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May 11, 2022 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
32:56
Alan Dershowitz and Mike Adams discuss censorship, civil liberties and the cultural cancer of BIGOTR
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I'm Mike Adams and the interview you're about to see is a conversation with attorney Alan Dershowitz.
Now, I fully realize in putting this interview together that Alan and I have very different circles of influence.
And I realize there would probably be people in Alan's circle that would tell him something like, oh, how dare you talk to Mike Adams?
And there might be people in my circle that might say, oh, how dare you talk to Alan Dershowitz?
And I say, and I think Alan would agree with me, We reject such small-mindedness and such cry-bully tactics to prevent people from talking with each other, especially about important issues on which we agree.
In fact, I think that what you're about to see is a demonstration of what America desperately needs right now, which is two people coming together, finding common ground, sharing their intelligent, informed and rational thoughts on key principles that should be the pillars of informed and rational thoughts on key principles that should be the pillars And this is exactly what you're going to see, that Alan treats me with respect.
I treat him with respect.
And we have dignity and respect for each other, respecting each other's ideas, even though we may disagree on other topics such as vaccine mandates, for example.
We don't have to agree on everything in order to be able to talk to each other.
And somehow our society has forgotten this.
It's a very important principle.
But I say if we can't share what's in our hearts without reaching for each other's throats, then we've already lost the pillars of our civilization.
We must restore this ability to communicate with each other even if we don't agree on everything.
And finally, if you listen to this interview and you have a problem with it, look in the mirror.
The problem might be with you.
Not with us.
We're just two people talking about ideas that matter.
So give it a listen.
I'm Mike Adams, the founder of Brighteon.com, a platform of free speech, which includes the rights and freedoms of those with whom I may not completely agree.
That's the principle you are observing right here.
Take a look and enjoy the interview.
Welcome everyone to Brighton Conversations.
I'm Mike Adams, the founder of brighteon.com, a free speech video platform.
And today, we couldn't have a more appropriate guest, Alan Dershowitz.
He's the author of The Case Against the News Censorship.
And, of course, you've seen him all over the media.
He's a very principled person arguing in favor of civil liberties, especially...
The First Amendment and freedom of expression.
His voice, I think, is very important for our time.
So we're very honored to have him on today.
Alan, thank you so much for joining me.
It's really an honor to have you on.
Well, it's my honor and my pleasure to be on such an excellent show.
I mean, in the days where there's so much censorship going on, to have a podcast like yours out there expressing support for free speech is so important.
Well, not only do we express support for free speech, I would say that I'm probably one of the people who pushes the boundaries of free speech from time to time.
But isn't that also kind of what free speech means, is you have to define where it goes?
Of course, it's so easy to support free speech for me, but not for thee.
To become a member of the First Amendment Club, you really have to be willing to go out there and support free speech for those who you oppose, who you strongly oppose, who you're appalled by, and who you wish didn't exist.
But, you know, I defended the rights of Nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois.
I've defended the rights of communists.
I've defended the rights of candidates I've voted against.
That's the most important aspect of free speech.
Free speech for those you disagree with.
Voltaire said, you know, I will disagree with you, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.
This is what I really appreciate about you, your position and watching you in the media over these last few years, especially during the Trump administration years, that you are a principled person on civil liberties.
And I'm to the point, and I would imagine many Americans are also, they don't even care which political party someone belongs to.
We just want someone who is principled and who is consistent in applying those principles.
How did we...
I wish you were right.
I wish you were right.
I think the number of those people is shrinking.
I think in America, the number of people who are extremists and who support free speech and due process only for people on their side is actually increasing.
Maybe there'll be a backlash.
Maybe the pendulum will swing.
Maybe we'll see a return.
It's a principle of support for civil liberties, but it's not there right now.
Absolutely.
Tell us, I know you cover some of this in your book, but what is your primary answer to what big tech has done with defining so-called hate speech, or now recently...
