Tommy Robinson’s Free Press Societies Award in Copenhagen’s parliament on January 20th drew a sold-out crowd, yet Western media ignored it—even conservative outlets mocked his prison conditions as "luxury living." Facebook’s Danish head admitted secret blacklists targeting him, mirroring Orwellian censorship, while automated bans silenced ads for The Victim Cult despite positive reviews. Section 230 immunity risks enabling unaccountable corporate control of discourse, with Silicon Valley platforms policing debates without transparency. The Rebel News Cruise (July 4, 2020) offers a rare counter: panel discussions with figures like David Menzies and Daniel Pipes, bypassing digital suppression. Censorship’s expansion signals a crisis for open debate, demanding urgent public resistance. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I give you a podcast account of what I saw in Copenhagen, Denmark.
I went there because Tommy Robinson was receiving a World Free Press Award.
That was very interesting.
My engagement with Antifa Outside was interesting.
But the most interesting part of all was Tommy Robinson explaining how Facebook had put him on a secret blacklist.
Well, if it's a secret blacklist, how do you know about it?
Well, incredibly, the head of Facebook in Denmark told him.
All right, I'll let you, well, you can't see it.
I wish you could see it because some of it is in Danish and we have subtitles, but I think you can get the gist of it on the podcast.
Let me encourage you to get the video version of the podcast.
Just do that by becoming a premium subscriber.
Go to premium.rebelnews.com and it's eight bucks a month, which is no big deal.
And you get the video version of the show where you'll be able to see what happened instead of just hear it.
I'd appreciate the support if you could do that.
Okay, here's the podcast.
Tonight, the war for free speech.
I'll show you the latest battle from Copenhagen, Denmark.
It's January 20th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is government about why I publish them.
It is because it's my bloody right to do so.
As you may have noticed, I went to Copenhagen, Denmark on Friday because on Saturday, Tommy Robinson received the prestigious Free Press Societies Award in that city.
That's quite an honor.
Tommy joins the ranks of British philosopher Roger Scruton, commentator Douglas Murray, our friend Mark Stein, as a defender of free speech and journalism.
It was such an encouraging place to be.
A larger room in a pretty large room, hundreds of people.
In the Danish parliament was the venue, and it was packed.
In fact, I saw them turning away someone at the door who didn't have a ticket because it was sold out.
I actually didn't have a ticket myself either.
I had no idea Tommy was going to win this prize until I happened literally by coincidence to call him up to say Happy New Year on, I think it was Thursday, and he mentioned he was off to Copenhagen.
I followed Tommy pretty closely, and the fact that he was winning this major prize, and I hadn't seen a peep about it anywhere except in Danish, I guess, shows me that the media is not obsessed with Tommy Robinson.
They're obsessed with hating him.
Let me give you an example of that.
Here's the Daily Mail.
That's a big British newspaper.
Claims to be conservative, claims to support the working class.
But look at this story.
They're literally trying to claim that Tommy Robinson, who was in solitary confinement for 66 days in Belmarsh prison, because he has a kettle and apple juice and some tins of tuna that he had to buy with his own money, by the way, which I think is quite odd, but at least they let him buy as much food as he wanted this time, unlike when he was in solitary confinement in Onley prison.
They actually called that a luxury.
To have a kettle and tuna and a TV set.
Luxury living.
I swear.
And the sun, that also claims to be a right-wing working-class newspaper, same story.
Really, they all repeat each other.
I tell you that to prove that the media will literally report any jot or tittle about Tommy's life, no matter how tiny, to sell newspapers and also to smear and undermine him.
They hate him professionally.
It's like their job to hate Tommy.
It's a bit gross.
But not a single mainstream media report about Tommy winning the world's most prestigious free speech prize, not one.
It's weird because Russia today, which is owned by the Kremlin, they actually sent a camera to the event, to a free speech event, Russia.
And they filmed Tommy and they filmed the event and they filmed the protesters outside.
Now, they didn't actually say a word in their video, no commentary at all, no spin.
They just turned on their camera and recorded the sounds of what they saw, both sides, Tommy and his critics.
I'm sorry, but how weird is it that a state broadcaster from an authoritarian regime like Russia covers a free speech award fairly?
They just turned their camera on and showed what was happening.
But no mainstream media from the West did the same.
Don't tell me they didn't know about it.
