SPECIAL! Allum Bokhari predicts “marches on Silicon Valley”
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Summary
Breitbart's Alana Bokhari joins Ezra to discuss the dangers of Big Tech Censorship, and why it's our greatest fear for 2019: Big Tech's censorship. Ezra and Alan discuss why Big Tech is a threat to our freedom and why we should be worried about it.
Transcript
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Tonight, my greatest fear for 2019, big tech censorship.
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We'll have a feature interview with Breitbart.com's Alam Bokhari.
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It's January 2nd, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
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You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.
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The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my
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This is the first show of 2019, and we're going to look forward to what will happen in the
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Now, there was a time when tech was some obscure thing that only either the really cool or
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really nerdy kids were interested in, but now tech, well, that's just a code for every
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There's not one of us who's not active on Facebook or Pinterest or, if you're in business,
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Our whole company, The Rebel, lives on the internet.
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And the thing is, that was wonderful when it was this great, undiscovered, frontier-style
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In fact, that's why we put The Rebel on the internet when the Sun News Network shut down
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three and a half years ago, almost four years ago.
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But now we're vulnerable to the colonization of big tech by social justice warriors and
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grievance mongers who are bringing censorship to big tech in a far more serious way than
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was ever done through the democratic institutions, even the Human Rights Commission.
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So joining us now for the course of today's show is our friend Alan Bokhari, who's the senior
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tech correspondent for Breitbart.com, who is the leading journalist in the world covering
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Would you agree with me that, I mean, maybe, of course, you would agree because it's your
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But I think that the most important political beat in the world right now is not the Trump
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collusion narrative or the daily shenanigans in the White House or not even the EU fights,
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I think it is who will control the politics of the internet because that has the power
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to snuff out and deplatform political candidates of the highest order.
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It has the ability to shape what we perceive the world to be.
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I think that the battle for the political soul of the internet is the largest story of our
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I agree because, as you said in your intro, tech now refers to everything, every aspect
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of our lives, everything we do, whether it's business, political speech, or just talking
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We now do it online via some sort of online app.
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So these companies have grown to such an extent and have such a level of importance in our
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lives and also know so much about us that they've, in a sense, become more relevant, more
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important to our lives than national governments.
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But the flip side of that is they aren't subject to the rules and regulations of national governments.
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They are not currently subject to the First Amendment or any protections on privacy or
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any part of the Constitution, really, because they're a private company.
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And until they're subject to some level of official oversight and some level of regulation,
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they're just going to continue to have a totally arbitrary, tyrannical level of power
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And, of course, when you think of the number of authoritarians we have coming out of Western
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University at the moment, social justice warriors, as he pointed out, this is extremely tempting
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And they've been putting pressure for the past year.
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We've been seeing the results of their efforts in far-left Silicon Valley in the increasing
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level of censorship we've seen from these companies.
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And unless President Trump or Congress takes action, that's the future that we'll see.
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We'll see more and more takeovers of these incredibly influential companies by the far-left
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who want to control these companies, who recognize the amount of power they have and want to use
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it to get their way, to enforce their will and their values.
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And that's the power and the utility of the Internet is how everything is so seamlessly
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I mean, it wasn't long ago when many people were afraid to use their credit card on the
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Well, now almost everyone uses Facebook, 2 billion users.
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Now you can deposit a check by taking a picture of it on your phone.
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We forget how ubiquitous it is and things we don't even think of as the Internet.
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But what's terrifying is that it's now connected and it's tagged, whether it's a cookie or a
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database file, to everything else we do or say.
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You can't unless you're going to go full Unabomber, live in the forest in a hut.
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And interesting that you mentioned the Unabomber and people living in forests.
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He's actually enjoying a bit of a renaissance on on social media.
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There's this whole movement, very sort of obscure.
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I don't know much about it myself, called Pine Tree Twitter.
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And it's this whole idea that you've got to unplug, you've got to go live off the grid.
