Are Jews the Most Endangered Minority in the US? Does Free Speech Include Calls for Violence? PLUS: New Poll Shows Black/Latino Voters Abandoning Biden | SYSTEM UPDATE #176
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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.
American conservatives have long expressed all kinds of scorn by one thing in particular, that is, victim narratives.
Specifically, claims by various minority groups that they are unsafe in the United States and that as a result of the threats and prejudice they face, they need many protections from the law, including censorship of ideas that they find threatening and that make them unsafe.
In order to feel protected.
Yet, over the last month, this narrative stopped being mocked by many conservatives and began being honored, defended, and taken gravely seriously ever since the narrative of victimhood was made not by black Americans or Latino Americans or LGBTs or immigrants, but instead by American Jews in the wake of the new war between Israel and Gaza.
That American Jews are now a uniquely endangered minority group in America has become gospel in many sectors of American discourse.
And it is invoked not just as an abstract thought, but for very serious consequences to justify a wide range of measures that the American right has spent years condemning.
Censorship, cancel culture, campus rules, and banning of protests.
This claim about victimhood in American Jews is transforming American political life.
That is not an exaggeration.
A new political article today declares, quote, how the Israel-Hamas war is redefining the limits of free speech in the United States.
A news article from a New Jersey newspaper today reports, quote, Jewish high schools are demanding plans from colleges to keep students safe.
But is all of this true?
Are victimhood narratives offered on behalf of American Jews that they feel unsafe on campuses and in workplaces and in American life generally are more valid, compelling, and convincing than similar victimhood narratives offered on behalf of other minority groups?
Are special changes required to the law, to our speech laws, to campus rules, to the limits of what can be argued by members of Congress in order to protect them?
We'll consider the very serious implications of this debate.
Then, There is yet again serious confusion in American political discourse about the scope of free speech in the United States.
Newfound censorship advocates in the wake of the Israel-Gaza war have argued that certain views being expressed on campuses and at protests are not really protected free speech and therefore can be legally censored because these views are hateful, because they call for violence, and because they are likely to incite violence against a vulnerable minority group.
Those are the traditional left-liberal theories for why censorship of right-wing speech is justified.
But is it valid in this case, or does it represent a radical distortion of the scope of free speech as protected by the First Amendment?
We'll examine the relevant free speech precedents from the Supreme Court to once again emphasize how broad America's free speech rights are and how important it is that they remain broad.
And then finally, a new poll from the New York Times has extremely bad news for Joe Biden and the Democrats, including a finding that Donald Trump leads Joe Biden by a significant margin in five out of the six key swing states that Biden was declared the winner of in 2020.
But even more alarming from the Democratic Party perspective, Black and Latino voters are abandoning Biden and the Democrats in record numbers.
We'll examine why this is and what this means.
Before we get to the show, a few programming notes.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
Over the last week while I was traveling, we had prepared for you, taped in advance, several different interviews with various guests to ensure that we had a program four out of the five nights when I was traveling. several different interviews with various guests to ensure that we That included a couple of critics of U.S.
policy toward Israel, including the musician Roger Waters and the foreign policy scholar John Mearsheimer.
And over the last couple of weeks, we have had other critics of U.S.
policy toward Israel or critics of Israel itself.
And one thing we have not had Is any stalwart defender of Israel or a stalwart defender of Joe Biden's policy of supporting the war that Israel is currently engaged with?
But that's not for lack of trying.
On this program, we have emailed, we have invited, we have called multiple guests who are strong supporters of Israel, strong advocates of Joe Biden's policy of supporting Israel, people who have advocated new censorship laws or cancel culture practices in the name of protecting American Jews and Jewish students to come on our show in order to have dialogue about these issues, and that includes people who have been on our show before or whose shows I've been on.
Including people who were readily available every time we asked in the past.
Unfortunately, we have not yet been able to secure any such guests to come on our show and make the case that we would genuinely like to hear.
We promised everybody the thing we offer all guests, which is civic discourse, the ability to be heard.
I don't scream and yell at anybody.
I don't insult my guests.
I don't talk over them.
I give everybody an opportunity to be heard in the hope of having constructive and illuminating dialogue.
And yet, unfortunately, everybody seems very, very busy suddenly.
Several people had said that they would love to come on, but couldn't because of health emergencies and their family, only for me to see them on other shows hosted by people who agree with them on Israel.
One person even told us that they would love to come on, but unfortunately they're just swamped in November, but we should call them in a few weeks, maybe in December, and see if we can find some time for them to come on our show, including a person who previously was immediately available whenever we asked.
So I just want our audience to know we would love to have a good faith, smart supporter of Israel, someone who disagrees with us on this conflict or on US policy, but we have simply not had anybody who has agreed to come on the show.
That's why we haven't had any such guests and we have reached out to people to help us find those.
People who might be willing to come on if you know of anybody or are friends with anybody or have contacts with people who you think would be good guests to come on and defend Joe Biden's policy toward Israel or simply disagree with whatever views we've had on the censorship aspects of this war, on America feeding arms and money to Israel, or just on the general belief that Israel is blameless in this overall conflict, we would love to have Those people on.
We're going to keep trying.
We encourage you to try.
And we promise that we will put someone on who is a competent and good faith defender of their views the minute we get somebody to agree.
But it's certainly not for lack of trying that we haven't had them yet.
Now to turn to the topic, first topic of our show.
There has been a lot of claims of late over the past month or so that while oftentimes claims of victimhood from minority groups are scoffed at and scorned, suddenly we now have a victimhood narrative from a minority group in the United States that should not be mocked at all but should be taken gravely seriously.
It's not black Americans who are the most vulnerable and marginalized group in the United States.
It's not Latinos or immigrants who are endangered.
It's not LGBT or Latinos or any other group, not women either.
The only real group that has a valid and serious claim to victimhood to being an endangered minority group in the United States, according to this narrative,
Our American Jews, and I want to show you a few examples of people asserting that, not just that they're endangered and unsafe, but also that special rules are now required in order to accommodate that feeling of unsafety, including protecting them from views on campuses that they say make them feel unsafe, or having blacklists of students who are unhirable because of views that they've expressed.
Or other measures that for other minority groups would usually be laughed at by certain segments of American political life if they were demanded, but now are being taken not just seriously, but are being told are necessary in order to address the safety concerns of this one particular minority group in the United States.
So here from Fox News on October 17th.
Fox News is definitely a media corporation that generally mocks the idea that minority groups in the United States are unsafe because of threats or that college students need to have special protections because they no longer feel safe in the United States because the United States is a white supremacist country or a country that's not welcoming to immigrants or to LGBTs.
But here they're taking such claims very seriously.
There you see the headline on the screen, Jewish college students say they're scared to go to class.
And blame universities for their silence on antisemitism.
Georgetown and American University students tell Fox & Friends antisemitic classmates are creating, quote, a hostile environment.
Quote, as anti-Israel protests continue to erupt at colleges across the United States, Jewish students are pushing back against universities allegedly turning a blind eye to anti-Semitism on their campuses.
Quote, as soon as the terrorist attacks occurred, it became a hostile environment for Jewish students, Julia Wax, a Georgetown University law student, told Fox News on Tuesday.
Quote, people are scared to go to class.
You have to sit next to classmates who are posting anti-Semitic rhetoric, who are promoting rallies that spew anti-Semitic rhetoric.
People are scared and the universities are doing nothing, are not doing their part, and they're not stepping up, and they're staying silent.
Responding to the upheaval, WAX founded a Zionist group on campus to give Jewish students a place to go and to understand their heritage.
One of her best friends is on the front lines of the conflict, she said, and the Jewish students at the university are all tied to the conflict in the Holy Land in some way.
Quote, I have students who are texting me who just got back from Israel on Thursday, and it's difficult because there are people at Georgetown that are getting into Georgetown Law School, getting into Harvard, getting into Stanford, getting into Yale, and they're spewing this kind of rhetoric toward us.
It's anti-Jew, it's anti-American, it's anti-democracy, and it's hateful and it's spiteful.
Michael Korovakov, a freshman at Georgetown, told Fox & Friends host Lawrence Jones that he has been witnessing similar rhetoric, including claims that some Hamas-led atrocities, including the beheading of babies, never happened.
Quote, the biggest problem has really been the fact that student organizations have cropped up on campus that are largely spewing this anti-Semitic rhetoric.
We had a rally a week ago in favor of Hamas.
It was a Palestinian martyrs, basically, rally, he said.
