The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it Resolved, Elon Musk’s Twitter is a real threat to democracy

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

Few people engender public debate like Elon Musk. When the world’s richest man purchased Twitter for a whopping $44 Billion, much of the media, the political establishment, and countless users, heralded that this marked the beginning of the end for one of the much beloved social media platforms. Musk’s detractors claim that handing over the platform akin to a mercurial sole proprietor has been a catastrophe from day one. Musk’s misguided maximal commitment to free speech is turning Twitter into a cesspool of hate, violent threats, and outright disinformation.  In short, Musk’s twitter is not just a nuisance, it is fast becoming a threat to our democracy. But others see Musk’s twitter takeover as a godsend.  Musk has proven himself an adept businessman and visionary, whose Midas touch can only make Twitter better.  They argue freedom of expression is a hallmark of democracy, and opening what people can express on Twitter is only going to make our democracy more vibrant and real.  For Musk’s supporters, democracy thrives when each individual is able to determine for themselves what and whom to believe, and a free exchange of ideas only encourages us to seek, to learn, to discuss, and to engage.    Arguing for the motion is Kyle Spencer, an award-winning journalist and author. Her most recent book is Raising them Right, the untold story of America's ultraconservative youth movement and its plot for power.   Arguing against the motion is Michael Tracey, an independent journalist with over a quarter million followers on twitter. Tracey’s writings in recent years have appeared in the New York Daily News, the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Beast, and the Nation. Speaker Quotes  KYLE SPENCER: “When Elon Musk announced that the bird is free upon taking control of Twitter, what he really meant was tyranny is alive and well”.   MICHAEL TRACY: “Twitter was no less monopolistic in that sense before October of 2022, just now the ownership has changed hands to someone who people feel is a bit of a bomb thrower, a bit of troll in his own right, or offends their political sensibilities”. The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.     Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/   To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].     To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/   Senior Producer: Jacob Lewis Editor: Adam Karch     Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

These statues have to come down. It's always been a pandemic of the unvaccinated. The problem now is it's a pandemic of the willfully unvaccinated. Falling birth rates are good. They're good for our planet. They're good for our societies. We're not responsible for the escalation with Russia. We're not the ones who invaded Ukraine.

I don't think it's fair to portray people of color as victims. It is a very dangerous time in American politics. Welcome to the Monk Debates. Every episode we provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issue of the day to arm you, the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved, Elon Musk's Twitter, is a threat to our democracy. Twitter has agreed to sell itself to Elon Musk, the flamboyant, controversial CEO of Tesla and Space X, for about $44 billion.

After revolutionizing the space race and electric cars, the world's, the world's richest man is now promising a Twitter makeover. Elon Musk said today he's buying San Francisco-based Twitter to, quote, help humanity. The board of Twitter is set to meet in a couple of hours to hold a discussion on Elon Musk's takeover bid. Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffith. Well, few people engender public debate like Elon Musk. When the world's richest man purchased Twitter for a whopping $44 billion earlier,

this year, much of the media, the political establishment and countless users heralded the beginning of the end of one of the most beloved social media platforms. Musk's misguided maximal commitment to free speeches turning Twitter into a cesspool of hate, violent threats, and outright disinformation. In short, Elon Musk's Twitter is not just a nuisance. It's fast becoming a threat to our democracy. Donald Trump's Twitter account restored tonight. Nearly two years after the former president was suspended due to the risk of further incitement of violence in the wake of the January 6th attack. But others see Musk's Twitter take over as a godsend. Elon Musk has proved himself time and time again as an adept

businessman and visionary, whose might as touch could conceivably make Twitter into an even better social media platform. They argue freedom of expression is a home. mark of our democracy and opening up what people can express on Twitter is only going to make our democracy more vibrant and real. For must supporters, democracy thrives when all of us are able to determine for ourselves what in whom we believe and a free exchange of ideas only encourages all of us to seek to learn to discuss and to engage with one another. On this installment of the Monk debates we go deep into Elon Musk's Twitter by debating the motion, be it resolved. Elon Musk's Twitter is a threat to our democracy. Arguing for the motion is Kyle Spencer, an award-winning

