0:15

It's Andrew Clay one. With this week's

0:17

interview with Michael Shellenberger, I'm really delighted

0:19

to have Michael on he is or

0:22

to reflect investigative Reporter and I've said

0:24

this a million times. So one of

0:26

the many things that we need more

0:29

of his from good independent investigative reporting.

0:31

He has a sub stack called Public

0:33

which is absolutely terrific. He's the should

0:35

be or chair of Censorship Our Politics

0:38

and Free Speech at the University of

0:40

Austin or bestselling author is book called

0:42

apocalypse Never when called sham from Chicago.

0:45

Ah. Michael Thank you for coming on. A

0:47

switch around me. So let's start

0:49

with the the news or the

0:51

with social media. I. You

0:54

are one of the guys that

0:56

the Elon Musk chose to unleash

0:58

the twitter files and recently this

1:00

is calm before the Supreme Court

1:02

bunch of state suing the Biden

1:04

Administration for trying to shut down

1:06

voices. I thought. Some. Of

1:09

the things the court said, sounds pretty skeptical

1:11

of stopping. The government's doing

1:13

this. Where did you see? how did you feel about

1:15

the case and where do feel going? Well.

1:17

I share your concern. I think

1:19

that I am. I was there

1:21

on Monday, I got got got

1:23

on line bright narrowly and got

1:25

into here in in person. The

1:27

interaction between the attorneys ended supreme

1:29

court justices. I think that our

1:31

side didn't argue it as well

1:33

as we could have. I think

1:35

it's a complex issue. I was

1:37

disappointed by the reaction I think

1:39

from the justices i on two

1:42

levels. First, they didn't seem to

1:44

understand the difference legally. Between.

1:46

Newspapers, traditional media and social media

1:48

platforms. are you in your listeners

1:50

main know that That and Ninety

1:52

Ninety Six. There was a law

1:54

passed that credit as part of

1:56

a Communications Decency Act. Called.

1:58

section two thirty which explicitly

2:01

distinguishes between publishers

2:04

like The Daily Wire, like Public

2:06

on Substack, and social media

2:08

platforms like Substack, like X and

2:10

Facebook. And they didn't seem

2:13

to understand the difference. And so they think

2:15

it's sort of, they sort of implied that

2:17

it was the same thing for a politician

2:19

to talk to a reporter and say, hey,

2:21

I don't think you should cover that. That's something politicians

2:23

do all the time. And that was something that Brett

2:26

Kavanaugh in particular expressed some familiarity

2:28

with, given his time working in

2:30

the White House. That's

2:33

very, very different from what was

2:35

being discussed in this case, which

2:37

was a mass censorship effort coordinated

2:40

by various parties.

2:42

But one of the worst ones was coordinated

2:44

by something called Stanford Internet Observatory, where

2:46

they would literally provide many, many

2:48

tweets and posts to the social

2:51

media platforms, asking them to be

2:53

censored without the person's knowledge. That's

2:55

very different than talking to a reporter and trying

2:57

to talk them out of a story. So that

2:59

was the first problem. The second problem is I

3:01

just don't think they had a very strong commitment

3:03

to the First Amendment. And you

3:05

could hear this with Justice

3:08

Katanji Brown-Jackson's comments. She

3:10

said something to the effect of, doesn't

3:12

the First Amendment get in the way

3:14

of the government's ability to censor speech? It

3:16

was like, yeah, that's exactly why we

3:18

have the First Amendment, the government's core.

3:21

She also said something like, well, what if,

3:24

for example, there's a bunch of videos going

3:26

around showing people jumping out of windows and

3:28

then kids start jumping out of windows? Shouldn't

3:31

the government stop those videos?

3:33

Well, A, no, the government

3:35

should not stop that. That's

3:38

not illegal speech. There is some

3:40

illegal speech. Famous

3:43

examples include child pornography or lying to

3:45

you in order to steal your money.

3:47

That's fraud. Or deliberately

3:49

lying about you in order to ruin

3:52

your career. That's defamation. Very high bar

3:54

for those things, but nonetheless, those are

3:56

some very limited exceptions to fraud.

4:00

out of buildings because if it did then

4:02

one of my favorite things in the world

4:04

to watch on Instagram reels would be illegal.