What big tech is doing with so-called labeling things medical misinformation, even though the context continues to change, such as the lab leak theory, at one time it's debunked and then another time it's plausible and so on.
What are they doing?
How can we trust that they have a monopoly on the truth?
You can't trust them.
Let me give you an example.
I was challenged to a debate on vaccinations by Robert Kennedy, the son of a former attorney general.
I remember that.
A very significant environmental lawyer, and he's skeptical of vaccinations, and I'm much more supportive.
We had a great debate.
It was very substantive.
Thousands and thousands of people watched it, and then Google banned it.
Google said, it's okay to watch Dershowitz's side of the debate because we agree with him, but we don't want you to see Kennedy's side of the debate.
And so, of course, they took down the entire debate, and that was Google's decision to deny you and me and everybody else The right to see a thoughtful debate with both sides of the issues well presented.
Their argument was that he had presented medical misinformation, and so we challenged him.
What was the misinformation?
And why can't we just, if you think it's misinformation, correct it?
Let the marketplace of ideas expand rather than contract, and they kept it down.
And what can you do about it?
A lot of things.
Number one, you can challenge their right to have immunity under Section 230 of the Decency and Communications Act.
That was supposed to be only for platforms that didn't have any substantive censorship.
But now that they're substantively censoring, they shouldn't have the right to have that immunity and exemption.
They should be treated like you and me or The New York Times or CNN or anybody else and held responsible for what they say.
The reason the new censorship is so much more dangerous than the old censorship.
And I was deeply involved in fighting against the old censorship, fighting against censoring communists, fighting against censoring Nazis.
I was the lawyer for the Pentagon Papers case.
I was a lawyer in the Hare case.
I am curious yet.
yellow, Chicago 7, all of those cases.
They were easy.
We won those cases largely because we had the First Amendment on our side.
The danger of the new censorship is that the new censors, Facebook and Twitter and Google, have the First Amendment on their side.
They have the right to censor, and that's why it's so much more dangerous and so much more important for us to fight against them in the marketplace of ideas.
But aren't we also seeing, though, that these tech giants are serving as a kind of proxy for government censorship?
I believe one case of Dr.
Shiva ran for Senate, I believe, in Massachusetts.
Some documents have come out showing that it seems that, at least if I'm reading it correctly, that big tech was In essence, ordered by government to censor his campaign.
And something similar has come out in California.
I'm sorry I don't have the exact details, but when private industry acts as proxy for government that wishes to engage in censorship, isn't that also a violation of the First Amendment or can that be argued in court as such?
It can be, and it's a close case, and sometimes the remedy is worse than the illness.
We don't want the government in there making censorship decisions either, but you're absolutely right that the government often works hand-in-hand with corporations, with big tech, with universities.
Universities are the worst, and the Obama administration worked hand in glove with the universities to suppress dissent and civil liberties.
And, for example, to move just off the subject slightly from free speech to due process, the Obama administration said if any university dares to require proof beyond a reasonable doubt or by clearly convincing evidence of charges of sexual assault, they will lose their the Obama administration said if any university dares to require proof beyond
So it was the federal government that demanded that private universities deny students and faculty members due process of law.
The same thing is happening with freedom of speech.
We see a lot of universities being willing to curtail free speech for fear of what will happen if they allow it and how the government will come in and intrude.
So there is this dangerous combination of government, big corporations, universities, the media, and others.
Remember today, the media is on the forefront of censorship.
Simon& Schuster, employees, 300 of them said, no, no, don't allow censorship.
Any of Trump's accolades or supporters to publish books with you.
Other publishers have withdrawn books, the biography of Philip Roth.
So you get editors and agents and writers now calling for censorship.
And this is the first time in my 60 years of fighting for First Amendment and free speech rights that I see the Academy and editors and writers And people on the left demanding censorship.
And that's what makes it so dangerous.
