Juno News - Cities Under Siege

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:06.760 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.920 Coming up, how should we respond to protests, riots, and looting across North America?

00:00:18.360 More lockdown hypocrisy from the government and big tech censorship.

00:00:22.320 Is government the answer? Rarely.

00:00:24.140 Welcome everyone to the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:00:37.080 As I record this, things are happening across North America at such a pace that there's no point in my view even going through the latest news

00:00:45.020 because I think that by the time you listen to it, by the time you are done listening to it, things will have changed.

00:00:51.300 I'm going to talk about some of the big stories that are happening and some of the narratives that are emerging.

00:00:56.720 But I want to talk about the riots that are taking place across North America right now, mainly the United States,

00:01:03.600 but the violence, the protests, the looting in a bit more of a reflective way rather than a journalistic way.

00:01:11.340 And, you know, the benefit of this being a talk show is that I kind of have the flexibility to go wherever I want with it.

00:01:16.660 So I thank you for indulging me if you've made it this far in the show or in this particular episode.

00:01:23.600 Last week, things were very different.

00:01:26.660 When I did the last show, I actually was speaking about, I don't know if it was last show or two shows ago,

00:01:30.940 but sometime last week, I was speaking about the woman who's been minted Central Park Karen, Amy Cooper,

00:01:36.540 this woman who had called the cops on the guy and I'd made a bunch of comments. 1.00

00:01:41.100 I spoke about it at quite a bit of length, actually, about my resistance to social media mobbing

00:01:46.640 and how even if she's in the wrong, I don't like having people's lives ruined because of these mistakes.

00:01:53.400 And I got actually a lot of pushback from people, some people who said I was being defensive of a racist,

00:01:58.480 other people who were just more interested in the dog than they were in the birdwatcher.

00:02:03.540 But I bring that up now to say just how small that incident seems in light of everything that's happened

00:02:12.660 in the week since or five days since or however long it's been.

00:02:17.980 And, you know, at the time, we knew that George Floyd had been killed.

00:02:22.100 We knew that that incident had happened.

00:02:23.960 And a lot of people were viewing what happened in Central Park in the context of what had happened in Minneapolis.

00:02:29.120 And, of course, now the tensions across the country have ballooned and it's become about protesting.

00:02:35.360 But it isn't just about protesting.

00:02:37.840 Everyone knows that right now.

00:02:39.240 It's not just about people like they are in many communities across North America coming together and saying Black Lives Matter

00:02:45.940 and we need to take a stand against police brutality and we need to fight against racism and all of that,

00:02:51.200 which I think is an absolutely worthwhile thing to do.

00:02:54.940 I am, generally speaking, very pro-police.

00:02:59.440 And I think in Canada, it's easier to be pro-police because despite the fact that we have issues,

00:03:03.800 most of the issues we have in Canada, in my experience,

00:03:07.120 and I'm talking about my experience as a journalist and columnist and commentator here,

00:03:11.720 have been with the institutional sides of policing, not the officers themselves.

00:03:17.300 My issues have been with the brass, with the access to information, with the transparency, with the politics,

00:03:22.640 not with frontline officers.

00:03:24.560 And I'm not saying we don't have issues here.

00:03:26.640 I am saying that, generally speaking, in Canada, we don't have what we see in the United States all too often,

00:03:32.860 which are people that are being subject to brutality, subject to not being given the benefit of the doubt,

00:03:39.100 subject to a lot of things that we need to be resisting in society, up to and including death.

00:03:44.580 And I think George Floyd's killing last week is not a new thing.

00:03:48.380 And it's not a new thing.

00:03:50.140 And in fact, I've seen a lot of black people in my circles that have been very critical of this renewed interest in the subject almost,

00:03:57.860 not because they don't want people to pay attention to it, but because they're like, where have you all been?

00:04:02.500 This keeps happening.

00:04:04.040 And one post I saw, and I haven't received permission from the person to share it,

00:04:08.000 so I'm just going to paraphrase it here.

00:04:09.940 It said, you know, that they're basically not too optimistic because all the white people that are saying,

00:04:14.760 yeah, Black Lives Matter are going to forget and move on within a couple of days once this initial wave dies down. 0.76

00:04:21.260 And all of this is to say that right now, there is a difference between the people who are protesting,

00:04:29.000 the people who are raising an idea, a thought, a call to action, even if it's done in a very passionate or angered way,

00:04:37.140 and the people who are seeking to destroy.

00:04:39.980 And the fact that one bleeds into the other doesn't mean that they're all the same.

00:04:47.260 You know, I don't even like the term peaceful protest.

00:04:50.720 And the reason why I don't like the term peaceful protest is because I think that a protest is by its nature peaceful,

00:04:56.920 and you shouldn't have to qualify it as such.

00:04:59.240 When you have to call it a peaceful protest, it means that you can call rioting and looting a form of protest as well,

00:05:05.480 which I don't like and I don't respect.

00:05:07.200 And I don't want this to be about semantics, but I would say that, you know, the rioting is not a form of protest.

00:05:12.980 It is rioting. It is looting. It is destruction.

00:05:17.220 And there are many, many reasons why it needs to be condemned.

00:05:21.080 For starters, I mean, based on morality and on efficacy.

00:05:24.640 On morality, it's just wrong.

00:05:26.060 No one has the right to destroy another's property, to destroy another's livelihood,

00:05:29.820 whether it's through a social media mob or a literal mob, a literal mob on the streets carrying torches and lighting fires and smashing windows.

00:05:39.580 And then efficacy.

00:05:40.840 It's not even like it works.

00:05:43.180 It's not even like all of these people that are dismantling these physical structures and buildings and burning things and burning police cars and smashing the front windows of CNN.

00:05:53.120 And then it's not like they're actually winning people over.

00:05:58.400 So the problem that I have with a lot of protests and with a lot of movements is that no one,

00:06:03.760 and I don't want to say people are stupid, but no one seems to look a little bit down the line to see what it is that they want or what it is that they expect to happen.

00:06:14.320 You have to do this. 0.98

00:06:15.500 Look, I'm a big believer in the fact that you have to look two or three or four or five moves ahead.

00:06:21.640 And this is not because I'm a particularly calculating person.

00:06:24.500 I'm certainly not a good chess player.

00:06:26.320 But the one thing in my limited knowledge of chess that I've learned is that you have to look not just at the moves in front of you,

00:06:31.740 but you have to look at where all of those are going to go and where all of those are going to go.

00:06:35.340 And right now, for the people rioting, not the people protesting.

00:06:39.460 I'll get those in the moment.

00:06:40.940 For the people rioting, where do you think this is going to go?

00:06:44.880 So, you are either going to win people over or you are going to terrify them.

00:06:53.380 Are both of those victories to you?

00:06:55.900 If you've terrified people, is that a win?

00:06:58.440 Is that a victory?

00:06:59.220 I mean, right now we have people who have had to shut down their businesses for months and months and months because of COVID.

00:07:04.980 They've had to shut down their business.

00:07:06.620 They've had to surrender their livelihood.

00:07:08.160 Many of those are not going to reopen.

00:07:09.620 And now in cities like Atlanta and Minneapolis and Louisville, you have businesses that are just getting ready to maybe reopen.

00:07:17.420 And boom, all of a sudden they have to deal with civil unrest and riots.

00:07:21.280 They have to board up.

00:07:22.560 They have to shut down.

