Guerrilla History - The Battle for Free Speech w/ Michael Fox

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we are joined by returning guest Michael Fox (whom you may remember from our episodes The Rise of Fascism, Bolsonaro, & the Brazilian Elections,  American Imperialism's Shadow on Latin America, and Stories of Resistance + Brazil Update) to discuss his great new series The Battle for Free Speech, a collaboration with The Real News Network.  Be sure to check this one out! Michael Fox is a Brazil-based journalist, contributor to The World, former Editor of NACLA, and the host of the podcast series Under the Shadow and  Brazil on Fire, and now also Stories of Resistance. Michael can be followed on Twitter @mfox_us, you can support his project on his patreon and follow his band Monte Perdido. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You remember Dan Van Boo? In Africa, they didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki,

unfortunately not joined today by Professor Adnan Hussein, who of course is my usual co-host and a historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Adnan is on the road in Istanbul today and was unable to make it for this conversation, but he should be back for hopefully the very next conversation that we have. We have a very exciting conversation ahead of us today, and a returning guest that many of you will be familiar with, but before I introduce the topic and our returning guest,

I'd like to remind you, listeners, that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash gorilla history, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. You know, you're never going to hear an advertisement on guerrilla history. I hate turn down advertising requests pretty frequently, actually, but we want to make sure that this is 100% listener funded. So if you want to support, you can do that at patreon.com. All right.

With that out of the way, as I said, we have a returning guest, a fan favorite. We have Michael Fox back. Michael Fox. Nice to see you, Michael. I'm just going to remind the listeners that you're a Brazil-based journalist, contributor to the world, former editor at Nackland. We've had you on the show many times in the past. We've talked about your series Under the Shadow, Brazil on Fire, stories of resistance. We've talked about Brazil and the rise of fascism in Brazil.

We've had a lot of conversations over the years. But Michael, it's great to see you today. How are you doing? Thank you so much, Henry. I'm doing fantastic. So happy to be here. Yeah, absolutely. It hasn't been that long since we've had you on.

And by that, I mean, it's been probably seven or eight months, which for guerrilla history standards is not that long between guest appearances because we have so many different people. But, yeah, it's nice to see you again as always. And I'm happy that we're going to be talking about your new. program, which is out through the Real News Network, the battle for free speech. So, Michael, I'm going to just take the easy route and have you introduce what this series is for the listeners. I guess the germ is the 250th anniversary of the United States Foundation and kind of the current political moment that the United States is in. But I'm curious as to, one,

whether you can briefly introduce the show to the listeners, because we're going to get deep to it over the course of the conversation. But then also why you decided that the 250 year anniversary of the United States was the moment to make a show that was focused on free speech. Yeah. So in this podcast, we look at the clear attacks from the Trump administration on the freedom of expression, on press freedoms, but also by social media, big tech, Silicon Valley, platforms. Free speech, it's like this, it's like this amorphous thing that we think we all understand. And yet there's all these definitions. And what I think of as free speech might be very different from what you think of his free speech.

Oh yeah. That was going to be my next question, Michael. What is this? And I think I want to start this by just like saying where this idea, where I really start to dig into this and understand deeper about this. It was right after I just finished Brazil on fire, so quite a few years ago, and I was talking with a solidarity activist in the U.S. And he asked me something about Glenn Greenwald. And Glenn Greenwald, for those people that know, you know, he's kind of a muck-raking journalist. He's released a lot of stuff through The Guardian and elsewhere leaks and things like that that have happened over the years.

But he's lived in Brazil for a very long time. And in the past, he was always seen as kind of this, this kind of guardian of the left who was going to, you know, talk about what NSA was doing in the United States and, like, you know, show what was behind the curtain and stuff. And so people really kind of herald him. And then what we saw, particularly in Brazil, in the last few years, was kind of this flip, not just in Brazil in the United States as well, but there's kind of this flip to the right where he becomes kind of, you know, a regular guest on Fox News. and, you know, supporting Bolsonaro, former president Bolsonaro in Brazil. And so people were like, what is going on with this guy?

And I realized, because he asked me about Glenn Greenwald and I said, well, you know, he's done good work in the past, but right now he's kind of gone off the deep. And he said, well, no, I think what he's doing is really important. I think it's really great. He's standing up for our right to speak. He's staying up for our right to say what we want. And I realized that he had, this gentleman who I was speaking with,

had a definition of free speech that was at absolute. So for Kame, it didn't matter who was saying what you should have the right to say what it is that you want to say. Period. That was all that mattered. And for me, I was coming it from a frame of that's not the way that free speech is seen. That's the way that it's roughly the definition for some people within the United States today outside of the United States in almost every other country.

That is not actually the definition. It's seen as more of a balancing approach where you're right to free speech and then then there's a ton of other rights and that all falls under the rubric of democracy. So, for instance, in Brazil, that's the reason why Jaya Bolsonaro, the former president, was barred from running for office again because he was lying about the electoral system. The same thing that Trump did, but in the United States, Trump was reelected. And in Brazil, Bolsonaro can't run for office. In fact, he was then, he's now serving a 27-year sentence in jail for trying to carry out a coup.

So that one difference in terms of understanding what free speech, means makes the difference between, say, Trump returning to power and doing everything what he's been able to do in the U.S. and in Brazil, where the former president can't return to power, it actually barred from running. This is really important, and we don't understand it as that. And in fact, what happens is then the far right, big tech, social media, use that discourse of this kind of absolute as free speech to then challenge other countries or try and say, oh, Brazil, they're censoring speech. It's like this, this tagline that big tech or major corporations can use to say,

well, we're just standing up for free speech. We're just standing up for what's right. And you guys are trying to censor speech. And so it is a really complicated notion. And that's why this podcast, why I really want to do this now. And so what I do over these eight episodes is I dig into looking at A, the first episode is about the attacks. from the Trump administration

on free speech today and major corporations and whatnot. And then I dig into the past. What free speech has meant, what it meant for the abolitionist movement, what it's meant for organizing. I look at what free speech means within the rubric of Silicon Valley

and big tech platforms and how they're trying to push their own vision of free speech all the while while they're actually pushing an algorithm which is completely cutting free speech and blocking free speech and not doing, you know, actually censoring. And then I dig into these questions of, I really try and go deeper into these questions of

let's actually look at what free speech can mean or what it should mean. And that, that I think is some of kind of the most original reporting because most people they think of it as, oh, it's First Amendment or it's what's the laws and what's the rules. And so I interview a bunch of people and really get into like asking questions of what it should what should it mean and looking back at the history of what it has been or these ideas of fearless speech versus reckless speech that that some academics have been talking about and so I really try and dig into this and then I look at you know case studies in Brazil and Europe about who have pushed back on disinformation in

different ways and in fact are at the forefront of what news is happening right now because literally there are big elections happening in Brazil in just a few months the United States has just re-tariffed Brazil in part because of Brazil, you know, pushing back on big tech platforms. And we've seen the same thing in Europe as well, you know, where EU regulators have just find Google $1 billion for breaking their digital service act, which is basically the regulations for social media, right? So it is very present, but most people don't take free speech to another level

really question and really trying to challenge what we understand and give ourselves this deeper understanding rooted in history to be able to root us now so that we're not confused when someone comes out and says, oh, well, you just have to stand for the free speech of the, you know, the KKK or the, you know, the far right. We have the right. And so we have to understand where does that come from and what's the past and actually understand the roots of what free speech has meant for movements and organizing and social organizing going back for centuries.

Yeah, and we're going to get into each of those topics vis-a-vis the series in just a second, but I do have one question. I did warn you ahead of time, Michael, that I'm going to be playing devil's advocate during this episode, and I'm going to do it quite a bit. And listeners who have listened to the, listeners who have listened to the show for many years will know that the more friendly I am with the guest, the more likely I am to play devil's advocate and ask particularly provocative questions. Like I don't do it with guests on their first time on the show. But, you know, Michael, it's like your sixth time on the show. So, you know, be, being prepared for me to go a little bit wild here. Bring it on, Henry. The first one won't be that wild.

