized opposition to those of us who stand for what used to be a pretty basic principle, which is that prejudice and hatred shouldn't be experienced banning group, Jews or anybody. and, you know, I've represented over the years Jewish organizations, but Muslim organizations, Christians organizations, but what Jews have experienced over the past three years is extraordinary.

And, you know, I've been tracking this stuff and writing about it, as you know, for 40 years. I've never seen it this bad. Yeah. Never seen it. Well, you know, my dad, my dad in his study had a sign that I guess he purchased, I want to say it was from the 1920s,

I think it was from Toronto. and it said, Irish need not apply. And he kept that, but he also knew that by and large, sort of the arc of history bends towards justice for almost everyone. Like eventually we're going to get to a place

where, you know, you saw the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, gay rights, trans rights. I mean, there's forward progress. Sometimes there's a step back. Sometimes there's an explosion forward.

But by and large, we're getting to a place where we all will be treated with the dignity we deserve. There's something about the Jewish exception where things get normalized and, oh, it feels like they are accepted and it feels like they are embraced. Until something happens, a flashpoint brings us right back to the beginning. And there's almost this primal, either fear of or anger towards this group that always the patina of equality always gets scratched away. It's, you know, anti-Semitism.

I've grappled with it too, you know, over the many years, because it's just so stupid. Like it's so dumb. It makes no sense, but it does, you know, prevail. It does exist. Like, it's existed as long as the Jewish faith has, going back to the beginnings of the Hebrew people. And I, in the hidden hand at the start,

I kind of try to figure out, okay, why is this happening? And why is it so bad right now? And I think really it comes down to envy and resentment. And in politics, that's a very powerful force. You know, when it's harnessed by a candidate and a big ad by, resentment can topple governments. And I think that's what Iran and its allies in China and Russia and Hamas and Hezbollah, and this alphabet soup of NGOs and nonprofits and charities have figured out,

is if we can build resentment about the Jewish state and then beyond that the Jewish people, we can win. And one of the things that they've done really successfully, especially online, is depict Israel, this diverse, pluralistic state where about a third of the country is Arab or Muslim, as the new South Africa. Yeah. So if you oppose Israel to these young people who are mainly doing it, you're not being anti-Semitic, you're being anti-racist.

And it's been a really successful dishonest, but successful propaganda campaigns. Yeah, I mean, I wonder how far back that the research went by that group, by the hidden hand, to realize, yeah, if we can, if we can harness misinformation on TikTok, for example, and so many, so many young people are getting, they're using TikTok as a search engine, right? This is where they're getting their news from. If, it will supercharge any lie that you want to sell. Yeah, and TikTok, I mean, all of these platforms, it's not just TikTok, in fairness to them. It's all of them. Yeah. Instagram and Facebook and X, X in particular. They're all terrible at it.

And it's crazy when you think of it. Because if you look at the end-user agreement, if you sign up for any of these platforms, you have to promise not to promote hatred and division and disinformation. And none of them are enforcing it. And they claim that they don't have the resources for it. But, you know, some of them have budgets bigger than some countries. So they absolutely can do it.

They just don't want to. And unfortunately, the principal victim of this propaganda campaign, as I talk about in the book, is young people. You know, in this country right now, 41% of Gen Z. So Gen Z are like from 18 to 24 support Hamas. They don't support Israel. Yeah. They support Hamas. And so 41% of Gen Z, that's about 3 million people.

Yeah. That's a lot of people. Well, you know, I wonder, it's made me re-contextualized a lot of questions I've had, you know, listening to nonsense terms like silence is violence and, you know, words are violence. I always wondered where that nonsense came from and I thought it was silly. But I wonder whether that stuff was planted in the ground in anticipation of stuff like this so that so that the lie would be easier to sell, right? If words are violence, then that activates a certain type of, you know, keyboard warrior

to feel like they are doing something. And, you know, I saw a video online of, you know, one of those right-wing guys who's trying to have a provocative conversation on a university campus. And, you know, not my thing, but it's also conversation. and one woman was so upset about this and that this guy was a neo-Nazi and she felt in her mind she was standing up against Hitler. Like that she was doing noble work

because in her mind the words that he espoused were akin to Nazi propaganda. And I feel the same thing happened here. Like a lot of these kids on so, most of them truly believe that they were on the side of good. Otherwise it wouldn't be, we didn't raise a, we didn't raise a generation of hate-filled children.

So they had to believe they were on the side of good. But in the absence of seeing real violence, and it must have been the words. And that was planted in the ground a long time before. Words are so important. And hateful, you know, words precede hateful deeds. Always, always. You know, I've been tracking anti-Semitic jihadists

and anti-Semitic skinheads for years. and they always have leaflets that preach this homily of hatred, all of them, all of them. And, you know, the words, the importance of words, repetition and catchphrases like globalize the intifada and genocide, and from the river to the sea, you know, Palestine be free. All those are just words, but what they share is a characteristic with cults, right? Cults know that if you bring people in and get them into a cycle of words and catchphrases and refrains, you can bend reality. You can change the way people look at the world. And that's, in fact, what these guys have done.

