Ep. 650 - The 'Hate Speech' Trojan Horse
Episode Stats
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Summary
The White House calls for big tech companies to censor so-called hate speech. But what is hate speech, and should we be censoring it at all? We ll talk about that, plus 5 other headlines, including Governor DeSantis' effort to rein in Big Tech, and a Maryland school district s efforts to instill anti-racism in preschoolers. Plus, our daily cancellation and much more.
Transcript
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, the White House calls for big tech companies to censor so-called hate speech.
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But what is hate speech? And should we be censoring it at all?
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We'll talk about that. Also, five headlines, including Governor DeSantis' effort to rein in big tech, speaking of big tech,
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and a Maryland school district's efforts to instill anti-racism in preschoolers.
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Plus, our daily cancellation and much more today on the Matt Wall Show.
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You know, I don't quite hate myself enough to waste my time watching White House press briefings.
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And there was a highlight from the press conference on Monday that perhaps deserves our attention.
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One member of our illustrious press, always looking to ask the tough questions, to hold those in power accountable,
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to shine the light of truth into the darkest corners. Democracy dies in darkness, after all.
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They took the time to ask White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki whether it's nice to not have Trump around anymore.
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Really tough question. Always a tough question from this bunch.
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But there was something said in that exchange that was inadvertently interesting and important.
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As you know, President Trump has been barred from a lot of social media sites.
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I'm curious whether you think his absence has made your job any easier or the White House's job any easier
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as it kind of goes forward on these COVID negotiations.
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He would have a certain gravitational pull with Republicans who may be more inclined to take a harder position.
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I wonder if that's been anything that you guys have thought about or kind of considered.
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We don't spend a lot of time talking about or thinking about President Trump here.
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I think that's a question that's probably more appropriate for Republican members who are looking for ways to support a bipartisan package
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Does President Biden support the continuing ban of President Trump on their sites?
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We've certainly spoken to, and he's spoken to, the need for social media platforms to continue to take steps to reduce hate speech.
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But we don't have more for you on it than that.
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Yeah, that's not true, first of all, the idea that they don't spend a lot of time thinking about Donald Trump.
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They spend a lot of time thinking about Donald Trump.
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I mean, Joe Biden issues 14 executive orders every day to undo Trump's policies and has said that that's what he's doing.
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So I think they do spend a lot of time thinking about him.
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They say continue to take steps to reduce hate speech.
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The implication here, obviously, is that by their thinking, Donald Trump is guilty of hate speech and his ban was a way of reducing the hate speech.
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The implication is also, though she says it as an aside and moves on quickly, and of course, there's no follow up,
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that the administration is pushing the big tech companies to purge and censor those who are guilty of hate speech.
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No big surprise there, but it does highlight why hate speech is so dangerous.
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And when I say hate speech is dangerous, I don't mean that the type of speech they call hate speech is dangerous.
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I mean that the term is, the term hate speech, the labeling of certain speech as hate speech,
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especially when it's done by people in power and for political reasons, is dangerous.
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Conservatives made a massive mistake, I think, not the first by a long shot,
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when many of them tacitly went along with the formation of categories like hate speech and even hate crime.
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The difference between those two, hate speech and hate crime, is that hate crime is an actual legal category,
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though it shouldn't be, it is, while hate speech is not, but not for lack of trying.
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I mean, the left has long wanted to make hate speech a crime in its own right.
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They've so far run into roadblocks, mostly from the Supreme Court, preventing them from achieving that goal,
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Even so, other powerful institutions outside of the court system, namely big tech, also academia,
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have adopted their own policies of punishing so-called hate speech.
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And ultimately, this is an excuse, a cover, a Trojan horse, by which conservative speech and thought,
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and really any speech or thought that does not comport with leftist orthodoxy, is silenced.
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I think it's therefore worth analyzing this idea of hate speech.
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And the main thing we should say, in analyzing it, is that it doesn't really exist,
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or at least it doesn't exist in any sort of objective way.
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Because to label something hate speech, just as to label a crime a hate crime,
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is to label not the thing itself, but the motivations behind it.
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So you hear someone say something, and you call it hate speech,
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because according to you, it was said for hateful reasons.
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But you, of course, have no way of knowing that.
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Unless the speech in question was someone literally saying, I hate you.
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Almost anything outside of that, or many, many of the things outside of that,
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when you call it hate speech, you are merely labeling your own feelings about someone else's speech.
