What Is Free Dumb Of Speech With TLAV Corbett Slow News Day And More
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Hey everybody, Jason Burmes here and I've got a great independent media alliance panel for you.
It features myself, James Corbett of the Corbett Report, Ryan Christian of The Last American Vagabond, Steve from Sloan News Day, Charlie from Macro Aggressions, and so many more.
The topic is freedom of speech.
You're not going to want to miss it.
Buckle up and get ready to make sense of the madness.
Welcome back to the Independent Media Alliance.
We're here to have a very in-depth conversation about the nuance of free speech today, something that I'm very passionate about.
Obviously, I think everyone here, very passionate about.
But even within this group, I mean, I don't know for sure, but I argue there's probably variances on where we think that should be.
And that's the whole point of the conversation today.
Obviously, this has become very, very relevant for a lot of different topics we could discuss throughout this conversation.
For me, it's sort of like going back to the fire in a theater point and or even today with the idea of political violence being what I kind of argue is the new hate speech.
You know, violence is a thing, you know, speech, but it's the overlay to it and where that line is drawn.
You know, somebody going, making a joke about somebody doing something bad or somebody saying that person should be hurt.
And, you know, the words are violence overlap and all of that.
So that's the main point of today.
So let's get into it in general.
And why don't we just start off?
Well, I know we'd in the past, we wanted to briefly introduce each other.
You know, if you guys want to do that today, that's okay with me.
If you guys want to say anything real quick, go ahead and go around.
Sure, I'm not shy.
I'll jump in.
Jason Burmes, independent journalist, free thinker, and I'll throw it to Bros.
Hey, everybody.
Derek Brose here with the Conscious Resistance Network.
Happy to be here for another IMA panel.
James Corbett, CorbettReport.com.
And I'll throw it to Charlie.
ActivistPost.com, macroaggressions.io.
I'm Les Claypool, and I play bass.
Happy 62nd birthday, Les.
A little late.
Good job.
Appreciate it.
Now, I actually don't know where the banner for our names are.
I'll tell you point that to me later and I'll try to include that.
But let's go ahead and start with, you know, what I think is kind of the best starting point, which is the fire in a theater.
And I'll kind of kick that off and where I think the, you know, for me, let me put it this way.
I think this started with something that I already find to be a challenge on what the constitutional right is.
The idea that it became this kind of line that was drawn, well, where, which opened the door, the shoe in the door of the conversation of that, that allowance, you know, that words can be a problem in this circumstance, but then that becomes a nuance, right?
And so I argue that no matter yelling, almost anything we should get into, but just saying fire in a theater could be an accident, could be deliberate.
Maybe you actually thought it, you know, either way, that other people are responsible for their actions.
So let's get into that main point where we and what we think about that and the overlaps to it.
Anybody want to jump in?
Go ahead.
I'll jump in because I hate the fire in a crowded theater line so much.
I have hated it since I first heard it when I was about 14.
It is the most annoying thing I've ever heard on the internet.
On the internet, it is the most annoying thing because think about what that means.
It doesn't make any sense.
It just throws open deliberate vagueness for anything to be classified as potentially offensive or potentially dangerous.
There is no legal definition of fire.
There is no legal definition of crowded.
There is no legal definition of theater.
What does it mean?
It doesn't mean anything.
And it will be used a lot and it is used a lot.
They can just say Twitter is the public theater and shouting fire is saying vaccines are dangerous and that kind of thing.
It is deliberately vague to give people a tool they can use whenever they want to use it.
And I hate it.
So I want to kind of throw in where my line is.
Okay.
And I'm a free speech absolutist.
Now, I think the question is, where does speech become either criminal, in other words, prosecutable, or you have the right to take physical action against that speech?
And my argument is this, unless somebody is directly threatening your life or others around you, okay, with force right there.
You don't have the right to take force against them.
I would say that the one exception, if that person is an authority figure who is directing others to take force against you.
In other words, the general that is saying you need to go raid that or take that from that person and it is unjust.
Otherwise, I'm sorry, words are not violence.
You can say the most despicable thing about another person, about another entity.
You can call for an organization to be burnt to the ground.
You know, you can literally say, I want this person dead.
And if you are not directing people to do so, that may be abhorrent behavior.
Okay.
But to me, that does not cross the line.
And quite frankly, has never really legally crossed the line.
They have constantly tried to take this idea of speech, especially in a public forum, to incite violence and the causation so that they can criminalize that later.
I think that is extremely dangerous.
And obviously, what Kit just said about, you know, there is no legal definition of what a theater is and can that be a public square has constantly been exploited in the rhetoric, not just in the last, you know, 10 to 15 years of cancel culture, but I would argue, you know, you go back to the war of terror post 9-11 times and you had the same thing.
I'll give just one really quick example.
Michael Reagan, who was Ronald Reagan's son, had a right-wing neocon talk show.