And I talk about in the hidden hand, they very much are like, they operate like a cult. And it's very insular. And, you know, there's an outside world. So like at U of T, when they had their encampment in the center of campus for months and months and months, if you were a Jew or somebody they suspected of being sympathetic to Jews, you weren't allowed in there. It was crazy to me. And they were allowed to continue. Yeah.

But as somebody, as you said, who's been tracking this sort of thing for years, I would think that you would see this and you go, okay, well, this is the new iteration. This is the next, there's the next step. They've just, they've modernized. They've gone online. They've gone digital. But this was something that clearly you felt needed the treatment of an entire book. So what was it that you, as you were. unveiling it or discovering it as you were witnessing that the hidden hand coming into into focus.

What did you witness that you said, okay, this is not, this is not what I've seen before. It was, I was watching TV and I talk about this in the hidden hand. High school in San Francisco, Lowell High School, upper upper class kids, racially diverse. And they came out. So before Israel had even received. responded militarily to the attack of October 7th. So it was 10 days after that event. Hundreds of these kids did a walkout at their campus in San Francisco.

They had signage, professionally made signs. They were using clearly, to me, talking points. They had a whole strategy. And they absolutely dominated news coverage because it was one of the earliest protests. And I looked at it. I said, there's no way of it. a bunch of 14-year-olds put this together. And of course, and then I found out that was the case.

It was this group that has been regarded by the ADL as anti-Semitic, provided these kids of talking points, provided them with the signs, gave them training. They gave the media training. Yeah. And they even said to them, if you get arrested, we've got lawyers who will represent you. I'm continuing on my conversation with Warren Kinsella,

the author of The Hidden Hand, The Information War and the Rise of Anti-Semitic property. aganda warned the great irony to me, well, there's so many, and there's a lot of sadness that any of this ever had to transpire. But had October 7th not happened, the Israel was on the cusp of turfing Benjamin Netanyahu. I mean, in the weeks, I want to say weeks before, I might be getting the timeline wrong, but didn't a full third of the country come out in protest to the changes he was bringing to the Supreme Court? Yeah, he was trying to change the judicial system. Yeah.

And a rig it in his favor because he's, you know, unbeknownst maybe to a lot of people here. He's facing three separate corruption trials. So he's passed his best before date. Like, you know, I advise politicians, as you know, and I would have said to him, hey, BB, time's up, pal. Like, you got half the country coming out and protesting against you. But then, you know, this terrible event happened on October 7th. So has he been a good wartime prime minister?

He hasn't been a bad one. Yeah. But the one thing I do talk about in the book, based upon the excellent reporting in the New York Times is that he made a choice to buy peace with Hamas. He actually facilitated the transfer

of millions of dollars from Qatar to Hamas. Like, suitcase is bulging with cash the New York Times found because he thought he could buy peace with Hamas who he thought that would never do what they did on the seventh. And of course that was a terrible miscalculation.

Yeah, but now in the last last time. The only time I've ever gone to Israel, I talked to a lot of people, and it feels like the conclusion that a lot of Israelis have reached, be they left or right or apolitical, is that any conversation about a two-state solution is not palatable in the, certainly not in the short or the middle term. Yeah, no, that's those, unfortunately, that is gone. And I think that was one of Hamas's objectives. They saw Israel starting to develop an actual legal relationship with Saudi Arabia. They already had one with Bahrain and other places.

They wanted to stop that. And October 7th was one way they did that. So regrettably, you know, I think you're right. I think that is on hold. But the other thing that, you know, I've interviewed for our documentary, the campaign, and for the hidden hand in the book, lots and lots of Israelis.

You've talked to lots too. And they have become so pessimistic about their reputation around the world. Yeah. And, you know, I had so many say to me, Warren, what's the point? You know, everybody hates us. It's never going to change. And it's like, no, no, that's not true.

Well, I'm glad you went there because I want to pivot into sort of ending this on a positive note. Like, tell me what you mean by that. I think that, you know, we share so much with the Jewish people, with the Israeli people. They are truly a democracy in the middle of a sea of undemocratic government. some of which are quite dictatorial. You know, that's number one. Number two, this notion that they're the new South Africa is so false. It's so dishonest.

