Joe Rogan Experience #1595 — Ira Glasser Transcript

Transcript

0:00 the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day And the private sector has always had the discretion, it's their First Amendment right, what Facebook and Twitter did is perfectly legal out how to work out yet because this medium is in its infancy. You know, people forget that the printing press I think Facebook and Twitter had the right to do what they did in banning Trump.

4:02 It's not like anybody could have bought or made a printing press and printed their own books or printed their own newspapers not everyone can make their own twitter When I was growing up, I was a teenager in the 50s. And so, you know, it's a lot better now, even with questions about abusing the power of being a gatekeeper that Twitter and Facebook have.

6:46 he could say it to our family at Thanksgiving, but he didn't have access to an audience of the What I'm worried about are people like you, people who have something to say, but their freedom is that they get to say it in the closet where nobody hears them. It was in the early 60s. flag to symbolize the fact that if a Benjamin Spock burned draft cards.

10:32 these private people decide who gets to hear what. But even with that, the ability of ordinary people It just seems very strange. The only way to remedy that is to give the government the power You're going to give it to Giuliani? You're going to give it to Trump. You're going to give it to Giuliani. You're going to make some sort of a law that distinguishes or makes a distinction,

13:55 My inclination is that the best way to think about it I think that that is the best way to start thinking about this problem. Now, there are differences because the difference is that on Twitter and Facebook, you're not having a private conversation between two people or even a private conference call with hundreds of people on it. Facebook pulled it, or excuse me, Google pulled it from their Play Store.

16:31 And suppression has never worked. saying on it, they're not even supposed to listen to what you're saying on it. who's in charge. I mean, it's not really possible to rid yourself of the problem entirely. It's only because people want to ban hate speech they want it's not going to be the same speech as the speech you hate. to ban art in the Brooklyn Museum of Art that he didn't like because he thought it was disrespectful

21:41 And a lot of black students were in favor of it. And I was then the head of the ACLU, and I used to go around speaking to these audiences. And the truth of the matter is, and who gets to decide what to ban. a very few years later, they didn't think that Zionism was a form of racism. on them and they also think that it um it radicalizes young people it gets young people

25:48 the rest of them were all these super advocates of free speech and First Amendment, but they that false speech was not protected by the First Amendment. So it ended up that people who were critical of John Adams, including a member of Congress, So two plus two is five is false. But in the world of politics, almost everything can be interpreted as true or false depending on who the speaker and who the listener is.

29:06 You know, the price we pay for having the freedom to speak and listen and argue is that some of the stuff we have to hear is ugly. If somebody insulted you or said something bigoted to you, you had two choices. No, it's not an easy thing And I began to see pretty quickly, as you come to grips with these in real life cases, and Richard Nixon and Trump.

33:42 reason than they descended from Japanese people. bad laws they can abridge, but not good laws, And some of those people said the most hateful, horrible things to women going inside. or physically prevent women from going into the clinic as they wish. them to be strong. you have to be powerful That's all the leaflets did. They didn't threaten anybody.

39:18 And that was called incitement. That case was overturned by the Supreme Court. You can't say, oh my God, this speech is so bad, that's one thing, but you can't, the crowd, because that speech was an incitement in an imminent way. It was part and parcel 1969 Supreme Court case. It has to be imminent. It has to be really kind of explicitly tied to You have to take this into your own hands.

44:17 just passed yesterday. So that's really the question. And and, you know, from what I've seen, I think that that what he said was incitement. that private individual said exactly the things To see this happen the way it's happening? It took us a long time to get to that standard that is speech protective. So you think that even though you could argue that he incited those people, you don't think he should be convicted for that?

48:50 because he's so polarizing, he's so problematic, that people want to do anything they can. That's the exact lesson in that film, that you have to be very, very careful about not bad cases with really ugly speech in it to end up weakening the rights of free speech of all of us. marching, having a demonstration in Atlanta against school integration. they will also gain the power, the discretionary power, to ban some other speech tomorrow.

