Ezra Isaac Levant (born February 20, 1972) is a Canadian media personality, political activist, writer, broadcaster, and former lawyer. Levant is the founder and former publisher of the conservative magazine, The
Western Standard. He is also the co-founder, owner, and
CEO of the
far-right media website
Rebel News. Levant has also worked as a columnist for
Sun Media, and he hosted a daily program on the
Sun News Network from the channel's inception in 2011 until its demise in 2015.
Levant rose to prominence in 2006 after publishing the
Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons in The
Western Standard, which led to a protracted legal battle with the
Alberta Human Rights Commission regarding
hate speech legislation and
freedom of speech. The complaint against Levant was ultimately withdrawn. In February 2015, Levant co-founded
Rebel News with
Brian Lilley; Lilley left
Rebel News in 2017 citing lack of editorial standards. Under Levant,
Rebel News has been described as a platform for the anti-Islamic ideology known as
counter-jihad.
Levant self-identifies as a
libertarian conservative;
[8] however, he has also been identified as belonging to the Canadian far right. He is a prominent supporter of the
Canadian petroleum industry and
fracking. Levant has been successfully sued for libel on multiple occasions, while apologies and retractions were issued by him or on his behalf on numerous other occasions.
Early life and education
Levant was born to an
Ashkenazi Jewish family in Calgary, Alberta. His great-grandfather emigrated to Canada in 1903 from Russia to establish a homestead near
Drumheller, Alberta. Levant grew up in a suburb of Calgary. He attended the
Calgary Hebrew School in his childhood before transferring to a public junior high school.
Levant campaigned for the
Reform Party of Canada as a teenager and joined it as a university student. From 1990 to 1993, while at the University of Calgary, his two-person team won the "best debating" category in the
Inter-Collegiate Business Competition held at
Queen's University. The first two of those years, his debate partner was future Calgary mayor
Naheed Nenshi. He has subsequently accused Nenshi, who is
Ismaili, of "anti-Christian bigotry" as mayor.
In 1994, he was featured in an article in
The Globe and Mail on young conservatives after accusing the
University of Alberta of racism for instituting an
affirmative action program of hiring women and Indigenous professors. After his actions outraged Indigenous law students, feminists, and a number of professors, Levant was called to a meeting with the assistant dean who advised him of the university's non-academic code of conduct and defamation laws. As head of the university's speakers committee, Levant organized a debate between
Doug Christie, a lawyer known for his advocacy in defence of
Holocaust deniers and accused
Nazi war criminals, and Thomas Kuttner, a Jewish lawyer from the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission.
Levant was invited to write a guest column for the
Edmonton Journal and interviewed on television.
[18] He spent the summer of 1994 in
Washington, D.C., in an internship arranged by the libertarian
Koch Summer Fellow Program. In 1995 he worked for the
Fraser Institute and wrote
Youthquake, which argued for smaller government, including privatization of the
Canada Pension Plan. Levant saw "youthquake," the term he used to describe what he identified as a conservative youth movement of the 1990s, as similar to the 1960s
civil rights movement. In his eyes, instead of being enslaved by racism, his generation was "enslaved by debt", and in order to liberate itself, society needed to dismantle elements such as
trade unions, the
minimum wage,
universal health care, subsidized
tuition, and
public pension plans.
[...]
At Rebel News
Main article:
Rebel News
Following the closure of Sun News Network, on February 16, 2015, Levant launched
The Rebel website as a corporate endeavour with a YouTube channel for videos produced by himself,
Brian Lilley and other former Sun News Network personalities. Levant argued his online production would be unencumbered by the regulatory and distribution challenges faced by the Sun News Network. He also said lower production costs would make it more viable.
[46] A
crowdfunding campaign raised $100,000 for the project.
Lilley quit the Rebel on 12 August 2017, following coverage of the
Unite the Right rally in
Charlottesville, Virginia, by
Faith Goldy, who was later fired by Levant. Lilley said he had become uncomfortable with what he felt was an "increasingly harsh tone" when The Rebel discussed topics such as
immigration or
Islam. He also accused The Rebel of exhibiting a "lack of editorial and behavioural judgment that left unchecked will destroy it and those around it."
In 2017, The Rebel was repeatedly the object of controversy, including advertising boycott campaigns in Canada and the UK, the loss of several well-known contributors, and the cancellation under pressure of a planned Caribbean cruise featuring The Rebel personalities. As of February 20, 2022, The Rebel Media had more than 1.56 million subscribers on its YouTube channel.