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So it reminds me of the scene in the office when someone poops on Michael's carpet,
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and he calls it a hate crime, which it very well may have been.
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That is essentially how both hate speech and hate crimes are judged.
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The person doing the labeling is using the standard of their own feelings
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As for the feelings of the person who actually said or did the thing,
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This is why the hate speech label has always been and always will be political.
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The left hates conservative speech and labels it hate speech,
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which is a statement not about the speech, but about their perspective of the speech.
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They feel that the speech is motivated by hatred.
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Whether or not it actually is, how could they possibly know?
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Unless you're inside the mind and the heart of the person doing the speaking.
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who is to say that that's a bad thing necessarily?
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There are plenty of things in the world worthy of hatred.
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and in so doing, you are speaking at least partly out of hate.
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I get hit with the hate speech label all the time.
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For example, recently I said something on this show,
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as I have many times in the past, about drag queen story hours.
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And I was afterwards accused of hate speech, as usual.
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because that was the message I was trying to send.
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you mean to accuse me of hating the actual people themselves
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who host and stage these drag shows for children.
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I mean, I try not to hate any individual person,
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But I will admit that I fail to live up to that edict sometimes.
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And yes, I lapse into actually hating the individual people
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That certainly exists, just as with hate crimes.
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but the things that are legally labeled hate crimes
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Physically attacking someone for their race or ethnicity,
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I myself am the target of quite a lot of deeply hateful speech.
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Often I know it's hateful because the person will say something to me like,
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Okay, I think I'm safe in assuming that's hateful.
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But the implication is that really hateful speech is the worst kind of speech.
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Just as we're supposed to believe that really hateful crime is the worst kind of crime.
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The person who physically assaults another person for their race will get a harsher penalty
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than someone who physically assaults another person out of, say, greed because he wants their money
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or just out of general indifference, just for the fun of it.
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Is it worse than crime motivated by indifference or greed or envy?
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I mean, at a minimum, they're all equally as evil.
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But really, it seems to me, people who commit violent crimes indifferently are the worst of all.
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If anything, indifferent crimes should get the kind of emphasis that hate crimes do.
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Think about serial killers, sociopaths, school shooters, most of these indifferent.
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They're committing violent crime indifferently.
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They don't hate the people they're victimizing.
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Or maybe I should say people who hate things that should not be hated.
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But what makes the internet especially miserable are the trolls who say vile and horrible things indifferently, merely to get a rise out of people or to experience whatever thrill they get out of it, which I don't quite understand, but they get some kind of thrill.
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And even if it does mean something, it doesn't deserve the attention we give it.
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And this is their way of shutting all of that down.
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis launched an offensive against big tech on Tuesday, warning that the social media platforms are targeting politicians like former President Donald Trump now, but will soon be coming for regular American citizens, vowing to combat the threat.
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He said in a news conference, quote, today they may come after someone who looks like me.
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Tomorrow they come after someone who looks like you.
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And he was announcing the Transparency in Technology Act.
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As part of his measure, DeSantis suggested fines of $100,000 per day for deplatforming political candidates, as well as daily fines for any company that, quote, uses their content and user-related algorithms to suppress or prioritize the access of any content related to a political candidate or cause on the ballot.
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The governor also called for allowing people to opt out of content algorithms, requiring notification about changes in terms of service, and providing the right of citizens to take legal action if these conditions are violated.
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This is all exactly what Republicans should have done this years ago on the federal level.
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And some of this should be totally uncontroversial.
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So, yeah, if you want to, we could have a debate about rules that stop social media companies from censoring political content or political candidates.
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But something like notification about changes in terms of service.
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Yeah, that's just, that is basic transparency that we expect and legally require of most any other company.
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And oftentimes companies that don't have nearly the kind of power and control over you that big tech companies do.
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If they're going to make a change, at a minimum, if they're going to make a change to the terms of service, you signed up for the site thinking one thing, and then they start tinkering with it and changing it, they should have to tell you that.
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And, again, at a minimum, if Twitter wants to decide that it's going to start purging conservative accounts, as they have been doing, which is why all conservatives are losing their Twitter followers, they should, at a minimum, have to tell us that they're doing it and explain why.
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Basic transparency that we require of any other company.
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So, DeSantis, we'll play some of the clips from this because I just think it's great.
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Here he is talking about some of the things that prompted this and discussing what Twitter did with the New York Post story and how that's motivating some of what he's doing now.
