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April 28, 2021 - Dennis Prager Show
06:56
Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process
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Alan Dershowitz's newest book, and every one of his books is important, which is rare for an author, and utterly readable.
The Case Against the New Censorship, Protecting Free Speech from Big Tech Progressives and Universities.
When we left, I had noted that it is worthy of note that in the subtitle of the book, Protecting Free Speech from Big Tech Progressives and Universities, we don't see government.
And you then...
Well pointed out.
Every case you had, a free speech against the government, you won.
This is much more serious a threat, isn't it?
It's much more serious.
It's more serious than McCarthyism because we don't have the legal recourse against Google and Facebook.
We don't have the legal recourse against private universities.
We don't have the legal recourse against individual progressives.
Who cancel?
And there's another thing that's important, and your listeners may not appreciate this as much as some of my friends would.
A lot of the people who are at the forefront of censorship are our friends.
They're our friends' children.
They're our grandchildren, our nieces, our nephews.
You know, in McCarthyism, it was pretty easy because Joe McCarthy was not a particularly likable guy, and it was easy to see him as an evil force.
The people who are censoring today, many of them are good people.
Justice Brandeis once said the greatest dangers to liberty worked in people of zeal who have no understanding.
Good intentions, but no understanding.
And I think the new censors, the people on the hard left, think they're doing the right thing.
And a lot of young people I know, good, decent people who are against racial discrimination, who are in favor of the environment, who are in favor of good values, don't understand the need for process.
The need for procedures, the need for patience, the need for democratic values to get where they want to get.
They just want to get where they want to get because they know they're right.
And they're much harder to fight against than government.
So, okay, the $64,000 question, and it didn't begin with PragerU, but, you know, there were four editorials in one year at the Wall Street Journal about our being censored.
TikTok has just removed one of our most well-known spokespeople.
Just removed.
She has no more account.
She's a young black woman who is extraordinary.
Amalia is her name.
It doesn't even resonate with people.
So how do you fight if they are, well, are they really protected in doing this?
Well, they're protected in some respects and not in others.
I'll give you one more example.
Some of you may have heard me say this before, but, you know, Bobby Kennedy challenged me to debate the son of a former attorney general who's an environmental lawyer, but also a vaccine skeptic.
And I'm not a vaccine skeptic.
I go with the science.
And we had this great debate, and people watched it from all over the country.
They loved it.
Some people changed their minds.
Some people didn't change their minds.
YouTube took it down.
They didn't want anybody to think that vaccines are a debatable issue in America or elections are debatable issues in America.
How do you fight back?
Number one, you take away their special privileges under Section 230 of the Decency and Communication Act.
They can't both decide to censor and then be exempt from any defamation or other lawsuits.
So that's the first step.
Section 230 has to be changed.
Every media company has to check a box.
Either you check a box saying you will not censor, you're just a platform, anything goes.
In which case you get the benefit of 230, or you check a box saying, no, we have the right to pick and choose, and then you don't get 230. That's one legal way of fighting back.
The other way is to create a better mousetrap, and Rumble is trying to do that.
They're competing with YouTube.
They put up my debate with Kennedy.
And, you know, people said to me, oh, you must be very happy.
YouTube thinks you won the debate.
I don't want to win the debate by censorship.
I wanted to win the debate in the court of public opinion.
I want people to hear both sides and agree with me or agree with him.
That's what the nature of democratic open debate is.
I don't want some kid who just graduated college or some machine making a decision that they can't hear me debating Bobby Kennedy.
That's just so un-American and so wrong.
And so we have to fight back.
One of the ways I fight back is to write books and appear on shows like yours and thank God for shows like yours.
Because you are part of the open marketplace of ideas, and you are part of the answer to the new censors.
Yeah.
Well, I want people to understand, well, I think my listeners do, that the threat is unique because it's coming from the private world, and that is, as you correctly point out, unprecedented since the 18th century.
We've never had this since the 1780s.
Yeah.
But even in the 1790s, when we had the Alien and Sedition Act, that was the government.
And they were able to rescind it.
And Jefferson pardoned all the people who were convicted under the Alien and Sedition Act.
What is your position on vaccination passports?
Well, I wouldn't call them vaccination passports.
I would like to know when I go into a restaurant or a movie theater or send my kid back to university, I would like to know what their policy is on vaccination.
And if they don't require vaccination, I might take my business elsewhere.
But the irony is that liberals want to make sure that you have ID that shows you've been vaccinated, but they don't want you to show ID to vote.
And some conservatives take the opposite view.
They want to show ID to vote, but not ID on vaccines.
So I'm not saying they're in consistent positions.
But in general, look, I don't like passports.
I don't like show me your papers, please.
But I do think that there are understandable reasons why people should want to know what the policy of an institution is.
As far as vaccination is concerned.
If you don't want to vaccinate, fine, but I really don't want you in my home.
Well, we differ on that one, which is great, because I was getting worried that we might not have any differences.
No, we have differences.
Of course, of course.
I know that.
I voted for Joe Biden.
Hey, I voted for Joe Biden.
Yom Kippur is coming up, and you can repent.
That's the beauty of it.
I have repented so many times.
I've repented mostly my votes for Barack Obama, particularly my second vote for Barack Obama, which I think I was tricked into doing, and I blame myself for doing that.
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