Steve Kirsch joins me to speak at a protest against censorship at the Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, CA on May 19, 2019. We talk about why the government is trying to censor our speech and why we need to fight back. We also talk about how the First Amendment applies to government censorship and why it should apply to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Finally, we talk about the new public square, and why the internet platforms are becoming the public square and why they should be allowed to be used as a public space. Please join us at the protest on Thursday, May 19th, at 3pm to 6pm at the headquarters of the world's largest social media company. Bobby Kennedy will be there, and Peter McCullough and other folks will be at the rally as well. Thanks to Steve Kirsch and Bobby Kennedy for coming on the show and joining us. If you like the show, please consider becoming a patron patron and/or share it on your social media accounts! Thanks also to my good friend Bobby Kennedy and my lawyer, Jed Rubinfeld, for joining me on this episode. Thank you Bobby Kennedy, for all the support, Jed and I hope you enjoy this episode, and that you enjoy it! XOXO, John Rocha, John and Bobby, for your support and support this show, and support us in our efforts to protect our First Amendment rights and freedom of speech and freedom from government censorship. Thank you, John, for being loud and clear. - John and for supporting us in this cause, and for standing up for our cause, thank you, and supporting us, and fighting for us, Thank you all of us, all of our efforts, and thank you for being a voice for our freedom, and so much more! -John and I appreciate you. -- Thank you. -Amen and much more. -Sue, John & Bobby Kennedy - -Robby, for supporting our cause and your support us, and for all of your support, and all of the support and love, and respect and support our work, and thanks for all your support. -Drew, -Jed and all the love and support, John's words and support. . -Sandra and I am so much love and appreciation. -Jadynne, Rachael and Rachit and Rene, etc.
00:00:28.000I want to talk to people about why I'm doing this.
00:00:30.000Well, I asked you to come on because you've been censored, I think, almost as much as I have, and you're even more pissed off about it than I am.
00:00:39.000Let's tell people why we're doing this.
00:00:43.000To say, well, you have to be censored so that we protect the people following you from yourself?
00:00:50.000I mean, the people are following me because they agree with what I'm saying.
00:00:55.000So what's the point of censoring me on Twitter or on Facebook, since we're doing this at Facebook headquarters?
00:01:03.000I mean, the people who I'm posting to are all people who want to hear what I have to say.
00:01:09.000And it used to be we were in America where there was freedom of speech and your speech wasn't censored and you're allowed to be heard.
00:01:16.000And these platforms, these social media platforms are becoming the new public square where people should be allowed to express their opinions.
00:01:25.000Now, of course, the First Amendment, you know, people think that that means that you're allowed to say anything, you know, you want and there's no censorship.
00:01:33.000But the First Amendment only applies to government censorship.
00:01:36.000It says that the federal government or the state governments and so forth, that government in general cannot censor your speech.
00:01:46.000But the Constitution says nothing about whether...
00:01:50.000Private companies like Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and YouTube can censor your speech, and so they're silent on that so that when these companies, you know, they're all acting in coordination.
00:02:04.000They're all suppressing things like early treatments and so forth, and they're all By taking their cues from the NIH. And whether they're doing this in coordination with the government, I think there is coordination with the government because I've heard stories about that.
00:02:19.000But the point is that what's really going on here is essentially government-controlled.
00:02:24.000The government is centering our speech, and they're doing it indirectly through these companies.
00:02:50.000And Peter McCullough and other folks will be there.
00:02:53.000So, you know, come meet us and join us and protect your protests, these platforms doing what they're doing because it's terribly wrong.
00:03:02.000Yeah, let me just kind of brief people, because I am doing, you know, we are suing Facebook, and I am doing the argument with my co-counsel, Jed Rubinfeld, next week in front of the Ninth Circuit, a court of appeals, a federal court of appeals, and Here's how the First Amendment works.
00:03:22.000If you own a printing press, you can write anything you want.
00:03:57.000And they're probably right about that.
00:03:59.000In fact, the courts tell they're right.
00:04:01.000There is an argument that you brought up.
00:04:03.000Which is that these internet platforms are now so huge that they occupy the entire public square.
00:04:11.000And at some point, if you occupy the entire public square, do you become a quasi-governmental agency?
00:04:19.000And there's some case law that says that, for example, private malls, During the 1970s, there were these huge malls going up, which for certain communities, that was the only public space.
00:04:34.000And Vietnam War protesters started going on that private property to protest.
00:04:41.000And the mall owners ejected them from trespassing.
00:04:45.000And the federal court said, wait a minute, because you occupy so much of the public space, you essentially have made yourself a public square.
00:04:56.000And you people who want to use that space to express themselves have a right to do so under the First Amendment right to assembly.
00:05:06.000Well, there is some case law that it's possible that sometime in the future that may be applied to Facebook and Google, etc.
00:05:15.000But right now, that's not where the law is.
00:05:17.000However, as you pointed out, If they can censor you, they can eject you, but not if the government tells them to do it, and not if they're coordinating their activities with the government.
00:05:28.000And they admit that they are, and we have the emails with Tony Fauci and with other member people.
00:05:35.000We have the White House telling them to censor the disinformation to us, which includes me.
00:05:41.000And once that happens, it's called the government actor exception.
00:05:46.000Which is if they're acting as a surrogate to censor people on behalf of the government, that implicates the First Amendment.
00:05:54.000And that's what we're arguing in front of the Ninth Circuit.
00:05:57.000People can tune in and see that argument next week.
00:06:01.000And the most important thing is to show up At the Facebook protest, this is your one chance to tell Mark Zuckerberg that you do not want him deciding what facts you can hear and what facts you can't hear.
00:06:16.000You live in a democracy, you're an American citizen.
00:06:21.000Our democracy relies on the free flow of information, the capacity for ideas to be...
00:06:30.000Annealed in the furnace of debate and then triumph in the marketplace of ideas in order to become public policies.
00:06:38.000And that's the whole theory about how and why a democracy works.
00:06:43.000And we had a war in this country beginning in 1776.
00:06:49.000In which Americans stood for one proposition above all others, that we ought to be able to criticize our government officials.
00:06:59.000No other nation in the world could do that.
00:07:01.000We were the first nation, and by 1865, there were six other nations that allowed it.
00:07:08.000Today there's 190 nations that supposedly allow it, and they're all based upon our model.