EU Takes Major Step in Forcing X to Censor Non-Sanctioned Political Speech, Biden Seeks to Link Israel Aid w/ More Ukraine Funding, Former CIA-Chief Incites Violence Against a US Senator | SYSTEM UPDATE #159
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube tonight.
The European Union takes another major step toward forcing Big Tech, and especially X, formerly known as Twitter, to censor more in accordance with their demands.
In September, the EU adopted a new law called the Digital Services Act, one of the most repressive such laws anywhere in the West, and it vests EU officials with vast new powers to require social media platforms to censor political speech in accordance with their demands, And it allows them to impose massive fines, 6% of the overall revenue of these companies.
Not 6% of their profits, 6% of their overall revenue for failure to censor whatever the EU decides is disinformation or hate speech or pro-Russian propaganda.
Last month, the EU released a study that purported to show that far more disinformation and, quote, pro-Russian propaganda is circulating on all big tech platforms.
But again, especially Twitter, now known as X, since that's their target, given how controversial Elon Musk has become, all as a result, they said, of the fact that these platforms are failing to censor with sufficient aggression and frequency.
The study they commissioned was conducted by a group that has anointed itself Disinformation Experts, one of the most fraudulent new titles ever invented.
And, like so many of these disinformation groups, that one is funded by the neoliberal billionaire Piero Meteor, who seems obsessed with creating an industry that is empowered to determine truth and falsity with the intention of censoring what they declare false from being heard on the internet.
As we reported and documented when all of this happened last month, the Washington Post trumpeted that study in order explicitly to blame Elon Musk and X for insufficiently censoring and then warning them, as well as other platforms like Facebook and Google, that they would now be in violation of the new EU law if they did not censor more.
Earlier today, the French EU official responsible for this new law, both for creating it and then overseeing it, Thierry Breton, wrote a letter to Elon Musk warning him that X was failing to censor content that the EU now officially regards as disinformation.
This time, instead of citing Russia, they're exploiting the emotions around the war in Israel to claim that X is allowing, quote, disinformation to circulate about Israel and Gaza.
And the EU official threatened X explicitly with serious punishments in the event that it does not immediately start complying with the EU's censorship demand.
This is one of the most authoritarian, really creepy letters you will ever see.
But it's absolutely a sign of what is coming, an even more aggressive expansion of the censorship regime under which we now live, and so we will show you this threatening letter and discuss its implications.
Speaking of exploiting the war in Israel, this war is not even three days old yet and the Biden White House is already plotting how it can opportunistically use the high levels of support for Israel and the United States among both political parties to force Congress to do something in the last several weeks it has been reluctant to do, namely approve the appropriation of another $24 billion for the war in Ukraine.
Remember that?
The war in Ukraine?
Knowing that there is immense pressure on both parties to quickly approve additional funding for Israel, meaning funding to fuel their new war beyond the close to $4 billion annually that the U.S.
already gives to Israel, Democrats, along with their Republican allies who support further funding for the war in Ukraine, are seeking to force Republican members of Congress who have been opposing more funding for Ukraine to now vote on a joint package.
That would only allow them to fund Israel and its war if that new funding for Israel is accompanied by billions more for the war in Ukraine.
We'll discuss the implications of this as well.
And then finally, one of the most unhinged people I have ever encountered in public life is the former head of the CIA and NSA for the Bush-Cheney administration, General Michael Hayden.
He was the head of the NSA when the 9-11 attack happened.
It is hard to imagine a more shameful failure than that.
Imagine having that sit on your conscience.
I don't think he has one though, so I don't think it bothers him.
After leading the CIA through some of the worst post 9-11 abuses, he became a fanatical opponent, General Hayden did, of Donald Trump, endlessly claiming that Trump was a Kremlin agent and Trump is a traitor, just like his successor at the CIA, John Brennan, did.
And it probably comes as no surprise to learn that General Hayden, like almost every former operative of the U.S.
security state who devoted his life to opposing Trump, is now employed As a news analyst for CNN.
Now earlier today General Hayden posted a tweet that can really only be read either as a death threat against Republican Senator Tommy Turbeville of Alabama or at best inciting for others to go and do violence against that senator.
There is, of course, endless chatter about this kind of rhetoric.
Not only is it used to demand censorship of the internet, but they even invented a new term for it.
Stoastic terrorism.
Yet because General Hayden's deranged incitement of violence was directed at one of the most currently despised people in Washington, someone who is blocking the appointment of senior Pentagon officials, none of the people usually so upset at this kind of rhetoric care at all about what General Hayden said today.
Still, it's really a mass-dropping moment for someone who, let's remember, ran a U.S.
government agency that is notorious for, among other things, targeted assassinations, so it's really well worth looking at.
And then, actually, finally, as a follow-up to last night's show, we will have a few updates on things that are happening regarding the war between Israel and Gaza, and especially the U.S. role in it.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
We have been reporting for almost two years now on the fact that the top priority of Western centers of power is to implement a rigorous and official
and a legally endorsed regime of censorship that primarily controls the principal means that we use to communicate with one another, to disseminate information and ideas, to receive our news.
Which is the internet, and particularly the small handful of large platforms that have commandeered the power over the flow of information.
And there's been all kinds of reporting, of course, on all the different ways that Western governments are attempting to influence and coerce censorship, to demand that views that they regard as threatening be banned every new crisis.
Including the election of Trump and Brexit and Russiagate and the 2020 election in January 6 and COVID and the war in Ukraine and now the war in Israel is seized upon.
Every single one of them seized upon as justification for more and more censorship.
That is how this censorship regime has been fortified.
And one of the things that has happened, without much media attention, we cover it every time it happens when we can, is that governments around the world, around the democratic world, are now adopting laws that empower them explicitly to wield this censorship power.
It had been the case that they were doing it informally.
The Twitter files, of course, were about how the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security would pick up the phone and call Facebook and Google and Twitter and say, hey, what about this tweet?
Why are you lining this one up?
We want this one banned.
There's a disinformation tweet about COVID.
Here's one about Ukraine.
We want these gone.
And a federal court recently ruled that the Biden administration's fixation on doing this violates the First Amendment.
In fact, one of the gravest attacks on free speech, said the court ruling in decades, if not in the history of the judiciary.
But governments are really not content any longer to use that kind of informal threat or that kind of shaming or the leverage they have over these companies because they regulate them, because they dole out benefits.
Instead, they're now adopting legal frameworks that lay out the powers that they have and provide for punishments, serious punishments.
In the event that major social media platforms do not comply with their censorship demands, it is now a crime or illegal not to censor in the way that Western governments want.
I can't overstate how oppressive that is.
We used to talk all the time about how China would impose all sorts of restrictions on the flow of political speech in China.
That's exactly what Western governments are doing, and they're doing it by law.
We covered the enactment and the approval of the Online Safety Act in the UK.
Look at how Orwellian that is.
