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Rebel News Podcast
EZRA LEVANT | EU declares war on Elon Musk and free speech itself
00:39:17
Allum Bokhari, managing director of the Foundation for Freedom Online and an expert in Big Tech censorship, joins Ezra Levant for an in-depth discussion on the fight to shape the future of the Internet as we know it amid the European Union's lawsuit against Elon Musk.
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, my friends. One of the smartest people I know is Alan Bakari, and he's been on the Tech File for a decade. And by that I mean he realized very early that tech would be the political battleground. It's the free speech battleground. It's the freedom battleground. And he's been covering it closer than pretty much anyone else. We'll talk to him about so many developments, including the battle between Elon Musk and the European Union. But first, let me invite you to get a subscription of what we call Rebel News. Plus is the video version of this podcast. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com it's eight bucks a month, which may not sound like a lot to you, but, boy, it adds up for us. That's how we stay independent and we take no government money. And it shows.
- [00:43]
B
You're listening to a Rebel News podcast.
- [00:55]
A
Tonight, the latest in the tech wars. Elon Musk versus the European Union. A feature interview with our friend alan Bokari. It's December 10, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
- [01:09]
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
- [01:21]
Well, the world's most consequential man is Donald Trump, but that expires when his term as president expires. And though there are some who wish and hope that he could find a way to get around the US Constitution's ban on a third term, I don't think he wants to run again. At least he's intimated as much. And so the world's second most consequential man, Elon Musk, I think, will be even more important. How will he fare without Donald Trump backing US High technology and US Free speech, both of which are important to Elon Musk. And I want to tell you this because over the last few days, the European Union has made it clear what they would do to Elon Musk if they could. They announced a fine of 120 million euros in Canadian money. That's like 200 million in. Here's a clip of them just so proud of themselves fining the United States leading social media platform. Take a look.
- [02:22]
C
Today, the Commission has issued a fine of 120 million Euro to X for breaching the Digital Services Act. This is the first ever fine under the dsa. X has indeed breached its transparency obligation. Under the dsa. The this includes X's blue check mark. It deceives users. Anyone can pay to obtain the verified status and X does not meaningfully verify who is behind. Also includes X advertising repository, which does not work properly and X doesn't provide effective data access for researchers. Failure to comply with the non compliance decision may lead to periodic penalty payments on top of today's fine. At the same time, we have adopted today and accepted TikTok's commitments to make its own advertising repository work. What does this show? Our objective is not a fine. If you engage constructively with the Commission, we settle cases. If you do not, we take action.
- [03:33]
A
You know, I saw a chart that showed the amount of money that all European tech companies pay in taxes is smaller than what the European Union charges American tech companies in terms of fines, whether it's Apple, Google, Meta or Elon Musk. X, formerly called Twitter. The European Union doesn't really have a tech industry of its own, but, but it certainly extracts wealth from America. This of course is causing a bit of a showdown. Various Americans, including ambassadors to the European Union have said they will fight this. How's that gonna go? And when Donald Trump leaves in three years, what will happen then? Joining us to talk about these and other important issues is one of our favorite guys who was really the first to cover the importance of the political side of the, the tech beat. You know, I'm talking about my friend Alan Bokari, who's the managing director of the foundation for Freedom Online and he joins us now via Zoom. Alan, great to see you again. You knew before everyone else that tech was going to be the political theme of the decade. I remember when you were the senior tech editor@breitbart.com, i somehow thought tech, that's sort of boring. Boring, it's the opposite of boring. It's the heart of all debates.
- [04:48]
B
Isn't.
- [04:50]
Certainly is. And it's, it's, that's becoming more the case. You saw that in the 2024 election as well when you know, podcasts started to play a massive, massive role. For the first time ever, they've almost displaced the mainstream legacy media. Now people go to X for their news. It's the number one news app in almost every country at the moment. So it's no wonder that bureaucrats at the, in the European Union would like to control it and would like to use their vast regulatory powers to get to get to grips with this platform. Because you know, the political establishment was used as very comfortable multi decade period where they had a very pliant compliant mainstream media, legacy media that controlled the bounds of acceptable debate. And now social media has just thrown thrown debate open to every perspective you can imagine. And it's, you know, it's not something that bureaucrats can easily control and the purpose of the European Union's Digital Services act is to restore that control that political elites feel they've lost because of the online media displacing legacy media.
