January 14, 2021 • 36 mins
Big Tech is censoring conservatives online in a bid to exert left-wing political control. On this episode, CJ discusses what the right should do about it with two people deeply knowledgeable of this issue: Brandon Straka, founder of the #WalkAway campaign, and Will Chamberlain, a lawyer and publisher of Human Events. All three have a can't-miss discussion about the extent to which Facebook and Twitter have become drunk with power. They also dig into concrete, practical steps that can be taken in the legal arena to defend free speech and give persecuted individuals some recourse. This episode will make you think while also getting you fired up!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Up next C J. Pearson Uncensored, part of the English
twenty six D network. We're not gonna go quietly. They
think they could ban us from everything, They think they
can just shut us up through these ridiculous means. No,
I'm saying no, and I'm gonna keep saying that. Hi, guys,
Welcome to episode leven of c J. Pearson Uncensored. We
(00:21):
actually are not gonna waste any time today. We're gonna
hop right into it with our guests, who I'm so
excited for you guys to hear from Brandon Strock, the
founder of the walk Away Movement, and my friend Will Chamberlain,
an attorney and also publisher of Human Events, who has
done a lot of big things in terms of online censorship.
And that's what we're talking about here today. Big tech
(00:41):
is crashing on the conservative movement and these folks, they've
been right in the middle of it, so as I
thought it was one, but for some reason it started
to feel like a lot like the past week as
the big tech elite decided the conservatism just apparently isn't
allowed with America, that you're just not allowed to be
a conservative and have your views, have your ideals and
(01:03):
have a space on Twitter or have a space on Facebook,
and if you dare have an independent thought, well they're
coming for you. And they've come for certain people in
the movement. Really well everyone in the movement. It's not
even certain people at this point, it's everyone, um, really
really hard you know, folks like Brandon's Draw who was
a guest you know, earlier this year, last year. Now
(01:25):
founder the Way Movement has an entire Facebook page deleted
in this new censorship wave. Uh. And it's been absolutely
insane to watch. And that's what I wanted to talk
about here today because it's like a lot of people have,
like in social media of course, this new public square,
because that's exactly what it is. It's it's where people
come to talk about things, is where people come to
communicate their ideas. It's what started revolutions, and it's what
(01:47):
started the perforation of the ideas that have spread democracy
across the world. Uh. And so I think it's very
dangerous for us to be in a time we're literally
being conservative can be the reason you lose your Twitter,
you lose your Facebook, and some people you lose your Venmo,
PayPal and whatever else that is insane, and so I
wanted to bring on Brandon Struck talk about his experience,
(02:08):
but I also wanted to bring on Wild Chamberlain. Will
Chamberlain is the publisher of Human Events, a conservative magazine.
Has been been behind a lot of incredible conservative ideas
for a long long time. And I'll have him talked
about a little bit more too, But he has done
a lot of work on the entire idea that you
have a civil right to being on social media, that
there's a civil right, and so a lot further Ado,
(02:31):
let's let's bring them in. Brandon, how are you doing well?
C J. I'm hanging in there. It's it's a rough
time right now for me and my team, my staff,
my volunteers, but you know, I'm I surround myself with
people with similar constitution, and so we're doing okay. I mean,
we're just we're taking all the punches that they're coming
in and we're finding solutions as best we can. And so, Brandon,
(02:54):
you lost your entire walk Away Facebook page and and
some of them, your volunteers, your staff members also lost
their full pages. Um because the Facebook just completely shutting
you down. How many followers do you end up losing well.
So the walk Away campaign group had five eight thousand
members at that time, and it's um, you know, for me,
it's not even so much about the size of the group,
(03:16):
although that's a significant group size to get to. I
think it's UM, it's about the archives that have been lost.
You know, if they don't restore these accounts, they're lost forever.
And we're talking about at this point, hundreds of thousands
of video and written testimonials. Uh, people you know, videos,
people telling their stories. I mean, these are just real
people using their voices on social media to to to
(03:40):
to describe their account, um, their their experience, why they
used to believe one thing and now they don't believe
that thing anymore and they believe something else. And UM,
it's insane to me that we live in a time
that that's dangerous, that it's considered dangerous to listen to
somebody talk about why they've changed their mind about something.
(04:02):
And perhaps it's worth noting too that walk Away has never, will, never,
and still never endorses candidates, endorses parties. We don't tell people.
This is often misreported on both sides. We don't tell
people to walk away and support Trump. We don't tell
people to walk away and become Republicans. We don't tell
people that's the whole point. We're trying to tell people.
(04:24):
Think for yourself, read, do research, stop listening to the media,
go on your own journey and see where that leads you.
Some people are independent, some are libertarians, some you know.
So it's it's not even like they've closed down a
group where we're trying to grow the Republican Party. That's
not what it is. It's a group for three for
free thinking, and that's now considered dangerous and it seems
(04:44):
to be a carnalson these days, you know, just to
simply think for yourself, and I think that's an indictment
upon the current affairs is country, and it's sad and
it's depressing. You know. But well, you know, you've been
sounding the alarm on issues like this for a long
long time. Kind of tell us out on some of
your advocacy and and what you really see, you know,
other creators and folks like Brandon going through what's your
(05:06):
take on all? Yeah, So I've been pushing really hard
on the online censorship issue for a couple of years now. Um,
I think back, Actually, I'll go back in ten. So
three years ago, UM, I pushed a White House petition
to protect free speech in the digital public Square. I
got like a hundred thousand signatures. UM. And I think
last into I polished an article which sort of basically
(05:28):
states my view on this, which is the platform access
should be a civil right, UM. That we need to
look at it as essentially a discrimination problem, UM. And
that the remedy is ultimately going to be a federal
law that prohibits the discrimination that's happening to people, um,
and gives people a remedy to go into court and
fix it. So, for example, Brandon had his Facebook page
tacking down. Brandon didn't break the law. There was no
(05:49):
unlawful speech on that page, as far I assume, UM,
what happened. What Brandon should be able to do if
the laws were set up right, is you should be
able to walk into court today and get a court
order forcing Facebook to restore the age. That's what should happen.
In addition, he should be able to get attorney's fees
for having to waste his time doing it, and it
maybe additional statutory damages so Facebook doesn't do it anymore.
That's the ideal world, because that's a world in which
(06:10):
free speech is protected, where Facebook isn't picking and choosing
between who gets the right to speak in public and
who doesn't, who gets a right to organize on public
platforms and who doesn't. Um, you know, I think you know.
Another analogy is the idea of common carriers, the idea
that it should be looked at like a phone company
or a power utility. You know that they have this,
you know, monopoly right over a big chunk of our
(06:31):
public square. But that right comes to the responsibility to
allow anybody into it as long as they're not breaking
the law. Um. And I think that's where we need
to go. And when you have somebody like President Trump
having his accounts suspended and a slew of other people
like Brandon having their accounts suspended, it's clear none of
us are really safe, and none of us are going
to be safe until we have meaningful reform and do
(06:51):
things also that conservatives often haven't been comfortable with, like
telling a private company what to do. But I mean,
if if you think entrepreneurship is the solution, I think
looking at Parlors per should cure you of that notion. Yeah,
and I think for me. You know, for a long time,
I was kind of in the middle on the issue.
You know, I knew that obviously we need to do
something about what was happening. But of course there's this
kind of convoluted and in layered argument when it comes
(07:13):
to section two thirty, because there is the fact that
it does serve as kind of a protector or a
protection against liability damages. Um. You know, for these big
corporations like Twitter and Facebook. You know, some people would say,
you know, Twitter is a private company, Facebooks a private company.
They get to choose who uses and who doesn't use
their platform. But to the point you just made, they're
(07:34):
all monopolies. And and it's hard to see until you
see what happened this past week, right we saw you know,
the president taking off with Twitter. We saw Amazon be
able to completely created an entire company just by simply
taking their servers away. Um. And then you see what's
happening on Facebook, and you see just how widespread it is.
We have people with YouTube pages taking down, we have people, um,
(07:56):
you know, Instagram is taken down like that is a monopoly.
And so it's like, even if you're a conservative, who
is like Hey, I don't really feel all that comfortable
telling corporations what to do. It's their service, they built
it whatever. At the same time, does it really look
favorable for democracy or republic or free speech in general
for one single company or one group of people to
(08:16):
have that much power over the public debate. No, I
think it's super scary to me. But I mean, sorry,
I'm stuttering because I just get exasperated when I talk
about this subject like it's it's it's unbelievable to me
that in the year now we're in one and on
the Conservatives, like, I don't actually understand how we got
(08:38):
to this place. You're kidding yourself if you're listening to
this and you think that we're a United States and
that we're you know, healing and unity is I mean,
you're kidding yourself. But I mean, if you look at
America left in America right, America left, and just for
a moment, let's just pretend like there are two different countries.
