← The Rubin Report
The Rubin Report
Behind the Scenes Stories of Censorship: Abigail Shrier, Jonathan Turley & Linda Yaccarino
00:38:07
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- [00:15]
Dave Rubin
So samistat were really important in the Soviet Union in the post Stalin era as a means of acquiring information.
- [00:23]
Abigail Shrier
Every word in every newspaper and in every book must be approved before it is published.
- [00:30]
Jonathan Turley
People who engaged in samista, they were literally risking life and limb.
- [00:37]
Abigail Shrier
You know, samostat means underground publishing. It was the means by which the Russian people actually were able to discover the lie killer that was the Gulag Archipelago. Courageous people did that.
- [00:49]
Dave Rubin
I think we take for granted just how plentiful, you know, truthful information about the world is.
- [00:56]
Linda Yaccarino
Free press is crumbling. Giving up on fact checking.
- [01:00]
Abigail Shrier
That First Amendment, that thing that is our business model all of a sudden is no longer something that can be above ground, that has to go underground.
- [01:09]
Jonathan Turley
There are examples of samizda in People's Republic of China, in Cuba, I assume there are examples in North Korea.
- [01:16]
Unknown
If people go to only one source and the source they go to has an agenda and they're putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to just hammer it out of existence.
- [01:29]
We believe in free speech, but then how are we accepting any form of.
- [01:34]
This type of censorship?
- [01:36]
Jonathan Turley
And so there's still the human spirit, there's human nature, and people want to resist.
- [01:41]
Linda Yaccarino
I think the pendulum's starting to shift. I think people are starting to realize this is not the way it can be. You have to have guiding principles.
- [01:49]
Unknown
I think that's a popular belief, the right to speak from the government. It just recognizes free speech as a human right.
- [01:57]
Abigail Shrier
I think what we need to do is highlight courage. It's never coming from everybody. It's always being. We cannot be afraid.
- [02:13]
Unknown
That's one of your primary jobs as a journalist. In addition to getting things right, making sure that the right for journalists to continue to do their work unimpeded is inherent in your responsibilities as a journalist.
- [02:25]
Abigail Schreier's just written a report on.
- [02:27]
This for City Journals World.
- [02:29]
Here's Abigail Shrier.
- [02:30]
Take a look at the risks to their health. They acknowledge that there can be risks. And the reason do that because I don't want them to experience harm. They look at the objective consequences of these laws.
- [02:40]
Jonathan Turley.
- [02:41]
I want to bring in Professor Jonathan Turley who has been in the courtroom today.
- [02:45]
For the government to be in the business of silencing citizens, it's wrong. We saw it during the McCarthy period where the government was behind the blacklisting of individuals.
- [02:54]
And that is why we are taking action.
- [02:57]
Abigail Shrier
X Formerly known as Twitter, the company's CEO, Linda Yakarino report.
- [03:01]
Unknown
Foundation of X is based on free expression and freedom of speech. Everyone deserves to have that opportunity.
- [03:10]
Linda Yaccarino
Linda Yaccarino of Twitter, think about what that took. The FBI is threatening Twitter to squelch news that they don't like. She stood up for the First Amendment and she took all they need.
- [03:21]
Unknown
Jonathan Turley stood up for the First Amendment and who was not afraid to take a lot of criticism.
- [03:28]
Linda Yaccarino
Abigail Shire. You talk about somebody who took heat too.
- [03:31]
Unknown
Abigail deserves a lot of credit for her perseverance in getting an issue that the entire Internet did not want to hear about.
- [03:41]
Abigail Shrier
In making it one, they weathered the storm and also that they were right. They were vindicated by facts. And that's why we let people talk that we disagree with.
- [03:52]
Unknown
It's helping to take the place of a collapsed media system.
- [03:56]
Linda Yaccarino
And I'm proud of our prize, named after a Russian word from the old Soviet Union where they had to have underground newspapers.
- [04:03]
Dave Rubin
The importance of free speech, being able to speak publicly.