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I think that's movements like that, sort of fairly fringe movements like that.
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That is something we're going to see in the future in response to the growing power of
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And honestly, I think, you know, we used to see marches in Washington because of Washington's
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I think we're going to see marches in Silicon Valley because the nexus of power has shifted.
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It's no longer politicians who seem to control our lives.
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It's a bunch of unaccountable Silicon Valley CEOs.
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Yeah, and what a tragic coincidence that the most left-wing city in America is in the San
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It couldn't have been Dallas or Houston or, you know, Salt Lake City or Boise, Idaho.
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Well, listen, I promised that we would look at a few of the highlights of 2018 and then
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look forward to 2019, and you helped us to select three video clips that you think are
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emblematic of some of the conversations in tech and politics, and I'd like to play those
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for our viewers and have your comments on each.
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It's from a December congressional hearing where Sundar Pichai, the senior executive of Google,
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was asked by a very sympathetic Democrat, Gerald Nadler, who actually receives tens of thousands
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I was really surprised by it because the answer, if he would have known the answer in advance,
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I don't think he would have asked the question.
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It's a Democrat asking Google, how much money did Russia spend on Google, which owns YouTube
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Well, here's the clip with the question and the answer.
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Now, according to media reports, Google found evidence that Russian agents spent thousands
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of dollars to purchase ads on its advertising platforms that span multiple Google products
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as part of the agents, the Russian agents' campaign to interfere in the election two years
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Additionally, Juniper Downs, head of global policy for YouTube, testified in July that
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YouTube had identified and shut down multiple channels containing thousands of videos associated
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Does Google now know the full extent to which its online platforms were exploited by Russian
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We have, you know, we undertook a very thorough investigation, and in 2016, we now know that
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there were two main ad accounts linked to Russia, which, you know, advertised on Google for about
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I mean, us here at The Little Rebel, we've spent that much on Google Ads in our short life, just
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For two years, we've heard this theme that Russia bought the election through fake news
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That's sort of a joke, but a joke that's been taken seriously for two years by the mainstream
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Yeah, well, the whole point about this idea that Russian disinformation swung the election
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One, it's to delegitimize the election of Donald Trump.
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What we've seen in the past two years is this elite backlash against any form of, any way
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in which ordinary people express their opinion.
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And that includes elections, that includes the Brexit referendum, that includes comment
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And the whole idea is, you know, the election was illegitimate.
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So they have to push this idea that Russia had this huge influence on social media.
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You know, even anti-Trump researchers like the political psychologist Brendan Nyhan have
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said the effect of fake news and propaganda on the election on voters was absolutely nil,
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because what little Russian ads there were on Facebook and other platforms, they were targeted
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at political partisans who had already made up their mind.
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Now, I'm not, you know, Russia did play some role in social media, but their goal has never
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really been to swing elections one way or the other.
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Their goal is to manipulate both sides and deepen divides between both sides.
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So it's very different from actually trying to influence an outcome.
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Um, and actually, you know, this panic over Russia sort of helps them because, uh, it
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helps them achieve that goal because it helped it, uh, you know, it deepens divides and makes
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That's Russia's goal, not in, not winning elections.
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Uh, and this whole idea that, you know, they spent 4,700 or whatever on, uh, on Google ads.
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It, it, it just shows you the depth of this, uh, conspiracy theory that Democrats are caught
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And, uh, and, you know, the Democrats were saying social media since it was a conspiracy.
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So there's a lot more evidence for that than there is for, uh, Russia trying to influence
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Well, when Facebook shut down, uh, 30 or 40,000 Marine Le Pen sympathetic Facebook pages in
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France, that single act of foreign interference from Mark Zuckerberg in the French elections
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was far more effective and terrifying and under the radar and unreported and malicious, I would
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say, than anything Russia would dream of doing.