- [05:58]
A
Some of your most blockbuster stories were back in 2016, 2017, when tech was one of the tools used by an insurgent populist right to support Donald Trump. And I don't think Silicon Valley saw it coming. We saw, and I think it was your scoop when you got ahold of an internal town hall meeting. I think it was at Google, YouTube, if I recall, where senior executives were basically having a struggle session, confessing that they didn't do enough to stop people and that they'll do better. And that's when the great tech censorship wave really began in earnest. After Trump's first win in 2016, they were much more successful in regulating the Internet. I think for 2020. After 2024, the pendulum has started to move back towards freedom. Talk a little bit about that and then I want to dig more into this 120 million euro fine. But the pendulum's been swinging, isn't it? Even some of these Silicon Valley tycoons who are extremely critical of Trump personally, some of them have actually embraced him and they sound like fans.
- [07:02]
B
Yes, that's certainly been a massive change compared to 2016. I think 2016 was just a huge shock to the establishment, both the political establishment and in places like Washington D.C. but also the business, corporate establishment and the tech establishment in Silicon Valley. Up until that point, you know, the tech industry had been very buddy, buddy with the Democratic Party, with Barack Obama, Zuckerberg and Obama had that whole bromance in 2012, if you remember that. So, you know, there was the idea that tech would have to deal with, you know, this very new, very populist Republican administration was a massive shock. You've got to remember most people in Silicon Valley, especially at that time, were quite left leaning. It was a very left leaning culture. That chain really changed over. So you had really just quickly, you had tech and the deep state in Washington D.C. and the legacy media all on the same side. After 2016, they were all basically on the same side that populism needs to be contained. And they all sort of agreed that a big reason for this was unregulated social media. And this is when US Government agencies who were completely not cooperating with the first Trump administration, there was sort of a law unto themselves. This is when you start to see hundreds of millions of US Taxpayer dollars being poured into these disinformation research institutes. This is the first time we start hearing about words like disinformation and misinformation enter the mainstream. That's after the 2016 election. That's when it all starts. And Silicon Valley broadly cooperates with this right up until the 2020 election. But after Biden gets in in 2021.
- [08:44]
The US government and governments around the world continue putting on the pressure on Silicon Valley. And it looks increasingly like governments are bullying Silicon Valley companies and trying to, almost trying to destroy them, because they're so committed to, to restoring the power of the legacy media. There was even a bill in 2022, 2023, called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. I think I've talked to you about it before. That would have forced Silicon Valley companies to give billions of dollars in ad revenue to legacy media companies just for the privilege of linking to their content. And, you know, I believe Canada has a similar law. So you had all these things happening after Biden wins, after Trump, one goes away. And I think this gradually turns people in Silicon Valley gradually understand that political elites want them under their thumb. And I think that's why they're a lot friendlier to Trump right now.
- [09:39]
A
Yeah. And I think some of his policies towards them are friendlier from a business point of view. And I think he's taking them seriously as a strategic competitive advantage. I think that's how it looks like to me. I'm not an insider like yourself. I mean, talk a little bit, if you would, about after this announcement that Elon Musk and TikTok on Twitter were being hit with a massive fine, there was a whole constellation of US Diplomats and other senior members of the administration who were saying very tough things about the European Union. So, I mean, and it looked organized and it looked like it was green lit, perhaps by the White House. Maybe you can give us a minute on that. Because it wasn't just Elon Musk saying, this is outrageous. It was like the entire United States. I don't think Trump himself spoke to it, but really at the highest levels, people were saying, this will not stand if America has its way. Give me a minute on that.
- [10:37]
B
Yeah. So my foundation, the foundation for Freedom Online, has been writing for a long time about the Digital Services Act. We actually started looking at it before this administration came into office, so while Biden was still in office, because that's when the building blocks of the Digital Services act were put into, really put into place. And it actually came into effect before Trump took on office. So we've known for a long time that this is going to be a huge, huge risk to online free speech, because even American companies can't ignore a market as big as the EU and its regulatory power unless they want to exit the continent altogether, like some US tech companies that exited China.