4:06

And by that I mean parkour, the wonderful

4:08

sport of parkour which includes literally people jumping

4:10

out of windows. A, it's

4:13

a very, that's safetyism that Jonathan Haidt

4:15

and others have talked about where this

4:18

idea that somehow we have to protect

4:20

people from things that they might blindly

4:22

copy which is I think absurd. But

4:24

second I think the more broader point

4:26

is that there's counter speech. So the

4:28

government is welcome if there's an epidemic

4:30

of children jumping out of windows to

4:33

go and do PSAs to say

4:35

please parents don't let

4:38

your kids jump out of windows.

4:41

Really what's at risk of something quite the opposite

4:43

which is that there was

4:45

censorship to prevent discussion of things

4:47

that really needed to be talked

4:49

about like should we lock

4:51

down the schools and prevent kids from going

4:53

to school because of COVID? Should

4:56

we refer to trans

4:59

identified people by the pronouns they

5:01

wish to be identified by? These

5:03

things were being censored by Facebook and

5:06

Twitter and other parties and they were

5:08

done so secretly. Behind

5:10

the scenes this is not jaw boning in

5:12

the famous examples that people think

5:14

of of a politician simply urging a reporter

5:17

not to write about something. So

5:20

when you look at social media, you look at

5:22

acts or you look at Facebook, is

5:24

there anything are they like the phone

5:26

company I can call up my friend on the

5:28

phone and say anything I want but nobody else

5:30

can hear it and the phone company can't censor

5:33

me. Should they just allow

5:35

anybody to say anything or do they have

5:37

the right to put certain standards in place?

5:41

Well let me tell you what my view

5:43

is of what should be the situation and

5:45

then we can work backwards from there to

5:47

where we actually are. I

5:49

think that adults should be

5:51

able to decide how we

5:53

consume all legal content meaning

5:56

if as an

5:58

adult user Giving

6:00

legal content now again legal content. I'm

6:02

not talking about You

6:05

know child exploitation. I'm not talking about

6:07

incitement immediate incitement to violence, which again

6:09

is a very high bar But things

6:11

that would immediately say go and kill

6:13

or cause violence these people that's not

6:15

legal things that are fraudulent Those things

6:17

are already well governed. We don't need

6:19

any moral laws So adults

6:21

in my view should be able to decide our own

6:23

legal content That means if I sign up for Twitter

6:25

or Facebook or X or LinkedIn or anybody else I

6:28

could just choose a bunch of filters. I could choose

6:30

the Andrew Clavin filter I could choose

6:32

the Michael Schollinger filter. I could choose the Elon

6:34

Musk filter I could choose the ADL filter. I

6:36

could choose the Joe Biden filter the Greta Thunberg

6:38

filter Whatever I could say I don't want

6:40

these things and I want them in that way. That's how I think

6:42

it should be if you want section

6:46

230 protections which are these sweeping liability

6:48

protections allowed for in this 1996 law

6:51

Then you should let user adult

6:54

users decide their own legal content That's my

6:56

view if you're a publisher like the Daily

6:58

Wire or public at sub stack or the

7:00

New York Times You publish whatever you want

7:02

and you don't have sweeping liability But you

7:04

can you can that's how I think it should

7:06

be What we're having right

7:08

now is we're actually seen in

7:10

real time The social media

7:13

companies basically getting treated like

7:15

traditional publishers And in

7:18

fact, you see a war going on

7:20

between X and really the entire news

7:22

media save the conservative media Or some

7:24

more radical media that don't want the

7:27

restrictions where they're basically

7:29

competing for advertisers And

7:31

X is basically and Facebook are basically going to

7:33

be free to censor whoever they want including under

7:35

pressure from the government I think that's what the

7:38

Supreme Court will ultimately remit

7:40

and so you're you're basically back to What's

7:43

the difference then between a publisher and a social media platform?

7:46

As far as I could tell the only difference is that one of

7:48

them is much more powerful than the other I Think

7:51

we happen to be in a situation where

7:53

we're very lucky to have someone that controls

7:55

the most important social media platform Who happens

7:57

to have a very high free speech standard?