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And I got to say, Alan, not only are you covering the important beat, but you're just getting,
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because of that, you're known in Silicon Valley as the guy to go to if you've got a leak, because
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the other people, the other mainstream media would bury it because they just love talking
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And I, maybe I can, you know, get some, um, you know, free demo at, like I used to work,
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um, uh, I remember when the national post, uh, when these tech companies would give out
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devices to journalists, to try them out, like product test them and they would keep them
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I remember when Jonathan Kaye reviewed some new handphone and was in love with, of course
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And yeah, you're immune to that kind of, uh, uh, colonization, to use that word again.
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Uh, and so you get all the scoops because the dissidents in Silicon Valley know they can
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And so you got a full one hour video of a weekly town hall that Google has where they
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basically put their staff in a big theater and other people can join by remote.
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This was never supposed to be seen outside of the inner sanctum of Google.
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I want to play for you an excerpt from a senior Google executive talking about partisan politics,
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the hate for Donald Trump and the sorrow that he lost.
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8.30 PM on Tuesday night, I was at home with friends and family watching the election returns.
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And, uh, as we started to see the direction of the voting, I reached out to someone close
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to me who was at the Javits Center where the big celebration was supposed to occur in New
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Somebody had been working on the campaign and, um, I just sent him a note and said, you know,
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And I got back a very sad short text, um, that read, people are leaving, staff is crying,
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Uh, that was the first moment I really felt like we were going to lose.
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And it was this massive, like, kick in the gut that we were going to lose.
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It did feel like a ton of bricks dropped on my chest.
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And I've had a chance to talk to a lot of fellow Googlers and people have said different
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Um, the fact that they were having this big staff cry is amazing.
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But to me, the most powerful thing, and she said it three times, she didn't say the Democrats
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First quoting her friend embedded in the Clinton campaign.
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I bet she was talking about Eric Schmidt, the senior Google executive who was a Hillary
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We were going to lose because there is no division in the mind of a senior Google executive
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between the company and Hillary Clinton's Democratic campaign.
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I don't even think she realized she was saying it that way.
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And no one in that town hall meeting objected because they all think the same way.
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Yeah, that meeting featured the head, all the heads of Google had the co-founders, Larry
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and Sergei, it had the CEO, Sundar Pichai, and the head of the chief legal officer, Kent
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They were all holding this sort of funeral for the country just one day after Donald Trump
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So there was, what you saw was a total uniformity of values at the top of Google.
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And, you know, Google maintained that their political biases don't filter down into their
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product, but how can you know the whole idea of a bias is that it's unconscious?
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And the other thing we don't know is what internal safeguards Google has to prevent bias
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We saw the Google hearing last month when Sundar Pichai went to go and testify on Congress.
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And one of the best questions, I thought, was Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida.
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He repeatedly asked Google, you know, have you launched an investigation into political
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Because, you know, we've seen stories, we've seen leaked emails that we've pulled from
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Breitbart showing that there are groups of Googlers who do work inside the company to
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influence policy against conservatives and conservative media.
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There was a concerted effort by Googlers, with the assistance of the director of monetization,
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who's now the director of trust and safety, to get Breitbart demonetized from Google's
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ads by cataloging examples of so-called hate speech, not from articles, but from the comments
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So we do see these anti-conservative efforts inside Google.
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And the question is, what internal safeguards does the company have to stop the biases of
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What sort of review process do they have when they introduce new products?
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You know, every Google product is looked at by multiple people and reviewed by multiple
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But we don't know if all the people reviewing them are all liberals or all left-wing, all
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And we don't know if they, you know, I don't think they do.
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I don't know if they explicitly control the politics and that review process.
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It seems like it would be a good thing to do if they were trying to avoid political bias.
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But I don't think they're very serious about doing that.
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Let's take a quick look at that question and answer from that congressional hearing in December.
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Have you ever launched an investigation into whether political bias is impacting the consumer
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To the extent there are concerns, we look into them and, you know, it's...