- [04:07]
Unknown
First Amendment rights was always a major national issue of the journalists always galvanized and got together and fought against.
- [04:16]
Dave Rubin
It is important because without it, we will not flourish either individually or together.
- [04:22]
Unknown
I'll say this.
- [04:23]
Linda Yaccarino
If the First Amendment becomes a partisan issue in this country, this country's in trouble. That's why this prize is softboard.
- [04:35]
Unknown
Abigail Shrier, Jonathan Turley, Linda Yakarino, Dave Rubin.
- [04:59]
Well, thank you guys for coming out tonight. It is great to see some old friends and new friends. I'm fairly certain I have some enemies in the crowd, so it's very exciting to be here. I have to say I'm really struck by the fact that it was less than a year ago that we did this very event and how incredibly fast. I guess you could say the world has changed. You know, when we did this, it was 11 months ago, actually. Many of us in this room thought that we were going to be prisoners of the state. And now they're serving prisoner wine here, which is hilarious. Their pinot is quite good. That's really what I want to focus on today because we've got about a half hour up here. We have three incredible people who are well worthy of this prize. And what I love about the fact that I'm sitting here with three of you is you come from different disciplines. We all got into this free speech fight for different ways or from different avenues. And so why don't we start with that? Abigail, I know you the longest, so I'll start with you first. You came in this, I think, really probably more as a mother than Anything else, I think in that you were defending your children and what the endless assault on children. And of course, as it relates to free speech, suddenly you couldn't say basic biological realities and much more than that. So why don't you tell people maybe a little bit of how you got into this and how you feel now that it seems that so much of this, I mean, I think it was just today, or was it yesterday that Donald Trump signed this executive action that will ban boys from girl sports. Interestingly enough, he didn't have to do an executive action banning girls from boys sports. That does make you, that does make you think. But why don't you tell everybody a little bit about how you got into this and how everything flipping has been for you.
- [07:03]
Yes. Thank you, Dave. And thank you all so much for this. And thank you, Real Clear Politics, for this wonderful, wonderful honor. I think it's worth remembering because it's hard to that about five years ago the Overton window had shrunk to the size of a pinhole. Those of us who are worried about things and trying to write about things like gender treatments on children, which I was, or the presence of boys and girls sports, which I wrote about, had to always worry about being kicked off Twitter or otherwise censored. The first tweet I ever wrote about Biden's executive order requiring male entry into female sports was censored on Instagram when someone tried to repost it there. So we really lived in a regime, through a regime that was incredibly repressive. If you remember, Babylon Bee kicked off Twitter for misgendering. Megan Murphy, a gender critical journalist, kicked off Twitter. And that's what we were trying to operate in. And it really was a lot like persecution in the art of writing. We had to write in such a way that we were trying to, as journalists, trying to explain what was wrong with putting a man in a woman's sport without pointing out that Lia Thomas was a man because that would get us banned. It made it much more difficult to make the argument. But I would just say this. You know, we have come a long way since then. It really has been a huge shift. And as someone who has been constantly worried about and critical of the direction of American culture, I think it's worth noting that today there is no real clear politics of Canada. There is no free press of the United Kingdom. Those things exist in America. And I think that America really still is. I think, and I hope that America really still is the home of the brave, which doesn't mean every American is Brave. But what it means is that we promise that the brave will always have a home here.
- [09:21]
Well, although wokeness is dying at a rapidly increasing rate, I am still going to the straight white guy last, so. Linda.
- [09:32]
I'm sorry.
- [09:32]
It's quite all right.
- [09:34]
Yeah. Sucks, man. What can I tell you, Linda? You have been right in the center of the tech portion of this. I think everyone in here has heard about your boss. He's a pretty influential guy that a certain set of people don't seem to like, but I think is on the right side of all of the issues. I mean, you take this job, has it turned out to be what you expected? And just in the last couple weeks, as the culture and the political climate has changed, how's that making you feel and think?