They all follow Tommy's every step.
They certainly follow my tweets, so they would have heard about it.
Don't tell me it wasn't a visually interesting or newsworthy event.
I can assure you it was.
In the Danish parliament, protesters outside, it was a news event.
The mainstream media just didn't want to tell the other side of the story, that their own hatred for Tommy Robinson is not shared uniformly.
That in fact, in Denmark, he had a hero's welcome in the parliament.
Here's the Danish MP, Marie Krarup, who had a short introductory comment.
She was glad to host Tommy and the Free Press Society.
And one of the reasons they did was because the parliament is a high-security facility.
That I, as a parliamentarian statement, am able to provide you with this hall where we can hold meetings that are high security, which this is, as I understand it.
So I'm very happy that the Free Speech Society has been in United.
I'm very much forward to what you're saying.
And I'm happy that it's possible to host you here in the parliament.
So thank you for coming.
I spoke with some of my friends from the Free Speech Society.
I had met them back when I won the prize in 2014 for fighting against Canada's censorious human rights commissions.
And I told them that I don't believe that either the UK or Canada would have permitted such an event in our parliaments.
I just don't.
I mean, Canada's parliament bans rebel journalists like me and David Menzies and Kian Becksty and Sheila Gunread from even covering the prime minister on parliamentary premises.
They even banned us from covering the election debates till the federal court slapped them down.
Minutes of Arrest00:14:46
Anyways, it was a great event, full house, great speech by Tommy.
I'm going to show you something from his speech that I didn't know before and that actually shocked me.
And that doesn't happen a lot anymore that I'm shocked by things.
I'll show you that in a moment.
But first, let me show you an interaction from outside the parliament.
I arrived a bit early.
Actually, I was literally on the street walking in Copenhagen and I heard a car honk.
And obviously I ignored it because I was on the sidewalk walking in Copenhagen.
Obviously no one was honking at me, but actually they were.
It was Tommy in a vehicle being driven by a police officer who was escorting him to the parliament and they offered me a ride that Hong Kong get in.
They said, I couldn't believe it.
I interviewed Tommy briefly in that short car ride.
Isn't that funny?
In the United Kingdom, police often come to arrest Tommy.
In Denmark, the police are a security protection detail for him.
So they dropped Tommy off at a special entrance and I walked around to the main door and I immediately saw about 30 anti-foot types and I thought, oh, I've got 10 minutes, 15 minutes to kill before it starts.
Why don't I want to go talk to them?
Now I'm in Denmark and I don't really know the lay of the land that well.
So out of a friendly courtesy, I asked a cop if he minded if I went over to interview anti-foot.
I mean, I knew he'd say go ahead, but it was my way of introducing myself to the cops in a really friendly way.
I was a little obsequious just because I wasn't on my home turf and I wanted to say, hey, oh, it's just me.
I'm going to go talk to them.
And the cop said, sure.
Well, let me show you the next five minutes of what happened.
Hi, guys.
How you doing?
What's your name?
I don't have a name.
If you don't have a name, give a message to him.
Don't get.
Don't get. Don't get. Don't get.
Don't get.
Don't get.
Don't get. Don't get.
Well, I went there to talk to the Antifa protesters and I think they spoke pretty good English, but they could tell that I wasn't like them.
I wasn't dressed in black.
I had a shower today, and there's another few indicia that they knew I wasn't on their side.
So Ringleyer came out and got in my way and touched my selfie stick.
The cops came in and calmed everything down pretty quick and asked me to give him a couple feet.
I will.
I'm not like the Antifa.
I don't believe in censoring people.
I sort of want to do the opposite, ask them what they believe in.
But just a reminder that there is an alliance.
Why are you filming, everybody?
I'm filming because it's a free country.
What's your name?
I'm not happy about being filmed.
I can tell that, but it's a protest, protested to the public, aren't they?
I'm not coming around.
I'm not going to do that because I'm afraid of it.
I know my.
Oh, yeah.
Hello.
I'm Warner from Black Lives Matter.
Fuck off or ACE.
To be frankly.
Hi there.
Pardon?
Do you speak English?
Okay.
Well, it looks like the police don't want me to provoke for I'm getting a gentle push from the police lady behind me.
How are you?
So I'm going to sign off now because I got a I'm going to go in.
Do you have a ticket?