I actually ended up having him on twice on this program for his work with veterans, I think on Memorial Day each year.
He called for me and Corey and Dylan, the three Loose Change filmmakers, to be shot in front of a firing squad.
That's his right.
He had nobody that was going to come and shoot us.
He had no way to get us to be arrested or into a trial.
We hadn't broken any laws.
If he wants to be an ignorant jackass and expose himself, I'm all for it.
I don't like people hiding their speech.
I don't like the term dog whistle or innuendo.
Say what you feel.
That's what we're supposed to do.
Let's get a real bend on who these people are and combat that type of speech with better speech.
And that will end my intro rant.
Well, no, I mean, that's the whole point is that you combat speech you don't like with more speech and better speech.
You don't do it with a billy club or a bullet or any of that nonsense.
In the last five, maybe seven years, the term stochastic terrorism has been floated over and over and over.
And it's one of the most nonsensical phrases that has been injected into the Western lexicon in recent memory.
If you're a violent person, you're going to do violent things.
If you're a peaceful person, you're going to do peaceful things.
Very rarely is speech going to be the thing that incites you to violent action.
In most cases, it's violence being visited upon you first.
And most people are reactionary.
Most people don't wake up in the morning and go, I'm going to say the most insane, hateful crap I can come up with in order to provoke a reaction from people.
There are bullies, sure, but 99 times out of 100, violence on the part of any individual is in reaction to what's been done.
So to claim, especially from the perspective of the state, that there are now phrases or words that we can't use because they may be violent when in almost every case, the state itself is raining down violence upon people is like literal violence, physical violence, whether it be bombs, bullets, whatever, you know, limiting rights.
It doesn't matter.
The state is an inherent arbiter of violence and they're the people that are trying to say, oh, well, maybe your words hurt, but our bullets are fine.
Whoever wants to jump in next.
I'll jump in.
Can I go?
Okay.
Who wants to go?
I just wanted to add on to, it seems like there's a bit of a sentiment, which I totally agree with, that the speech is not really the root of the problem.
So I think with so many issues, whether it's speech or drugs or anything that people want to ban, the root of the problem is not the item in question.
It's not the speech.
It's not the drugs.
It's not the guns.
It's a much deeper, I'd say spiritual sickness, emotional sickness, and trying to cordon speech or anything else off under force, under bans or whatever else, whatever government authority is invoked.
It never really addresses the root problem.
And I think the same is true of speech.
I'd like to get everyone, if you kind of just, you know, chime in on this if you don't, unless you don't want to, we just thought we kind of like set the table.
Otherwise, I can jump in again if you guys don't want to throw in your thoughts.
Going back to the fire in a theater analogy, does everyone know where that came from?
You know, it's a good question.
I'm sure there was a lot of people.
The first use of that was a federal prosecutor by the name of Wertz in the case against Eugene Debs for having the temerity, the absolute gall to make a speech suggesting people resist the military draft in World War I.
And of course, Debs' defense is free speech.
Of course, we've got a First Amendment.
There's Congress shall make no law, right?
And so the federal prosecutor said, yes, of course, there's the First Amendment and free speech, but what about if somebody is yelling fire in a crowded theater?
That was the first ever use of that analogy.
And it was then picked up by Oliver Wendell Holmes, who argued in the Schneck case in 19, I think 1918, which was, again, prosecuting people for having the temerity to hand out flyers suggesting that they should resist the military draft in World War I.
That again, well, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater.
That's where that analogy comes from.
And I think that explains exactly what that analogy has always been about and what it has always been aimed at, which is suppressing political dissent.
And James, as always, why you're such a welcome part of this team.
And that's such an James Corbett addition to all that.
I mean, that's fantastic overlap to understand that it comes from something that was not even about the actual threat, right?
That's the real crux of that.
But I have more thoughts, but go ahead.
If anybody else wants to give their kind of overlay.
Well, just to build on James's point real quick.
Sorry, Charlie, I'll throw it to you.
This is the sort of the justification for the Espionage Act that has limited the ability for journalists to report on real things that are happening in real time ever since 1918.
Charlie, go ahead.
Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.
Yeah, a place where these words are actually going to hurt us is in the designation of domestic terrorist.
You know, if you're using it to classify somebody like that.
Now we're talking about something totally different where this level of speech in this current iteration post Patriot Act America, where Antifa is being labeled as a domestic terrorist organization.
Now, all of a sudden, somebody starts going around calling you a domestic terrorist.
That's a little bit more than just an insult.
It might be a legal designation that could get you killed.
So this is something that I think we need to take into account moving forward, that given the world that we live in, and of course, the right is enthusiastically cheerleading the Antifa stuff without having the ability to comprehend two steps ahead that it'll be turned on them eventually at some point.
But this is where the language and the words might actually be violence.
You know, how the left is always going on about words or violence and things like that.
