The Matt Walsh Show - August 07, 2018


Ep. 78 - The War on ＂Hate Speech＂ is a War on Conservative Speech


Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

163.2427

Word count

3,046

Sentence count

219


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Alex Jones and Infowars have been banned from all of the major social media platforms within 12 hours of each other. This sets a precedent that should concern all of us, especially conservatives. Is this a censorship issue or a First Amendment issue?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 So Alex Jones and Infowars have been banned from Facebook, YouTube, iTunes, also Spotify.
00:00:08.920 I think some other platforms as well have gotten in on the action.
00:00:12.420 And this all happened at once.
00:00:13.980 This was within 12 hours.
00:00:16.340 The three big gatekeepers of the Internet, Facebook, Google, Apple, all decided to shut down Alex Jones.
00:00:23.480 And there's just no way that that's a coincidence.
00:00:26.140 There's no way that they all got up independently on Monday morning and said, you know what, I think we're going to ban Alex Jones today.
00:00:33.160 Yeah, that's what we're going to do.
00:00:34.380 No, this very much seems to be a conspiracy between the three big tech giants to censor Alex Jones.
00:00:41.220 And listen, it doesn't matter how you personally feel about Alex Jones.
00:00:47.560 That should not have any bearing on the way you look at this story.
00:00:56.140 Because hate them or love them, there's a precedent being set here that should concern everybody, especially conservatives.
00:01:04.300 And you might say, Alex Jones isn't a conservative.
00:01:06.920 He's a conspiracy theorist.
00:01:08.500 Yada, yada.
00:01:09.280 Doesn't matter.
00:01:10.280 That discussion doesn't matter.
00:01:12.020 Because you know what?
00:01:13.720 In the minds of Facebook, Apple, Google, we're all the same.
00:01:19.520 You may draw a distinction between conservatives and Alex Jones.
00:01:22.960 They don't draw that distinction.
00:01:26.060 In their minds, we're all in the same boat.
00:01:29.620 And that is, you know, I don't think that at this point we can say that this is a First Amendment issue, at least not yet.
00:01:36.180 These are private companies.
00:01:37.760 And I have always affirmed the rights of private companies to do business the way they want, to do business with whoever they want.
00:01:45.400 That's up to them.
00:01:47.900 It's freedom of association.
00:01:49.660 And I don't buy the argument that Facebook is a monopoly, and so therefore this is a First Amendment issue.
00:01:55.720 Facebook is not a monopoly.
00:01:56.960 There are a million other social media platforms out there.
00:01:59.600 And we could just as easily—this isn't like it's 1857 and somebody's got a monopoly on the railroads, okay?
00:02:06.380 And so if you want to use a railroad, you've got no option.
00:02:09.580 That's not the case here.
00:02:10.480 There are a million social media platforms, and we could just as easily use any of them.
00:02:13.960 We choose to go to Facebook.
00:02:15.600 We could choose to go somewhere else, and it would require no effort.
00:02:19.600 It's just a matter of clicking on a different app.
00:02:23.680 So it's like instead of doing this, we do that.
00:02:26.780 That's the amount of effort required to use a different social media platform.
00:02:32.000 And if we decide that that is too much, like to bring our finger down here to the different app on our phone, if that's just too much effort, well, that's kind of on us.
00:02:42.940 So it's not a monopoly.
00:02:44.380 Facebook has 2 billion users, I think, because they all choose to use Facebook instead of something else.
00:02:51.160 And so then Facebook can do what they want with their own platform that we have all chosen to use.
00:02:56.720 Now, that said, this could easily develop into a very serious First Amendment issue.
00:03:05.780 And so let's look at Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut.
00:03:10.140 Sent out a tweet yesterday in relation to this story, and this is what he said.
00:03:14.040 He said,
00:03:14.220 So if you happen to be a constituent of Senator Chris Murphy, you may want to keep in mind come election time that he thinks the survival of our democracy depends on the restriction of free speech.
00:03:44.880 Maybe you agree with him.
00:03:46.220 Maybe you're anti-American as well.
00:03:48.460 But if you're not, you may want to keep that in mind.
00:03:52.280 I don't see how any decent American can vote for a senator who would say something like that.
00:03:58.120 Because now this is First Amendment.
00:04:00.220 What he's saying, this is a government official saying companies must do more to restrict speech that I don't personally like.
00:04:10.020 And if he decided to officially get involved, or if the Democrats officially got involved, said, you've got to shut down this speech, which we could very much, which we would certainly be heading in that direction.