I'm on the guest list.
Yes.
Then you need to go now.
Come here and talk to this gentleman.
He said hello to me.
You can talk over there.
So you do speak English.
Well, I'm getting a gentle push or a back rub from a lady cop, which is a little bit disappointing.
I mean, it is the free press society.
It is sort of a gentle massage.
My last chance for what?
So if I'm over here you'll arrest me?
No, he's not excuse me.
If I stand over there, you'll arrest me.
You'll arrest me if I stand over there.
At a free press society event?
You'll be famous.
You'll be famous.
There's no press cards in Canada.
So if I stand here, you'll arrest me?
Will she arrest me if I stand here?
It's very strange.
The censorship had a free press event.
Anyways, as usual, it's the cops who buckle because they know that the path of least resistance is to push around free speech activists as opposed to anti-flip thugs.
I wasn't roughed up in any way, but I was handled a little bit.
It's a little bit disappointing.
But I'll go inside now where the MPs at least still believe in freedom.
Yeah, a bit disappointing.
I think that's cops pretty much everywhere these days, isn't it?
Take the easy way, take the path of least resistance, which means moving peaceful people out and caving into violent people.
That's not what a cop should do.
We've seen more and more of that in Canada too, as our own David Menzies repeatedly gets manhandled by cops for literally no reason.
He went to report on a pro-terrorist vigil in Toronto after that Iranian terrorist was killed.
And the police literally told David Manzis he could not call Osama bin Laden a terrorist or he'd get arrested.
Remember that?
If I was to call Osama bin Laden a terrorist, that would be against please.
Am I clear?
I know you're not clear, sir.
I don't call Osama bin Laden.
And it incites a breach of the peace.
You would be placed under arrest.
Do you understand?
Terrorists?
Oh, what am I going to be arrested for?
What am I going to be arrested for, sir?
Another event, another cop said that David was not a real journalist, so he had no rights.
As if our Canadian Constitution gives free speech only to a list of approved people generated by the government.
David, by the way, is the only journalist here at Rebel News who actually does have a journalism degree.
I should tell you, but I don't hold that against him.
This is not journalism.
Do you have a journalism pass to be here?
Yes, I do.
I have press credentials.
No, you don't.
See, that's a lie.
I'm in a public place.
Yeah, that's gross.
When cops start sounding like Antifa, you've got yourself a problem.
Anyways, it was a great event, this award for Tommy.
And I've been to dozens of these things.
I feel like I sort of know what they're about, but I learned something new at this one.
And it was from Tommy's acceptance speech.
I'm going to play a few minutes straight from that speech now.
So you'll see Tommy speaking.
This is his acceptance speech.
He had just won the Free Speech Award.
And he's giving actually a one-hour presentation.
You can find the whole thing on our website, TommyPrize.com, if you want to see the whole thing.
Anyway, in his speech, he plays some clips from Danish TV.
They're in Danish, but there's subtitles in English underneath.
This is truly incredible.
Now, this is a few minutes long, but I think you have to watch the whole thing.
Okay, so watch this and I'll come right back.
Here, a Danish journalist asked him some questions about these allegations.
According to Guardian, there is something else that Tommy Robbins has asked on Facebook to half-wugge Muslims.
He himself says that he has not done anything.
How can I, as a journalist, check that you have documentation for your advice against Tommy Robbins?
Yes, there is no one box link.
There isn't one box, really.
Let's have a little look at what they said in their press statement that went around the entire world.
This went on the world's media, okay?
A post urging people to terrorize and behead those who follow the Quran.
Total lies.
Now, this interview with the head of communications actually revealed a lot.
It revealed that I'm a designated hate figure.
And people go on Facebook and they can write what they want about me.
In fact, use their guidelines.
They can encourage murder about me and it will not get deleted.
But anyone says one positive word about me, they will be deleted.
Now, this would seem unbelievable.
Only negative stuff can be said about me online.
It's a hard reaction against him.
But what happens now is that people who are talking about Tommy Robinson, who have been blocked, or who have been trod.
How do you do that?
Our rules are not to talk about Tommy Robinson.
You can say that you don't like him.
Or that you don't like him.
Okay, so I'll ask you again, explicitly.
We have laws in the UK, we have laws across Europe that prevent incitement to hatred.
We have criminal laws and they're good laws.