Well, hey, well, if you get labeled a domestic terrorist operating in the homeland on the battlefield, that's more than just an insult.
That might get you blackbagged.
Well, I would just say this, though, Charlie.
You know, I refer to a lot of bad people as gangsters, which they are.
I called, you know, Joe Biden Joey B for years before he had dementia.
And you could argue that if I'm calling them a gangster, then you could invoke a RICO case against them.
Or, you know, in the laws of the streets, he could be taken out by another quote unquote gangster.
I would be just very careful about what regular citizens are trying to designate.
Now, again, if you're a government official or you're somebody in power in that arena of law enforcement and that can actually be taken against you, okay.
But let me say this.
I also think that you have the right in the society, even though it is overly used, to sue that person for defamation.
If there's somebody in that public arena and that gains traction, that you are in fact a quote unquote domestic terrorist, I would hope that you could get them on libel, you know, the same way that they got, you know, libel case for that 16-year-old kid in the MAGA hat who had a drum beat against him.
And all of a sudden, everybody was calling that kid a white supremacist, right?
So listen, I hate the language.
I hate the designate.
I think it's totally and completely insane that you would label any group a domestic terrorist organization, especially one as quote unquote loosely affiliated as Antifa is.
You know, I was covering the anti-fascists back in 2008, 2009 at the G20 when it was the black block.
And, you know, I don't, back then, I didn't like people wearing masks.
I still don't.
It was one of the things that I thought was abhorrent in the whole COVID-19 44 nightmare.
I, again, feel like if you believe in your speech, you believe in your cause, let it show.
Get out there.
At the same time, you have the right to wear that mask.
And until it crosses into the level of criminal behavior, trespass, destruction of property, et cetera, then it's not a crime.
And by the way, those crimes are not terrorism, right?
We have laws on the books.
You know, I'm not.
When I was in D.C. a few weeks ago to host that event, I went over to the George Washington Masonic Memorial because it had been somewhere that was really interesting to me.
I'd been in the past.
They had a big thing for Albert Pike in the corner.
And I mentioned to the guy, I said, Hey, what do you think about the Pike statue that was ripped down and Trump talking about it going back up?
Now, I'm not for ripping down statues.
I'm not for Albert Pike.
At the same time, I don't think that those people that did that should be charged with terrorism.
If you are going to charge them with something, destruction of property, et cetera, let's not make things bigger than they are.
And that is another thing in this meme-ified culture that we are constantly there.
It's not just dunking on people, it's how big and fantastical can you make everything?
How can you exaggerate it?
And when you do that, you end up exploiting the entire general populace under authoritarianism, under collectivism.
And that's extremely dangerous, in my opinion.
That's such a good point, Jason.
And Ryan and I have talked about this plenty when he comes in on Tuesday.
There's almost always, if not always, existing laws on the books that address whatever issue is being thrown into the media sphere at any given point.
So, if the laws already exist and you're now creating a new statute, you're now creating an additional portion to it.
What you're doing effectively is sending a message to everybody else on the planet going, We have new ways to come after you because the ways that we traditionally used don't fit the narrative or don't fit the agenda that we're trying to push forward.
Now, I'd like to give a chance to chime in on his thoughts and kind of the origin part of this.
But if we could, I'd like to focus on like the principle because we'll get mired in the examples, which I do want to get into, like all that because we all probably have 15 examples and how it's overlapping with policy.
But where we started was about the like fire in a theater and like the principle of, you know, again, like I said, the absolutist, in my opinion, being a free speech absolutist means there is literally no word or sentences you can say out loud that means that you are because you have absolute free speech can't be infringed.
So, where do you, you know, the point we started with was fire in a theater.
And if you wanted to, go ahead and chime in on maybe your thoughts on that basic premise.
And I want to throw in some more thoughts.
Yeah, I get what you're saying with all the examples.
And I think ultimately what we're dealing with here, and I know this example has been used to death, 1984, George Orwell.
I reread it this summer.
I watched the movie for the first time, but it's basically they're bringing in globally in each country the Ministry of Truth, thought police.
And so, you know, today it's Antifa.
Tomorrow it's anti-Semitism.
The next day, it's going to be the list is just going to get longer.
And so hate speech is thought crime.
And that's what they're doing.
Essentially, they're legalizing these systems: Canada, Europe, UK, Mexico, you name it.
And so I think that's really what's going on.
And, you know, when we were all kids, we didn't really have these problems, right?
You know, I was just thinking about this today.
You know, maybe people should be allowed to be racist, right?
But maybe there is that one exception of death threats.
Who wants to be dealing with death threats?
But I think ultimately what we're really dealing with here is the installation of the Ministry of Truth writ large.
Boy, you live in Mexico.
All of your neighbors are racist.
Hilariously, casually racist.
It's okay.
So, I'd like to throw in the, you know, so where I'm glad we can, it sounds like most of us have a pretty similar standpoint.
