On Slander: Glenn Greenwald, Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian & Jimmy Dore.

the american constitution was written in
the 18th century people seem to think it's virtuous to believe in the constitution people think certainly it's virtuous to believe in freedom of speech as it is defined by the american constitution and the american constitution went on to influence the rest of the world but the american constitution is a relic of the 18th century why does it say so simply and so absolutely that the government shall make no law abridging freedom of speech and why does it say that everyone should be able to own and carry a gun in the 18th century in england and the united states of america they didn't have such a problem with defamation they didn't have such a problem with libel laws because they had dueling men would fight duels over a point of honor and that could be an insult that could be a rumor it could be a criticism it could be something that one man said about another man that was perfectly reasonable and true but nobody had to hire a lawyer and if you weren't strong and healthy enough to fight for yourself you could ask your older brother to do it you could even pay a mercenary to do it people would kill each other over minor insults and we today take this scrap of paper we take this sentence in the american constitution out of its cultural and historical context and we imagine that we can have a working society based on this simplified notion of freedom of speech without personal responsibility for what it is you've said for what it is you've done and instead of describing the criticism and then proceeding to engage it and refute it or even instead of mocking it instead what they proceeded to do is something that has become extremely commonplace extremely commonplace in liberal media and in liberal politics and because it's so commonplace we are starting to overlook how odious and pernicious and toxic and destructive and reprehensible it is in particular what they did was in response to aaron mate's criticism they accused aaron jank accused aaron of being quote paid by the russians and anna kasparian in a way went even further because she didn't even state anything definitively she used a vague innuendo to say that she believes that aaron mate is working for despicable dictators oh aaron right the guy who denies that syrian children were killed with chemical attacks yeah yeah and gets paid by the yeah anyway let's move on let's end the freaking pot i can't i can't okay see that's what happened i can't stand and i can't stand the very intentional disinformation they put out there in regard to disgusting dictators around the world the very people they seem to be working for to be quite honest with you let's move on they accuse somebody a journalist of being paid by the russians even though jank yuger who made that accusation has no evidence of any kind to support that accusation let alone improve he doesn't even have any grounds for reasonable suspicion that it's true but even if he did it wouldn't make it any justifiable because you note that he said it as fact aaron mate is the guy who is paid by the russians he's paid by a foreign government a foreign adversary of the united states he's an agent of a foreign power that's what jank yuger said about aaron mate with no evidence so that was on may 26th we are now a month and a week later they have never apologized for those comments presented evidence for them retracted them it is almost impossible for people especially heterosexual men who are most vulnerable to these kinds of tactics to survive in liberal life politics because at any moment anyone can accuse you of anything and no evidence is required scott stringer has been in public life for 30 years and out of the blue someone pops up and for the first time ever accuses him of having groped her 18 years ago she never told anybody about it and his reputation and his candidacy is instantly destroyed there are anonymous twitter accounts right as we speak doing this against youtubers and writers and commentators who are on the left or who are liberals who are spouting opinions that people dislike and even with no name attached to it their reputations are getting rude so what anna kasparian did here with that little message i've not said this about you i've kept it to myself and now that you're criticizing us that's all going to change that is grotesque that is ethically repugnant fabricating accusations that someone is paid by the russian government to discredit them and destroy the reputation and weaponizing weaponizing accusations of sexual harassment or other forms of toxicity and abuse including against people who have never even met the supposed victim knowing that people are too scared to defend anybody who's accused of that because the minute you step forward and defend somebody accused of that you yourself get accused when i started defending alex morse when those allegations first emerged everybody who wanted to attack alex morris and defend richie neil said oh glenn greenwald is defending alex morris only for one reason because alex morse likes to teenage boys and so does glenn greenwald everyone knows what's gonna happen if you try and defend somebody who's unjustly accused of no evidence in these cases they count on that intimidation factor and that's what was just done to jimmy dore culture has the potential to change politics but with the passage of years with the passage of decades with the passage of centuries it is a certainty that politics transforms the culture some of you have been watching this youtube channel for many years some of you welcome it's your first time ever seeing my face or hearing my voice people who know me for a long time might be expecting me to offer the sort of personal reflections glenn greenwald just offered about ridiculous allegations that have been made against me and the terrible long-term effects they've had in my life still to this day the google search results you'll get when you put my name in still this day allegations made against me by other residents living in my same apartment building who defamed me who blacken my character and you back it up by saying just google his name just look at this link on reddit i have to live with that forever that's not what i have to say what i have to say is that we're living through a transitional period in the civilization not just the united states not just of england not just to the whole western world we're living through a transitional period on planet earth where we have to go back and re-examine some of the most fundamental tenets some of those fundamental assertions made in politics we have to let ourselves really radically re-evaluate the extent to which they're