And people shouldn't be prevented from inciting violence against people, I believe.
But what have I done?
What have I been convicted of by a court of law?
What is it I believe?
My opposition to Islam is what's resulted in this.
Literally, any mention of publicity around me is removed, as this TV network found out themselves.
But I think it's a fact that we're discussing it.
Now we're talking about it.
Now we're discussing it.
I would like to show you what you said was another question.
I would like to show you something that my editor did earlier today.
He wrote on Facebook.
In the afternoon we should have done something about Tommy Robinson.
What is the best article on Tommy Robinson we should read in the redaction?
It took 9 minutes and it was removed.
Is it the understanding of the phenomenon of Tommy Robinson and the possibility of talking about the thinking he presented?
Is it that such an option will be removed?
This level of censorship can terrify us.
The control of Silicon Valley now has.
In controlling how people think.
37 million people in my country have Facebook.
It's their main source of news.
They're now in control of them.
The ability for people to hear the other side of the story, which is what we pride ourselves on, has now begun.
Who authorises who can and can't have Facebook?
Who is making these decisions?
Let's see.
So how can you go after this?
As I said, this list is not open.
But it's the list that is completely overlooked as Tommy Robinson?
It's a list over the people, where we, over our common rules of hate speech, actually don't allow people to support them.
Can you see the list?
No, it can't.
How long is it?
I don't know.
But I do not want to be led with all details surrounding what you're doing.
Why do you decide who's standing in place?
We have a team who has that work in politics.
So some of Facebook's employees?
Yes.
And this is a work they are doing in collaboration with external experts when they are doing it.
They stand by their banning of Him.
They literally say the only things you are allowed to post about Tommy online are defamatory things.
You can only disparage Tommy.
Being neutral or supportive will get you banned.
You banned.
Have you ever heard anything more Orwellian in your life?
Full credit to the Danish TV station for actually asking those questions.
That's actually a shocker too.
That TV station doesn't particularly like Tommy.
Honestly, they don't, but I guess they're true enough liberals in that Danish way.
They're not hardcore leftist radicals.
They're not anti-foot types.
They're not authoritarian bullies.
So they ask the question, but the banality and the calmness and the smiles with which this Danish Facebook spokesman answered, it was as if he was saying the whole time, what are you going to do about it?
I mean, really, what are you really going to do about our secret enemies list and our you know the crazy what are you going to do about it?
I mean Facebook is one of the richest companies in the world and certainly one of the most powerful.
They're not afraid of Denmark, a country of five million people.
They might buy Denmark as a joke.
Authoritarians like Justin Trudeau get along well with Facebook because they share the same enemies and Trudeau can do deals with Facebook.
He'll tax them lightly, maybe, or he'll regulate them lightly, as long as they do his political dirty work for him.
I mean, really, how long before we are depersoned here in Canada too, like Tommy Robinson was?
And after that, I guess how long until you're depersoned?
Stay with us for more.
How can you check the information for your journal?
Not yet, because I can't believe it.
So where can you go after it?
The concrete list is not offence.
It's a list over the people who are like Tommy Robinson?
Yes, it's a list over the people who, under the rules of hate speech, we can't allow people to support them.
Can you see the list?
Can't See the List00:14:05
No.
How long ago?
I can't see the list.
I can't see the list.
Is Hitler or Pol Pot?
I don't know.
Pause the script.
Fine.
That's the most amazing thing I've ever seen.
It confirms all of my worst fears about Facebook and indeed most social media companies in San Francisco, which is they have a secret set of rules for political hygiene.
And the most incredible part about this is you can talk about Tommy Robinson on Facebook, but only if you defame him.
But that would never happen in Canada, would it?
I mean, we're not as rough as Tommy Robinson.
And if it were to happen, it would probably happen to a ruffian not like me, not a respected PhD who writes for the leading newspapers of our country like Mark Milke, would it?
Well, in fact, it has.
And joining me now via Skype from Alberta is our friend Mark Milke to talk about an experience he had with Facebook.
Mark, great to see you again.
Ezra, thanks for having me on.
Facebook is in an interesting position these days, isn't it?
Yeah, now we had you on not too long ago about your new book called The Victim Cult and how the culture of blame hurts everyone and wrecks civilizations.
We went through it and I really liked your premise.