I mean, America right is like a third world country
when it comes to technology, and America left is absolutely
(09:01):
vastly superior to America right in terms of technology. Why
have we allowed this to happen. And I mean this
didn't just social media didn't just spring up in the
last year or two. This has been you know, I
joined Facebook in two thousands seven. Before that, there were
my Space, and you know, so we have decades in
which we could have, to some degree, made attempts to
get caught up. And now I think we're at this
(09:25):
point where we have no choice UM, where we have
to now get caught up as quickly as possible. We
have to become autonomous UM and we have to become
completely unreliant of anything and anything anything to do with
the left. Now, some people will say, but we don't
want to exist in an echo chamber. That's fine. If
you want to continue to be on Twitter, if you
(09:46):
want to continue to be on Facebook and use those
platforms and succumb to their uh fascistic rules and they're
double standards that apply to you but don't apply to
the other side, that's fine. I'm not judging or saying
anything if anybody wants to do that, But I'm saying
that cannot be our only alternative, because we have put
ourselves in a position right now to be completely destroyed
(10:08):
living in a digital age. If these people and by
the way, these are not rational, reasonable people. These are unhinged,
abusive people who are looking for any reason you can
give them to destroy your life. And if they decide
that today is the day where it's time to come
after you, we've given them all the all the power
(10:29):
to cut off our financial streams, to cut off our
communications streams, to cut off our banking uh, to cut
off our email system. I mean, how did we get
ourselves in this position? And whatever? I mean, who even
cares at this point with the answer is? The point
is we have to get ourselves out. We have to
become self sufficient, self sustaining, and we have to create
an I think an ecosystem. Uh that duplicates you know,
(10:52):
what's happening on the left, but that allows us to
be safe on the conservative side. Yeah, you know, was
completely agree that we need to build our own stuff.
But I think what's what's troubling about it, though, is
that we've seen, like through parlor is that even when
we build our own stuff, it just take that away too.
And so I think that leads discussions how do we
(11:14):
preserve our place on these platforms, How do we bring
accountability too big tech? To keep our voices there, and
I think that deals with kind of section to thirty. Well,
you've talked a lot about that in the sense and
you're in favor of an outright elimination. If I'm right
of sexual two thirty, can you tell us but not? Actually, UM,
I mean I want to first actually want to address
a Brandon said, because I think it's actually an important
(11:35):
This is actually an important discussion to have internally on
the right, like the question of do we sort of
where should our energy be focused. Do we focus more
on building UM our own essentially entire technology stack UM right,
or like focus on the kind of civil rights angle
that I'm promising and where I'm proposing. And I realized
that in the short term, we're not in control of
the federal government, so we can't pass these laws. And
I have no problem with I mean, we should be
(11:57):
finding ways to build the tech stack and and you know,
I mean I think actually was talking with Charlie Kurt
the other day, and one of the things he talked
about is, you know, state governments and friendly Republican states
subsidizing UM businesses to try and build that technology stack
so we can compete. Uh. The problem is that means
to me, I my honest assessment is that it's a
twenty year project because it's not. It's clear it's not
(12:17):
just about building another social media platform's about building another
cloud services platform and another I s P and another.
I mean, we have to have sovereignty over not just
one piece of you know, the Internet infrastructure, but the
entire thing. So I think, you know, we you know,
the simplest you know that that ultimately and sort of
and I think in the end goal is not that
appealing because part of what I think Facebook and Twitter
(12:39):
value before is the ability to try and influence public
conversation and participate, Like, I don't want to see us
self segregated into kind of second class social media platforms
while you know the I mean, I think because I
think Twitter and Facebook were perfectly happy to see every
conservative disappear, I don't think they really care, and I
think it would like from their perspective, that's great. We
don't have to deal with these annoying people and we
can continue to shape public opinion without their meddling. Um.
(13:01):
So that's where I come from there. And and as
regards to thirty, I'm not for full repeal. I think
you know, at the end of the day, it would
just completely destroy the ability to have any sort of
social media platform. Um, they none of the companies could
possibly sustain it. I don't even think Facebook and Twitter
could really sustain themselves in the absence of new law
being made to protect them from liability for third party
(13:21):
users post. But I certainly in for reform. I just
my my ultimate goal is to see us move from
you know, section to thirty is a liability provision. It's
it's meant to deal with a different problem, not the
problem of censorship, but the problem of you know, the
moderator's dilemma of these platforms, like if they moderate too much,
they become defamation liable. If they moderate too little, you've um,
you know you let child porn on your platform, right
(13:42):
that that was the original idea behind it. Um. I
want to see us focus on this, like, what is
the problem we're trying to solve. Well, we're being discriminated
against for being conservatives. That's the problem. And it's like
it's not a kind of discrimination we can solve with
a new business in a in a year. Because there's
so many like as as prob the perject polor demonstrated
they can just cut off your servers, or they can
(14:02):
just cut off your I S p UM. And so
the solution of mass collective discrimination is federal law prohibiting
that discrimination. That worked with common carriers at the turn
of the century like hotels and trains, um, that worked
with the Civil Rights Act of nexteen sixty four. That's
what ultimately broke the back of Jim Crow. And I
think that's the you know, the simple solution here, right.
(14:23):
I mean, if if Facebook and Twitter have to pay
damages every time, you know, if brand Strockle walks in
court today and he were able to walk in get hit,
you know, get hit an injunction restored and get his
attorneys fees and maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars for
his time. It took a Twitter wouldn't do this stuff.
They go but they go back and focusing on tuning
their Autu's a really good point. Well, we'll get right
to it right after the break. And it was in
(14:49):
email excittion to three. Yeah. It feels is that when
it was first and posed back in the nineties, is
that the tech companies in the argument that they can
exist because they didn't have the ability to moderate their website.
But what we've seen apparently is that they actually are
really good at moderating their websites. I wouldn't call it
moderating much that I think it's just more like great
(15:09):
flavorant censorship at this juncture. But you know, doesn't that
kind of hobbl that entire argument that that they need
Section to thirty now to be able to exist if
they have launched these crazy measures in terms of censorship. Well,
I mean it's it's kind of like that, but I
mean it sort of helps to understand like what was
the legal for like landscape like in the nineties that
(15:32):
led to Section to thirty being passed, and that one
was there have been these court cases that came out
around the new Internet forum spring up on, like compy
Serve and Prodigy and the cases there were these two
cases that came out differently. One, you know, copy Server
wasn't held liable for a third party users defamatory posts
because they didn't do any moderating at all, so they're like,
we're just a you know, passive observer. And then Prodigy,
(15:54):
on their hand, they were marketing like, well we'll take
down obscenity we'll take down porn things like that, and
the court and okay said, well, then your exercizing editorial control.
You're a publishers, so it meant that, you know, from
Congress's perspective, it's like, well, here's the problem that we
need to address with legislation. If we want these platforms
to do some moderation so that there is in child
porn and and violent you know, like ridiculously of seeing
(16:16):
content everywhere on the internet. We don't want children seeing that.
But if they do that, under current law, they become
liable for all the defamation stuff. So we want to
make it possible for them to moderate reasonably without having
the defamation liability. And that was presumed on this sort
of good faith notion that they would use this you know,
unique grant of moderating flexibility, you know, not in a nonpartisan,
(16:37):
public interested way, and instead they decided to use it
to wield political power. What's so wild about it, though,
is that it's like, now, can we even do anything
about it? You know, we we're not gonna be in
the White House in a few days. We've lost control
of Congress, and I feel as if these issues aren't new, right,
and That's what I think, that's what makes me the
most angry is that these issues are not new. Republican
(16:58):
lawmakers knew about this, well what can policymakers knew about this,
but still they didn't do anything about it. They sent
out press releases, they tweet about it, they offense about it.
But for all the years that Donald Trump was in
the White House, for all the years that we control cars,
we actually have the ability to do something about sexual
two thirty, not even just eliminated, but reform it or
actually make these tech companies pay um for their actions.