I'll save the wilder ones for later. But you did mention Glenn Greenwald. And I know that our listeners, the vast majority, will be fairly familiar with him, particularly his, you know, earlier work vis-a-vis Snowden. And the vast majority will also know that he relocated to Brazil. but you know you mentioned this this turn that he took relatively recently and now the the moment for devil's advocate to come out is I believe that Greenwald himself and his hardcore supporters would push back on your framing of him a little bit and what they would likely say is that you know he hasn't taken a

swing to the right rather he is just more deeply embracing libertarianism and libertarianism itself is not necessarily a right wing or a left wing, you know, political movement. It's a philosophy unto itself that, you know, believes X, Y, Z, et cetera, et cetera. And so Greenwald and his supporters would likely go against what you were saying, you know, by saying, well, I'm not taking a step to the right. I'm just embracing libertarianism. And I always believed in libertarianism. You know, libertarianism can be of the left or the right. And you also mentioned that he has supported Bolsonaro. And I also believe that he would probably push back on that because when you say support, you don't necessarily mean saying let's elect Bolsonaro. But what you're meaning is that he's

supporting Bolsonaro in terms of defending him against the judicial cases that are being brought up against Bolsonaro. You know, de facto support for him, not saying that people need to vote for him, but rather that it's a political witch hunt against him. And maybe we don't like him, but, you know, we have to treat him fairly and make sure that he can run for office and that he's not going to be persecuted for attempting a coup in Brazil because, you know, he's just speaking to his supporters and things like that. So, Michael, how would you respond? And I don't want to get too deep into this because it does take us a bit far afield from the topic

of your podcast. But I am curious how you would respond to Greenwald or, again, his, you know, most fervent supporters who would say that, well, this is just an expression of libertarianism. And he's not actually a supporter of Bolsonaro, but that's also an expression of libertarianism as well in that. He supports his ability to speak freely. Well, I agree with you 100%. And the first thing I think, which is really, really important is to understand that free speech is very, very clearly defined under the Brazilian Constitution as one of many rights. It's a harmony of rights within the Brazilian constitution.

And this is extremely important because you can't come in from someplace else and have an absolutist vision of what free speech is and expect that that's going to stick or push your definition of free speech on another country. You just can't do that. That's actually what the far right and Glenn Greenwald and Bolsonaro are trying, and big tech platforms, Elon Musk, what they're trying to do in Brazil right now is trying to shift that definition. of what free speech means within Brazil

to a more absolutist definition so they can push, you know, the same thing that Trump's been able to do in the United States. This is really important because Glenn Greenwald, who's a lawyer, knows this. He should know what the Brazilian Constitution actually says. And let me just back up a second. This is really important.

And I dig into this over more than an hour in episode six. And I'll just say that that is actually the reason. Episode six of this podcast was like the main reason I wanted to do this, this larger podcast, so which, which dives into Brazil. But what is really, really important understanding is why is democracy so important for Brazilians? It's because they left a 21-year dictatorship in the mid-80s and they say, we're not going back to that. And so, yes,

your right to free speech is really important, but so is my right not to be harmed. And so are all the other rights. And they all fit together like a quilt. And all of this is under the rubric of a democracy. So you can say what you want to say, and it's fine that Glenn Greenwald is trying to stand up to Bolsonaro's right to be able to say what he wants to say in Brazil. But at the end of the day, these are the countries' laws. This is the country's constitution. Can you imagine if someone was coming from another country into the United States and telling U.S. citizens what they need to believe or how their constitution could be, please? So this is really important understanding that point about our definition of free speech. Yeah, you can have nuance.

And you can believe different things. But this is actually something that is like codified into the Brazilian constitution. So that's really important to understanding. And that is also why the attack from Elon Musk and then Twitter. And if you remember, part of this goes back to the whole, you know, thing where Musk said, you know, the Supreme Court had ordered Musk to take down certain users from the, his, his platform, then Twitter, now X. And he refused to do it. And they said, okay, well, essentially, we're.

going to have to hold your, your business accountable. And then he removed the, the legal representatives from Twitter from Brazil. And then so they closed, put Twitter down for, for several months. This whole back and forth happened also because Mux was trying to play politics in Brazil. He's trying to push his definition of free speech into Brazil into a place that, sorry, these are the rules. If you want to have your big tech platform here, that's the way it works. And in terms of Greenwald being libertarian, yeah, I mean, absolutely that's right.

But here's the thing that I think is really important, Henry. And this is where we get into the, like, the nuance of trying to dig into understanding what free speech means. Because one of the big visions of free speech, at least in the United States, is this idea of the marketplace of ideas, right? It's coined by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in a 1919 Supreme Court case Abrams versus the United States. And what he says is we need to put all the ideas out there into this marketplace of ideas. And then they'll imagine it. They'll all be out there. And then the good ideas will rise to the surface and the bad ideas will fall apart.

But that's just not reality. It doesn't work. What's interesting is I spoke with a woman named Marianne. Franks and she is a law professor at George Washington University. She wrote the book Fearless Speech, Breaking Free from the First Amendment. And she actually says what's fascinating is, first off, in an economy, you can't have a completely free libertarian economic system. Why? Because it goes to huge corporations with a massive amounts of power. Like it doesn't work. You have to have constraints on an economy. We wouldn't believe that, except for the fact that libertarians do,

maybe do believe that you should have, you know, and the capitalism and the market should rule everything. But that's not the way it works in reality. And that always creates more and more inequalities. And it does the same thing for speech, right? When you have a market that's clearly run by private, big business, capitalist business, what happens is the power for the ones that rule. The voices of the people that have the most money and the most power, those are the the loudest. So that's what we see on social media platforms right now. That's what we see in big tech, right? That's how come there are secret algorithms that are unregulated and that these big tech platforms can do whatever they want to and make sure that some people's speech

doesn't get pushed or doesn't get lifted. And then people like Musk, because he happens to own it, you know, get millions and millions, hundreds of millions of followers. And of course, his voice is going to be the loudest in the platform. That is not fair. And so in a libertarian system, There is no, there, it is not fair. What it happens is just a free-for-all in which the powerful get powerful and they get richer and more richer. And that's how come we had antitrust laws. That's how come big business going back into the 1800s had to be broken apart in the early 1900s. That's how come we had regulations of, you know, newspaper and radio and television that those had to be happened in the early part of the 20th century so that the like the juggernauts weren't broken apart.

We actually, frankly, we need that now for big tech and social media. But so that's the, that's the, but you're absolutely right that that is the libertarian vision. That is the vision of what, of what Green Gold wants and many libertarians. But that ends up. What happens is the libertarian line ends up kind of sidling and saddling with the far right. Because that is just what happens in Brazil. It's what happens in Bolsonaro. You saw the supporters of Bolsonaro.

Sometimes there may be independent. because Bolsonaro is not going far enough, or at least that's what it was during his presidency. But still, those two go hand in hand because it's all about the powerful gaining more and more power. There is no way to do this without regulations. Yeah, absolutely. Now, one of the things you mentioned in that answer is that there is this understanding constitutionally of what free speech is. And that actually brings me to how I was planning on bringing this conversation up. But, you know, I got a little bit distracted there.

When you open the series, Michael, of the Battle for Free Speech, you open it with a pretty powerful framing, which is that free speech in America was never given. It was fought for, bled for, and died for. That in itself is a direct challenge to the myth that the First Amendment just exists, right? And we have this idea of the Constitution just existing at this point in American history. Can you talk about why you chose that framing of that there was a fight for the right for free speech and what it means for how we should understand the current crisis, which is, again, the 250 year anniversary and this rising wave that you were talking about in kind of our

introduction to this episode. Yeah, this is really important because first off, I don't think people understand what the First Amendment actually says. It's like a couple of lines and I don't have it in front of me, but it essentially, says Congress shall pass no law prohibiting the freedom of expression or the freedom of speech. So it's not even an actual right, right? It's just saying that Congress can't do something against our right to speak. But it says nothing about private businesses.

It says nothing about communities. So people are fired for standing up or speaking out, whatever, all across the United States. It's saying that Congress can't do something. So it had to be what we understand as our free speech. And this goes back to this question of it had to be fought for, bled for, and really fought for and bled for by the abolitionist movement, by women's movements, by feminist movements, by civil rights leaders.

