Derek Barris (2:49)

Hey, you can't say that. I'm Derek Barris.

Julian Walker (2:53)

I'm Julian Walker.

Derek Barris (2:54)

You are listening to a Conspirituality Brief maga's Censorship Hypocrisy. As always. You can find us on Instagram and Threads at Conspirituality Pod, as well as individually on Blue Sky. You can access all of our episodes ad free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on patreon via patreon.com conspirituality or just our Monday bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions. We are independent media creators and we really appreciate your support.

Julian Walker (3:31)

All right, so over this past weekend, Derek, you sent me a copy of a letter from Louisiana State Rep. Clay Higgins. It's on congressional letterhead. It looks very official, and it lists his role as being on the board of directors for the House Freedom Caucus, which is essentially today's version of the ultra conservative Tea Party group from the past, as well as the other committees he sits on. But it's who the letter is addressed to that is most important. Under the letterhead, we see six names and full mailing addresses for each. So first is Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook Meta, Elon Musk at Twitter, or X Neil Mohan at YouTube, Shozi Chu at TikTok, Jay Graber at Blue sky, and Devin Nunes at Truth Social just for good measure. So where did you come across this gem of a letter?

Derek Barris (4:20)

I saw it somewhere on Blue Sky. It's actually funny that he would send it to Jay Graber. I'm sure she burned it up right away, but I follow a lot of tech reporters and publications there, so I'm not exactly sure what feed that I saw butt on. Yeah, but in terms of the broader picture, before we get into what the letter says, it really isn't surprising given that it's Clay Higgins. Let me give a little context here. He's a MAGA Republican Congressman from Louisiana's 3rd congressional district that does not include New Orleans. He's a former sheriff's deputy who star rose thanks to his Crime Stopper videos in which he called black and brown criminal suspects animals, heathens and thugs. Now, to be clear, those criminal suspects, those are not actual criminals. They hadn't been prosecuted. In one of them, he said, you will be hunted. You will be trapped. And if you raise your weapon to a man like me, will return with superior fire.

Julian Walker (5:22)

Unbelievable.

Derek Barris (5:24)

So here's a little bit of his background. Higgins supported David Duke's gubernatorial campaign back in the 90s. You know David Duke, the leader of the KKK. Before getting into polic, Higgins managed used car dealerships.

Julian Walker (5:41)

Come on. This is a character in a movie.

Derek Barris (5:44)

In his own movie. Yeah, He's. He does a lot of video work. He's compared abortion to the Holocaust. He opposes same sex marriage, but he's been married four times and he's been sued by 1X for failing to pay over $140,000 in child support because, you know, Christian moralism. He's also one of the more vocal MAGA stands. Leading up to the 2024 election, he focused his social media posts on Haitian immigrants, describing the country as the nastiest country in the Western hemisphere. And of course, he repeated the false eating pets claim. Higgins actually resigned from the police force in 2007 after he slapped a suspect again. A suspect during the execution of a warran. He initially lied about the incident, but later he admitted to striking him while the man was in handcuffs. At first he was demoted and removed from the SWAT team, but Higgins eventually resigned, though he claims for a different reason. I know this is a lot to keep track of, which he called a former superior in the force, a peacock, meaning he was like a colorful yet ineffective bird animal.

Julian Walker (7:02)

And this was the same guy who was, who was going to, you know, hold him accountable for his wrongdoing?

Derek Barris (7:07)

Essentially, yes. So that was, that was why he says he resigned. Now, after he resigned, he was immediately recruited to run for office. So this man has been failing upwards for a while. A couple more. After a terror attack in London in 2017, he posted that any suspected Islamic terrorist should be killed without quarter. The same year, he posted a five minute video when he was, was, you know, on tour at Auschwitz. Yeah, he warned Americans that this would be our fate with all of the immigrants and all. He later removed the video and he actually did apologize for that one. Higgins appeared at events organized by militia groups including the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers. He's actually a self identified Three Percenter. He has said that at meetings, which is a far right anti government militia movement based on the historically inaccurate claim that only 3% of American colonists actively fought in the American Revolution. He's much more than a lab leaker. He claimed that the Chinese Communist party intentionally created COVID 19 as part of a biological warfare campaign. Higgins has been fighting hard to not release the Epstein files, but he promises that the Oversight Committee is working hard on it. And finally, he physically removed a progressive activist from a news conference in 2023. Because, you know, free speech.