- [11:16]
It's something I don't think it's extremely possible, but it's certainly a possibility at this point. So we've been looking at for a long time and we've always been clear it's a massive censorship threat. And I think the present administration has, has also understood this for a long time, because you go back to when Elon Musk first took over Twitter. Almost immediately you start to see threats from European bureaucrats and European commissioners. So they were very clear from the outset they were going to use every tool in their arsenal to go after Elon Musk, to go after X if it restored free speech, which of course it did. And that's why X has become, I think it has actually become the first tech company to be fined under the Digital Services Act. And I think that was very obvious for a long time. And I think that's why the current administration has been, has been, you know, putting the, putting, turning up the heat on Brussels. Even before this announcement, you know, I.
- [12:11]
A
Saw that one of the things that the European Union announced at the same time they're going after Twitter, or X is now called, they specifically said, we're not going to find TikTok, which as of today, if I'm not mistaken, it's still owned by Communist China. The handover to an American owner has not yet been completed. Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think that happens until the new year. So you have a Chinese run, Chinese managed, Chinese censored, Chinese propaganda, Chinese algorithm. I think that's fair to say. I mean, TikTok is a Chinese company specifically given a pass by the eu. They praise it, saying, well, TikTok will talk to us and show us respect. That's why we're not finding TikTok. So even as they condemn and censor Elon Musk, they toot their horn to the fact that they're cooperating with the Communist Party of China. That's gotta, they gotta know that that's gonna be a provocation of Donald Trump. And they've gotta know that shows that they're hypocritical. I guess they just don't care.
- [13:14]
B
Well, let's step into the shoes of a European bureaucrat or a European political elite. From their perspective, China is not nearly as big of a threat to them and their political Power and their political project in the European Union as a whole, as the populist right, is. You look at Germany, AfD is now opening up a massive lead over every other party in Germany. You look at France, Jordan, Bardella and the National Rally, the favorites to win the next election. You look at the Netherlands, where Geert Wilders had the biggest party for a long, still has the biggest party, I think. And it's the same all across the European continent. And what's really troubling, I think, to European political elites is that most of the support for populism, their biggest supporters, their largest base of support, actually comes from young people around the continent. So time is not on their side. It's not the case. It's not like the us, where young people tend to lean left, and Canada and the uk, where young people also tend to lean left. On the European continent, in places like France, Germany and across the European Union, actually young people are flocking to the populist right. So this is why controlling platforms like X, where the populist right congregate, is so important to European elites, because they know they're on borrowed time and they know that the more access young people get to social media, the more public opinion will turn against them, not just in the short term, but in the long term with future generations.
- [14:43]
A
And they also know that TikTok is not promoting a right wing agenda. TikTok is fine with censorship too, by the way. I think they appreciate dealing with China. They have a similar authoritarian edge to them. Now, there was one US diplomat, I forget her name right now. I think she was the diplomat, the ambassador to the eu. She did a little video and she said, here are things I can say as an American that I could not say if I was a European. And let me play the clip. It was a bit audacious. Like she even said some words that I would say were not particularly polite. But I think that's the point because we're allowed to say things that may be impolite. There's a difference between being impolite and being illegal. And that's one of the things that Elon Musk has repeatedly said about X. He said, we're going to enforce the law, the law against, you know, uttering threats, the law against terrorism. There are some speech crimes that I think many of us who are even free speechers would agree that's a crime. But Elon Musk is saying, we're not going further than that to regulate politeness. Here, take a look at this video.
- [15:47]
D
I got off my European train and checked into my European hotel and noticed that a member of European Parliament called Helmut Bronsteder tweeted, there's no censorship in Europe. Everyone has to follow our rules. Well, I'm traveling here on a diplomatic passport, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to say a few things that ordinary Europeans can't by revisiting some remarks for which people in Europe and also the UK have been in, investigated or arrested or jailed by their governments over the past few years. So, as I tweeted a few moments ago, a German woman notoriously received a harsher jail sentence than a convicted rapist after the woman called the rapist, quote, a disgraceful pig. This was after he participated, along with several other disgraceful pigs, in the gang rape of a 15 year old girl in a public park. Similarly, a British woman was dragged out of her bath by 11 police officers after she referred in a private text message to a man who allegedly violently assaulted her as a faggot. And victims of violent crime aren't the only people who lack free speech rights in Europe. In Sweden, an activist called Rasmus Paladin was jailed after he burned a Koran and referred it to Islam as gay Islam. Finally, in Germany, a man faced a criminal investigation for referring to Green Party leader Ricardo Lang as fat. There are many more. I could go on, but it's important to note that the European censorship bureaucracy often postures as populist fighting against big tech. Yet none of the people I listed as a large tech company, these are ordinary Europeans in one Brit who were punished by their governments for saying what they thought was true or just what they felt like saying. In a free society, that shouldn't happen. So which is it, Mr. Braunstetter? Is there no censorship in Europe or do we all have to follow your rules?
