Canada ‘Breitbart North’ Co-Founder Quits Over Charlottesville
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Aiden Pink August 15, 2017
The co-founder of Rebel Media, the far-right Canadian news organization commonly referred to as “Breitbart North,” resigned on Monday, citing the firm’s cozy ties to white supremacists.
Brian Lilley, a conservative radio host, said in a Facebook post that the departure had been “a long time coming. What may have started as a concern over the harsh tone taken on some subjects came to a head with this weekend’s events in Charlottesville, Virginia.”
“What anyone from The Rebel was doing at a so-called ‘unite the right’ rally that was really an anti-Semitic white power rally is beyond me,” he added.
Rebel correspondent Faith Goldy had been livestreaming the rally, and was highly critical of the anti-Nazi counter-protesters. Goldy had previously created a video for the website titled “White Genocide in Canada?”
This was not the only connection between Rebel Media and the “Unite the Right” march: Rally organizer and white nationalist figure Jason Kessler publicly complained in June that he had been plagiarized in a video made by then-Rebel correspondent Jack Posobiec.
Rebel Media’s other co-founder, Ezra Levant, who is Jewish, released a memo on Monday refuting Lilley’s claims that it had grown close to the “alt-right.”
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