The Online Safety Act, which is trying to make the internet safer for you by keeping away from you unsafe or dangerous ideas.
And we have been reporting on the law that is pending in Brazil, which would be one of the most repressive of all.
But it was at the last minute, its enactment was prevented because Google and Facebook went to the mat to argue against it to the point that the Brazilian Supreme Court banned them from doing that further, ordered the executive of those companies to appear at the federal police for interrogation over the activism in which they were engaged to stop the law.
But One of the most repressive laws, and we've talked about the law in Canada as well recently, which is the C11 law, that isn't quite as extreme as the UK law, and the most extreme of all is actually the one that has now been adopted by the EU, which is the Digital Services Act, an incredibly benign-sounding law that, in fact, is incredibly repressive.
And they have been building up.
They have been laying the foundation for months.
We've been reporting on every step of the way to essentially create a perception that the failure on the part of social media companies to censor in accordance with their demands is dangerous.
It's causing the flow of disinformation and hate speech.
It's fortifying Russian propaganda.
And as I said, the war in Israel and Gaza is not even three days old.
And already the EU official who oversees this new censorship law, who advocated for it, who's been a longtime censorship advocate, he's a French official who works right under the German president of the EU.
He has been working overtime to create the perception publicly that Twitter and Google and Facebook's failure to censor is a serious public threat that the EU now has to do something about.
And one of the tactics that sensors always use when it comes time to sensor is they always deliberately choose in the first instance.
Someone who is so widely disliked that most of the public won't mind when those people are silenced.
They think, oh, well, I don't really care if this person with this extreme view has been silenced.
That person is dangerous.
The problem is the reason they choose someone deeply unpopular is because they know the public will acquiesce.
And now the precedent has been set And then once they start using it on less disliked people or people who have a greater proximity to, say, the mainstream, by then it's too late.
You've given them that power.
Remember, the very first people who were depersoned by Big Tech, Big Tech got together and chose to eliminate them from Big Tech platforms all at once.
It was in 2018 during the Trump years, of course, and it was Milo Yiannopoulos and Alex Jones, two of the people most widely hated, certainly by mainstream venues.
And everybody said, well, I don't really care that Alex Jones can't be heard or Milo Yiannopoulos can't be heard.
They spread hatred.
They spread lies.
And obviously it was very predictable.
And one of the very few people who stood up and objected at the time was Peter Thiel, who sat on the board of Facebook.
Who said this is an extremely dangerous precedent.
Within a very short period of time, they were using it against more and more and more people, including people who weren't as disliked as those two.
But by then, the power had been given to them because people didn't object.
That's always what they do.
And so one of the things the EU is doing, even though they're after Facebook and Google equally, Is their focus primarily on Twitter, on what is now X, because of how hated Elon Musk has become in neoliberal culture, given his commitment to free speech and his refusal to censor on command.
And they know that going after Facebook or Google this way will be more difficult, in part because they're just much bigger and more powerful companies.
Twitter is a small fraction of the size of Facebook and Google, but also because Elon Musk has become such a hated figure.
This is the person who did more than anybody to bring electric cars to the market at a time that liberals are saying that there's no greater priority than reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.
You would think he would be a hero, and yet he's hated.
Because he bought X by waving the free speech banner and promising to defy censorship orders.
He's been far from perfect in that.
We've covered and criticized him when he has violated his own principles, but he has allowed a lot of people who were previously censored to be heard, and they're enraged by it.
They being media elites and political elites, and they know that if they focus on Elon Musk with the use of this new law, there will be enough people happy about it simply because they hate Elon Musk and believe that he's allowing too much free speech that very few people will object and they'll have this power to go and use it against Facebook and Google there will be enough people happy about it simply because they hate Elon Musk and believe that he's allowing too And today what they did was they know that emotions are extremely high about the war in Israel.
In the West, it is essentially a unified consensus in the mainstream that it is the duty of the West to support Israel.
The monuments in Germany and in France and in the UK and in the US have all been lit in solidarity with Israel and support for Israel.
The EU, the UK, the US have all pledged across political parties to do everything possible to support Israel.
They know that this is the issue that provokes the most emotions right now.
And so they wrote a letter today to Twitter to X threatening Elon Musk that you are going to pay a huge price if you don't censor more and they cited an allegation that he's allowing disinformation right now specifically about Israel.
Knowing that that would be designed to get people on their pro-censorship side.
Here is the news article from Reuters about the article.
And what we really want to go through and show you is the letter sent by this leading EU official, which we will, because I don't think you will believe just how heavy handed and authoritarian and dictatorial it is and its tone and its sentiment.
Fearfield vs. Reuters, you see the headline, EU says disinformation spreading on X after Hamas attack, urges Musk to tackle it.
Quote, the EU industry chief told Elon Musk that disinformation was spreading on his X messaging platform since Palestinian Islamist group Hamas' surprise attack on Israel, urging him to take countermeasures in line with new EU content rules.
Now let me just stop here and say that obviously nobody likes disinformation in principle.
The problem is who has the power to determine what's true and what's false.
And I honestly can't fathom the level of drooling authoritarianism necessary to trust or want to empower government officials like Thierry Brenton, the French EU official, With the power to determine what is true and what is false to the point where they have the power to ban anything they decide is disinformation.
But that is what this law is.
It says it right there.
It says urging him to take countermeasures in line with new EU online content rules, which means that the people who decide what is disinformation and what can and can't be heard are people like Thierry Breton, EU officials.
The article goes on, quote, Brenton did not give details on... Brenton did not give... Let me just see.
Brenton did not give details on... Brenton did not give details on the disinformation he cited.
X did not immediately respond to a writer's comment for request.
The online content rules, known as the Digital Services Act, require X...
And other online platforms to remove illegal content and to take measures to tackle the risk to public safety and discourse.
So this is the key part, is that this law, it purports to require all social media platforms to remove what they regard as illegal content, which includes hate speech and disinformation, and to take measures to tackle the risk to public security and civic discourse.
All is determined by the agenda of these EU officials.
This is a pure censorship regime.
There's no other way to describe it.
No drama is needed.
No hyperbole.
This is a legally enacted EU wide censorship regime that now entails massive punishments for any large social media platform that refuses to censor in accordance with the dictates and opinions and agenda of EU officials.
And if anyone thinks I'm overstating the case or being melodramatic about it, let us look at the letter sent today by this EU official to Elon Musk.
Because as I said, it's not just the content, the tone that makes so manifest what's really going on here.
Quote, Dear Mr. Musk, You see it there.
It's on official EU European Commission stationary.
It's from Thierry Breton, a member of the EU Commission.
He, of course, is in Brussels.
These are bureaucrats, the kind of Brussels-based bureaucrats that the people of the United Kingdom decided they did not want to be ruled by when they enacted Brexit.
Because this is the sort of people they are.
Quote, following the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel.
So do you see already what they're doing?
They're exploiting these emotions.