journalist and author. Her most recent book is Raising Them Right, the Untold Story of America's Ultra-Conservative Youth Movement and its plot for power. Arguing against the motion is Michael Tracy, an independent journalist with over a quarter of a million followers on Twitter. Tracy's writings in recent years have appeared everywhere from the New York Daily News, the Wall Street Journal, The Daily Beast, and the Nation. Kyle, Michael, welcome to the Monk debates. Thank you. It's great to be here. Great to be with you. I'm looking forward to today's debate. It certainly is a topical one. The resolution before the House, so to speak, be it resolved, Elon Musk, Twitter is a threat to our democracy. Kyle, you're speaking in favor of the motion,

so I'm going to put two minutes on the show clock and turn the program over to you. When Elon Musk announced that the bird is free upon taking control of Twitter, what he really meant was tyranny is alive and well, and democracy in a site is an idea that has expired. Power in the hands of few is a danger to democracy. Power in the hands of one is a disaster. Elon Musk, buying Twitter, is a threat to our democratic ideals and our democracy as a whole. Twitter is a town square of sorts where political players express their views,

journalists report and analyze them, and group think and tribal clashes are encouraged. Musk is a billionaire technocrat who operates like a bad faith actor on a platform, which is essentially the place where a American democracy now plays out. If Musk were a 1970s character in a sci-fi film, his mockery of civility, his cavalier attitude about truth, and his encouraging of his many followers to do what he did recently, which before a major American election, which was to vote for Republicans, one particular party, might be funny. And his free speech, absolutism, might be engaging. But he is not a sci-fi character. He is the owner of the most important platform in which Americans now express themselves.

As a corporatist who operates with the financial resources of a political state, he is a danger to our democracy. Thank you, Kyle, for that opening statement. I appreciate you landing it within our two-minute parameter there. Great way to start out this debate. So, Michael, we're going to have you up on deck now. You're arguing against our motion today, be it resolved, Elon Musk's Twitter is a threat to our democracy. So the same opportunity for you, two minutes of opening remarks. Take us away. The first thing I would ask listeners to consider is what exactly is being referred to when these claims are made that tyranny has been unleashed by the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk. What at bottom is actually being alleged constitutes this supposed tyranny?

Here's what I'll propose is actually being alleged is this tyrannical menace. It's that with Elon Musk taking control of Twitter, there will be marginally fewer restrictions imposed. on the proliferation of speech on the Internet. And there are influential cross-sections of the media, of the political world, of other tastes-making classes who view the reduction in the ability of their political and cultural peers

to regulate speech on the Internet as a seismic existential threat. In 2015, the Twitter policy on so-called abusive behavior was under 300 words. You can go and check the policy now. Musk has retained the policy that existed prior to him buying the company. The policy on abusive behavior on Twitter has ballooned to over 1,100 words. And I have to tell you, many of those words are pure jargon. They're pure, sorry to say, gibberish. They're all predicated on this notion that Twitter has

to be in the business of, quote, making sure that voices aren't silenced. They're importing this therapeutic jargon rhetoric into the operating philosophy of Twitter, because that was demanded of them by media organs, by foundation-funded activist groups, by politicians who made out online harm or online violence to be the great scourge of our age. Kyle, your opportunity to react to Michael's opening statement. I'll do the same as we did off the top and put two minutes on the show clock for you now. I would argue that free speech absolutism allows for hate speech and untruths and both hate speech and falsities online in the venue that is now our town square are a threat to democracy. Hate speech is in fact speech that silences, and it is true that Americans are very concerned about the silencing of speech. Free speech, hate speech, which permits people to essentially mock and rage on minority populations, marginalized populations, is a way to silence them.