I mean, it is, it is grassroots organizing that has created our understanding of what free speech means today and our ability to be able to stand up and protest or to speak out. So this is like, this basis, I think, is really, really important. Because in particular, like as I kind of mentioned, already, we have this attempt by Trump, by the far right, by big tech, to try and redefine what we understand today as free speech. And to redefine it as, oh, you're allowed to say whatever you want online and now, or you can say whatever you want. And everyone should have

the right to say what they want, whether they're, you know, white supremacists, um, Nazi. You know, it doesn't matter who you are. Everyone should have the right to say. And in the United States, that is true. Everyone has the right to say what they want to do. That is not the vision most other places. In Germany or in Brazil, it's illegal to march or to show Nazi propaganda symbols. That's just illegal. You can't do it, right? So this is important to understand how other countries look at this. But that redefinition that the social media platforms and the far right are trying to push right now is really dangerous because what Trump is trying to do is, say, well, no, it's not necessarily the right to protest. No, it's not necessarily a right to

stand up and speak your mind. It is, of course, if you're in cahoots with me. And we saw that. I mean, how much of a backlash was there against the pro-Palestine protests at universities all across the United States? How much of a backlash was there in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing, where you had, you know, hundreds of people who were fired from their jobs and just, just massive backlash. And so part of this redefinition that we're seeing right now to make it seem as though free speech is my right to say anything I want online in particular, whereas, but at the same time, online is again, like I mentioned, it's controlled by big social media platforms and secret algorithms. And so you could say what you want,

but that doesn't mean anyone's actually going to hear it. So it's a very dangerous, slippery slope that we're living in the United States. And I think what's interesting is the fact that we actually began with with Trump's second term just going back, you know, a year and a half ago. It seems like, you know, a decade ago. It was just a year and a half ago. But in his second term, he talked a lot about free speech and bringing back free speech and, you know, we're going to do this. And then within like six months, what you saw was him saying, well, we had to cut the freedom of speech because, you know, so you have this, this kind of two-faced thing. It works, that slogan works for him, you know, if, if you're on his side. And so it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

This is why this is so important right now. It's why it's so important to understand the roots. And I just want to mention something that Marianne Franks, I just want to mention something that Marianne Franks and I spoke with a lot about and that I dig into in the second episode of this podcast. So she wrote this book, Fearless Speech, Breaking Free from the First Amendment. And one of her things was the difference between. fearless speech and reckless speech. And what she, the way that she looks at this is the idea of

fearless speech comes from the Greek philosophies back many, a long, long time ago. And the idea of fearless is kind of like speaking truth to power. In order for speech to be fearless, you have to be speaking to someone more powerful and not just like appraising them, but you have to like be countering them. And that was seen as the most important speech. Foucault, spoke about this back in the 1980s, this idea of fearless speech. And this is what she said, that all of the abolitionist movements and all these different movements against slavery and women's rights were doing throughout the 1900s and the 1800s in the United States.

And that this actually should be the type of speech that we are striving for. And again, this is getting away from what the First Amendment is or what, like, other definitions are. But this was really, really important for her in this book. Whereas reckless speech is seen as. you know, the KKK marching, Nazi people, it's always the speech of the powerful

is reckless, supporting those that are discriminatory or hateful or whatever else. And so in her work, she looks at, instead of seeing it as, oh, well, what is allowed under the First Amendment, let's look at

what type of speech should we have? What type of speech should we be standing up for? And if you look back at the abolitionist movement, back, you know, 1835, they do the great postal campaign where they send in some estimates more than a million pieces of anti-slavery postal letters and newsletters to the South to try and fight slavery. And then, of course, you know, there's this whole backlash where they're actually banned from sending anti-slavery material to the South. So you see censorship time and time again

against movements that are standing up for free speech. And this is really important because we have a history of censorship in the United States. It runs deep, but it's always, almost always, against movements that are fighting for change, against movements that are standing up.

And those movements then see free speech as their rallying cry. So there's this crazy example that she gives about Pennsylvania Hall, 1838. This is a place. It's this hall built by the abolitionist anti-slavery society in Pennsylvania. It's in Philadelphia, so right at the seat of where, you know, the constitution was written. And they build this huge hall and the idea is this is

going to be an abolitionist hall where we can come together, black people, white people, women and men can come together and stand together and speak out. And essentially, local and southern and even northern newspapers, slavery, pro-slavery newspapers fight against this. They call out and they call on people to like attack the building. And they do. They burn the building to the ground. And it's just this terrifying moment in U.S. history where abolitionists are standing up for what's right. And again, you're seeing this violent wave coming from those people in defense of slavery against the abolitionist movement.

And so what free speech actually, where it is actually comes from, our understanding, standing what did what did like the depth of it comes from organizing it comes from the activists comes from the movements who have stood up for what's right in the united states from the very beginning of the country uh and particular around you know the the fight to end slavery in the united states and so we need to understand that route right when we uh when people are are marching in a no king's day or people are going to stand up and and and fight about what's happening about the united states right now we need to understand that like we are standing on the backs of those people who have fought for free speech from the very beginning, and that this

attempt to redefine it is only going to fall in the hands. It's only going to do justice for the powerful and the rich and the barons in Silicon Valley and the far right. And that it's really important to understand that kind of that route of where we come from with this. Yeah, understanding that Genesis being in struggle within the United States for the ability to have a semblance of free speech anyway. That continues to today. And you brought up, I was planning on saving this for a little bit later in the conversation, but you brought-

I'm sorry, Henry. That's okay. The listeners will know that my thoughts are very rarely linear. Basically everything is a tangent on this show. But you did mention that there were hundreds of people who have been fired, suspended, or investigated for speaking against the Trump administration. You know, one of them, you're familiar with Michael, an old friend of mine and a former guest on the show, Karina Mullen. You know, she's on the series.

You describe this movement as the tip of the iceberg in terms of people being fired or suspended or being looked into for speaking out, just speaking against, you know, the administration that's in charge of the United States right now. What is the full iceberg, I guess, is the main thing? point of this question. You know, if that's just the tip of the iceberg, what is the iceberg? And, you know, something else that you talk about is why has the liberal free speech establishment been relatively quiet about what's happening, particularly when we're discussing the case of, you know, really radical people, you know, radical academics, radical activists, who are not part of the liberal establishment, you know, not part of the mainstream Democratic Party who are complaining, well, Trump is doing this, Trump is doing that. But we're talking about, you know, guests will know Karina, or listeners will know Karina Mullen.

She's been on the show before. When we have these people that are actually coming out with a radical analysis challenging the administration, those are the ones who are being particularly targeted. And I don't have to, I think I don't have to go into the fact that the Trump administration, and Marco Rubio at the forefront is talking now about how communism is the biggest threat to the United States. Just either today, yesterday, I think, at the time of recording, which will be a few days before release. Trump was doing a press conference. Somebody at the press conference yelled he's a pedophile defender. And he just said that person's a communist.

A person's at a Donald Trump rally. Like, you know, obviously the person is not a Trump fan if he says he's a pedophile defender. but now the the taring of just calling literally anybody who says anything against you as a communist. And at the same time, they are saying that communism and Marxism are a bigger threat to the United States. You'll have seen this, Michael. I'm not sure if the listeners will have, but they're saying that communism and Marxism are a bigger threat to the United States than Pearl Harbor and 9-11. So, you know, we're talking about they're really looking at clamping down on radical speech, on radical thought. But at this time, and I'm sorry that this question is getting a little bit long.

But the point is, is that when we have these sorts of people, the ones that are that are criticizing from an actual radical perspective, the liberal free speech establishment fails to speak up at least as forcefully as they could have. why. So I guess the two questions on this are what is the full iceberg and why are the liberals, you know, you're going to have a very easy answer for this, but I have to ask it anyway, why are the liberals not speaking up for us radicals that are being persecuted? Yeah. I mean, the first thing is the iceberg, I don't think we fully know the size of this iceberg. And I think this goes back to what you were just mentioning. I mean, there was a, there was a report released, I think it was last week that it was a hundred page report

about how Cuba was behind all of the leftist movements in the United States and now there's been subpoenas from the People's Forum and they've subpoenaed all these different organizations and groups and even outlets

and these are organizations that have you know they've brought humanitarian aid right tried to break the U.S. blockade to bring aid to Cuba over the year years. These are people that have traveled to Cuba. This is not, this is not a big thing. You travel to Cuba, right? This is something that we saw back in the McCarthy era, or we saw it back in the 1960s when there was a backlash by the FBI, a backlash from the United States against activists at that time.