In addition to that, multiple organizations released statements basically calling for the destruction of the state of Israel and also calling for anti-Israel sentiment.
Lauren Kael, a junior at American University, told Jones she has always been, quote, loud and proud about her Judaism, but she doesn't feel safe on campus while the pro-Palestinian rhetoric strives to undermine support for Israel.
Now, right from the start of this war, we had suggested that the most important and relevant historical event to look at this through, the prism through which this can all be understood, namely this new war, was 9-11.
And in particular, we urge that the lessons of 9-11 be remembered, that Americans were enraged by the attack on our country.
I know I was.
And that far too many people decided that an erosion of civil liberties here at home, giving more power to the government in the form of things like the Patriot Act, NSA spying, and just going around madly bombing in a quest for vengeance ended up being quite counterproductive.
And no matter how enraged we were about the 9-11 attack, no matter how much vengeance we wanted, so many of the measures that our government induced us to support it, From the invasion of Iraq, to the bombing of multiple countries, to the transformation of our political system here in the United States, didn't solve the problem at all.
In fact, many cases worsened it.
It caused trillions of dollars to be spent, a million lives to be lost, and in many ways it inflamed and increased the anti-American hatred that gives rise to terrorism in the first place.
But I also think, while I still think 9-11 is a highly relevant historical event, I am starting to think that maybe at least an equally historical event or maybe even a more historical event, a relevant historical event, is the climate that was created in the United States after the George Floyd murder.
When all kinds of activists insisted that black Americans were unsafe in the United States, that speech codes were needed, that censorship was required, that we couldn't tolerate any longer on campus certain statutes or certain that we couldn't tolerate any longer on campus certain statutes or And it seems very similar that a lot of that is what's happening now with calls for censorship, calls for people to be fired for their jobs, for their dissent.
So much of what I just read about Jewish students complaining to Fox News were simply fellow students expressing views.
In fact, the last paragraph said there were students at their schools who are defending the Palestinian cause and undermining support for Israel.
You're allowed to defend the Palestinian cause and oppose U.S.
support for Israel.
That's not anti-Semitic to do.
In fact, there are many, many Jewish students who are supporters of the Palestinian cause and who oppose U.S.
support for the war effort in Israel.
And just like conservatives have long complained, I think validly, That many on the liberal left in the United States go around accusing their political opponents of being motivated by bigotry and hatred for minority groups in order to discredit their opponents and quash the possibility for debate.
You're now seeing exactly that but from the other direction.
I can't tell you how many times in the past month I've been accused of being anti-semitic.
Even though Pretty much every person who was important in my life for the first 40 years, with a couple of exceptions, is Jewish.
I was steeped in Jewish history and tradition.
My grandmother was an immigrant from Germany who came here with her younger sister in the late 1930s to escape anti-Semitism by the Nazis, and her whole family who stayed behind were murdered in the Holocaust.
All things I was steeped with, the idea that I harbor hatred for Jews is preposterous.
The fact that I don't think the US government should be funding the Israeli war, just like I don't think they should have been funding the war in Ukraine, is not the byproduct of anti-Semitism or anything even close to it.
But we're now at the point where any dissent is automatically described as anti-semitic, just like many left liberals in the wake of George Floyd went around accusing everybody who disagreed with them of being racist and white nationalists, and everybody after 9-11 who expressed dissent was accused of being on the side of the terrorists.
These same kind of tactics are very much in play, except this time they're coming from the very same people who have long claimed to abhor such tactics.
Here is an article in the New York Times, an opinion piece by several college students, Jewish college students, on November 3rd, entitled, What is Happening on College Campuses is Not Free Speech.
So here you see an attempt to limit, reduce, diminish the range of accepted free speech by saying, no, certain views are not free speech.
What's happening on college campuses with protests is not free speech.
Now, obviously, And this has been the law forever, you don't need new laws for this, you don't need new campus rules for this.
If anybody engages in violence, or assault, or threatening behavior, that is a crime.
You can't physically menace people, you can't assault them, you can't threaten them with violence, and you can't physically attack them.
Everything else short of that is fair game, is free expression.
No matter how unsafe those views make you.
Lots of black people say that they feel unsafe when people argue in favor of the Confederacy or against affirmative action.
Many immigrants say they feel unsafe by a lot of language that depicts immigrants as rapists.
Many LGBT people say they feel unsafe by rhetoric that equates being trans or being gay to pedophilia.
But all of those views are nonetheless free speech, even though it makes minority groups safe, and that's the same of views on college campuses regarding Israel, Gaza, and Hamas.
And we should have never tolerated an erosion of civil liberties and free speech in the United States in the name of the 9-11 attack, but at least that was an attack on American soil, on the United States.
What happened on October 7th is an attack on a foreign country.
The last thing we should be doing is allowing anybody to limit or diminish the scope of what free speech is in the United States in the name of this attack on another country.
And yet that's what this op-ed, like so many others, is arguing.
Quote, since the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th, campus life in the United States has imploded into a daily trial of intimidation and insult for Jewish students.
A hostile environment that began with statements from pro-Palestinian student organizations justifying terrorism has now rapidly spiraled into death threats and physical attacks, leaving Jewish students alarmed and vulnerable.
No, let's not conflate these things.
You're allowed to justify terrorism.
People after 9-11 who said the United States got what was coming to it, that the United States brought that on itself, that that was blowback for all the violence we brought to the Middle East, might have been saying things that many found repulsive and repellent and reprehensible, but they were obviously expressing views that were legally protected.
And so people who argue that the broader context of the Israel-Palestinian conflict has to be understood,
Or even people who want to go so far as to say that Israel has become sufficiently repressive of the Palestinians that violence is now justified, as reprehensible as that may be, clearly are expressing views well within the free speech clause of the United States, just like you're allowed to say my government, the United States government, is so tyrannical and authoritarian that I think violence against it is justifiable.
That was the Brandenburg case in which the Supreme Court reversed the conviction, the criminal conviction of a Ku Klux Klan leader who stood up in a speech and threatened violence, saying, unless you in government become less anti-white, we're going to believe that violence is justified against you.
And the state of Ohio prosecuted him for terrorism.
And the Supreme Court said, no, you can advocate violence.
These things are all well settled.
So, while I understand that black people feel intimidated or threatened by people who argue that affirmative action is unfair or is anti-white and LGBT, students feel threatened by rhetoric that equates them with pedophilia, or Latino students feel unsafe or threatened by rhetoric that says that immigrants are rapists, all of that is free speech, and should be, and is.
And if this were coming from any other group, this idea that what's happening on campuses is not free speech but hate speech and violence and intimidation that needs to be stopped, American conservatives would scoff at it.
They've been mocking it for years.
The idea that college students have a right to be safe from ideas that they find threatening on campuses.
And there should be no different reaction now coming when the same arguments are offered but by a different group.
Quote, this most recent wave of hate began with prejudiced comments obscured by seemingly righteous language.
Following the... Do you see here they are... The headline is, this is not about speech.
And yet what they're complaining about are, quote, comments obscured by seemingly righteous language.
They have disagreements with the views that were expressed.
Not just disagreements, anger and rage over these comments.
And comments justifying the Hamas attack, as we've made clear very many times on this show, are ones we think are reprehensible.
The Hamas attacks cannot be justified.
But people are permitted in the United States to offer the opinion that they were.
And it's important that free speech be maintained.
Quote, following the October 7th attacks, more than 30 student groups at Harvard signed on to a statement that read, quote, we, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.
There was no mention of Hamas.
The university issued such a tepid response, it almost felt like an invitation.
Now remember, the whole point of this op-ed is to say what's happening on campus is not about free speech, and yet all they're complaining about Is there disagreement with certain views that student groups issued?
Blaming Israel?
Saying Israel is to blame because of the occupation of the blockade?
That's exactly what free speech is on college campuses and always has been and always should be.
Now obviously when it turns into violent attacks or threats of violence aimed at individual students, those are crimes and should be.
But the bulk of what this grievance is, is about protected speech, and this has been happening every day now for a full month.
And instead of being mocked at, mocked by conservatives, or derided and scorned, oh, look at all the students, the little snowflakes who want to be protected from views they dislike, all the things we've heard from conservatives for years, when these grievances came from black students, or LGBT students, or Latino students, suddenly, These things are to be taken very seriously and measures must be implemented to shield them from views they find upsetting.
Quote, days later at a pro-Palestinian rally, the Cornell Associate Professor Russell Rickford said he was quote, exhilarated by Hamas's terrorist attack.