00:07:23.580 Or they have to risk just having everything in their business destroyed, trashed, stolen to such a point that insurance won't cover.

00:07:30.740 So, this is a great metaphor for 2020.

00:07:33.400 What COVID-19 won't do to you, the rioters will.

00:07:37.160 And whatever the rioters don't do, who knows what will come along down the line.

00:07:41.080 I mean, I know people were joking earlier this year about, you know, the biblical levels of plagues, you know, from coronavirus to murder hornets.

00:07:49.060 Last week there was a story I saw about coronavirus monkeys.

00:07:53.120 They were monkeys that escaped with COVID-19 samples from a lab and smashed them.

00:07:57.500 So, now we've got monkeys that are spreading COVID-19.

00:08:00.840 You know, all of the things that have happened this year that we've been able to kind of laugh at and joke about.

00:08:05.740 But what's happening now is not a joke.

00:08:08.400 What's happening now is not a fleeting thing.

00:08:11.680 What's happening now is not just an unrest.

00:08:14.540 It's the early stages of what could become a civil war.

00:08:18.400 And I don't say that lightly.

00:08:20.740 And I don't say it to sensationalize.

00:08:23.580 I say it to point out that right now, people are taking a battle-like mentality, a war-like mentality, where they're not thinking about collateral damage.

00:08:32.760 They're not thinking about the actual implications of what they're doing.

00:08:37.800 You know, for example, let's talk about the rioters here.

00:08:41.440 A lot of these people, I would say perhaps most, are not actually allies of the black community.

00:08:49.600 In fact, if you look at the pictures, most of them are not themselves black.

00:08:53.460 A lot of these are your garden-variety Antifa anarchists or people that are just complete ne'er-do-wells and criminals that want to seize this civil unrest to just get off on doing whatever it is that their criminal hearts want to do.

00:09:07.360 But these people are not and surely cannot think that they are making a point of blacks standing up for something or standing up for black people in the pursuit of something by going and stealing this, by smashing this window, by throwing bricks, by dragging police through the streets. 0.53

00:09:26.660 I mean, this video I saw was just horrific. 0.51

00:09:28.560 Police officers are on the ground being dragged through the streets.

00:09:31.560 So, from an efficacy perspective, surely no one thinks this is winning over hearts and minds.

00:09:37.580 And that's not what they want.

00:09:39.460 They want to terrorize.

00:09:40.640 They want to terrify. 0.83

00:09:41.980 And, you know, the people that are suffering, especially in communities that have a lot of minorities and communities that have large black populations, 0.63

00:09:49.680 this looting and vandalism and rioting is, of course, harming black business owners.

00:09:54.700 You know, I saw a story last week that was kind of interesting that black businesses are pretty much disproportionately affected. 0.65

00:10:03.100 Black owned businesses are disproportionately affected by COVID-19.

00:10:08.400 And this was, I think, a very jarring stat for me because, again, in Canada, we don't really speak of things along racial lines like you hear in the United States.

00:10:16.660 It was in the Washington Post, number of working black business owners falls 40% far beyond what other groups are facing, beyond the experiences of other groups.

00:10:26.640 So, already you have a disproportionate effect where black businesses are being targeted here.

00:10:31.460 It's gotten so bad with the riots and protests that even Al Sharpton, Al Sharpton, who has never met like a race-baiting race war he didn't like,

00:10:39.680 has said that the destruction of black-owned stores in Minneapolis is reckless.

00:10:43.360 So, he's understanding that, hey, you know, the people that are suffering right now are not, you know, the big whitey enemies here that you're trying to target,

00:10:52.440 but the actual people that you're targeting are the ones that you claim to protect. 0.98

00:10:57.760 And, again, these people are not stupid. 0.88

00:10:59.840 They have to know this on some level. 0.99

00:11:02.340 I saw one story, a black business owner weeps after looters destroyed the sports bar he invested his life savings to.

00:11:09.800 He said, we worked so hard to get here.

00:11:11.420 This is in Minneapolis.

00:11:13.400 Just take a look at this.

00:11:15.120 Today, we found core boy Bala, who invested his life savings into opening this sports bar, cleaning up.

00:11:21.000 While our camera was there, looters came back to try to steal his safe.

00:11:25.680 Right, trying to steal the safe.

00:11:27.480 I don't know what we're going to do.

00:11:29.480 We're going to work so hard to get here.

00:11:31.880 So hard.

00:11:32.520 I mean, the brazenness of that.

00:11:34.300 Looters, while he is there, while there is a news crew filming, coming back and trying to take aim at this man's business.

00:11:42.480 Another story that jumped out that, again, I mean, just the sheer absurdity of this.

00:11:47.580 Riots have destroyed a $30 million affordable housing project in Minneapolis.

00:11:52.420 So anything that I've ever seen, anything I've ever read has talked about the ways you lift up people in poverty, the way you lift up people who are disadvantaged is through housing.

00:12:01.100 So here you have $30 million being spent on an affordable housing project.

00:12:05.200 I don't know how many units it was going to have.

00:12:07.240 But all of a sudden, 190 units.

00:12:09.060 There we go.

00:12:09.460 And that's now destroyed because of the fires that were setting everything ablaze.

00:12:14.500 So all of a sudden, again, people that were going to be helped are now hurt by this.

00:12:18.440 The city is set back and unrest only grows.

00:12:22.020 Now, we've heard a number of reports of people that are being busted in places like Minneapolis that are from out of state.

00:12:29.920 This is why Donald Trump has talked about declaring Antifa a terrorist organization.

00:12:34.420 Look, I'm all for going after people that are sowing this sort of terror, which is what it is.

00:12:41.940 The problem with calling it an organization is that that assumes there is, you know, some organization there.

00:12:47.360 Whereas instead, you just have a bunch of people that like to pick up the brand name.

00:12:51.060 I mean, Antifa is more of a franchise than a chain.

00:12:53.580 So I don't know how effective it will be at anything.

00:12:56.400 But certainly there are people that are waving that Antifa flag that I think need to be shown the justice that they are proclaiming to stand up for and speak for.

00:13:07.840 And, you know, it's so challenging for me because all of this has now taken away from what was a very valid and many would argue a very necessary fight,

00:13:18.000 which is the fight for racial equality, the fight to stand up against police violence when it's happening.

00:13:23.280 And a lot of this comes down to, A, the need to stand up for civil liberties, B, the need to stand up for reform of the criminal justice system,

00:13:31.940 which, again, the left and the right have both failed profoundly on.

00:13:35.360 I think Trump has done more to try to move on this file than Obama did in eight years.

00:13:40.540 But ultimately, we then go back to the protest side of this.

00:13:43.200 So take the rioters out of the equation.

00:13:45.300 What are the protesters seeking?

00:13:47.420 What are they looking for?

00:13:48.600 They all say they want change, but what is it they actually want?

00:13:51.240 And this is why I find a lot of protests are lacking because they tend to reveal anger, but eventually they fizzle out.

00:13:59.940 And I don't think they really get what they want because a lot of the time it's not clearly articulated what they want.

00:14:06.420 This was, I think, the most absurd part of this.

00:14:08.840 So there was a video that was posted by former presidential candidate Kamala Harris,

00:14:13.520 and it was posted, I believe, by Kamala Harris, of Kamala Harris, protesting outside of the White House.

00:14:20.440 And I pointed out about this on Twitter.