00:04:20.420 Well, then it is a straight up war on the First Amendment.
00:04:22.940 But either way, even if what's happening now is legal, that doesn't mean it's defensible, doesn't mean that it's rights, doesn't mean that it isn't dangerous.
00:04:33.420 It is possible to do something legal yet bad.
00:04:36.440 That happens all the time in this country, and I think this is one of those times.
00:04:40.100 Now, the justification for this, the basis that was provided, is something we should be really concerned with.
00:04:47.020 Because all of these companies have claimed, in unison, that this is part of a crackdown on hate speech.
00:04:53.980 Okay, hate speech.
00:04:57.260 Let's think about hate speech for a minute.
00:05:00.120 Because when the real war on the First Amendment begins, it will begin on this basis of we have to go after hate speech.
00:05:09.300 And I think there are going to be a lot of, frankly, very stupid Americans who will say, well, I mean, that's okay.
00:05:15.360 If it's hateful speech, I mean, how could I have any problem with that?
00:05:19.580 Of course, we've got to get rid of hate speech.
00:05:23.920 We have to get rid of all the hate speech and leave only good speech.
00:05:26.940 I mean, you know, that's what the First Amendment meant to protect, is good speech, not hate speech.
00:05:31.940 Well, hate speech is a nonsensical, ambiguous phrase by design.
00:05:38.800 It's ambiguous because the people who use it want to be able to apply it to whatever, right?
00:05:45.800 So it's a lot like a hate crime in that case.
00:05:48.280 In fact, let's step to the side for a minute, because I think it helps us to understand hate speech.
00:05:52.900 Let's think about hate crime, okay, first of all.
00:05:56.420 The whole problem with a hate crime, with the category of hate crime, is that any crime could be motivated by hate.
00:06:05.760 It doesn't make any sense to say, well, we have this special category of crime that's motivated by hate.
00:06:11.740 That almost any crime that's ever been committed in the history of mankind could have had some hatred involved in it, right?
00:06:20.300 Or maybe not.
00:06:21.620 And you can't really know whether there was hatred behind the crime or not.
00:06:27.940 Because hatred, it's an emotion, it's a passion, it's a feeling.
00:06:33.420 How can you prove what emotions went into a crime?
00:06:38.420 And more importantly, why does it matter?
00:06:42.120 What difference does it make?
00:06:43.300 Look, if I were to key your car or slash your tires because I hate you or because I hate the demographic that you belong to, and then I'm on a crime spree here, so then I go to your neighbor's house and I kill him because I want to steal his TV, I'm sure that you would agree that you got the better end of the bargain even though you were the victim of the hate crime.
00:07:07.140 My crime against you was motivated by hate, my crime against your neighbor was motivated by greed, but in that case, the greed crime is worse.
00:07:17.860 So there are motivations that can lead us to do worse things.
00:07:22.720 If anything, even take two crimes that are the same.
00:07:25.740 Let's take two murders, okay?
00:07:28.880 Let's say I kill you because I hate you.
00:07:31.520 And then let's say I kill your neighbor because I want to steal his TV.
00:07:38.160 Well, I would say even then, the crime against you is bad, and I should go to jail for it, obviously, but it's actually slightly less bad.
00:07:49.220 It's evil.
00:07:50.240 It's not quite as evil as my crime against your neighbor, I would say.
00:07:55.560 Because you, I was angry, I hate you, I kill you.
00:07:59.140 Terrible.
00:07:59.540 I should go to jail forever.
00:08:00.740 But your neighbor, I just was totally indifferent to his life.
00:08:06.320 I just, I wanted his TV, and his life meant nothing to me.
00:08:11.040 Total indifference.
00:08:12.640 And in that case, when you kill somebody because of total indifference, and so you're willing to kill them over their shoes or their TV, I think that makes you a bigger threat to society.
00:08:24.380 That makes you a more dangerous person.
00:08:26.700 And the possibility of reforming a person like that is probably less likely than reforming someone who commits a, quote, hate crime.
00:08:35.860 So treating hate crime as the worst possible thing just doesn't make sense.
00:08:41.720 I think a similar thing is the case with hate speech.
00:08:45.080 Hate speech is not an objective category of speech.
00:08:50.740 Hatred is a motivation.
00:08:52.080 It is a, it's a feeling.
00:08:53.560 It's a passion that can motivate speech.
00:08:58.240 But you can't prove it.
00:09:00.460 Hate speech.
00:09:01.260 When you say hate speech, that is an accusation.
00:09:04.080 You're accusing somebody.
00:09:05.820 It's an assertion, an accusation.
00:09:08.080 It is not in itself a proof.
00:09:09.740 When you call something hate speech, you are inferring, based on your own subjective analysis, that hatred was the motivation behind the speech.