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And the typical corporate media outlets, they just chose to ignore it.
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So we rely on social media to go around that, not let corporate legacy media outlets control the discourse and let us speak.
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So you had the New York Post to run it, and you couldn't get any traction.
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You couldn't get any reach on it because big tech put their thumb on the scale.
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What they said at the time, oh, it's a conspiracy or it's based on hacked information.
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You're trying to tell me if there was hacked information that could damage me, you guys wouldn't print it?
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You can whiz on my leg, but don't tell me it's raining.
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You guys would print it every single day if you could.
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And big tech would allow it to proliferate every single day 24-7.
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So it's not being done in a principled basis, and it's not – there's threats on me.
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And it only gets taken down if law enforcement goes and tells them to do it.
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And if, once again, Twitter wants to shut down the New York Post story, and yes, that is influencing the election.
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Now, maybe you could argue that it wouldn't be influencing the election quite as much, at least not influencing it in a dishonest way,
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if Twitter just came out and said, listen, we are – we're a liberal company.
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The content that we're going to highlight and put in front of your eyes, that's going to be left-wing content.
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And if there's a story that we don't like for political reasons, we're going to get rid of it.
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At least if they came out and said that, then everyone would know where they stand,
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and the bias would maybe be a little bit less harmful.
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That's why I tend to think that bias from a news organization like CNN, if we can call them a news organization,
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but the bias from CNN is – it's indefensible, but it's also not very harmful because everybody knows what they're getting with CNN,
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Now, with Twitter, there are still a lot of people who use Twitter and are oblivious to this.
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They think they're getting an accurate reflection.
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You know, the way they – what they think is happening is that when they go to their news feed on Twitter or Facebook,
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that they're going to be exposed to news, and they're going to find out what's going on.
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So, Twitter should have to be honest about that.
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And here's DeSantis touching on something that I also feel.
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I mean, we talk about the bias from Twitter, which is very concerning,
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but that doesn't even hold a candle to what happened to Parler.
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What really, I think, scared me was the decapitation of Parler.
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It wasn't just – it wasn't just some of that stuff.
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It was the web hosting, the payment processing, take away your email, your text.
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You could totally neuter a candidate's ability to communicate and execute a campaign plan.
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So, once we have that situation, they can't de-platform you without consequence.
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And, look, I don't know that there has been – in 2020, we'd have to look –
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I don't know that there has been a candidate that got wiped off the map.
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But you see the way this is going, and I think that protection is very well warranted,
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And just think, if you're in October of 2022 and you have a state senate race or something,
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and they de-platform one of the two candidates,
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that is not – that's going to have a huge impact on the outcome of the race.
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Yeah, Parler, they – we could talk about the bias from Twitter and Facebook.
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But what they did with Parler, they just came in and – he says decapitated.
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They didn't like Parler and said, no, you can't have that.
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Now, for years we were told, oh, if you want this – if you want your own kind of social media platform,
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And so people went to Parler, and they said, fine, we'll start our own thing.
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And enough people went over there, and then the left said, no, never mind.
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Yeah, it is time for legislative solutions to this problem.
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So I'm glad that DeSantis is getting the ball rolling.
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The headline is, how the Biden administration can help solve our reality crisis.
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And among other things, it is suggested – I'm not – it's not satire.
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It's suggested that Biden appoint a, quote, reality czar, a czar of reality, lord of all reality.
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But the writer says, several experts I spoke with recommend that the Biden administration put together a cross-agency task force
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to tackle disinformation and domestic extremism, which would be led by something like a reality czar.
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It sounds a little dystopian, I'll grant, but let's hear them out.
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Right now, these experts said the federal government's response to disinformation and domestic extremism
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is haphazard and spread across multiple agencies.
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And the way to solve that – I'm not going to read all of this – but the way to solve that is to have an agency
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and an actual czar who's – I guess – now, I did read all of this.
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And before going on the other – it's not quite explained what exactly the reality czar would do.
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But I guess the idea is that we have a czar, we have an authority figure to stand up and tell us what reality is.
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If there's information circulating, they can declare if it's false or not.
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And even if it did happen, who would actually listen to the realities are?
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You look at these organizations that have just declared themselves fact checkers.
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They haven't had to prove why they deserve that label or anything like that.
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Organization comes along and says, oh, we're fact checkers, this is what we do.
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And so, if we say it's not a fact, because we're fact checkers, means it's not.