And we are seeing it again. And so it is a terrifying moment. And I think it is important to see it as the tip of the iceberg because it is so much greater. And we don't. fully understand how deep it's going to run, how bad it's going to get. But, I mean, if you just look at the fact that there are officials running around neighborhoods in masks and unmarked cars picking people up and detaining them, killing U.S. citizens,

this is a terrifying moment. And people need to understand, like, this is like, we can't mince words, right? This is like, that's, I'm actually working on another small podcast kind of series within Under the Shadow that I'm calling disappeared in America with this idea of making this connection to what happened in the authoritarian dictatorships

of Latin America of the 1960, 70s, and 80s, and drawing these parallels to now and having people who were impacted in those places in that time draw these parallels to now. So to fully understand... So the iceberg runs very, very deep, right? And I don't think we fully know. And in terms of why the liberal establishment isn't standing up, they haven't stood up for a very, very long time, unfortunately, Henry.

And even for themselves, Michael, not just for the radicals. They don't even stand up for themselves, but particularly for radicals. You know, I was listening to this really important, I was listening to this episode of C-N-On-Radio. I don't know if, do you know this, this podcasting on radio. They do really, really important work. This is, they're now in the eighth season. I definitely recommend listeners check it out. They basically take issues and then they,

and the style is similar to the battle for free speech, just why I've been listening to it lately. But they basically take big issues like, you know, racism or white supremacy or the news was the last season. And then they try and break it apart and try and dig in to understand, like, kind of what's behind it. And in their episode where they low,

at follow the money, that's one of the things they're saying, well, why aren't, you know, mainstream media taking a stand at this moment, essentially? And, you know, on the one hand, they're afraid. And the other hand, they don't really have a backbone to take a stand. And so it just continues. It's the same cycle, right? It's the same cycle we've seen for decades and, or for centuries in many cases. And so the people who really have to stand up and speak truth to power are the same radicals who have spoken up and spoken truth to power. And that is exactly where Trump is trying to push back on. One of the things I think was really powerful. I just want to mention this really fast about the crackdown that we saw in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination was I was speaking with a professor and he said that and I don't have the figure. right in front of it. It was something like the number of people who were fired from their jobs within a week after Charlie Kirk's assassination for speaking out was roughly one third of the number

of professors who were fired during the McCarthy era over like a decade long period. So it's like things are on, you know, it's on speed. And the reality of what's how fast everything has happen right now is terrifying. And we, this is why this podcast is so important in this conversation, clearly. And I just want to add in one small point because I know that you're not going to argue with it, but I think that we also have to acknowledge the fact that one of the reasons, if not the main driving reason, why liberals never speak out on behalf of radicals when radicals are they're being persecuted, whether that's socialists or communists, is because structurally, the liberals agree with the conservatives structurally, and they disagree with socialists and

communists. Right. And so while they don't like conservatives, they have a different worldview than conservatives. If we're talking about economic structures, both nationally as well as how the international, global economic system should be run. Fundamentally, liberals and conservatives, and I'm using these terms with the American context of what liberal and conservative means, because of course, every country has its own definition of liberal and conservative, but in the classical American definitions of liberals and conservatives, structurally they agree with one another on these

points. So they don't like each other for various reasons, but they're not criticizing the institution of capitalism, neither of them. And so when it comes to what are we going to use our efforts and our energy on defending? Well, as you said, liberals don't even, I mean, I also said it, liberals don't stand up for themselves. They don't have a backbone to stand up against any form of power and haven't for decades. But if they are going to have any form of backbone and stand up for something, it's never going to be the people who fundamentally disagree with them on the structural system.

That's a, I mean, there's a much bigger divide. And I don't think that this will be controversial for the listeners of guerrilla history. Liberals might disagree with me, but guerrilla history listeners won't. There's fundamentally a much greater divide between liberals and socialists and communists, you know, quote unquote radicals, than there is between the liberals and conservatives. So it's natural that they wouldn't come up to the plate and go to bat for, you know, socialists who are being persecuted by conservatives. They're going to wait for the opportunity where they have, you know,

the easiest possible case against some mainstream liberal figure. And that's where they might say, you know, one or two things about it. Michael, you wanted to say something. Yeah. And I think it's just important to add that this moment as we enter into more of a sphere of using those words, socialist, communist, as means of attack

against opponents of Trump and opponents of the government of the right. I think there will increasingly become a fear. There already is a fear. That some, you know, mainstream liberal journalist might be seen as a socialist or might be

called a communist or might, you know, like that is, I mean, we're reviving this stuff from the past. I remember when Trump talked about socialism for the first time, And he said, we have to fight against the socialist. It was back, you know, whatever it was. It was in his first turn.

I don't remember if it was, it was one of his state of a union addresses. I don't know if it was in 2016 or 2007, but I remember when he said it because we had already heard that from some, you know, far right or right wing leaders in Latin America. And I could, you could see the writing on the wall that, oh, this is, this is where we're going. I get it. But now it's like this revival. And now we're lifting up those turns. and it's a return to McCarthy, but it's much, much worse and it's on steroids because it's being done at the same time with social media and big tech and Silicon Valley and it's

being done so fast. Yeah. And the social media component is one that I absolutely want to make sure we get to before the end of the conversation. I mean, there's a lot of people who have said things that if it was like the McCarthy era where it comes to trial and bringing up statements and affiliations that people have had, you know, and you had back in those days, you would be persecuted if you had some informer who was giving some insight information about you. Today, it's much easier because people put their thoughts and feelings and affiliations online. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've said, I'm a communist either on this program or online. Now, that's true. I'm not trying to walk that back. I'm not saying I was being flippant about it. But the point is,

there's a lot of documentation of me saying I'm a communist. If they wanted to use that against me, it would be exceedingly easy for them to do so because there is probably reams of documents where I have stated that, where I've worked on things related to Stalin or whatever. You know, that's everywhere, Michael. Yeah.

And let me just say, Henry, real fast, the document that they released about Cuba last week, I ran it through. So you know how you can search. for things to see how AI something is or see if it was likely generated by AI. So I ran as an educator. I'm very, very aware of the technology to look for how much my students are using AI. That's right.

So I did that to that document. And it came up with a 96% chance that it was AI. So basically what you have is someone at the State Department going, well, let's see what connections we can make. And then it runs it through the document. And then, you know, like not even an hour later, you know, they've got a full document, you know, that they can use. anyone they want to and making these connections that may or may not actually exist. It's not even real. But like it doesn't matter because they found it online and, you know, AI says it's real.

Yeah. Well, I want to get back to the social media in a little bit, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention at this point. And honestly, I should have brought it up earlier. You don't host this series alone, Michael. You co-host it with Mark Steiner, who you, you know, he's been fighting for free speech since the late 1950s. The final episode of the series

is essentially an interview with him about his life. I want to ask you what it was like working with Mark Steiner, somebody who has that kind of institutional memory of the battles for free speech. And also what working with Mark has taught you about that fight

that you may not have been able to learn in any other way other than working with somebody who has that firsthand experience for a matter of, you know, decades before I was even born. Yeah. Well, I'll just say from the very beginning, this was a podcast that I actually went to the real news and said, listen, I want to do this, but I want to do it different. And I want to do it radio lab style.

And for those listeners that don't know, Radio Lab is an incredible podcast. It's been around for decades. And the idea is that you have two co-hosts and usually one of them will go out and do a ton of reporting and they'll bring it back to the other co-host who doesn't, necessarily know what the other person has been working on and that's what makes it kind of unique and different and um almost improvisational because this one it has a lot of conversation but it's also very very rooted in my reporting and of course all the sound so it's it's immersive like all of my podcasts are and it has music and everything else but then i'm also kind of i go out

i do a ton of reporting i talk to people and then i bring that back and then we like i talk with Mark about it, but then Mark is bringing a bunch more. And from the very beginning, I said, look, you know, I want to do this podcast. I want to do it radio lab style. And I'd like to do it with Mark. And Mark was, you know, more than excited to work on this. He just turned 80 this year. So, I mean, it was incredible to be able to do this with him. We met at the very beginning of this process almost a year ago in Baltimore. We went out and did some reporting on the streets of Baltimore work together and then began to kind of have our conversations around this kind of in person. And it was amazing.