They're saying, given the outrageous, dangerous terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel, knowing that most people are horrified by what they saw, as we covered last night, Quote, we have indications that your platform is being used to disseminate illegal content and disinformation in the EU.
Let me remind you that the Digital Services Act sets very precise obligations regarding content moderation.
And as we all know, content moderation is just a liberal euphemism for censorship.
But he's saying there that There are now very precise obligations regarding content moderation under this new law.
And now he's about to lay out what those requirements are.
First, you need to be very transparent and clear on what content is permitted under your terms and consistently and diligently enforce your own policies.
Why does the government have the power to require social media platforms to censor in a certain way?
He goes on, this is particularly relevant when it comes to violent and terrorist content that appears to circulate on your platform.
Your latest changes in public interest policies that occurred overnight left many European users uncertain.
Second, when you receive notices of illegal content in the EU, you must be timely, diligent, and objective in taking action and removing the relevant content when warranted.
We have, from qualified sources, reports about potentially illegal content circulating on your service despite flags from relevant authorities.
Third, you need to have in place proportionate and effective mitigation measures to tackle the risks to public safety, security, and civic discourse stemming from disinformation.
Public media and civil society organizations widely report instances of fake and manipulated images and facts circulating on your platform in the EU such as repurposed old images of unrelated armed conflicts or military footage that actually originated from video games.
This appears to be manifestly false or misleading information.
I therefore invite you to urgently ensure that your systems are effective and report on the crisis measures taken to my team.
Do you see how dictatorial these people are?
How despotic and authoritarian they are?
You are to censor in accordance with our demands and then you are to report to me on the censorship steps you have taken.
Given the urgency, I also expect you to be in contact with the relevant law enforcement authorities and Europol and ensure that you respond promptly to their requests.
So we have this whole controversy in the United States because the CIA, Homeland Security, the FBI were pressuring Twitter, Facebook, Google to remove information.
A court found that it is unconstitutional, but there in the EU they're saying, we have law enforcement authorities that are going to be contacting you demanding that you take down certain content.
And when they do, you had better ensure that you are in contact with the relevant law enforcement authorities in Europol and ensure that you respond promptly.
to their requests.
That is not just a suggestion, that is the requirement of the law now.
That social media companies have to obey the censorship orders of European law enforcement agencies, EU agencies, security state agencies, the DOJ, the FBI equivalent, the CIA equivalent, Homeland Security.
Quote, In case you thought the orders were done.
Moreover, there are more on a number of other issues of Digital Security Act compliance that deserve immediate attention.
My team will follow up shortly with a specific request.
I urge you to ensure a prompt and accurate and complete response to this request within the next 24 hours.
We will include your answer in our assessment file on your compliance with the DSA.
I remind you that following the opening of a potential investigation and a finding of noncompliance, penalties can be imposed.
You're sincerely Terry Breton.
Are you comfortable with that?
I cannot fathom how anyone could be.
I genuinely can't.
It's one of those issues where as somebody who tries very hard to see things from other people's perspectives.
I actually work a lot on that with my kids.
On the importance of not only looking at the world through your own perspective but trying to understand other people's perspectives if they have a view or a conclusion different than your own.
Instead of just condemning it.
or denouncing it or rejecting it.
You have to first try and understand where that's coming from, what the basis is.
It's just empathy, the ability to understand the perspective of other people.
This is an issue in which, try though I might, I cannot understand how people would think it's a good idea, how they would want and trust government officials to have this power.
Except of course, and you have to be cynical I guess to assume this, it's because they believe that these government officials have a perfectly aligned ideology with their own and that therefore the censorship will only be aimed at their political enemies.
I still wouldn't want that if I believe that to be the case.
In part because I just think it's wrong intrinsically and dangerous intrinsically, but also because I would never be secure that at some point those leaders will change and then the views about what is disinformation and hate speech will morph and start to be directed at my own cause or my own views.
So even if people are sufficiently authoritarian to want this, I don't understand how they are comfortable believing that it will never be used against them.
Now, as I said, what this really is is a grotesque and cynical and transparent attempt to exploit the war in Israel.
They don't care about that.
I mean, the EU is on Israel's side, for sure, but the Pro-Israel sentiments that prevails very pervasively here in the United States, as we documented last night among both political parties and has for decades, isn't quite nearly as strong in the EU.
There are political parties far more pro-Palestinian and critical of Israel than is typically the case among the two political parties in the United States, but They know that right now everybody has spent on these videos all weekend and is enraged at Hamas and on Israel's side.
And so they're trying to grab that emotion and redirect it to support the EU and cheer the EU because they're engaging in this censorship in the name of protecting Israel from disinformation.
That's how cynical these people are.
Now, just last month, They used a completely different pretext for demanding censorship, namely that Twitter was allowing all sorts of Russian propaganda to spread, and that was why they needed to threaten Twitter.
Here, The Washington Post, on September 1st, and we did an entire program breaking down this study, reporting on what was happening here.
So if you want to go watch that, I encourage you to do so, because what happened here is amazing.
But here the headline in the Washington Post shows exactly the strategy that I suggested they're using, which is to focus on Twitter in particular, knowing that it will be more successful.
There you see the headline, quote, must new Twitter policies help spread Russian propaganda, the EU says.
X's failure to slow the spread of disinformation on the internet would have violated EU social media law had it been in effect.
So the Washington Post was warning him back then, just a month ago.
That the only reason why you weren't found to be in violation of the law is because there was no Digital Services Act yet.
But now that it's here, if you don't start censoring more, you're gonna find yourself in grave trouble with the authorities, who are gonna punish you for not censoring enough.
And it's not even a month later!
When we explain that this is what was going on, that they're now writing a letter under this law threatening him explicitly with punishment for not censoring more.
Here's what the Washington Post article said, the key passages, quote, Elon Musk's axe, formerly Twitter, has played a major role in allowing Russian propaganda about Ukraine to reach more people than before the war began, according to a study released this week by the European Commission, the governing body of the EU.
The research They always now use these fake experts and disinformation to pretend that their censorship desires are based in science and data.
Quote, the research found that despite voluntary commitments to take action against Russia propaganda by the largest social media companies, including Meta, Russian disinformation against Ukraine thrived.
Allowing the disinformation and hate speech to spread without limits would have violated the Digital Services Act.
The EU's social media law had it been enforced last year, the year-long Commission study concluded.
"Over the course of 2022, the audience and reach of Kremlin-allying social media accounts increased substantially all over Europe," the study said.
"Preliminary analysis suggests that the reach and influence of Kremlin-backed accounts has grown further in the first half of 2023, driven in particular by the dismantling of Twitter's safety standards." The EU has taken a far more aggressive regulatory approach to government-backed disinformation than the United States has.
The Digital Services Act, which went into effect for the biggest social media companies August 25th, requires them to assess the risk of false information, stop the worst from being boosted by algorithms, and subject their performance to government auditing of social media.