Julian Walker (8:39)

Yeah. So listeners will be unsurprised that none of this CV made it onto the letterhead where he lists only his official roles in the government that apparently he wants to Destroy as a 3 percenter. And all of that makes it seem as if the document carries some kind of official or even legal power, which was my first hit. When I saw it, I was like, oh, wow, this is a big deal, Clay Higgins. It's just him doing what he. This, as it turns out, was a formalization of a couple of tweets from a few days previous. And in one of those tweets, he said, if they ran their mouth with their smart ass hatred, celebrating the heinous murder of that beautiful young man who dedicated his whole life to delivering respectful, conservative truth into the hearts of liberal enclave universities armed only with the Bible and a microphone and a constitution, those profiles must come down. Higgins said in a Sept. 11 post on X. So I'm going to lean to. I'm going to lean forward in this fight, demanding that Big Tech have zero tolerance for violent political hate content. The user has to be banned from all platforms forever. He also tweeted that he would seek to have people who cheered Kirk's killing on social media expelled from schools, blacklisted, bankrupted, and stripped of their driver's licenses, saying, I'm basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk's assassination. And he said, I'm starting that today. That is all. It's almost a characteristic Trump sign off right here.

Derek Barris (10:10)

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Julian Walker (10:12)

Exactly. Exactly. That is all. Thank you for your attention. In between those tweets and his official letter that we're talking about today to those tech bosses, and in response to some concerns online that he might be violating free speech laws, Higgins tweeted, the most egregious offenders, those who celebrated the evil assassination of Christian martyr Charlie Kirk, can live and speak freely in the wilderness. We the people are done quietly tolerating the Nasty, filthy hatred of the left in our public spaces. They're to be shunned in every way. Enough. It is enough. We're scourging the temple.

Derek Barris (10:48)

We're scourging our temple. I don't even understand, like, he. I mean, he uses biblical language and he is a Protestant, but he doesn't talk about his actual faith. I couldn't find, like, what church he goes to or what his actual Christian beliefs are. It's more of a general Christian nationalist flavor. In fact, the tweet before this one that you just read was posted on 911, and it features an image from the World Trade center that day with the caption, never forget and never fail to recognize the darkness that threatens Christianity. Wake up, America. Wake up and buckle up. I find all of his talk about limiting free speech. You actually left out the opening of the tweet, too. And I will to point that out, because he starts with, there are societal limits to the freedom of speech. Yeah. It's all pretty ironic given that Higgins co sponsored House Resolution 140, otherwise known as the Protecting Speech from the Government Interference Act. In a press release, when he co sponsored that bill, he claimed that no single organization, including the federal government, should determine what constitutes an acceptable form of speech.

Julian Walker (12:00)

Yeah, so we're going to talk about that in a minute. But, Derek, that. That was like, two years ago. I mean, he's. He's evolved, clearly in his position.

Derek Barris (12:09)

I love that. You know Jimmy Kimmel's return, which, you know, I watch Kimmel occasionally, and usually his monologue gets a couple hundred thousand to maybe a million views per day. And when I watched his return last night, it was at 24 million views on YouTube, which is just insane. But he points out. I mean, a lot of people pointed this out, though. They're just reposting Brend in Carr tweets from two years ago where he was all about the freedom of speech and its importance. And then he's like, I don't know if you saw this, but someone said, this is all part of Project 2025. And car just responds with a meme of Jack Nicholson shaking his head. Yes, like, these people are trolls. They're master trolls. So the fact that in 2022, they were all gung ho on everyone should speak their minds freely. And now they're pivoting is just indicative of. Of what they.

Julian Walker (13:04)

Yeah, yeah. All right. So that's the setup for this letter published on Congressional letterhead, which is really something. So in the spirit of what I've been doing, so far today. Dear listeners, here it is. Gentlemen, thank you for the service you provide to our republic, and may God be with you and your family. It's a great opening. America is suffering under the dark weight of horror after the graphic televised murder of a heroic Christian leader, Mr. Charlie Kirk. I ask that you reflect upon your own unique responsibility to participate in the very appropriate, legal and constitutionally capitalized c. Constitutionally sound response. Please be advised that your platforms are rightfully expected to expeditiously remove all posts that have celebrated the political assassination of Charlie Kirk. Further, the authors of these posts are to be identified and banned from your platform, as well as any new pages they may create.

Derek Barris (14:01)

When we were preparing for this episode, I ran down a list of major social media and tech companies that have been capitulating to Trump since he's returned to office, just so we can better understand why Higgins thinks that his gambit here might pay off. And honestly, it might. I don't think so, given the current temperament, but I can see why he would feel emboldened to do this. Couple examples. YouTube reinstated numerous accounts that had previously been banned for violating COVID 19 and election misinformation information policies, including President Trump's own accounts. They cited free expression and also acknowledged direct political pressure from the administration when doing so. Of course, Meta paid $25 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Trump for alleged censorship. The settlement included a contribution that was to be directly paid to Trump's presidential library, which is fucking hilarious. As if he's ever going to build it. As if he reads.