(17:21):
We chose to do nothing. Uh. And I think that
tells us a lot about the caliber of Republicans that
we have today in our party. People that can talk
a good game all day long, but people that are
unwilling to fight. You know, we see that with this
impeachment fight. People that love the president, you know, just
not too long ago, but now they're going to impeach
them because DNN says they should. UM As they talk
(17:43):
about unity and healing, they think that impeaching the president
who's gotten the most votes in history UM of any
incumbent president will actually do anything to heal this nation.
And that is obsurred to me. But what also I
think gratifies me the most is that the reason they
sense to these ideas because they're scared of these ideas, Brandon, Like,
you weren't doing anything you were you know, spreading hatred
for any group or anything like that. You were seeking
(18:05):
to lighten people and wait people up. And they said
that because of that, you have no place on their
ab no place on their forum. And so why do
you think these people are scared of conservative ideas, Brandon? Well, Um,
I mean, first of all, I think it's a combination
of things. I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of who
we are and what we're about. Um, I mean that
there's I think there's only a handful. Uh. And I
(18:28):
don't listen. I'm so like exhausted with all the fights
I've been in the last week that I'm actually past
the point of wanting to insult liberals or troll liberals,
so that I'm not even trying to be like nasty
or insulting when I say I think the majority of
liberals are just um, totally uninformed, just very emotional, uninformed people.
(18:49):
And I think there's only a handful of people on
the leftist side who actually know what they're doing and
are pulling all the strings. So when you start appealing
to people's like basis uh emotional insecurities, like by saying,
you know, these people who disagree with you are racists,
These people who disagree with you are bigots, these people
(19:10):
are Nazis. They wish you're not safe in their presence.
I mean, they've done this incredible job of snowing the
majority of their base, and they actually believe this, and
it's gone so much further, to to the point. I mean,
I'm you know, I'm on Twitter and on a daily basis,
I I'm reading these comments from people who talk about,
you know, still with the Russian bots and still with whatever,
(19:31):
and it's like they can't comprehend a world in which
people just genuinely do not agree with what they believe
is real and and they're unwilling to. I mean, with
walk Away, we've tried, you know, the majority of the
live events that we've done have been town halls. We've
done town halls, encouraging people from both sides to come
to argue. You can disagree with us, you can stand up,
(19:54):
you'll be heard. But we have a really hard time
hosting debates, which is what we've always wanted to do,
because even the loudest voices on the left with the
largest platforms do not want to show up to debate.
They don't want to have the discussion. AOC is one
of the biggest rising stars on left. She will not debate.
She won't show up and have debate her green new deals,
(20:16):
she won't debate socialism. These are the things that she's like,
you know, the hills she's willing to die on, but
she won't debate. And so it's I think that they're
fundamentally I think they're terrified of of us as people
and what they think that our intentions are. I don't
think that they understand our ideas. Usually when they understand
our ideas and get to know our hearts, a little
(20:38):
bit um, they budge a little bit um. Some of
them budge all the way and end up walking away.
But um oh. And one final thing I'll say on
that note too, is our leadership does nothing to dispel
those narratives as well. I mean that the smallest of
actions could go such a long way. And I tried
(20:59):
with the rees sources I had to to get people
to listen and to do this, um and I listen.
I love President Trump. I still love President Trump. I
would vote for him again. But he failed too at
this very same thing. Because I was just having a
conversation last night with somebody about how things would have
been so different if I had had a voice in
(21:20):
his campaign that people had listened to. And I, you know,
I said, why didn't President Trump sit down with Black
Lives Matter and record it, do a live stream town
hall with Black Lives Matter? Why doesn't he sit down
with twenty Hispanic liberals and let them voice their concerns,
let them ask him, are you a racist? You scare us?
Why did you do this? Like it's like our side
(21:43):
just has this arrogant attitude like yeah, they think we're racist,
they think we're biggots, but who cares whatever, Let's just
build the wall, let's ignore them. And so I think
there's this massive failing by not communicating with the other
side and showing them who we really are. Right now,
a lot of people, I think, are they want hope
right And it's and it's so easy, I think, to
(22:03):
get down trodden. Right now, everything's having the country after
the last week, the events of the capital, you know,
of course, with what we're about to be going through
for the next four years and at least the next
two of the Democratic Congress, it's it's it's a lot
to deal with for a lot of people, I think
for a lot of creators and influencers and actress in
the movement. I wake up every morning not knowing that
(22:24):
I'm gonna have a Twitter account, right I don't like
everyone we're gonna have Facebook anymore. Um, And that's a
weird reality, you know, for a lot of people. And
it's not as though because I tweeting again, I'm not
tweeting things controversial or wild or anything like that. It's like, literally,
because of my politics, I am afraid of being like
un person Like that is insane and that should be
(22:44):
nos reality. But I think the question that we get
to right now is where do we go from here? Now? Well,
we've lost control of the White House, we don't have
the Senate, we don't have the House. We we have
a pretty strong in control the Judiciary and the President
make significant shrides and stacking the core. Do you think
that modes wall for us in terms of maybe is
our path to limitying this through the courts, Like, where
(23:06):
do we go from here to actually see some results
of season changes? Yeah, I mean, you know, we we
feel the courts with a bunch of textualists, and the
problem is the way the lot is currently written. It's
on Facebook and Twitter and all their sides. Right. Section
two thirty is is pretty dramatic in terms of its
scope of protecting them from immunity. Um. And then you know,
there's no there's no civil rights protection for political affiliation,
(23:28):
and the Supreme Court is not just going to invent one,
not with a bunch of good textuals judges who don't
just make up law as they go along. So you know,
I mean, there are a lot of places where the
Supreme Court will be very good at protecting our rights
with all the new conservatives. The Second Amendment is one
of them. Uh, free speech on college campuses is another.
I mean, there's there's places where we can expect help.
But in terms of you know, whether private companies are
(23:50):
going to censor us or not, I don't think the
Supreme Court is going to be the avenue. So you know,
in the medium, in the short in the medium term, obviously,
I think the goal is retake federal power and passing
new civil rights. In the short term, we need to
figure out how to use the states um and state ages,
bringing cases and and maybe perhaps passing from state laws
that jive with Section two thirty but still protect their
(24:11):
citizens from bad faith removal, because ultimately, the ability to
sensor content based on two thirty is rooted in this
good faith provision. And so I think that you know,
Ron Coleman and another very good lawyer and I have
argued that there's a way to approach these things from state,
the state consumer protection level, and have a friendly state
like Texas or Oklahoma or somebody like that, say, do
(24:32):
they say their citizens are not going to be discriminated
against on social media anymore? That's unfair competition, that's on
violated communsumer protection statutes. And we're going to try and
prosecute Facebook and Twitter for those things. Other than that,
I mean, we really just need to focus on figuring
out how the hell we're gonna get federal power back,
and I hope we can. Um can I ask a
question of will so will in the scenario that you're
(24:54):
describing going to civil rights route, Um, what is the
recourse these platforms when they do, in fact have a
legitimate neo nazi racist. I mean, if it depends like
if if I mean, it depends on how the law
is written, right, you know, you could you know, the
beauty of like federal law is that you're not you're
(25:15):
not bound by the First Amendment, so you can write
it give a little more permission to these companies. So
say we all agree that like, if you're out there
spewing um, you know, bizarre incredibly, any submitigatred that. Well,
in that case, a platform should be able to be
in you Okay, that could be an exception in the
law that gives additional flexibility of the platform beyond what
you know, a college campus would have or a you know,
(25:36):
a university. Um. But I think you know, the starting
point should be you know, you know. Then then we're
now we're just debating about exactly like what level of
regulation at the starting point used to be. Well, clearly
they have too much discretion. Okay, if we're having to
debate about, Okay, well, should they have just a discretion
they would have if they were a university campus, or
should they have slightly more in like narrowly categorized areas.
(25:58):
I mean, that's a debate that would ultimately how you
to resolve. And I don't actually have strong feelings on
like I'm you know, if you want to say to me,
we need to keep vicious any semits off the internet,
I'm like not, you know, I don't have the strong
feelings that they must be allowed to stay, although I
think you know, there is a simple simplicity and elegance
of just saying, you know what the symbolist move here
is the First Amendment comes over right, Like, you know,
(26:20):
if if your speech is lawful, you stay and they
don't have can you? They have to have a good faith,
reasonable belief that not just that they don't like your speech,
but that you've broken the law that your speech is
a lawful it's defamatory, it's child porn, it's incitement of violence,
something like that. That's what I think. That's why ultimately
think the goal is, so would it be fair to
say that with the solution that you're proposing, it's it's
(26:41):
almost more about giving people an option when they're, for
lack of a better term, victimized this way, whereas right
now they essentially have no recourse whatsoever when this happens
to us to at least be heard to have a
day in court, right right, yeah, exactly like I mean it,
And it makes it's very scary for the company is
to be facing litigation like this. They don't they wouldn't
(27:02):
like it at all. You know, again section to thirty.