I mean, because I knew that he had his whole history in organizing his civil rights organizer, civil rights activists. He was the youngest person to ever be arrested, civil rights activist in Maryland at the time. You know, and then the free speech movement and then a community organizer and organizers. and organizer and underground newspapers, theater, like he's just, he's been through it all, you know, and it was just an incredible experience to be able to do this to be able to have this kind of conversation,

but also particularly around this second episode where we really dig into the past to have him talk to this history of the abolitionist movement, which is something he knows really well, the free speech movement, which is something that he wasn't in Berkeley at the time, time, but he was part of the free speech movement at the University of Maryland. And, no, it was, it was, it was amazing.

It was an honor. It really was an honor. He's like, you know, he's, he's been a, he's a legend, at least in Maryland and Baltimore, he's a legendary radio host since the early 90s. So to be able to do this with him was really amazing. And he actually got sick halfway through the, the podcast series. And so he had to take a bit of a step. step back. And it was really interesting because the hosts that I found, I wanted to keep it the same structure. And so the host that I found for episodes four, five, six, seven, many of them are people also in the real news who have their own shows in the real news, but who are also incredible in their own right. So Taya Graham, who's an investigative journalist, Mansa Musa, who was actually in jail for 48 years. And he's, he's a little bit of,

the host of the Real News is rattling bars podcast all about the prison industrial complex and and so that was this incredible experience also having these like I could reach out to these specific people within the real news

and I didn't have to be within the real news but they just were right there and then the seventh episode was with Laura Flanders who was just so incredible and she was born in the UK and then we're talking about Europe so she has had her career in the United States, but we kind of straddle these two worlds.

So, no, it was an incredible experience. It was so great to be with Mark. He brought so much to the table. I mean, he just has so much experience, but I think he also brought, and you can hear this in

particularly the first three episodes that I'm with him, he brings this depth and this grounding to why this moment is so perilous and why this is so important to be standing up and to be speaking out and to be working on this podcast right now and why free speech is so important. Because he basically says, look, this is essentially, we're at the tip of an iceberg. He has essentially, we are at the precipice and we haven't seen a moment like this in my lifetime. And we need to really push

back and we really need to fight. And so that for me, I think, was really powerful to be able to do this reporting, but also to be able to have this conversation and to this kind of this in-depth experience with someone who understands that, going back 80 years, you know. Yeah, it's a great opportunity to work both with Mark as well as, as you mentioned. And you had a really great cohort of hosts that you were able to draw from just by, you know, doing this through the real news network. Now I want to backtrack, again, nonlinear format here, Michael. I want to get back to big tech. I didn't want to get into it before we talked about Mark Steiner a little bit because I felt that we wanted to get that into the conversation.

But the question of big tech and the political economy of speech is. one that I think is one of the most pressing points that you touch on within this series. Episode three of the series is all about big texts, assault on free speech, media consolidation, social media, AI, we just talked about a little bit. You made the point that in the show that these platforms claim to be liberating us, but what they're actually doing is strangling the speech of people. I'm wondering if we can go through that mechanism by how that works. What is the material relationship between Silicon Valley's business model and the erosion of, quote, unquote, free speech?

Yeah, I mean, first, I just want to say, you know, this is kind of what I dive into the very beginning of that episode of Trump's deep connections with like the owners of Silicon Valley. Every single one of them were at his inauguration, you know, standing just a couple of rows behind him. And they've continued extremely, extremely tight. And of course, you know, we saw this with Jeff Bezos. He's the owner of Amazon, owner of the Washington Post last year when he just said, you know what, we don't need. And this, I think, underscores. I think there's no other, there's no greater metaphor to underscore what this is right now. When Jeff Bezos comes out and says, from today on out,

the opinion pages of the Washington Post will only champion the themes of free market because and he actually came out straight and he said this, it will only champion the free market ideas because now everyone is allowed to post whatever they want to say online and now we have this great marketplace of ideas

online through social media. Well, it's bullshit. I'm sorry. But that's, that is the discourse that is being used. And they actually believe it, I think. And so this is another thing that is really important within this, is to understanding why there is this redefinition or the attempt to redefine and why we need to understand it.

But then to walk to Silicon Valley and to look at this kind of political economy what you're just talking about. I learned about this word in shitification. Like, I can't remember it was nine months ago, something like. that and I just love it. I want to do an entire series just called inshittification because I think it's so important to understand it's the same thing you see when you know oh wow there's a new chip company out there and you buy a bag of chips and you really like those chips but then you notice that like six months later a year later there's like half the number of chips the amount of chips

have dropped in the bag and they're not they're not so good because they're cutting corners on cost they're not making so it's the same thing or you have a chip company and they get sold out and bought by a bigger company. It's the same process whereby we, people jumped on board with Facebook because it was a means for everyone, because that was like, Facebook, we can go back to MySpace if we want to, but mainly Facebook, because that was like the first big social media platform, it was a way for us to communicate, we're all there. And we've all seen this, that in recent years, our ability to put things out there for those

things to be seen, now you go on Facebook and half of what you get in your feed are either or ads or what they're being pushed by somebody else or what Facebook wants you to see. And part of that has to do with the fact that they're actually extracting data from you. And that's the other issue with all the social media. It's not actually about what you're seeing. It's not about you are there. And someone tells me this in this podcast. They are extracting more from us.

The social media, the big tech platforms are taking more of our data than we are from them. That is actually their business, is extracting our information. and so but the instittification is we go online and we keep losing out more and more we have less of a less of a connection Facebook is essentially worthless Instagram it used to be a certain platform and they change the algorithm change it change it change it Twitter I mean don't even you know don't even get me started with X but the whole idea is is the decreasing space for a common sphere of discourse. And what happens,

look, these companies are there to make money off of us, right? And so, you know, whether that's happening because,

you know, we're now, we now have to pay them if we want people to actually see our posts. There was a post that I went, so just the backup on, on X,

you know, I've never paid any for X. I wasn't going to. At the very end of last year with everything was happening with under the shadow, with Trump pushing

into other countries, I said, okay, I'm going to go ahead and pay whatever to get the little blue check and play the premium. So maybe people will see my posts. And I did. And it lasted for a few months. But I noticed that in the first couple of months, I could post something. It would get retweeted a couple times, not what it was retweeted, whatever it was a few years ago. But then I set up a post like a month ago that I was like, this is the type of post that a few years ago would have gone viral.

Right? It was a post about someone who had gotten was censored because of this, what this and that. and I had a bunch of pictures on there. It was going to go viral. And on X, it gave me a question. It said, look, do you want to pay to, you know, push this out on ads? And if you pay $500, this many people will see it. And I was like, this is fucked up.

Like, this is the only way to actually push things out now. So I said, no, I don't just want that. But I'm not paying any more to X. And I'm done. I'm just done. And most people, you know, I'm late to the game in terms of being done. because I was like, oh, maybe they're still, but that's the whole idea is they kind of drag you on and keep you there.

It's all a money-making scheme, but most of that money is being made off of actually extracting our data. So who am I? Where am I from? Where do I live? I put all my bio information into there. I post. I like things.

So then they know, what do I like? And then they send me more ads. And they send me the stuff that they think I'm going to like. And then they keep that. It's like the, what was the thing that we had back in the, Cambridge Analytica, but on steroids. And that's still what we have today. These are the most powerful,

these are some of the most powerful businesses in the world and definitely the most powerful information corporations. And what Farad de Boivla, who's this Princeton professor, who wrote the book, what is free speech? He published it last year, the year before, A History of a Dangerous Idea.

And I interviewed him for this. He said, these are the most powerful publishers the planet has ever seen, but we don't see them as publishers because they say, oh, not us. We're just a platform. We're not doing, we're not regulating. We're just, we're just putting things out there, right? But actually, no, they have a responsibility. They should be regulated and they have a responsibility to be able to ensure that things that are out there on the platforms, that the space is a free and fair space of public debate, but it is actually a privatized system and it's a pay for play scheme. So if you have the money or if you are powerful

or if you are saying the things that they want you to say, then your voice will be lifted up more than other peoples. And that's just the way it is. But it is terrifying because, you know, big tech, like there's one thing because I'm just talking about social media, but then the next step is AI, right? And then also how are they pushing within the United States? But these are like intercontinental corporations. They may be based in Silicon Valley, but they have, you know, their people all across the planet use them.