It's that victimology undermines groups that embrace it, whether it's Aboriginal bands or Yasser Arafat.
And you have case studies, and I think you wrote this with a great sympathy to groups that are downtrodden in some way.
It's almost like a prescription of don't do this because you'll be trapped in that negative spiral.
It almost felt like a tough talk, tough love, self-help guide for minorities.
I think.
Is that the spirit in which you wrote it?
Well, indeed.
And just a warning, right?
There have been 113 billion people in the history of this planet, and 7 billion of us are alive now.
We're going to knock into each other, even accidentally.
Never mind the people among us in a history that seek to do harm.
So the question then is, what do you do about it?
So yeah, that's a basic premise of the victim cult.
Not that you deny that people have been harmed in history or now, but how do you actually constructively combat that if you're a victim or certain groups have been victims?
I mean, Fred, you know, a friend of mine from the Ottawa Film Society, Free Thinking Film Society, described the book as very sympathetic and very sympathetic counting of minorities and Aboriginals as well.
So it's not that I'm denying that harm has occurred in history or now.
A key point of the book, though, is you better watch out that you don't just get stuck there.
Otherwise, you're going to end up in the position of a lot of people where you end up creating new victims.
So, and Barbara Kay in the National Post noticed this.
You noticed this.
I mean, the book has been excerpted in the New York Post.
So, along comes Facebook last week after begging me to advertise for weeks upon end.
You know, those annoying ads that sometimes pop up in Facebook from Facebook.
So, I decided to give it a whirl.
I put out a couple of ads, including one, by the way, on, you know, are we too tough in Western civilization with a picture of John A. McDonald?
Well, after an initial couple of small runs of these ads, testing them out on the Toronto market, the Calgary market, other markets, I get these messages from Facebook that the ad has now been banned.
And when I appeal, they don't reinstate the ad.
What they do is they ban my advertising account.
This is Facebook vis-a-vis the victim cult.
We've got an image on the screen right now of your Facebook page that you sent us showing, like, it's just a picture of the thumbnail, a picture of the front of your book, a new book from Mark Milke, The Victim Cult.
And it just, you know, knows someone who plays the victim.
This ad rejected, this ad rejected.
And I think we have one more image to show as well, if we can put that up on the screen.
This is the John A. McDonald one.
It's popular to blame multiple ills today on those long dead, be they John A. McDonald or Christopher Columbus, and then engage in Taliban-like raising of their statues.
And it goes on.
This is banned.
And I just want to read a little bit and then I'll throw right back to you, Mark.
But let me read the reason why this was banned.
It's incredible.
This ad can't run because it promotes products, services, schemes, or offers using deceptive or misleading practices, including those meant to scam people out of money or personal information.
Example, products that claim to boost Facebook likes.
These types of practices don't comply with our advertising policies.
You're selling a book.
You're not selling, you know, you're not a Nigerian prince asking people for their social insurance numbers.
You're selling a book.
And I think your book, in fact, I'm pretty sure became a bestseller on Amazon.ca.
They're calling your book, or your ideas, I'm not sure which, a scam.
Yeah, I mean, it's like the guys at Facebook have never written books before, right?
I mean, maybe they're just busy tweeting at each other or in Davos or something.
I don't know.
I mean, it's incredible to me that, again, this is a book where it took eight years to get the victim cult done.
It's been praised around the country now.
It's been reviewed, like I said, in some major newspapers, excerpted in the United States even.
I saw an excerpt the other day from Australia on a website.
So there's obvious interest in this book.
And I'm very careful, again, to point out that people, you know, sometimes end up as being victims.
But what are you going to do about that?
But for Facebook, I mean, maybe it started with an algorithm, but I have appealed this now two times.
So there must be a human being somewhere in Silicon Valley or wherever Facebook hires its editors from that must have looked at the site by now, my own website, looked at the victim cult book and the reviews that I sent them and said, this is hardly, you're right, not only a Nigerian prince, not only am I not a Nigerian prince promoting some Ponzi scheme or attempt to get your bank account information.
I mean, this is on amazon.com, amazon.ca.
You promoted it.
I mean, it went up the charts when we talked in November.
So there's obviously there is obvious interest in the victim cult, and it's not like I'm hiding.
My website has all sorts of reviews on it.
It's all over, you know, it's in local bookstores across the country.