8:00

I don't know that it's possible to have an absolute free

8:02

speech standard. You know,

8:04

and Elon sometimes says he wants to comply with

8:06

the local laws of the country. I

8:08

think it's clear that he goes beyond that

8:10

in many cases to censor content that I

8:12

think a lot of people would find offensive,

8:14

including anti-Semitic content, for example, or really

8:17

bullying content that under my scenario

8:20

would probably still be legal, although I'd want to

8:22

people would have the right to filter it. But

8:24

that's kind of where we are now. In

8:26

other words, there's my ideal platonic reality that

8:29

I would like to have, and then there's

8:31

the the cluj, messy reality that

8:33

we live in. And I don't know quite

8:35

how we get from here to there if we ever do, but honestly,

8:38

I walked away out of that Monday Supreme Court

8:40

hearing thinking the First

8:42

Amendment defense a lot more on Elon Musk

8:44

than on the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, I

8:46

feel the same way, and I feel like

8:49

Musk is, you know, he's a kind of

8:51

volatile guy, so you don't always know where

8:53

he's going to come down. But it is

8:55

interesting that he went from being the hero

8:58

of the of the nation for having

9:00

electric cars and suddenly he's his

9:03

shoe size is under investigation by the FBI.

9:05

I mean, everything he does is under investigation

9:07

suddenly simply because he's letting people

9:10

who disagree with the Biden administration speak. So,

9:12

you know, it's a threat. And speaking of

9:14

which, I mean, there's this thing going on

9:16

in Ireland that kind of fascinating. We're not

9:18

hearing a lot about it here, but

9:21

your reaction sort of startled me. I have to admit, it

9:23

kind of woke me up because your reaction to this was

9:25

that this is a four five alarm fire. Can

9:28

you explain what's going on over there and why you think it

9:30

matters to us? Well,

9:32

it's a five alarm fire, not just in Ireland, but in countries

9:34

around the world. I mean, it's very shocking. I mean, you saw

9:36

the Scottish police. This

9:39

is the front page story in the Scotland Herald

9:41

is that the Scottish police have been

9:43

given instructions on enforcing a hate speech

9:46

law, including against stand up comedians. Now,

9:48

the response from the police in Scotland

9:50

was to say, well, we're not targeting

9:52

stand up comedians. But The

9:54

point of the article was accurate, which is that

9:56

this is a hate speech law that could be

9:58

applied to stand up comedians. It's I mean

10:01

just think of Ricky Gervais, Sir

10:03

Dave Chappelle are Louis Ck or

10:05

Joe Rogan. Think about them an

10:07

are potentially been prosecuted for things

10:09

they said. That's the reality right

10:11

now and Scotland. In. Ireland. The

10:13

proposal is that the police be

10:15

allowed to invade your home, confiscate

10:17

your phones in your computers to

10:20

search for hate speech in Canada.

10:23

I. Prime Minister True Does

10:25

party has proposed legislation that would

10:27

allow up says life in prison

10:29

sentences. For. Hate speech,

10:32

particularly genocide denial and were seen

10:34

in Brazil. A huge push by

10:36

the government to criminalize particular forms

10:39

of speech. An insult

10:41

for me. Or any

10:43

know any I kingdom last surpass

10:45

it's online safety bill. It's always

10:48

the same name as I thought

10:50

he was all online safety. And.