00:14:22.920 Now, she wasn't one of the ones storming the gate to the White House.

00:14:25.600 We saw that.

00:14:26.280 I mean, Donald Trump, actually, I was reading, had to go into the bunker because they were concerned that perhaps these rioters might breach the White House.

00:14:33.660 But the Secret Service was able to hold them back.

00:14:35.640 All was well there.

00:14:36.480 So Kamala Harris wasn't one of the ones with, you know, the pitchfork and the torch. 0.93

00:14:40.280 But she was there protesting, clapping along, chanting along, and probably with a security detail that you can see is not on camera.

00:14:48.200 Maybe they're the ones taking the video.

00:14:49.620 Who knows?

00:14:50.660 But I'm thinking here, these people are protesting for changes to the system.

00:14:57.360 You are a United States senator.

00:15:00.040 You are the system.

00:15:01.700 Like, you are the system.

00:15:03.120 What on earth are you protesting?

00:15:04.340 And I know that the Republicans are in power right now, but I am sorry.

00:15:07.880 An individual United States senator carries a lot of power.

00:15:11.220 So these people are protesting to get people like you to pay attention, to get people like you to do something about it.

00:15:18.440 So why are you out there on the streets clapping?

00:15:21.080 Where's your bill?

00:15:22.840 Where is your bill?

00:15:24.120 What is it that you're going to do?

00:15:25.280 You are the system.

00:15:26.240 They want changes to the system.

00:15:27.820 What are you going to champion for it?

00:15:29.380 And I'll give her a bit of credit because Kamala Harris has been there since 2017.

00:15:33.420 So she's not one of these people like Joe Biden that's been in the Senate for, I don't know, like 72,000 years since dinosaurs roamed the halls of Congress.

00:15:41.580 He's been a United States senator.

00:15:43.480 And anything he says that, you know, the system hasn't done, he's responsible for because he's been in that for decades.

00:15:49.920 Whereas Harris, okay, she's been there a lesser period of time, but before that she was a criminal prosecutor.

00:15:56.260 She has, again, done more to incarcerate and target the people she's claiming to speak up for than the people, than a lot of the people that she's protesting against with them. 0.98

00:16:07.160 So all of this is to say, and it's not that she doesn't have a right to protest,

00:16:10.680 is that all of those protesters should instead be turning to her and say, oh, yeah, we're glad you're on side.

00:16:16.200 What are you going to do for us?

00:16:17.980 It's easy to yell.

00:16:19.480 It's easy to shout.

00:16:20.400 It's easy to torch something.

00:16:21.660 It's easy to steal something.

00:16:23.040 It's a lot harder to be part of a solution.

00:16:25.340 So when people who are in positions of power are going down this road of slacktivism and hashtagging and chanting and doing all this,

00:16:35.120 when people who are, and it's not just Kamala Harris, by the way, she's just the one that was in the crowd.

00:16:39.060 But when people who are in positions of power feel like they need to protest, I'm like, wait, what are the protests for?

00:16:47.600 The protests are to get the attention of the people in charge and get them to do something.

00:16:51.920 Now, what that something is, there is a lot of gap.

00:16:54.800 There are a lot of gaps there of what it could be.

00:16:57.620 But the people in positions of power to start protesting fails to accept that they themselves have power.

00:17:05.040 They have the ability to make a change.

00:17:07.220 And then we get back to this very uncomfortable and I will say unpleasant point that I don't know what the change is.

00:17:15.540 I don't.

00:17:16.460 I honestly have no idea what the change is.

00:17:18.620 And I truly, truly wish that anyone who is a member of the black community or another minority community,

00:17:25.760 if you have concrete solutions, please let me know.

00:17:29.100 And I will read them.

00:17:30.160 I make you this promise.

00:17:31.100 I will read them on my show because I want a solution to this.

00:17:35.380 The George Floyd killing was exactly that.

00:17:38.320 It was a killing.

00:17:39.120 It wasn't a death that we can just say, oh, well, you know, that's just what happens when you resist.

00:17:43.700 I mean, it's not even like from some of the videos, like he was resisting, by the way.

00:17:48.840 So in this particular case, you had this incident that happened.

00:17:51.820 You had outrage.

00:17:52.860 You had charges laid.

00:17:54.960 This happened very swiftly.

00:17:56.800 Charges being laid didn't ameliorate the anger.

00:18:01.340 In fact, the anger only went up in volume anyway, just like it didn't.

00:18:05.720 And this comes in a string of incidents that have really captivated that racial tension,

00:18:11.060 such as the Arbery shooting in Georgia a couple of weeks ago,

00:18:14.920 where, again, justice was very swift to start acting.

00:18:18.600 And I don't proclaim to know a lot about the facts of these cases because I'm seeing what everyone else is seeing.

00:18:24.660 But certainly in the Minneapolis case, in the George Floyd case,

00:18:28.240 it was very clear that what had happened shouldn't have happened.

00:18:32.100 And unfortunately, it's taken a lot of rioting right now,

00:18:38.400 which has now taken away from the serious discussions,

00:18:43.660 which has taken away from the ability for people to have adult discussions.

00:18:47.860 You can feel that what happened to Floyd was an injustice

00:18:50.800 and similarly feel like what's happening to burning cities right now is an injustice.

00:18:56.660 And you can also do what I'm doing, which is sitting back from a place of safety right now

00:19:01.060 and saying, OK, this is going to do more to set back the real discussions,

00:19:06.020 because now it causes people to turn on the protesters,

00:19:09.860 because the protesters and the rioters get lumped into the same category.

00:19:14.620 And, you know, I have a lot of respect for individual police departments,

00:19:18.920 police officers that are doing their best to de-escalate now.

00:19:22.160 And I should qualify this by saying that I'm generally not a fan of virtue signaling policing.

00:19:28.000 I'm really not.

00:19:28.960 I don't like when police start to become community liaisons over actual law enforcement officers.

00:19:35.640 However, I can't argue with results.

00:19:38.100 You have some cities that are right now in flame and other cities

00:19:41.280 where police and protesters are marching alongside each other.

00:19:44.540 Now, I do think that some of the criticisms I would put here

00:19:47.080 are the same as the one with Kamala Harris, where, I mean, they're protesting you.

00:19:51.020 So you don't need to be marching with them.

00:19:53.040 You can just do what they're asking if you want to play ball with them.

00:19:56.400 You know, one story here from Fox 11 online.

00:20:00.800 The police chief in Green Bay, Wisconsin, is marching with protesters.

00:20:06.460 The protests were going on.

00:20:08.880 They invited police.

00:20:09.860 They said, listen, we want to work with you.

00:20:11.860 They had, it sounds like, a very constructive approach to this.

00:20:14.800 And then the Green Bay police chief, Andrew Smith, was joining the march.

00:20:18.340 And there's a photo right there.

00:20:19.780 Another example of this, not far from me in Michigan, in Genesee County,

00:20:24.640 the sheriff of Genesee County decided he would walk with the protesters.

00:20:29.500 He addressed them.

00:20:31.020 He said, what can we do?

00:20:32.400 We love you.

00:20:32.960 How can we help you?

00:20:33.740 And they said, walk with us.

00:20:34.820 And he said, OK.

00:20:35.840 And there he is.

00:20:36.560 He's walking with them.

00:20:37.280 He's taking selfies with people.