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Have you expressly launched an investigation into political bias of your employees?
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You know, to the extent, you know, we always take...
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We take any allegations around code of conduct across every issue seriously and we look into
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You said to me yesterday that, as it relates to political bias, you haven't launched those
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investigations because there are so many redundancies and there is so much peer review that that
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If you need to make a change in our algorithms, there are several steps in the process, including
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launch committees and user testing and our rate of guideline evaluation.
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But at your company, your employees can get together and chat in groups, right?
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One of those groups is the civil rights group, right?
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We have many employee resource groups on which they can participate in conversations, yes.
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Have you ever looked into the conversation into the resist group?
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Is that a surprise to you that there's a resist group?
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I'm not aware whether such a group exists or not.
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If there was a resist group, would that be the type of thing that you would want to look
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You know, we have clear policies around how our products are built and...
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No, but if there's a resist, you know that the resist movement is a movement built to resist
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If there's a resist group within your company where groups of employees, not one, are getting
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together within that group to engage in discourse on company time with company infrastructure,
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does that strike you as the type of thing you would want to investigate?
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None like that has been brought to my attention and, you know, happy to follow up to, you know,
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Mr. Chairman, I seek unanimous consent to enter into the record a document from what purports
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to be Google employee Miles Borens, which is opposed to the Google group resist.
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Well, Alan, it raises a good question because Google is not just neutral.
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YouTube, Facebook, all these companies are not neutral.
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They are the largest hirer of lobbyists in Washington.
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They spend, you know, they've displaced the banks and the oil companies and the arms dealers
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as the biggest lobbyists and the biggest political donors.
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And so you can imagine if a congressman asks a friendly question of Google, he'll get not just
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And if a congressman asks a critical question of Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, whatever,
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But what's terrifying that we can't track like we can track donations is, is there some
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internal squad within Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter that says, ah, that guy, that guy asked
00:21:06.900
Let's make sure anyone who Googles that congressman that all the bad stories come up high, the
00:21:19.480
And like what I'm saying is the secret efforts to marginalize Breitbart that you disclosed,
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why wouldn't they have similar efforts to marginalize political opponents?
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Because they have an oil company couldn't do that.
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But people who control the Internet could do that.
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And here's why we here's why Google and these other companies, we need that process in place
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to to make sure that anything they do is reviewed to ensure that there's no political bias,
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because, you know, the things we've leaked are things that Googlers have been discussing
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in private on their email lists or in these recorded meetings.
00:22:00.600
But, you know, not everything that happens at Google HQ is recorded or put down in writing.
00:22:06.040
And especially after these leaks, I think they'll be putting a lot less down in writing
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So we don't know if there's a group of Googlers, you know, sitting around a cafeteria table discussing
00:22:15.720
how to demonetize conservative media right now.
00:22:18.280
And, you know, there's very little way we'd be able to know that unless there's someone
00:22:24.660
So it's going to become harder and harder for the media to track these companies, especially
00:22:29.820
as they become more paranoid and more safety conscious about leaks.
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So we need to be asking ourselves, what what safeguards does Google have?
00:22:44.240
We were talking earlier about people de connecting, disconnecting from the Internet.
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It wouldn't surprise me if senior executives at these tech companies had all their official
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online communications and then they carried around an old fashioned pad of paper and a
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pencil or a pen, something ultra low tech that couldn't be forwarded, couldn't be disclosed
00:23:09.880
Which I absolutely believe that there is a that there is a disconnected Google where they
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have frank talks about people like you, about Breitbart, about people like us in a smaller
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degree and that you wouldn't find it in a search.
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And if there was litigation, they'd say, oh, we searched all our files and there's nothing
00:23:30.200
because it's in a little that's a little conspiracy theory on my part.
00:23:39.860
It's from Tim Cook, the CEO who took over from Steve Jobs at Apple.
00:23:47.320
And I've shown this, I did a show about this last month.