10:52

Whenever we have we have a bus as

10:54

we don't want to reports on the invents

10:57

investigative reports on each of these countries. People

10:59

can go to public that such that.com and

11:01

look at them but we've done them on

11:03

Brazil on Germany on Canada and the Uk

11:05

on Ireland on and was you see is

11:07

the same set of actors and all these

11:09

countries. People. I'm think tanks

11:11

with very clear ties to

11:13

governments and probably the intelligence

11:15

community. Groups like Aspen Institute,

11:18

which are heavily funded by the Us

11:20

State Department. Groups. Like these do

11:22

for strategic dialogue heavily funded by

11:24

Nato and the Atlantic Council, and

11:26

you see them pushing for these

11:28

laws alongside. Basically. Last

11:31

or centre left. Parties

11:33

and political coalitions. And then

11:35

you see the same philanthropic

11:37

actors George Soros, Pierre Omidyar,

11:39

are. Craig. Newmark. and

11:42

you might think well maybe this is

11:44

just cultural maybe some political but there

11:46

is clearly an undercurrent all these places

11:49

of involvement by the state and particularly

11:51

intelligence and security agencies it's very alarming

11:53

any clearly it's all of you the

11:55

research that we'd been doing on censorship

11:57

we would see initiatives back he mouthed

12:02

Witnesses trustworthy sources telling us that there were

12:04

conversations including at the Obama White House in

12:06

early 2017 Talking about

12:08

they don't want a repeat of 2016 by

12:11

which they meant first and foremost the election

12:13

of Donald Trump But also the brexit so

12:16

it is very clear to us that there

12:18

was a counter populist Reaction

12:20

to the events of 2016 and

12:23

that you start to see the various abuses

12:26

of power Including to

12:28

get censorship but also to spread disinformation

12:31

The case I worked on at Twitter was the

12:33

hunter Biden laptop and the way that both That

12:36

foreign and current FBI officials worked together

12:39

inside the social media companies where some

12:41

of them had worked From

12:44

the FBI going to them

12:46

and saying hey, there might be

12:48

some sort of Russian disinformation relating to

12:50

hunter Biden Doing that at

12:52

the moment that FBI had the hunter

12:54

by in laptop and were monitoring Rudy

12:56

Giuliani Who was selling that story to

12:58

the news media those kinds of events

13:00

should absolutely give you the creeps it

13:03

appears to be part of a broader abuse of

13:06

power a broader weaponization of the

13:08

government that we've seen including around events

13:10

of January 6th the mysterious

13:13

disappearance and deletion of all secret

13:15

service text messages on January 6

13:18

the mysterious appearance of two pipe

13:20

bombs and Planted on January 5th

13:22

supposedly for January 6 with

13:24

a 60-minute kitchen timer Which meant there's no way they would

13:26

have been plants on the fifth of the six Whole

13:29

FBI whistleblowers who talk about the

13:31

entrapment of people to do a

13:33

fake kidnapping hooks in Michigan These

13:36

things are all proven. These are

13:38

not theories These are proven abuses

13:40

of power fitting a pattern of

13:42

a counter populist backlash aimed at

13:44

censorship electoral interference and

13:47

even at greater extremes the

13:49

incarceration of political

13:51

enemies of the state Being proposed

13:53

in places like Canada Ireland

13:55

and Brazil how much

13:58

of a conspiracy? Are you

14:00

talking about just so I'm clear when

14:03

you say that when you say the intelligence

14:05

agencies are involved? You're talking about different countries.