- [17:39]
A
So that's Sarah Rogers. What was her reaction to her? Because that was provocative. And you know that a career diplomat like her would never have done anything so provocative without clearance from the top. Like diplomats. One thing you can say about diplomats is they're diplomatic. That was a very undiplomatic diplomat. So she was obviously given the green light on that. Do you know what the reaction has been in Brussels to that tough talking American lass?
- [18:06]
B
Yes, that Sarah Rodgers, one of the Trump administration's best appointments, in my opinion. The State Department has really been exemplary. I think in this administration, they've really made free speech a priority and it's clearly becoming a priority now for American public diplomacy, which is a massive sea change to previous administrations. We Actually just have a report out to the foundation for Freedom Online showing how under the previous administration, the US Government actually fully cooperated and supported the establishment of the, of the Digital Services act, which is now being used to target American companies. The current administration, Sarah Rogers, Marco Rubio, the State Department, they, they have completely turned the page on that and are now actually putting pressure on US partners to, to, to actually not just support, not just not infringe the free speech rights of Americans, which laws like the Digital Services act threaten to do. And laws like the Online Safety act in the uk, they threaten to infringe the rights of Americans by targeting American companies and forcing American companies to re establish the censorship regimes that they've been dismantling over the last few years. But they're also saying one of the things Sarah Rogers has said is that this is also bad for the free speech of their own people in Europe and the uk and obviously these are American allies. America wants its allies to have a culture of free speech like America has a culture of free speech. Unfortunately, some Americans, especially in the Democratic Party, actually would prefer a more European system of tight speech controls, and you can see that very clearly in our latest report. But I think this is now official policy at the State Department and official policy at the administration. And it's great to see that the US will go out around the world to its allies, to all countries really, and actually promote free speech and promote free speech for the people in those countries.
- [19:54]
A
Yeah, it's sort of interesting to watch the Europeans try and push back. They're not used to fighting with Americans. They're not used to fighting on Twitter in short soundbites. They're used to doing blah, blah, blah speeches in the European Union that no one actually pays attention to. Let me just say one more thing about the Twitter find before we move on. There were three, I think, main beefs that the European Union had with Elon Musk. One of them was that he was giving away. There's a little thing on Twitter or X, it's a blue check mark that it's sort of a badge that you're official, that you're a somebody. Now, in the past it was very ambiguous how you got them. You had to. It was like you were tapped on the shoulder and were bestowed this blue check mark by a friend in the company. Some people secretly paid 15 grand, 1 NEWS story reported, to get the blue check mark. It was basically, are you cool with the cool kids? It was very snobby. One of the things Elon Musk did is he let anyone buy a blue check mark. This was something that enraged the Europeans. It was specifically something they said they were fining him for. One more thing I thought was odd. They demanded access to internal statistics. They wanted the right to study Elon Musk's X or Twitter. Neither of these things seem appropriate. They seem invasive. They almost one of them seems, well, how dare you let anybody get the cool kids check mark. And the other seems quite, you know, snooping around. Why is that anyway? I thought that the actual reasons sounded like bs. What do you make of those reasons? Are they real?
- [21:28]
B
So this is actually very, very important. I think a lot of people are aware that the EU is doing this because they want more censorship on X, but they don't really understand the mechanism of censorship. So if you look at the three things in that announcement, the three things that the EU says they're finding X for, it's like you said, it's the blue check marks, number one. Number two, it's not giving researchers access to Twitter's ad repository. And number three, not giving researchers access to data more widely, data from Twitter's API. Now, here's why those three things, here's how those three things directly relate to online censorship. Number one, subscribers.