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Compare this to the great 1984 TV ad that Apple made when they were introducing their computer
00:23:59.280
against the conformity and linear thinking of IBM.
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IBM's motto for really a century has been think, which is a great motto.
00:24:13.260
And they had, I don't know if you remember, that great ad that was showing 1984, everyone
00:24:19.320
And this one woman came in and threw a hammer and smashed the screen of Big Brother.
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It was this great, great, great ad about thinking differently.
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And here's Tim Cook of Apple saying what he thinks about anyone who thinks differently.
00:24:40.620
Watch this terrifying clip of Tim Cook at an anti-hate rally, which is right out of Orwell 2.
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Perhaps most importantly, it drives us not to be bystanders as hate tries to make its headquarters
00:25:00.200
At Apple, we believe that technology needs to have a clear point of view on this challenge.
00:25:10.040
That's why we only have one message for those who seek to push hate, division, and violence.
00:25:38.520
From the earliest days of iTunes to Apple Music today, we have always prohibited music with
00:25:57.580
And as we showed this year, we won't give a platform to violent conspiracy theorists on
00:26:13.060
My friends, if we can't be clear on moral questions like these, then we've got big problems.
00:26:21.680
At Apple, we are not afraid to say that our values drive our curation decisions.
00:26:32.460
Doing what's right, creating experiences free from violence and hate, experiences that empower
00:26:40.660
our creativity and new ideas is what our customers want us to do.
00:26:46.880
I believe the most sacred thing that each of us is given is our judgment, our morality, our
00:26:55.780
own innate desire to separate right from wrong.
00:27:00.280
Alan, I think that Tim Cook is doing something very tricky there.
00:27:08.140
He's conflating division, which means a difference of opinion.
00:27:12.700
He's just complaining with hate, which is a negative emotion, which all humans have.
00:27:20.960
And I don't even know how you do something violent on the internet.
00:27:24.180
I guess you could talk about something violent.
00:27:28.360
So he's throwing in the word violence there to denormalize division, which is another way
00:27:37.660
But if we take our hate and sublimate it into something constructive and positive, it can
00:27:44.560
I'm sure Martin Luther King Jr. hated Jim Crow laws and hated racism, but he turned it into
00:27:55.140
Apple isn't a safe place for thinking differently anymore, is it?
00:28:03.360
They've become the dystopia they used to make ads against.
00:28:07.600
And that whole thing at the end there is, it was very, very, very sly how he was talking
00:28:22.900
OK, well, apparently Apple's consumers don't have that responsibility anymore because Tim Cook
00:28:28.120
They don't get to choose what's right and wrong.
00:28:30.080
They don't get to choose which podcast is fake news and conspiracy theories and which
00:28:34.120
one isn't because Tim Cook's already made that decision for them.
00:28:41.660
Does Tim Cook get to make them on behalf of the millions of people who use Apple products?
00:28:46.460
Or, you know, and that essentially infantilizes those users.
00:28:49.540
It says they don't, if you leave it up to them, they'll make the wrong decision.
00:28:56.080
And that's the question we should be asking, you know, whether we, whatever we think of
00:29:01.680
all the, of, you know, so-called conspiracy theorists or so-called hate mongers, who gets
00:29:08.020
to decide what, who falls into those categories?
00:29:11.420
Is it a small number of unaccountable heads of corporations?
00:29:14.460
Or is it the millions and millions of people who use the internet and consider themselves
00:29:21.820
You know, Tim Cook said on stage, is what his users want?
00:29:27.960
You know, when there's been surveys about hate speech, most people disagree with the
00:29:31.280
There's been surveys about political rightness.
00:29:38.000
And I, you know, even ordinary Apple consumers, many of whom are left wing, I think they'll
00:29:41.860
want, they'd want to, to make their own decisions, make their own minds up about what they want
00:29:46.460
to subscribe to and who they want to hear from.