- [10:07]
You know, I thought, first of all, I would like to really send out my debt of gratitude to Real Clear Politics. It is quite an honor to be here tonight on behalf of X and also to my two Fireside chat mates here. It is really a good fortune that we're here to. Brought together under different circumstances, but happy to be here. And this tonight is for my Uncle Steve, who's on his way to get some medical attention. He's doing okay. I saw him before he left, so I just wanted to say that. But back to. So I took this job and when I first took the job, I would tell everyone that it was a career opportunity of a lifetime. How often do you get an opportunity to take your business experience and skills, which was largely legacy media? And I said, wow, there's this opportunity to reshape history and then say, match it with purpose. And the purpose of something that I felt passionate about, which is protecting free speech around the world. So I used to say when I first started that it was a career opportunity of a lifetime. So I dropped the career part. It's been about 20 months. It is just a damn opportunity of a lifetime. So thank you. But to just comment a little bit on Abigail's comments, when you talk about just a short year ago, where we were actually on the precipice of everything breaking, because in the last year, freedom of speech around the world has been under attack. Right. When you said there is no real clear politics, there is no free press, when you look at. And you know this very well, from England to France to Australia to Brazil, X has proudly been that place to be that beacon of hope for free speech around the world. And if. Thank you.
- [12:21]
Think about this.
- [12:22]
Free speech is the core, obviously value of our company, but free speech is what Enables democracy to thrive all around the world. It's why the freedom of speech is the First Amendment. But if free speech is broken, everything else breaks. So that's why. Thank you. But our radical dedication to the truth and being a home for voices, no matter which side of the aisle they are, no matter which opinion they are, but to give them that opportunity to come to the new global town square where everyone is welcome.
- [13:08]
So, Jonathan, on the legal side of this, you've been fighting all of this for decades, the ever encroaching state and the squashing of free speech. To connect some of this, you know, a couple years ago during COVID this was. Then this information was released by Jim Jordan in some of his files and work that he was doing. I was one of the people that the government colluded with the previous regime at Twitter to remove tweets that I put out about COVID I suppose at the moment you're feeling quite good and pretty confident that this new administration is going to, let's say, do less of that sort of thing.
- [13:50]
I am. And first of all, let me also join in thanking Real Clear Politics and for all of you for this honor. I'm particularly overwhelmed that it comes apparently with a nomination to head to CDC in a year. And. And I accept. I. You know, it's funny because I testified with both Jay and Matt, two individuals who I have tremendous respect for, and we went through some pretty heated hearings during the peak of the censorship system. And when you look back at that time, yes, it is. There's a feeling that we may be turning this around. But you also learn in the free speech community that you can't assume that this course will remain the same. We have never had particularly stalwart friends. They tend to leave when opportunities offer themselves. But what remains are the things that we fight for. And I've written a lot about Elon Musk because of his. The fact that he changed that course in a very significant way. I don't think we'd be here today without Elon Musk. But what is really chilling, and this is why I'm somewhat more cabined in my response, is that the anti free speech movement today is the largest in history. It is the most threatening in history. My book talks about how we've gone through ages of rage. That's not new. Rage rhetoric is not new. The danger is when rage rhetoric becomes state rage, when the government uses it to silence others. And what worries me is we've never seen a coalition like the one that we've been experiencing for years that Jay and Matt and I saw firsthand in various committee rooms of an alliance of the academia, the media corporations, and the government. We've never seen that before. And Europe is in a free fall of free speech. So is Canada. We're in. I mean, this. This tide has reached our shores, and the fight has to be now. It has to be here. And there are promising aspects of where we're going, but we have to be able to reach the people that have these twisted concepts. You know, in one of the hearings, I think I was testifying either Matt or Jay, I had this encounter with Representative Goldman from New York, and he said, you know, professor, this is just regulating speech. When someone cries fire in a crowded theater, and the Internet is one big crowded theater. And I said, you know, Carsman, just for context, you do realize, of course, that that line comes from a case where the government imprisoned a socialist for opposing the draft by passing around a flyer that quoted the United States Constitution. Is that really the case you want to rely on? Because Oliver Wendell Holmes walked away from that quote, and it was. Ultimately, that case was rejected by the Supreme Court. And he cut me off and said, professor, we don't need a legal lecture here. And I said, I think you do. And the fact is we're, you know, we're giving the same lecture. And so I think that things are going well, better than they were before. I do have high expectations. It is really useful to have a president who was canceled, and I'm hoping that he'll remember that.