14:07

You're talking about the English-speaking world basically

14:11

Are they in kind of contact with each other? They saying

14:13

we have to stop this kind of

14:15

thing from happening Well, the first

14:18

thing to understand is that we know that

14:20

the so-called five eyes nations which are the

14:22

English speaking Nations of

14:24

the US the UK Canada Australia New Zealand

14:26

who have been what we know they've been

14:28

working together since World War two To

14:31

spy for each other. We know

14:33

that with the Edward Snowden revelations

14:35

of 2013

14:38

we know that they've been working together

14:40

to engage in mass surveillance across countries

14:42

and then we recently reported that John

14:45

Brennan the former director of the CIA under

14:47

Obama Targeted 26

14:49

members there were 26

14:51

Trump associates for what they call

14:54

for appealing intelligence community called reverse

14:56

Targeting where they would quote unquote

14:58

bump Trump associate

15:00

usually these were young and inexperienced

15:02

guys George Papadopoulos is

15:04

the most famous one where somebody working

15:07

for a foreign intelligence agency an asset

15:09

You would say would bump into them

15:11

and say hey Let's have a drink

15:13

and they would report then back to the

15:16

CIA that something was told to them

15:18

about Trump campaign collusion with the Russians

15:21

This our story advanced on other stories

15:23

that had come out until then But

15:25

we we have good sources that tell

15:28

us that that there was a weaponization

15:30

Effectively of the five eyes spy network

15:33

by John Brennan under the Obama administration

15:36

Order to basically create the Russia

15:38

collusion hoax, but it wasn't just

15:40

the steel memo the famous PP

15:42

memo Yeah, that instigated the FBI involvement,

15:45

but there was something else going on

15:48

with the weaponization of the five eyes and

15:50

then you've got another lesser

15:53

known in the censorship Research

15:56

we've done a lesser known initiative that we were

15:58

given a whole trove When

16:00

we talk about the conspiracies, these are

16:02

not theories. All of this is based

16:04

on documents and whistleblowers. There was something

16:06

called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League that

16:08

was created, and it was

16:11

created by two people, Pablo Brewer, who

16:13

worked for the US military at the

16:15

time, and Sarah J. Terp, who worked

16:17

for the British military at the time,

16:19

working on an initiative that would basically

16:22

engage in ... That was looking to

16:24

early initiative on censorship in 2017 through

16:27

2020 that was basically

16:29

trying to hide censorship initiatives

16:31

as cybersecurity. This was

16:34

something we keep seeing over and over

16:36

again, including tucking a major censorship initiative

16:39

into the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity

16:42

and Infrastructure

16:44

Security Administration, and as SISA,

16:47

tucking a kind of

16:49

anti-misinformation or censorship initiative

16:51

into cybersecurity. When

16:53

we say how much of this is coordinated

16:55

a lot across borders,

16:58

it appears. We

17:00

also see coordination with the same philanthropies.

17:02

The two big ones are Soros and

17:04

Omidyar, but also Craig Newmark. We

17:07

see similar think tanks involved, the

17:09

Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Atlantic Council,

17:13

and then we see similar tactics, like claiming these

17:15

things are cybersecurity, but also using the

17:20

censorship. This is an important and

17:22

subtle distinction, often using the censorship

17:24

as a way to spread disinformation. I,

17:27

for example, in 2020, I didn't get much

17:29

credence to the Hunter-Bion laptop because

17:31

it had been censored. I had thought, well,

17:33

if it was evaluated by Twitter staff and

17:36

they said that it was hacked materials, then

17:39

it really looked fishy. Turned

17:41

out that Twitter's own staff had

17:43

evaluated the Hunter-Bion laptop, found

17:45

that it had not violated their terms of

17:47

service, and then because of

17:50

pressure from the former general counselor

17:52

from FBI inside Twitter, they reversed

17:54

their decision and censored the Hunter-Bion

17:56

laptop anyway. I

17:58

think you have to view it the way that it is. They

18:00

view it, the people involved in

18:02

these influence operations, these disinformation operations,

18:04

they view themselves as trying to

18:07

get control of the

18:09

information environment in general, and

18:11

in particular to stomp out

18:13

narratives that they're against, narratives

18:16

meaning climate

18:18

skepticism, COVID skepticism,

18:20

vaccine hesitancy. They're

18:24

trying to control the information environment and

18:26

control how people think about the information,

18:29

not just do censorship. Censored is sort

18:31

of a crude tool for

18:34

a bunch of very sophisticated people that are thinking

18:36

next level and actually spreading, actively

18:38

spreading disinformation in some cases. I

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When you look at the normal media,

20:13

what they call the mainstream media for some reason, and

20:16

you see just for instance, the

20:19

thing that happened recently with Donald Trump talking

20:21

about a bloodbath, which then became his, just,

20:25

I mean, it was hilarious, but it was also

20:28

kind of terrifying. Are

20:32

they consciously part of this or are they

20:34

just useful idiots? Well, that is

20:36

an extremely interesting question and I don't have

20:38

the full answer for it. I mean, there's

20:40

definitely a set of

20:43

journalists who keep showing up

20:45

who are, I consider, very

20:47

suspicious characters. I think

20:49

there are people at most innocently, you

20:51

could say they're very close to the

20:53

intelligence community. People like

20:56

Brandi Zadrozny, for example, shows up

20:58

a lot from NBC as

21:01

somebody that kind of feeds a lot of

21:03

the same narratives that you see coming out

21:05

of the, but they're also similar narratives to

21:07

come out of the democratic party. So sometimes

21:09

you think is the democratic party is the

21:12

intelligence community who's feeding this stuff. The

21:14

bloodbath, for me, I also think these journals are

21:16

also well trained now. I mean, they

21:18

certainly look to each other. There's a herd quality

21:21

to it, but the bloodbath thing did scare me

21:23

a little bit in the sense that I

21:25

see the way the media tries

21:28

to twist the meaning of these

21:30

things as ways of creating justifications

21:32

for crackdowns that would violate

21:34

fundamental civil rights and constitutional

21:37

freedoms, including freedom of speech.

21:39

But we saw, for example,

21:41

January 6th, you see this whole thing

21:43

was constructed as though it was a coup. I

21:46

mean, at best it was an accidental failure

21:48

of security.