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You know, we know on the left, they believe in pregnant men, for example.
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So, we just need the reality czar to come out and say, yes, officially, this is reality.
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Number three, a CNN legal analyst reacted to Trump's impeachment defense, and she made a rather startling legal claim.
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This is the 14-page brief filed by the president's lawyers.
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It says, number one, this is unconstitutional because he is a former president.
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It says, number two, that he has a First Amendment right to speak, and therefore, he said things at a rally and people attack the Capitol.
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Yeah, those are wrong, and they're well countered by the very long brief the House filed earlier today.
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I mean, you don't have a First Amendment right to lie.
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You don't have a First Amendment right to put people in danger, and he did both of those things.
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And, of course, we know the jurisdictional arguments were covered in about 40 pages of the House's brief as well.
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So, you know, it's not surprising that in only 36 hours with what are clearly not his A-listers of defense lawyers, they weren't able to come up with compelling arguments.
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But it also highlights that there really aren't any compelling defense arguments here at all.
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So, you know, the brief was mostly what was to be expected.
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There was one thing, actually, that did surprise me.
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A lecturer, Columbia Law School, legal analyst, a lecturer.
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And her claim is that you don't have a First Amendment right to lie.
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But I can say you absolutely have a First Amendment right to lie.
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That is, but keep in mind, we talked about hate speech to begin the show.
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These are the same people who, according to them, what they would like to see happen is that you don't have a First Amendment right to say things hatefully either.
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The Montgomery County Public School District in Maryland spent more than $450,000 on an anti-racist audit for the 2020 through 2021 school year,
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which resulted in the district tentatively adopting policies that push anti-racist thinking in preschool.
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So we're talking about like three- and four-year-olds, okay?
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According to a copy of the school district's Tentative Action Policy obtained by the Daily Wire,
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the district will now provide a culturally responsive pre-kindergarten to grade 12 curriculum
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that promotes equity, respect, anti-racist thinking, and civility.
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I'm wondering when do we get to the how to riot part of the lesson?
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The curriculum will also teach students that the impact of racism on mental health has been deemed a public health crisis.
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The school district, which is one of the largest in the nation, announced in November that it would partner with the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium
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for the $454,000 to conduct an anti-racist audit.
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The audit was designed to examine the district's systems, practices, and policies that do not create access opportunities
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and equitable outcomes for every student's academic and social-emotional well-being.
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Now, you know what I'm going to say, because what I always say when we read a story like this,
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which is the first thing is get your kids out of the public school system.
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At least, at least get them out of the public school system at these very early ages.
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Please, dear God, do not send your four-year-old to a public school system.
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Now, you homeschool them early on, send them to high school or something.
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Because at that point, if your kid's 13 or 14, they've been raised, and you've raised them correctly,
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and you've, maybe at that point, they'll have the fortitude and the formation to withstand the brainwashing that will still happen.
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But the point is, at four years old, forget about it.
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A four-year-old is going to believe whatever they are told.
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Anything you tell them, you tell them that you rode to work this morning on a unicorn, they'll totally believe it.
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That won't even occur to them as an odd thing to say.
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Because talk about reality, they have no concept of reality.
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So when you send much more than this is the case with the older kids, with younger kids,
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when you send your younger kid to school, that is an act of profound trust.
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in the people that will be in charge of your child at that school.
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Because the influence and power they're going to have over your child, it's difficult to articulate.
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And if they decide that they want to brainwash your kid at the age of four
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into this anti-racist nonsense, into critical race theory,
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If they're being exposed to that for hours a day, at that age.
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Somebody changed the Hollywood sign to read Holly Boob.
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Someone climbed up there and they changed the W and the D.
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Someone changed the Hollywood sign, made it Holly Boob.
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And of course, I think all people, our inner middle schoolers, are delighted by this story.
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And we're told that, here's what the New York Post reports,
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Julia Rose, who won fame for flashing her breasts on live TV during the 2019 World Series.
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Apparently that's something you can win fame for now.
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I've never heard of this person, but she's famous for this.
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She was busted along with five others for changing the famous Hollywood sign to read Holly Boob.
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And apparently this was done in an act of protest
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because she was protesting that Instagram had locked her out of her account for posting nude photos.
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And I have to say, this is a very disappointing reveal, isn't it?