- [17:35]
Abigail, can you talk a little bit about, as we shift from sort of the corporate version of it or the government version of it, what it's done to parents after seeing what you've been through, just that parents are going to board meetings, school board meetings, and not fighting for their kids properly. And how hopeful are you that that now will come to its conclusion?
- [17:59]
I hope it will. I mean, I agree very much with what Jonathan said, that we always have to be vigilant. And, you know, first, to answer your question, when I wrote Irreversible Damage and this came out in 2020 and Amazon refused to carry ads, then Amazon refused, wouldn't allow autocomplete for the book, so people who typed in the name wouldn't find the book. And then we had, you know, Target deleted it, and ACLU came out in favor of. Anyway, when all that happened, what that meant was that every month that went by, thousands of children in America who were medically transitioned with the encouragement of parents who couldn't get access to information about the risks. Couldn't get access, you couldn't find material that would tell you there was another side to this. And so I think, I hope certainly on the gender issue that that's changed. I don't think we're out of the woods in other respects. And first of all, Amazon still controls 50% of books worldwide. That's a problem. It very nearly deleted my book. It deleted Ryan Anderson's. And the other thing is we're seeing, I think, is that as Jonathan can say, tell much more than I can, is that there's of course no Heckler's veto exception to the First Amendment, that you're, you know, you're not allowed to shout down someone else's speech. But what we have today in America is a rioters veto. We have people showing up on campuses, we have them showing up in on highways. We have them showing up at tree lighting ceremonies, in the Christmas tree lighting, as they did in November of 2023, and they shut down the speech. In my own city of Los Angeles in June, rioters showed up. There was a pro Israel event at a synagogue and Jews could not enter. Why? Because we had a mayor who refused to enforce the law. So there was no passage to that synagogue. That's another way of shutting down free speech. And that unfortunately hasn't changed.
- [20:10]
Jonathan, let me ask you, because it's a legal point, I mean, what do we do about that? We all want to defend free speech. We all want to defend the right to assembly and protest and all of those things. But that this seems to be the next forefront or sort of manipulation of our ability to have that exchange.
- [20:25]
No, I think that's very true. And we've seen that in higher education. The anti free speech movement in the United States that is now growing really originated in higher education and then metastasized that we have a separate movement that came from Europe that has also reached our shores. But the homegrown movement started in higher education and they perfected this technique of often being just passive and allowing groups to shut down, to shout down, to cancel speakers. And that culture is we still have a higher education in the grips of it. And one of the things we have to do is first of all, exactly to require the enforcement of laws to protect it. We also need to really aggressively move in higher education. And donors could do that. University presidents are not complex creatures and when it comes down to money, they make a decision. And the person I most respect was someone I like to call a friend. We weren't as in contact as often as I had wished before he died. But Robert Zimmer, who was the president of University of Chicago, is one of my great heroes. And one year I called him because I went to University of Chicago and they sent out the acceptance letter to everyone, all these kids that had gotten in. And Zimmer said, I want to congratulate you and to welcome you, University of Chicago. And I'm afraid that some of you may feel concerned that you won't have a safe space here and that you will feel uncomfortable and you will face triggering ideas. And I wanted to assure you there is no safe space at the University of Chicago. And he said, if you want to be protected from ideas, you must go somewhere else. And I called him up and between trying to fight back tears, I said, that's the most beautiful damn letter I have read in a long time. And I said, what caused you to write it? He says, I woke up one evening and it came to me and I said, for God's sake, get a diary and leave it by your bedside, because that's pretty great. I think that when we look at the passive aggressive aspects of enforcement and we look at this culture, we're going to have to start at the roots and we're going to have to retake higher education.