He later apologized and was granted a leave of absence.
In an article, a Columbia professor, Joseph Massad, seemed to relish the, quote, awesome scenes of, quote, Palestinian resistance fighters storming into Israel.
Most recently, over 100 Columbian Barnard professors signed a letter defending students who blamed Israel for Hamas's attacks.
To the best of our knowledge, none of these professors have received meaningful discipline, much less dismissal.
Another green light.
Now, look at what they're saying here.
I think this is so important.
I mean, I have spent more time in this show talking about the need to protect free speech and the dangers of censorship on college campuses and elsewhere, and here's what they're complaining about.
And I know my audience here has been with me.
If there's anything that unifies the audience that we have for this show that I know have a wide range of Divergences ideologically and politically.
But one thing that unites people who watch this show is a belief that free speech is urgent.
That we maintain a free discourse in the United States.
And so much of what has been going on since this war broke out thousands of miles away on the other side of the globe in a foreign country which is what Israel is.
There has been this steady drumbeat of demands that censorship be instituted on college campuses and in American society generally in the name of making Jews feel safe.
And if that were a framework that in general were accepted, I would still disagree with it, but it wouldn't surprise me.
But the fact that this is coming from people who have nothing but scorn and derision for these arguments when offered by other groups, Is watching people on a dime violate the principles they've spent years claiming they believe.
Here's what these students are saying.
Remember, they're saying this is not about free speech and yet here's their grievance.
Over a hundred Columbia and Barnard professors signed a letter defending students who blamed Israel for Hamas' attack.
You know why they defended those students?
Because you're allowed to blame Israel and the United States if you want to.
That's free speech.
Whether you like it or not, it's free speech.
You are allowed to speak critically of Israel.
And you don't have limits on how much you can criticize Israel.
You can criticize Israel as much as you want, just like you can criticize your own government in the United States as much as you want.
I've heard conservatives talk about the United States government in the harshest terms.
They're tyrannical and authoritarian and despotic.
And I've supported a lot of those claims because I believe them to be true.
If you're allowed to be that critical of your own government, you're certainly out to speak as critically as you want about foreign governments.
So these professors were absolutely right to sign a letter defending the rights of those students who blamed Israel.
You don't have to agree with the students' views blaming Israel, but certainly they have the right to express those views.
And what are these students here writing this op-ed, who in the headline said, this isn't about free expression, what are they angry about?
That none of these professors who signed that letter have received meaningful discipline, much less dismissal.
They want these professors fired for having signed a letter defending the free speech rights of other students.
And they have the audacity to begin this op-ed saying this isn't about free expression.
This is pure freedom of expression.
And it is being steadily eroded.
Because this time, the people pushing these victim narratives and demanding censorship have the power to make it happen.
Now, there has been censorship on college campuses, to be sure, on behalf of other groups.
Because on college campuses, those other groups wield a lot of power as well.
But there's been an endless stream, a tsunami of criticisms and attacks on those censorship campaigns demanded by other groups on college campuses.
In fact, like I said, mockery of the most vicious kind.
Oh, these poor little students, these snowflakes, they're little children, they can't afford to hear, they can't stand to hear views that make them unsafe, they want little safe spaces, they want little comfort blankets.
Why is this different?
Why are those claims mocked and this one is taken so seriously that many conservatives now suddenly support cancel culture campaigns against them and even censorship in campus speech limits?
That these professors should be fired for signing a letter defending the free speech rights of students?
You can be as upset as you want about the Hamas attack.
You can be as angry as you want about students who blame Israel.
That's your absolute right.
What you don't have the right to do is exploit those emotions about this war to try and silence people who are expressing those views.
There's been a lot of repulsive views.
I find people defending the Hamas attack and justifying the Hamas attack repellent.
As I said from the first day, you know what else I find repellent?
People in Israel, people in the United States, calling for Gaza to be wiped off the map, to be turned into a parking lot, for all people in Gaza to be killed.
And there are many of those who are saying that.
I'm going to show you some of them.
I don't want them silenced or censored either.
I think those views are also within the realm of free speech.
That's what it means to be a consistent advocate of free speech and a principled opponent of censorship.
It is so easy to cry about censorship when the views that are being silenced are the views that you like.
Everybody will do that.
Nobody is in favor of censorship of the views they like.
Nobody.
Doing that is meaningless.
It's worthless.
It's cheap and it's easy.
The only thing that matters is whether you defend free speech and object to censorship when the views that are being silenced are the views you dislike most, that you hate the most, that you find the most repellent.
That's the real test of whether you are a believer in censorship or not, and so many conservatives are failing that test.
So many conservatives are beating their chest like tough guys.
Like, oh, students need to step up and become adults and tolerate the fact that in this world there are things that are going to make them uncomfortable.
They don't have the right to their safe spaces.
Who now suddenly are cheering these kind of students for doing this.
The article goes on.
Over these last few weeks, dozens of anti-Israel protests have been hosted on or near our college campuses.
Many of these demonstrations had threatening features.
Mass students have chanted slogans such as, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, which many view as a call for the destruction of Israel.
People can debate the meaning of that term all they want.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
Earlier today, Marsha Blackburn, the Republican Senator from Kentucky, accused Rashida Tlaib, the Democratic Congresswoman, of calling for a genocide of the Jewish people because she invoked this chant.
That's not what this chant means.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
It does not mean kill all Jews.
Do some people who chant that want that?
Maybe.
Probably.
Last month, the former head of the Mossad said that Israel has now become an apartheid country.
That's not Cornel West saying that.
That's not Noam Chomsky saying that.
That's not a Palestinian leader saying that.
That's the former head of the Mossad, somebody chosen by Benjamin Netanyahu.
We showed you that report on The Guardian.
Many other Israeli officials have said that as well.
So when a lot of people are chanting from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, what they're simply saying is that Palestinians from the river to the sea, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, that area that is Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, should be free of what the former head of the Mossad has said is oppression of an apartheid nature.
Not that all Jews should be murdered.
But even if the chant means Israel should no longer exist as a country, you're allowed to say that.
You're allowed to advocate that you think the recognition of Israel as a state in 1948 was unjust, that it stole Palestinian land.
These are all views that are protected free speech.
Just like Lindsey Graham wakes up every day and calls for war against some new country.
Let's go bomb Iran.
Let's go wipe this country off the map.
Let's go to war against this country.
And I find it reprehensible.
I find it reprehensible when people call for Gaza to be wiped off the map.
But I wouldn't want any of those people censored because those are all protected free speech.
And so is that chant.
Quote, simply affirming that tolerance and intimidation have no place on campus isn't enough.
Professors violating these rules should be disciplined or dismissed.
Student groups that incite or justify violence should not be given university funds to conduct activity on campus.
Do you, are you somebody who trusts college administrators knowing what you know about college administrators?
To decide which student groups have views that incite violence?
Do you not think that there are college administrators who would look at, let's say, a conservative group that has anti-trans rhetoric or that equates LGBTs with pedophilia or that calls gender-affirming care a mutilation?
Do you not think there are campus administrators who would consider that incitement of violence and therefore that group should be defunded for its views?
Or conservative groups who oppose affirmative action?
Don't you think there are Administrators who would consider that white nationalist or racist or anti-immigration student groups.
Don't you think there are administrators at Harvard and Yale and Princeton who would regard that as inciting violence?
Is this the power you want to give to college administrators like these students do?
Quote, furthermore, in line with anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies, established university initiatives that protect minority groups must also include Jews.
Universities should adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism as a mechanism for properly identifying and eliminating anti-Jewish hate.
Now there have been many attempts to essentially define anti-semitism to include opposition to Zionism or even criticism of Israel.
Boycotting Israel, for example, is considered anti-semitic.
Even though the boycott of Israel designed to end the occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza was modeled after the boycott movement against South Africa that brought down the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Oftentimes these are ways of smuggling in attempts to censor just like having a very broad definition of what's racist that includes a lot of right-wing speech is an attempt to Justify censorship on the ground that those aren't political views.
Those are racist views.
Those are white nationalist views.
Those are views that incite hatred against trans people and therefore it needs to be censored.
This is all the left liberal theory of censorship that's being invoked here.
All of it.
Every last prong of it.
I spent seven years now arguing with left liberals who want to censor and I know exactly what they think.
I know the phrases they use.
I know the theories they invoke.
And I've spent the last month arguing with newfound right-wing advocates of censorship.