Julian Walker (15:02)

How do you combine a brazen bribe or, like, paying off of an extortion with something so hilarious as it's Trump's presidential library. That's just right.

Derek Barris (15:13)

Right. Twitch reinstated Trump's account I didn't even know is there after his indefinite ban following the insurrection in 2021. And that also came under considerable pressure from the administration. Plus, you know, you have the White House dinner that featured Zuckerberg, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, who all publicly expressed gratitude for Trump's leadership and more, his deregulation policies.

Julian Walker (15:42)

I think they also said he was looking a lot thinner. And. And, like, you know, his. His. His skin was really nice that day.

Derek Barris (15:49)

Right, Right. Yes. Yeah, it's. It's. It watching these people, it's. It's so disgusting. And then lastly, you have TikTok, of course, whose American business interests are about to be taking over by a consortium of US Tech companies led by the. Well, he was the richest man in the world, and now I Think Musk is back on top. But either way, Larry Ellison, the co founder of OR consortium, includes techno fascist fans like the guys over at Andreessen Horowitz.

Julian Walker (16:18)

All right, so this is how Clay Higgins continues. Gleeful celebration of the heinous murder of an American citizen, brazenly published within the public forums of social media, is not to be tolerated within the accepted and legal parameters of a free and humane society. And I've initiated a congressional effort to force accountability. If you shield these offenders, Section 230 will not protect your platform from vigorous exposure. Right. So this is the. The aspect of the law which says that you can't hold the platform accountable for the statements of individuals on the platform. So it's a pretty bold statement that we're just going to completely run roughshod over that and come after you unless you accept our demands.

Derek Barris (16:59)

I have to say, I know people have varying feelings about Gavin Newsom and I mine. We've talked about this a number of times. You know, as a former Californian, like, some days I'd be like, yes. Some days I'd be like, what the are you doing? But he just gave a. A pretty good interview to Colbert.

Julian Walker (17:17)

Yes.

Derek Barris (17:18)

Last night. So that would be Wednesday night, where in one of the segments, he talks about how he feels that a. He talks about the gerrymandering and what the Republicans are doing and why he's doing what he's doing in California to give Democrats more seats. But then he's like, if you don't think. Think that he's trying to make it so there's not a 2028 election. And if all, if you can't read all the signs happening right now and you have to wake up. And I thought it was, you know, just definitely something that people should really be scared and concerned about.

Julian Walker (17:49)

Yeah. I mean, Newsom got dragged for his. His sort of diplomatic statement after the Charlie Kirk assassination, but that was, I think, less than a week after he had held the press conference in which he announced that he was banning face coverings for. For all, you know, police essentially extending that to ICE agents. So I, I see him making all kinds of moves to try to stand up to Trump strategically, and I got to take my hat off to him for that.

Derek Barris (18:18)

And they go together. And I think that's important because, you know, we talked on Thursday's episode about, like, our feelings on Ezra Klein and whether or not Kirk is doing politics the right way, but I just feel like when you have people who are making some sort of attempt at recognizing that we can't just not engage with people we don't agree with. You might not like how they go about it, but Newsom made the point like what the Democrats. What the left is doing is not working. We are not gaining power. We need to try other things. And he was even showed some humility around the social media that he's doing, which is effective. And then he's getting some complaints about it, but he's like, you know what, what else am I seeing in the. That's actually making a dent? I don't see anything. So the fact that he's willing to try, that client is willing to try. They might fall flat, but they are trying.

Julian Walker (19:14)

