Mollie Hemingway: This Is How I Discovered Publication Was Victim Of 'Censorship Industrial Complex'

2 days ago

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last Tuesday, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) spoke to Mollie Hemingway about the "censorship industrial complex."

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Transcript

00:00Thank you, and thank you all for for being here

00:03Thank you

00:05For your time. I want to start with miss Hemingway your

00:10Your publication on the Federalist is one of the most

00:14Targeted it appears

00:17Which I suppose is a bit of a badge badge of honor, but could you just sort of describe?

00:22How that happened like what was the when did you first become aware of it, and how did it play out for the Federalist?

00:31One of the things that's very difficult difficult about dealing with the censorship industrial complex

00:35Which does exist is that it's very hard sometimes there the people who are engaged in the censorship are not always very transparent about what?

00:43They're doing we did start to see some problems around

00:472020 some of it was related as I mentioned to our critique of media coverage of the black lives matter riots

00:54That's when we first got an indication that there was an effort to demonetize us that was done through a foreign entity

01:00With that Orwellian name the Center for countering digital hate they conspired with NBC News and Google in that

01:07Operation and we were able to push that back then of course 2020 was also the year where we saw just widespread

01:14government

01:15Related censorship for people who criticized the response to the pandemic

01:20It was widely held at that time by elite people that you were not allowed to disagree with certain entities within the government about how to

01:27handle

01:29Pandemic response, but it just kept getting worse and worse

01:32What the Federalist does is we exist to counter the false narratives promulgated by major media on the left side of your chart

01:39You see some of those people so one of the things that we became most well-known for was disputing the Russia collusion hoax

01:45That was the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election

01:51That was a very prominent theory we worked very hard to dispel that hoax and for that we gained a lot of attention

01:57You will notice that supposedly the least dangerous entities there include the New York Times and the Washington Post which remain

02:04Which remain in that and again the Kavanaugh?

02:06Confirmation when we push back against some of the outlandish and ridiculous claims that did by the way arise in some part out of this

02:13Committee that put us at odds with major media who were pushing some of those outlandish conspiracy theories

02:18It just keeps going

02:19I mean whatever you're doing if you're speaking against the orthodoxies of the age which are frequently false

02:25You're going to be targeted by the censorship complex

02:28Professor Turley I want to ask you you mentioned this and it's starting to get a little bit more attention

02:32You mentioned what's happening in Europe to what is it?

02:35So there's this there's nothing new

02:38About any of this in particular right people who've aggregated power want to exercise that one of the first things they do is try to take

02:43Away the ability for people to dissent. What is fueling this?

02:48Do you think here in this country and other Western countries?

02:53this sort of

02:54Renewed sense and desire to censor speech, you know in my book

02:59I talked about basically two anti free speech movements that are coalescing one came from Europe

03:05That's not reaching our shores and free speech isn't a free fall in Europe

03:10And many of the free speech groups there, but I bet just met with them at the in Berlin are on the ropes

03:17And then we have our own anti free speech movement that really started in higher education and metastasized

03:22Throughout our system

03:24But Europe has taken in my view the most dangerous turn and represents the most dangerous threat now and that is through the DSA

03:32so after

03:35After the mosque bought Twitter and said that he was going to take down the censorship system

03:40various leaders including American domestic leaders called on the EU to use the DSA which is

03:47Widely criticized by the free speech community because of its sweeping terms allowing for the criminalization of speech

03:53But what they were arguing is that if the EU could effectively pull

03:59US companies to force them to censor in the United States

04:04Citizens on social media the EU did exactly that they told Musk that he had to restore censorship

04:12Systems or he could be hit with confiscatory crimes even arrested

04:16I have to tell you just a few days ago in Berlin

04:19That was much the talk of many of the EU people speaking is that they're calling for

04:24What they call a new world order based on European values those European values are in fact the DSA according to many of them

04:32Yeah

04:33Thank you

04:35Dr. Frank's I did want to ask

04:38You yourself in your writings, I want to ask you about it and to respond

04:42Don't seem to be a very big fan of the First Amendment

04:45You've written and I quote the conception of free speech enshrined in the First Amendment

04:50Reflects white wealthy men's experiences and interests. You've described free speech advocacy advocacy as a quote neo

04:58Confederate agenda and in 2021 you publish an op-ed calling for completely writing the First Amendment. Are those your comments?

05:07Those are not entirely accurate

05:09No

05:10the Boston Globe piece was a thought experiment that I was invited to contribute to and so I was asked if we were

05:15Rethinking the Constitution. What are some of the ways we could rethink it? So that is the context of that op-ed

05:20Okay, I just I think it's interesting

05:24That of all the people that could have been selected to come testify

05:28about the dangers of limiting free speech and censorship

05:32my colleagues on the other side chose someone who believes that

05:37The First Amendment is essentially a white male fetish

05:40Thankfully that is not in the mainstream and that we believe that the ability to speak your mind to express yourself

05:46Is protected by the First Amendment is a God-given right the government doesn't confer that upon anyone

05:51It's our job to protect it. I think the dangers that we've seen from the government outsourcing

05:57What it can't do itself

06:00have been laid out bare and

06:02It's it's a very dangerous road to go down and the reason why we're having this hearing is that

06:08You have every right to express a point of view that I find abhorrent

06:11I would hope that you would defend my right to do it to have an opinion that you disagree with

06:17but in the previous administration

06:18If you dared to say that masks were somehow ineffective or that you couldn't you know

06:24The kovat vaccine didn't actually prevent transmission. All those things were true, but you were deplatformed

06:29You were told you cannot speak you cannot engage in dissent

06:33That is a very un-american thing. And so that's why we're gathered here today.

06:37May I respond to the question? Sure.

06:39Mr. Chairman, I don't mean this is your committee and I respect it

06:43But a lot of us have other places we could be and I would respectfully ask if we could stay all within our time

06:49so we could

Mollie Hemingway: This Is How I Discovered Publication Was Victim Of 'Censorship Industrial Complex'

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