I'm being told this by the people who claim to be on my side.
I'm told he's anti-Semitic.
I'm told he aligns himself with Islam.
I'm told he's off limits.
He's evil.
I'm told the same thing about Candace Owens and Megan Kelly and Alex Jones and Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump and Dave Chappelle.
And you want me to keep going?
I can't keep track of everybody.
I'm not supposed to.
Don't listen to him.
He's evil.
If somebody says 100 things and let's say two of them, five of them, 10 of those 100 are crazy or evil, whatever evil, whatever this evil is, does that destroy the 90% of that which makes sense?
Are ideas fungible?
Are they articulably different?
Can they be severed?
You know, the list keeps growing, and the pattern is impossible to ignore.
And I'm wondering, well, who are these people who are telling me to do this?
Why must I ignore?
Why must I ignore Tucker Carlson?
Tell me why he's wrong, but don't tell me he's wrong because he's pro-Islam.
The same people that I know who say this have no problem with Saudi Arabia, but that's not Islam, I guess.
I don't know.
I'm not listening to these people.
So don't think I am.
And you shouldn't either.
On any side.
On any side.
At some point, you have to ask yourself a very basic question.
Who exactly am I allowed to listen to anymore if these people have their way?
This is not about agreeing with every word Tucker Carlson has ever said because it's not true.
And I'm not going to list all of the things that he has said where I thought, well, I think that's crazy.
Figuratively, he's not crazy.
He's spoken on a wide range of topics.
Some of them I agree with, like I told you.
Some of them I question.
Some of them I reject outright, which is normal, par for the course.
That's normal.
That's how thinking works.
Agreement is not some blood oath.
Listening is not endorsement.
And disagreement is not heresy either.
We've been through this.
I keep saying this over and over again.
Who are these people telling me that he's, who are you to tell me he's evil?
Excuse me, who appointed you?
Excuse me, who are you?
What if I disagree with you?
Well, that's different.
Well, I'm obviously on the enemy side.
Who is the enemy?
What is absolutely anathema to a free society is the idea that anyone should be told whom they are forbidden to listen to.
And that idea should absolutely chill every American regardless of ideology.
See, once you accept that principle, once you accept that, you accept that idea, you have already surrendered the argument.
And it is, I mean, it goes against every grain of my being.
You know, you have accepted the logic of censorship, even if you dress it up in moral language.
Stop this.
Stop it.
Remember, if you tell me not to listen, I'm going to go listen.
What makes this moment particularly disturbing is that the policing is coming, again, from inside the right or whatever we call our group.
We are constantly warned about the dangers of the left silencing speech.
We talk endlessly about cancel culture, and yet an entire cottage industry apparently has formed telling conservatives or Republicans or MA folks who among their own ranks must be avoided.
Do not listen to any of these people.
Do not platform that person.
Do not engage with this idea.
It is poison.
It is dangerous.
It is forbidden.
It is un-American.
I mean, think about this.
Think about how backwards that is.
Just stop for a second.
I can't believe we even, I'm talking about this all the time.
The left tells you what you can't say.
The right now tells you whom you cannot hear.
That's not strength.
That is fear.
Let me say this again.
I don't want that to go by.
The left says you can't say these things.
The right says you can't listen to these things.
Saying, listening?
What's really the difference if you think about it?
I am told today, yet again, that anti-Abieta, that Tucker Carlson is anti-Semitic.
Yet I hear Jews repeating many of the same critiques he raises, often in far stronger language.
What does that mean?
How do I figure that out?
Are they anti-Semitic too?
Or does the label only apply when the speaker is politically inconvenient?
If you are an advocate of Islam because you're Muslim or because you're whatever, does that mean you are anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic?
Does it?
Can the two coexist?
I don't want to go into the definition of what anti-Semitism is because we could spend hours on that, but you know and I know.
That if you just blanketly say terrible things about a religion, about a group of people a priori, black people, you know, that kind of thing.
Jews are, no.
Judaism, no.
Israel, Islam, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, that sounds like geopolitical stuff to me, which is okay.
Take the word, if you can replace the word Israel, let's say, with Vietnam, and if the subject comes out moot, it may not be rather incongruous, but if it sounds like, well, that's okay, then it's not an anti-Semitic statement.
If you could say, I disagree with Vietnam, I disagree with Israel, it's not anti-Semitic.
That's just opinion.
If criticism of foreign policy or questioning power structures automatically qualifies as anti-Semitism, then the term has lost all meaning, which I have been warning about since the beginning of our discussion.
Worse, it becomes a weapon.
And once that weapon is normalized, it will not stop with Tucker Carlson.
You're going to do to him what you've done to Candace Owens.
You're going to elevate him through this apotheosis.
He's going to be the forbidden fruit.
You're elevating his status.
I am also told that Tucker aligns with Islam.