- [22:56]
Well, one thing that it seems like we have definitely taken back is the town square. And what Elon often says is that we are the media now. So as you help lead X, how concerned are you that just all of the fire, I mean you guys are taking fire every which way all the time. Elon's personally taking it from several members of Congress just screaming about him yesterday, saying the most absurd over the top things, but just to organize a company properly and to do your mission, how concerned are you that you now have the aim of the entire machine that we largely feel like we're beating to some extent, at least temporarily, but that it's coming for you?
- [23:34]
Well, it's always coming all day, every day. But I have to say we're highly encouraged. First of all, the platform is growing and is stronger than ever before because of what exactly you said. It actually happened organically on the platform. You are the media now. Right? So our users to your comments have a think about it as a two way street of accessibility to information. And when you think about what legacy media is all about, is the control, old gatekeepers of that one way distribution or broadcast of information completely designed to have you think one way only. So X broke all of that open and actually gave our users a Vote of confidence. You had a two way street of information. You could get that information now for the first time. And we trust you to make the own, their own decision. That's why we're pretty confident. Like when you talk about the results of this year's American election, they talk about it as a podcast and an ex election and think about that. Why was that true? Because you could bypass legacy media, actually leapfrog that one way broadcast you and you had the flexibility and the freedom to make your own decisions. And that was the differentiator. Legacy media can't keep up. Big example if you think about when former President Biden announced that he was stepping away from his reelection campaign, he posted it on X. Seminal moment, right? Posted on X about 20 minutes before any legacy media even read it or could post about it, let alone get on air or write an article about it. That post alone was seen over 450 million times globally. That was one of the moments where X leapfrogged all of legacy media. And there's been several other examples of that since. Because you know you have the global newsroom in your pocket, right? With X, it's reached kind of FOMO status. I have to check X. And that's what is encouraging and enabling people. But I think it's really important, as we're enjoying these early days, moments of success, is that you have to stay vigilant because they're, as you can see, going down, fighting.
- [26:10]
Let me ask you all, I want to ask you the same question actually, and see if how similar the answers are. We're in the midst of a massive political realignment that everyone can see right now. I mean, even if you look at the hearings over the last couple days, you know, you have Bobby Kennedy who was a Democrat less than a year ago, you had Tulsi, who was a Democrat presidential candidate only four years ago. You have people like Elon, who, I don't know if he was a Democrat in the most technical sense, certainly not a Republican, but basically everyone on the free speech side now tends to be either more Republican or conservative. Do you think that this new sort of wide tent movement that's kind of marrying Maga and Maha make America healthy again and based really around free speech and love America. Do you think it can hold? I mean, there's going to be a lot of pressure to rip this thing apart?
- [27:01]
Abigail, that's a great question. And the truth is, I don't know. I think it's going to come under a lot of pressure. But remember that the, the sense that we were divided on this issue, turned it out to do, on a lot of issues, turned out to have been manufactured by the legacy media. So we had a sense, based on the legacy media and what they would allow to print, you know, to show appear in print, that we were very divided on things like gender media, you know, gender transition, or males and female and girls sports. We were never divided on that. And the. The fact that the media is always there, you know, the legacy media, which is still very strong and is trying to, you know, create these divisions, I think that will continue. I mean, the. The thing that's one of the huge, truly monumental shifts when Linda and Elon stood up to the advertisers, this was a major moment. It really, truly was in the history of free speech in America. And one of the reasons it was when the Twitter files came out, we learned what we suspected, but we didn't know that private act. They may have been wearing the mask of private actors, but it was always the government silencing us. And then all of a sudden we knew that. So we know that this is the government's, you know, in general, this is a temptation. And when it can wear the mask of private actors, when the social media companies are happy to go along with it, it will.