And I, you know, if you, if you feel that there is like, like even say, like, a death threat, like, you know, going beyond firing a theater, I'd like to flesh that out too.
Like, again, I argue that we should go as far back in the print, like to the principle, which is that there are no, like, and this is where I even argue a lot of Americans probably disagree.
And that's why it'd be great to have somebody on that might even want to argue that like the Constitution is outdated and we should change it, which I disagree with.
But that the argument is that if I say go kill that person, it would be the person's responsibility who acted it out.
But like Jason brought up an excellent point from that all the way down to something that's more benign.
The reality that we've how this got manipulated was the argument that the government should get involved.
Because the point is, as he points out, there's a legal process through which you can sue somebody for doing like something like that.
And it's always to the discretion of the judge.
Now, it can be obviously overturned if it's a ridiculous ruling, but judges can quite literally rule pretty much any way they want at the end of the day.
And they could argue, fire a theater.
You could argue as the theater owner, that guy said this and it destroyed my business.
You probably win that.
But the case is for the government to step in and say, you're not allowed to say that because that might do some harm.
Like that's where you know where that line I think needs to go back to.
And so again, I think it's all speech.
As absolutist or just what free speech means, I argue it should be every single possible variation of that.
But so like a death threat, for example, like we could argue under the current legal reality, which I argue would be unconstitutional, therefore null and void per Murbury versus Madison, for example, 1803.
Like that, it's if it's repugnant to the Constitution, it's null and void, whether or not it's been voted on by a bunch of unconstitutional politicians.
But like that, there's a line where a lot of Americans might say, well, you can't threaten my life.
Like you can't act out on that.
You know, I want to get into like the sue part as well.
But right on that, any more follow-up thoughts that anybody wants to add?
Well, I would just say something in there real quick.
Because I know we're not talking about too much of the current event yet.
It's mainly just the principle, but it does kind of tie into things going on with, you know, with Pam Bondi coming out speaking about hate speech.
I just wanted to mention that when she was talking about hate speech, which a bunch of people on the right, you know, thankfully actually were calling out over on Twitter on Elon's platform, she got a community note where people added some context and they linked to a Supreme Court case where the Supreme Court ruled that it is legal to justify or celebrate violence or to advocate or teach the duty, necessity, or propriety of violence, but not incitement to imminent violence, such as telling a mob with weapons to kill somebody.
So even under what's constitutionally legally allowed, some level of calls for violence is considered constitutionally protected speech.
And that, well, that's interesting because at least if I'm not very versed in the case, but the argument sounds like you're there and saying, go get them.
And they all run out and go do something.
Now, that's the line right there.
It says, so if there's a mob of people with weapons and they're about to live somebody, you say, do it, then that's the line, according to the script.
That's a perfect example because, like, so I'm going to be erring very hard on the side of the principle, but myself right now, I'm going, yeah, like you could make a legal argument that that person would be involved with that violence.
But see, this is where that line gets blurred.
And so I argue today, even with something like that, because of the way the government is abusing these things, the only way to fight it is to err on the side of the principle.
And then who committed violence would be charged for that violence.
This is why Charles Manson got put in prison, right?
He didn't do any violence himself, but according to the state, he orchestrated, encouraged, and then provoked and ordered the violence.
So that in and of itself should be viewed as a free speech case as opposed to any sort of actual physical crime, murder, anything like that.
It became a conspiracy to commit.
And that's how the court system entraps other people.
But it's a very, very fuzzy area.
I don't know if anybody has any thoughts about that in particular, but that's the thing that popped into my head immediately.
Well, that's great.
It's a remote hole we don't necessarily need to go down right now, but the Charles Madsen case was all the way down to discrediting the anti-war movement anyway.
Right, right.
But that's a really interesting overlap as well, though, right?
So conspiracy to any number of things is arguably well, that is a crime, right?
But there might be a line where that would overlap, like you're saying, to abuse that to go after somebody for speech.
But if you are planning a violent act and then people carry it out, like that's that's a very different situation.
But these are all really great examples to bring these things to mind about why we should be having this conversation.
Because right now, I mean, and don't we can go to wherever we want.
I just wanted to really get that principal point out there of all the different examples, you know, because let's get into them.
A million different ways we could overlap this with Charlie Kirk and all that's been happening and the objectively obvious hypocritical stances of people that were 30 seconds ago screaming that shall not be infringed and now are making similar cases.
Well, there's one thing I don't think that we've really covered when we're talking about death threats, and that's domestic abuse, right?
Like how many boyfriends, ex-husbands have said, I'm going to F and kill you, bitch, or this and that, and then gone and done it or went and beat that person.
You know, I've seen a lot of domestic violence on that level.
And I'm just going to say that the legal system is such where you could probably get arrested if the person takes the phone call or has it on videotape and it's a direct death threat, direct threat of physical violence, but otherwise it's extremely difficult.
