Feb. 8, 2017 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
09:19
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
[music] | |
| Well, ladies and gentlemen, the lines have been drawn and the free speech wars are upon us. | ||
| This battle between freedom of expression and those who would quash it in the name of tolerance has been ramping up for quite some time now, but it has officially arrived into the mainstream. | ||
| From Gamergate, to Ben Affleck's gross and racist tirade, to trigger warnings and safe spaces on college campuses, to Hillary's deplorables comment to punching Nazis, and now to the mayhem after Milo Yiannopoulos tried to speak at UC Berkeley, the battle over free speech is now front and center in the American psyche. | ||
| Some of us tried to put out this fire before it got so inflamed, and I guess we failed. | ||
| And for those of us who have been awake to what was happening this whole time, there's a doubly interesting challenge for us now. | ||
| Not only do we have to continue our fight for free speech and free expression, but we also have to try to bring along all the new people who are just now realizing how dire this situation is as it bubbles into the mainstream. | ||
| Before I get into the Milo situation, I quickly want to share with you my experience at two college campuses in the last week. | ||
| Last Friday I spoke at Portland State University with my friends and former guests of the Rubin Report, Christina Hoff Sommers and Peter Boghossian. | ||
| At first, the local anti-fascist group was going to try to stop us, but about a half hour before the event, their protest was canceled. | ||
| I'm not exactly sure why they canceled on us, but I'd like to believe that maybe, just maybe, they suddenly realized that we weren't the gay hating, women hating, white nationalists that they said we were on Facebook. | ||
| Somehow though, I doubt this group did their actual research to figure out that I'm gay and married, Christine is a feminist, and Peter has a Chinese daughter. | ||
| None of those facts make us great people by the way, they just add a little insight into the lunacy of what we're dealing with here. | ||
| The fact that 3 moderate speakers had to be escorted to the venue by an armed guard is a sad sign of the times, but the 400 people who came to listen, learn and share their ideas really took part in something great. | ||
| A few days later I spoke at UCLA with Steve Simpson of the Ayn Rand Institute and Fleming Rose, the editor of the Danish newspaper that published the Mohammed cartoons back in 2005. | ||
| Once again, free speech was the topic, and once again I'm proud to say the conversation was civil, honest, and most importantly engaging. | ||
| What I realized more than anything else over the course of these two conversations is how starved young people are not only for honest conversation about difficult topics, but also to have their voices heard without fear of being called bigot, racist, and the rest of the usual buzzwords. | ||
| Ironically, as we began our question and answer portion of the evening, one of the first questions was about what was happening that very moment at the Milo Yiannopoulos event at UC Berkeley. | ||
| So while we were having a calm and insightful conversation at a Southern California university, there was a university in Northern California which was literally burning because rioters decided that their moral obligation to destroy public property, stopping someone from simply speaking, All this leads me to what happened last week with Milo at UC Berkeley and the long term effects it's going to have on free speech in America. | ||
| If you somehow missed it, around 200 rioters decided to destroy public property, break windows, tear down light posts, and burn whatever they could get their hands on, all so that they could stop Milo Yiannopoulos, a bleached blonde British gay man, from exercising his freedom of expression. | ||
| By the way, I do make the distinction between protesters and rioters. | ||
| Protesters of course have the right to stand outside and chant and show signs and exercise their free speech, just as Milo is using his. | ||
| These people, on the other hand, were rioters, despite what several mainstream media outlets said, and they were there to create violence and wreak havoc. | ||
| They are fascists in the name of anti-fascism. | ||
| I guess irony isn't taught in Fascism 101. | ||
| Of course, anyone paying attention should have seen this violence coming a long time ago. | ||
| I did a video a few weeks ago about how the left has painted itself into a corner by calling everyone else Nazis, so their obvious next move was violence. | ||
| If you've framed all of your intellectual opponents as Nazis, then suddenly punching Nazis is fair game. | ||
| I saw a disturbing amount of public people, including comedians I used to respect, saying it was okay to punch Richard Spencer, the alt-right leader, because he's a Nazi or a white nationalist or whatever it is that he is. | ||