and if we are in the Democratic town square, and if we believe, as the founding fathers did, and that those during the Enlightenment believed that democracy is predicated on a civic community voicing their opinion, any type of marginalizing speech is anti-democratic. Further, when we understand democracy as a living entity, as something that requires participation and requires rational thought and decisions and conversations made through rational thought, falsities spread online, preclude rational thinking and rational decision making. So if Elon Musk is not committed to banning hate speech and to making sure that what is said on that platform is indeed truth as they are understood, if you're looking at a space that is

threatened. Thank you, Kyle. Okay, same opportunity for you, Michael. You can react to Kyle's opening statement or what you've just heard now. First of all, these apocalyptic proclamations are ironic because as far as I'm aware, please correct me if I'm wrong. Musk has not formally altered any of the pre-existing policies of Twitter on issues like hate speech, at least as of yet, at least in terms of what's been promulgated. So if democracy is in a tailspin, then the tail is spinning even with the pre-Musk Twitter policy still in effect. When you're talking about tyranny, or when one talks about tyranny, it sounds a bit hyperbolic to me either way. But if tyranny is going to be applicable to anything that's been raised thus far in this exchange,

it would have to be this idea that anyone, any entity, any group of people or individual persons ought to be endowed with the unilateral authority to decree what constitutes, quote, untruth, as Kyle put it, on the internet. Who annoys a tech official sitting somewhere in San Francisco as the arbitrator of what is true or what is false? That is far more a pure distillation of potential, quote, tyranny than claiming it's tyranny. for speech to be allowed to slightly more freely proliferate on the Internet. Now, I think talk of danger to democracy and so forth tends to be overblown whatever the context. But recall, the prior regimen at Twitter before Musk took over unilaterally banned the sitting democratically elected president of the United States. Now, I'm not a particular fan of Trump.

That's not the point. Remember, everybody from Angela Merkel to Lopez-Abrador, the president of Mexico, to even Alexi Navalny, the opposition leader in Russia, condemned that action by Twitter to ban Trump on the ground that it was incredibly stifling of just basic tenets of free expression. So if we're going to get into this highfalutin talk about what Twitter policies enshrine democracy in which Twitter policies undermine them, I think there's a very strong case to be made that the policies in place before Must took over were a far greater threat in that regard.

Thank you, Michael, for that rebuttal. Okay, you are listening to our debate today, be it resolved. Elon Musk's Twitter is a threat to our democracy. I'm Roger Griffith, your moderator. My opportunity now to join this conversation, kind of think up some questions that are top of mind for our listeners. And Kyle, let me come to you first on, I guess, a sentiment that's out there that Twitter was making decisions as a corporation, not as a public institution, not at any way connected to any regulatory body of government directly. In other words, Twitter itself is outside our democracy. So how can it be a threat now? under Elon Musk's tutelage in a way say that it wasn't before. I mean, what materially or substantively

has changed for this organization pre-Musk to now? Or do you think Twitter always was a threat to our democracy? So I think that when you have these technocrats owning and controlling platforms that are basically monopolies, we have a problem. It doesn't matter whether, to some extent, whether it's Elon Musk or Jack Dorsey or Zuckerborg, right? It's a problem. But I think it becomes a bigger problem when you have someone like Elon Musk who shows a kind of flagrant disregard for the democratic ideals that this country stands for. So I'd say that Elon Musk does not live in a vacuum, right? Having these large Silicon Valley oligarchs owning things and controlling and operating with more power and more financial will than countries in the world. This is a problem. But Elon Musk poses a particular problem because he seems very little interested in some of the democratic norms that we hold dear.