And so they're having an outsized influence abroad. And they're unregulated, which is just like, it's shocking and it's terrifying, the fact that we can't move beyond that. And there was something that I found in, and this is the thing that people don't understand. I think people, not everyone,

but a lot of times the big tech platforms or social media are seen is kind of like, oh, they're just out there. And then maybe they create the algorithm and maybe the algorithm doesn't do what we want it to, but it's not their fault. And they're just, but actually they have a very clear agenda.

And that agenda is in most cases, in support of Trump, in support of the far right, or in support of libertarian ideas, or the crazy ideas of Silicon Valley Barons and tech barons. but also they are they are pushing their agenda and these are these are private spheres and I think it's really important to understand it was in this the episode seven when I took a look at how Europe was trying to push back on big tech and there was a there was research done on how much lobbying was being done by the big tech platforms against possible. regulations, whether that was, you know, in Europe or other countries. And I don't have the

figures in front of me, but we're talking about, like, you know, millions of dollars spent in 10 different countries in, I think, lobbying 2,500 government representatives over a five or six year period. Like, the numbers, it's staggering. And this is how, like when you start to see where the money is and how much big tech is willing to push back so that they're not regulated, so that they can continue to push however they want to push. And again, let's not forget, they're in a business. And their business is about getting bigger and making more money. It is not about bringing the public sphere to the American people and creating a free and fair debate. That doesn't matter to them.

The bottom line, even though that might be the discourse, like Marx says, Oh, it's about free speech, but the bottom line, it is about making more money. Well, and just to add into that, Michael, you would kind of touched on this at the beginning of the conversation, but I think it's worth bringing up again here. You mentioned that the tech companies themselves are putting millions and millions, tens, hundreds of millions of dollars into lobbying governments against regulation of these tech companies of social media. But you also have touched on the fact where there is an integration between these tech companies and the Trump administration.

And now we see it so explicitly where, and again, the point that you touched on earlier, the EU was fining Google for breaching digital regulations that are in place in Europe. And what happens in return? Probably just more lobbying, right? You know, lobbying to overturn it, right? Right? Listeners, that's all the ha. No, no, the Trump administration themselves are levying huge tariffs on Europe as direct response. And they don't even try to couch it that it's for any other reason. They literally say they are fining an American company for regulations that the United States government didn't agree to, even though that, you know, this is for violations of policies that are taking place in Europe. But the American government, didn't agree to these regulations. And as a result, we are going to have basically reciprocal tariffs. It's not tariffs as a fine from the EU against Google.

But, you know, that's the idea is that it's a reciprocal action by the United States government against the EU, which is interesting for many ways. You know, it highlights that integration of the tech companies with the Trump administration just directly. but also, and I talked about this on press TV recently. So, you know, listeners, I don't know if I've mentioned on the show, I've been on press TV several times recently. You can tune in periodically and find me talking on Iranian television about things in Iran because they want to ask me my opinion on things in Iran, apparently.

I don't know. Response has been good. So I guess it's worthwhile. But in any case, one of the things that I had talked about recently was that this, this latest incident of the Trump administration putting tariffs on the EU shows the EU in a very interesting light because the EU has to act on behalf of American interests all the time. And typically they do so because the EU is propped up by the international system that the United States is at the head of, right?

We're talking about the international imperialist economic model. The EU benefits not as much as the US does from that model. and the U.S. is the primary maintainer of that system. But the EU is a very strong partner within that system. And the countries of the EU benefit from the imperialist capitalist model that the United States is, again, the hegemonic power within. So it's interesting that whenever the United States takes some actions, the EU either willingly or unwillingly goes along with the U.S.

in almost every opportunity. And the one time where they try to do something that goes against the United States, the United States immediately takes this sort of this action against them directly. And the EU doesn't really have any recourse against it because, again, they are operating within the model that the United States heads in terms of the international economic system, and they benefit from it. They, again, if we're looking at structures, it's a system. that they don't want to overturn.

And so they're put into this position where they have to basically blindly follow the United States and absolutely everything if they want to maintain the model that they're benefiting from, whether those specific things benefit them or not. But in any case, Michael, I want to take this up. Oh, sorry, there is one other point that I wanted to make before I go to a very provocative question. Yeah, Michael, I see you want to add something. Yeah, just let me just say that, you know, it's the same thing.

happened in Brazil last year when then Trump said it was in part because of the social media platforms it was part because of the

whole kind of Twitter X debacle and so Trump said well you guys are trying to censor an American company and so we're levying a fifth that was when Trump you know levied the 50%

tariff on Brazil it was also because of the trial against Bolsonaro and so Trump was trying to push back and actually it completely backfired because Brazilians rose up and said we don't want you guys deciding

what we can do in our country and so it was actually it was and we're kind of seeing the similar thing right now ahead of the elections where Trump has levied these these new their lower tariffs but these new tariffs are pretty much the same thing and also against the economics

because in Brazil we use a system called PICs which is kind of this online media, digital, media, not media, sorry, digital monetary platform where people can send, it's almost like Venmo, but it's through the Banco de Brazil.

And so Trump says, well, our U.S. credit card companies are losing out. And so we're going to, you know, put some tariffs on you. So it's all the same, it's all wrapped up into the exact same thing in Brazil

says, okay, well, you guys are going to do what you're going to do, you know. Yeah, that's right. I did want to give one anecdote before I ask a very provocative question, which you already know what's coming, Michael. I did give you a forewarning of this one, but I do want to give an anecdote because you were talking about X and the algorithm and the

basically pay-to-play model that they're operating under. I don't think I've actually talked about this on the show before, but I did kind of just a small-scale experiment for my own amusement. Listeners will know that because of sanctions is basically impossible for me to get on social media. I haven't been on for like at least a year on any social media platforms. They still can follow guerrilla history on the social media platforms. Listeners, just I won't be posting anything for the meantime, at least until sanctions get lifted. But in any case, a few years ago, this is like probably five, four or five years ago, guerrilla history's Twitter page had somewhere between five and 10,000 followers.

It was a really small account at the time. And I had put up a couple of tweets. that like did really well. They got, you know, between one and 20,000 likes on them, which for an account that had between 5,000 and 10,000 followers is really big. And then a couple of years ago, like two years ago, three years ago, the algorithm very obviously was changing. We never paid anything for the social media, but it was very obviously changing where, whereas

in the past, we would get three to 500 likes for when we would have a new episode come out. again, not a very big account. Now we were getting like 40, even though the account by that point had about 20,000 followers. So it was about three times bigger in terms of followers, but our number of likes on similar types of tweets, you know, new episode, here's the guest, here's some photos. It went down from like 300, 400, 400 likes to like 40,

10 times reduction. But I wanted to just test something. and I went back and found a couple of our more popular tweets from a few years previous, the ones that got, you know, 3,000, 7,000 likes. I copied and pasted them on same day of the week, same time that they had previously gone out on to see if we got anything like what we were getting before. And it was the same thing. Before when we were getting 10,000 likes on tweet, you know, whatever, we only had

6,000 followers at that point. Now we've got 20,000 followers. I put it out same day of the week, same time of the day and instead of 10,000 likes, like copy and paste, same images, everything. We got like 70 likes and I did it a couple of times and every time the, the result was exactly the same. The first time when we had a smaller account, but when the algorithm wasn't as obviously biased and obviously, it was still biased, but you know, it wasn't as obviously biased, we would get 5,000 likes, 7,000 likes. And then when we would try again, we would get 30 likes, 100 likes, 40 likes. It was, it was.

In shittification, Henry, in shittification. Exactly. That's why I wanted to bring that up. But now, time for provocative questions since I did say it. Bring it on. I did say at the top of this that I was going to be playing devil's advocate. And I only asked one particularly provocative question so far. So time for the second one.

Michael, some people. might say that free speech is an absolute ideal doesn't make sense. It's not something that we should strive for, absolute free speech. And maybe not even absolute free speech, but free speech as like a governing ideal doesn't make sense. And some people, not saying whether I'm one of them or not, Michael, but some people might say that, you know, we should look at free speech as a, uh, a, We should look at speech more generally, not free speech, but speech as a tool within the battle that is political struggle. And when you are not in control of the political structures of the country, of course you want there to be more free speech because it allows you to get your oppositional message out to more people. on the other hand, if you are in a very strong position, you don't necessarily want to allow all of the fascists and conservatives and reactionaries and very, very moderate liberals and et cetera, et cetera, to be able to say whatever they want.