The thing about it is the focus on it is
very It's like a indirect way of getting to the
solution because the idea is, well, we get rid of
section to thirty, and we open up the possibility of
defamation lawsuits by other people who damages from Facebook. It's like, well,
what about the person who's censored. That's the victim that
and that's the person's whose harm are trying to redress.
So the idea here is saying no, we what we
(27:24):
need to do is and what's been done in a
lot of other areas of law, um is say no.
As an American citizen, you actually have a right to
use these platforms for lawful speech, and if a company
violates that right, you can go to court and get
that right vindicated by a federal judge and get an
injunction forcing them forcing the company to stop violating your
right to use their platform. You know, c j you
were saying a second ago, Um, you said, you wake
(27:46):
up every day and you're not sure if you're gonna
have a Twitter account or not. And then you you know,
it's like we have to kind of question what we're
posting in question you know, how they're going to react
to it. And this is my biggest concern too, because
I feel like as these as the left in general,
not just the the tech overlords, but just anybody, you know,
leftist and progressive in my opinion, become more unreasonable and
(28:08):
more unhinged, and they're able to sort of like create
these narratives that in itself, I mean it's not hyperbole
at this point to think that they could create the
narrative that Donald Trump is the most dangerous man who's
ever been president. So if you support Donald Trump, you're
(28:29):
supporting the downfall of America. I mean, like, I don't
think that's so. I mean, like I actually question now,
I'm like, am I safe anymore? Going on Twitter? Being
like Trump is the greatest president of my lifetime? Am I?
They could deem that to be a threat to Democrat
you know what I mean? Like, so I just feel like,
what where we're drawing the line at this point about
(28:50):
you know what is uh discriminatory or threatening speech or
things like that, is the rules are so skewed it's, uh,
it's almost difficult to know how you can be safe
to just express your opinion. Like I tweet earlier this week,
I said, the Republican Party has led by we need
coward did time for patriots to rosity the occasion and
(29:10):
take it back. There are people tagging the FBI in
the comments of that tweet as we're referring to the
Republican Party. They were saying I was inside and I'm
sure people probably reported the tweet two and like that
is absolutely insane that that is what the media is
constructive narrative that conservatism itself is a violent ideology. That's
(29:32):
what they've been able to do because of the Capitol
Hill of it that they have made it out to be,
as if conservatism itself is just this ideology of hatred
and violence, when it's like, when did they ever really
do that for radical Islam? But conservatives are being treated
like we're literal g hottest because of the things in
which we believe. That is c J. Black Lives Matter
was a part of the d n C platform this year.
(29:55):
I mean that a huge part of their their convention
was is honoring the martyrs of BLM, the same people.
I mean, I personally was physically attacked by BLM three
or four times this year, all on video. I mean
it's clear they instigated it. I didn't start it. They
came to my events, they brought violence, and I'm just
(30:18):
one of thousands of people that were physically attacked. People
lost their businesses, neighborhoods were destroyed. Uh, people were killed.
And this was a part of their convention, being like
Black Lives Matter is an amazing organization. It's but they're
able to do this because they control everything technologically. And
this is again where I fundament I don't care if
it takes twenty years. I mean, let's let's invoke the
(30:40):
spirit of the pioneers who built this country and let's
roll up our sleeves and let's aim for twenty years
from now being self sustaining people. On the conservative side,
I think you need to have the get everybody ready
for the legal route in case we have the power
to do it one. I mean we don't get that power.
We do need to still build the alternatives to or
if we can't get Republicans to agree like need to
do both. Um. Yeah, and I'm definitely for you know,
(31:04):
I'm not one person who's like we should only have
one approach, right like multiple you know, multitude approaches. You know,
head your bets, like make sure that you you know
your your options are are covered. Well. I think we're
all gonna be and tried in the days aheah. I
think there's no doubt about that. And again, like this
should not be the reality in which we live, but
it's the one we have to grapple with, the one
(31:24):
that we have to adapt to, and it's it's troubling.
But I think at the end of the day, all
of us are still committed this fight. I know, Will,
you are, Brandon. I know that this has only led
you to plan more, probably for one And the way
I'm looking at it, you know, they can try to
censor our ideas, but really what that shows that they're
(31:45):
scared of our ideas because they know that they can't
beat them. Thank you so much for joining us and
taking a Todd Will Brandon. I hope you guys have
a great day, and again, thank you so much for
joining us. Thank you guys well, welcome back. Thank you
so much to Will and Brandon for joining me. Those
(32:08):
patriots are always fighting, and I've been inspired by their
work in so many ways, and they've been just as
affected as everyone across. The movement has been about the
recent strides taken by big tech to silence us, to
unperson us, to push us into the shadows because they
are scared of our ideas. They're scared of what they represent,
not hatred or violence, as they like to pretend, but liberty, freedom,
(32:31):
limited government, economic opportunity. Those are conservative ideals. Hatred and
violence have never been. If you really want to talk
about the history of hatred of both in this country,
I think it starts with liberalism quite actually right, the
KKK liberals, right, Jim Crow liberals, right, you know, the
internment of Japanese Americans. To switch it up a little bit. Liberals, Democrats,
(32:53):
they did that. Concerns didn't do that stuff. But yet, somehow,
because of the mainstream media's narrative and the just control
they have over public discourse, for some reason has allowed
them to paint us as if we are just some
domestic terrorists who only sin our cornal sin guys is
loving America too much. We love America too much, guys.
(33:15):
If that's what I'm going to be blamed for, if
that's what I'm gonna be hated on for, if that's
what I'm gonna get banned from the Internet for being,
then I'm okay with that, guys, because I love this country.
There is a lot to love about this country, and
and and what's I wrote about all of this? And
these same people who preach about unity, who preach about
wanting to bring America together, are doing everything they can
(33:37):
in these closing days of the trouble administration to divide us.
They're working to impeach the president. They just did that
today in a vote that Nancy Pelosi said was a
absolute must. And we're also seeing now, of course, they're
trying to wipe us all away from the Internet because
concerned ideas, they incite violence, Apparently they start hate. Apparently, guys,
(33:58):
this is the reality in which we live. These people
say one thing, but they do a completely different thing.
And unfortunately, this is the reality for the next four years.
And so, guys, I want to give you hope, I
want to give you faith, and I think there's some
of that to be had, But I also want to
be really clear about the times of which we live.
These are worries sometimes they really are, but not the
(34:20):
type of worry that I want you that I want
to push you into being fearful. Not the type of
worry that I want that you to feel that will
push you into being silent. It's a type of worry
that I want you to have so much so that
it makes you get off your ass and fight for
this country like you never have before. That's the reality
which we live. They're coming for us. They're coming for
(34:40):
each every one of us, I mean, for anyone who
has the audacity thing for themselves. Guys are really Last
week I told you about how a girl is trying
to expel me from school for being a Republican, and
now they're trying to ban everyone from social media for
being a Republican. If you think you're safe, you're wrong.
There are people who have gotten fire from their jobs,
or people who have lost streams of income simply because
(35:02):
of their politics. And so if some of you may ask,
where do we go from here? How do we fix this?
How do we change this? Well, first it spot electing
Republicans who actually know to fight back against this craziness, right,
but it's also about doing stuff. Just like Will said,
political affiliation should be a protected class in this country,
and I've been saying that far before this stuff happened.
There are people literally getting attack in these streets for
wearing a Make America Grid Again hat, and people didn't
(35:23):
think that maybe, just maybe we should start protecting people's
expression their political views, because it wasn't Trump supporters going
out in the streets and beating up people with vaginas
on their head. It was never us who were instigating
or committing these acts of violence. It was never us. Never,
it was them beating us up, attacking us, getting us canceled,
(35:44):
trying to get us fired, get us kicked out of school,
trying to cancel us because we have ideas that make
them feel uneasy. Well, I'm sorry, I don't care anymore.
I'm done. And you have the right to voice your
opinion just as anyone else does, and we're gonna fight
for that right. We're not gonna go quietly. They think
they could ban us from everything, they think they can
just shut us up through these ridiculous means. Now I'm
(36:10):
saying no, and I'm gonna keep saying it. We'll see
you back next week. Hey guys, c J. Pierson here.