- [22:08]
By opening up the verification system to everybody, Twitter has created a stream of revenue that is independent of advertisers, that makes the company more resilient to advertiser boycotts. And people who are, people who support online censorship don't like that. So. And what the EU says is completely false. They, what they say is the current system doesn't actually verify users. That's a nonsense allegation because if you want to be verified, you actually have to give your id. You have to give a form of ID to Twitter. They can verify that you're a real person. It's absolutely a valid form of verification. What the eu, I think is actually concerned about is that subscriber revenue will become a greater and greater share of excess revenue, which will make them less and less dependent on advertisers and thus almost immune to outside pressure. And that goes to the second thing that they find them for not opening up the ad repository to so called independent researchers. Right now, they'll always say this, you know, independent researchers, they use words like civil society researchers, universities, disinformation researchers. And you know what this is? These are the same sorts of people I mentioned earlier in this show that the previous administration and the US Deep state funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars of US taxpayer money to create this sort of anti global, anti disinformation network. All that money goes to so called researchers. And what they do is they compile lists of disfavored speech of disfavored users. They compile these vast databases. They essentially function like a third party private sector stasi. Right now, if you can. Now if you imagine, if they imagine if the US actually or governments actually tasked a government agency with doing this, it would get called the stars. It'd be a massive scandal. Like government bureaucrats directly employed in monitoring online speech. That's why it's much easier to farm it out to independent researchers with grants and awards. That's how they've been doing it for the last 10 years. It gives them much more plausible deniability and it lets them say, oh, they're just independent researchers, they're just innocent academics. They're not innocent academics and researchers. What they're doing is they're building hit lists of users to get them banned by trust and safety departments. And one more they did in 2020. There was an organization, I'm sure you're familiar with it, called the Election Integrity Partnership. And exactly the kind of, you know, allegedly academic researchers that the EU wants to open up X to. What they did is they built a database of millions and millions of tweets, thousands of users, and almost every prominent pro Trump commentator. And then they then passed this list on to content moderation departments to get them banned. And that organization was set up with the full cooperation. It was actually an idea hatched in the Department of Homeland Security. This came from the government.
- [25:03]
A
Right.
- [25:04]
B
And this is the case with every disinformation researcher. So that's why the second point that the EU makes against X, that the ad repositories aren't open to researchers. They want researchers, these third party Stasi officers, to be able to go into the ad to see exactly who is advertising on X, so that they can then pressure them to boycott X if they need to. If they can't see who the advertisers that are advertising on X, they can't do that. That's why it's so important to them. And the third point.
- [25:32]
A
Go ahead.
- [25:33]
B
The third point is opening them up to data in general. That's just, that just allows researchers to build these databases of what's trending, who's talking about what, what forbidden topics are being discussed and who's discussing them. What are the biggest, the big users, the big accounts that are discussing these forbidden topics. Basically, if they don't, if their researchers don't have access to this data, then the entire global censorship machine is blind. So that's why it's so important to.
- [26:00]
A
Them, you know, and everything you've listed, the fake blue check mark controversy, the ad info, the general data, none of these things actually go to some, you know, turpitude. There's, there's nothing wrong, there's nothing that Twitter X is doing that needs to be stopped. It's just the EU wants to be nosy, they want to poke around for. But none of that has anything to do with breaking a law or Twitter is responsible for some harm. It's just, hey, they're not letting us overregulate them like our scant European tech companies allow. I think that's very interesting. I'd say one more thing about the. Go ahead.
- [26:44]
B
And I'll just, I'll just add here, like we're talking about the EU, right. But as our latest report@foundationfreedomonline.com shows, the previous administration completely collaborated with the EU. They shape the same. This Digital Services act, the US shaped it through the. They use the International Trade Administration at the Department of Commerce, the previous administration and the U.S. trade Representative at the White House. They had something that was called. It was called the U.S. eU Trade and technology Council. And we've published all of their materials on our site. You'll see year after year, since between 2021 and 2024, they put out publication after publication where the US and the EU government both say, both reiterate again and again the importance of tech companies giving access to civil society researchers. So the exact same thing that the EU is now fining X for, the US Government and the previous administration completely supported that. And they supported it through the trade offices. These are offices that are supposed to stand up for American companies and American economic interests. But you'll see in these documents, they're actually shaping a law in the European Union that is now targeting American companies for hundreds of millions of dollars. And that's because the previous administration, the US Deep state more generally, was just as committed to online censorship at whatever cost, no matter the cost to American companies as the EU is now. And it's only this current administration that's really changed that.
