Aug. 15, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
10:43
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| Over the last few weeks, I have experienced some of the very highest and lowest times in my personal life and in the history of the show, which culminated over the last few days in the most shocking developments this show, this philosophical conversation has ever experienced. | |
| Now, of course, the whole Australia, New Zealand tour was an eye rip opener, so to speak, even trying to get in to the country. | |
| Endless bureaucratic delays and requests for more information and police checks and just the media whipped up frenzy of constant egregious lies about myself and about Lauren Southern was truly astounding to believe. | |
| Getting there, doing the first nights of speeches, standing in the parking lot as fans... | |
| Try to get to the show and are being attacked by an orc load of feral leftists who are ripping up the buses, trying to tip over buses with human beings in them, ripping off the sides of the buses. | |
| Just astonishing. | |
| Having to travel everywhere with my family with security guards in case I am recognized and attacked. | |
| Having to wear a hat, sunglasses. | |
| You understand? It's madness. | |
| Then, of course, we did great shows, which was a real high, wonderful to meet the fans, great to have the dinners with everyone, and having my daughter sit next to me in book signings was a wonderful time and moment, and the speeches themselves were fantastic. | |
| And then we get to New Zealand, and boom! | |
| We've been partly publicly deplatformed by the mayor, and then we get deplatformed by the venue that we have an agreement with, and have already Paid. | |
| And then you can, oh and of course I did do a lot of interviews with the mainstream media out there in Australia and New Zealand and it's very interesting to see how the tide has turned, how the balance of power has somewhat shifted in that the videos that we simply shot on a cell phone and published to YouTube have done five to ten times more views than the hit pieces produced by the mainstream media. | |
| But then to go on and see the mainstream media in New Zealand gloating over the financial losses of the deplatforming In New Zealand was really, really quite shocking. | |
| But I'm telling you, I'm not going to back down. | |
| I told you that before. | |
| And on my trip, I saw the ferocity and the viciousness and the violence that we're up against, the verbal abuse, the physical aggression. | |
| I mean, our security team was attacked. | |
| Outside the hotel on our last stayover in Australia. | |
| Just astonishing stuff. | |
| While I'm away, Tommy Robertson, half-starved to death, in jail, loses 40 pounds. | |
| People pouring verbal abuse in through his window of his prison cell. | |
| Alex Jones, unplatformed from social media almost as a whole. | |
| Gavin McGinnis loses his Twitter. | |
| The Amazing Atheist is kicked off Twitter for mere satire. | |
| Now he's been restored. | |
| And then I get the all-clear five-year cancer diagnosis and then let me tell you what happened in a 24-hour period. | |
| Wake up, log into YouTube, and what happens? | |
| Well, I have a strike against my channel. | |
| Apparently, you see, I had violated community standards. | |
| Why? Well, last year I published a short video entitled The Death of White Males. | |
| And I talked about the decline in life expectancy for white males in America, in part due to the loss of manufacturing jobs and in part due to the opioid crisis. | |
| And this was a violation of community guidelines. | |
| Now, you don't assume that there's going to be just one when people are out to get your channel. | |
| So what happened? Well, I tried to submit something to YouTube with my notes about the show saying, come on, like this is not even close to anything like that. | |
| But there's no room, you see they got a web form with no space to even explain what's going on. | |
| Next day, Wednesday, I awoke, we got another strike. | |
| Now this one was for a discussion I had with the British journalist Katie Hopkins. | |
| And some other Freedom Aid Radio videos had been automatically set to private by YouTube and locked. | |
| One of them was called What Pisses Me Off About the YouTube Child Sex Scandal, and the other was a chat I had with psychotherapist Tom Golden, who's authored such books as The Way Men Heal and Swallowed by a Snake, The Gift of the Masculine Side of Healing. | |
| Now, the second strike prevented me from being able to upload videos to YouTube for a period of two weeks. | |
| And then, of course, as you know, the third strike most likely means destruction of the entire channel. | |
| That is a big deal, my friends. | |
| That is a very big deal. Now, as you may or may not know, I have poured over 12 years of my life into my YouTube channel, this YouTube channel, heart, mind, body, soul, money, resources, travel, expertise. | |
| I have thousands of videos, hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and hundreds of millions of views. | |