Separately, European sanctions on Russian state media have prompted YouTube and other platforms to ban the likes of RT.
The Russian news outlet formerly known as Russia Today that was once one of the most followed channels but now is banned under EU law.
The study is the starkest indication yet that the legal and voluntary measures are not getting the job done.
Following June warnings from EU Commissioner Thierry Breton that X had work to do to avoid potentially massive fines under the DSA.
The research was conducted by non-profit analysis group Reset, which advocates for greater oversight of digital platforms.
And as we documented and reported at the time, Reset, the group that they used, is a disinformation expert group that claims that's what it is, that is funded by Pyramidiar, who along with George Soros and Bill Gates is essentially
Single-handedly funding the invention of this new disinformation industry that the EU is now relying upon to claim that scientific and data-based analysis has determined that there's too much pro-Russian propaganda spreading on Twitter because they're not censoring enough and they will be punished severely if they don't censor more.
And one of the things we did on our show was we broke down this report that was issued by RESET, this disinformation group, To find out what is it that they mean by pro-Russia propaganda?
How did they determine that?
And unsurprisingly, all that means, pro-Russia propaganda, is anything that aligns with the Kremlin's agenda or the Kremlin's interests.
Which means, by definition, that if you're somebody who opposes your government's funding of the war in Ukraine, obviously that aligns with the Kremlin's interests.
They also don't want NATO and the US funding the war on their border.
And so automatically, even if you have no thoughts at all about the Kremlin, even if you hate Vladimir Putin, and you just don't want the U.S.
involved in this war, automatically you are defined as being a pro-Russian propagandist because you're advocating views that quote, align with the Kremlin's interests.
That is the game that's being played.
It is nothing more than an attempt to suppress and censor dissent, dissent from government policy.
It would be like defining opposition to the war in Iraq as being pro-Saddam Hussein because that would have aligned with Saddam Hussein's interests, etc.
Pro-Assad if you're opposed to the war in Syria.
Pro-Hamas if you don't want the U.S.
government assuming that this war is an American war.
That's always the framework they're imposing, the game being played.
Now, Thierry Brenton has been trying to build a name for himself by threatening Twitter and Elon Musk specifically with censorship from the first moment that Elon Musk bought Twitter and announced that he would be devoted to free speech.
Here was a tweet that he posted and it was in response to Elon Musk.
This is right when Elon Musk bought Twitter in October of 2022 and he announced...
I'm having my standard problems with these pens.
So anyway, he announced the bird is free.
Maybe I can just use a highlighter for this.
The bird is free.
There you see it.
Meaning, Twitter's now free.
Twitter is now a free speech platform.
And in response, Tariq Brentan came To say the following, Elon Musk, hello, with a little waving emoji, like, I suggest you pay attention to me.
In Europe, the bird will fly by EU rules.
Hashtag DSA, which is the Digital Services Act.
So from the beginning, he's been threatening Twitter that you might think you want to do free speech, but free speech isn't allowed in the EU.
Here is a video where Thierry Brunton came and met with Elon Musk.
I believe this was at the SpaceX headquarters.
Maybe it was Tesla, I'm not sure which.
But it was in May of 2022 as he was building toward buying Twitter.
And watch this dynamic where Elon Musk is basically having to Please, this EU official, by promising that everything the EU wants, Elon Musk will do.
Watch.
Wait, that was the funniest thing.
I just want you to see that they were about to... Elon Musk wanted to shake his hand, but this EU official was not permitting that.
He wanted to give his lecture.
Thank you for welcoming me.
Thank you.
Most welcome.
And of course, we discussed many issues, and I was happy to be able to explain to you the DSA, a new regulation in Europe.
So he's saying, I'm very happy to explain the DSA, the Digital Services Act, and these regulations and what they require of you.
And he was just essentially doing what he did a couple months later on Twitter, which was saying essentially, this is something that you have to obey. - Thank you.
With what you think we should do in a platform?
No, I think it's exactly aligned with my thinking.
I very much agree with it's been a great discussion.
And I really think I agree with everything you said, really.
I think we're very much of the same mind.
And and, you know, I think just anything that that would be beneficial to Europe.
We want to do that, I just want to say. - No, thank you very much.
That's again a good example.
And when we see that there could be some differences, especially when we are speaking things so important for our fellow citizens, as in life and the digital space, the best is to come and discuss what we did.
And I'm happy to see that we're alive.
- Sounds good.
- Thank you very much.
- Thank you very much.
- Thank you.
- All right. - So there you see Elon Musk having to say like, oh, whatever you want, we're going to do.
We agree with you completely.
This is so important.
I mean, this is a despotic dynamic.
Obviously, Elon Musk has a lot of interest that the EU can affect, not just Twitter, but also Tesla and SpaceX.
And so you see the kind of posture of this EU official.
Now, this law is, it's hard to overstate how Repressive it is when it comes to free speech.
The New York Times seemed even a little bit shocked by it when they reported on the scope of what it was.
From September 27th, EU law sets the stage for a clash over disinformation.
That's the headline of the New York Times ad.
The law aimed at forcing social media giants to adopt new policies to curb harmful content.
is expected to face blowback from Elon Musk, who owns X.
Quote, the law, the Digital Services Act, is intended to force social media giants to adopt new policies and practices to address accusations that they routinely host and through their algorithms popularize corrosive content.
And needless to say, corrosive content, content that is corrosive as opposed to healthy, is determined by government officials.
Quote, if the measure is successful, as officials and experts hope, this was in the lead up to the and I think Implementation of the law, its effects could extend far beyond Europe, changing company policies in the United States and elsewhere.
This is a point we made a couple of weeks ago, which is that what they're attempting to do, knowing that the U.S.
has a First Amendment, is by forcing social media companies to change their rules to censor much more and to allow far fewer ideas, a far smaller range of ideas and debate, Even though it's only in the EU that this law covers, and then in the UK, and then hopefully in Brazil, and then Australia, that's their intention, that it will be impossible for these social media platforms to continue to allow free speech only in the US.
They're going to have to just make a censorship-wide change to their platform that will also severely limit the scope of what's permitted in the United States, despite the First Amendment.
Quote, the law years of painstaking bureaucracy in the making reflects a growing alarm in European capitals that the unfettered flow of disinformation online, much of it fueled by Russia and other foreign adversaries, threatens to erode the democratic governance at the core of EU values.
Now, that was the paragraph that we covered when The candidate that the West did not want to win in the NATO member Slovakia, the candidate who ran on a platform of ending all support for Ukraine, actually won.
And the EU instantly blamed disinformation from Russia as the reason they didn't win that election.
And they're essentially saying, this proves what we've been saying all along, which is essentially that we need to have greater amounts of censorship.
Now, We showed you, oh do we have that video of Elon Musk in the BBC?
Or do we take that out?