So I mean, they didn't do any due diligence, and I'm still kind of waiting on appeal.
As of this morning, I'm looking at the four ads that I created at Facebook's request.
Facebook business, bugging me.
And they're still banned as of this morning.
Yeah, we've got those four ads on the screen right now.
Three of them have a similar look, and then there's that John A. McDonald version.
Now, I think I know the answer, but I'll ask anyways.
You have had no direct contact with any human at Facebook.
You've only been filling out automated forms, like a basic appeal form, right?
Yeah, and automated responses, I think, copy and paste, perhaps.
If there is a real human being behind them, it's hard to tell.
I mean, look, this is how silly this is.
My aunt, who lives in another part of the country, you know, relatives like to promote your, you know, your books and what you do, of course, right?
And we all have proud parents, proud aunts, all that kind of stuff.
Well, my aunt said when she forwarded one of these excerpts a couple of weeks ago on which these ads are based, she received a warning from Facebook about forwarding this particular promotion.
I think it might have been a John A. McDonald one.
So when you have an intelligent conversation about Canada's first prime minister, John A. McDonald, and perhaps that maybe some of the anti-Western civilization folks are overdoing it just a little bit, you get a warning from Facebook, if you're my relative, that you shouldn't promote this dangerous point of view.
I mean, look, Facebook is a private company.
I guess it can do what it wants.
I'm not asking for it to be thumped on by government.
What I'm asking for is a business, Facebook, which seeks me out and wants my advertising dollars, not then turn around and waste my time by saying, maybe take a look at this ad again.
Maybe this isn't working for us.
Maybe it's not working for you, Facebook, but it seems to be working for a lot of people buying it off Amazon and their local bookstores.
Well, when you said it's a private company, that's the sound of the libertarian, the property rights absolutist.
And I think I was such a person until even four years ago.
But after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, after Brexit had won short months before that, Brexit sort of sneaked through and then Trump made all of Silicon Valley said, what just happened?
And if you've watched, I don't know, the Google town hall the week after the election where senior executives were literally crying, where they said, we can't let this happen again.
That's when the great censorship began, the great demonetization of conservative sites and this extreme censorship.
They say they're against disinformation and foreign meddling.
That's a cover for the fact that they are the ones disinforming and meddling.
I mean, let me say the obvious.
Facebook, which is a company based in California, is censoring Canadian political commentary, Canadian books.
They're meddling in our national discussions.
And when you have 2 billion of the world's 7 billion people on Facebook, you now have a private company owning the public square.
It's like a company town.
And simply saying, well, if you don't like the way the policeman is being unfair in this company town, we'll then move to another city.
I don't think those libertarian arguments work anymore when the company town becomes a company country.
Because it's a different country.
Go ahead.
Let me raise a different problem.
I think that's at the core of all of this.
No one in the right mind has, and it has the expertise.
No one in the right mind can or should censor others content when we're talking about debates over words, over meanings, over civilizations.
We're not talking about a call to action, a call to violence in my book or most books.
I mean, you're talking about legitimate debates, debates, never mind anybody's opinion of them as legitimate or not.
So Facebook's problem is a problem with modern progressivism, is that it's actually not liberal.
And by that, I mean they should go back and read John Stuart Mill in addition to reading the Vikman Cole.
They should go back and read Jon Stuart Mill on Liberty because no one can be an expert in everything.
You can't possibly parse policy or idea debates if you're a 21-year-old kid sitting in Silicon Valley as an editor or wherever you've been assigned by Facebook to edit from.
You can't possibly negotiate these debates between billions of people, many of whom are just as smart or smarter than you if you're sitting at Facebook trying to figure out what's legitimate content or not.
So the best thing to do is to go back and read Jon Stuart Mill and actually figure out that, listen, if you actually want to get the best ideas out there, if you actually want good societies, you know, civilized societies, what you need to do is to let people debate ideas.
Some of them are going to be wrong.
Some of them are going to be wacky.
But the best thing to do is to get them out there in the public square.
The moment you start, even as a company, censoring others, and you're right, there's 2 billion people that belong to Facebook.
The moment you as Facebook begin censoring, not like radical calls to violence, but I mean, idea debates, whether it's me or Jordan Peterson or someone else, the moment you do that, you actually do a disservice because then you're going to get people go underground with some wacky ideas.
And there's lots of people out there that have those.