21:51

At worst, it was a deliberate reduction

21:54

of security in order to create chaos.

21:56

But the over-prosecution, the

21:58

persecution of people who

22:01

frankly were not, I mean, they shouldn't, I

22:03

don't think they should have violated, they shouldn't

22:05

have trespassed, they shouldn't have gone on their

22:07

shore, but these ridiculously

22:09

long sentences, that

22:11

appears to us to be part of a strategy

22:14

to frame January 6th as a coup

22:16

attempt. I mean, many of my progressive

22:19

friends and family think

22:21

January 6th was a genuine coup attempt. And I

22:23

explained, I said, you know, I mean, I've done

22:26

work in Latin America, I'm familiar with the history

22:28

of coups. Coups,

22:31

you have tanks attacking the

22:33

Congress, people over the media,

22:35

it's not a bunch of guys hanging from

22:37

trying to kind of clamber in and then

22:39

walking through, it's just a real confusion. But

22:41

I do think a lot

22:43

of Americans were, they had

22:45

been, I mean, we're looking at basically

22:47

a disinformation effort that went from 2016

22:49

until today, aimed

22:52

at framing Trump supporters as a

22:55

threat to democracy, as a

22:57

violent extremists. And that's the

22:59

same playbook than they use all over the

23:01

world. The German farmers are

23:03

being portrayed as violent extremists, the

23:06

Canadian truckers, violent extremists. As a

23:08

reporter, you know, you go

23:10

out and you, I did interview the Dutch

23:12

farmers, they're very similar characters as the German

23:14

farmers, they're farmers, they're mad

23:16

because the energy prices are high. They're

23:19

actually not, I mean, sure, there's conspiracy

23:21

theories everywhere, and maybe there's some, maybe

23:24

there's some German farmers that are like

23:26

sympathetic to Putin, but

23:28

the framing of the farmers as though

23:30

they're Russian agents, that they're

23:33

committing, that they're at risk of

23:35

violence, that's very creepy and totalitarian.

23:38

And I really should chill you, and we have to

23:40

push back against it right away. So when I hear

23:42

the bloodbath thing, I go, well, there they go again.

23:45

They're gonna try to suggest that Trump and his supporters

23:47

are dangerous violent extremists. And I say this, by the

23:49

way, as an independent, never voted for

23:51

Trump. I'm not gonna vote this year.

23:53

I like being an independent journalist, but

23:55

I am very disturbed by this. It's

23:58

not just demonization. is, but I

24:00

worry that they're trying to create a predicate,

24:04

a justification for

24:06

violating civil liberties and interfering

24:08

in the election. You recently,

24:10

and another great coup, by the

24:13

way, I really appreciate any investigative

24:16

reporting that's going on. You

24:19

recently released a catch of documents from the

24:21

World Professional Association of Transgender Health, WPATH, I

24:23

think they call it. That

24:26

showed immense abuses

24:28

and actually seems to have

24:31

moved the British government to

24:33

curtail the national health's use

24:35

of hormone blockers on children. Can you

24:38

explain what was in that catch of documents to begin

24:40

with? Well, sure. I

24:42

think probably most of your listeners and a lot

24:44

of Daily Wire readers and

24:46

supporters know that they are

24:48

giving puberty blockers to kids

24:50

at very young ages to

24:52

stop their puberty. They're

24:55

giving testosterone to girls, estrogen to boys

24:57

who think that they're the opposite sex

24:59

and they're even performing surgeries on

25:02

children, adolescents, and vulnerable adults. The

25:04

documents that we received, which included

25:06

written discussions from a discussion

25:09

board that's part of this

25:12

transgender health organization called WPATH

25:15

and a video, what was

25:17

so damning about it, I think

25:19

there's a lot about it, but

25:21

it showed extreme medical mistreatment, extreme

25:24

mistreatment of children, adolescents, people with

25:26

schizophrenia, people that were homeless, people

25:28

that were in psychotic

25:31

states, people that were clearly not in

25:33

a state of mind. Even

25:36

if you think there are people

25:38

who were born into the wrong body,

25:41

it's not something I believe, I think

25:43

we're all born on the right body,

25:45

but even if you did believe that,

25:47

they're not even attempting to disentangle it

25:49

from schizophrenia or multiple personalities now known

25:51

as dissociative identity disorder or

25:54

from anxiety or from autism or

25:56

just being gay. So that

25:58

was one of the first shocking things. talking

26:00

thing is that particularly in the

26:02

video, these WPATH members admit that

26:05

they are not getting what is

26:07

known as informed consent from

26:09

either the children or their parents.