52:53 I know the police in Georgia. And, you know, in today's day and age, a lot of what we're talking about is not really to silence their critics or silence the the that they disagree with, silence their opponents? Well, you know, there's a tremendous human instinct to believe that if you don't like You know, I used to be asked all the time when I was at the ACLU whether or not it's frustrating

55:56 then pretty soon you're going to be the one Now, would I rather have those restrictions carried out by the private sector than the government? We have to stop that. of what people say. because as I said, it's not intuitive. horrendous period that we've just lived through and are still living through, But I did move him a little to understand that the proper remedy for the neo-Nazis coming to demonstrate in Skokie was the remedy that he finally undertook.

1:01:26 But when Ben Stern organized 60,000 people to demonstrate in opposition to them, They're against Muslims. the government will as likely prohibit you as them. And the answer It was a referendum on American values. you have to be able to leaflet, No, and it won't, you know, Because some of them, some of them clearly just don't like the democrats and their

1:06:39 That's right. If you have a mortal enemy, then you can't be civil to him. I mean, you just had a newly elected member of Congress Those are the terms that Trump set. And I think that there was something immoral in a lot of those 74 million people who were not And there's a lot of people that don't think of it that way. nationalism. I just don't think the people that voted for him see that way. Well, they don't.

1:11:55 And, you know, I have one view, I mean, there's some talk about some sort of an organized protest, after these recent events in the coming years, the time you can't talk to those people you're right that is scary as shit I thought the guy who Mitch McConnell knew better. he was willing to look aside at all the things about Trump he didn't like. And I don't know how you get those people back to where they were.

1:18:08 You know, the people who only know how to mine coal at a time when there is no more coal to mine. much less college degrees, who worked with their hands. And those people were never progressive in their politics. And what happened is the Democrats stopped appealing to them. you know, everybody calls Bernie Sanders a socialist. to what we're dealing with now. And that's what they have to find a way to do.

1:23:00 or whatever you engage with. I don't know if you've seen the documentary, The Social Dilemma. and cementing people's positions on the left and on the right, there were people who read the Times, There were Czech neighborhoods. Not only would I never see a black person, I would never see a Christian person. I mean, they were not friendly. And so this silo culture that everybody is attributing to the Internet was there in America well before the Internet.

1:27:47 We are a nation of immigrants And it's a problem that we've been struggling with as a country for a very long time. It isn't a sprint. then the other tribe was hostile and an enemy How could you not hate anti-Semitism? That's what I think the film Mighty Ira, of the same poison because that really is what it is that is yes what what do you think other than

1:32:30 that are unanimous Democrats for one thing You know, I know people who say, reasons. But you got to argue about that.'ve got to sit down in a room and talk about before the cameras went on and talk. to reach across the divisions of opinion that we had, It made it possible for us to be civil. And I think that that's what you have to do. I'm not going to tell him he should not feel the pain and the anger that he feels,

1:37:37 and then you want to disagree with them. I just don't know what the path forward is. and I was happy to be out of the fray. not only to be civil to each other, are tired of the demonization. Now, there's always going to be some people who thrive on piano lessons. When Dwight Eisenhower played golf, golf became much more popular. I think Joe Biden has a big responsibility to try to do that and to model that.

1:43:06 position and you you did hear this kind of fiery rhetoric from him and he fought you know and the about Germany in the 1930s. And then when Hitler got power, and you know, he never won an election, And he made these inflammatory speeches and these speeches full of hate and scapegoating. And to a large extent, that's the kind of change that I think Trump is responsible for in this country. And the only thing that can

1:47:16 I got off the track and handed the baton to other people. you want to end up in, Well, we came out of a history of 300 years of slavery and another 100 years of Jim Crow. It requires all of us to bend it a little bit at a time have to go on all of them. And you have to proceed in two ways. had never struck down a single law or government action on First Amendment grounds. Never.

1:52:29 the American Civil Liberties Union, Roger Baldwin, who was the guy who started it with But you know, it's a little bit like a football game. Then you play defense. "'You know,' he said, You figure out your strategies. Well, part of it, you know, Joe, is that a lot of the young progressives today. And it was clear that they were in favor. And they wanted that to go away.

1:57:19 Look at the labor union movement, control. When Margaret Sanger started distributing leaflets providing women with information on birth didn't have the right to organize the Montgomery bus boycott after Rosa Parks was arrested? that without the right to free speech and the right to dissent, They are inescapably partners. i appreciate the opportunity to talk to you all right man well take care of yourself