- [28:13]
A
Yeah. You know, another benefit to the censors of outsourcing this dirty work to Europe is it's beyond the reach of access to information or freedom of information requests, because that's a private company or not a entity that's governed by disclosure, so they could hide what they were doing. It's in another country. The Plaza deniability. There's all sorts of reasons they outsourced it to Europe. Now, one of the interesting things that the Trump administration has started to do is actually deny visas or bring in some other very targeted, I'll call them sanctions against the worst of the worst. There was one Brit who was, I think over in America mucking around and they sent him home because he was a censor. I forget his name right now, but he was prominent. There was this UK think tank that was sort of campaigning against Trump in 2024. I think he was part of it. And now that Trump administration is looking to deny visas to actual individual fact checkers, individuals. I think that's such a wonderful idea and I think it should be expanded. Like that bureaucrat who made the announcement of targeting X, he should be banned from going to America too. I'm not saying freeze his bank account. I'm not going full Trudeau like that. But you ban a guy like that from going to America, it's gonna sting. Because however much they say they hate America, everyone in the world loves America, especially elite, wealthy jet setters. They all want to take their kids to Disneyland. They all want to go to Broadway. They want to like, if you want to prick at what's important to these Europeans, it's their cosmopolitan jet setting ways. You ban them from entering the United States and you've hurt them morally. I don't know. I would like to see so much more of that. What news do you have on that front?
- [29:58]
B
Yeah, it's one of the biggest paradoxes of politics, isn't it? That, you know, people who are affluent and well educated and live in affluent areas often vote for and support the very same political course causes that would eventually destroy that affluence and the civilization that maintains it.
- [30:15]
That's one of the many, the visa bans is one of the many sources of pressure that the Trump administration is putting on worldwide census. And that's because the, the architects of online censorship around the world, whether they're in the Europe, European Union, whether they're in the UK or Brazil, they're kind of still marching to the tune of the previous administration and the US Deep State, not the current administration. I think they still, you can almost say that their government's in exile for the Biden administration's censorship state. That's certainly how they're behaving. And I believe that individual you identified, he's from the center for Countering Digital Hate.
- [30:55]
A
That's the one. That's the one, yeah.
- [30:56]
B
Yeah. And they're A very nefarious organization. They actually, they were founded in the uk but they also have an office in the US that ceaselessly lobbied the previous administration, ceaselessly lobbies people on Capitol Hill to make online censorship easier. And that organization was actually responsible for the so called disinformation dozen during COVID Right.
- [31:20]
A
And they put RFG Jr at the top of it. They put one of Trump's cabinet ministers before he was in cabinet. I remember that document. That was such a brutal attempt at a political assassination in a nonviolent way. I mean, wasn't it?
- [31:33]
B
Yeah, yeah. And of course, Biden, Biden personally amplified that report. But that, that report came from a UK organization. Not just any UK organization. This is an organization that was founded by a man called Morgan McSweeney, who is actually Keir Starmer's top lieutenant. He's his top aide, his top adviser, has been his top adviser since before Starmer was even prime minister. So that, that is where the organization comes from and actually is actually tied to the present government of the UK and they were involved in censoring someone who, as you said, is now HHS secretary. So that's not foreign. You know, there are all these worries about foreign interference. That sounds like foreign interference to me.
- [32:12]
A
You've been very generous with your time. Folks can get a copy of your new study@foundationforfreedomonline.com is that the right website?
- [32:21]
B
That is correct.
- [32:22]
A
Excellent. We'll take a look at that. It's just out very recently. I want to come back just for one more second to the idea of personalizing the pushback. That's sort of a left wing radical idea. Rules for Radicals, written by Saul Alinsky. Personalize the problem. Go after a particular bureaucrat. They're not used to it. They're not used to playing defense. They get flustered. There's a lot of reasons. Alinsky did that as a communist tactic and the left does that. And by the way, the United States, both parties, Republican and Democrat, have done that against Russia in their sanctions in respect to the Ukraine invasion. And I have no connection to Russia. But I can imagine that if you're an oligarch and you like to jet around and you have a yacht, you have holdings and property, being put on the naughty list is a terrible thing. Even if you were not planning to go to America, all of a sudden your wings are clipped, all the things you like, and you probably think a lot about it and probably are trying to convince Putin to wrap it up. I'm not talking about seizing bank accounts or real estate. But if you. If just like they had their dirty dozen, if the US administration had a list of censors. And just because they're trying to censor Americans, it's not a vindictiveness, it's just a tit for tat. It's a consequence, it's a reaction, it's a peaceful reaction. It's not seizing property or money. Yes, you can't come to America anymore because you're hostile to one of the foundational ideas. I think if you put anyone who voted for this, any bureaucrat who touched it, any scholar, any student, you started making it like a tar baby where you touched it and it sticks to your hand and you can't wash it off. Boy, that would concentrate the mind in a way that very few other things would because it would be personal and you would be worried. Personally, I don't know, I'm just so in love with the idea of being, of denying visas to these outsourced censors who think that they can trash America on Monday but then visit it and go to Broadway on Tuesday. I don't know. Is there any chance that that'll be taken to a wider scale? Like how many Russian oligarchs are on the sanction list? There's probably dozens, maybe hundreds. Why not do the same to the censorship industry?