And since we've seen the COVID situation, this censorship has really targeted medical professionals, doctors and researchers.
look at medical journals like the Lancet publishing article last year saying that it was it was a you know a nonsense theory and that everybody should stop talking about a possible lab leak or today doctors can't talk about ivermectin on youtube without being censored or deplatformed even though there is emerging evidence that ivermectin can be used effectively to reduce hospitalizations and save lives and so on
but at what point did it become that that doctors can't render an experienced opinion about medical interventions that they see firsthand may be working to help patients no longer Is that allowed?
It's all about right and left.
You get people on the left, for example, you get a psychiatrist who has grand rounds at Yale University saying that she thinks that she would like to shoot and kill white people, that white people are all psychopathic And that white people are terrible, terrible, terrible.
I mean, the most extreme form of racism, and that's okay.
Nobody censors that.
We have another Yale psychiatrist, a woman named Vandy Lee, who...
Offers a diagnosis that Donald Trump is mentally ill and that any of his supporters, including me, I wasn't a supporter, but I defended him in court, must be mentally ill as well.
We caught his contagion.
You know, total, total ridiculous nonsense is put forward on university campuses and in the social media, and then other positions are not allowed.
I think we have to have an open marketplace of ideas.
Let it all be out there.
Let the Bandy Lees make their absurd statements and let that other psychiatrist call for the killing of white people as long as we have an opportunity to respond, as long as the marketplace remains open to all points of view.
The best answer to bad speech is more speech, good speech, not censorship.
Well, I completely agree with you.
That's why we have this platform where freedom of speech is exercised.
And sometimes things get a little crazy.
And sometimes we have to remove a few things, people posting stalking videos or calling for violence and things like this.
So we have our guidelines as well.
But we allow speech that is abhorrent if it's not illegal for the reasons that you just mentioned, because someone needs to see that so we can have a response.
More speech.
That's where the line should be.
The line should be at legality and even some illegal speech should be permitted.
It was Justice Brandeis who once said that if protesters trespass They should not be prosecuted, even though they committed the tort or the crime of trespassing, because free speech is more important than property rights, he said.
And today we're seeing exactly the opposite.
We're seeing even lawful speech, even acceptable speech, which is offensive.
And remember, hate speech is protected by the Constitution.
Even that is getting banned.
The answer to hate speech again is love speech or anti-hate speech, but it's not censorship because once you give the government the power to censor, the censor has no limit on his or her appetite.
The appetite of the censor is voracious.
You give them any power to censor and they will censor much more than you give them the power to censor.
Well, that has been proven absolutely true.
And one of the key self-justifications that I've noticed, especially among universities, is this assertion that speech they don't like is a form of violence.
And I remember hearing that during the Trump years when a conservative speaker, for example, someone like I think Milo Yiannopoulos or Ann Coulter was going to speak at a university.
I forgot which one.
I think California University.
And the student body there, it was in the student newspaper, said that that speech is violence.
Therefore, we cannot allow violence.
We have to stop that speech.
And I think one essay argued that they have the right to kill those speakers in order to defend themselves against the violence of their words.
How twisted is that?
That's the logical conclusion of where it goes.
Look, the big lie is when students look you in the eye and say we don't feel safe.
It's a lie.
They do feel safe.
They're just lying, and we shouldn't let them get away with those lies.
I had lunch today with Ron Sullivan, a great professor at Harvard Law School.
And Ron was the master or the dean of one of the Harvard colleges, the first African-American couple, he and his wife, to be the deans of a college.
And he was essentially fired because he defended Harvey Weinstein.
And the students said they didn't feel safe in the presence of a mild-mannered lawyer who defended Harvey Weinstein.
The same lawyer had defended a person accused of a double murder and a gangland drug-related murder.
And the students didn't feel at all unsafe there.
They're just lying.
They look you in the eye and they lie.
And just because you're young doesn't mean you have the right to lie.