There was an interview that Elon Musk did with the BBC which we're going to show you because it was from April of this year and the topic was essentially why they're not censoring more and what disinformation is and here Elon Musk changed his posture from that very deferential The mentality we showed you when he was standing with this French official, this EU official, to a much more defiant one.
Watch what happened when he talked to the BBC.
Content you don't like or hateful?
What do you mean?
Describe a hateful thing.
Yeah, I mean, you know, just content that will solicit a reaction, something that may include something that is slightly racist or slightly sexist, those kinds of things.
So you think if something is slightly sexist, it should be banned?
No, I'm not saying anything.
I'm just curious.
I'm trying to say what you mean by hateful content, and I'm asking for specific examples.
And you just said that if something is slightly sexist, that's hateful content.
Does that mean that it should be banned?
Well, you've asked me whether my feed, whether it's got less or more.
I'd say it's got slightly more.
That's what I'm asking for examples.
Can you name one example?
I honestly don't... You can't name a single example?
I'll tell you why, because I don't actually use that feed anymore, because I just don't particularly like it.
A lot of people are quite similar, I only... Well, hang on a second.
You've said you've seen more hateful content, but you can't name a single example, not even one.
I'm not sure I've used that feed for the last...
Well then how did you see the hateful content?
Because I've been using Twitter since you've taken it over for the last six months.
Okay, so then you must have at some point seen, for you, hateful content.
I'm asking for one example.
Right.
You can't give a single one.
And I'm saying... Then I say so that you don't know what you're talking about.
Really?
Yes, because you can't give a single example of hateful content, not even one tweet, and yet you claimed that the hateful content was high.
That's a false.
You just lied.
No, what I claim was, there are many organisations that say that that kind of information is on the rise.
Now, whether it has on my feed or not... Give me one example.
I mean, right, and if you look at something like the Strategic Dialogue Institute in the UK, they will say that.
Look, people will say all sorts of nonsense.
I'm literally asking for a single example and you can't name one.
Right.
All right, so that was a pretty good example of the sort of thing that journalists are doing in taking the lead in demanding censorship.
And you see what kind of craven liars they are.
They're so unaccustomed to being challenged about any of the things they say when it comes to these things that just the slightest pushback made that guy almost cry and crumble.
He was whining about how his feed supposedly has so much more hateful content than it did before Elon Musk took over Twitter and yet couldn't give a single example because in their world that's just a given that more free speech leads to more dangerous ideas and therefore censorship is required.
And it's always worth noting that this censorship regime we're discussing has been primarily advocated by and continues to be advocated by employees of large media corporations, the media, which is the enemy of free expression, undoubtedly.
We've been covering the attempt in the UK to render criminal this platform, Rumble, in part using the Controversy around Russell Brand, you may recall that one of the Baronesses who sits in the Parliament wrote letters to every platform demanding they prove to the government they're taking sufficient steps to punish Russell Brand, to demonetize him, even though he hasn't yet even been charged with any crimes, let alone convicted of them.
And when Rumble refused and basically said, you're not in any position to dictate to us Who we can have on our platform, the UK began citing its own law, which is the Online Safety Act, to suggest that Rumble is breaking the law, that they might be banned on a
Nationwide level at an IP level or even have their executives be subject to arrest if they try and enter the UK because they're allowing content on their platform that is in defiance of UK law.
The UK has a similar legal framework now like the EU does to allow them to dictate to social media companies what they can and can't have.
And ever since Rumble, Assumed a defiant posture toward the government.
It was the British press that took the lead in writing one article after the next trying to show that Rumble is this dangerous site that doesn't allow for a safe Internet under the Online Safety Act.
Here's just the latest article.
Let me just show you how these journalists are so scummy.
So such good old foot soldiers for the censorship regime.
Whatever platforms are defiant of the government, like Elon Musk tried to be as well, those are the ones they immediately attack.
Because these journalists can't stand the idea that there can be any place free from their control, because those are the places thriving as they collapse.
Just today, the Washington Post announced it was laying off 250 people, even though it's funded by one of the world's richest men, Jeff Bezos.
And they look around and they see that part of the media being more and more hated, more and more distrusted, while the parts of the media that are devoted to free speech that they can't control thrive and they can't stand it.
And they want, they're working, they're agitating toward getting the government to attack these sites like Twitter but also like Rumble.
Here from The Independent, a British media outlet that's quite centrist and establishment, From today, the headline, I took a deep dive into Rumble and the issues go further than Russell Brand.
This is by someone named Josh Marcus, who is the, I'm not kidding, this is his title, the social justice reporter for The Independent.
A paranoid, right-wing, sometimes violent culture is developing, one that's bleeding into the offline world, writes Josh Marcus.
Quote, Fox News and MSNBC are in an unholy alliance to build a uniparty state.
These are examples, by the way, of things that you're not allowed to say in his view that you create a dangerous world.
One of them, Fox News and MSNBC are in an unholy alliance to build a uniparty state.
Fox News and MSNBC happen to have identical views on a lot of things, like the war in Ukraine.
Now that Tucker Carlson is gone, there's still a couple of people at Fox, Warren Ingram, Jesse Watters, who question the war but nowhere near as much as Tucker Carlson did every night.
But the rest of Fox News is 100% on board with Joe Biden's policy.
They're obviously unified about the war in Israel.
But according to The Independent, one of the examples of the kind of idea you can't allow that's too dangerous, Fox News and MSNBC are in an unholy alliance to build a uniparty state.
That's something Rumble allows.
The GOP is ruled by, quote, banana republic communists.
Undocumented migrants are training in US camps to learn how to be terrorists.
And a global deep state conspiracy is responsible for Russell Brand losing monetization on his YouTube channel.
These are a few of the non-facts I learned spending some time with the videos and comments on Rumble.
Not just the videos on Rumble, but the comment section.
That's how much he had to troll through Rumble to find these ideas that apparently he thinks should be illegal.
Do these people even have an audience?
On what social media platform would you not find comments that contain conspiracy theories or false ideas or whatever he's complaining about?
But he says, this is what I found after spending some time with the videos and comments on Rumble, a YouTube competitor that has boldly framed itself as the only truly neutral media platform.
The site indeed has a more relaxed approach to content moderation, but this has allowed a paranoid, right-wing, sometimes violent culture to develop among its users.
One that's bleeding into the offline world, but fixing the problem isn't as simple as removing bad actors.
This is the general vibe on Rumble.
A mixture of overheated arguments, intellectualized self-interest, and conspiratorial thinking, where everyone is in it together against you.
I don't, I'm sure, have to even note that The Independent is the source of all kinds of dangerous conspiracy theories and false unhinged claims that Russia is in control of everything, for example.
That's the basis of that EU law, of the EU letter to Twitter, of every one of these articles these journalists write.
And just to give you a recent example showing what a fraud this entire disinformation industry is on which all of this is based.
These people who invented overnight a fake expertise.
I'm a disinformation expert.
The Daily Beast just published an article by one of the most popular among liberal disinformation experts.
His name is Jared Holt.