- [34:33]
B
I think they should. Because the censorship industry has a much more direct impact on American citizens. It's resulted in probably hundreds of thousands of Americans being banned on social media platforms. So it directly impacts Americans far more than any Russian oligarch does. And you know, it's almost like self defense. It's almost like us or them. Because these are the same people who would be happy to cut Americans or Europeans or their own citizens off from bank accounts from online platforms that'd be happy to bankrupt them simply because of speech and political opinions that they don't like. So it's perfectly reasonable for these same people who want to impose so many consequences on their own citizens just for engaging in political speech and on American citizens, frankly as well, it's perfectly acceptable to impose some level of consequence on those same people.
- [35:24]
A
I'll let you go with one last question. Who is the point person in the Trump administration who is on this anti censorship beat, especially as regards foreign countries? I would like to follow that person more closely and I might even look to see if that person is attentive to Canada. Cuz we're going in the wrong direction. Just today Canada announced a partnership with the EU on independent media that's terrifying to me. That means censorship to come. Who is the man or woman in the Trump administration? Who's the key person on this stuff?
- [35:57]
B
Well, there are multiple ones, actually. There are. There's a lot of great people inside the Trump administration. Sarah Rogers, you mentioned, is a fantastic, fantastic example. She's been on a roll recently exposing the censorship in these foreign regimes. Darren Beatty over at the US Institute of Peace is another great example. And of course, J.D. vance, frankly, J.D. vance has been, has been very vocal on all of these issues and all of these foreign censorship laws. I think he really gets it. But really there are too many to list. And this administration has actually been quite impressive at making this a priority. I do think that if there's any, any, any part of the administration that requires a bit more pressure on this, it is the trade element of it. Like the trade, the trade administration, the trade representative, because trade policy is how the previous administration.
- [36:51]
Collaborated with the EU to create the censorship regime in the first place. And trade policy is also how you dismantle it. But it actually has to be a, it has to be a red line in trade negotiations, and I'm not sure it is yet.
- [37:05]
A
We'll have to talk another day about Ireland, which is sort of a fault line in this censorship debate because it's so connected to the European Union. But there's so many American tech companies that are there for tax reasons and there are free speech battles. Elon Musk has recently lost in court there. So I'm very concerned about, about free speech in that little island nation. We'll come back to that another day. Boy, I tell you, Alan, I'm so glad to catch up with you and thanks for giving us so much of your time and your expertise. Folks, if you want to get a copy of that new study that Alan's referring to, go to foundationforfreedomonline.com Alan, keep up the fight. You're doing such great things.
- [37:42]
B
Thanks, Ezra. Great to be on, as always.
- [37:44]
A
All right, there he is, Alan Bokari, one of the freedom fighters since the very early days. He could see the problem with tech. Well, that's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home. Good night and keep fighting for freedom.
- [38:05]
Who is your favorite Rebel news reporter? We're having our annual Rebbe Awards 2025 edition, and the most exciting category is Viewers choice. You get to vote who's the best rebel. Now, I find that an impossible question to answer, like asking which of your own children you love the most. But it is a fun way for our viewers to show our journalists how much they appreciate their work. From our coverage of Mark Carney's election, to the anti Semitic crime wave across Canada, to the ostrich band, to fighting for free speech, our journalism has never been more important, and our team of reporters has never been more courageous. Go to www.viewerschoiceawards.ca. each Rebel News viewer gets just one vote, so cast it wisely. Vote now. We will announce the results on Friday, December 12th. I know it's hard to choose your favorite Rebel. They're all great. But it's in the spirit of friendly competition and I genuinely want to know what our viewers think. CBC would never let the public rank their reporters. Go to www.viewerschoice.
- [39:13]
Ca vot vote now. And good luck.