00:20:39.080 You know, all of these things, they make for nice moments.

00:20:42.420 They make for nice stories.

00:20:43.540 I don't know if they change anything.

00:20:47.880 Because right now, it's de-escalation.

00:20:51.620 In the future, who knows?

00:20:53.520 Who knows what it's going to be?

00:20:55.480 And this is where a lot of this becomes empty.

00:20:57.940 If the problem is the system, and you need systemic change, then you can't just have a

00:21:03.840 wave of protests and expect that things are going to be fine moving forward.

00:21:07.040 If it's legislative change you need, you need legislation.

00:21:10.280 If it's cultural change you need, you need cultural change. 0.59

00:21:13.260 That's prolonged.

00:21:14.300 That takes a lot of time.

00:21:15.800 And cultural change is not going to happen.

00:21:18.320 Because the root of change is winning hearts and minds.

00:21:21.060 That's not going to happen if people are turning against you because they see you lobbing

00:21:25.380 Molotov cocktails.

00:21:27.640 So this is, I guess, the question that I would put to people.

00:21:30.960 And this is not a challenge in the sense that I'm not criticizing or critiquing.

00:21:35.300 But I'm saying, what do you want?

00:21:39.280 And I've seen a lot of suggestions to this that are more abstract.

00:21:43.980 I've seen some that are very firm.

00:21:46.400 Like, hey, we want you to stop killing us. 0.98

00:21:48.620 This is black people talking to police. 0.99

00:21:50.160 That's what we want. 1.00

00:21:50.800 We want you to stop killing us.

00:21:52.540 What gets us to that point?

00:21:54.880 Is it about training for police officers?

00:21:57.340 Is it about attracting a different type of police officer?

00:22:00.140 Is it about having more racial diversity in police forces?

00:22:04.120 Is it about having greater checks and balances on the legislative side?

00:22:08.640 I know Justin Amash, who is a congressman, has talked about removing a little bit of the

00:22:13.540 automatic protection that is afforded to law enforcement officers when they are facing

00:22:18.140 an incident like that.

00:22:19.040 So is it about stiffer penalties so that police will think twice?

00:22:22.240 You know, I think that there are different types of people that are attracted to policing.

00:22:27.480 Like anything.

00:22:28.400 I think you get people that are true community servants.

00:22:31.120 They want to serve their community and you get people that want to walk around and have

00:22:35.260 power and have a badge and a gun.

00:22:37.100 I mean, that's the reality.

00:22:38.180 People in positions of authority.

00:22:40.240 Look at politicians.

00:22:41.460 I mean, you get the same dynamic in politicians.

00:22:44.080 Some people want to serve.

00:22:45.380 Other people want power.

00:22:46.880 I think that's going to happen in anything where you have a level of authority.

00:22:51.260 Unfortunately, the authority that police carries is coming with violence sometimes.

00:22:55.860 So all of this is to say that right now we are facing, and by the way, I think a lot

00:23:04.900 of the Black Lives Matter protesters who are genuinely trying to advance a really solid

00:23:10.200 and sound vision are the ones that should be condemning the rioters.

00:23:14.000 And many are.

00:23:15.100 And many are.

00:23:16.000 But I think we need more to.

00:23:17.280 And when people start saying, well, I'm against rioting, but I'm against looting, but I'm

00:23:23.240 like, no, no, no.

00:23:24.220 That's the same as what you say all lives matter is on the other side, which is just refusing

00:23:29.160 to call a spade a spade and address an issue head on.

00:23:32.220 So everyone on both sides of the legitimate protest needs to be condemning the rioters and

00:23:37.160 the looting and standing firm against it.

00:23:39.440 And when I've seen protesters and I will say even armed militia guarding businesses, I'm

00:23:45.060 very grateful.

00:23:45.780 And with all the horror, with all the terror, with all the fire, with all the disruption,

00:23:50.500 I wanted to end with some stories of human grace here, if I can, because this is going

00:23:56.720 to be so profoundly important if society is to weather this.

00:24:00.080 And in particular, in Louisville, Kentucky, where a police officer got separated from his

00:24:05.840 unit in the midst of the chaos outside Birno's, which is a pizzeria in Little Sicily.

00:24:11.260 And this photo serves as a great ad for Birno's Little Sicily.

00:24:14.560 Police officer got separated from his unit in the chaos.

00:24:18.460 A group of men, all of whom are black, formed a human shield around the police officer, protecting

00:24:25.300 the police officer from the rioters that would have done God knows what to him.

00:24:29.700 And we can see examples of that from looking at, like I mentioned earlier, the video of

00:24:33.360 the cop being dragged through the street.

00:24:34.840 So here you have the protesters who are arguably protesting against police that decide to link

00:24:39.500 arms and protect a police officer from horror.

00:24:42.920 You can have a humanity, even in the face of those you disagree with, and an understanding

00:24:47.700 that we are all in this together.

00:24:51.140 We'll be back in a moment with more of The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:24:53.900 Stay tuned.

00:24:54.400 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:25:00.980 We are back.

00:25:02.100 This is The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:25:03.800 One thing that a lot of the protests have revealed, apart from the, you know, crux of them, is the

00:25:10.120 hypocrisy about getting together, about mass gatherings.

00:25:13.920 So when people were protesting the lockdown itself, when people have been going to Queen's

00:25:18.980 Park or Parliament Hill or rallying in cities across America, all of the lefties were saying,

00:25:24.360 oh, no, no, we can't do you.

00:25:25.280 You can't do this.

00:25:25.940 This is irresponsible.

00:25:26.800 You can't be all together.

00:25:27.900 But when they're protesting for a cause that the left is behind, of course, you know, you

00:25:33.100 don't need to worry about it, which I find to be absolutely great, because there was a

00:25:38.960 bit of a standoff on Twitter between Emmett McFarlane, who's a perennial commentator of all

00:25:43.880 things Canadian politics, who was accusing Robbie Suave, who's actually going to be on the show

00:25:48.980 in a bit, to talk about something unrelated.

00:25:52.000 So Robbie had tweeted, the media said reopening Florida beaches was an invitation to mass death.

00:25:56.620 Why is it wrong to hang out at a beach or a park, but not to gather in public and shout,

00:26:00.680 I can't breathe over and over again.

00:26:02.540 And Emmett McFarlane, of course, is mocking that saying, why is the beach hangout not the

00:26:06.320 same, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:26:07.500 And Robbie's response is great.

00:26:09.340 It's all the same to the disease, my dude.

00:26:11.180 So yeah, if the virus is going to kill grandma, if anyone goes to the beach, surely it will

00:26:16.740 also have very negative consequences to people that are gathering for a mass protest.

00:26:22.020 So it's interesting how the science depends on the particular political persuasion of the

00:26:27.660 protest.

00:26:28.940 But I mean, really, that's all besides the point, because government officials are still telling

00:26:33.320 everyone officially to, quote, stay home, stay lives and all that stuff.

00:26:37.460 But then we had this photo that was posted on the weekend by the Dows Lake Pavilion, which

00:26:43.580 is an individual place that does, I guess, boating and water sports and stuff in the Ottawa

00:26:49.080 area.

00:26:49.460 I used to live in Ottawa, but fortunately, I know very little about the city otherwise.

00:26:54.100 And they were promoting socially distanced kayaking with Catherine McKenna, Patty Hajdu,

00:26:59.600 Harjit Sajjan, Mona Fortier, and David Lamedi.