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And I hoped that these were some very industrious 12-year-olds who had managed,
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like instead of writing it on the bathroom stall, like the rest of us had done,
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But then you find out it's a 27-year-old, they did it for Instagram,
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This is one of the most disappointing endings I think I've ever seen in any story at all.
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Now, before we get to our daily, this is usually when we get to our daily cancellation,
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but before we do that, this is pretty exciting.
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I figure, you know, one thing that I'd like to bring back into the show that I used to have early on
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and hasn't been as much is a little bit of viewer feedback,
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a little bit of interaction with the viewers and the listeners.
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And so what I'm going to start doing after the headlines every day is reading.
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They say you're not supposed to read your comments, especially on YouTube.
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But the dirty little secret about people in my position, anyone with a platform,
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We're not supposed to say that because that only empowers the trolls
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because they know that we will see the stuff they're writing.
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So I'm going to read a few of the comments from the show on YouTube yesterday
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just to get a little bit of the viewer interaction.
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And this is a segment that I will call reading the comments.
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He says, I live across the street from that mattress store in Kenosha.
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I watched that mattress store crumble and collapse into the road from the extreme heat.
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It rained fire embers that night from the entire block burning.
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I thought it was a real possibility I could die that night.
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I also know the people and politicians responsible for inciting the $20 million in damages to my city and neighborhood
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will have to answer for what they did because God never forgets.
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Now she slightly knows how I and so many Kenoshaans feel about the night my life changed forever.
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We are still cleaning up the buildings, which were burnt.
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I currently live in a construction where I am reminded every day what happened,
00:30:26.780
what happens for a man who was a rapist and a thief evading police and evading the responsibility for his actions.
00:30:33.120
This is why you should read the comment because that's a great comment.
00:30:36.380
And these people like Anthony, completely forgotten.
00:30:40.580
Have we gotten any, have there really been any follow-ups with the people like Anthony,
00:30:46.520
people in the community who lived in these neighborhoods that were reduced to rubble?
00:30:55.880
I'm interested to know what it's like to live in a neighborhood like that.
00:31:13.180
I've always thought it had a vaguely sexual connotation.
00:31:15.640
I hope not, given that this came from someone named Nick.
00:31:19.620
Miss Region Rat says, okay, this Groundhog thing being so old school is actually really adorable.
00:31:25.440
I did come out against the Groundhog Day yesterday, and I had time to think.
00:31:29.160
Because my problem with it is that, as I said, we've gotten rid of all of our cultural traditions, pretty much.
00:31:35.460
All of our shared traditions are out the window.
00:31:40.380
The one thing we hold on to is the tradition where guys in top hats talk to a magical rodent who can tell the future.
00:31:51.180
But as I had more time to reflect on Groundhog Day, I realized, well, okay, if that's all we got, then I guess we should, I guess I should have the opposite attitude.
00:32:08.320
R.G. reacting to AOC's Instagram where she was crying about her trauma from the rioting.
00:32:17.420
Teddy Roosevelt was shot in the chest and still managed to give a speech.
00:32:23.460
Yeah, that was, I covered that in a daily cancellation, I think, recently.
00:32:26.240
You look at, he, he, Teddy Roosevelt, this is quite literally was shot in the chest and still gave a speech.
00:32:35.920
And David says, Matt, sounds like you're supporting this gradual acceptance of the Democrats view when you and others say, well, this is what we can expect.
00:32:50.440
The Dem put their deranged opinions in our face.
00:32:54.500
No, this is not, this is not defeatism on my part.
00:32:56.760
When I say, well, this is what, this is what we can expect.
00:32:58.880
This is what's, this is what's going to happen.
00:33:01.940
It's about, you know, I'm just like the realities are, wants us to.
00:33:10.200
And I think, especially in recent months, conservatives spent.
00:33:14.220
There was a, this kind of mass delusion that took hold of conservatives.
00:33:20.120
And not just in the last few months, but especially in the last few months leading up to the, to the inauguration.
00:33:27.440
Where conservatives were refusing to face reality and insisting to the very end.
00:33:32.040
I mean, I don't know how many, but many insisting to the very end.
00:33:40.160
And anyone like myself who said, no, look, it's he, Joe Biden's going to be president.
00:33:53.700
If I said, you know, Joe Biden's gonna be president.
00:34:02.980
So when I say things like that, it's all about facing reality.
00:34:07.020
Because we have to first, if we want to do anything about what our reality is right now,
00:34:12.320
if we want to, if we want to make changes in reality, then we have to first face, face it, right?