And if any student tells you they feel unsafe or they think it's violent, They're just lying.
They're using this as an excuse and a justification for censoring.
It's the new word that allows censorship.
We feel unsafe.
No, you don't feel unsafe.
You're lying, and you should be investigated and perhaps suspended by your own standards if you're lying to the administration and saying you feel unsafe.
When, in fact, you don't feel unsafe.
You just feel uncomfortable.
And universities are places where you're supposed to feel uncomfortable.
Isn't that true?
Our idea is to be always subject to challenge.
I taught a course at Harvard University for a couple of years called Taboo, in which Steven Pinker and I taught about the subjects you're not allowed to speak about on university campuses.
And it was one of the most popular courses on the campus.
I used to teach a freshman seminar.
Where I would tell the students, 18 years old, look, I'm going to shake up every one of your beliefs, everything you learned in church, everything you learned in synagogue, everything you learned from your parents, everything you learned from your friends.
If you're afraid of that, take another course.
But if you're willing to have your ideas challenged, this is the class.
And I wouldn't allow a student to say, I feel unsafe.
Your ideas are not safe here.
Your ideas are subject to challenge.
Your physical safety is assured, but nobody's physical safety is going to be compromised by speech.
You bring up so many interesting points, but I'm thinking safety, by the way they define it, seems to be homogenous belief systems, obedience to a system rather than diversity of ideas.
It's almost as if just someone having a different thought, regardless of skin color or religion or anything, is somehow a threat to them.
Yes?
Let's talk about diversity for a minute.
That's the second phoniest word.
I have to say the second phoniest word is diversity.
People who claim that they want diversity, the last thing they want is diversity of ideas.
The last thing they want is diversity of viewpoints.
They just want more of them.
They want more black people who think like them.
They don't want black people who don't think like them.
And they don't want white people who think like them.
They want more black people who think like them.
That's what diversity means.
Best proof?
Google.
Who does Google hire as its chief diversity officer?
An African American man who is an anti-Semite and anti-gay.
But they don't care.
That's right.
He's more of them.
He's in charge of diversity.
He's in charge of getting more African Americans into Google, even if they're, like him, anti-Semitic or anti-gay.
That doesn't matter because diversity means only one thing now, more black people who think the same.
That's not diversity.
Now, what has your experience been?
At times you defended President Trump on certain issues.
I believe you're working on a case for Mike Lindell, a free speech case.
That's right.
What has your experience been in terms of the way that you have been treated by people on the left or the right or the media for following principles here?
I've been going to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts for 52 years.
I first went there to help defend Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick.
I've been going there and I was one of the most popular people on Martha's Vineyard, constantly invited to lecture, constantly invited to this and that and the other thing.
And then I defended President Trump's constitutional rights.
I didn't vote for him.
I voted for Hillary Clinton.
I voted for Joe Biden.
But I defended Trump's constitutional rights.
Now, the same people in the Vineyard who asked me to write recommendations for their kids to college, who asked me to get up at 3 in the morning to bail their kids out of jail, won't talk to me.
Won't have anything to do with me.
They won't have anything to do with my wife.
They won't have anything to do with my children.
It's just the worst form of McCarthyism.
And it's true on the left, much more than on the right.
I'm a person who comes from the left.
I'm a liberal Democrat.
But the way in which people on the left, you know, fortunately, in most of these cases, these are boring, stupid people who I don't know why I ever associated with them in the first place.
Right.
Not to have to deal with these people anymore.
It really did tell me the difference between friends and people who just associate with you because you're famous or a celebrity.
And I'm sick and tired of those people.
They can go their own way.
I have my friends who support me.
Most of them disagree with me.
But that's what friendship is about.
You disagree.
You have an argument.
You have a conversation.
You have a discussion.
Maybe you change their mind.
Maybe they change your mind.
But for people like the people on the Vineyard who will have nothing to do with you, will have no association with you, that's just pure McCarthyism.