You know, we shouldn't think of it as some, you know, some right given to us by a higher power that we should be able to say and agitate for what we want. we should use it as a tool to say what we want, but we have to think first and foremost about the struggle for political supremacy beyond what this individual right would mean in some abstract that is divorced from an analysis of what the struggle is at that particular moment and who is in charge. So to somebody who says that free speech as the ideal that we should be focusing on as something that we really have to, you know, put at the forefront of our political thought is not necessarily the smart thing to do because it divorces it from political struggle

and an analysis of where political struggle is in your context at that moment. How would you respond to somebody who takes that view of free speech? Clearly, we need to understand how speech or writing or media or spreading of ideas fits into the bigger picture and the bigger picture struggle or the bigger picture of organizing, whatever else. But if you look at the history of

standing up, of organizing or fighting for what's right, and I don't say fighting for what's right from those who are the powerful. I don't say fighting for what's right from the white supremacists or the KKK, because if you look back and this goes back a little bit to kind of what we mentioned,

what we talked about in the second episode. Historically, the censorship happens historically against those who are standing up for the minorities who are standing up against the system itself. That's where censorship happens. And this is actually something that's that I think is misunderstood because there is this idea in the United States at least. that's always kind of pulled out and that says, well, we have to defend the right of the white supremacists

to say what they want to, because if you don't defend their right to say what they want to, well, then, you know, clearly the organizers and the activists and the civil rights organizers, the abolitionists, you're going to lose your right. So then we have to defend everybody's right to say what we want to. But actually what happens is censorship has always traditionally happened against the minorities,

against the downtrodden, against the marginalized, that's where it comes from. And I think that this is why it's important to, I agree with you actually 100%. We need to be challenging what we understand as the freedom of speech. We need to actually question what is free speech.

And we need to have a deeper understanding beyond like First Amendment or beyond like the rights in this country what the rights are to really question like what should this mean and I think this is one of the really cool things that I dug into the fourth episode of this podcast when I talk with Marianne Franks because she starts to ask this question she says nobody actually understands what free speech is and so she asks her students when was the last time you had a good conversation like what was the what did you what did you do what did that look like and they say oh well you know we were sitting around a table and I I was listening to them and they were listening to me. And that was really powerful about the conversations that everyone was in the room together

and we were listening to each other. We don't have like when we think about what free speeches, are we thinking about, oh, we're all in the ruin and we're all listening to each other, we're all having a discourse in it. But actually, at the end of the day, that needs to be, I mean, part of one of the things that I try and underscore in this podcast,

Henry, is the need for us to listen as much as speak. And I don't necessarily mean the marginal or the poor to listen because they don't need to listen anymore. Who needs to be listening is Trump and the big texts and the powerful, right? But what's happened in, at least in the United States, but it's happening all across the world

is that people are being more and more divided by social media. We're being more and more siloed into our own little corners. And that is only fuels and helps disinformation. It helps Trump. It helps the far right. And so more and,

more one of the things that I'm that I try to underscore in this podcast is also the need for people to come together and find the common ground of discussion and debate free speech is kind of at the root of that you know and I think

in a way I kind of feel like your question is almost like a little semantics it's like which comes first the chicken or the egg right because like yeah I guess we could see like as as as as a tool within a larger tool of of of of struggle to try and create change um i think it is kind of funny that free speech is the first amendment i think it's part of

the read like and people i've been speaking with like some of the professors you know they said why is free speech so important you know well it is you know the first amendment but like it could have been the second or third but this happened to be the first you know um but i think it it comes back to this root of this is a means for us for us to agitate and organize for change within the system that we live in legitimately

and what we see and what we've seen historically is the government the United States government or local states governments within the United States censoring those people who are trying to organize and stand up and agitate for change within the United States. That's where censor.

happens. Censorship does not, or it has almost never happened with the United States, against the far right, or against the KKK, or neo-Nazis, or white supremacists, or hate groups. It's like, that's freed up, but who they're afraid of is anyone who's actually trying to make change, right? Or clearly back in the 1950s, 1960s, or maybe today, communist, socialist, the radicals, right? That's who gets censored in the United States. And so it is it is an absolute right, but it should not be absolutist. For me, this whole idea of absoluteist free speech, we need to challenge that within the United States.

And in fact, this is something really fascinating that I learned in this podcast, is that actually our understanding of kind of absolutist free speech that we have, like libertarian absolutist free speech in the United States, only came about in like the 1960s, in large part due to the Cold War. I think in a backlash against, you know, communist and socialist ideas and the United States says, oh, we, we have to, you know, let's push for a libertarian idea of absolutist free speech.

And then if who wins in an absolutist free speech, you know, panorama, who wins is the far right. Who wins are the white supremacists. Who wins are, you know, that's who wins in that world. And who wins is Trump. and the biggest thing that I want people to take away from this podcast, again, is that something is broken in our system and our actual understanding and even our understanding of what free speech is in the United States is not working.

If it can't stop Trump, someone who actually tried to carry out a coup within the United States and who was actually attacking people's free speech in the name of free speech, if that did not stop him from being returning to power, and if it is not stopping him from saying whatever it is he wants to and unleashing this terrible censorship regime within the United States, then we have a problem, and we need to re-challenge and re-analyze what we understand as free speech. And, of course, now is not the time to rewrite what we, you know,

we're not going to do this via the laws, not in the United States, because who has the power right now is clearly Trump and Big Tech and the far right. but we need to start, the more that we can understand that, and the more that we can question this ourselves, and the more that we can push back on this with the root, and I think that's why guerrilla history is so great, Henry, what you bring to the table always is like this deeper understanding of the history to take to bring us to now,

the more that we can root ourselves in understanding what free speech can mean, what it should mean, what it's always meant, to ensure that we don't let that right being be redefined, and we don't let that right be taken away. And we actually understand that what it should mean is standing up for change and standing up against the powers that be like those in Washington right now. Yeah.

And I want to just point out a couple things before I get to the last question. I mentioned that I asked the question intentionally in a rather provocative way. I vote as provocative as I agree without just outright saying free speech is bad. But it is the fact that even when we have these phases of absolutist definitions of free speech, like you pointed out in the 1960s and 1970s in particular, and especially in the 1980s, even when it was these times, the absolute absoluteist rhetoric around free speech was not matched by an absolutist conception of free speech in which we actually saw. there was still repression against speech, I guess, and just to put it in a more blunt way,

there was still a lot of repression against speech. But the repression against speech was always against those radical voices, always was against the radical voices. And that was in those periods of, again, this absolutist rhetoric around free speech. And you did mention that you think that the absolutist rhetoric around free speech came up in response to the Cold War. I think that that's absolutely right for two reasons, actually. One is that, well, we have to be able to have people get the best ideas out there for how to argue against the socialist model.

But secondly, and I know that I'm going to be saying something that most of the listeners are already familiar with, but the Soviet Union had a completely different conception of how speech should be run. It wasn't free speech. It was democratic centralism. Now, Democratic Centralism, and again, I apologize to the listeners who, you know, we've said this before, but Democratic Centralism is freedom of discussion, but unity of action. And what that means is that inside of the party, inside party structures, that is the phase in which there should be this free speech, free discussion amongst party members in order to determine what is the correct course of action. but once a decision is made in a democratic process within those structures, there must be

absolute unity when it goes into the action phase. That's the centralist phase. So once it comes out of those committees, you can't say this is a bad idea. You can't say there should be other things that could happen. Well, I would have preferred this to happen. No. That is not how, and again, this goes back to the Leninist philosophy on how decision-making should be made is in this democratic centralist way.

Now, within the Soviet Union, that was how things operated up until the 80s, was in a democratic centralist fashion. Now, there was periods in which the freedom of discussion also wasn't quite so free, to just be honest about it. But in general, democratic centralism was the order of the day for the entire period of the Soviet Union's history. But that model runs absolutely, it's anathema to the conception of free speech within the United States and the West more generally.