00:27:03.060 And they said, there's nothing like a little socially distanced R&R out on the water.

00:27:06.300 Thanks for everything.

00:27:08.360 So look, I'm all for getting out and doing some kayaking.

00:27:12.540 I'm not very good at it.

00:27:13.920 I tend to roll over and it doesn't end well.

00:27:16.160 So I don't really care about kayaking and politicians doing kayaking and all of that.

00:27:22.100 But it is really funny that these people who are saying a day earlier that, no, no, no,

00:27:25.940 we don't need parliament.

00:27:26.820 We're all so busy dealing with things in our own ridings.

00:27:29.460 The next day are all cabinet members having basically a cabinet meeting on the lake, which

00:27:35.680 is nice, except without the meeting part.

00:27:37.760 They're all just hanging out there.

00:27:39.200 And again, you know, as Canadians still try to get the right in many parts of the country

00:27:44.000 to go camping, to do a lot of outdoor things, which are reopening gradually.

00:27:48.760 It's kind of interesting that these lawmakers who have been telling everyone else, no, no,

00:27:52.300 no, stay home.

00:27:52.980 Don't even go outside, are now out there on the water having a nice little kayaking trip.

00:27:57.660 So rules for me and not for thee, which was the title of a previous edition of the show

00:28:01.960 and one that I feel like I keep wanting to bring back.

00:28:04.980 But but alas, you can only use it once.

00:28:07.780 So let's talk about this story here for a moment, because right now the government is

00:28:13.880 still facing a bit of a challenge in where it goes from here in the pandemic.

00:28:18.420 And we know the economic issues are all going to be there.

00:28:21.400 But I every now and then get polls and I get them because I'm signed up for somehow, I

00:28:28.000 don't know, I'm signed up for one of the big polling companies, a poll list.

00:28:31.780 So I'll get phone calls and emails every now and then.

00:28:34.040 And I like it because it's always good to find out what questions people are asking.

00:28:38.200 And one in particular jumped out at me because ECOS, which does a lot of the government polls,

00:28:43.920 has been doing these, they call them environment scans, I think, or public opinion scans,

00:28:49.520 where they they basically just at random points in time, send out a bunch of questions on behalf

00:28:54.280 of the federal government to gauge where people stand on a bunch of issues that the federal

00:28:58.440 government is dealing with at that particular moment.

00:29:01.080 So clearly right now, that's the coronavirus pandemic.

00:29:04.400 Now, I can't say with 100% certainty that this particular poll was on behalf of the federal

00:29:11.020 government.

00:29:11.440 It may not be, but I'm pretty sure it is based on the wording and the types of questions and

00:29:16.480 all of that, and it's from ECOS, the source is me, I got it myself.

00:29:19.940 So it wasn't sent to me by someone where I can't verify it.

00:29:24.420 And a lot of it was pretty standard, you know, what do you think about this?

00:29:27.180 What do you think about that?

00:29:28.320 But there were two pages that really give us a glimpse of what the government is going

00:29:32.980 to try to do potentially in response to COVID-19.

00:29:37.040 One of them is on climate change.

00:29:39.280 The question, there have been some discussions about whether the federal government should focus

00:29:43.380 its economic relief efforts on clean energy to help deal with climate change and move

00:29:47.740 us to a greener economy.

00:29:49.000 Please rate the extent, yada, yada, yada.

00:29:51.980 And the questions are kind of leading or the statements that you have to respond to.

00:29:56.660 Much of the talk about climate change is exaggerated and we shouldn't act too quickly.

00:30:00.820 I think the COVID-19 crisis has given us the opportunity to invest in clean energy and

00:30:06.120 fundamentally reshape the economy.

00:30:08.240 I don't believe all this talk about greenhouse gas emissions causing global climate change.

00:30:12.340 I think focusing federal government relief efforts on clean energy will help with both

00:30:16.560 economic recovery and environmental sustainability and so on.

00:30:21.900 So for starters, they're just poorly worded questions.

00:30:24.300 You have two options.

00:30:25.500 You can either be a climate change denier or you can think that the government needs to

00:30:29.480 be spending every single penny it has and more on climate change programs.

00:30:34.540 And the reason for that is that, you know, there's no time like the present.

00:30:37.820 So the government is basically, if this is a government poll, which I suspect it is, the

00:30:42.800 government is basically trying to shoehorn climate change programs, which are historically

00:30:47.160 expensive and ineffective under the guise of COVID-19 relief and economic relief.

00:30:53.640 So unless you work for the green energy sector, you're probably not going to be getting much

00:30:57.560 support in the future.

00:30:59.160 The other question I thought was very interesting.

00:31:02.020 And this is one that I know will rub a lot of people the wrong way.

00:31:06.180 Please rate the extent to which you agree or disagree with the following statements.

00:31:10.440 One line in particular, it will two lines, I guess it is every Canadian's civic duty to

00:31:16.120 get the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as it becomes available.

00:31:19.400 And the other one here, social distancing rules should be kept in place until a COVID-19 vaccine

00:31:24.960 is available.

00:31:25.900 So this tells us about the moving goalposts of this.

00:31:28.560 At first, it was, we just need to flatten the curve.

00:31:30.980 And then once the curve was flattened, it's no, no, no, we need to stay a little bit longer

00:31:34.300 just until the things level out a bit more.

00:31:37.360 And then it was, okay, well, now you got to stay until the vaccine is available.

00:31:41.100 And now people are talking about social distancing until the virus is eradicated altogether, which

00:31:46.020 should be, you know, at some time, you know, 2247.

00:31:49.940 That's not a time of day, that's a year. 0.94

00:31:51.420 The year 2247, I'm sure we can all go back to our normal lives.

00:31:54.900 But this is a very concerning line of questioning, pitching social distancing and vaccines as

00:32:03.240 civic duty, as civic duty as though to say that you are not a Canadian, you're not a patriotic

00:32:09.140 if you don't want to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

00:32:11.360 Despite the fact that a lot of people are uneasy about vaccines themselves, a lot of people are

00:32:16.880 uneasy about Chinese made vaccines, which it sounds like the coronavirus vaccine may well 1.00

00:32:22.820 be.

00:32:23.780 And also the word mandatory appears in this polling page with regard to testing, saying

00:32:29.540 that testing should become mandatory depending on where you rank your response on that statement.

00:32:35.640 But that basically is showing us where we're going here, that if you're concerned about civil

00:32:40.500 liberties and the civil liberties of having to stay home, of not being able to go to whatever

00:32:45.200 store you want and all that stuff, there could be bigger challenges ahead.

00:32:49.340 So again, I want to preface, well, not preface because I guess I'm like five minutes into

00:32:54.040 it now, but I want to establish that this is not about using these as though they are

00:32:59.200 policy because they aren't at this point.

00:33:01.400 But generally speaking, policy is a bit downstream of polling.

00:33:04.700 And a lot of the times it's governments trying to get the political cover to do what they

00:33:09.300 already want.

00:33:10.240 So don't be surprised if you see something along these lines start coming down the pipeline.

00:33:17.560 And that's something we got to be very mindful of because when it comes to vaccinations, and

00:33:21.800 I don't want to say this, I am not someone who is anti-vaccination.

00:33:26.320 I'm not anti-vax at all.

00:33:28.520 I am anti-mandatory about things like that.