Yeah, yeah. And they're naming exactly what you just said, which is like what they're doing on the other side is working. As much as we detest them, what we're doing is not working in terms of the effectiveness of being able to move the country in the direction we want to move it in. So let's be sort of frank about where we're failing and try and figure out some new strategies. So I'm all for that. Now, with regard to Higgins, you know, you mentioned earlier the bill that he co sponsored a couple years ago, which was against anyone infringing anyone in the government infringing on free speech. Many on our side, including Matthew actually, recently in an Instagram post on our account, are observing that Magas don't really give a shit when you tell them that they're hypocrites. But for the rest of us, I think it's still important to note the glaring examples of how and when this happens. So. So in 2023, Derek, you and I covered over a couple episodes the ridiculous high profile debacle spearheaded by Elon Musk called the Twitter Files, happening right after he'd bought the platform. And this was an attempt to expose the dark and secret plot between intelligence agencies, big tech companies and woke university think tanks to supposedly censor free speech on social media platforms. And, you know, really all of this was happening during the Stop the Steal period and during the COVID period when there was a mass massive spike in disinformation and conspiracy theories, which is what started our podcast. And indeed there was a lot of back and forth going on, but I would argue it was to try to manage the. The very, very dangerous effects of a lot of this disinformation, which we have strong evidence was coming from multiple state actors who were deliberately trying to sew division and move us in the direction that we actually find ourselves. Inhabiting right now. So at that time, Musk appointed handpicked journalists to dig through cherry picked internal communications so as to construct a narrative around how people posting election denialism, Covid contrarianism and anti vaccine misinformation were supposedly denied their free speech rights under the Trump administration by something that they dubbed the censorship industrial complex. And the crown in the jewel as we know of this supposedly secret plot was the suppression of the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story just before the 2020 election. Because here's the thing, Derek, this is what you may not have realized. Not only did Trump win the 2020 election, but he might not have lost it if the intelligence community's concerns about Russian disinformation had just been ignored. This is very important. This censorship narrative was mostly crowed by former journalist is what I choose to Matt Taibbi and climate denialists and amazing opportunists. He'll talk about anything from climate to homelessness to UFOs to the censorship industrial complex anywhere, anytime. Michael Shellenberger and those two actually took it all the way into congressional hearings. And wouldn't you know it, in those hearings, none other than Clay Higgins participated as part of the House Oversight Committee grilling former Twitter executives about this supposed conspiracy. The entire rationale behind Musk's purchase of the company was to make Twitter, or X as he's dubbed it, and I refuse to call it great again as a space for completely unregulated free speech. And he wasted no time reinstating the accounts of open neo Nazis, amongst others, and doing away with content moderation. All of which Higgins was totally in line with, including sponsoring that 2023 bill against government censorship ship.

Derek Barris (22:53)

And as more evidence of just how much power is slipping away, it was just finalized today that Grox Xai Chatbot is now going to officially be in use in government agencies. So that means that government agencies. Are you going to use that LLM for information that we know Musk is constantly tinkering at. This comes at the same time time that it's been announced that the Department of Education is launching this civics project headed by Linda McMahon, but also including people like Heritage foundation and Andreessen Horowitz to help teach American students civics. So we are in really dire shape. And I just want to wind down here with one other aspect of this larger media censorship story because it is a multi pronged attack and the way that it's been treated in the media is usually a separate parts, but they're all part of one story. We'll start with the Jimmy Kimmel incident because it actually revived a story which has been covered. John Oliver covered this for years ago. For example, the fact that major conservative media conglomerates like nextstar and Sinclair, along with Paramount, which we should note is run by Larry Ellison's son David, they're all lobbying the Trump administration to overturn long standing antitrust laws that state that no company can reach more than 39% of U.S. households. I know this sounds weird because most of us, or a lot of us, get our information digitally, but cable still matters here, like local news still matters. What's happening is Paramount is trying to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, which itself owns cnn, Warner Brothers movie and TV studios, HBO and a significant streaming business. Then you have NextStar, a publicly traded company, but it's run by founder CEO Perry Souk, and it has a long history of right wing contributions and conservative bias. They're trying to purchase Tegna, which owns a large portfolio of local TV stations and digital media properties. Then you get to Sinclair, which is who John Oliver has covered repeatedly, and they're even more right leaning. They have mandated conservative programming. It is also publicly traded, but it's owned by the Smith family, which controls the network, and they explicitly support Christian conservative ideals. They have no pending purchases, but they are also supporting the FCC writing these trust laws.

Julian Walker (25:35)

Yeah. So essentially what we have under the Trump administration is an oligarchical feeding frenzy. Like all bets are off. Get, just get into line as, as close to the front as you can to make whatever kinds of monopolies you can and get, get as much advantage as possible under these conditions. Right.

Derek Barris (25:53)

Yes. And this, you know, this particular aspect of the broader story, the picture I'm painting here, it usually ends with people saying, well, only boomers watch local TV anyway. They're, they're speaking to the crowd already. It's partially true. But all. First off, all these companies have a heavy digital footprint and it's expanding and all of them are capitulating to Trump right now. But then add to that. Remember the list that I just saw, I talked about? Right. Meta, Google, Amazon, Apples, all of them bowing down. Then, then throw in Larry Ellison taking over TikTok's US business interests and you start to see a fuller picture of what's going on, which is control over as many media outlets as possible. Regardless of what generation you are from. If you control what grandma and granddaughter watch for news and how they get their information, they're going to be fed the same sorts of ideological biases and likely not realize it because was it's just the local news or it's just TikTok? I've said this for a while. The right didn't create an alternative media ecosystem just to have their own right. The Fox project back in the mid-90s was always larger than just having Fox News. They've always wanted to control all media, especially the ones that cater to the liberal elites. So now we're watching it unfold right before our eyes. So I don't think we should treat Higgins Letter like it's an outlier. He's just one of the people that's willing to scream the not very quiet part very loudly.

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