A Candid Conversation with Canadaland’s Jesse Brown

Introduction

My choice of guest for this week’s episode—Jesse Brown—may come as a surprise to anyone who’s followed my career over the last decade or so.

Jesse is the founder and editor of Canadaland, a left-leaning Toronto-based media company that’s been producing popular podcasts since the mid 2010s. During that time, Jesse’s journalistic passion has been media criticism. And for a while, back in the day when I was still working in the Canadian media, one of his favourite targets was me.

This was a period when Jesse Brown and Canadaland were positioning themselves as the voice of an upstart media generation that was more progressive, politically enlightened, and racially diverse than the old guard—which is to say, people like me—who worked at legacy newspapers, magazines, and TV stations.

I won’t go into the details concerning my various online feuds with Jesse, which played out in the tiny fishbowl of Canadian journalism. But suffice it to say that back then, the prospect of either of us appearing on one another’s podcast seemed extremely improbable.

But then, the years marched on, Canadian politics got weirder, old ideological lines began to break down, and I began to notice that Jesse and I were suddenly on the same side of a few hot-button issues—especially since the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, which did much to convulse Canada’s progressive political scene.

As you’ll hear Jesse explain during our conversation, a significant fraction of Canadaland’s progressive listener base became incensed when Jesse, who, like me, is Jewish, started speaking out against rising antisemitism in Canada. To Jesse’s critics, his decision to focus on antisemitism was an unwelcome distraction from what they regard as the most urgent political project of our day—valorizing the struggle for Palestinian rights, and denouncing both Israel and Zionists.

For Jesse, this rebellion among a significant fraction of his Canadaland subscriber base—and even some members of his own editorial staff—came as a shock. For years, he’s stood against racism and hate; and so he expected that his allies and listeners would return the favour when that hate was expressed toward Jews. When they shot the messenger instead, he says, his whole world seemed to collapse.

But Jesse isn’t backing down. Just the opposite: He’s put his concerns about Canadian antisemitism front and centre on the Canadaland web site with a new podcast titled What Is Happening Here, in which Jesse interviews fellow Canadian Jews who’ve been targeted with street violence, bullying, vandalism, and professional cancellation. The series launched on November 17, a week after my November 10 interview with Jesse. But I was able to get an early listen to the first three podcasts in the series.

Please enjoy my discussion with Canadaland producer Jesse Brown, host of the new podcast series about Jews in Canada, What Is Happening Here.