00:33:31.680 And the second you start robbing people of their autonomy, especially on things like this,

00:33:36.180 because if we wouldn't see a flu shot mandatory, I don't think we should be making coronavirus

00:33:40.480 vaccines mandatory as well.

00:33:42.380 And that doesn't seem like an unreasonable proposition.

00:33:45.440 But if it starts becoming this civic duty narrative, which, by the way, is the precursor

00:33:50.320 to making something mandatory anyway.

00:33:52.260 But if it starts to become where this narrative unfolds that you have to, and if you don't,

00:33:56.400 I mean, like all of a sudden, it's going to start being like masks where, you know, people

00:33:59.940 are publicly shaming those who aren't wearing masks.

00:34:03.540 And by the way, I mean, when I when I've gone out, I haven't worn a mask.

00:34:06.260 And I'm seeing more and more people who are, and I think most people just mind their own

00:34:11.480 business with it.

00:34:12.140 I was at Home Depot the other day, and I walked the wrong way down one of the aisles that had

00:34:17.840 the arrows or whatever, which no one actually pays attention to.

00:34:20.640 And I actually saw a guy shake his head at me and kind of look down to the thing.

00:34:27.340 Now, maybe he was just thinking of something in his mind, and the answer was no, and it had

00:34:30.960 nothing to do with me.

00:34:31.860 I don't care.

00:34:32.360 But but I was I went down the wrong way and otherwise empty aisle that he was coming out

00:34:36.280 of.

00:34:36.480 So there was no interjection or interaction with anyone else except for his little head

00:34:41.760 shake.

00:34:42.920 And I in my mind, I'm like, I haven't had a good fight in a while.

00:34:45.980 So in a mind, I was like, I was like, oh, I just dare you.

00:34:48.840 I just dare you to open your mouth.

00:34:50.840 And then he didn't.

00:34:51.640 So I went back and I still haven't had my fight yet.

00:34:53.940 So if you want to pick a fight with me, I actually know I'm doing I'm very convivial today.

00:34:57.660 So don't worry about it.

00:34:58.700 But but again, you know, it's like, I think it's going to be like that with masks.

00:35:01.660 At some point, I'm sure someone is going to be told in public, you need to be wearing

00:35:05.120 a mask.

00:35:05.860 And a lot of this comes because the government has been giving just absolutely incoherent

00:35:10.420 message on everything.

00:35:12.480 I mean, for example, like, remember, the government was saying masks make things worse than, you

00:35:17.480 know, wear one if you want one to now you need to wear one.

00:35:19.740 And then they went back down to we don't know what they're going to do.

00:35:23.100 Fauci had made some comment last week about masks being more symbolic than anything else,

00:35:27.520 which I'm like, you know, there's enough symbolism in life.

00:35:29.700 I don't think you need to have a mask that's in high demand to make a symbolic statement

00:35:34.960 about something.

00:35:36.460 But all of this is to say that, you know, you're going to see the same things unfold.

00:35:41.620 And when you start to have peer pressure become the guiding force, no one is going to end up

00:35:46.940 in a particularly good place.

00:35:48.720 We'll be back in just a moment with more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:35:52.460 Stay tuned.

00:35:52.880 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:36:03.800 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show here.

00:36:06.300 Last week, Donald Trump had a standoff with Twitter, his preferred mode of communication,

00:36:12.420 having not a great amount of confidence in the mainstream media to get his message out.

00:36:16.420 He had labeled tweets.

00:36:18.820 That was what happened.

00:36:19.620 Twitter had labeled his tweets at one point misinformation, at another point put a big

00:36:24.400 old warning label in front of it.

00:36:26.500 This was the straw that broke the camel's back as far as Donald Trump's tolerance for big tech.

00:36:31.420 So he threatened and delivered an executive order that would aim to remove some of the

00:36:36.300 protections, some of the liability protections that social medias employ, social media companies

00:36:41.420 employ.

00:36:41.840 The basis of this is that they identify as platforms rather than publishers and should

00:36:47.740 be basically subjected to a level playing field in that they shouldn't have to be accountable

00:36:53.180 for what users post on their platforms.

00:36:55.300 And the goal of this is to force them to not censor content.

00:37:00.020 Conservatives oftentimes very critical, myself included, of an anti-conservative bias from big

00:37:05.380 tech.

00:37:05.780 But the problem is, I think the cure is worse than the disease when it comes in the form of

00:37:10.580 government regulation.

00:37:11.780 So how significant is this platform publisher divide?

00:37:15.420 And more importantly, is the big tech oligopoly, if you will, a justification for government

00:37:21.720 to crack down?

00:37:22.680 I want to talk about this with Reason.com editor Robbie Suave, author of a fantastic book,

00:37:28.420 Panic Attack, Young Radicals in the Age of Trump, and also has another book in the pipeline

00:37:33.500 on big tech itself.

00:37:35.160 Robbie, good to talk to you.

00:37:36.120 Thanks very much for coming on today.

00:37:37.880 My pleasure.

00:37:38.380 Good to speak with you.

00:37:39.160 You and I had talked about this very briefly in a social setting a couple of months back,

00:37:43.920 and I had shared with you something that I know you've dealt with yourself, which is

00:37:47.760 this frustration with people on the right who are in every other area, anti-regulation,

00:37:52.880 anti-government crackdowns.

00:37:54.460 But on social media, they tend to not only turn a blind eye to it, but as we're seeing

00:37:58.660 in the last week, actively encourage government to intervene in what are ostensibly private

00:38:04.080 companies here.

00:38:05.160 What's your response to this executive order last week?

00:38:08.100 Yeah, I mean, I think the best thing you can say about the executive order is that it won't

00:38:12.820 have any practical effect, because it was sort of empty.

00:38:17.320 It really just asked Ajit Pai to look into the issue, didn't compel him to do anything.

00:38:23.660 Again, you would actually have to have Congress look into this to seriously do anything.

00:38:27.860 The president only has so much authority to unilaterally command investigations and compel

00:38:32.860 new regulation.

00:38:34.580 Yeah, so like you said, you would think you could fall back on principle to be the reason

00:38:40.460 conservatives shouldn't take this series of steps against big tech.

00:38:45.380 But principle isn't the only one.

00:38:47.700 Practicality is another.

00:38:49.120 It's like it's simply not true.

00:38:50.540 So, of course, you can find examples of mistreatment of conservative speech by the tech

00:38:56.000 platform.

00:38:56.560 Certainly you can.

00:38:57.800 But it's not true.

00:38:59.020 I don't think it's true.

00:38:59.960 On the whole, that social media has been bad for conservative speech or conservative media.

00:39:04.820 On the contrary, it's frankly the opposite.

00:39:07.960 I mean, Facebook is routinely a place where conservative news websites like the Daily Wire,

00:39:14.140 Ben Shapiro, for instance, they perform terrifically on that platform.

00:39:18.240 The kind of gatekeeping of the traditional media, which is much more hostile to conservative

00:39:24.640 views, you get around that by being able to air your views on social media.

00:39:30.400 So that's not to say they're beyond reproach and there aren't some legitimate criticisms,

00:39:35.120 but I'm just, I'm really astounded at how easily and quickly and automatically people

00:39:40.720 like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, et cetera, are reaching for government intervention as the

00:39:48.600 solution here.

00:39:49.800 Yeah.