And they're going to go underground.
And then you're going to get smacked one day with an election or a result or an event that you don't like.
The best way to combat pernicious ideas, and there are lots of them, and I could combat some of them in the victim cult, is to actually let these debates go on.
Again, I'm not talking about allowing people to post videos inciting people to violence or terrorism.
We're talking about simple idea debates.
Why are some Aboriginals in Canada poor?
Why do some succeed?
Why have East Asians in the United States and Canada succeeded despite past discrimination in both countries?
Those are good things to think about.
But apparently Facebook is run by, I don't know, content editors that don't get the value of actually having good liberal debates.
Yeah.
Well, you're making the moral points and you're talking about the long-term cultural benefits of a free-ranging debate.
Those things you talk about, like incitement to violence, they already exist as crimes no matter where they happen online in real life.
So we already have a lot to cover that.
I've been focused on this censorship issue pretty solidly for two years.
I mean, some could say a dozen years.
Mark, there's something in the States called the Communications Decency Act, and Section 230 of it grants immunity to companies like Facebook, Google, if they're simply a neutral platform, sort of like a bulletin board in the public square that anyone can tack their message on.
If someone puts a illegal message on a bulletin board, you don't sue the bulletin board company that someone tacked something onto if they're neutral, right?
It would be like suing a payphone if someone made a death threat on the payphone.
Well, the payphone company's not listening to every call.
They're a neutral platform.
But when these companies start changing from neutral platforms where everyone is allowed to talk other than pure obscenity, obscenity, threats, et cetera, the things covered by the Communications Decency Act, when they start censoring and editing, in my mind, they should lose their immunity under Section 230.
And if they want to truly be editors of the entire world, let them be legally liable for editing the entire world.
Corporate Censorship Conundrum00:05:05
And I don't think they want that.
I don't know if you've looked that deeply into censorship on these platforms, but I am far more afraid, Mark, of anonymous censors who don't even give you the courtesy of talking to you and giving you their name.
At least when I went before the Human Rights Commissions a dozen years ago, they gave me some paperwork.
I knew who the complainant was.
I had a chance to say my piece.
I saw who my prosecutor was.
I still hated it.
But this is far worse.
Anonymous, cold, done.
You don't even know what happened.
And it's just, there's no appeal.
Well, and the appeals, again, seem to be lost in some algorithmic maze of bureaucratic, you know, private messages that are copied and pasted, perhaps.
So it's, look, I mean, you're the expert in the legal issues here, and these would be the states and Canada.
I mean, I'm loath to tell a private corporation what it wants to do.
But I mean, look, maybe an analogous example is going back to the 1980s. where AT ⁇ T in the United States had to be broken up precisely because it had such a natural monopoly of a position.
I don't claim to be an expert in natural monopolies in the public square these days.
I do think, I do wonder if there is a problem, though, with a corporation that has 2 billion people run by people out of Silicon Valley.
God bless them.
But, you know, that don't seem to understand.
They cannot be experts and everything.
They cannot adjudicate between debates in the public square.
So they shouldn't try.
Well, listen, when I saw that this happened to you, I was most alarmed because I'm used to this happening to people like Tommy Robinson and myself and our company here at the Rebel.
But I regard you as one standard deviation more calm, one standard deviation more philosophical, even professorial than us.
So if they're coming for Mark Milke, and this is a form of a compliment, by the way.
I know.
If they're coming for you, the dam has been broken.
I think that we are not quite the first line, but we're the first line of defense.
If they're coming for Mark Mielke, we're already at the second, third ditch already.
It's time for everyone to do something.
And the crazy thing is, there's nothing you can do other than maybe bust up the cartels as Teddy Roosevelt did 100 years ago.
Mark, it's good to have you on the show.
Let's at least do something positive out of this.
What's the website?
I guess Amazon.ca is a good place to go.
Amazon.ca, local bookstores, markmilkey.com.
You can find the book all across the internet and in your local bookstores.
People go to amazon.ca, and the reason for that is that helps your bestseller rankings.
So folks, if you type in the victim cult, it'll pop up there.
I know because I've done it myself.
You can add Mark Milke and you find it very quickly.
May I encourage you to defy the censors?
It's an excellent book, by the way.
Buy it for the book itself, but buy it to defy Facebook's censored.
Do that at Amazon.ca so at least Mark gets the bestseller rankings.