We've covered him on the show before.
He used to work at the Atlanta Council.
He now works at a different disinformation group that is funded by Big Tech and by Western intelligence agencies and he wrote an article accusing Christopher Ruppo, the conservative activist, of having said that he's willing to work with both racists and fascists.
That was the headline.
There you see it on the screen.
Influential anti-woke activist is open to working with racists and fascists.
Christopher Ruppo has the ear of Governor DeSantis.
He also refused to close the door to partnering with the worst elements of the right in his culture war against the left.
This is from Jared Holt, who claims to be a disinformation expert.
The problem is that turned out to be a total lie.
The entire article was a total lie.
Chris Rufo has always said the opposite.
That he doesn't think that the right should work with white supremacists or fascists.
That it does damage to the cause.
He just fabricated this accusation that became the entire basis of this Daily Beast article even though he's always heralded as a disinformation expert.
You see, the people who claim to be disinformation experts are the ones who spread disinformation most.
Now the Daily Beast is one of the shittiest tabloids around.
They have no standards at all.
They don't retract anything and yet they were forced to retract this entire article because of how blatantly false it is and how likely it was to subject them to lawsuits.
So now you see a much different headline that they had to change and it says, influential anti-woke activist is open to terrible allies.
There you see the new headline.
And the Daily Beast was forced to run an editor's note.
Quote, the headline of the story has been updated to delete that Rufo is open to working with racists and fascists, which Rufo has explicitly denied.
We have updated the story accordingly and added comment from Rufo.
Now, as I said, Jared Holt He's one of these people who claims to be an information disinformation expert and he is in the sense that he spreads it all the time.
Here you see his biography from the Daily Beast.
Jared Holt is a senior researcher and this is the important part here at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
That's where he works, where he analyzes hateful and extremist movements in the United States and their relationship to the Internet.
What is this Institute for Strategic Dialogue where he now works as a disinformation expert?
It is an organization that, as their own page demonstrates, is funded by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Omidyar Group, and the Open Society Foundation, which is George Soros', because as I said, those three billionaires, George Soros, Bill Gates, and Pierre Omidyar, are behind virtually the entire fake disinformation industry that emerged overnight.
But it is also funded by various Western governments, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs,
The various agencies of the Danish government and the Australian government and the Dutch government, it's funded by the European Commission, by various German agencies, by Global Affairs Canada, by the Ministry of Justice of the Netherlands, the Internal Affairs Department of New Zealand and Norway, the Ministry of Justice of Sweden,
The UK Home Office and the Department of Homeland Security and Department of State for the United States.
So when you put this all together do you see what's happening here?
This disinformation industry is the basis for everything.
The EU says we asked these disinformation experts to conduct a study and they concluded that there's too much free speech going on in your platform and that as a result There's all kinds of dangerous disinformation and hate speech and propaganda that we're now going to identify for you and demand that you remove under threat of law.
And in the meantime, the people who control this disinformation industry that's used to justify the censorship are not just these neoliberal billionaires, but also Western governments.
So Western governments are the ones implementing the laws that force social media companies to remove ideas or ban and prohibit perspectives that are deemed to be disinformation.
At the same time, they're the ones funding and therefore controlling the disinformation experts on whom they're relying, whom they're citing to justify their censorship.
And as we just saw, nobody lies more than these disinformation experts because they are disinformation agents.
This whole censorship regime is designed to ensure that Western governments can disseminate falsehoods and lies and propaganda that they drown you in and then at the same time Censor and prohibit and ban and exclude anyone who's willing to stand up and say, you know what?
That's not true.
I disagree with that.
Here's the reasons why this is propaganda and it's false.
And these agencies are behind everything.
You also see here, this group is funded by Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and YouTube as well.
You can put that up on the screen, the other donors of the ISD.
So they have private sector donors as well that are big tech directed against their competitors.
I think the reason it's worth spending this time on the reason it's worth reporting on this so often.
The reason it's worth paying attention to this new letter that the EU today sent to Elon Musk, threatening him with punishment, by citing the war in Israel like they last month cited the war in Ukraine between Ukraine and Russia.
It's because this is the world in which we are now living, and this world is growing.
The censorship regime is growing.
And the internet is becoming increasingly controlled as a result.
And it's vital to understand that journalists, people who call themselves journalists, who work for the biggest media corporations, are the primary propagandists in favor of the censorship regime.
Because they know that it will prevent their own dissenters from challenging the lies they tell.
It will force an audience to come to them again by getting rid of their competitors that are free.
But the real purpose of it is to ensure that the most valuable thing we have, which is the right to dissent, is systematically eliminated from the internet.
And if you think that's an overstatement, just go back and look at that letter that was sent today, because that will cure any doubts one might have about the real intentions and the mentality driving it.
As viewers of this show know, there has been a great deal of difficulty that people have had in Washington in trying to secure more funding for the war in Ukraine.
There has been a great deal of resistance within, in particular, the House Republican Caucus as a result of the fact that polls are now showing that Not just Republicans and conservatives, but Americans in general are growing increasingly opposed to the idea of sending more and more billions of dollars to the war in Ukraine.
And one of the factors that drove the removal of Kevin McCarthy from his position as House Speaker, the first ever House Speaker to be removed, is the fact that some Republicans were angry over his constant cooperation with the Biden administration in securing more funding for Ukraine.
At the same time, the United States has this massive debt, And deficit and an inability to, in its view, fund social programs on which Americans depend like Social Security, Medicare.
The idea that we're going to keep sending billions of dollars to this war is something that has been increasingly rejected by the American citizenry and therefore as a result of their representatives in Congress.
They could not get through this last $25 billion yet.
The first time since this war began that this idea of funding Ukraine endlessly has encountered any kind of difficulty.
And as a result, just like the EU is doing and exploiting the war in Israel, the White House has decided that they are going to exploit this war as well.
Here you see from the Washington Post yesterday, the headline White House considers adding Ukraine to Israel aid package.
So Israel is already asking for and the government is already planning to provide Hundreds of millions or perhaps billions of dollars more in weapons and aid, financial aid to fuel their war that they're now conducting against Gaza.
And obviously, I don't know what the vote is going to be.
We went over those votes last night that every time a resolution or a bill comes up concerning Israel, the vote is something like 412 to 7 in favor of Israel.
I have zero doubt That the vote to fund Israel above the $4 billion or so that we give it every year will pass overwhelmingly by a massive bipartisan consensus.
The White House knows that too, and so what they want to do is ensure that when you vote for that aid package to Israel, which is going to be depicted as something of immediate urgency, it can't even wait one day.
Anyone who waits one day loves Hamas.
All those factors are going to be brought to bear.
And so what they want to do is stick Ukraine funding in it to force House Republicans to vote yes, because if they don't, they'll be accused of the worst thing possible, which is insufficient support for Israel.
House Republicans warned sharply against efforts to link support for Jerusalem and Kiev, but some Biden officials see an advantage in doing so.
