Why this Jewish YouTube star ran for the PPC in Montreal

In the recent election, David Freiheit stood out as arguably the most popular candidate running for the People's Party of Canada—apart from its leader, Maxime Bernier. The Montreal-based lawyer spends most of his days recording YouTube videos for his more than 400,000 fans across YouTube, Twitter and other social platforms, who know him as "Viva Frei".

These days, in his videos, when Freiheit isn't commenting on prominent legal cases in his videos, he's arguing against vaccine mandates, lockdowns and elected politicians. He’s called Ontario Premier Doug Ford a fascist and despises Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. On his show, he hosts controversial right-wing speakers such as Robert Barnes and notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Offline, Canadians might recognize Freiheit from his purple campaign signs erected around Montreal’s Westmount and NDG areas this past fall. He was the PPC candidate for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, a riding long held by Liberal cabinet minister Marc Garneau.

Today, Freiheit joins to discuss why he decided to jump into politics, how he feels about winning around 1,500 votes and what he sees as the future of the PPC, which drew more than 800,000 votes nationwide.

What we talked about:

• Watch Viva Frei's videos at youtube.com/c/VivaFrei
• Register for Leonard Cohen’s 5th yahrzeit lecture with Rabbi Aubrey Glazer here

Credits

The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Victoria Redden is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We're a member of The CJN Podcast Network; find more great Jewish podcasts at thecjn.ca.