Well, absolutely.
So much of that that's been going on, families splitting apart initially over Trump, but now over vaccines, for example.
That's another issue that's tearing America apart.
But getting back to your book, The Case Against the New Censorship, what do you recommend should be done to address Section 230?
Because in retrospect, it was poorly written and it's been misapplied, I believe, by the tech giants kind of asserting.
This is a very simple solution.
Check a box.
Every media company has to check a box.
Are you or are you not a censor?
If you are not a censor, then you get the benefit of Section 230, but you can't censor.
You can prevent illegal things from going on the way you do, but you can't stop Positions from being stated because you disagree with them, because you think they're false, because you think they're offensive.
So if you check that box, you're not a censor.
You can't censor and you get 230.
Or you can check the other box.
We're the New York Times.
We're CNN. We do censor.
We're publishers.
We're entitled to censor.
We have a First Amendment right to censor.
Yes, you do, but you have no right to 230.
So that's the simple solution, and I think there are members of Congress that are now seriously thinking about that solution.
It's an idea that I've been promoting now for near on a year, and I hope it will be made into law.
Well, that's my next question.
Is there any political willingness to redress the problems with Section 230 in the context of the fact that now we have even a GOP senator was recently censored?
For, I think, talking about ivermectin in an interview or a podcast video of some kind.
But the censorship has reached the Senate.
So you would think at this point maybe they would recognize something needs to be done.
What do you think?
I think something will be done.
There's a tremendous amount of lobbying.
I just read in the papers that the amount of money that big tech has been spending on lobbying is just astronomical.
They don't want to see any of these statutes tampered with.
They want to have their special privileges.
It's like Major League Baseball.
Major League Baseball wants to be exempted from the antitrust laws, but then they claim the ability to deny the people The people of Georgia have the right to vote for what they want to vote for, and they move the All-Star Game from Atlanta, Georgia, to Denver, Colorado, just because state legislation was enacted, which according to the Washington Post will have no impact.
On voting, no impact on minority voting or anything else.
But, you know, it's what happens when political correctness is adopted by corporations.
Every corporation now supports Black Lives Matter.
Black Lives Matter is a racist organization.
It's an anti-Semitic organization.
The concept of Black Lives Matter is great.
I support it.
But I do not support the organization, which has called Israel a genocidal apartheid country, which has attacked America, which has attacked so many progressive values.
But every corporation today has its logo.
Every Major League Baseball Football, basketball team, they have Black Lives Matter as if Black Lives Matter has become the national anthem of America, whereas the organization Black Lives Matter is not to be emulated or supported.
The concept is to be supported, but not the organization.
The organization itself is bigoted.
Well, well said.
And there are even efforts underway right now, or at least proposals, to alter the U.S. flag to make it more inclusive, whatever that means.
I mean, oh, here we go.
But let me ask you a different question.
What happens in the long term if we don't regain ground on the First Amendment?
I mean, the erosion of the ability to speak or debate or to share ideas that are deemed unpopular, where does this lead a nation if it's allowed to continue?
Well, it's very obvious where it leads them to.
It leads them to what happened in a city in New York yesterday, where for the first time in 60 years, a radical socialist was elected mayor.
And we're going to see that more and more.
And when that happens, you just kiss the First Amendment and the due process clause goodbye, because we know what socialism has done to freedoms.
We saw it in Cuba.
We saw it in China.
We saw it in Russia.
We see it in Russia.
We see it in Belarus.
You'd think that people would understand and learn their lessons.
And of course, some of the strongest supporters of freedom are emigres from the Soviet Union or from Cuba, because they've seen what happens when communism or extreme socialism Can
the pendulum swing the other way?
Is a backlash forming in your view?
I think there is a little bit of a backlash forming, but shows like yours, books like mine, are essential to helping the backlash form.
We have to persuade people to vote their ideology and their conscience and their positions, not their race, not their gender.