bad and evil and wrong the doctrine of freedom of speech set down in the american constitution i am telling you is fundamentally bad and evil and wrong none of you would even raise your own children this way you can't possibly organize a society this way what a terrible thing to tell people as the first and only principle of freedom of speech that no law will be made to a bridget and then how it is defamation law how do laws trying despite this grand proclamation trying to delimit your freedom of speech trying to create some sense of personal responsibility for the damage done by your use of speech how do they then creep in around the edges of that system that set down that grandiose absolute first principle that no law whatsoever will abridge your freedom of speech historically those laws crept in precisely because there was a struggle to make dueling illegal a struggle that took place on a somewhat different timeline over about 150 years in france in italy in germany in england and in the united states of america it would be fair to say that between 1776 and 1876 dueling was in its final century and it endured longer in some places than others in russia for example well into the 19th century you've got quite a lot of dueling there's a misconception that dueling was a luxury only enjoyed by aristocrats no it wasn't it's just that there are fewer newspaper articles written about poor people killing each other or a point of honor about peasants doing it all right it was a fundamental part not just of english culture not just a french culture it was a fundamental part of western civilization and any journalists at the at the dawn of the technology of the newspaper any journalist knew that he could be called out on the street over a point of honor and people in that culture were not ashamed to fight and die in the street okay even get a sense of this in some of the plays of of shakespeare to us today what a low and dirty thing to have a knife fight in the street to have a sword fight in the street yes it's the same thing to have a gun fight in the street we associate that with drug dealers with poor people but in their culture at that time that was the noblest thing imaginable that was yes what a true aristocrat did and a common poor tradesman let's say would rise to the level of an aristocrat by standing up on a point of honor and doing the same thing all right they worshipped that they idealized that that was the pinnacle of manly virtue and if you read any primary source material from the time it comes up again and again i read the autobiography of a man who was in america in that early colonial period it's not worth telling the whole story of what this book was and he was an interesting but deeply flawed character he was anti-slavery but he was in favor of all kinds of other immoral things and i remember him just saying there will be no social progress in the united states of america until they abolish legal murder and he had an example that he read about and talked to people about in the newspapers of that time when he was living in early independence post-revolutionary united states america the first decades the new republic and um was a group of young men who went to an island as a logging party so you can imagine in those days technology was limited you take a boat over you'd stay for a couple of months cutting down trees and getting them ready to go and setting them up for a boat to carry them with a boat would come back and take the wood and take you take the take the workers back also from the island it's the cost of transportation it's limited and he said something like 10 men went across to the island and only four came back alive because while they were there they had disputes with one another that they settled through duels and some of the mothers or wives of these men who had died tried to bring a legal complaint and the attitude of the judges the attitude of the illegal system well as long as there was some as long as there was some dispute between as long as they were settling a quarrel this is perfectly fine and normal okay this is a deep profound part of western culture again none of you would raise your children this way none of you would raise your children to say oh well you know there can be no principle whatsoever to abridge your freedom of speech accept your fear for your own life let's be very clear about the nature of a duel it is not the case that duels distinguish right from wrong an innocent man can die in a duel just as well as the guilty one right the nature of a duel is that it will either be disturbed me it will either be decided by strength by skill by military prowess or just by dumb luck who lives or who dies so oh yeah 18th century america and probably a century earlier earlier in england frankly you know maybe you're talking more about 16th century england even 15th century oh yeah yeah yeah you can say anything you want but every single time you open your mouth you're putting your life on the line okay and now the centuries have gone by and we've held on to just one little piece of that principled view of the world the view of the world that as i say is fundamentally bad and evil and wrong and we've forgotten about the rest we've we've held on to the concept of personal freedom and mysteriously we lost our grip on the even more important concept of personal responsibility of taking responsibility for the consequences and let's be all the way real here living in fear of the consequences if you were raising a child or if you were writing a new constitution day how might how might the paragraph on freedom of speech begin couldn't it begin with a statement more like this couldn't it begin with a statement to the effect that you are responsible for everything you say publicly or privately for the rest of your life that you are responsible for any harm that your words may do intentionally or unintentionally and the paragraph could go on to detail the difference between something that is said with good intentions so let's say with bad intentions someone said that is true but that damages a person's life you might expose a secret about a person that is that is true and it might be well intentioned but it might ruin their careers and saying something that is false and then is it intentionally false is it false but you were sincerely misled by someone else telling you falsely it doesn't take a genius it doesn't take a genius to break down into a series of different columns what freedom of speech means what being responsible for your use of freedom of speech means in the 21st century and you know what it meant all the same things in the 18th century they just cope with it in a very different way they cope with it through a culture of indescribable violence