Join us right here on Apple Podcast, I Heart Radio,
or wherever you get your podcast for the same hard
hitting truth because we'll never stop fighting for you right
here on c J. Pierson noncensored c J. Pierson nouncensored.
(36:33):
Part of the Nguish Tweet network
Up next C J. Pearson Uncensored, part of the English
twenty six D network. We're not gonna go quietly. They
think they could ban us from everything, They think they
can just shut us up through these ridiculous means. No,
I'm saying no, and I'm gonna keep saying that. Hi, guys,
Welcome to episode leven of c J. Pearson Uncensored. We
(00:21):
actually are not gonna waste any time today. We're gonna
hop right into it with our guests, who I'm so
excited for you guys to hear from Brandon Strock, the
founder of the walk Away Movement, and my friend Will Chamberlain,
an attorney and also publisher of Human Events, who has
done a lot of big things in terms of online censorship.
And that's what we're talking about here today. Big tech
(00:41):
is crashing on the conservative movement and these folks, they've
been right in the middle of it, so as I
thought it was one, but for some reason it started
to feel like a lot like the past week as
the big tech elite decided the conservatism just apparently isn't
allowed with America, that you're just not allowed to be
a conservative and have your views, have your ideals and
(01:03):
have a space on Twitter or have a space on Facebook,
and if you dare have an independent thought, well they're
coming for you. And they've come for certain people in
the movement. Really well everyone in the movement. It's not
even certain people at this point, it's everyone, um, really
really hard you know, folks like Brandon's Draw who was
a guest you know, earlier this year, last year. Now
(01:25):
founder the Way Movement has an entire Facebook page deleted
in this new censorship wave. Uh. And it's been absolutely
insane to watch. And that's what I wanted to talk
about here today because it's like a lot of people have,
like in social media of course, this new public square,
because that's exactly what it is. It's it's where people
come to talk about things, is where people come to
communicate their ideas. It's what started revolutions, and it's what
(01:47):
started the perforation of the ideas that have spread democracy
across the world. Uh. And so I think it's very
dangerous for us to be in a time we're literally
being conservative can be the reason you lose your Twitter,
you lose your Facebook, and some people you lose your Venmo,
PayPal and whatever else that is insane, and so I
wanted to bring on Brandon Struck talk about his experience,
(02:08):
but I also wanted to bring on Wild Chamberlain. Will
Chamberlain is the publisher of Human Events, a conservative magazine.
Has been been behind a lot of incredible conservative ideas
for a long long time. And I'll have him talked
about a little bit more too, But he has done
a lot of work on the entire idea that you
have a civil right to being on social media, that
there's a civil right, and so a lot further Ado,
(02:31):
let's let's bring them in. Brandon, how are you doing well?
C J. I'm hanging in there. It's it's a rough
time right now for me and my team, my staff,
my volunteers, but you know, I'm I surround myself with
people with similar constitution, and so we're doing okay. I mean,
we're just we're taking all the punches that they're coming
in and we're finding solutions as best we can. And so, Brandon,
(02:54):
you lost your entire walk Away Facebook page and and
some of them, your volunteers, your staff members also lost
their full pages. Um because the Facebook just completely shutting
you down. How many followers do you end up losing well.
So the walk Away campaign group had five eight thousand
members at that time, and it's um, you know, for me,
it's not even so much about the size of the group,
(03:16):
although that's a significant group size to get to. I
think it's UM, it's about the archives that have been lost.
You know, if they don't restore these accounts, they're lost forever.
And we're talking about at this point, hundreds of thousands
of video and written testimonials. Uh, people you know, videos,
people telling their stories. I mean, these are just real
people using their voices on social media to to to
(03:40):
to describe their account, um, their their experience, why they
used to believe one thing and now they don't believe
that thing anymore and they believe something else. And UM,
it's insane to me that we live in a time
that that's dangerous, that it's considered dangerous to listen to
somebody talk about why they've changed their mind about something.
(04:02):
And perhaps it's worth noting too that walk Away has never, will, never,
and still never endorses candidates, endorses parties. We don't tell people.
This is often misreported on both sides. We don't tell
people to walk away and support Trump. We don't tell
people to walk away and become Republicans. We don't tell
people that's the whole point. We're trying to tell people.
(04:24):
Think for yourself, read, do research, stop listening to the media,
go on your own journey and see where that leads you.
Some people are independent, some are libertarians, some you know.
So it's it's not even like they've closed down a
group where we're trying to grow the Republican Party. That's
not what it is. It's a group for three for
free thinking, and that's now considered dangerous and it seems
(04:44):
to be a carnalson these days, you know, just to
simply think for yourself, and I think that's an indictment
upon the current affairs is country, and it's sad and
it's depressing. You know. But well, you know, you've been
sounding the alarm on issues like this for a long
long time. Kind of tell us out on some of
your advocacy and and what you really see, you know,
other creators and folks like Brandon going through what's your
(05:06):
take on all? Yeah, So I've been pushing really hard
on the online censorship issue for a couple of years now. Um,
I think back, Actually, I'll go back in ten. So
three years ago, UM, I pushed a White House petition
to protect free speech in the digital public Square. I
got like a hundred thousand signatures. UM. And I think
last into I polished an article which sort of basically
(05:28):
states my view on this, which is the platform access
should be a civil right, UM. That we need to
look at it as essentially a discrimination problem, UM. And
that the remedy is ultimately going to be a federal
law that prohibits the discrimination that's happening to people, um,
and gives people a remedy to go into court and
fix it. So, for example, Brandon had his Facebook page
tacking down. Brandon didn't break the law. There was no
(05:49):
unlawful speech on that page, as far I assume, UM,
what happened. What Brandon should be able to do if
the laws were set up right, is you should be
able to walk into court today and get a court
order forcing Facebook to restore the age. That's what should happen.
In addition, he should be able to get attorney's fees
for having to waste his time doing it, and it
maybe additional statutory damages so Facebook doesn't do it anymore.
That's the ideal world, because that's a world in which
(06:10):
free speech is protected, where Facebook isn't picking and choosing
between who gets the right to speak in public and
who doesn't, who gets a right to organize on public
platforms and who doesn't. Um, you know, I think you know.
Another analogy is the idea of common carriers, the idea
that it should be looked at like a phone company
or a power utility. You know that they have this,
you know, monopoly right over a big chunk of our
(06:31):
public square. But that right comes to the responsibility to
allow anybody into it as long as they're not breaking
the law. Um. And I think that's where we need
to go. And when you have somebody like President Trump
having his accounts suspended and a slew of other people
like Brandon having their accounts suspended, it's clear none of
us are really safe, and none of us are going
to be safe until we have meaningful reform and do
(06:51):
things also that conservatives often haven't been comfortable with, like
telling a private company what to do. But I mean,
if if you think entrepreneurship is the solution, I think
looking at Parlors per should cure you of that notion. Yeah,
and I think for me. You know, for a long time,
I was kind of in the middle on the issue.
You know, I knew that obviously we need to do
something about what was happening. But of course there's this
kind of convoluted and in layered argument when it comes
(07:13):
to section two thirty, because there is the fact that
it does serve as kind of a protector or a
protection against liability damages. Um. You know, for these big
corporations like Twitter and Facebook. You know, some people would say,
you know, Twitter is a private company, Facebooks a private company.
They get to choose who uses and who doesn't use
their platform. But to the point you just made, they're
(07:34):
all monopolies. And and it's hard to see until you
see what happened this past week, right we saw you know,
the president taking off with Twitter. We saw Amazon be
able to completely created an entire company just by simply
taking their servers away. Um. And then you see what's
happening on Facebook, and you see just how widespread it is.
We have people with YouTube pages taking down, we have people, um,
(07:56):
you know, Instagram is taken down like that is a monopoly.
And so it's like, even if you're a conservative, who
is like Hey, I don't really feel all that comfortable
telling corporations what to do. It's their service, they built
it whatever. At the same time, does it really look
favorable for democracy or republic or free speech in general
for one single company or one group of people to
(08:16):
have that much power over the public debate. No, I
think it's super scary to me. But I mean, sorry,
I'm stuttering because I just get exasperated when I talk
about this subject like it's it's it's unbelievable to me
that in the year now we're in one and on
the Conservatives, like, I don't actually understand how we got
(08:38):
to this place. You're kidding yourself if you're listening to
this and you think that we're a United States and
that we're you know, healing and unity is I mean,
you're kidding yourself. But I mean, if you look at
America left in America right, America left, and just for
a moment, let's just pretend like there are two different countries.