00:29:48.480
And they wouldn't want some random CEO making that decision on their behalf.
00:29:53.340
And, you know, even his point about right and wrong, and he uses the word sin, which is quite
00:29:58.280
something coming from Silicon Valley that profits off every sin you can imagine.
00:30:06.320
Right and wrong is the essential divide in all of humanity.
00:30:10.240
It's what separates us from animals is we believe in right and wrong.
00:30:16.080
And he seems to hate intolerance, you could say.
00:30:24.120
That is a different apple than the think different apple of that 1984 ad.
00:30:30.540
And there is no sign that these companies are going to slow down at all here.
00:30:36.320
I think 2019 is the year they go in for the kill.
00:30:40.940
And let's end with a couple minutes on that, Alan.
00:30:43.120
I appreciate your review of these videos from 2018 and our discussions around them.
00:30:48.540
I got to tell you, I'm a pessimist, and it serves me well being a pessimist, because that means
00:30:57.000
I hate saying I told you so because I'm always sad that I was correct.
00:31:02.260
I think 2019 is going to be a terrible year of deplatforming, unpersoning, censoring, the absolute merger between big tech and big government.
00:31:12.220
And I think that between you at Breitbart and us here at The Rebel, it would not surprise me if one of us was not left standing at the end of the year,
00:31:21.520
not because of any business decision or any market failure, but rather because we were deplatformed by the Tim Cooks and Sandra Pichai's of the world.
00:31:30.540
That's my extremely pessimistic prediction for 2019.
00:31:34.300
I think that would certainly follow the trend we saw in 2018, where we saw all sorts of figures being kicked off various platforms.
00:31:42.520
There was Patreon, the crowdfunding platform, and there was Twitter, where there was Facebook, where there was Google.
00:31:50.400
So Marsha Blackburn wasn't allowed to run ads on Facebook or Google just a few days before the midterm elections.
00:31:59.000
We saw Google shutting down your former contributor, Faith Goldie, from having ads just 48 hours before polls opened in Toronto.
00:32:09.480
So they've displayed this brazen willingness to interfere in politics and interfere in elections, and there have been no consequences.
00:32:22.220
Republicans controlled Congress, and they called them into hearings, but they didn't actually pass any legislation saying you can't do this.
00:32:30.580
These companies have learned they can censor, they can interfere in elections, and the worst that will happen to them is a few negative headlines, maybe some leaks, and maybe an embarrassing hearing in front of Congress.
00:32:41.860
But there's no actual legislation that's been passed.
00:32:45.020
So I think as long as that continues to be the case, we're going to see more of it.
00:32:49.480
We're going to see a tighter and tighter control over the Internet, which was supposed to liberate everyone and is now tyrannizing everyone.
00:32:56.000
You know, you mentioned our former contributor, Faith.
00:32:58.620
I sometimes look at our rebel alumni, and some of them moved on, some were hired away, some, frankly, we fired.
00:33:04.600
But they all were rebels, and when they were with us, they were sort of safe from the censorship for some funny reason.
00:33:11.180
But whether it's Faith Goldie, Laura Loomer, who was kicked off Twitter, Gavin McInnes kicked off Twitter and other sites, Tommy Robinson kicked off Twitter, kicked off PayPal, Lauren Southern banned from the United Kingdom.
00:33:27.100
All those people are alumni of the rebel, and I keep thinking, well, why aren't they coming for the rebel?
00:33:33.840
Now, they did try and come for us in August of 2017.
00:33:37.140
But I think that because they're sort of everyone I just listed is sort of on their own in a way, although Gavin was with CRTV.
00:33:44.140
But this is how the censors build up a track record, build up precedents, build up courage, build up sort of a body count.
00:33:53.060
And they start with the really, really, really fringe, you know, the neo-Nazis.
00:33:58.700
Then they go for the slightly less fringe, Alex Jones.