And I can tell you they sound exactly alike.
It's like arguing with a mirror image of one another.
Oh no, that's not really political speech, that's hate speech.
That's speech designed to incite violence against a vulnerable minority group.
That's calling for genocide.
That's calling for fascism.
It's all the same thing.
Hate speech isn't free speech.
Calls for violence aren't free speech.
All the same left liberal arguments for censorship are all the ones that people on the right who are calling for censorship are now invoking.
Now, there are a lot of noble exceptions.
Candace Owens publicly disagreed with Megyn Kelly over whether students who criticize Israel or who defend the Palestinians should lose their jobs.
And Vivek Ramaswamy had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled, Council Culture Won't Help Us Defeat Hamas.
And the outstanding nonpartisan pro-free speech group Fire.org vehemently denounced Ron DeSantis.
for flagrantly violating the First Amendment when he banned a pro-Palestinian group at the University of Florida, claiming they were providing material support to terrorism, even though they were doing nothing other than expressing views Governor DeSantis disliked.
So there have been a lot of conservatives who have been principled, but a huge number have not.
Now, as I said at the top, all of this is being justified by a campaign to try and claim that while victimhood narratives from every other minority group, blacks, LGBTs, Latinos, immigrants, women, trans people are all jokes, they're trans people are all jokes, they're all jokes.
There's only one minority group that faces real endangerment, real vulnerability in the United States, and that's American Jews.
In fact, there's a very viral campaign underway to try and claim that there's a second Holocaust coming.
And it's urging people to declare publicly whether they would hide Jews the way brave people in Europe hid people like Anne Frank during the first Holocaust.
An attempt to claim that American Jews are facing a similar threat as European Jews faced under the Nazis.
Here is one of the world's most famous influencers on TikTok.
You probably don't know if you're under the age of 28, but she's extremely famous and very influential.
And I'm only showing this to you because this campaign went very viral.
Listen to this.
You're going to start seeing this image all over social media.
So I figured I would try to explain what it means.
Would you hide me?
It means that Jewish people all over the world are under attack.
And we are so scared that another holocaust is going to happen.
During the holocaust... We are so scared that another holocaust is going to happen.
Is that a real threat?
Are American Jews facing another holocaust in the United States?
Because...
There are people who are protesting the fact that Israel is dropping more bombs on a helpless civilian population, half of whom are children in a tiny strip of land they can't escape from.
And because Americans and people around the world are protesting the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza and the killing of thousands of young children.
Now another holocaust is coming because that's somehow anti-semitic?
This is the sort of thing that is being disseminated into the discourse in a very influential and widespread way.
Jews were torn out of their homes and had no safe place to go unless one of their neighbors who wasn't Jewish would take them in and hide them.
The Nazis were a terrorist organization similar to Hamas and like those right now who support Hamas were brainwashed into thinking there should be no more Jews.
Six million Jewish people were murdered during the Holocaust.
And the fact is the Nazis did not just stop at Jews.
They wanted to kill black people, gay people, disabled people.
Millions of these groups were murdered.
So right now in the world when you're seeing anti-Israel rallies chanting and parading the streets saying to end all Jews, we truly are so scared that another Holocaust is going to happen.
This idea that Anti-Israel protests are about a call to murder all Jews is a repulsive lie.
Can you find protesters at these rallies who think that?
Yes, you can.
Just like you can find people at pro-Israel rallies, every last one of them, who believe that all Gazans should be murdered, and they say so.
But that's not what those rallies are about.
In fact, at almost every one of these rallies in the Western world against what the Israelis are doing in Gaza, you not only have Jews participating in it, but leading the way.
There are all sorts of Jews who organize pro-Palestinian rallies, who are very critical of the Israeli government, who even chant, from the river to the sea, Palestinians should be free.
I mean, I feel bad talking about this because this is some girl who's not exactly a scholar, but she's extremely influential.
She has millions of people who watch her.
And she's getting this from the ether.
This is what is being fed and disseminated.
And a lot of people are taking this seriously.
People who will mock every claim way milder from every other minority group.
Millions of these groups were murdered.
So right now in the world when you're seeing anti-Israel rallies chanting and parading the streets saying to end all Jews, we truly are so scared that another Holocaust is going to happen.
Jewish people right now are asking if we're not safe in public or on campuses, at some point are we not going to be safe in our own homes?
Jewish people are looking around right now wondering if our non-Jewish friends and neighbors would take us in if we were unsafe.
We're wondering right now that if the families we grew up with that are non-Jewish in our neighborhoods would take us in or turn their backs on us.
So when you see this image and wonder what it means, I'm asking you, would you hype me?
And so needless to say, a bunch of celebrities and other types like that, who after George Floyd were posting Black Lives Matter and in the Me Too movement were posting Me Too, Me Too, whatever you feed them Ukraine, the blue and yellow flag.
People like Meghan McCain, they're now like posting, I would, meaning I would hide you.
I'll hide you, don't worry.
I mean, this is neurosis and paranoia of the worst kind.
This is putting insane things into people's heads.
It would be worthy of cultural commentary if that's all it were, but the fact that it's being used as a foundation to justify widespread censorship and calls to ban pro-Palestinian groups, which is what's happening all throughout the United States, is what makes this dangerous.
Now, as I said, there's so much that reminds me of the aftermath of 9-11, but so much that reminds me of the aftermath of George Floyd.
This really is like the conservatives' George Floyd moment.
You may recall that shortly after George Floyd and the protests that erupted, the New York Times committed the crime of publishing an op-ed by Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, where he advocated that the military be called in to put a stop to the Black Lives Matter protests.
And a whole bunch of New York Times reporters and staffers, black ones but also white ones, started claiming that that op-ed puts them in danger in the workplace.
They all use the same language because it was a way of trying to immunize themselves from being fired because what they were trying to claim was that they were just complaining about a danger in the workplace.
And under labor law, workers who complain about dangers in the workplace can't be fired.
So here you see an article by the Neiman Lab, which is a trade journal for journalists, June 4th, 2020, reporting on that.
Quote, this puts black New York Times staff in danger.
New York Times staffers band together to protest Tom Cotton's anti-protest op-ed.
New York Times staffers are banding together in protest after the paper ran an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton arguing that the United States government should call on the U.S.
military to quash the people who are protesting the alleged murder of George Floyd, a black man, by a white police officer.
Times employees are not the only newsroom staffers protesting this week.
Times management spent the day defending the op-ed.
Then, on Thursday evening, the Times PR team released a statement saying that Cotton's op-ed, quote, did not meet our standards.
So in response, they retracted the op-ed and then they fired the editor, the editor of the editorial page, who approved publication of the op-ed.
And here's just one of many tweets by New York Times staffers.
Here you see Jasmine Hughes, a black New York Times staffer, who said, running this op-ed put black New York Times staff in danger.
So they claim they were endangered by this op-ed.
And I mean, every conservative I know mocked and derided this idea that New York Times staffers were endangered in the workplace because of an op-ed that was published.
And when they fired the two editors responsible for this, the publication of this op-ed, One of the people who led the way in objecting to that firing and defended the New York Times right to publish that op-ed, who mocked the claims by the New York Times staffers that they felt unsafe in the workplace, was Barry Weiss.
She at the time was a New York Times employee.
And when she left, she denounced very vocally the idea that journalists have the right to feel safe in their workplace.
They need safe spaces in journalism.
She, in fact, said there's no such thing as safe places, spaces in journalism.
And she was very outspoken about the argument that when you work at a newspaper, you have to hear views that make you angry.
You're entitled, as a journalist, she said, to feel safe at your workplace.
By demanding that nothing be published there that makes you uncomfortable or angry?
And I agreed with Barry Weiss about that.
I thought it was insane that the editor of the newspaper got fired for publishing this op-ed.
And yet, here's Barry Weiss now.
She has her own site called A Free Press, ironically, and here's what Barry Weiss is promoting.
An article by a staffer at the Guardian who is anonymous, who's Jewish, claiming they're unsafe at the Guardian.
And the reason they say they're unsafe at the Guardian is not because they're being targeted by mobs or being attacked in any sort of way that's violent or threatened with violence.
They're not claiming that at all.
They're saying they're unsafe because of the coverage of the war at the Guardian that they claim is too anti-Israel.
It's the same exact argument as what the New York Times staffers were saying.
I'm unsafe at my workplace because I don't like the editorial coverage my newspaper is taking.
It makes me feel unsafe.