00:09:20.500 When you say, let's ban hate speech, what you mean is, let's ban speech that, in my opinion, nobody could possibly express unless they're hateful.
00:09:31.320 But that's obviously arbitrary and subjective and impossible to prove.
00:09:37.640 And when you try to enforce something like that, it is going to be enforced on a partisan, uneven basis.
00:09:44.660 There's no way around it.
00:09:45.860 And we know that the left has already determined that nobody could ever, for instance, critique transgenderism or gay marriage or abortion or feminism or socialism or affirmative action, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, unless they're hateful.
00:10:02.040 So just like that, all non-liberal speech is hate speech.
00:10:06.780 But the problem is, when you call something hate speech, especially if you're using that phrase to describe a political opinion that somebody expressed, all you're really revealing is that you don't understand, you can't sympathize with that point of view.
00:10:27.240 I think most of the time when someone says, that's hate speech, what they're really saying is, I can't sympathize with that because they don't understand.
00:10:35.380 Using the gay marriage example, leftists believe that any opposition to gay marriage is hateful.
00:10:43.180 It's all hate speech because they just can't wrap their head around it.
00:10:47.500 They cannot sympathize with the opinion that gay marriage is not a legitimate form of marriage.
00:10:56.820 They can't sympathize with that opinion.
00:10:58.960 However, those of us who hold that opinion, we know that it's got nothing to do with hate.
00:11:04.000 We don't have any hate in our hearts about it.
00:11:05.640 This is just a matter of observing and defining what marriage inherently is.
00:11:12.700 You can disagree.
00:11:14.000 You could say that that opinion is wrong.
00:11:16.700 But you don't get to sit there and declare, that's hateful.
00:11:19.780 There is hate in your heart.
00:11:21.540 You're not the one who gets to decide that.
00:11:23.320 I can tell you what's going on inside my heart.
00:11:25.620 And you have no choice but to believe me because I am the only authority on earth when it comes
00:11:32.200 to what's happening inside my heart and what motivations are behind the things that I say
00:11:37.680 and do.
00:11:38.220 I am the only authority on this planet.
00:11:41.020 And so you have to listen to me and you have to believe me.
00:11:43.820 It's the only way this works.
00:11:45.100 So just because you can't sympathize with a point of view does not make it hateful.
00:11:50.820 It may be wrong.
00:11:52.140 It may be many things, but not necessarily hateful.
00:11:57.320 I mean, I don't understand.
00:11:58.380 Let's take an opinion or a point of view that I can't sympathize with.
00:12:02.820 I cannot sympathize with the opinion that Marvel movies are good.
00:12:11.400 I don't understand why people love Marvel movies so much.
00:12:14.160 I think that they're stupid and pointless and I just wish they would stop already.
00:12:17.340 I don't get it.
00:12:18.600 And it feels to me like there's some kind of conspiracy to annoy me.
00:12:23.540 And that's why they keep coming out with these stupid movies.
00:12:26.640 It feels hateful.
00:12:28.240 Honestly, it feels hateful.
00:12:29.180 It feels like hate speech when somebody says, oh, I can't wait for the new Avengers movie.
00:12:33.660 To me, it feels like hate speech.
00:12:35.340 It's hate because I it's it's just it makes me annoyed and angry when I hear that.
00:12:41.760 Feels like hate speech.
00:12:43.240 But I can't prove that.
00:12:45.040 I can't prove that your opinion that you like that the Marvel movies are good.
00:12:49.060 I can't prove that that opinion is based on a hatred for me.
00:12:51.840 It's possible that it isn't.
00:12:53.180 It's possible that that's just your opinion and you're expressing it.
00:12:56.920 I don't know.
00:12:57.640 But this is how hate speech works.
00:12:59.380 When someone calls something hate speech, it is simply a statement about how they, the listener, feel about this opinion.
00:13:08.420 So it reminds me of it reminds me of of that scene in the office when somebody defecates on Michael's carpet.
00:13:16.860 And and he called he says it's hate speech.
00:13:19.260 And then Stanley says it's not hate speech.
00:13:21.540 And Michael goes, well, I hated it.
00:13:24.600 And that's that's essentially how this works.
00:13:26.720 Of course, there there are exceptions, right?
00:13:29.720 I mean, there are things that people say that are clear, clearly hateful.
00:13:34.420 Like if I say I hate you.
00:13:36.180 Well, then I think it's safe to assume that there's hatred behind what I just said.
00:13:40.680 Or anytime you say something abusive, insulting to another person, there's very likely to be hatred behind it.
00:13:47.980 But the problem, first of all, is that that describes like 85 percent of the speech on on the Internet.