Last word to you, Mark.
Do you think this was actually just a glitch in the algorithm?
Or do you think this is what we're going to see a lot more of going ahead?
I think who designed the algorithm is the problem.
And Facebook needs to seriously consider backing off from attempts to downgrade views they think they might even disagree with.
I mean, how can you criticize a book?
How can you ban a book without even having read it?
So I think the core problem is just the thinking perhaps in Silicon Valley these days.
But I think you're absolutely right.
Look, I've seen you fight back against this nonsense.
And I think that one of the things I recommend in the victim cult is if you think you've been unfairly treated, don't think like a victim, fight back, and that's what we're doing.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, listen, I'm so glad to have you on the show.
Thanks for your time.
I wish you good luck.
And keep us posted.
If they do change course, let us know.
If they do let you back on, let us know.
But as you saw at the top of the clip with that Danish Facebook executive saying, no, no, we have secret blacklists.
I mean, it's right out of the book 1984, secret blacklists.
I feel we're in for darker days.
Mark Milke, great to see you.
Thanks for your time.
Thank you, Ezra.
All right, there you have it.
Stay with us.
more head on rebel news you know one of the things I try and keep in mind as a journalist and for the journalists we have is try not to talk about yourself too much I mean I know my show is very opinion oriented so I do a lot of I think and I believe that's the commentary stuff but for the news stuff no one cares about the journalist I mean journalists are self-centered by nature.
I suppose you're telling people about the world.
You feel like you have some high place, some celebrity, but I think that the public doesn't care as much.
Rebel News Cruise Highlights00:04:22
So I'm reluctant to go heavy duty on us, us, us.
But the fact that this censorship is coming for the media first makes it a large theme for the Rebel.
You know what I mean?
I mean, we have so many fights when cops try and censor us, when Facebook or YouTube or Twitter tries to censor us, when we're deplatformed.
And none of that is why I started Rebel News five years ago.
I started Rebel News and we're coming up on our fifth anniversary next month.
None of that is why we got into this business.
That's sort of talking about ourselves, right?
We were deplatformed, we were censored.
But that is actually becoming a broader public policy problem.
Censorship.
And that clip I showed you from Facebook is the most terrifying.
Well, hey, before I go, can I show you a short ad I made for the Rebel News Cruise?
Take a look at this.
We're doing another cruise.
I can't believe it.
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Don't worry, though, we're going when it's super warm out.
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I've done this cruise before.
It is so much fun.
It's very interesting, very different than a Caribbean cruise.
But here's what makes it the Rebel News Cruise.
Look at this guest list.
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By the way, this will be just a week after the Conservative Party chooses its conservative leaders.
So I know Manny will have a lot to say about that.
Now, on this cruise, your time is your own.
But remember, we're going to be at sea for two full days out of the seven.
So on those days at sea when there's not that much to do, we will have panel discussions with the talent I've just outlined.
Q ⁇ A sessions.
You can really mix it up with our people on a whole range of issues.
And every night at dinner, we'll eat together.
So on each night, you'll rotate to a different table and you can meet a different rebel personality.
These trips are wonderful.
We've done them before.
I don't know if you know, but we've had rebel cruises in the past.
We went to the Caribbean.
Here's some images of that.
Now, this will be a little bit different climatically, but it'll be just as much fun.
Half the fun is meeting your fellow rebels.
And because we're sailing out of Vancouver, it's easier and more affordable to get to.
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There's different kinds of cabins.
Take a look here.
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Of course, all meals and things like that are included.
All the details are at RebelNewsCruise.com.
In my life at Sun News, at the Western Standard before that, and here at Rebel, I've done about 10 of these cruises.
And I have to say that they're some of the fondest memories I have because just for a week, I turn off the cell phone and I can spend time with our people without being rushed.
I'm not just dashing off an email.
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Seven days we'll hang out together.
We'll see you at breakfast.
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I have to say, these cruises are the best way to meet your fellow Rebel viewers and your favorite Rebels on TV.
So find out more and sign up quickly because the cruise is coming up in July.
Get all the info at RebelNewsCruise.com.
So you coming?
I think it's going to be fun.
Have dinner with Kian, have lunch with David.
Hang out with me.
Let's spend a week together.
Come on RebelNewsCruise.com.
That's it for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night.