| And I stand by what I have done. | |
| I'm proud of what I've done. | |
| In particular, I'm proud of promoting peaceful parenting, convincing countless parents to stop hitting their children and start negotiating with them instead. | |
| So, first strike a warning, second strike, ban from uploading to YouTube for two weeks. | |
| No problems over 12 years with any violation of community standards. | |
| My channel hung by a thread. | |
| One more, I'm guessing. | |
| The channel could have been destroyed at any moment. | |
| Now, first one I did nothing, thinking it might be a one-off. | |
| Second one, I took to Twitter and posted a statement. | |
| And thank you to the people who responded, who were positive, who were respectful, and tweeted at Team YouTube to stop what they were doing and to reverse this injustice. | |
| But I'm telling you, my friends, this has really, really driven home to me the reality that significant resources are going to be needed in this fight. | |
| This was a wake-up call. | |
| This was a direct shot across the bow. | |
| Now, I assume as a result of community involvement, for which I am eternally grateful, these strikes against the channel have vanished. | |
| There's no communication with YouTube. | |
| It's like trying to commune with a pharaoh 2,000 years dead, but these strikes have been removed and my ability to upload has been restored. | |
| But for how long? | |
| Is this a reprieve? Is there going to be another mass flagging incident that occurs that wipes me off the map? | |
| Well, it is very clear to me now that resources, significant resources are needed. | |
| There's lots of different ways to protect yourself and fight back in this kind of culture war. | |
| Of course, I'm going to need a backup resource of some way to keep the show going should something happen that's going to cost money. | |
| I have to look into my legal options. | |
| That's also going to cost money. | |
| And I need your help. | |
| As always, as this is a show without advertising, I don't want to be beholden to advertisers. | |
| I don't have sponsors. | |
| I'm not beholden to some rich people writing checks who get to tell me what to say. | |
| I am responsible to you and to the truth. | |
| And I will continue to tell you the truth. | |
| Because here's what they want to do. | |
| What they want to do, I think, Is to have me start to self-censor and say, well, you know, almost lost the entire channel. | |
| 12 years of my life. | |
| Vanish. Almost lost the entire channel. | |
| Maybe I better not talk about this. | |
| Maybe I better not talk about that. | |
| Maybe I should just not invite this person on the show. | |
| Maybe I shouldn't discuss this topic. | |
| To which I say, no! | |
| I will do no such thing. | |
| I am responsible to the truth and to you. | |
| And to my own conscience. | |
| And there is no amount... | |
| Of deplatforming threat that will break that bond. | |
| Socrates taught me about this when I first read about him 35 years ago. | |
| That when cross-examined in the public square, Socrates said that he listened to his conscience. | |
| He called it a daemon, which sounds like demon, but it's not a daemon, just a conscience. | |
| And he said, if I'm comfortable and content with my conscience, I cannot be swayed. | |
| I am comfortable and content in my conscience. | |
| I cannot be swayed. I will not self-censor. | |
| I will not castrate myself out of fear rather than bring the truth to a world desperately thirsty and in need of reason, evidence, the Socratic method, philosophy, solutions. | |
| Solution comes from peace, reason, evidence, debate, conversation. | |
| And I will not self-censor out of fear of loss. | |
| And that means I need choices. | |
| The future of this show, the future of this conversation, the future of philosophy as it stands, hung by the thread of a whim of someone I don't even know. | |
| That is not acceptable for me in the long run. | |
| So I need your help. I am going to need to figure out what to do. | |
| Because This is surely not the last time that I will be targeted, that you, that this conversation will be targeted, so I need your help. | |
| Please help me continue to do what I do. | |
| The most necessary thing I believe in the entire world is teaching people how to think, teaching people how to reason, teaching people to raise their children peacefully and to have quality relationships, to be surrounded by love, to pursue virtue, to be good. | |
| And as always, it entirely depends upon your support whether or not I can do that. | |
| So please, please, my friends, I am begging you. | |
| Philosophy begs you. The future begs you. | |
| Please help out the show at freedomainradio.com slash donate. | |
| That's freedomainradio.com slash donate because I am not backing down. | |
| I am going forward and I am dragging a recalcitrant and anti-rational world behind me if need be. | |
| But I need your help. freedomainradio.com slash donate. | |
| For now, this conversation continues. |
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