I mean, America right is like a third world country
when it comes to technology, and America left is absolutely
(09:01):
vastly superior to America right in terms of technology. Why
have we allowed this to happen. And I mean this
didn't just social media didn't just spring up in the
last year or two. This has been you know, I
joined Facebook in two thousands seven. Before that, there were
my Space, and you know, so we have decades in
which we could have, to some degree, made attempts to
get caught up. And now I think we're at this
(09:25):
point where we have no choice UM, where we have
to now get caught up as quickly as possible. We
have to become autonomous UM and we have to become
completely unreliant of anything and anything anything to do with
the left. Now, some people will say, but we don't
want to exist in an echo chamber. That's fine. If
you want to continue to be on Twitter, if you
(09:46):
want to continue to be on Facebook and use those
platforms and succumb to their uh fascistic rules and they're
double standards that apply to you but don't apply to
the other side, that's fine. I'm not judging or saying
anything if anybody wants to do that, But I'm saying
that cannot be our only alternative, because we have put
ourselves in a position right now to be completely destroyed
(10:08):
living in a digital age. If these people and by
the way, these are not rational, reasonable people. These are unhinged,
abusive people who are looking for any reason you can
give them to destroy your life. And if they decide
that today is the day where it's time to come
after you, we've given them all the all the power
(10:29):
to cut off our financial streams, to cut off our
communications streams, to cut off our banking uh, to cut
off our email system. I mean, how did we get
ourselves in this position? And whatever? I mean, who even
cares at this point with the answer is? The point
is we have to get ourselves out. We have to
become self sufficient, self sustaining, and we have to create
an I think an ecosystem. Uh that duplicates you know,
(10:52):
what's happening on the left, but that allows us to
be safe on the conservative side. Yeah, you know, was
completely agree that we need to build our own stuff.
But I think what's what's troubling about it, though, is
that we've seen, like through parlor is that even when
we build our own stuff, it just take that away too.
And so I think that leads discussions how do we
(11:14):
preserve our place on these platforms, How do we bring
accountability too big tech? To keep our voices there, and
I think that deals with kind of section to thirty. Well,
you've talked a lot about that in the sense and
you're in favor of an outright elimination. If I'm right
of sexual two thirty, can you tell us but not? Actually, UM,
I mean I want to first actually want to address
a Brandon said, because I think it's actually an important
(11:35):
This is actually an important discussion to have internally on
the right, like the question of do we sort of
where should our energy be focused. Do we focus more
on building UM our own essentially entire technology stack UM right,
or like focus on the kind of civil rights angle
that I'm promising and where I'm proposing. And I realized
that in the short term, we're not in control of
the federal government, so we can't pass these laws. And
I have no problem with I mean, we should be
(11:57):
finding ways to build the tech stack and and you know,
I mean I think actually was talking with Charlie Kurt
the other day, and one of the things he talked
about is, you know, state governments and friendly Republican states
subsidizing UM businesses to try and build that technology stack
so we can compete. Uh. The problem is that means
to me, I my honest assessment is that it's a
twenty year project because it's not. It's clear it's not
(12:17):
just about building another social media platform's about building another
cloud services platform and another I s P and another.
I mean, we have to have sovereignty over not just
one piece of you know, the Internet infrastructure, but the
entire thing. So I think, you know, we you know,
the simplest you know that that ultimately and sort of
and I think in the end goal is not that
appealing because part of what I think Facebook and Twitter
(12:39):
value before is the ability to try and influence public
conversation and participate, Like, I don't want to see us
self segregated into kind of second class social media platforms
while you know the I mean, I think because I
think Twitter and Facebook were perfectly happy to see every
conservative disappear, I don't think they really care, and I
think it would like from their perspective, that's great. We
don't have to deal with these annoying people and we
can continue to shape public opinion without their meddling. Um.
(13:01):
So that's where I come from there. And and as
regards to thirty, I'm not for full repeal. I think
you know, at the end of the day, it would
just completely destroy the ability to have any sort of
social media platform. Um, they none of the companies could
possibly sustain it. I don't even think Facebook and Twitter
could really sustain themselves in the absence of new law
being made to protect them from liability for third party
(13:21):
users post. But I certainly in for reform. I just
my my ultimate goal is to see us move from
you know, section to thirty is a liability provision. It's
it's meant to deal with a different problem, not the
problem of censorship, but the problem of you know, the
moderator's dilemma of these platforms, like if they moderate too much,
they become defamation liable. If they moderate too little, you've um,
you know you let child porn on your platform, right
(13:42):
that that was the original idea behind it. Um. I
want to see us focus on this, like, what is
the problem we're trying to solve. Well, we're being discriminated
against for being conservatives. That's the problem. And it's like
it's not a kind of discrimination we can solve with
a new business in a in a year. Because there's
so many like as as prob the perject polor demonstrated
they can just cut off your servers, or they can
(14:02):
just cut off your I S p UM. And so
the solution of mass collective discrimination is federal law prohibiting
that discrimination. That worked with common carriers at the turn
of the century like hotels and trains, um, that worked
with the Civil Rights Act of nexteen sixty four. That's
what ultimately broke the back of Jim Crow. And I
think that's the you know, the simple solution here, right.
(14:23):
I mean, if if Facebook and Twitter have to pay
damages every time, you know, if brand Strockle walks in
court today and he were able to walk in get hit,
you know, get hit an injunction restored and get his
attorneys fees and maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars for
his time. It took a Twitter wouldn't do this stuff.
They go but they go back and focusing on tuning
their Autu's a really good point. Well, we'll get right
to it right after the break. And it was in
(14:49):
email excittion to three. Yeah. It feels is that when
it was first and posed back in the nineties, is
that the tech companies in the argument that they can
exist because they didn't have the ability to moderate their website.
But what we've seen apparently is that they actually are
really good at moderating their websites. I wouldn't call it
moderating much that I think it's just more like great
(15:09):
flavorant censorship at this juncture. But you know, doesn't that
kind of hobbl that entire argument that that they need
Section to thirty now to be able to exist if
they have launched these crazy measures in terms of censorship. Well,
I mean it's it's kind of like that, but I
mean it sort of helps to understand like what was
the legal for like landscape like in the nineties that
(15:32):
led to Section to thirty being passed, and that one
was there have been these court cases that came out
around the new Internet forum spring up on, like compy
Serve and Prodigy and the cases there were these two
cases that came out differently. One, you know, copy Server
wasn't held liable for a third party users defamatory posts
because they didn't do any moderating at all, so they're like,
we're just a you know, passive observer. And then Prodigy,
(15:54):
on their hand, they were marketing like, well we'll take
down obscenity we'll take down porn things like that, and
the court and okay said, well, then your exercizing editorial control.
You're a publishers, so it meant that, you know, from
Congress's perspective, it's like, well, here's the problem that we
need to address with legislation. If we want these platforms
to do some moderation so that there is in child
porn and and violent you know, like ridiculously of seeing
(16:16):
content everywhere on the internet. We don't want children seeing that.
But if they do that, under current law, they become
liable for all the defamation stuff. So we want to
make it possible for them to moderate reasonably without having
the defamation liability. And that was presumed on this sort
of good faith notion that they would use this you know,
unique grant of moderating flexibility, you know, not in a nonpartisan,
(16:37):
public interested way, and instead they decided to use it
to wield political power. What's so wild about it, though,
is that it's like, now, can we even do anything
about it? You know, we we're not gonna be in
the White House in a few days. We've lost control
of Congress, and I feel as if these issues aren't new, right,
and That's what I think, that's what makes me the
most angry is that these issues are not new. Republican
(16:58):
lawmakers knew about this, well what can policymakers knew about this,
but still they didn't do anything about it. They sent
out press releases, they tweet about it, they offense about it.
But for all the years that Donald Trump was in
the White House, for all the years that we control cars,
we actually have the ability to do something about sexual
two thirty, not even just eliminated, but reform it or
actually make these tech companies pay um for their actions.
(17:21):
We chose to do nothing. Uh. And I think that
tells us a lot about the caliber of Republicans that
we have today in our party. People that can talk
a good game all day long, but people that are
unwilling to fight. You know, we see that with this
impeachment fight. People that love the president, you know, just
not too long ago, but now they're going to impeach
them because DNN says they should. UM As they talk
(17:43):
about unity and healing, they think that impeaching the president
who's gotten the most votes in history UM of any
incumbent president will actually do anything to heal this nation.