The New York Times columnist the other day said, I don't care who's elected mayor as long as she's a woman.
And you see that all the time.
People vote race.
People vote identity.
People vote gender.
People vote sexual orientation.
And identity politics is the exact opposite of equality.
My next book, which is finished, but it's being edited now, is called The Case for Colorblind Equality in an Age of Identity Politics, in which I call for a return to Martin Luther King's dream Yes.
His children will be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.
We're moving in the wrong direction.
I've cited that speech so many times in my own work, saying you were there.
My book starts by two episodes.
One, being there, listening to Martin Luther King with tears in my eyes, and then later, having dinner with Malcolm X and hearing the exact opposite point of view.
And my new book is really about the conflict.
Between Malcolm X's concept of equality and Martin Luther King's concept of equality.
What Dr.
King demanded was basically a meritocracy where judge people by the content of their character or the quality of their accomplishments or the quality of their ideas.
California, if you call for a meritocracy, you are guilty of a microaggression.
You say, this is literally true, if you say the most qualified person should get the job, you're guilty of a microaggression.
Martin Luther King would be guilty of a microaggression.
Okay, last question for you.
And again, thank you for your time today.
And I know this interview is going to get a large response, perhaps a sensitive area, but I want to mention one thing I've noticed, even on my own platform, there is, in certain sectors of alternative voices, there continues to be a strong anti-Jewish kind of narrative, which I've never understood.
I've never understood it at all.
But it blames...
People of Jewish descent for everything that's wrong in the world.
Why does that persist?
I own a letter written by Albert Einstein in 1944 in which he calls anti-Semitism an eternal problem, something that has never ever been solved, something that will never be solved.
Why do you think there's so much support for Palestinians today on college campuses?
People don't care about the Palestinians.
When the Palestinians were being murdered by Jordanians, not a word.
When 4,000 Palestinians were killed in the Syrian civil war, not a word.
The only reason that people pretend to care about the Palestinians is because the people who allegedly are oppressing them are Jews.
And it's all about anti-Semitism.
And there is an enormous amount of anti-Semitism involved.
In the world today, considerable amount in minority communities, considerable amount in majority communities.
And we have to fight it like we fight every other bigotry.
And we can't allow groups like Black Lives Matter, because they do some good things, to get away with fomenting anti-Semitism.
And Black Lives Matter foments anti-Semitism.
Many of the women's movement ferment anti-Semitism.
The Women's March a few years ago wouldn't allow Jews to participate because they were Zionists, and this was an anti-Zionist march.
Right, and this crosses party boundaries.
I mean, we're fools.
It has been with us for a long time.
It will be with us for a long time.
And any good liberal or conservative must fight against the bigotry of anti-Semitism.
And wouldn't it be amazing if that were simply a universal concept in the minds of good people to say it's always wrong to be a bigot, no matter what the target of your bigotry, it's always wrong.
It is always wrong, but today, for the first time in my lifetime, we're seeing justifications for bigotry.
We're seeing justifications for anti-white bigotry, anti-Jewish bigotry.
Anti-Cuban emigre bigotry, anti-Asian bigotry.
Bigotry is coming back, and bigotry is being justified.
It's called identity politics, but identity politics is simply a euphemism for bigotry, because if you favor one group because of their identity, inevitably you're disfavoring another group, and there's a word for that.
It's called bigotry.
That's right.
What was that recent federal judge decision against, I think, the Biden administration's farm subsidies that says, the way to stop discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating based on race.
It was a simple statement.
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much, Alan Dershowitz, and your book, The Case Against the New Censorship.
I hope your book succeeds.
Your voice, I think, is very important for our time.
Thank you for joining me today, and thank you for sticking to your principles on this.
Well, I'll always stick to my principles, and thank you for having a show that sticks to principles.
Thank you so much.
All right.
Take care.
Take care.
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