00:34:21.120
You know, whether you're in school or out of school, whether you went to college or you didn't,
00:34:24.500
whatever your education level is, the point is that all of us throughout our whole lives,
00:34:29.540
we need to strive to know more information, to gain more knowledge.
00:34:33.360
The thing is, you know, it doesn't matter what your level of official education is.
00:34:39.580
If you stop learning, if you stop pursuing knowledge, the moment you get out of school,
00:34:43.960
at whatever age that happens to be, you know, you are not going to be the smart, well-rounded
00:34:50.000
person that you could be, because this has to be a constant process of recharging ourselves
00:34:56.040
And that's why you've got to check out The Great Courses Plus.
00:35:00.240
I just watched The Great Courses Plus course on World War II, the Pacific Theater.
00:35:06.440
I tend to kind of prefer the history courses, but it's not just history.
00:35:11.860
With Great Courses Plus, you get unlimited streaming access to thousands of video lectures
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If you want to learn Tai Chi or public speaking, if you want to know marine biology, which also
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I'm interested in, if you want to know how to read body language, that could be an important
00:35:29.400
thing, then you got to check out Great Courses Plus.
00:35:33.280
Great Courses Plus has something for everyone, and it's all thoroughly vetted, fact-based information
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that you know you can trust from some of the best professors and top experts in their field
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And when you download the Great Courses Plus app, you can watch or listen on any device,
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But what I find is sometimes, especially at night when I have time to either read or watch
00:36:04.820
a Great Courses course, it can be easier sometimes to go with a Great Courses.
00:36:09.560
It's just kind of, you can sit down and relax, and you can watch Great Courses, and it's
00:36:18.640
Sign up for the Great Courses Plus to find out.
00:36:20.420
I have a special URL to use thegreatcoursesplus.com slash Walsh.
00:36:24.900
Again, that's thegreatcoursesplus.com slash Walsh.
00:36:27.780
You get a full month of unlimited access for free.
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Again, that's thegreatcoursesplus.com slash Walsh.
00:36:35.700
Which another thing not to miss out on, when you still have a chance to take advantage
00:36:40.620
of this, over at The Daily Wire, become a Daily Wire member today.
00:36:47.860
RHF obviously refers to our new feature film, Run, Hide, Fight.
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And if you are one of the people that has not had a chance to check out this movie, then
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Go become a Daily Wire member now, and you can watch Run, Hide, Fight, which is a tense,
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suspenseful, exciting, action-packed movie with a great message.
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But as we've been telling you, it's not a message movie where we're trying to sermonize
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You can watch it over at dailywire.com or on our mobile app or on our streaming apps
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If you're not a Daily Wire member yet, use promo code RHF to get 25% off.
00:37:39.640
Today for our Daily Cancellation, we must begin by discussing the drama of a woman who
00:37:50.180
She's apparently an Instagram influencer, which, as far as I can tell, just means that she's
00:37:53.680
married to a rich guy and posts a lot of pictures of herself online.
00:37:58.100
So, Mrs. Carlos was at the Hawks game a couple nights ago, courtside seats with her husband,
00:38:03.140
watching the home team take on LeBron's Lakers.
00:38:06.160
At some point during the game, a brief argument or shouting match of some kind broke out between
00:38:14.220
She, after the fact, described the interaction between herself, because she intervenes, she
00:38:20.700
says, and she described the interaction with LeBron in a way that certainly does not engender
00:38:28.440
So, I'm minding my own business, and Chris has been a Hawks fan forever.
00:38:33.900
He's been watching the games for 10 years, whatever.
00:38:40.800
Anyway, I'm minding my own business, drinking my f***, having fun.
00:38:45.280
All of a sudden, LeBron says something to my husband, and I see this, and I go, I stand
00:38:51.260
up and go, don't f***ing talk to my husband, and he looks at me and he goes, sit the f***
00:38:55.580
down, b***h, and I go, don't f***ing call me a b***h, you sit the f***, get the f*** out
00:39:00.000
of here, and I go, don't f***ing talk to my husband like that.
00:39:03.900
Don't talk to my husband, and he literally was like, f*** you, b***h, sit down, b***h,
00:39:08.940
and all of a sudden, now I'm getting kicked out.
00:39:10.940
Excuse me, I have courtside seats that I pay for.
00:39:13.760
F*** you, LeBron, you're a f***ing b***h, get the f*** out of here.