And so if you know that that is the model that your adversary is taking, this Democratic centralist model where you don't hear criticism in the public sphere, the criticism takes place within party structures, how do you respond to that if you're in an all-o- ideological war. You respond by taking the absolute opposite the path that you can possibly take, which is an absolute absolutist conception of free speech and what should be considered free speech. Now, again, rhetorically, you still have to crack down on those radical left-wingers, right? You can't actually have total free speech, but rhetorically, at least, you want to take the path that is as far divorced from what your adversary has as possible, and understand.

what democratic centralism is, is instructive into figuring out what the opposite would be, which is exactly what the United States did during that period. So, Michael, you want to say something. I've got one small question to end the conversation, but go ahead. Yeah, I know. I just want to say, and I think this is really important, when we, because Musk, Elon Musk talks about this a lot. He considers himself an absolutist, free speech absolutist.

But he is not. he doesn't clearly doesn't give free speech to everybody. He cuts free speech for certain people. He censors certain people. He lifts his voice up. So he's not an absolutist, but he has the discourse of an absolutist. I think when we talk about absoluteist free speech,

we actually should almost redefine that term. And I don't get into this in the podcast, and I haven't thought about it until now, really. But I think we should actually be saying, no, absolutist free speech. we should be saying free speech for the powerful, free speech for the white or the elites within the United States, but not for the others.

So those people who believe in absoluteist free speech already have to understand built into the system that you actually want, that if you're with the government or you're with the powerful big tech platforms, you want free speech for your people, but not for anybody else. And that is absolutist free speech.

If we start to challenge this and redefine it, suddenly it changed. That's not free speech, actually. That's free speech for some and not for the others. But that is actually what is being pushed by those people within kind of the libertarian absoluteist free speech ideology or framework. And I think we need to think about it more clearly like that. It's hegemonic speech, Michael. If you adhere to the hegemonic ideal of the society, then you can speak freely. but if you have an anti-hegemonic ideology, your ability to speak on it is rather limited.

Now, Michael, I kept mentioning that I have one question left just because I'm cognizant of the fact that you're running short on time. I honestly could go all day, but I've got one question to close us on. Something that we haven't talked about much in this conversation, at least not directly, but is an important thing. Palestine Solidarity. You cover, and I know this is a huge question, and I know you don't have that much time, but I want to make sure that we at least hit it a little bit. You talk about how free speech is being weaponized

against Palestine solidarity. We've talked about the professors who are being fired, students disciplined. You've talked about Freedom House, and we've talked about how these institutions are silent. And I am curious on with specifically the case of Palestine. And I'm asking about this because we talk about Palestine on the show like every episode, basically.

But, you know, at least every other episode. How does the case of Palestine demonstrate where we are today? I think you could really say that in particular, Trump's crackdown on free speech under his second term began. with the crackdown on those speaking out in defense of Palestine. We saw that with professors, clearly. We've seen that with students and teachers. I mean, this was like the first big issue of the Trump administration, beginning of the second term of the Trump administration,

where people are holding protests and people are standing up in defense of Palestine and the backlash against those student movements, against teachers, against professors for standing up in defense of Palestine and also in terms of academic freedom. You know, one of the things I dig into

in the second episode is about the free speech movement in Berkeley in the 1960s. And I kind of try to draw this connection to now and ask this question like, okay, 60 years later, are we like, are we back where we started? You know, where students can't stand up in defense of issues, can't speak out on their campuses. And Palestine is the issue. It has been the issue. And of course, then Trump has taken that

and then he's attacked different universities saying, well, you all are being anti-Semitic. And, you know, it's like it's this use of not Palestine. but Zionism as a tool to undermine academic freedom at the different universities, to undermine professors, to undermine students. Mahmuh Khalil, I started this entire podcast with Mahmahmu Khalil and his, you know, literally jailing in front of his house and that his detention for months because I wanted to underscore how this is someone, University of Columbia graduate

who stood up who led the protests at the University of Columbia in defense of Palestine and he ended up in detention detained by federal officials so wrapped up into all of this you also have the like the attacks against in particular within the United States

in the last couple of years and this makes this connection to the immigration crackdown and what we're seeing with ICE because the people who have been most pushed aside and the most cracked down and most attacked are immigrants or students in the United States because they don't have the same defense and the supposedly

the same rights that other people do or U.S. citizens do. But Palestine has been the issue. It like the, at least it was the first issue. Then of course, in the wake of Charlie Kirk, then you had just this weight. of firing. But these are excuses in a lot of ways. I mean, Palestine is an issue. It's an excuse in order to push Trump's agenda. And of course, it has everything to do with the deep connection

that Israel has and the Zionist Israel connection in Washington and the lobby in Washington. And this is why Palestine is so important. I've been asking myself this, almost the same question, Henry, for years. And many of the people that I'm interviewing, why Palestine and not other things? Why is it so many other things? And of course, it's like it is so important for people to stand up because of the fact there is a gen. It is a genocide that is happening in real time in front of our eyes. But it is the fact that that genocide is being unleashed by a government and a country that is deeply,

deeply, deeply, in, in cohutes and in connection with the U.S. imperialist intentions abroad. And,

no, it's, it is, but without a doubt that has been, in particular, within the first year of the Trump administration, and it remains,

like, one of the top issues that, the question of free speech. And clearly, this is a place where where Trump has said, oh, well, free speech, if you're on my side, it's great. But if you're going to stand up for Palestine, that doesn't count. That speech does not fall under Trump's

or the social media platforms or big techs or the far rights rubric of being allowed to speak out. Well, Michael, on that note, it was a great conversation as usual. It's always nice to have you on here, my friend. Can you let the listeners know, one, where they can find the Battle for Free Speech, the show, of course, that we've been talking about for this entire conversation, and then also where they can keep up to date with more of your work, and also where they can listen to Monteperdito,

which we didn't mention much during this conversation. We didn't talk about your band in the previous episode that we had with you, but let the listeners know a little bit about the kind of music that you make. That's awesome, Henry. So the Battle for Free Speech, you can find it wherever you listen to podcasts. Just search for the battle for free speech. It is produced by the real news. So you can find on the real news site, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get it.

You can find me at www. patreon.com forward slash MFOX. So Patreon.com forward slash MFOX. And I have a Patreon page. You can support me there

and I keep people kind of updated with several posts every time. I'm I roll something out that's new. I'm reposting there. I've got my own content there, new content. So I'm pretty active there on Patreon. And of course, I'm on social media. Blue Sky, we actually do have the Battle for Free Speech podcast on Blue Sky.

So if anyone wants to follow me there, you can find me at if you search for the Battle for Free Speech podcast, and I'm posting about all things there. In terms of music for this podcast, actually, so I, for all, for all, of my podcast, I always try and write at least the theme music and the closing music. And this one is no different, but I did this with an old banjo player of mine who I used to be in a band called Haudan Quartet, and his name is Jordan and Jordan Klein, and he's an incredible banjo player out on the West Coast. And so we kind of sat down, we recorded some music, and then I had my guitarist from Monte Perdeo, my band Monteperdivo, to do.

kind of the bass and the guitar. So it's cool. It's a little bit different. I wanted to have a really American feel, a really American vibe, which is, I feel like with the fiddle and the banjo that goes together really well. And my band Monte Perdido is still there.

You can find that on Spotify or wherever you listen to music. Monte Perdido. This is a band that I've been in for 25 years. We did our first album in 99. Another one in 2001. Our Spanish guitarist passed away in a free diving accident in 2014.

And then we did a kind of an album in honor of him near where he passed away in the Yucatan in Mexico about four years ago. And that was what released and that was the theme music

too under the shadow. So you can find that all online and thanks so much for bringing it up. Henry, I have about two or three other albums that I'm working on now and I will continue to release them out. If you want to find me, you can also find me

on Spotify or any of that stuff just search for Michael Fox my own personal album is called sunrise and it's kind of you know I do I basically use a looper and a bunch of pedals and my fiddle and kind of do my own uh do my own music like that so yeah absolutely I like Monte Prantino's music I've told you this before and I also mentioned off the record before that if you're ever in the in the need for a mediocre Russian based rhythm guitar player and singer uh you've got my number I love it I love it, Henry. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate it. Absolutely. So listeners, on that note, then, I'll just remind you that you can help support guerrilla history and allow us to continue making episodes by going to patreon.com forward slash

guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And on that note, then, and until next time, solidarity.