That accusation is thrown around as if it's self-explanatory.
What does that even mean?
He interviews people.
He discusses geopolitical realities.
He thinks one thing.
Okay.
And I'm going to go a step further.
Let's assume that he does say something that you happen to agree with regarding Islam or Islamism or whoever it is.
Does that mean everything that he says that makes sense?
Everything that brought him to the dance, everything that he said, which got him kicked out of, remember, kicked out of Fox News.
Their number one show.
Does that mean that that doesn't matter anymore?
That that's wrong?
So what's this not only a litmus test, but it's a hierarchy of ideas?
Look, he acknowledges that Islam exists as a global force, whether we like it or not.
Okay, sound radical?
I don't think so.
Is recognizing reality now a crime?
Some people say the same thing about China.
Am I supposed to think that this kind of a sinophilia versus accepted sinophobia?
Are they communist now?
That's another one.
Communism.
The old days it was communic.
Before that, it was anarchist.
Or is this another example, by the way, of moral panic that's substituting for argument?
Aren't you getting tired of it?
I am.
I am.
The most revealing part of this entire campaign is not who is being targeted, but how.
No one is arguing point by point.
No one is saying, here is where Tucker is wrong or here is why, or here's what I'm right.
No.
Instead, the message is simple.
Do not listen.
Do not engage.
Turn away.
Shut him down.
Turn him off.
That is not persuasion.
That's conditioning.
What are you doing?
It doesn't work with us.
Of all the people in the world, you can't do this to us.
And it doesn't stop with Tucker.
No, no, no.
Nay, nay, nay.
I'm told not to listen to Candace Owens.
Why?
I guess because she asks questions that make people uncomfortable?
I don't know.
I am told not to listen to Megan Kelly.
Why?
Because she refuses to tow approved narratives.
Is that it?
I'm told not to listen to Alex Jones.
Well, of course, Alex Jones.
Why?
And by the way, Alex Jones has shown concern for Candace Owens, but he's not telling you not to listen to her.
You can disagree.
Why don't I listen to AJ?
Why?
Well, because he's loud and messy and sometimes wrong.
I'm told not to listen to Bobby Kennedy Jr.
Don't listen to him.
Why?
Well, because he challenges biomedical tyranny and orthodoxy, and he challenges institutional consensus.
And I'm told not to listen to Donald Trump.
Why?
Well, for obvious reasons.
Why?
Well, because he's a racist and a nationalist and a fascist.
Because he doesn't behave the way political society demands.
I go down the list.
People have been told from John Lennon to James Baldwin to Orson Welles to FDR to Lincoln to St. Paul.
You guys go down the list.
Charlie Chaplin.
I think Dave Chappelle is going to be the new one.
And notice this common threat.
And by the way, some of these people are just deliberately going into these areas because it will help their career.
There's a lot of folks out there, a lot of people who are in the entertainment business advising their clients go into this particular area.
Absolutely.
None of these people are being banned because they're silent.
They're banned because they're effective.
They're banned because they're saying something that apparently matters.
They're being banned or offered to being banned because what they're saying is dangerous.
Here is the part that should terrify anybody who actually values free speech, which I believe you do.
The accusation alone, the accusation alone is supposed to end the conversation.
And too often it does.
Too often it does.
Meanwhile, meanwhile, there's no problem at all attacking the United States or Trump.
None.
No problem, no problem calling our country evil or illegitimate.
No swat.
No problem mocking Christianity or especially Catholicism.
No problemo.
No problem ridiculing believers of such as backwards or dangerous.
That speech is celebrated.
It's edgy.
I heard this week on Saturday Night Live, they were joking.
This is one of the, I don't watch the show live, but I saw it on YouTube.
They were actually joking about molestation, molestation of children, presumably boys, I guess, in Catholic church or schools by virtue of this settlement.
They wrote this in.
They were laughing about that.
This is between poop jokes and things like that.
This is the mentality.
Anybody joking about that?
Do you ever talk to people who are victims of pedophilia?
Or this type of behavior?
It's not really pedophilia.
It's abuse.
You see, all that speech is protected somehow.
That speech is framed as brave and funny and edgy.
So listen, remember, you will never hear me say, don't say something.
Never.
You will never hear ban someone, don't let them talk, don't listen to them, never.
I will destroy, I will try to destroy their argument, not them.
So let me get this straight right now.
You can attack the country, you can attack faith, you can attack history, you can attack tradition and values, but questioning power or listening to the wrong voice is somehow forbidden.
That makes sense to you because that inversion tells you everything you need to know.
Everything.
Think about this.
And we're going to have, and save this, by the way, because we're going to have the same conversation later.
You see, the right is in danger of destroying itself, not because of outside pressure, but because of internal obedience training.
We are being told constantly not whom to challenge, not whom to challenge, not whom to resist on the left, but whom, get my who and whom right, whom to avoid on the right.