00:39:17.160
You're going to let a 25-year-old girl intimidate you during a game?
00:39:22.980
I wanted to send that to our editors, I know it was probably fun for them to get all the...
00:39:27.980
My lord, why do rich guys marry women like this?
00:39:32.260
Now, I know why they do, I'm not naive, but is it worth it?
00:39:36.760
Is it worth the price of listening to that every day?
00:39:41.500
I don't know anything about her husband, I assume he's older.
00:39:46.440
And your final years of life, this is what you're listening to?
00:39:53.900
In any case, this woman later apologized for the argument and took full responsibility,
00:39:58.440
which tells me, you know, which does make me doubt the part of the story where she allegedly
00:40:04.900
She seems to have backed away from that and is now trying to apologize and move on.
00:40:09.060
Whatever actually happened, given what we know already about LeBron James and given what
00:40:12.980
we know about this woman just from the 30-second clip there, it's safe to say that there were
00:40:20.420
But today's daily cancellation has nothing to do with any of that.
00:40:23.780
LeBron James, after the game, didn't have much to say about the whole incident except
00:40:29.240
He tweeted, Courtside Karen was mad mad, followed by a bunch of laughing emojis.
00:40:35.780
I've already canceled grown men who use emojis, so we're not going to rehash that aspect of it.
00:40:40.800
My issue today is with the pejorative use of the name Karen.
00:40:45.140
The Karen meme is officially canceled because it's a racial slur.
00:40:48.320
Now, to reiterate, I'm not defending the woman who seems to embody pretty much all of the
00:40:55.740
Also, I'm not personally offended by the Karen thing.
00:40:58.620
I'm not a white woman, though I could become one if I wanted to, of course.
00:41:03.780
Okay, so for now, it doesn't concern me directly or apply to me, but I am a fan of intellectual
00:41:10.680
consistency, and I do hate, with a burning, unyielding passion, here's some hate speech,
00:41:21.040
And on that basis, I object to the name Karen being used in this way.
00:41:26.900
First of all, Karen does absolutely have a racial connotation.
00:41:33.400
Please do not embarrass yourself by claiming otherwise.
00:41:36.640
Yes, sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, non-white people are labeled Karens.
00:41:40.920
But in its origination, and in its most popular usage, it refers specifically to obnoxious white
00:41:46.460
And when a non-white woman is called a Karen, the insult is, you're acting like a white
00:41:53.640
A Time Magazine article in July says that the Karen meme confronts the violent history of
00:41:59.740
And a Teen Vogue article from around the same time says that the archetypal Karen is a white
00:42:04.880
woman, and that the Karen meme originated, quote, as an inside joke within communities
00:42:10.100
That is, it's an insult against white woman, and it was created by non-white people.
00:42:15.320
In fact, the Teen Vogue article takes issue with white women using the word themselves in
00:42:21.760
The writer, Malavika Cannon, explains that non-white people have a right to use this slur
00:42:31.500
And if you, as a white person, use it yourself, then you are appropriating your own slur.
00:42:38.820
A Daily Beast article from earlier this month says that, says, quote, Karen, like the once
00:42:44.120
popular phrase, Becky, became a moniker to describe white women who were problematic.
00:42:48.760
In this case, the author wishes to stop using the term, but not because it's racist.
00:42:54.340
He wants to stop using it because he fears instead that Karens are being normalized by
00:43:03.040
And if you prefer to go to Wikipedia for all your information, as most of the country does,
00:43:09.140
here's what that site says about the origins of Karen.
00:43:11.680
It says, quote, there are several possible origins of the term.
00:43:14.580
One theory is that it's an evolution of an African-American vernacular English term of
00:43:21.740
The term may have originated on black Twitter as a meme used to describe white women who
00:43:29.400
Bitch Magazine, that's the name of a magazine, don't blame me, described it as a term that
00:43:34.400
originated with black women but was co-opted by white men.
00:43:41.520
This is a pejorative of a certain race, of white people, but white people aren't allowed
00:43:56.160
The point here is that without any doubt at all, this is a racial term.
00:44:01.160
The people who first came up with it and first started using it say that it's racial, and
00:44:07.640
they very much object to any attempt to de-racialize it.
00:44:11.460
The next question then is whether it is a racial term, but is it a racist term?
00:44:21.260
Well, to answer that question, we need only engage in a thought experiment.
