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?
00:02:15.600We could choose to go somewhere else, and it would require no effort.
00:02:19.600It's just a matter of clicking on a different app.
00:02:23.680So it's like instead of doing this, we do that.
00:02:26.780That's the amount of effort required to use a different social media platform.
00:02:32.000And 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.
00:03:14.220So 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.
00:04:00.220What he's saying, this is a government official saying companies must do more to restrict speech that I don't personally like.
00:04:10.020And 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.
00:04:20.420Well, then it is a straight up war on the First Amendment.
00:04:22.940But 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.
00:04:33.420It is possible to do something legal yet bad.
00:04:36.440That happens all the time in this country, and I think this is one of those times.
00:04:40.100Now, the justification for this, the basis that was provided, is something we should be really concerned with.
00:04:47.020Because all of these companies have claimed, in unison, that this is part of a crackdown on hate speech.
00:06:43.300Look, 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.
00:07:07.140My 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.
00:07:17.860So there are motivations that can lead us to do worse things.
00:07:22.720If anything, even take two crimes that are the same.
00:08:12.640And 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.
00:08:24.380That makes you a more dangerous person.
00:08:26.700And the possibility of reforming a person like that is probably less likely than reforming someone who commits a, quote, hate crime.
00:08:35.860So treating hate crime as the worst possible thing just doesn't make sense.
00:08:41.720I think a similar thing is the case with hate speech.
00:08:45.080Hate speech is not an objective category of speech.
00:09:09.740When you call something hate speech, you are inferring, based on your own subjective analysis, that hatred was the motivation behind the speech.
00:09:20.500When 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.
00:09:31.320But that's obviously arbitrary and subjective and impossible to prove.
00:09:37.640And when you try to enforce something like that, it is going to be enforced on a partisan, uneven basis.
00:09:45.860And 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.
00:10:02.040So just like that, all non-liberal speech is hate speech.
00:10:06.780But 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.
00:10:27.240I 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.
00:10:35.380Using the gay marriage example, leftists believe that any opposition to gay marriage is hateful.
00:10:43.180It's all hate speech because they just can't wrap their head around it.
00:10:47.500They cannot sympathize with the opinion that gay marriage is not a legitimate form of marriage.
00:10:56.820They can't sympathize with that opinion.
00:10:58.960However, those of us who hold that opinion, we know that it's got nothing to do with hate.
00:11:04.000We don't have any hate in our hearts about it.
00:11:05.640This is just a matter of observing and defining what marriage inherently is.
00:13:36.180Well, then I think it's safe to assume that there's hatred behind what I just said.
00:13:40.680Or anytime you say something abusive, insulting to another person, there's very likely to be hatred behind it.
00:13:47.980But the problem, first of all, is that that describes like 85 percent of the speech on on the Internet.
00:13:56.720And 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.
00:14:04.040But often that that's exactly the kind of speech that is not called hate speech.
00:14:11.100Or if it is called hate speech, it's called hate speech very selectively.
00:14:14.720People insult me on the Internet literally hundreds of times a day.
00:14:21.180If I were to actually read all my comments, which I don't, and read all my emails and messages, which I don't.
00:14:27.240But if I were, I would I would be insulted hundreds of times a day.
00:14:34.620If you don't believe me, just go look at the comments under anything I ever write or do or anything.
00:14:39.520Any 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.
00:14:46.760Right. And to me, that that seems hateful.
00:14:50.240Right. 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.
00:14:59.240If I were to do that, I would be told that, no, that's not really hate speech.
00:15:03.320Really? This guy just told me to kill myself.
00:15:05.560That's not hate speech. You're not going to ban him.
00:15:07.740How is that not? If that's not hate speech, then then I don't know what hate speech means.
00:15:14.180And that's the point that oftentimes the most clearly hateful things are not considered hate speech.
00:15:21.960Because hate speech is just a broad, ambiguous term that it's just a vessel for controlling speech.
00:16:00.160What 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?
00:16:20.640I would say that all those forms of speech are are more dangerous than hate speech much of the time.
00:16:28.480So 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.
00:16:38.100I think the same thing is the case with hate speech.
00:16:41.660And I would say in general, we have in our culture a very off balance focus on hatred.
00:16:50.640We act like hatred is the biggest problem in our culture.