| And therein lies the rub of free speech. | ||
| Everyone seems to be for free speech when it's easy to defend, but you really see who's for defending free speech when it's hard and uncomfortable to do so. | ||
| And of course all these faux brave people are nothing more than virtue signaling Twitter warriors. | ||
| If the threat of Nazis is so great, why are these people on Twitter instead of outside with gangs of Nazi hunters? | ||
| Where's Brad Pitt when you need him? | ||
| And is punching Nazis enough? | ||
| What about bombing their cars or burning down their homes? | ||
| When is it just too much? | ||
| And at the same time, who decides who a Nazi actually is? | ||
| If we punch Nazis, can we punch the people who talk to Nazis? | ||
| One of the tricks the left is using is that this definition of Nazi will increasingly expand until everyone has silenced themselves out of fear of violence. | ||
| Their game of using buzzwords is losing, and you guys watching this video right now have a lot to do with that, so they're moving on to their next phase, which is violence and intimidation. | ||
| Putting the violence itself aside for just a second, just think how poorly thought out this tactic is if the goal is to silence their opponents. | ||
| Does Richard Spencer seem more influential or less influential than when he got punched? | ||
| Does Milo Yiannopoulos seem more culturally relevant or less culturally relevant than before these rioters stopped him from speaking? | ||
| The misguided authoritarians are actually increasing support for the very ideas they claim to hate. | ||
| Milo supporters are multiplying like gremlins in water. | ||
| To be clear, I like Milo. | ||
| He's a friend, even though we don't agree on everything. | ||
| And the fact that I see so many people saying I don't agree with him on everything is also a symptom of how far we've fallen as a society that protects free speech. | ||
| Who in your life do you agree with on everything? | ||
| Why would that ever need to be said? | ||
| We're all flawed, imperfect people who are often ideologically inconsistent on a day to day basis. | ||
| That you don't agree with someone 100% should be the most obvious thing ever. | ||
| We are individuals, not pre-programmed robots. | ||
| At least not yet. | ||
| We're continuing our partnership with Learn Liberty this week and sitting down with Fleming Rose who, as I mentioned, spoke with me at UCLA last week. | ||
| Fleming was the editor of the Danish newspaper that published the Mohammed cartoons back in 2005. | ||
| His life, and in some respects the fate of Western civilization, was significantly altered on that day. | ||
| Over 200 people died in riots around the Middle East after the cartoons were published, and Fleming's life was turned upside down. | ||
| I taped this interview with Fleming before I'm taping this direct message right now, and wanted to add here that he is truly one of the most decent, genuine people I've ever met. | ||
| He's a fervent supporter of free speech and free expression, and he's paid the price for it both personally and professionally. | ||
| He's in the thick of a battle that was thrust upon him because we live in an unjust world, not because he is unjust. | ||
| He lost friends in Paris in the Charlie Hebdo Massacre and now travels the world to show people how precious free speech is, but perhaps more importantly, how tenuous our precious freedom really is. | ||
| Let me be clear here. | ||
| This situation is going to get worse as it goes more mainstream. | ||
| The left is going to continue to purge all of its moderate voices until it eats itself entirely. | ||
| Bill Maher, who has been the standard bearer of the left for the past 20 years in America, now gets called a bigot. | ||
| I was actually in the audience at Realtime this past week in which Sam Harris made his return to the show and he and Bill discussed the need for moderate voices in the Muslim world while also blaming Trump for his executive order on immigration and much more. | ||
| Of course the usual suspects came out after to call them both Islamophobes and the rest of the usual drivel. | ||
| Eventually this destructive force will come after every dissenting voice there is because leftism isn't based on individual rights and on individual liberty. | ||
| It's based on authoritarian control. | ||
| The left will come for everyone, even their hero Bernie Sanders. | ||
| Let's not forget he's a rich white man with three houses. | ||
| The free speech wars are upon us. | ||
| And unless you are ready with the knowledge and passion to fight it, this battle will be lost quickly. | ||
| The issue we now face is that the masses are going to wake up to this battle only now, years after many of us have been in the trenches fighting it. |
Export Selection