00:39:50.360 And I mean, I would take a bit more of a critical look than you tend to of social media companies,

00:39:56.600 because I do think there is an anti-conservative bias.

00:39:59.640 But at the same time, I do take your point.

00:40:01.660 And you look at Donald Trump and Twitter, for example.

00:40:03.900 I mean, up until last week, Donald Trump has had quite a positive relationship with Twitter.

00:40:08.780 In fact, in many cases, Twitter can be linked to his rise to the presidency.

00:40:13.220 So you can't say that the conservatives are being completely stonewalled on these platforms.

00:40:18.320 I guess what it comes down to is that a lot of people on the right are saying that, okay,

00:40:22.180 it's not that we want government to regulate.

00:40:24.620 We just want a level playing field, this platform publisher divide.

00:40:28.260 And I know that there is a protection carved out there for platforms.

00:40:32.040 But I also think people tend to overstate the importance of that distinction.

00:40:36.360 Right.

00:40:38.360 So this is the Section 230, the law that has to do with this.

00:40:43.520 It's a confusing issue.

00:40:45.840 A lot of people think that it was explicitly, and conservatives often speak about it like

00:40:50.800 it was this.

00:40:51.840 What the law said is you have to be a platform or a publisher.

00:40:54.300 And if you're a platform, you get all these special protections from liability, from being

00:40:59.240 sued for having false statements or something like that appear on your platform.

00:41:02.820 Whereas if you're a publisher, you're doing some kind of moderation, some kind of curation

00:41:07.380 the way like a book publisher or a library would do, and then you would be liable.

00:41:11.140 So conservatives are saying, well, they're acting like a publisher because they're taking

00:41:14.440 action against some speech or in a politically non-neutral way.

00:41:20.960 But of course, the law didn't actually compel neutrality.

00:41:25.400 It was not part of the law.

00:41:26.260 That might be a good thing.

00:41:27.240 So there's a little bit of wishing Section 230 said something other than what it does

00:41:31.260 say.

00:41:32.060 I won't go so far as to say Section 230 is perfect or something.

00:41:36.280 There are changes I would make to it if I was the one altering it.

00:41:42.860 I think you could have more insistence on privacy protections, for instance, would be something

00:41:48.560 I might like to see in my ideal version of the law.

00:41:51.900 But the issue is I would be also fearful that any attempt to rewrite the law would get rid

00:41:58.980 of these protections in a very harmful way because, look, the result of making Facebook,

00:42:07.720 Twitter, et cetera, become more liable for speech that takes place on their platform, the obvious

00:42:13.480 result of that would be more censorship, would be more moderation, more sort of borderline

00:42:20.840 kind of right-wing edgy speech.

00:42:23.320 That's the stuff that would go under a ... I mean, there could be Trump tweets that are

00:42:28.900 up now that would not be up under a regime where Twitter feels like it could be sued

00:42:34.180 by anyone who's a ... I mean, let's think of Joe Scarborough and that series of tweets

00:42:39.160 we had last week.

00:42:41.080 So it's fine to complain about the unequal treatment, the bias.

00:42:46.640 You know, we can talk about how we address that.

00:42:49.000 But again, this seems like a taking away Section 230 in the kind of blanket way that, again,

00:42:58.300 Josh Hawley has talked about.

00:42:59.980 I don't think the consequence of that would be better landscape for conservative speech

00:43:04.160 on the internet, but in fact, quite the opposite.

00:43:06.980 Yeah.

00:43:07.200 All of a sudden, you force risk aversion to become more of a priority than an open platform,

00:43:12.940 however many holes there are in that idea of a completely open platform now.

00:43:17.800 But I guess where I would ask you about this is that we've had social media companies like

00:43:23.720 Facebook, like YouTube, like Twitter that have gone after ... I'll use extreme examples

00:43:28.460 here.

00:43:28.740 I know they don't represent the mainstream right, but you know, you're Alex Jones types.

00:43:32.880 And I mean, maybe not even ... Maybe that's an example that I think establishes them all

00:43:36.360 here.

00:43:36.980 And my issue with this as a free market person is that I don't think that people should

00:43:41.020 be building their business models based on other companies and based on other companies'

00:43:45.300 business models, because if you have a path to success that relies on YouTube getting

00:43:50.800 you views or Facebook getting you shares, eventually you're at the mercy of those things.

00:43:55.360 But do you think there is some truth to this idea that these companies are effectively public

00:44:00.640 squares now?

00:44:01.380 And it's not to say that they need to be subjected to the regulations and restrictions that governments

00:44:05.960 are, but that their role in society is public platforms.

00:44:10.260 I mean, obviously they are functioning to a degree as the public platform.

00:44:15.500 And, you know, Mark Zuckerberg has said, for instance, that he, to some degree, views Facebook

00:44:20.260 as the public, the public square.

00:44:24.120 You know, they offer their terms of service, right?

00:44:28.140 They outline what are the rules and procedures under which you can operate on this platform.

00:44:33.640 I generally think they should be open, honest, and transparent about what those rules are.

00:44:39.000 They should be clearly stated.

00:44:40.680 I think if they take action that is outside the bounds of what those terms are, they should

00:44:46.140 be criticized for it.

00:44:47.600 It's still, though, it's like difficult to hold them accountable in a like violation of

00:44:52.060 a contract circumstance because you're, again, you're not paying for these services.

00:44:55.520 It would be a different thing if you're paying for the service and you could, you know, you

00:44:58.760 could present some, well, this was fraudulent behavior or something.

00:45:01.040 But, again, this is a free platform that was provided to you by a company that doesn't

00:45:05.380 charge you for it.

00:45:06.520 That's a tremendous, you know, that's a tremendous boon, in fact, to a lot of independent journalists,

00:45:11.540 self-published people, conservative commentators, activists, even non-conservatives, people

00:45:16.860 of all kinds who have an ability to transmit information, to communicate with other people.

00:45:23.840 And I agree there is some bias.

00:45:25.760 I think often the bias is on the part of the users, though.

00:45:28.500 A lot of conservatives have this idea that there's some cabal, like Jack Dorsey is sitting

00:45:33.620 in his, you know, his evil tower and deciding what speech to go after.

00:45:39.760 Maybe that's true in some narrow cases.

00:45:41.980 That might have been true with the Trump fact check.

00:45:44.280 But a lot of it is it's complaint driven, right?

00:45:47.100 The platforms don't do anything until someone complains.

00:45:49.700 It might be the case that very progressive minded people are more litigious.

00:45:53.280 They're reporting more speech they don't like and then actions taken against it.

00:45:57.260 So it produces a kind of de facto bias.

00:46:01.700 But it's actually not de jure bias.

00:46:03.800 It's subtly different than that.

00:46:06.980 So that's an issue with, you know, YouTube has, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of

00:46:12.220 new hours of content, like every couple seconds, something like that.

00:46:16.280 There's no way they can moderate.

00:46:18.380 They can check all that on the front end.

00:46:19.900 They have to let it go up.

00:46:21.040 And then they'll take action once there's complaints.

00:46:23.880 So if you if you made them liable or responsible, I mean, how would YouTube even operate?

00:46:28.320 They would have to review all the all the footage before it goes up.

00:46:32.140 I mean, it would I don't think do we want that?

00:46:34.360 I don't think conservatives should want that to be the case.

00:46:36.780 I mean, you know, Prager University's complaints about YouTube notwithstanding.