And instead of mocking that and denouncing that, Barry Weiss has completely shifted positions and is promoting and heralding this claim from the Guardian staffer that they're unsafe as a Jew at the Guardian because the paper is too anti-Israel.
Here's a tweet by Barry Weiss promoting this article on her site.
Quote, I hear colleagues complaining about the newspaper's American readers.
They're always accusing us of anti-Semitism.
They're laughing.
I'm a Jew at the Guardian.
I don't feel safe at work.
Must read, said Barry Weiss.
And if you read the article, as I did, you will find that the person, there's the title of it, I'm a Jew at the Guardian.
I don't feel safe at work.
An anonymous employee describes the hostile environment at Britain's foremost left-leaning newspaper.
And if you read the article, you will find that the person is complaining solely about the fact that they think the editorial coverage of the Guardian is too one-sided, just like the New York Times staffers said they were unsafe because of the coverage by the New York Times.
The article up?
Here's what the article said, this is why they're claiming they're unsafe.
Quote, I look at the papers the next day.
The newspapers I work for has a tank on the front page.
Quote, hundreds die in hostages held as Hamas assault shocks Israel.
Victorious terrorists hold a Palestinian flag.
The subheading reads Netanyahu declares war as 150 Israelis die, 230 Palestinians killed in airstrikes.
I don't understand.
I know people, Israelis, who were murdered.
They did not, quote, die, as if it was some kind of an accident.
I saw footage of terrorism.
It was not an assault.
On Monday, I go to work.
How are your family, a colleague asked.
When I answered, she squirms.
Can't they just leave, my colleague says.
No, they can't, actually.
I look at the morning newsletter for the newspaper I work for.
It breaks down the number of dead Palestinian children.
It does not mention dead Israeli children.
I see a colleague who had posted about decolonialization all over social media over the weekend.
They're laughing with the rest of their team.
They're having a great day.
I used to love their podcast, full of hot takes and celeb gossip.
Now they're evolved into an expert on the Middle East.
It doesn't look like their family is in the middle of it though.
Okay, so it just goes on and on like this.
Imagine if this were a black journalist or a Latino journalist or an LGBT journalist Saying they felt unsafe at the workplace because they didn't like the editorial coverage of their paper, Barry Weiss would be leading the way, mocking that person and saying, if you want a safe space, don't go into journalism.
But because now it's a group that she belongs to instead of a different group, now it's to be taken very seriously.
Most people have a lot more empathy For perceived threats to their own group than they do to groups that they don't belong to.
And so it's very easy to say, oh, I'm mocking all these claims by black people and by Latinos and immigrants and trans people.
They're not really threatened.
They're babies.
They're snowflakes.
Oh, but this group that I belong to?
No, these threats are real.
Even though the article by this Jewish staffer who's saying she's unsafe is not claiming that she's physically threatened.
Or that there are any violent mobs searching for her.
Her only complaint is that she doesn't like The Guardian's coverage of the war.
She thinks it's too pro-Palestine, even though The Guardian is editorially completely pro-Israel.
Here's Barry Weiss in 2020 mocking the idea, right at the time that the New York Times staffers were saying they felt unsafe, mocking the idea.
That people have a right to feel safe at the workplace.
Quote, the New Guard, says Barry Weiss, has a different worldview.
One articulated best by John Haidt and Greg Lukianoff.
They're the ones who wrote the book, Coddling of the American Mind, that makes fun of the idea that Americans now have a right on college campuses to feel safe.
Barry Weiss says, quote, they call it safetyism.
In which the right of people to feel emotionally and psychologically safe trumps what were previously considered core liberal values like free speech.
Do you understand that this is exactly what Barry Weiss is now doing?
And look, I know Barry.
She's a nice person.
There's not a cynical bone in her body.
She means this earnestly.
I'm not trying to jam up any kind of hostility toward her.
It's not personal.
It's about the fact that so many conservatives, and I realize a lot of people think she's not conservative, but I don't care about those labels.
So many people who previously were leaders of the idea that we have to have free speech, that we can't censor to make people safe, that college students are pathetic for wanting to be safe from views that make them uncomfortable, are now suddenly leading The effort to venerate these claims of feeling unsafe because college students and journalists are exposed to ideas they dislike.
Now, I think it's very, very difficult to put that generously and politely to try to make the case that American Jews are the only or the most endangered minority group in the United States.
They have been targeted with threats and they have been targeted with mass shooting sprees like the one in the Pittsburgh synagogue a couple years ago.
So have many other minority groups whose claims of grievance are typically mocked.
Here from Al Jazeera, in February of 2022, historically black colleges received threats second day in a row.
Quote, the bomb scares come at the start of Black History Month in the United States, and a day at a half-dozen universities received threats.
Quote, multiple black universities and colleges in the United States received bomb threats that put their campuses on high alert or on lockdown, a day after similar threats forced the cancellation of in-person classes for the day.
Local news outlets reported on Tuesday that Howard University in Washington, D.C., Kentucky State University, Xavier University of Louisiana, and Fort Valley State University in Georgia were among at least nine universities that reported receiving threats.
Here from Howard University, February 1, 2022.
There's a tweet from Howard University, quote, the Metropolitan Police Department and the Howard University Department of Police have issued an all clear in the investigation of a bomb threat made this morning at approximately 2.55 a.m.
Here from the New York Times in February of 2022, quote, bomb threats are roiling historically black colleges and universities.
Black people have plenty of reasons to feel unsafe.
In the United States, they can say these sorts of things all day long and yet conservatives are not sympathetic to the idea that black college students' feelings of unsafety justify censorship or changing campus speech rules or banning student groups that are against affirmative action.
And they're not the only group threatened.
Here from The Hill, October 16, 2023, just two weeks ago, FBI crime statistics show anti-LGBTQ hate crimes on the rise.
Quote, anti-LGBTQ hate crimes rose sharply in 2022, jumping more than 19 percent over 2021, according to the FBI's annual crime report released Monday.
More than 11,600 hate crime incidents were reported to the FBI in 2022, the highest number recorded since the agency began tracking them in 1991.
A majority of hate crimes recorded last year targeted Black people, according to the report.
Hate crimes targeting LGBTQ people were up significantly compared with 2021, with 622 reported single-biased anti-LGBTQ hate crimes.
Hate crimes motivated by anti-transgender bias rose more than 35% year over year, reaching 338 incidences.
Kelly Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign and National LGBTQ Civil Rights Group, described the increases in hate crimes as, quote, both shocking and heartbreaking, yet sadly not expected.
Quote, the constant stream of hostile rhetoric from fringe anti-equality figures.
Alongside the relentless passage of discriminatory bills, particularly those targeting transgender individuals in state legislatures, created an environment where it was sadly foreseeable that individuals with violent tendencies might respond to this rhetoric, Robinson said Monday in a statement.
What do people like Barry Weiss do, or, I don't want to pick on her, any conservative who, Who mocks these claims do when a group like LGBTQs claim that they're threatened and endangered with violent because of rhetoric against them.
They say, too bad.
We have free speech rights to speak about your group.
Here from the Voice of America, August 30th, 2023, quote, report, African Americans remain the top target of hate crimes.
Quote, the recent killing of three black people in Jacksonville has drawn attention to a grim reality that researchers have long documented.
Black Americans are the most frequent victims of racially motivated hate crimes in the United States.
And there's all these statistics about how significant that is.
Now, A lot of American Jews are pointing to identical studies.
Here from CNN, October 13, 2023.
2022 saw the highest rate of recorded anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S.
American Jews fear the Israel-Hamas conflict could make things worse.
Quote, many Jewish people in the United States have become more vigilant and concerned about their safety as deadly fighting intensifies between Israel and Hamas.
Oren Siegel, Vice President for the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, said, quote, It's a very painful time for Jewish people in the U.S.
who are already facing an increase in hate crimes.
An increase in hate crimes and now worry for relatives or friends in Israel.
Quote, The level of hatred that we already were dealing with on the ground, combined with what people are seeing online, just kind of all came together at the worst moment, perhaps one of the worst moments in Israeli history, Siegel said.
In recent years, there's been a rising number of anti-Semitic speech and attack in the U.S.
While incidents in the U.S.
can't be solely attributed to a group or ideology, there has been increased coordinated efforts by known white supremacist groups to spread anti-Semitic propaganda.
Anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S.
fast-tracked by the ADL reached their highest level in 2022 with nearly 3,700 reported cases.