And I obviously it should be extremely difficult if you can't prove that.
But at the same time, again, there are laws on the books when you make a direct death threat or physical threat against somebody, you know, that is realistic.
And I don't think that that is overhyped.
I think that we should have laws like that on the books, especially because we see it happen every day in our society and culture.
And, you know, when we are talking about abusive relationships, you know, oftentimes it's very difficult for the female to sever those ties fully.
So again, we don't make it about terrorism.
I don't necessarily think that that is a First Amendment issue.
I don't think that you can repeatedly tell somebody that you're involved in that you're going to kill them without any type of repercussion.
But again, you put that in a context where you can prove it in a court of law and they will be prosecuted and more than likely successfully so and do criminal time.
You know, again, we have to have these types of criminal deterrence.
So, you know, again, when it's a direct person that you're involved in, you're calling for their death, I think it's different than if you're, you know, a psycho on the internet with some kind of ideology saying this person has to die or that person has to die or I hope Trump's next, et cetera, et cetera.
As much as I don't like hearing those things, I think that that's a different thing from a direct threat to somebody that you know.
And so who gets to decide?
You know, like logic, like just logically, I mean, agree with you.
Like, I don't, I'm legally arguing we shouldn't be doing that, but I agree with you in the logical sense because that seems like somebody threatening somebody.
But what if they're joking?
What if they, you know, how do you prove intent in that regard if you just basically have them saying that?
That's my, and the government will inevitably and already is using those kind of nuances to drive in more restriction.
So with that reality, again, my argument is that we err on the principle.
And if he breaks the law, you charge him, event your evidence.
If not, then you don't charge him because there was no crime.
The moment we create the crime for words is where we lose our way.
That's that's kind of my stance today.
Well, I mean, we could bring up plenty of examples, right?
I mean, we, one of the, some of the very obvious ones are like with like, you know, we can even just start with the, Oh, you know what?
Let's do this one quick since we chime in about the Antifa thing that Charlie mentioned earlier.
Because I think that this is something that I think we're all probably paying attention to and have been warning people for years about the use of domestic extremism and domestic terrorist.
And I know Jason was giving the example of, you know, calling somebody a gangster, but I think that, well, especially now with that actually being a term, now you could be accused of being an MS-13 and you might actually get taken away, right?
So it is almost rising to that level of being called the domestic terrorist.
But I've been warning people for years that labeling your political enemies domestic extremists, domestic terrorists, which has been happening the entire time Trump has been around since Antifa and alt-right clashing in the street, that it's just, it's getting us exactly to where we are right now, where, you know, just the last week, Trump designates Antifa's terrorist domestic terrorist organization, which by the way, I know that we have a few people who might or have identified in the past as anarchists or volunteerists on the panel here.
And I just wanted to read the first sentence of that executive order.
It says, Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the U.S. government.
I'm sure some here or in the audience have done that.
The overthrow of U.S. government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law.
Again, it's not hard to see how that can be twisted to fit probably many of the things that some of us here on this panel have said in the past.
And I think that's really what I worry about.
Obviously, the Antifa thing itself is problematic and labeling people domestic terrorists, but it's that combined with the free speech conversation we're having here.
And then how words like that are like anarchist, et cetera, are being thrown around that really does, I think, worry me.
Not that it's anything unexpected, but I do think we are now entering that territory where it's not just the left using hate speech and stuff like that, but now the right has kind of found their angle of how in the post-Charlie Kirk assassination, they want to use that to target people.
And I just think that is, it's taken us all the places we've known for years it was going and it's not going to end up good if people really embrace this.
So I just want to kind of implore anybody out there in the audience or in our collective audiences to do what you can in your virtual spaces and in your real world human spaces to discourage that as much as possible when you meet people who are talking like that, really try to bring it back to a sense of normalcy and help people understand why labels like that.
And then of course, accepting and embolding this idea of hate speech, which I think many of us here probably have been the kind of people, I know I have been for years saying that hate speech, hate crimes, these aren't even really a thing.
Like that it was a problematic from the beginning.
You already have, you know, if somebody commits a crime, they want to make a special case that says, well, if it was because they were gay or if because it was a racial thing, then that should be, you know, aggravated, extra charge, extra time, instead of just being an assault and a murder.
So that was already kind of problematic from the beginning of creating these special categories.
And the same thing goes with creating a special category of speech.
You know, it's not just free speech, it's hate speech now because it's, again, this is specific group or it's, you know, all the different ways they twist it.
So yeah, I just want to encourage everybody out there who's seeing what's happening to not participate, not buy into that, not feed into it, but instead try to pull away from it as much as possible.
And my point was that political violence is the same thing.
I mean, in principle, it's the same thing, right?
Violence is something.
You can prove the violence, but political violence, even like you could prove, in some cases, you could probably prove that somebody hated somebody and that's why they acted.
