Ezra Levant has finally apologized for the jaw-dropping segment he did on his Sun News show last year in which he ranted against Roma people as “swindlers” who were going to “rob us blind” if allowed to immigrate to Canada.
“There were some criticisms after that show, but I dismissed them as coming from the usual soft-on-crime liberals and grievance groups,” he said on The Source yesterday. “But when I look at some of the words I used in that show - like ‘the gypsies have gypped us’ — I must admit that I did more than just attack a crime or immigration fraud problem. I attacked a particular group, and painted them all with the same brush. And to those I hurt, I’m sorry.”
Levant then invited his boss Kory Teneycke onto the show, who agreed that the host had “crossed the line.”
All in all, this is a very good apology for someone to issue following a lapse in judgement.
But Levant’s anti-Roma segment was way more than a momentary blunder. It was a nine-minute screed against an ethnic group that suffers from negative stereotypes across Europe, where they are routinely discriminated against both legally and informally. After going on about how “gypsies” are predisposed to lie, steal and cheat for nine goddamn minutes, no apology can obscure the fact that Levant’s original remarks were the sort of thing that would forever mark him as a bigot unworthy of a public platform if he had targeted any other group.
Here are some of Levant’s words from the original broadcast:
“Gypsies aren’t a race, they aren’t a religion, they aren’t a linguistic group. They’re the medieval prototype of the Occupy Wall Street movement, a shiftless group of hobos that doesn’t believe in property rights for themselves… or for others — they rob people blind.”
…and…
“These are gypsies, a culture synonymous with swindlers. The phrase gypsy and cheater have been so interchangeable historically that the word has entered the English language as a verb: he gypped me. Well the gypsies have gypped us. Too many have come here as false refugees. And they come here to gyp us again and rob us blind as they have done in Europe for centuries … They’re gypsies. And one of the central characteristics of that culture is that their chief economy is theft and begging.”
On Monday’s broadcast, Levant said he remains concerned “about immigration fraud and crime gangs” but that he “can be better in the way I express those concerns.” I’ll say.
via:The apology video: The original remarks
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