Quote, no final decisions have been made on whether to link the request, said two senior administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
One of the officials said such a move could make sense because it, quote, jams the far right, which is firmly opposed to more Ukraine aid, but strongly supportive of aid to Israel.
And at some point, I want to re-raise this question, which we've actually devoted a show to before to asking,
Which is, how is it that an America First foreign policy that holds that the United States should not be involved in wars, should not fuel wars or fund wars unless our own national security is directly threatened, how can that America First ideology be reconciled with treating this war in Israel as our own war, as something we have to fund, as something we have to provide the weapons for when we're already depleted in our weapons because of our support for the other proxy war, the one in Ukraine?
Tucker Carlson last night on his Twitter show interviewed Vivek Ramaswamy, and before he did, he gave a monologue similar to the one he used to do on his Fox show, asking exactly that question.
Saying, well, obviously, any psychologically healthy person who looks at videos of some of the things Hamas did in massacring civilians in Israel is going to be enraged and disgusted, which is what I started off my show on this war last night also observing.
But he then asked, but how do you get from that rage and disgust to saying that we have to treat this war as our own?
He pointed out that we give the funding for Israel's Iron Dome, even though we don't have an Iron Dome system ourself.
So I do think that's a topic to explore in the future, but this is what the Biden administration is doing, which is they know that even Republicans on the kind of anti-interventionist or anti-war side of the party, there is none on the Democratic side, Don't want to support funding for Ukraine but have to support funding for Israel and want to support funding for Israel.
Top Biden administration officials have told leaders at the House and the Senate, as well as members of key committees, that the White House will soon ask Congress to approve additional military aid to Israel after Palestinian gunmen from Hamas infiltrated the country Saturday and launched the deadliest attack in Israel that the White House will soon ask Congress to approve additional military aid to Israel after Palestinian gunmen from Hamas infiltrated the country Saturday and launched the deadliest attack in Israel That request could come as early as next week, the people said.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers have expressed overwhelming support for Israel since Saturday's attack and vowed that the United States would stand by one of its closest allies.
That includes hard-right members of Congress who oppose continued aid to Ukraine and argue that the U.S.
taxpayer dollars should not be used to fund a war thousands of miles from American borders.
Obviously they're implying there's a little bit of inconsistency between saying Ukraine is not the 51st American state or we shouldn't be funding this war that doesn't threaten our national security on the other side of the world and yet taking the exact opposite view when it comes to Israel.
Josh Hawley is somebody who, for example, opposes funding the war in Ukraine.
He asked from the beginning, he voted no, and yet yesterday he posted to Axe, quote, Israel is facing an existential threat.
Any funding for Ukraine should be redirected to Israel immediately.
Here is a tweet from Someone who is familiar to viewers of the show.
She's a trans woman, an American trans woman named Sarah Ashton Cirillo, who represents or at some point represented the Ukrainian military as its official English language spokesperson.
She was fired for going on Twitter and Expressing some incredibly deranged views, we covered a video that she got trapped in when she thought she was talking to a senior Ukrainian official, the former Prime Minister Poroshenko, who now is the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, but in fact was talking to Russian pranksters.
And she said all sorts of things like admitting the war was a failure, the counteroffensive was failing, that her, that morale was very low.
And mostly of all, she said, essentially, the Russians are of an inferior race.
They're not European.
They're of the Mongol race.
They're kind of this mongrel people.
And we're defending superior races in Europe from these subhumans.
It was really just a neo-Nazi ideology she was expressing.
So she had gotten fired again, but she's still claiming to be the official representative of the Ukrainian military.
And this is what she said, quote, personal view.
The discussions taking place in Washington to bring together one funding bill to cover the appropriations for Ukraine and Israel simply make sense.
Which is obviously something anyone in Ukraine who favors that war would say because she knows that's one of the ways to manipulate the Congress into doing what a lot of them don't want to do, which is continuing to fund the war in Ukraine.
But the reason the Biden administration wants to link these two wars together is because it's not easy to justify why We should abandon Ukraine or not fund the war in Ukraine, but fund the war in Israel, given that they're not really words that the United States is directly involved in.
And they're going to force people, perhaps, to vote for funding for Ukraine by exploiting the war in Israel.
So I just want to show you one other story before I also want to just give you one update about the war in Ukraine.
It involves General Michael Hayden, the former chief of the CIA and the NSA for the Bush-Cheney administration.
He was the head of the NSA on 9-11.
And therefore, I mean, his job was to oversee American intelligence, to inform policymakers of the things they were supposed to know.
And although the accounts are in conflict, there is no question that General Hayden failed to detect the 9-11 attack or to tell American policymakers about it.
They had other warnings, the Bush administration did, from the CIA, from other foreign intelligence agencies.
But the NSA, despite spending tens of billions of dollars on massive surveillance technology, failed in its job to detect this attack, even though it involved dozens or hundreds of people across multiple countries, including in the United States.
So that's Michael Hayden.
And when he left the NSA, he went to run the CIA for George Bush and Dick Cheney.
And now he works at CNN because he became a hardcore hater of Donald Trump.
And he went on to Twitter today to ask, General Hayden did, and a person, Natalie Jacoby, put a picture up of Republican Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville.
And at a poll, should Tommy Tuberville be removed from his committee, yes or no?
Right now, Tommy Tuberville is hated in Washington because he's blocking the appointment or the confirmation of senior military officials.
And there's all kinds of maximalist rhetoric about how he's endangering the United States, how he's helping Vladimir Putin.
Imagine how much the military-industrial complex hates him.
And so, Natalie Jacobs said, should he be removed from his committee, yes or no?
And General Hayden said, how about removed from the human race?
That was his answer.
Should Tommy Tuberville be removed from his committee?
And General Hayden said, how about from the human race?
How about the human race?
Now, that seems a lot to me like exactly the sort of rhetoric that if the politics were reversed, would be immediately The target of all kinds of controversy demands that it be banned on the grounds that the person is inciting violence?
I mean, if that's not inciting violence, what is?
I don't think he should just be removed from his committee.
I think he should be removed from the human race.
One of the journalistic accomplishments on which I'm proudest, in 2014 I debated General Hayden in Canada along with Alan Dershowitz.
They were on one side.
Alan Dershowitz with General Hayden, and I was on the other, and my partner was Alexis O'Hannon, the founder of Reddit, Serena Williams' husband.
And we debated mass surveillance in the NSA.
It was in the wake of the NSA revelations, and the audience voted for us We won the debate.
They start off by asking, do you favor mass surveillance?
And everybody votes.
And then at the end, they vote again.
And if your side goes up, it means you won the debate.
We won the debate.
The vast majority of the audience sided with us, even more so after the debate.
And General Hayden hated this debate in part because he lost, but also at one point they lowered this gigantic screen when it came time to ask questions of Edward Snowden.