Our point is that's still just speech, right?
Violence is the same idea.
And I think it's just the new, it's like the rights version of hate speech, even though both is happening, you know, and so I'm glad you bring that up because clearly this is about hypocrisy.
And there are so many examples right now of people being driven and weirdly enough, almost coming out in the conversation of like, yes, we're being hypocritical, but it's because they deserve it and they started it.
Like that's the level of the conversation.
I think Gavin McInnes was one that made that case very clearly and just argued that that's, you know, they're the real terrorist.
That's why this is acceptable.
When they do it, they're lying about us.
Like, how do you argue something like that?
Well, here's the thing.
Antifa, according to all available paperwork and propaganda, is an idea in the same way that the global war on terror was us fighting an idea, not an actual group of people.
When Derek highlighted Black Block, yes, that's a specific group of people who all dress in the same uniform and all show up with a specific intent to do damage or violence or something.
Five years ago, five and a half years ago, Jason Burmes and I were standing in Washington, D.C., looking at a group of people who on one side was Black Block and people who would probably identify as Antifa.
And then on the other side of the square, it was Proud Boys and people who would probably identify with people on the right.
And me and Burmes are standing in the exact middle of this going, which way should we turn?
Because it was sort of a cordoned off like alleyway type of thing.
And we knew that we were going to get flack whichever way we moved, you know, but all of those people had a hundred percent right to be there.
All of those people had a hundred percent right to air their grievances.
Where it becomes legal, in my mind, is when somebody goes and runs and throws a fist or shoots or does whatever that then becomes actual violence.
But two disparate groups of people shouting mean things at each other across a courtyard is fine as far as I'm concerned.
But this does kind of bring up a larger problem because now the state is attacking ideas that could or could not be manifest within an individual.
And you can't, we've proven you can't fight a war against an idea.
You have to have a physical embodiment of that idea.
And that is now going to be disseminated throughout the populace.
And it seems kind of the crux that that can lead to violence.
Right.
Go ahead.
Well, I would just say, going back to the hypocrisy, I think that's very much the point of what we're going through right now, because we're not actually seeing anything new.
These are not new talking points.
Pam Bondi says hate speech isn't free speech as if she just had that idea, but she didn't.
That's years and years old.
It's, you know, it's not hate speech of incites by, it's not free speech of incites violence.
We're talking about years old things.
Even domestic terrorism was first in like invoked years ago and was freshly invoked just a couple of years ago by Joe Biden about January 6th and then even about anti-vaxes because again, they weaponized the vagueness to be like, well, if killing four people in a building is terrorism, it isn't killing 500,000 children because they didn't get their vaccines, even more terrorism.
What this, what the last spatial offense has been about has been corralling the pro-free speech right back into the anti-free speech camp.
So now everybody's in there no matter what.
Maybe I'll just add that I think the technosphere, right?
You know, we always had issues before the internet world with free speech and governments, but I feel like all of this is heightened because of the internet, because so many people can now put their thoughts online and have effect, you know, weaponize their thoughts.
You know, I don't know if we, you guys mentioned the recent example of George Galloway coming back from Russia and being held up for about five, six hours as a, you know, thought criminal.
So I think it's important to highlight the technosphere aspect and the difference between policing thought, which is what they're trying to do, and then using that example of the death threat.
Like if I get a serious death threat, you know, I don't really take many death threats, fortunately, but if there's something serious where I'm in Mexico and it's like a cartel member sending me a message or something, then I will go to the police to deal with that act.
And it's not so much about the authorities dealing with that, you know, speech online.
You know, traditionally we'll go to the authority to deal with the potential violent act going around the internet.
So anyways, yeah.
Well, Hervoy, I'm glad you brought up the technosphere side of this because this is potentially a point of discord that may exist amongst us.
I don't, for one thing, I don't call myself a free speech absolutist only because I think that might convey to people a misapprehension.
For example, if I certainly don't think anyone has the right to come into my house and start scribbling on my walls, I don't think anyone has the right to come into my website and start scribbling on my website walls, my comment section or whatever.
No, there is no free speech there.
It is my, I allow what speech I allow and I disallow what speech I disallow and no one can stop me from that.
Now, of course, if you put free speech absolutism in the context of government, government can make no law against this or that.
Yes, of course, I 100% agree with you.
But private entities on private property can absolutely make whatever speech curtailment they desire.
And people entering into that private property will either agree to abide by that or agree to get kicked out if they don't abide by that.
Well, can I ask something though, Jason?
A trust.
Well, can I just point because this is where the disagreement comes.
This is where people start saying, but the government already is in bed with Twitter, so, or X or whatever it's called this week.
So therefore, it's not private property.
Therefore, the government can tell us what can and cannot be on Twitter, right?
And that is where I fundamentally disagree.
Well, that's what I think.
Like, where is the line drawn when you're talking?
