Tucker Carlson urges Canadians to notice mistreatment of Christians, says leaders 'trying to hurt you'

Carlson torches Justin Trudeau as 'weird, cross-dressing prime minister'

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Thursday, January 25, 2024

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson urged Canadians to take notice of how Christians have been treated in their country by state authorities, some of whom he said are pushing "hard-edge fascism" behind the guise of "public safety."

In two speeches at packed events in Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta, on Wednesday, Carlson torched Canadian political leaders and especially Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whom he described as a "weird, cross-dressing prime minister."

Liberating Canada: The Calgary Speech pic.twitter.com/nidv7KHHlz

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— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) January 25, 2024

During his approximately 20-minute speech to about 4,000 people in Calgary's TELUS Convention Centre, Carlson noted that while he has an affinity for Canadians because some of his ancestors settled in Nova Scotia, he believes the country's political leadership are worthy of derision and suggested that Canadian citizens are not pushing back enough against their encroaching totalitarian impulses.

"You should recognize what is happening to you," Carlson told the audience.

"This is not a political debate on which you've been invited to participate," he continued. "This is a destruction of you, and your culture, and your beliefs, and your children, and your future as a country."

Carlson singled out policies such as the decriminalization of hard drugs in Alberta's neighboring province of British Columbia, laws affirming trans identities for children, and the rising statistics of government-funded euthanasia to assert that Canadian authorities have contempt for their own people.

"They're not people who are trying to help you, they are people who are trying to hurt you," he said. "Anyone who goes after your children, anyone who encourages you to have fewer children is trying to make you extinct. It's literally that simple."

Carlson concluded his address by exhorting his audience to "take a look at what they're doing to your Christians."

"I am a Christian, but that's not why I'm telling you this," he said. "I'm telling you this because there's no more inoffensive and peaceful group in the world than Christians. In fact, there isn't. The religion tells them, commands them, to turn the other cheek and to put the concerns of others above their own concerns."

Carlson admonished anyone who takes issue with such precepts to explain why anyone would object to them.

"People who pray for their enemies? Who does that? Who would pray for an enemy? No one, except for Christians, and they do," he said. "They're commanded to. So if you're hassling that group, maybe you've got another agenda that we should be concerned about, even if we're not in that group."

Carlson mentioned the 96 Canadian churches that have been burned or vandalized in recent years, which Trudeau condemned as "unacceptable and wrong" while also claiming they were "understandable" in the wake of allegations that mass graves of indigenous children were discovered at Catholic residential schools. Later excavations found no evidence of human remains at the sites, according to the New York Post.

"If we burn 90 of their churches to the ground, and the prime minister and his little weird buddies are endorsing that — burning churches — if you're on the side of burning churches, let me just say I don't need any other facts of the case, you're on the wrong side," Carlson said.

Carlson also made an apparent reference to the Christian pastors who were jailed in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, most of whom were in Alberta.

"If you think that preaching the Gospel is so dangerous that the people who do it need to be in prison, in shackles, you're serving someone other than the people of Canada, if you know what I mean," he said.

"That's really scary," he added. "And I don't care how much they dress it up in the passive aggressive, self-help language of the modern Left — 'Well, it's really about public safety.' Every time I turn on your freaking television shows, everything's about public safety, which is a euphemism for hard-edge fascism, actually."

In early 2021, Pastor James Coates was the first clergyman arrested in the country for keeping his church in Edmonton open in defiance of government authorities during the pandemic. The pastor spent a month in jail after police raided his GraceLife Church at dawn and barricaded it behind multiple layers of fencing.

Following Coates' imprisonment, Pastor Tim Stephens of Calgary was also arrested and jailed after a police helicopter found his congregation gathering outside in June 2021. Police arrested him at his home while his young children sobbed, which prompted a letter of concern from Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Pastor Artur Pawlowski also made international headlines in 2021 when he forcefully expelled police and public health authorities from his Cave of Adullam congregation in Calgary. He would go on to be arrested multiple times, spending 51 days in prison after delivering a sermon and officiating a service to truckers blocking the U.S.-Canada border in February 2022.

Carlson urged his audience to consider the implications of authorities who are "throwing preachers in prison for preaching the Christian Gospel" while advocating for increased lawlessness.