So do you see how every group has similar claims, equally valid claims, to feeling threatened, to being targeted with violent shooting sprees, as happened in Charleston and Buffalo and Jacksonville to black people, and has happened to LGBTs, and has happened to Jews? and has happened to LGBTs, and has happened to Jews?
And yet for some reason, These kinds of grievances and victimhood narratives are mocked in every case, especially when they're invoked to justify a need for censorship or cancel culture, to fire people for expressing views those groups dislike, except in this one case where they're being taken very seriously.
Now, you can cite statistics.
Showing how difficult it is to argue that American Jews are somehow the most vulnerable and endangered minority group in the United States.
In America, Jewish adults have long reported that they are very satisfied with multiple aspects of their lives.
Here from Pew Research in May 2021, including their economic well-being.
Every time there is a vote in Congress, Regarding Israel, they passed overwhelmingly in favor of Israel.
You can pick anyone.
Here, in the Senate, a resolution agreed to, to stand with Israel.
It was a unanimous vote.
97 to 0.
In support of Israel.
Every single time there's a vote.
Here from 2014, the last time, one of the last times Israel was bombing Gaza in enormous amounts.
Nothing compared to now, but still.
The U.S.
Senate unanimously approved a resolution giving full support to Israel on Gaza.
It had 78 bipartisan co-sponsors.
The United States is a deeply pro-Israel country and has been for decades.
In fact, Israel, of course, is the country that has received by far the greatest amount of economic and military aid from the United States over the last several decades.
Here from Axios is the poll showing the amount of the billions and billions of dollars every year that goes from the United States to Israel.
I think it's very difficult to try and claim that the United States Is some sort of hotbed of anti-Semitism, the way that a lot of people on the left tried to claim that America is a hotbed of white supremacy and white nationalism in the wake of the George Floyd killing, or wants to exterminate trans people.
These are all exaggerated victimhood narratives to try and justify limitations on free speech or the right to speak.
And they should be taken no more seriously in this case when it comes to censorship than in any other case.
Now, one of the people who has been very consistent is Bata Unger Sargon, who is as steadfast an Israel supporter as it gets.
She goes on television.
She wears a gigantic Jewish star visible to the camera because she's very proud of being an American Jew.
She is a steadfast supporter of Israel.
And yet she went on Fox to complain about this new narrative that Jews are some sort of uniquely oppressed group.
Here was her tweet, quote, the problem with intersectionality is not that they didn't rank Jews high enough on the oppression scale.
It's that they rank people based on oppression at all.
The safetyism about Jewish students is harmful.
The main danger they face is of being unpopular with their immoral peers.
Listen to what Batya said.
She is, again, someone steadfastly pro-Israel, and yet she has not at all abandoned her free speech principles, and she refuses to give credence to these new victimhood narratives on behalf of American Jews, just like she rejected similar victim narratives when offered by other groups.
Listen to what she said on Fox News, how easy it is to be consistent.
Can we play this video?
You are also seeing students saying that they don't feel safe on campus, and to that I have to say, you know, I hope they'll forgive me for saying this, but you know, the problem with the intersectional movement is not that they didn't rank Jews high enough in the oppression Olympics.
It's that they rank people based on oppression at all.
And this language of safetyism, it's not healthy for the students to see themselves that way.
I do think most of the threats are bullying, yelling, not physical in nature, although the editor of the Harvard Law Review attacked a Jewish student yesterday.
We saw a video of that.
But most of it is in the realm of speech.
And I think that it is much more important for Jewish students to be able to defend themselves from bad ideas and bad speech than it is for them to accept this idea that they are actually unsafe.
What they are unsafe, what they are in danger of is being unpopular with their peers who have adopted sociopathic views that they have been taught by their professors.
and that they learned on TikTok, by the way, because the Chinese Communist Party controls TikTok and has sided with Hamas in this conflict.
And so they're learning all of this there.
But you know what?
The Jewish students need to stand up for themselves.
They need to stand up for what is right.
It's okay to be unpopular with sociopaths. - Now, I have some bones to pick with what she said about TikTok, The fact is that TikTok has more or less turned over their censorship and content moderation decisions to the U.S.
security state in exchange for being allowed to stay in the United States.
But leave that aside.
The much more important point is that what she's saying here is that this idea of trying to convince American Jews that they're facing another Holocaust Or that they need to be protected from unpopular ideas through censorship and through punishing other students who are critical of Israel is just as dangerous when other groups demand that.
It's the same kind of safetyism that the American right and people who are conservatives have long Derided and mocked, and it should continue to be derided and mocked because this effort to erode our civil liberties and to try and suggest that we are not permitted to have free speech about Israel and about this war is just as dangerous as any other censorship efforts.
And yet, because of how much support it has from American conservatives, not all but many, and because of how bipartisan a pro-Israel posture is in the U.S.
Congress and among our political elite class, These censorship efforts are really taking hold in a way that is very dangerous.
And it's being predicated on this claim that is incredibly demented and damaging to Jewish people.
To convince them that they face another Holocaust, that they need their non-Jewish students to hide them like Anne Frank was hidden.
It's okay to have pro-Palestinian protests.
It's okay for people to blame Israel.
For that conflict, those are all legitimate ideas, even if you disagree with them.
What's way more dangerous is not allowing that free speech to thrive, but trying to stifle it.
Now, one of the things that happens whenever there comes time for free speech debates is lots of people get very confused, I think sometimes deliberately confused, about what the First Amendment actually protects.
And as I said earlier, I have debated left liberal censorship advocates for the last seven years, even much longer than that.
And they say things that are just not true.
They say, this is hate speech and that's not free speech.
Hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment.
They say speech that might incite violence is not protected.
They say speech that generates hatred for a minority group is not protected.
They say that advocating violence against a group or genocide is not protected.
All of that is untrue.
The Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment is very broad.
It even allows you to advocate violence.
You are allowed to advocate violence.
You are allowed to advocate genocide.
It may make you a repulsive person, but you're allowed to do it.
And the seminal case that defined the contours of free speech in the United States was the case of Brandenburg versus Ohio, which was a 1968 ruling by the Supreme Court that made a very steadfast stance for free speech.
And it left a tiny little exception.
That is very narrow.
It's basically you're not allowed to stand on a street corner with a mob and direct it to go and tell it to burn down that person's house over there.
In other words, you can't tell a mob to go do violence in a way that's very imminent and specific against another person.
But anything short of that, short of gathering a mob outside of someone's house with torches and telling them to go burn it down, is protected free speech.
Here's the case describing what happened.
Quote, the appellant, the person appealing, is a leader of the Ku Klux Klan group, and he was convicted under the Ohio criminal syndicalism statute.
And what was his crime?
Quote, that statute made it a crime to quote, advocate the duty, necessity, or propriety of crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform.
And he was accused of violating this terrorism statute because he stood up at a rally and threatened violence against American political officials because he claimed they were too anti-white.
He was arrested, he was fined a thousand dollars and sentenced to one to ten year imprisonment and they had him on film.
And it showed him in his Klan regalia making a speech This is the court speaking, and the speech in full was as follows, quote, the Klan has more members in the state of Ohio than does any other organization.
We're not a revengeant organization, but if our president, our Congress, our Supreme Court continues to suppress the white Caucasian race, it's possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken.
We are marching on Congress, July the 4th.
400,000 strong.
From there, we are dividing into two groups, one group to march on state Augustine, Florida, the other group to march into Mississippi.
And the court went on to explain it overturned that criminal conviction and it said that you cannot convict somebody for standing up in a speech and threatening violence and advocating violence as a necessary or justified response to repression.
You are allowed to advocate violence to the court.
After all, the United States was founded When people in the colonies started to say that the repression of the British crown had become so extreme that violence was necessary and justified.
It'd be a weird country.
To be founded based on people saying violence is necessary to then turn around and say, oh, you have free speech, but you're not allowed to advocate violence.
The court said, no, you're allowed to advocate violence.
This is what it said, reviewing the history in the 20th century of Supreme Court decisions.
Quote, these later decisions have fashioned the principle that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and a free press do not permit a state to forbid or prescribe advocacy of the use of force So this is what is protected.
This is what a court cannot prohibit.
The First Amendment, the constitutional guarantees of free speech, do not permit, do not permit a state to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation.
You're allowed to advocate violence, you're allowed to advocate the necessity to break the law.
The only exception is where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
It's a very narrow exception.
The left liberal censorship advocates always try and expand it.