Because I totally agree with you, right?
Like, if I, if I'm even on my, my YouTube channel or on my X account and says something is just so bigoted or so crazy, I'll take it off.
Or if someone's just spamming like pro-Trump or, you know, it's the copy-paste stuff, I just get rid of it.
It doesn't even necessarily have to be bad.
At the same time, does an entity like Google that has been, I mean, first of all, brought up through the intelligence apparatus, not only through Incutel, but NASA and DARPA, the National Library Initiative that has all sorts of Defense Department contracts, that has AI contracts, that is in bed with them on quantum computing.
Does that entity, because it's on the stock market, classify as a private company that can do what it wants, when in reality, it is literally financially and when you're talking about especially AI, authoritatively a government organization.
I mean, the CAI only.
The question is specifically, can Google or Alphabet or X decide what goes or does not go on their platform, even if they are government sponsored or whatever?
It is.
Yes.
I freaking love that.
I'm an absolutist on that point.
They can decide what goes on their platform, even if they are government entities, because we have the right to not go on their platforms.
That is our choice.
They are private entities.
We do not have to be giving our information and everything over to Google to allow.
And then, oh, well, they're trying to censor my channel.
So the only possible solution is to create a government platform that's going to decide and arbitrate and say, no, YouTube, you can't ban James Corbett, or you can ban this person, or you can't ban this person.
And there's going to be some sort of government adjudication of each person getting banned or not.
No, okay, but Corbett, here's the thing: what we're ultimately talking about is a third amendment issue, okay?
Because Google and all of these other massive tech platforms aren't private entities, they're public private entities, and they all have seed funding from the state.
And the third amendment says you have the right to not be forced to quarter the government within your home.
Yet, everybody with one of these is quartering the government within their home.
This is a fundamental issue that I think people really could rally around because the government, the state, their soldiers, their minions, everybody has whatever device you're on, that entity in your home.
You're not, maybe you're volunteering to do it in terms of purchasing it, but you don't know that as the consumer.
So, we're all we all have forced sequestration of the state within our confines.
I find that traditional argument would be a lot of fun.
It has everything to do with freedom search and seizure.
Um, however, I see what you're saying, and I don't disagree with that necessarily, but I'm Japan, I'm in Japan, I'm Canadian.
So, so let me ask that applied question.
I think this is a really interesting point because I mean, that's a little bit of a stretch, but there's some logic there.
But I think it's like I kind of have, I kind of actually take issue with the idea of conflating the idea of that digital space with our home.
It's more of like the almost feel like the government's argument, but I get where you're going with that.
Like, it's a router, no, no, you know, with the motor.
No, I get it.
I get it.
It's a very, it's an interesting point.
But I think, you know, it's like this is another really good dividing point, like James is saying, because look, you could even ask this of James.
Like, so if you could literally prove the government was controlling the actions of that platform, I think you'd probably argue that that would make the case for that it was government censorship.
But it's a very fair point to make.
And I've always made that argument about like, you know, what the principle of government censorship versus just people, you know, deleting comments off their platform, for example.
It doesn't, it's not a pretty good thing.
This isn't hypothetical because YouTube just came out just in the past week or whatever it was and admitted, yeah, the government forced us to de or was pressuring us to deactivate all these accounts because of COVID, right?
So let me ask you this.
I've got another like nuanced question.
So that came out, and I decided, you know, I was going to tag at Team YouTube on X and say, remonetize my channel.
This is insane.
They've labeled me now for six years in one sentence as harmful content.
And that is content that is controversial and therefore harmful to viewers.
I think everybody here is in that same boat.
Okay, but hear me out here.
I pointed out how they are government sponsored and a government entity.
They are also government protected from me suing their ass for defamation through 203.
So what is my recourse?
This is an exactly.
That's the question though, Jason.
What is the solution?
So what are you actively proposing should be done here?
Should the government come in and now tell the government should protect them.
So in other words, I should have the same right to sue them as anybody else.
But me going in, I'm not only going against a megalithic corporation, I'm literally going against the national security apparatus that we know has been nothing but honest and gracious to us in the last, you know, several decades, if not post-World War II, James.
So I think that we're in this conundrum where, you know, You can kind of scoff a little bit about what he said, but these magical devices are in everybody's home and half of them are directly associated with that organization, Google, Alphabet, YouTube, call it whatever you want.
It's the same thing.
And now you not only have these, but these are embedded with our children, not just through this, through the education system.
Every single one of them has a Chromebook.
In fact, that's so integrated that Chrome and Android have now announced that they are merging.
Now, that infiltrates, I would say, 90 plus percent of the youth in this country.
I'd say there's probably 10% of schools and homeschoolers that maybe aren't using those devices.
And then I don't have a voice as an adult on an equal playing field and I can't challenge that.
I don't know that, and by the way, I'm not advocating for a government solution.