00:46:41.260 That seems like a recipe for disaster to me.

00:46:43.980 There are certain areas of the Facebook and Twitter experience that are very much human

00:46:50.120 curated.

00:46:50.880 I mean, Twitter moments is one example where you've got people at Twitter that are trying

00:46:54.760 to craft a narrative.

00:46:55.960 And I don't mean that in the sinister cabal way, but but just a narrative of tweets that

00:46:59.620 tell a story of a news event on Facebook.

00:47:02.180 You have very similar things.

00:47:03.900 We know there's some human intervention in what's trending or not.

00:47:06.960 I guess the question would be, does that make them by definition publishers?

00:47:11.640 Because they're choosing what to amplify and what to share.

00:47:15.140 Now, whether or not that that should make a difference as far as regulation, it's a different

00:47:18.380 question.

00:47:19.220 But I do think that there is, by the company's own admission, a level of a human curation

00:47:24.780 of the user experience.

00:47:27.540 Right.

00:47:28.160 And in truth, Section 230 was specifically designed to make it so that the platforms could

00:47:33.840 do some amount of curation without being treated as publishers.

00:47:38.520 That's what actually prompted Section 230, because there was a court decision where they

00:47:42.660 told I can't remember which platform it was, but they told them that, well, oh, so you're

00:47:46.800 well, you're you're you're you know, you're taking action against like obscenity or something

00:47:50.000 like that.

00:47:50.500 So you're not you're not just letting anybody post.

00:47:52.480 So then you can be liable because you're you're you're behaving like a publisher rather

00:47:57.280 than a platform.

00:47:57.940 So then the actually the law was to make it so that if they take they if they censor speech

00:48:03.560 that actually everyone agrees with would like off the platform, just kind of crazy stuff that

00:48:08.180 they're not going to be treated the same way like a book publisher would be treated.

00:48:11.420 So so there's I mean, there's some amount of of of good faith moderation that is not

00:48:18.500 political in nature that we probably do want taking place like it's a good thing that this

00:48:23.480 is a private company rather than the public square.

00:48:25.520 I mean, in the public square, right, the Westboro Baptist Church can shout obscenities at the

00:48:30.620 funerals of soldiers saying, you know, things more vile than anyone can even imagine.

00:48:35.420 And the Supreme Court said in a not narrow decision that that's acceptable speech because it's

00:48:39.880 the public square and its First Amendment protected.

00:48:42.080 So on one hand, it's like there are benefits to the fact that Twitter is a private company.

00:48:46.600 They don't have to let that be there if they don't want to.

00:48:49.880 And that's that could be their decision.

00:48:51.800 And you can like it or you can dislike it.

00:48:53.680 If you really dislike it, you can find another service to use, I guess.

00:48:57.560 But there's some you know, there's some level of like harassment and horror that is a function

00:49:02.300 of the Internet that they are taking action against in probably a responsible way.

00:49:06.900 Or if you were saying they are they are truly the public square and they are bound to the

00:49:10.920 First Amendment understanding of speech, then there'd be a lot of horrible stuff that they

00:49:15.820 would have to allow on the platform that might make it an unpleasant place for people just

00:49:20.600 in a nonpolitical sense to be.

00:49:23.020 So that's that's one that's one advantage of keeping them a private entity rather than

00:49:27.220 legally the public square.

00:49:29.000 Yeah, that's a great point, because I know that various companies or people have tried to

00:49:33.620 make, you know, completely 100 percent free speech friendly platforms.

00:49:37.360 And unsurprisingly, they become magnets for the the least desirable form of speech, the

00:49:42.660 type of people that either on principle or because they know they won't make the cut

00:49:46.500 at Twitter, Facebook, YouTube flock there.

00:49:49.060 And it does, I think, very much ask the question of, you know, should you be careful what you

00:49:53.160 wish for if you want a First Amendment platform?

00:49:56.380 And I know that I think it was Dennis Prager or PragerU had sued very unsuccessfully YouTube

00:50:01.300 on these grounds, they tried to say that, you know, the First Amendment should extend

00:50:05.460 to YouTube and the court, I think, very correctly shot that down.

00:50:09.000 But it is weird that all of a sudden and I don't want to take aim at people on the right

00:50:12.760 because I am on the right.

00:50:13.820 But but the ones who are being hypocritical on this, the same people that stand up for 0.96

00:50:18.640 a baker to deny making a gay wedding cake, for example, are now saying, no, no, no, 0.96

00:50:23.740 the Constitution has to apply to YouTube and Facebook.

00:50:27.000 Yeah, and I'm right.

00:50:28.260 I'm very passionate about that issue.

00:50:29.700 I've written a lot on that issue, right?

00:50:31.540 I certainly don't want to compel a small business owner to engage in work that violates their

00:50:38.200 code.

00:50:38.540 I think that violates their freedom of religion, their free expression rights.

00:50:42.620 So, yeah, it's very baffling to me that so many conservatives, it's the same principle

00:50:47.420 when you look at some of these companies.

00:50:51.280 And I just also think, you know, let's say Trump loses or in four years or whatever, eventually

00:50:57.460 a Democrat is in the White House again.

00:50:59.660 Elizabeth Warren is the most vocal opponent of Section 230. 0.92

00:51:05.020 She wants to aggressively regulate these companies because she thinks Facebook in allowing a greater

00:51:11.780 level of free speech and saying, you know what, we're not going to fact check everything.

00:51:15.080 Make up your own minds what's true or false.

00:51:16.980 We're not going to try to go through which political ads are misleading or not.

00:51:20.480 That's what Mark Zuckerberg has said.

00:51:21.800 I agree with that standard.

00:51:23.120 I think that's the correct standard to take.

00:51:26.260 Elizabeth Warren types hate that, and they want to punish Facebook for doing that. 1.00

00:51:30.420 So they want to give the government more power to intervene in what these companies' policies are.

00:51:35.060 So I think it would just be so short-sighted for conservatives, for Republican senators to set up some kind of commission,

00:51:43.780 which was really Josh Hawley's idea at one point at least.

00:51:46.280 It's like conservatives should always fear the bureaucratic answer to this, where there's going to be like a committee of government insiders to decide these.

00:51:53.320 Like, I don't understand how anyone remotely right of center could think that is going to result in an outcome that is favorable to more conservative speech online.

00:52:01.780 Like, there's just no way.

00:52:03.040 And I think maybe the conservative movement broadly or conservative politicians will remember that when we no longer, when the right no longer has so much power and influence over government.

00:52:16.600 Very well said.

00:52:17.600 Robbie Suave, senior editor at Reason and author of Panic Attack, Young Radicals in the Age of Trump.

00:52:23.560 Robbie, good talking to you, sir.

00:52:24.540 Thanks for coming on today.

00:52:26.320 My pleasure.

00:52:26.860 Thank you.

00:52:27.880 That does it for me.

00:52:29.200 If you want to let me know what you think about that interview or anything else in the show or anything else at all, really, I may regret saying that.

00:52:35.060 My email is andrew at andrewlaughton.ca.

00:52:38.380 We'll be back in a couple of days here on Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show on True North.

00:52:43.400 Thank you.

00:52:43.860 God bless and good day.

00:52:45.420 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Laughton Show.

00:52:47.580 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:52:52.700 We'll be right back.

Juno News - June 01, 2020

Cities Under Siege

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