00:34:02.620
Then they come for the slightly less fringe, our alumni.
00:34:06.640
And you see they're moving closer and closer to the center, and they're building on the precedent they established with the most extreme cases that no one wanted to fight for.
00:34:15.620
No one wanted to fight for the neo-Nazi websites that were kicked off of GoDaddy or whatever, or whatever their host was, because who wants to defend a neo-Nazi?
00:34:25.900
And here we are a year or two later, and a year from now, they're going to be, that's what I'm worried about, is that they're going to swallow up.
00:34:35.140
Well, I mean, we see PragerU, which is very mainstream conservative, having their videos censored.
00:34:40.420
Jordan Peterson, so many, they're really coming close to the center.
00:34:46.760
Will the left ever care, Alam, or do they just know that the bullies in charge here are their allies, so they don't care about the principle of free speech, because they know they won't be swallowed up by it either?
00:34:58.200
Well, the Democrats certainly won't care either, because like, you know, Representative Gerald Nadler, who's now going to chair the same committee that questioned Sundar Pichai last month,
00:35:06.960
is essentially in the pay of Google, Google is his highest donor, you won't hear much from him, or because they're really logical.
00:35:15.160
And, you know, multiple Democrats, when they've got an opportunity to question Silicon Valley CEOs, haven't asked them about censorship, they've called it a conspiracy theory.
00:35:23.260
They've instead asked them what they're doing to shut down hate speech, so they want more censorship, not less.
00:35:30.360
On the left, the people who actually have a handle on the issue and are honest about it are the anti-establishment, anti-war left people like Glenn Greenwald,
00:35:40.820
because they know that they're also in the firing line because the elites don't like them either.
00:35:47.280
And, you know, Facebook, for example, is advised by the Atlantic Council.
00:35:51.900
And we see sort of neoconservative Bush-type think tanks, you know, in the U.K. and the U.S. talking about extremism and not just, you know,
00:36:01.900
legitimate extremism like real extremism like Islamic terrorists and ISIS,
00:36:07.860
but they're now talking about so-called far-right extremists as well,
00:36:11.880
and they're putting, you know, some of the people, some of you are alumni in that category.
00:36:15.200
So, you know, it's the establishment right and the establishment left that want censorship on social media,
00:36:23.640
and it's the anti-establishment of both sides, I think, that need to unite to fight against it.
00:36:37.740
I always want to keep you longer than I can, and I'm really grateful for your time.
00:36:42.720
Two things in Canada, and I don't know if you would have followed them because you're based,
00:36:48.800
you used to be based in the U.K., now you're in the United States.
00:36:53.680
A few months back, the Toronto Star had what I thought was a shocking story.
00:36:58.920
It was a report of when Justin Trudeau met with Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook.
00:37:05.680
And this was leaked to the Star by the Prime Minister's office.
00:37:14.360
And as you can see on the screen, the headline is basically Trudeau's telling Facebook,
00:37:19.340
if you don't fix your, quote, fake news problem, we will fix it for you through the law.
00:37:31.800
Fix it in advance of my 2019 re-election campaign.
00:37:38.780
He wanted it fixed before he was up for re-election.
00:37:41.720
If she didn't do his censorship for him, he would do it to her.
00:37:46.480
And obviously she wasn't moving quickly enough because they leaked the story to the liberal-friendly
00:37:51.420
Toronto Star, which ran it as a threat to Sandberg.
00:37:54.600
I thought it was a shocking revelation of Trudeau's thin skin and his plans.
00:38:00.740
It hasn't been followed anywhere, so that's Exhibit A.
00:38:11.340
Justin Trudeau just announced a $595 million fund for journalists, for media companies who
00:38:20.020
The equivalent in the United States, because we're one-tenth the population for the states,
00:38:29.280
But Trudeau said it's only for journalists that he could, quote, trust.
00:38:40.200
If you're trustworthy, we got $595 million for you.