That's how movements collapse.
They turn inward.
They cannibalize.
They substitute purity tests for ideas.
See what I'm saying?
Donald Trump, Donald Trump, obviously, my friends, understood this instinctively and still does.
And one of the most important things he ever did was refuse to ask permission.
He spoke to people everyone else avoided.
So did Charlie Kirk, by the way.
Remember him?
Oh yeah, the Charlie Kirk guy, right, right.
Donald Trump said things everyone else was told not to say.
He broke taboos, not because he enjoyed the resultant chaos, but because he recognized that taboos are how power protects itself.
And Tucker Carlson has done much the same thing.
Again, if you don't like him, don't listen to him.
It's up to you, though.
I'm not telling you to.
It's up to you.
I'm telling you the obvious.
I'm telling you the obvious.
Tucker Carlson asks questions that are off limits.
He speaks to people deemed radioactive.
That's not extremism.
That's journalism.
In the most basic and raw of form.
Do you have a problem with that?
I don't.
You don't have to agree with everything Tucker says to recognize the value of hearing it.
In fact, in fact, disagreement is the point.
Exposure sharpens thinking.
Avoidance dulls it.
The demand that you shield yourself from ideas is not about protecting you.
No, it's about controlling you.
See how that works?
So here is my position, and it is non-negotiable.
I will listen to anyone I want, whomever I want.
I will read anyone I want.
I will decide for myself what is persuasive and what is nonsense.
I, I will do that.
The moment, the instant, the second that somebody tells me not to listen is the moment I lean in harder.
Not out of spite, but out of principle.
It's that simple.
Free speech.
Free speech is not about comfortable speech.
It's about dangerous speech, uncomfortable speech.
It's about speech that unsettles and irritates and forces you to think.
Once you allow others to curate and to control your intellectual diet, you are no longer a citizen.
You are a consumer of approved narratives.
You want that?
I don't.
If you want it, go ahead.
I don't.
If Tucker Carlson says something wrong, I want to hear it.
I want to hear it so I can challenge it.
If Candace Owens makes a claim that I question, I want to evaluate it.
I want to.
I want to be given the opportunity to evaluate it.
If Alex Jones goes too far, I want to see where and why.
I decide that.
Shielding yourself from ideas doesn't make you moral.
It makes you fragile.
And that's a huge difference.
Remember, the left wants to affect what you say.
The right apparently wants to affect and stop what you hear.
The irony that the people demanding boycotts are often the same ones, the same ones who accuse the left of authoritarianism.
Isn't that interesting?
The irony of this is breathtaking.
They rail against cancel culture while practicing, in essence, a softer version of it, a softer version of themselves.
They do not call for bans.
They call for ostracism.
They don't demand censorship.
They demand silence.
And the effect is exactly the same.
The future of the right or whatever it is that we're involved in does not lie in narrowing the circle.
It lies in expanding it.
It lies in tolerating disagreement.
And it lies, my friends, in trusting people to think.
If we can handle hearing ideas that we disagree with, then we are not strong enough to govern anything.
And that is absolutely axiomatic.
And it's true.
So no, I will not boycott Tucker Carlson.
I will not stop listening to Candace Owens.
I will not pretend Alex Jones doesn't exist.
I will not avert my eyes because someone, someone else, somewhere else is uncomfortable.
The more you tell me not to listen, the more I know I should.
This is who I am.
And I'm not changing for anybody.
And that isn't rebellion.
That is citizenship.
Plain and simple.
And any movement, any movement that forgets, that forgets what I'm saying and forgets this premise will collapse under the weight of its own fear long before its enemies ever defeat it.
And that is precisely what we are saying right now.
And I can't believe how many times I am repeatedly saying the same thing to you over and over since I was a kid.
From Lenny Bruce to wake up little Susie to music, you name it.
My whole life has been one.
Don't say this, don't say that.
And what the courts have agreed to, everything from flag burning to, remember the greatest anarchist cookbook, protected under the First Amendment, books that detail how to assassinate and poison and snipe.
Oh my God.
Right now, as we speak, listen to me.
This may come as a shock to you.
Do you know that there's this public library, maybe in your town, and they sell this book called Mein Kampf by this dude named Hitler?
You can even get it on Amazon.
Nobody's banning that.
Do you hear what I'm saying?
Nobody is banning that.
But they want to ban Tucker Carlson.
It blows my mind.
And I'm not going to be a part of it.
And something tells me neither are you.
So thank you, my friends.
Thanks for the great comments.
Thanks for the following.
Thanks for your exercising your own intellectual freedom and the like, your own sense of intellectual cognitive liberty.
Thank you for watching this.
Thank you for being a part of this.
And thank you for doing everything that needs to be done and said.
We thank you for that.
We thank you for that.
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