00:13:56.720 And so if Facebook was really going to shut down hate speech, they would have to shut down almost every profile on the on their site.
00:14:04.040 But often that that's exactly the kind of speech that is not called hate speech.
00:14:11.100 Or if it is called hate speech, it's called hate speech very selectively.
00:14:14.720 People insult me on the Internet literally hundreds of times a day.
00:14:21.180 If I were to actually read all my comments, which I don't, and read all my emails and messages, which I don't.
00:14:27.240 But if I were, I would I would be insulted hundreds of times a day.
00:14:34.620 If you don't believe me, just go look at the comments under anything I ever write or do or anything.
00:14:39.520 Any any any content of mine that I post, there's going to be plenty of comments that are just ripping it, ripping me to shreds.
00:14:46.760 Right. And to me, that that seems hateful.
00:14:50.240 Right. I. But but if I were to call that hate speech and complain to Facebook or Google about it or whatever, I'm being victimized by hate speech.
00:14:59.240 If I were to do that, I would be told that, no, that's not really hate speech.
00:15:03.320 Really? This guy just told me to kill myself.
00:15:05.560 That's not hate speech. You're not going to ban him.
00:15:07.740 How is that not? If that's not hate speech, then then I don't know what hate speech means.
00:15:14.180 And that's the point that oftentimes the most clearly hateful things are not considered hate speech.
00:15:21.960 Because hate speech is just a broad, ambiguous term that it's just a vessel for controlling speech.
00:15:30.360 That's all it is. And you know what?
00:15:32.640 But even in cases where hate is clearly the motivation behind the speech, even in cases where you have clear cut, cut and dry hate speech.
00:15:42.200 OK, is that really the worst kind of speech?
00:15:45.640 Even in that case, is hate speech really the worst kind of speech that you can find on the Internet or anywhere in life?
00:15:53.360 I don't think it is. I mean, what about dishonest speech?
00:15:56.900 What about manipulative speech?
00:15:58.700 What about propaganda?
00:16:00.160 What about what about what about the speech of somebody in the outrage mob who isn't really hateful and isn't really angry, but is just kind of indifferent and emotionally dead and is just saying what they're saying in order to in order to in order to whip up hysteria for fun?
00:16:16.800 Well, yeah.
00:16:17.360 What about emotionally dead speech?
00:16:19.380 Let's call it.
00:16:19.960 What about that?
00:16:20.640 I would say that all those forms of speech are are more dangerous than hate speech much of the time.
00:16:28.480 So just as a hate crime is not necessarily the worst kind of crime and it's not the worst motivation for a crime, although it's bad, it's not the worst.
00:16:38.100 I think the same thing is the case with hate speech.
00:16:41.660 And I would say in general, we have in our culture a very off balance focus on hatred.
00:16:50.640 We act like hatred is the biggest problem in our culture.
00:16:54.720 It's the worst thing is hatred.
00:16:56.760 But I don't think that's the case.
00:16:58.820 Hatred is bad.
00:17:00.840 But I don't even think that everyone's always so worried about, oh, hatred is the, you know, the disease that's infecting our culture.
00:17:08.080 I don't think that's the case.
00:17:09.860 I think the worst thing in our culture, and I made this point before, the worst thing is not hatred.
00:17:14.380 The worst thing is indifference, is just this kind of moral indifference.
00:17:20.640 And that explains a lot of what you see online are people, you know, they don't really hate each other.
00:17:27.960 They just don't recognize the humanity of other people and they don't care.
00:17:32.460 And they're kind of morally dead to the world.
00:17:37.220 That's the worst thing.
00:17:39.760 Hatred isn't even half as bad as that.
00:17:41.560 And that's the thing that is going to propel people to do the worst sorts of things.
00:17:49.180 As I've said in the past, most of these school shooters, mass killers, serial killers, and so on, most of them, they're not hateful.
00:17:56.680 They don't feel anything inside.
00:17:58.680 They have nothing going on inside.
00:17:59.940 They're totally empty.
00:18:01.880 And that's why they're doing what they're doing.
00:18:04.920 It's just they're trying to feel something.
00:18:06.760 They're just doing it for entertainment because they have no, because they just don't recognize humanity anymore.
00:18:15.420 So those are some things to keep in mind about the dreaded hate speech.
00:18:19.080 And it's important to keep this in mind because when the crackdown on the First Amendment really begins,
00:18:24.560 and maybe we're seeing it in its gestational phase right now, but when it really kicks into full gear,
00:18:32.220 it's going to be under the guise of cracking down on hate speech.
00:18:37.160 Thanks for watching, everybody.
00:18:39.080 Godspeed.