26:12

And that's up there with do no

26:14

harm, you can't do

26:17

things to people without them understanding what

26:19

you're doing to them. Like that's a

26:21

violation of fundamental violation of medical ethics.

26:23

And yet there they are having a

26:25

zoom conversation, talking about how the 14

26:28

year old doesn't understand that

26:30

that that they will be sterile and

26:32

what the implications of sterility are for

26:34

them. And instead, and there they are

26:36

having that conversation and instead of saying,

26:38

well, therefore we shouldn't

26:41

perform these surgeries on

26:43

the 14 year old or give them

26:45

puberty blockers. They say, yeah, it's a

26:47

real gap. They say real lacuna, a

26:49

gap in our research. Well, it's not

26:52

a gap. It's a fundamental problem. These

26:54

children cannot consent. Look, my

26:56

view is well, anyway, that's what they say. I

26:58

was I walk away from that. And I was

27:00

like, puberty is a fundamental human right and that

27:02

nobody has the right to take away anybody's puberty

27:04

and their ability to grow up as an adult.

27:07

We say these things should not be occurring

27:09

to children, adolescents and vulnerable adults. Maybe there's

27:12

some adults, you know, who, you know,

27:14

they go through a whole set of things to

27:16

be sure that this is not some other mental

27:18

illness. I'm open to that. But but this is

27:20

really people that are clearly they don't know what's

27:22

happening to them. I think it's probably

27:26

the biggest medical mistreatment scandal in

27:28

modern history. It's certainly as bad

27:30

as Tuskegee and lobotomies, but it

27:32

might be worse because there's just

27:34

so many more people that have

27:36

been impacted. And it's been going on

27:38

for such a long time. Now, I frequently say

27:40

that if Mengele had explained this stuff to Hitler,

27:42

Hitler would have recoiled in horror. I

27:45

think that I mean, it's just it's just amazing

27:47

that it's going on in the country of

27:50

this level of sophistication. Is

27:53

there some and I don't

27:55

want to get I'm not trying to get,

27:57

you know, crazy conspiratorial, but is there some

27:59

connection? between this transgender

28:01

ideology, which seems to me

28:04

literally psychotic the environmental

28:09

Panic which just seems ill-informed to me

28:11

and you know completely unbased in any

28:13

science, you know, there is some kind

28:15

of climate

28:17

change but there always is and

28:20

and the the censorship effort are these

28:22

things related? I mean, is there something

28:24

some connection there a thread there that?

28:28

Helps the same that is there

28:30

some reason you keep coming back to the same organizations

28:32

finding them all supporting the same thing Yeah,

28:35

I think so I think there's a they have a

28:37

lot to do with each other and I would say

28:39

the first thing you would notice is that On each

28:42

of those issues you see

28:44

liberal elites in particular who

28:46

are in some ways the

28:48

most civilized Members of

28:50

your civilization that the best educated

28:52

they're the wealthiest of the

28:54

most informed They are ab

28:57

they are directly attacking fundamental

29:00

pillars of liberal democratic civilization So if

29:02

you just kind of go down the

29:04

list you go What is the civilization

29:07

require at a minimum that requires cheap

29:09

energy law and order and meritocracy if

29:11

you want the civilization? To be a

29:13

liberal democracy Then you need free speech

29:16

free and fair elections and equal justice

29:18

under the law if you would like

29:20

the civilization to continue Then

29:22

you need to have reproduction and you need

29:24

to produce more human beings and have more

29:27

children So you kind of go there's seven

29:29

fundamental pillars of liberal democratic

29:31

civilization and they're all under attack

29:34

and the attack is basically

29:36

focused on treating

29:38

those pillars as obstacles

29:41

to taking care of people or

29:43

taking care of the natural environment

29:46

and I think that there was these Jonathan

29:48

Haidt the psychologist talks about how traditional Cultures

29:51

and conservatives all

29:54

hold a set of core

29:56

values around things like freedom

29:58

tradition loyalty sanctity purity But

30:00

what characterizes progressives, liberals, is that

30:02

they really opt out of them

30:04

and they focus on a single

30:06

one, which is care and compassion.