And Edward Snowden hovered above General Hayden, this gigantic image of Edward Snowden, the leaker of the NSA, the biggest leaker in its history, the biggest whistleblower in its history.
And I thought General Hayden was going to collapse out of his chair and fall on the ground and have a heart attack from rage.
Not just having Edward Snowden present, who he thinks should be in prison, but on a gigantic screen hovering right over his head.
And I refused to socialize with General Hayden either before or after the event because I thought it would be incredibly hypocritical, given everything I had written about him, to then have a cocktail with him and shake his hand.
I just think that's sort of corrupting.
And he wrote a book, General Hayden did, and talked about the Snowden reporting, but also that debate.
And here you see the headline in Salon.
This is, I think, the thing of which I'm proudest.
Debating Glenn Greenwald was like, quote, looking the devil in the eye, ex NSA Chief General, ex NSA Chief Michael Hayden details his distaste for the media in his new book.
So that was my encounter with General Hayden.
I mean, obviously, I had a lot of encounters with him during the during the Snowden reporting, but I found it amazing, actually, that he would go on Twitter and say that about Senator Tuberville, given how usually that kind of violent incitement Is the sort of basis for not just censorship, but even criminal prosecution here.
Nobody cares because the politics are right.
So right after the show, we're going to do our live after show on locals.
And I'm sure people are going to have a lot of questions about the show we did last night on Israel and Gaza, where we're going to talk about that.
But before I concluded the show, I just, I actually had a few different updates I want to give you, but given the time, I just want to share with you a Video that was taken of a series of interviews conducted with the pro-Israel counter-protesters.
We talked last night about how there was a pro-Palestinian protest sponsored by DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, in New York on Sunday, and there were a couple of speakers, one in particular who defended Hamas, and in particular the
Grotesque actions that it took on Saturday in Israel, explicitly mocking what he called the hipsters at this music festival, even though dozens of them, if not hundreds, were gunned down in a way that any decent person would be disgusted by.
But we talked about the fact how The reason why so many people focused on this unknown, marginalized person at this protest who said that is because, in reality, very, very, very, very, very few people actually defended what Hamas did in Israel in terms of targeting civilians.
It's indefensible.
It can't be defended.
And they had to go searching for these unknown people, and it got a ton of media attention to try and pretend That defending what Hamas did is some widespread view in order to suggest that anybody questioning whether the U.S.
should be involved in this war somehow is an apologist for what happened and what Hamas did on Saturday.
It's just a tactic that often gets used.
If you question the war in Ukraine, it means you're pro-Putin.
We went over all those tactics earlier, the things that get said.
So the idea is anyone not fully on board With the Maximus pro-Israel script, obviously somebody who sympathizes with Hamas and the reason that person's speech was so highlighted was in order to create this deceitful framework.
Let's get the name of the journalist who conducted this interview.
You can find it on Twitter.
I just want to make sure we give him the credit for the interviews that he conducted.
He went to that protest and there was a counter-protest group of pro-Israel demonstrators and he interviewed some of the pro-Israel demonstrators about their views.
About what Israel should do to Gaza.
And I just want to show you a few of these to give you a little bit of balanced perspective given how much these marginalized views at the pro-Palestinian protest received.
Let's watch what some of the people at this pro-Israel protest said.
Fuck Palestine!
Palestine to my dick!
What do you think the response should be from Netanyahu and the military to Gaza?
Kill all Palestinians!
All of them!
Not one left from the river to the sea, Palestine will be deceased!
And Israel need to do like this.
You see?
Now Gaza.
Like this.
Gaza need to do like this.
All, all, like this, but all this, Jewish.
Two options.
What do you think the response should be to Gaza?
We gotta wipe them off the fucking map.
I'm talking about every fucking, flatten them like a parking lot.
Yeah.
We're flattening them out.
There's nothing else you can do.
They proved to us that there's nothing else you can do.
We tried.
We tried everything, it doesn't work.
We have to wipe them flat off the fucking map.
Like a fucking parking lot.
I'm not stopping.
Till all abs are wiped out.
I think now is the time that we need to erase Gaza.
There is people inside, our people inside, that kidnapped and now we need to kill all of them and free Israel.
All of their belief is killing Jewish and killing and murder our people.
Flatten it.
flattened Gaza.
That will be the last war in Gaza.
This will be?
Yes.
It's all big.
So the journalist who conducted those interviews, his name is Jeremy Lafredo, I just want to make sure he gets the credit he deserves for those interviews he did.
I think the point that is worth making here is that to suggest that anybody questioning the reaction of Israel to Gaza, anybody suggesting that there are humanitarian limits that ought to be observed, that there are wars of law that ought to be observed,
Trying to act or questioning why the United States is immediately involving itself in this war to suggest that anybody who's doing that is somehow associating themselves with people who justify what Hamas did in targeting civilians, even though everyone I've heard practically who's not fully on board with the maximalist pro-Israel view has explicitly renounced and repudiated and denounced what Hamas did, including myself.
I think it's an incredibly intellectually dishonest tactic.
I hate this tactic because it's used in every war.
Every war it's claimed that if you ask any questions, if you're not immediately on board, it means you're on the other side.
It means that you don't care about what Saddam Hussein is doing to his Citizens, it means you don't care about Gaddafi's threats, it means you don't care about the repression of Bashar al-Assad, it means you don't care about Vladimir Putin.
It's the same tactic in every single war.
It's designed to manipulate support for every war.
If the Washington class, as many of them do, wanted to go to war with Iran, And someone stood up and said, well, it's an incredibly dangerous war.
It's a very powerful country.
It's going to destabilize the region like the war in Iraq did.
It's going to give rise to ISIS and galvanize radicalism.
Immediately, you would be accused of being indifferent to or supportive of every last atrocity ever committed by the Iranian government.
Every act of oppression, you would be immediately accused of being an apologist for that or even supportive of it or associating yourself with it.
And so I show you these people explicitly advocating genocide.
There's no ethnic cleansing.
There's no other way to describe that.
If you're saying, I want to incinerate and eradicate 2 million people, 2.2 million people, wipe out all of Gaza, that's genocide.
That is mass murder.
No attempt at all to distinguish between civilians and Militants to just kill everybody and then have Israel move in, which is what some of them said.
I would not try and associate anybody who supports Israel or who wants to fund Israel.
I would not ever claim that by definition they are sympathetic to these deranged genocidal views, but that is the same tactic that gets used against people who are questioning of or opposed to new wars or to U.S.
role in new wars.
And so if that's a tactic that someone supports, immediately accusing somebody of being pro-Hamas, who's against the war, then it's just as intellectually dishonest or as intellectually dishonest to say anybody supporting Israel necessarily believes in genocide of those in Gaza.
So I just think it's important to see that those videos can be made, and not made, just shown, because that's what some people think.
And that's how easy of a tactic that is to use and it's a good reason why that tactic could be avoided in general when it comes to all these debates concerning wars.
So that concludes our show for this evening.
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