- [28:35]
So what do we do about that? On a. On a legal front? I do want to get your answer to the original question, but on a legal front, I mean, when I was at the Capitol, Jim Jordan said, she showed me the documents. He said, the government had communication with Twitter to remove your tweets. Dave. I said, well, what do you do? Does anyone apologize to you? Do you get 50 bucks? I mean, he said, do they send the janitor out to shake your hand? Do you get anything and you get nothing? I mean, as far as I can tell, there is no legal recourse for people whose First Amendment rights have been trampled.
- [29:05]
It's difficult, in my view, that there should be a legal recourse. I actually, as I go into this in the book, I think that this was sort of censorship by Surrogate, and they enlisted social media as a type of agency, and that can trigger the First Amendment. The First Amendment does apply to the government, but it also applies to private actors. If the police get a private security guard to go into your room and search it for them, that is still an unlawful search under the Fourth Amendment because it's an agency relationship. I think they did cross that line with these. With these social media platforms. In terms of how the political aspect is shifting, I think we are seeing that this was the first election where free speech was a major issue since 1800, when Jefferson beat John Adams and campaigned against Adams, who was a terrible hypocrite who arrested his opponents under the Alien and Sedition Acts. This is only the second election in our history that turned in a significant part on free speech. And there's that old joke that a conservative is a liberal who was mugged. And I think that there's a lot of people who've been mugged. And I am actually fairly hopeful, because the thing about the echo chamber that we have in the media and in higher education is that we don't know how strong this basis is. I had a debate with one of your counterparts at Facebook. It didn't go well. And I criticized Facebook, ran this creepy campaign that tried to convince young people to embrace censorship years ago. It was truly creepy. And they said it was very cheerful about how they're going to content, modify, and moderate.
- [31:04]
Oh, goodness.
- [31:04]
And it didn't work because it's hard to get a free people to give up freedom. But the most. The most. Thing I have the most confidence in is I just had a debate at Harvard Law School with Randall Kennedy. And the way they do debates there is they have people vote before you debate, which is a bit odd. And it was a debate on intellectual diversity and free speech. And I lost overwhelmingly in the initial vote. Then Randy and I went at each other and I noted. I said, you know, all the students in this room, less than 8% of them now identify as conservative Republicans. And your faculty has less than 2% Republicans. You've purged them in a country that's half conservative. And he said, harvard is an elite institution. It doesn't have to look like the country. And I said, you don't even look like Massachusetts. I mean, you know, Massachusetts is 34% Republican. But here's the interesting thing. We had this debate, and then they voted again. And those students overwhelmingly rejected Harvard and said that they felt that there was a lack of diversity. That was just a couple hours of being exposed to this. Right? So I think that they have. We have a. I think that we have a greater chance with this young generation than some of my colleagues in the anti free speech movement believe.
- [32:31]
So as since you guys are the platform that this is now all taking place on, Elon is now framed as somehow, let's say, on the right or in the Trump camp, to whatever degree some of that is true or not true, it doesn't even matter. But the media wants it to seem like oh, the platform has somehow shifted, right where I can tell you as someone that if I have one addiction in life, it is 2x and Twitter, that if any, yeah, I need a lot of my soul back from you people. But I can tell you in the two plus years that he's had it, it is so much more open and even handed. And so to watch the people on the left that used to champion free speech and the ACLU and all that stuff, to watch them now go off on the place that's giving what they used to ask for, it's rather extraordinary.
- [33:21]
It's really extraordinary because if you look at the complexion and you know this, of the users on X during the election, I used to tell all of our customers that X was really like a giant swing state. It's a third, you know, like identified Republicans, a third Democrats, and a third actually independent or undecided voters. And I spent a lot of time talking about that because a lot of people needed to be educated. Because when the acquisition happened and the Twitter files happened and we blew everything wide open, it was kind of like almost like a lazy response from whether it was from some critics, certainly legacy journalists or advertisers, that they're like, oh, this is like this new right wing platform and it really isn't. And what other platform invites you to have that voice? When you spend a lot of users spend most of their time on the platform complaining about the platform and we're like, well, you're welcome here. So it's really, really fascinating.