30:09

In San Francisco, I amend

30:11

his theory to say that

30:13

progressives still have those other values,

30:16

but they're only for the victims.

30:18

And so you've got something called victimhood ideology

30:20

that divides the world into victims and oppressors.

30:22

And to victims, everything should be given and

30:24

nothing required. They're actually made

30:27

sacred. The victims are viewed as sacred and

30:29

special in ways. Everything should be given. And

30:31

so they can have, so they, all of

30:33

those things, freedom, you know, the

30:35

freedom to use drugs publicly, camp

30:38

anywhere you want, you know, do whatever you

30:40

want. Those are extended to people that have

30:42

been categorized as victims. And of course, in

30:44

the case of people that are suffering psychiatric

30:47

disorders, whether it's

30:49

addiction or gender dysphoria or

30:52

anxiety, it's the worst thing

30:54

in the world to affirm those disorders. You

30:56

want to actually talk back to them

30:58

through, you know, what you might call cognitive

31:01

behavioral therapy or stoicism or just, you know,

31:03

keeping a stiff upper lip in the

31:05

British tradition. And so

31:07

what progressives are doing is they're affirming

31:09

psychiatric disorders. They're undermining these core pillars

31:12

of civilization, and they're really doing

31:14

it because they're in the grip of a religion. You

31:16

might call it wokeism, and it has a kind of

31:18

different organizing principle. We used to want to be right

31:20

by God. Now you want to be right by nature

31:23

and climate change. The entire economy has to

31:25

get reorganized for climate change. You

31:27

used to have, you know, an

31:29

idea of meritocracy. Now we're going

31:31

to reintroduce a racialist hierarchy. It

31:34

wasn't even good enough to have people of

31:36

color. They had to have BIPOC, black, indigenous

31:38

over everybody else. And

31:41

then on gender, you're really talking the

31:44

idea, the big idea is that there

31:46

are some people who are born into

31:48

the wrong bodies, meaning they have gendered

31:50

souls that are different from their body.

31:53

So this is, I think, a

31:55

consequence of nihilism, the secularization of

31:57

the society of people traditional

32:00

religions. Some people are

32:02

able to maintain a commitment to

32:04

liberal democratic civilization that while being

32:07

atheists, Steve Pinker, Michael Schirmer, Richard

32:09

Dawkins, these are the famous anti-woke

32:12

liberals who are also atheists. But I just

32:14

think a lot of other woke people, they

32:16

end up, the other progressive people, they end

32:18

up needing to create a new religion and

32:20

that's what they've done. And so you've got

32:22

these, a kind of a

32:24

woke religion that's created this fanaticism and

32:27

this dogmatism that then ends

32:29

up undermining those fundamentals of

32:31

civilization, including free speech. They

32:34

don't want free speech, they just want

32:36

to impose this orthodoxy on the society.

32:38

That was a concise and complete, an

32:40

answer to a very complicated question. I

32:43

think I've ever gotten Michael Schoenberger. Thank you so

32:45

much. Where do you want people to start looking

32:47

for your stuff if they're trying to find you?

32:50

Well people can certainly find me on x

32:52

at Schoenberger or on the

32:55

sub stack which is public.substack.com.

32:57

Yeah I recommend the sub stack highly, it's really great.

33:00

Michael I hope you come back again, I really enjoy

33:02

talking to you, thank you. I'd love

33:04

that, I'd love to come back, thanks Andrew, appreciate you. That

33:07

was terrific and I really do

33:09

recommend his sub stack. I think

33:11

that along with culture and art

33:13

and entertainment, what conservatives, if I

33:15

may call them that, people trying

33:17

to conserve freedom and conserve

33:19

the liberal world order, what they need is

33:21

investigative reporting, reporting power, we don't have enough

33:24

of it. That is Michael Schoenberger

33:26

is an excellent reporter and

33:28

if you want to get more

33:30

wonderful satire entertainment and commentary, you want to

33:32

come to the Andrew Clavin show on Fridays,

33:35

I'm Andrew Clavin and I will see you there. Whether

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