And they say, oh, well if you stand up and say trans people have a propensity to pedophilia, you're inciting violence against them.
And that falls into the Brandenburg exception.
No.
The exception is very narrow.
That's why they said the only kind of advocacy you can criminalize is one that is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and that is likely to do so.
Meaning you have an actual group of people, a mob, and you tell them to go attack that person over there.
Not within the next month or two months, but within the next five minutes.
And court cases have said it's extremely important that we keep this exception narrow or else the exception will swallow the rule.
The court went on, as we said in No Diverse in the United States, quote, the mere abstract teaching of the moral propriety or even moral necessity for a resort to force or violence is not the same as preparing a group for violent action and stealing it to such action.
A statute which fails to draw this distinction impermissibly intrudes upon the freedoms guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
That is the scope of the First Amendment.
So when you hear people saying, oh, these pro-Palestinian students are calling for violence, they're calling for Israel to be eliminated, they're calling for there to be genocide against the Jews, even though that's not true, let's assume that it's true.
Those are all protected free speech.
You're allowed to advocate those things.
Now, I think it's very important to note that it isn't just pro-Palestinians and pro-Palestinian protesters who have been advocating violence of this kind.
There are a lot of people in Israel and a lot of pro-Israel protesters in the United States who are also standing up and saying, wipe out all the Palestinians, kill all the Gazans.
This is from one of the earliest pro-Israel protests back in October in New York City.
We credited the interviewer.
I want to do that again.
I don't think we have his name so hopefully we can get that.
I want to make sure he gets the credit.
But there was a reporter who went to that pro-Israel march in New York and he interviewed some of the people at the pro-Israel protest and asked them what they want Israel to do.
Listen to what they 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!
Kill all Palestinians, all of them.
Not one left.
Not one left from the river to the sea, Palestine will be deceased!
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be deceased.
Do you think you could go and arrest this person for having said that?
You cannot.
Because as despicable as that statement is, it is clearly protected speech under the First Amendment.
He has the free speech right to say that.
Listen to others.
And Israel need to do like this.
You see?
Now Gaza.
Like this.
Gaza need to do like this.
Or, or, like this, but all this, Jewish.
First of all, the reporter who conducted these interviews is Jeremy Lofredo, and you just saw there another pro-Israel protester saying, you have two options.
Either you flatten Gaza and turn it into a parking lot, or you allow it to remain, but only with Jews.
You drive these Palestinians out, you kill them all.
Also protected speech.
Here are a couple others.
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.
else you can do.
They proved to us that there's nothing else you can do.
We tried and...
We tried everything.
It doesn't work.
We have to wipe the flat off the fucking map.
Like a fucking parking lot.
I'm not stopping.
Tell all our abs are wiped out.
I think, 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.
Wipe Gaza off the map, kill them all.
You think any of these people can be arrested or should be arrested?
All of their belief is killing Jewish and killing and murder our people.
Flatten it.
Flatten Gaza.
Flatten it.
Flatten Gaza.
I would vehemently oppose her prosecution, even though she's calling for genocide.
Just like all these other people at this march.
Not all the other people at this march, but the people we just heard from are.
And you can go to every Israel protest, and it's not a majority of people by any means who support Israel who are saying this.
But there are some.
Just like it's not a majority of people at these pro-Palestinian marches who want to kill all Jews, even though you can find some if you look hard enough.
But they all have the free speech right to say it.
Here, in case you think that was just some sort of one-off after October 7th, here is video of a bunch of young Israelis who in 2014 set up a party with chairs to watch and cheer to watch the bombs fall on Gaza, to see the buildings blow up.
And reporters went to them and interviewed them and said, what are you doing here?
Why are you doing this?
And listen to what they said.
This is 2014.
We want to see it in our own eyes, not from a television point of view.
They chose Hamas to rule them.
It's their fault.
They got it to where it is now, not us.
But don't you think it'll get worse by bombing them?
No, I think that's the only solution.
I think they should just clear off all the city.
Just take it off the ground.
Yes, I'm a little bit fascist.
I think they should just destroy all of Gaza, take it off the map, take it off the ground.
I'm a little bit fascist, she said.
You can see another rocket going in from Israel, slowly making its way, presumably a precision-guided missile coming into the northern part of the Gaza Strip, and it seems as though the bombardment has been very much in Beit Lahiya.
Now, the sound that you are hearing here, we're on the top of a hill, and I think you can probably see there are lots of Israelis gathered around, who are cheering when they see these kinds of Israeli strikes.
And it is an astonishing, macabre, and awful thing really to watch this display of fire in the air.
But really it is what is going on in the ground, Wolf, that is significant.
Alright, so they all got together, they were applauding, they wanted to cheer, they wanted to see the bombs exploding things.
And you heard what they say.
Now, it's not just random.
Pro-Israeli protesters, just like you can find people in the leadership of Hamas or the Hamas charter who say we want to erase Israel.
People in the Israeli government have these views too.
Here's an article from Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, about people inside the cabinet, Netanyahu's cabinet, or in the Knesset, who are explicitly calling for an ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Quote, we are told that tranquilizers were handed out before the screening, great conditions.
The people who underwent the atrocities were forced to do so without the benefit of Conopin.
Galit Distel Atterbyron, tender soul that she is, took a pill and it didn't help.
She couldn't take the terrible sight, she said, and ran out shrinking and sobbing, shaking all over in one of the worst anxiety attacks she has ever known.
She tweeted, quote, Erase Gaza from the face of the earth.
Let the Gazan monsters rush to the southern border and flee into Egypt or die.
And let them die badly.
Gaza should be wiped off the map and fire and brimstone on the heads of the Nazis in Judea and Samaria.
Jewish wrath to shake the earth around the world.
We need a cruel, vengeful IDF here.
Anything less is immoral.
Alongside cabinet members who vie with her to head the most useless ministries, such as Gila Gamil and Amikai Elayou, she caused this terrible damage.
Her tweet garnered 3 million views, retweets, and appalled comments by leading journalists from around the world.
Her post, the Minister of Heritage of Absolutely Nothing, began with this pastoral line, quote, the northern strip more beautiful than ever, bombing and flattening everything.
Receiving much media attention, the editor-in-chief of The Economist even mentioned it.
And then from the Times of Israel from this week, far-right minister says nuking Gaza is an option.
And then Netanyahu suspended him for saying that because of how much controversy that created.
You can find people in the United States advocating the elimination of Israel, and you can find pro-Israel protesters advocating the elimination of Hamas, or the elimination of Gaza rather.
All Gazans, as we just showed you.
And all of that is Constitutionally protected.
Here is Lindsey Graham.
He gets up almost every day and thinks about which country he thinks should be bombed today.
He's constantly advocating violence and the extinguishing of human life.
And of course, while he's despicable, he has the right to say so.
And he went on CNN today and he was with Senator Blumenthal, who is, as usual, when it comes to Ukraine, when it comes to Israel, you have bipartisan consensus.
And Lindsey Graham was essentially dismissing the value of Palestinian life.
Here's what he said.
You said there should be no limit to what Israel can do to take out Hamas.
But is the administration right that Israel needs to do more to protect civilians in Gaza?
Well, I think Israel is committed to following the law of armed conflict.
One thing I want to say for sure is Israel is not engaged in genocide.
And another thing we need to deal with is the whitewashing of the status of people in Gaza.
I'm sure there are plenty of people who would love to be free from Hamas, but the most radicalized people on the planet live in the Gaza Strip.
They've been taught since birth to kill and hate the Jews.
How do you teach math in Gaza?
If you had 10 Jews and you killed 6, how many would be left?
That's been in their school system.
So I'm all for providing humanitarian aid in a fashion that doesn't help Hamas.
I'm all for Israel having the time and space to destroy Hamas.
I'm all for a new governing regime over the Palestinian people when this is over.
And I'm all for Israel and Saudi Arabia reconciling.
That's sort of where I'm at.
But no pause?
No humanitarian pause?
I don't want to take the pressure off Hamas militarily, but if Israel can find a way to help the humanitarian situation, yes, I'd like to do it.
But after World War II, did anybody ask us these questions?
You've got to realize the United States dropped two atomic bombs on cities in Japan to end the war.
I think this is total war between Israel and Hamas.
I want to protect innocent people as much as possible, but I want the world to realize that the radicalized population in Gaza So that is basically a way of saying, yeah, protect innocent Palestinians if you can, but in reality, these are people full of hate.
drive them into the sea.
And here's what I think.