00:44:29.200
What if white people on Twitter started to refer to obnoxious black women using a stereotypical
00:44:36.360
Now, in order to properly frame this, let's use an actual name as an example.
00:44:39.860
ABC News has an article from a few years ago listing what they call the top 20 whitest and
00:44:46.020
Now, if you have a problem with a phrase like whitest and blackest names, take it up with
00:44:50.280
One of the names at the top of their list for black women is Shanice.
00:44:55.640
What if white people on Twitter, a bunch of a bunch of dastardly right wing white people,
00:45:00.980
let's say, started describing their encounters with black women by saying things like, oh
00:45:05.700
man, so this Shanice was up in my face, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:45:09.780
Would there be any doubt about whether that qualifies as racist?
00:45:13.640
Would anyone even dare suggest that it isn't racist?
00:45:19.220
I mean, in my mind, it would be absolutely 100% clear to me that using a stereotypical
00:45:23.980
black female name as a pejorative to refer to black women I don't like is extremely racist.
00:45:32.040
If that's not racist, then what could possibly be racist?
00:45:35.940
You're taking a stereotypical name for members of a certain race and using it as a pejorative
00:45:47.120
That's the stance I would have in the case of Shanice.
00:45:58.320
And on the left, especially among the very people defending the use of the term Karen,
00:46:04.740
I mean, they, they would be writing think pieces with titles like the Shanice meme is
00:46:09.380
an attack on black womanhood, so on and so forth.
00:46:33.140
Does this kind of racial slur, this kind of dehumanizing, degrading way of referring to
00:46:37.300
people of another race, does it suddenly become acceptable if you apply it to white people?
00:46:47.560
Subjectively, according to our culture and the way the rules are now set up, it does.
00:46:50.940
According to those rules, it's impossible to be racist against white people.
00:46:54.960
I mean, you could run up to a white person, call him a white devil, spit in his face and
00:46:59.060
set him on fire, and you still would not be racist.
00:47:08.800
If it's so obvious, which it is, that Karen originates as a racial slur, and it's intended
00:47:14.480
to be a racial slur, then why do so few white people, even white women, object to it?
00:47:20.040
But why is it that on the few occasions when I've brought this issue up, I've been met
00:47:25.820
with backlash mostly by white people desperately defending the slurs that are used against them?
00:47:32.260
Taking it personally, that I think they shouldn't be slurred.
00:47:37.120
The reason I think is that white people have Stockholm syndrome.
00:47:40.140
They think that they aren't allowed to object to this kind of thing.
00:47:43.300
They actually think they might be racist if they object to racism targeted at them.
00:47:47.000
They're at the point now where you could go up to them and pee in their cereal, and they
00:47:52.200
would just smile and say, hey, man, no problem.
00:47:55.000
You know, I would never tell you to stop peeing in my cereal.
00:47:57.740
I didn't want those Frosted Flakes anyway, unless you want me to eat them.
00:48:01.880
But, you know, it would be really obnoxious on my part to object.
00:48:05.020
I, and if I came up and said, hey, man, that guy's peeing in your cereal, that's kind of
00:48:12.140
You would say to me, hey, hey, you snowflake, get out, mind your own business.
00:48:21.460
Trying to cancel this person for peeing in my cereal?
00:48:26.700
I mean, have a little self-respect, for God's sake.
00:48:36.480
Now, I know that just by pointing out a double standard, that's not enough to make it go
00:48:55.320
We should take the stance that racial slurs are bad.
00:49:03.640
And as it happens right now, there's really only one racial slur I can think of that is
00:49:09.580
popularly used and can be used without any social consequence whatsoever.
00:49:14.940
And so that should be the racial slur we focus on.
00:49:18.060
Because all the others, everyone agrees, are bad.
00:49:20.040
This one, even the people who fall victim to it, cannot bring themselves to say that it's
00:49:29.780
And that is why the Karen meme and all who use it have been canceled.
00:49:46.780
Well, if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe.
00:49:49.220
And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review.
00:49:54.640
We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts.
00:49:58.680
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show,
00:50:05.420
The Matt Wall Show is produced by Sean Hampton, executive producer Jeremy Boring.
00:50:09.820
Our supervising producers are Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
00:50:22.940
And our production coordinator is McKenna Waters.
00:50:29.040
The Senate prepares for the pseudo-impeachment trial of former President Trump.
00:50:32.760
AOC compares Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to rapists.
00:50:35.940
And BLM gets nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.