And that is obsurred to me. But what also I
think gratifies me the most is that the reason they
sense to these ideas because they're scared of these ideas, Brandon, Like,
you weren't doing anything you were you know, spreading hatred
for any group or anything like that. You were seeking
(18:05):
to lighten people and wait people up. And they said
that because of that, you have no place on their
ab no place on their forum. And so why do
you think these people are scared of conservative ideas, Brandon? Well, Um,
I mean, first of all, I think it's a combination
of things. I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of who
we are and what we're about. Um, I mean that
there's I think there's only a handful. Uh. And I
(18:28):
don't listen. I'm so like exhausted with all the fights
I've been in the last week that I'm actually past
the point of wanting to insult liberals or troll liberals,
so that I'm not even trying to be like nasty
or insulting when I say I think the majority of
liberals are just um, totally uninformed, just very emotional, uninformed people.
(18:49):
And I think there's only a handful of people on
the leftist side who actually know what they're doing and
are pulling all the strings. So when you start appealing
to people's like basis uh emotional insecurities, like by saying,
you know, these people who disagree with you are racists,
These people who disagree with you are bigots, these people
(19:10):
are Nazis. They wish you're not safe in their presence.
I mean, they've done this incredible job of snowing the
majority of their base, and they actually believe this, and
it's gone so much further, to to the point. I mean,
I'm you know, I'm on Twitter and on a daily basis,
I I'm reading these comments from people who talk about,
you know, still with the Russian bots and still with whatever,
(19:31):
and it's like they can't comprehend a world in which
people just genuinely do not agree with what they believe
is real and and they're unwilling to. I mean, with
walk Away, we've tried, you know, the majority of the
live events that we've done have been town halls. We've
done town halls, encouraging people from both sides to come
to argue. You can disagree with us, you can stand up,
(19:54):
you'll be heard. But we have a really hard time
hosting debates, which is what we've always wanted to do,
because even the loudest voices on the left with the
largest platforms do not want to show up to debate.
They don't want to have the discussion. AOC is one
of the biggest rising stars on left. She will not debate.
She won't show up and have debate her green new deals,
(20:16):
she won't debate socialism. These are the things that she's like,
you know, the hills she's willing to die on, but
she won't debate. And so it's I think that they're
fundamentally I think they're terrified of of us as people
and what they think that our intentions are. I don't
think that they understand our ideas. Usually when they understand
our ideas and get to know our hearts, a little
(20:38):
bit um, they budge a little bit um. Some of
them budge all the way and end up walking away.
But um oh. And one final thing I'll say on
that note too, is our leadership does nothing to dispel
those narratives as well. I mean that the smallest of
actions could go such a long way. And I tried
(20:59):
with the rees sources I had to to get people
to listen and to do this, um and I listen.
I love President Trump. I still love President Trump. I
would vote for him again. But he failed too at
this very same thing. Because I was just having a
conversation last night with somebody about how things would have
been so different if I had had a voice in
(21:20):
his campaign that people had listened to. And I, you know,
I said, why didn't President Trump sit down with Black
Lives Matter and record it, do a live stream town
hall with Black Lives Matter? Why doesn't he sit down
with twenty Hispanic liberals and let them voice their concerns,
let them ask him, are you a racist? You scare us?
Why did you do this? Like it's like our side
(21:43):
just has this arrogant attitude like yeah, they think we're racist,
they think we're biggots, but who cares whatever, Let's just
build the wall, let's ignore them. And so I think
there's this massive failing by not communicating with the other
side and showing them who we really are. Right now,
a lot of people, I think, are they want hope
right And it's and it's so easy, I think, to
(22:03):
get down trodden. Right now, everything's having the country after
the last week, the events of the capital, you know,
of course, with what we're about to be going through
for the next four years and at least the next
two of the Democratic Congress, it's it's it's a lot
to deal with for a lot of people, I think
for a lot of creators and influencers and actress in
the movement. I wake up every morning not knowing that
(22:24):
I'm gonna have a Twitter account, right I don't like
everyone we're gonna have Facebook anymore. Um, And that's a
weird reality, you know, for a lot of people. And
it's not as though because I tweeting again, I'm not
tweeting things controversial or wild or anything like that. It's like, literally,
because of my politics, I am afraid of being like
un person Like that is insane and that should be
(22:44):
nos reality. But I think the question that we get
to right now is where do we go from here? Now? Well,
we've lost control of the White House, we don't have
the Senate, we don't have the House. We we have
a pretty strong in control the Judiciary and the President
make significant shrides and stacking the core. Do you think
that modes wall for us in terms of maybe is
our path to limitying this through the courts, Like, where
(23:06):
do we go from here to actually see some results
of season changes? Yeah, I mean, you know, we we
feel the courts with a bunch of textualists, and the
problem is the way the lot is currently written. It's
on Facebook and Twitter and all their sides. Right. Section
two thirty is is pretty dramatic in terms of its
scope of protecting them from immunity. Um. And then you know,
there's no there's no civil rights protection for political affiliation,
(23:28):
and the Supreme Court is not just going to invent one,
not with a bunch of good textuals judges who don't
just make up law as they go along. So you know,
I mean, there are a lot of places where the
Supreme Court will be very good at protecting our rights
with all the new conservatives. The Second Amendment is one
of them. Uh, free speech on college campuses is another.
I mean, there's there's places where we can expect help.
But in terms of you know, whether private companies are
(23:50):
going to censor us or not, I don't think the
Supreme Court is going to be the avenue. So you know,
in the medium, in the short in the medium term, obviously,
I think the goal is retake federal power and passing
new civil rights. In the short term, we need to
figure out how to use the states um and state ages,
bringing cases and and maybe perhaps passing from state laws
that jive with Section two thirty but still protect their
(24:11):
citizens from bad faith removal, because ultimately, the ability to
sensor content based on two thirty is rooted in this
good faith provision. And so I think that you know,
Ron Coleman and another very good lawyer and I have
argued that there's a way to approach these things from state,
the state consumer protection level, and have a friendly state
like Texas or Oklahoma or somebody like that, say, do
(24:32):
they say their citizens are not going to be discriminated
against on social media anymore? That's unfair competition, that's on
violated communsumer protection statutes. And we're going to try and
prosecute Facebook and Twitter for those things. Other than that,
I mean, we really just need to focus on figuring
out how the hell we're gonna get federal power back,
and I hope we can. Um can I ask a
question of will so will in the scenario that you're
(24:54):
describing going to civil rights route, Um, what is the
recourse these platforms when they do, in fact have a
legitimate neo nazi racist. I mean, if it depends like
if if I mean, it depends on how the law
is written, right, you know, you could you know, the
beauty of like federal law is that you're not you're
(25:15):
not bound by the First Amendment, so you can write
it give a little more permission to these companies. So
say we all agree that like, if you're out there
spewing um, you know, bizarre incredibly, any submitigatred that. Well,
in that case, a platform should be able to be
in you Okay, that could be an exception in the
law that gives additional flexibility of the platform beyond what
you know, a college campus would have or a you know,
(25:36):
a university. Um. But I think you know, the starting
point should be you know, you know. Then then we're
now we're just debating about exactly like what level of
regulation at the starting point used to be. Well, clearly
they have too much discretion. Okay, if we're having to
debate about, Okay, well, should they have just a discretion
they would have if they were a university campus, or
should they have slightly more in like narrowly categorized areas.
(25:58):
I mean, that's a debate that would ultimately how you
to resolve. And I don't actually have strong feelings on
like I'm you know, if you want to say to me,
we need to keep vicious any semits off the internet,
I'm like not, you know, I don't have the strong
feelings that they must be allowed to stay, although I
think you know, there is a simple simplicity and elegance
of just saying, you know what the symbolist move here
is the First Amendment comes over right, Like, you know,
(26:20):
if if your speech is lawful, you stay and they
don't have can you? They have to have a good faith,
reasonable belief that not just that they don't like your speech,
but that you've broken the law that your speech is
a lawful it's defamatory, it's child porn, it's incitement of violence,
something like that. That's what I think. That's why ultimately
think the goal is, so would it be fair to
say that with the solution that you're proposing, it's it's
(26:41):
almost more about giving people an option when they're, for
lack of a better term, victimized this way, whereas right
now they essentially have no recourse whatsoever when this happens
to us to at least be heard to have a
day in court, right right, yeah, exactly like I mean it,
And it makes it's very scary for the company is
to be facing litigation like this. They don't they wouldn't
(27:02):
like it at all. You know, again section to thirty.