80% of the people in Gaza support the idea from the river to the sea.
That has to change.
So that is basically a way of saying, yeah, protect innocent Palestinians if you can.
But in reality, these are people full of hate.
They're the most radicalized population on the planet.
So they're not really innocent.
Even though we just showed you how many Israelis think the same about the Palestinians, but also Lindsey Graham of all people, who has advocated every single American war, actual and proposed, who if he had his way, there'd be bloodshed in the most massive who if he had his way, there'd be bloodshed in the most massive quantities all over the world, is the least entitled person, the person with the lowest degree of moral credibility to accuse others
Thank you.
But Lindsey Graham has the constitutional right every day to go on TV like he does and call for the destruction of some other population.
And so does everybody else.
Now, one of the things that has been, I think, disturbing is that there's been an effort by a lot of billionaires to dictate to American colleges Which views they can allow to be heard and which views they can't.
I don't think it's a healthy thing if we have billionaires dictating through their money which views can be heard.
Billionaires are entitled to donate or not donate whoever they want and yet there's been a campaign from the start led by oligarchs like Bill Ackman who was the first one to compile the list, the public list, of students who are too critical of Israel or too defensive of the Palestinians.
He wanted to put them on a list of people who could not be hired.
And then here is another wealthy donor who went on CNBC earlier today to say that he was not going to donate any more money to the University of Pennsylvania because they were insufficiently pro-Israel.
It's not going to happen until next year.
Hey Steve, before you go, I want to pivot the conversation one second just because I know you're a major benefactor to the University of Pennsylvania.
I wouldn't say major, but a benefactor.
You are a significant benefactor to the University of Pennsylvania and I believe you've gotten involved in this sort of larger debate about what's happening in universities right now.
Yes.
What's going on?
Well, I mean, your interview with Mark Rowan woke me up a bit, and my history with the University of Pennsylvania is pretty deep.
I went there, my wife went there, we met there.
My sister went there, my brother-in-law went there, and they met there.
So, a lot of members of my family have been there.
I've gone back to the university many times to speak.
After, a couple of days after the interview, I called my contact person at the university and I said, you know, we have a small scholarship that we created about a dozen years ago and I called my contact and I said I wanted our names removed from it immediately.
I do not want my family's name associated with the University of Pennsylvania, ever.
What was the response?
She's very nice, you know, she understood, and she has gotten a lot of calls like that, and she said she would take care of it.
Is there anything they could do to change her mind?
Yeah, you could fire the president and the chairman of the board of trustees immediately.
I believe they're having a board meeting today.
Well, I doubt they're gonna do anything, but... So, I hope you can see just the confluence of events, very radical, extreme events over the last month in the United States in the name of this foreign war.
Just today, Brandeis University decredentialed or banned a student group, Students for Justice for Palestine, just said you're not allowed to exist anymore.
They were going to have a vigil for Palestinian victims.
That's off.
They're not allowed to meet.
They're not allowed to exist as a group.
They can't get any more funding.
There's been this constant drumbeat of attempts to restrict speech, to punish speech, to limit speech, to narrow speech.
Because of how many influential people in the United States have a significant affinity for Israel and who therefore seek to outlaw, to banish, to render punishable any views other than steadfast support for Israel.
And that is something that, no matter your views on Israel, should be deeply concerning.
As our last segment, there has been polling data that is causing a great deal of anxiety among Democratic Party stalwarts and in the Biden White House, and for very good reason.
For those of you who didn't see it here is one of the latest polls that Is from the New York Times that the headline tells a big part of the story.
There you see it.
Trump leads in five critical states as voters blast Biden.
Time Siena poll finds voters in battleground states said they trusted Donald J. Trump over President Biden on the economy, foreign policy and immigration.
As Mr. Biden's multiracial base shows signs of fraying.
Here are the six swing states, all of which Biden was declared the winner of in 2020.
And here you see Trump with a significant lead.
He has a 10 point lead or 9 point.
Actually, it's a 11 point lead in Nevada, a 6 point lead in Georgia, a 5 point lead in Arizona, a 4 point lead in Pennsylvania, and a 5 point lead in Michigan.
All states that Biden was declared the winner of in 2020.
Only in Wisconsin is Biden leading and he's leading there only by two points.
But what is even more disconcerting for Democrats and confusing to the media is the reason why that's happening.
Quote, across the six battlegrounds, all of which Mr. Biden carried in 2020, the president trails by an average of 48 to 44 percent.
Discontent pulsates through the poll with the majority of voters saying Mr. Biden's policies have personally hurt them.
The survey also reveals the extent to which the multi-racial and multi-generational coalition that elected Mr. Biden is fraying.
Demographic groups that backed Mr. Biden by landslide margins in 2020 are now far more closely contested as two-thirds of the electorate sees the country moving in the wrong direction.
Voters under 30 favor Mr. Biden by only a single percentage point.
His lead among Hispanic voters is down to single digits and his advantage in urban areas is half of Mr. Trump's edge in rural regions.
Black voters long a bulwark for Democrats and for Mr. Biden are now registering 22% support in these states for Mr. Trump.
A level unseen in presidential politics for a Republican in modern times.
22% of black voters, one out of every five, saying they would vote for Trump over Biden in these states.
Add it all together and Mr. Trump leads by 10 points in Nevada.
We just went through those numbers.
And then here you have an article today specifically about the fact that black and Latino voters are abandoning Trump.
As black voters drift to Trump, Biden's allies say they have work to do.
And there's an article about how these demographic groups on which the Democratic Party has long relied to win elections simply don't trust Democrats and don't like Joe Biden.
Now, I think there's a couple of notes here to observe.
One is that it is remarkable.
That Donald Trump even has a chance to win, let alone is leading in the key states by this margin, given that he is now indicted on felony charges in four different jurisdictions, two federal, two state.
Ten years ago, it would be unthinkable for a American politician to even have the possibility of an indictment to get near high office.
And yet now Trump is indicted in four different jurisdictions on four different felony charges.
And voters don't care.
In fact, his lead has increased since he's been indicted.
And I think the only conclusion you can reach is that voters regard our leading institutions of law enforcement and the Justice Department and the corporate media that constantly pushes the narrative that Trump is guilty.
They regard those institutions as fundamentally corrupt.
They don't trust them any longer.
They don't listen.
These media outlets have been telling people that Trump is corrupt, that he's a criminal, that he did an insurrection.
And they don't care.
They're not listening to that.
They don't trust these institutions.
The media can't affect what they think any longer.
And then the second thing to note is that think how often over the last eight years or seven years since Trump descended down that elevator and gave that first speech about immigration, how often media outlets have said that Donald Trump is a white nationalist, that he's a racist, That he hates black people, he wants to put Latinos into cages, he wants to put minority groups into concentration camps, that he's a fascist, that he wants to install white nationalist dictatorship.
And here you have a huge number of Latino and black voters.
42% of Latinos, 22% of black voters saying they intend to vote for the person these media outlets have repeatedly told them is a white nationalist and hates them because he's racist.
Think how much contempt they have to have for these media corporations, how little trust they have to have in them for them to tune that out and reject that and decide they're going to vote for the Republican candidate over the Democratic Party candidate, given the history of voting patterns of these groups.
And these institutions, the Justice Department, the law enforcement agencies, and the FBI, prosecutors, and the corporate media have earned that distrust.
They've earned that hatred.
They deserve that.
And they're starting to realize just how much of a gap there is.
Imagine, they go into work, they talk to each other every day about how Donald Trump is such a laughable, ridiculous, preposterous, corrupt fascist.
And then they read the New York Times and they see what the American people are thinking.
And they have to come to the recognition that what they say doesn't matter.
Now, they'll blame Americans for being stupid, for being low information.
For being so susceptible to people who are feeding them disinformation, they'll blame the voters themselves, which they always do.
But deep down, they have to know that they are losing control over the narrative.
That's why they have turned more and more to censorship, because they're trying to silence and eliminate the only voices that are dissident, that critique them, that offer an alternative way of thinking.
And the reason is because of this.
They saw it in 2016 that if they allow too much free speech on the internet, they cannot control the outcome.
And they're seeing that again now that no matter how much they crack down, they're held in such contempt and distrust that if anything, they produce the opposite of the outcome they're trying to engender.
And no matter your preference for party or for candidate, if Corporate media and our leading institutions of authority have completely and irrevocably lost the faith and trust of most Americans.
Given what they are, that is something that ought to be celebrated.
So that concludes our show for this evening.
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