I'm advocating government take away the protection so at least I can get in the arena.
And I don't think that we can get better.
You're referring to 230 specifically, or is there some other pretty good?
You know, and I've heard people make the argument against repealing 230.
I would say, you know, it should not get any type of special protection, just like the pharmaceutical companies should not be having these, et cetera, et cetera.
Just like if they want to say, and they have ruled on this many times, that corporations are people, right?
I can sue people.
So then I anything that you want to sell on the stock market.
Specifically, what lawsuit would you like to bring against Alphabet?
I would defamation.
I have harmful.
Yes, I defamation.
You have blanketed me as harmful content.
You have to prove that I have literally produced harm to.
I have produced harm to nobody.
Words are not violence, James.
Like, that's the idea.
Everything that I have never, not only have I never called for violence, everything I have presented, I've either backed up with evidence, I have said it's speculation.
And when I am wrong, which is often, I say, I got it wrong.
I didn't think they were going to put the dementia patient in as the president.
I got it wrong.
I thought they were going to put Trump in prison.
I didn't think they were going to try to shoot him.
I think if you are an honest broker, you should have the same abilities, especially when these people are not being honest brokers.
And I know we're getting into the weeds of free speech, but unfortunately.
These things are important here because specifically, it always comes down to the brass tax: okay, so what specifically should happen here?
And I'm, you know, I'm not American.
I'm not in America.
So you have tried to sue YouTube for defamation, but you were rejected by the courts.
I don't know that you can bring that lawsuit.
I've talked to, for instance, not that I'm a rich man, but Renz, me and Tom have talked now for several years.
I met him early on in the Reawaken America campaign.
This is really before he even opened up to a lot of the things about the hate and lies shots, DARPA, et cetera.
And, you know, I went over with him.
I go, you know, is there a case?
Is there a way to bring this case?
And he goes, you know, there might be a way to bring the case, but you're talking about literally millions of dollars in fees and a team to go up against Google and somebody willing to risk their career and possibly even, you know, them passing the bar and being a lawyer.
Like, I don't like Sidney Powell.
I'm not like, I was never out like, hey, the Kraken is coming.
And, you know, she's the best.
She lost her license to, you know, pursue law.
You know, I look at somebody like Bill Barr.
Is he ever going to lose his license to pursue law?
I don't think so.
And has he been an honest broker?
I don't know if you guys have seen it yet.
But for instance, the oversight committee did ask him about the first Epstein suicide.
They said, you know, Epstein went to prison guards and multiple officials and said he was attacked.
Were you aware of this?
And again, not being reported on the media, he said, yes, I am aware of those reports, but I don't think they were true because of his mindset at the time.
I mean, let me bring in another addition to the YouTube censorship part.
Like, so it's interesting because yours, you overlap with like that you're harmful.
That's an interesting, that's a good way to look at that.
But so let's take like mine, or it needs the same situation.
It was specifically around myocarditis being possible through the shots, which everyone knows is a provable case today.
Not that I was saying every time, but you can prove that's possible.
And we got censored for that.
And still to this day, because of all this coming around, I petitioned them like everyone did.
And they immediately responded saying we re-looked at it.
No, you can't come back medical misinformation.
And so there's a very different case there, right?
So to Corbett's point, you know, it's a very, I honestly don't know exactly what I think should happen.
One thing I think you can prove is that the government's involved, right?
So that makes it government censorship.
Now, the company part of it being a private company, I think that kind of that doesn't apply if we know government's doing it.
But what am I demanding?
Like you said, that the government should then allow it back.
I mean, it's kind of a like, I think the point is that new platforms that we should lean into, we should fight to not allow that overlap.
But the dealing point should be the government being involved in any case.
I don't think suing a company, whether or not the government's involved, is going to be free.
I think our justice system, our legal system is wildly broken for people that don't have a lot of money.
So it's a whole different conversation.
But so that changes a little bit, right?
So I just, I mean, what do you think, James?
What would be your solution as a U.S. citizen in that situation?
Or, you know, what you think would make the most of it?
Well, I don't know if I can imagine myself as an American, but I am a Canadian in Japan who had my channel taken down for years because they said, whatever, oh, this is, you know, unallowable content.
And then after a few years, they said, hey, guess what?
We were wrong.
Oops.
Sorry.
Here's your channel back.
Okay.
Yay.
Wonderful.
Yeah.
So what's my solution to that?
It is certainly not to beg the U.S. government to be some sort of adjudicator in this or something.
No, obviously government action interaction with these platforms is the problem itself.
So the only solution is to get government out of these platforms.
I don't have much of an ability to do that on my side by myself anyway.
But are we moving?
Are we not moving in the opposite direction, especially with this TikTi-tock hype?
Right.
To me, socially, we're starting to, on a grand level, it doesn't matter what side you're on, just accept this techno-fascism.
And that wraps up part one of this Independent Media Alliance panel.
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