00:38:44.940
And the stick is, we're going to ban you as fake news.
00:38:48.420
I think 2019 could be the year the lights go out for independent journalists.
00:38:55.080
I just, I know that sounds so pessimistic, but I just don't know what else to make of
00:39:03.620
Well, that is essentially state-run media you now have in Canada, all of it.
00:39:07.340
Because if they're all taking money from the government, they're no longer independent
00:39:10.860
So what Trudeau is doing there is essentially trying to make all of the Canadian media his
00:39:21.140
You know, in a sense they are already, I assume, because from what I hear, most media is pro-Trudeau
00:39:28.900
in the same way that most media was pro-Obama when he was in office in the U.S.
00:39:33.500
So in a sense it's already happening, but this will make it even more the case.
00:39:36.820
You know, the government paying off every single journalistic outlet.
00:39:42.520
That's making the entirety of media essentially no longer independent of the government.
00:39:50.240
It's even more incredible than pressuring Sheryl Sandro because, you know, that's happened
00:39:58.220
We've seen Silicon Valley CEOs being pressured, saying, you know, what are you doing about fake
00:40:03.320
Which, Angela Merkel, back in as early as 2015, was pressuring Mark Zuckerberg to crack
00:40:10.800
So all of these European politicians, all of these, and, you know, Canadian politicians
00:40:14.560
now also, and Democrats in the U.S. are pressuring these Silicon Valley companies to become their
00:40:22.520
And the only way to counter it, I think, is for the grassroots who do believe in Internet
00:40:28.800
freedom to rise up and demand their own legislation, their own protection from these tech companies
00:40:33.620
and their own politicians who want to use them as agents of oppression.
00:40:42.620
And sometimes I think in the luxurious, comfortable, postmodern West, we just enjoy ourselves too
00:40:52.940
We'll just watch another movie on Netflix or play another video game or just go out and
00:41:01.160
And we used to be good at fighting for freedom.
00:41:11.680
I hope, Alam, that when we talk again for our year in review next year, first of all,
00:41:16.340
I hope that we will talk again a year from now, that both of us will still be around in
00:41:22.260
And second of all, I hope that my prophecies here are wrong.
00:41:29.880
I've just made predictions that I think are dire.
00:41:32.980
And I hope and hope and hope that my predictions are false.
00:41:36.720
I have yet to see evidence to make me change my mind, though.
00:41:44.020
Yeah, certainly what I'd like to see over the next year is more.
00:41:49.560
I'd certainly like to report on more grassroots activity, because I think that's the only,
00:41:55.020
especially with the Democrats in charge of Congress, that's the only way to push back
00:41:59.580
against it and ensure there'll be an independent media on the Internet.
00:42:06.120
Because what we've seen over the past four or five years is essentially the robbery of
00:42:11.760
You know, my generation especially was given this, this, you know, this great gift of the
00:42:16.900
open platform, the Internet, where you could say whatever you want and challenge mainstream
00:42:21.880
And that's just been suddenly and rapidly taken away over the past three years.
00:42:25.400
And I think there are a lot of people in the country, in the U.S. and elsewhere who are
00:42:34.380
And it's is an existential threat to us here at The Rebel, which is, I think, is the point.
00:42:42.620
They all voluntarily want to hear what we have to say.
00:42:45.320
We have, I'll tell you, it's not much of a secret, 3.4 million people who are affiliated
00:42:50.540
with The Rebel in some way or another, whether following us on social media, who are engaged
00:42:57.040
3.4 million people, which is quite a lot for a little country like Canada, but a lot
00:43:05.800
But all it takes is one person, if they're the president of Google, YouTube, Facebook,
00:43:17.620
Alan Bokhari, the chief technology correspondent with Breitbart.com.
00:43:23.460
It's the most important political beat in the world.
00:43:27.040
And I think 2019 will be the year of reckoning.
00:43:33.200
On behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night, and