The thing about it is the focus on it is
very It's like a indirect way of getting to the
solution because the idea is, well, we get rid of
section to thirty, and we open up the possibility of
defamation lawsuits by other people who damages from Facebook. It's like, well,
what about the person who's censored. That's the victim that
and that's the person's whose harm are trying to redress.
So the idea here is saying no, we what we
(27:24):
need to do is and what's been done in a
lot of other areas of law, um is say no.
As an American citizen, you actually have a right to
use these platforms for lawful speech, and if a company
violates that right, you can go to court and get
that right vindicated by a federal judge and get an
injunction forcing them forcing the company to stop violating your
right to use their platform. You know, c j you
were saying a second ago, Um, you said, you wake
(27:46):
up every day and you're not sure if you're gonna
have a Twitter account or not. And then you you know,
it's like we have to kind of question what we're
posting in question you know, how they're going to react
to it. And this is my biggest concern too, because
I feel like as these as the left in general,
not just the the tech overlords, but just anybody, you know,
leftist and progressive in my opinion, become more unreasonable and
(28:08):
more unhinged, and they're able to sort of like create
these narratives that in itself, I mean it's not hyperbole
at this point to think that they could create the
narrative that Donald Trump is the most dangerous man who's
ever been president. So if you support Donald Trump, you're
(28:29):
supporting the downfall of America. I mean, like, I don't
think that's so. I mean, like I actually question now,
I'm like, am I safe anymore? Going on Twitter? Being
like Trump is the greatest president of my lifetime? Am I?
They could deem that to be a threat to Democrat
you know what I mean? Like, so I just feel like,
what where we're drawing the line at this point about
(28:50):
you know what is uh discriminatory or threatening speech or
things like that, is the rules are so skewed it's, uh,
it's almost difficult to know how you can be safe
to just express your opinion. Like I tweet earlier this week,
I said, the Republican Party has led by we need
coward did time for patriots to rosity the occasion and
(29:10):
take it back. There are people tagging the FBI in
the comments of that tweet as we're referring to the
Republican Party. They were saying I was inside and I'm
sure people probably reported the tweet two and like that
is absolutely insane that that is what the media is
constructive narrative that conservatism itself is a violent ideology. That's
(29:32):
what they've been able to do because of the Capitol
Hill of it that they have made it out to be,
as if conservatism itself is just this ideology of hatred
and violence, when it's like, when did they ever really
do that for radical Islam? But conservatives are being treated
like we're literal g hottest because of the things in
which we believe. That is c J. Black Lives Matter
was a part of the d n C platform this year.
(29:55):
I mean that a huge part of their their convention
was is honoring the martyrs of BLM, the same people.
I mean, I personally was physically attacked by BLM three
or four times this year, all on video. I mean
it's clear they instigated it. I didn't start it. They
came to my events, they brought violence, and I'm just
(30:18):
one of thousands of people that were physically attacked. People
lost their businesses, neighborhoods were destroyed. Uh, people were killed.
And this was a part of their convention, being like
Black Lives Matter is an amazing organization. It's but they're
able to do this because they control everything technologically. And
this is again where I fundament I don't care if
it takes twenty years. I mean, let's let's invoke the
(30:40):
spirit of the pioneers who built this country and let's
roll up our sleeves and let's aim for twenty years
from now being self sustaining people. On the conservative side,
I think you need to have the get everybody ready
for the legal route in case we have the power
to do it one. I mean we don't get that power.
We do need to still build the alternatives to or
if we can't get Republicans to agree like need to
do both. Um. Yeah, and I'm definitely for you know,
(31:04):
I'm not one person who's like we should only have
one approach, right like multiple you know, multitude approaches. You know,
head your bets, like make sure that you you know
your your options are are covered. Well. I think we're
all gonna be and tried in the days aheah. I
think there's no doubt about that. And again, like this
should not be the reality in which we live, but
it's the one we have to grapple with, the one
(31:24):
that we have to adapt to, and it's it's troubling.
But I think at the end of the day, all
of us are still committed this fight. I know, Will,
you are, Brandon. I know that this has only led
you to plan more, probably for one And the way
I'm looking at it, you know, they can try to
censor our ideas, but really what that shows that they're
(31:45):
scared of our ideas because they know that they can't
beat them. Thank you so much for joining us and
taking a Todd Will Brandon. I hope you guys have
a great day, and again, thank you so much for
joining us. Thank you guys well, welcome back. Thank you
so much to Will and Brandon for joining me. Those
(32:08):
patriots are always fighting, and I've been inspired by their
work in so many ways, and they've been just as
affected as everyone across. The movement has been about the
recent strides taken by big tech to silence us, to
unperson us, to push us into the shadows because they
are scared of our ideas. They're scared of what they represent,
not hatred or violence, as they like to pretend, but liberty, freedom,
(32:31):
limited government, economic opportunity. Those are conservative ideals. Hatred and
violence have never been. If you really want to talk
about the history of hatred of both in this country,
I think it starts with liberalism quite actually right, the
KKK liberals, right, Jim Crow liberals, right, you know, the
internment of Japanese Americans. To switch it up a little bit. Liberals, Democrats,
(32:53):
they did that. Concerns didn't do that stuff. But yet, somehow,
because of the mainstream media's narrative and the just control
they have over public discourse, for some reason has allowed
them to paint us as if we are just some
domestic terrorists who only sin our cornal sin guys is
loving America too much. We love America too much, guys.
(33:15):
If that's what I'm going to be blamed for, if
that's what I'm gonna be hated on for, if that's
what I'm gonna get banned from the Internet for being,
then I'm okay with that, guys, because I love this country.
There is a lot to love about this country, and
and and what's I wrote about all of this? And
these same people who preach about unity, who preach about
wanting to bring America together, are doing everything they can
(33:37):
in these closing days of the trouble administration to divide us.
They're working to impeach the president. They just did that
today in a vote that Nancy Pelosi said was a
absolute must. And we're also seeing now, of course, they're
trying to wipe us all away from the Internet because
concerned ideas, they incite violence, Apparently they start hate. Apparently, guys,
(33:58):
this is the reality in which we live. These people
say one thing, but they do a completely different thing.
And unfortunately, this is the reality for the next four years.
And so, guys, I want to give you hope, I
want to give you faith, and I think there's some
of that to be had, But I also want to
be really clear about the times of which we live.
These are worries sometimes they really are, but not the
(34:20):
type of worry that I want you that I want
to push you into being fearful. Not the type of
worry that I want that you to feel that will
push you into being silent. It's a type of worry
that I want you to have so much so that
it makes you get off your ass and fight for
this country like you never have before. That's the reality
which we live. They're coming for us. They're coming for
(34:40):
each every one of us, I mean, for anyone who
has the audacity thing for themselves. Guys are really Last
week I told you about how a girl is trying
to expel me from school for being a Republican, and
now they're trying to ban everyone from social media for
being a Republican. If you think you're safe, you're wrong.
There are people who have gotten fire from their jobs,
or people who have lost streams of income simply because
(35:02):
of their politics. And so if some of you may ask,
where do we go from here? How do we fix this?
How do we change this? Well, first it spot electing
Republicans who actually know to fight back against this craziness, right,
but it's also about doing stuff. Just like Will said,
political affiliation should be a protected class in this country,
and I've been saying that far before this stuff happened.
There are people literally getting attack in these streets for
wearing a Make America Grid Again hat, and people didn't
(35:23):
think that maybe, just maybe we should start protecting people's
expression their political views, because it wasn't Trump supporters going
out in the streets and beating up people with vaginas
on their head. It was never us who were instigating
or committing these acts of violence. It was never us. Never,
it was them beating us up, attacking us, getting us canceled,
(35:44):
trying to get us fired, get us kicked out of school,
trying to cancel us because we have ideas that make
them feel uneasy. Well, I'm sorry, I don't care anymore.
I'm done. And you have the right to voice your
opinion just as anyone else does, and we're gonna fight
for that right. We're not gonna go quietly. They think
they could ban us from everything, they think they can
just shut us up through these ridiculous means. Now I'm
(36:10):
saying no, and I'm gonna keep saying it. We'll see
you back next week. Hey guys, c J. Pierson here.
Join us right here on Apple Podcast, I Heart Radio,
or wherever you get your podcast for the same hard
hitting truth because we'll never stop fighting for you right
here on c J. Pierson noncensored c J. Pierson nouncensored.
(36:33):
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