You go there and you see Muslims serving in the IDF. You see Muslims in the Knesset in their legislature. You see, you know, police officers who are Arabs. Like a quarter of the country is Arab. And you see how diverse it is and how pluralistic it is. And so that that is something that Israel needs. needs to actually have a word for it. They call it Hasbara. We need to be better at Hasbro, which is telling their story. And it's like, yeah, like you guys are the most technologically advanced

country in the world, and you absolutely suck at communications. And I, you know, I give them that criticism in the book, is the bad guys, Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran, they've, they're evil, and they've done terrible things, but they are super disciplined communicators. But that's because social media is is the tool of the insurgency, right? It's not the tool of the governing power. And so in that dynamic, it works well. It's more, it's more received. I personally think that's why Pierre Poliab was so effective against Justin Trudeau

is that he was, he leveraged social media as an insurgent. And then it just didn't work when the new guy came in. But look, I met a guy when I was in Israel who spoke. He wasn't Jewish, but he had been in all sorts of key positions in government and in diplomacy and in the military. And he said, look, is everything perfect in this country for my people? No. Sometimes do I feel like we are not as well treated as we should be? Absolutely.

So what do I do? I fight for it. I fight for it within the, I try to pull the levers of power. I try to communicate. I try to, I try to rally the troops. And then I thought to myself, well, that's what happens in Canada. Like if a group doesn't feel like they're getting their fair shake, they will fight for it within the system. That's how a democracy is supposed to work.

That is not a sign of weakness in that country. It is a sign that the system is working because no one's ever going to get it right. But it's about striving to get it right. Yeah. And, you know, message, everybody talks about the narrative. You know, what's the narrative? And the Israelis have a tough time because they are a democracy, you know, and there's a joke that Israelis tell about themselves.

You get two Israelis in a room, you'll get three opinions. But, you know, there's one section in the book where I talk about the mainstream media. There are good and decent Palestinian people. And I've met, and talked to many of them, so have you. But if you step out a line in Gaza, if you're a reporter there and you actually try to tell the truth about Hamas, you will be killed. they will kill you or they will kill your family or they'll threaten you or they'll kidnap you.

That's what Hamas does. So their message is singular. Like it's absolute message discipline because if you step out a line, you could lose your life. And so that's one of the challenges that Israel faces is they are a democracy. And in a democracy, the beautiful thing about democracy is we have lots of different opinions.

Which leaves it open to being exploited by those cynical powers, by a hidden hand. What do we do for that generation here that, look, I don't want to speak, I don't want to be condescending to them, but there's an element of deprogramming that has to happen. How do we, how do we reach them? Our educational system has done badly, both at the post-secondary level and before that. And we've seen the bad guys, you know, the Jesuits taught me in Montreal. And the Jesuits used to say, you know, you give me the boy until he's six and I'll give you the man. And the bad guys in Gaza realized that a long time ago.

So they're very good at propagating a hateful message to children and young people. So we need to take that back. Yeah. That's number one. Number two, as you pointed out a few minutes ago, like the number one search engine for young people in Canada for Gen Z is TikTok. Yeah. It's not Google.

It's not Bing. And so we need to say to those platforms who make a lot of money, money out of us. Hey guys, we're not going to let you operate, you know, to the extent that you are now, until you enforce some basic rules like telling the truth and not promoting hatred. That would be the second thing. And then I think the third thing is that politicians, you know, up to including the prime minister of Canada, need to do better, right? We've got the laws on the books and they need to be enforcing them. And Mark Carney, still he's the only G7 leader is not visited Israel after October 7th. He's the only one. And so Canada, like Spain, like Norway,

like Ireland, has got a big anti-Semitism problem. We're regarded as being one of the worst places in the world for anti-Semitism. That's going to change. Yeah, I don't know how to, are you optimistic for the future? I am. Yeah. I am. Because when I've been talking to people about the book and the documentary, they're saying, you know, finally, this is good, you know, go ahead and tell that story. Yeah, and I just hope that those who believe that they're fundamentally opposed to the way you and I think on this specific thing, I just, I want to get to a place where they are willing to read something or watch your movie without immediately thinking, like, I'm, I'm, that person is the enemy, that person represents everything. So what? Go in there, watch it with an open mind,

and let's have a conversation afterwards. If we can get, just get to that point, then, you know, so much more positive things can flow because right now it feels like we're log jammed. No, it does. And no, you put it so well. That's exactly what we need to do as a country and as a people and as a civilization. Because, you know, the cliche is, you know, they come for the Saturday people, the Sunday people are next. They're not just after the Jews. These bad guys want to destabilize democracy in the West.

And all of us have a stake in this. The book is The Hidden Hand. The Information War and the rise of anti-Semitic propaganda by Warren Kinsella. It's out tomorrow morning. Warren, thank you very much. Congratulations. Welcome to Survivor 50. Wednesdays on Global.

We chose you to represent 25 years of the greatest adventure on television. And all we want is everything. This is the Survivor Coliseum. It's do or die. Light your torch and be a part of history. Survivor, all new Wednesdays at 8 Eastern on global. Stream on Stack TV.