Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

May 9, 2021 - Epoch Times

07:59

It’s ‘Like a Digital Stoning’—Alec Klein on Cancel Culture & #MeToo | American Thought Leaders

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	A big kind of theme also, it seems to be in the book, is basically how this information that was put out—it was actually 10 individuals accusing you of these different things, ultimately—and how that actually kind of played out in the media coverage.
	It became almost a completely different creature, from what I understand.
	It's one of those things where it's hard to fathom that these things happened, but one of these most outrageous elements about the misinformation that was put out there is that there had been essentially a secretary years ago in 2015 who had filed a claim of harassment Well,
	she was One of the main attackers years later when it went out in the media.
	And the university did nothing.
	They didn't lift a finger to correct the record because here she was violating the terms of her agreement with the university.
	They already found her to be lying about all this, but the University did nothing to stop her from putting out these false statements that were utterly destructive to my career and life.
	That's the way these things happen, and there's not much you can do about it when you're in that hailstorm, when you're getting attacked on social media.
	It's kind of like a digital stoning, if you will.
	And the more you try to resist it, the harder it gets to even survive it.
	But that's the way that that unfolded.
	As people are attacking others on social media, they're finding that it's effective, whether the accusations are true or not.
	And they're also noticing that corporate interests and other interests are caving quickly because they don't want the trouble.
	But that's the dynamic we have today, which is why in many ways cancel culture has gotten much worse Well, and as we were talking earlier, I think you found in the media coverage, going back to the media right now, that basically there were a lot of mistruths that were amplified as if they were somehow factual.
	And this is something, of course, that we see as kind of rampant in at least the legacy media, frankly, everywhere.
	And what do you make of this, and how did this actually impact you in particular?
	One of the accusers went on television about this and said that I had told a story of a sexual nature.
	And I'll tell you the story right now because I don't think it's a story of a sexual nature.
	It was that when I was in college many moons ago, there was a girl that I liked and I had a Hershey's kiss in my pocket.
	This girl didn't know that I had the Hershey's kiss.
	And I asked her, I said, would you like to kiss?
	And she turned to me and thought about it.
	She said, yes.
	And I was too afraid to do anything about it, so I threw her the Hersey's Kiss, and that was the end of the story.
	And I told that story as sort of a cautionary tale, which is, you know, when you're young, sometimes you may be afraid to pursue what you really want.
	But anyway, so this one accuser told that story.
	I don't know how she described the story, but she apparently described it as some sort of story of a sexual nature.
	I actually talked to one of my lawyers about it.
	I said, is that a story of a sexual nature?
	But, you know, these things, they have a momentum of their own.
	So when somebody, when the attacks start, there's almost like this pylon effect.
	And that happened in my case.
	So there were students whom I had never taught, I didn't know, who put a template on Facebook, I think it was Facebook, in which they said, here's how you can complain about this guy, just fill in the blanks.
	So that encouraged people to put out those complaints.
	There were other students, again, who I didn't know, had never taught, who put out a petition, an online petition to have me ousted.
	And it was actually my then wife who was sort of like flabbergasted by this.
	She said, you know, who in their right mind would survive basically having a proverbial, you know, billboard on the highway saying, here's how you can attack and take this person down.
	Go at it.
	But that's exactly what happened.
	And, you know, it had a life of its own, and, you know, I remember sort of being utterly shocked that this was happening.
	You know, I can tell you, by the way, Jan, that as a professor at this university for about a decade, you probably know this, and many of your viewers and listeners will know this, is that students do anonymous evaluations.
	They say whatever they want about the professors, and so it's kind of a free-for-all.
	You know, they'll talk about, oh, he's a bad dresser, he's obnoxious, or whatever.
	I had 10 years of anonymous evaluations.
	Never, not once, was I ever accused of any kind of mistreatment of my students.
	And trust me, if you did something to mistreat them, It would be known.
	It would have been said.
	That's leaving aside the fact that they could walk into any office and complain about you as well.
	But none of that had ever happened.
	And I can tell you that is impossible if you have some sort of track record of mistreating students.
	It just is impossible.
	But it didn't matter.
	This is the world we live in today where cancel culture is based on the accusation itself.
	It's guilt by accusation, which is a term others have used.
	It's kind of like...
	The Salem-Wits trials and McCarthyism, in my opinion, may be worse, but the idea is that during McCarthyism, it was, you're a communist, we have no proof of it, and that was the end of it, and your life was destroyed, and people would just walk out of their lives, and that was the end of it.
	But we're sort of going through that all over again, because it's about the accusation, and then it's the more that they can get others to pile on and add to those accusations, the more effective it is.
	So you've just watched a clip from an American Thought Leader's interview, and as you probably know, I pour my heart and soul into these.
	YouTube has been censoring some entirely mainstream videos lately, including things like Florida Governor DeSantis' coronavirus roundtable.
	We've even had some of our own videos removed from YouTube for no clear reason whatsoever.
	And frankly, I don't find this to be appropriate.
	I don't find this to be acceptable.
	I don't want to be sitting around thinking what YouTube may or may not feel like they want to censor.
	And beyond that even, YouTube has demonetized us for the past two months.
	Ostensibly, we're working to resolve the issue, but our hopes are kind of fading when it comes to this.
	So what is our response to this?
	Well, we've started our own platform, Epoch TV. Now, Epoch TV is the premium Epoch Times video platform.
	It's got American Thought Leaders, but it also has The Larry Elder Show and Crossroads with Joshua Phillip and a number of other programs.
	So you can get Epoch TV for this low introductory rate of $4.99 a month.
	And in so doing, you're actually supporting the Epoch Times as an organization.
	You're supporting uncensored news.
	You're supporting groundbreaking investigative reporting.
	And you're supporting these deep dive interviews that I love doing so much.

▲