We're not philosophically living in some world in which we cannot know knowable truths. We can. And so here's a guy that basically tells people who is supposed to be moderating a platform that he owns who they should go vote for and tells them that they ought to go vote for a party for candidates of a party that don't uphold the fact that we have electoral integrity in this country and who also believe falsities, conspiracy theories, and intend to spread them. So this guy is a serious threat, and we cannot pretend that this is just some loan operator who has some owned some entity that people communicate on. This is a town square, and we all know it. Okay, Michael, let me come to you on this point now. We've just heard from Kyle, an argument here

that this platform is important. It's part of our town square. It's part of how we hold powerful institutions and people to account. We know that Elon Musk has significantly cut the workforce at Twitter. He slashed the number of moderators that are analyzing and assessing content. Why isn't that creating more misinformation, more disinformation in our public discourse? And why isn't that a threat to our democracy? Well, it's true that Twitter is a massively,

influential platform, hence the incredibly overwrought reaction to Musk taking it over by people in the media and in the political domain who view Musk as some sort of antagonist or somebody who's hostile to their interests. And I think actually Kyle did a very good job distilling the essence of the complaint, which really boils down to in her telling a partisan complaint. she doesn't like that Elon Musk endorsed Republicans ahead of the midterm elections. I didn't vote for Republicans in the midterm elections. I wouldn't have endorsed them. But am I going to extrapolate from a billionaire who supports Republicans?

That means, therefore, that he has this deep-seated sinister intention to collapse democracy. No, that's catastrophizing the... meaning of that fairly anodyne statement. Again, I would personally not agree with it, but I'm not going to take it to this five-alarm fire level of declaring that it means something far more drastic than it really seems to. I agree in theory that it ought to at least be entertained, that given that Twitter does function as something of a public utility that maybe a different ownership structure would be ideal, but it's not as though pre-must. It was this, you know, democratically distributed ownership regulatory schema that satisfied these high democratic ideals.

It just got transferred to a different rich guy and taken off the stock market. Hey, Monk podcast listeners, I wanted to let you know about our other weekly audio program. It's called Friday Focus. And hey, guess what? It comes out each and every Friday. It's half an hour long. and it provides you with a masterclass on international events, all the big issues and ideas shaping our world.

We've got that for you each and every Friday here at the Monk Debates. Simply access via our website, triplew monkdebates.com. Click on Friday Focus in the top right navigation. You'll get all the details or check out a sample of the program in the same podcast feed as the main monk debates podcast. I hope you'll join us for the next edition of the Friday Focus podcast. Now back to our program. Kyle, I think you know the argument.

It goes, you know, something like this, that the kind of content that was being, in a sense, D platform through moderation up until the purchase of Elon Musk of Twitter was more likely to be content and voices to the right of the place. political spectrum. Would you deny that? And if if you don't deny that, then why isn't it a boon for democracy now that Musk is there and you're, you're going to have a broader range of views express. Some, yes, that might be very oppositional to beliefs that many people hold. But nonetheless, these are beliefs that are in society and, you know, therefore Twitter is a reflection of that society as it stands today?

First of all, I would argue with that premise, and that's a premise and an argument that right-wing activists make falsely a kind of victimization of their use of Twitter. You have people like Charlie Kirk, Candice Owens, Ben Shapiro, Mike Cernovich, who have millions and millions of followers. These are people whose tweets frequently go viral. I would also argue that study after study... after study has shown that hate spreads on Twitter faster and goes viral more quickly than tweets of other kinds. So this falsity that somehow the Twitter of the past silenced the far right

is ludicrous. Furthermore, I would argue that what we saw with the insurrection, the January 6th insurrection, was that leading up to that insurrection hate speech skyrocketed. So it is just a false and disingenuous claim that the right wing in this country has not been able to voice itself on Twitter. And I would further argue that beliefs of racist beliefs, anti-Semitic beliefs, fascist beliefs are not beliefs that we want spread it in a democracy. Now, you can speak hypothetically about free speech, but we also understand that in places where those views have spread and have proliferated, what has led, what has followed is violence and often violence against particular groups of people. So no, do not think it's a good idea to spread

hate speech. I do not think it furthers democracy. And I do not think that those types of thoughts and those types of words were not, were somehow silenced under other Twitter owners. Thank you for that, Kyle. Okay, Michael, let's come back to you and get at the root of it, sense, Kyle's argument there, which is, you know, that that classic image of the person getting up in the crowded theater and yelling fire. I mean, isn't that now a greater likelihood? More the reality of Twitter today under Elon Musk's kind of hands-off regime when it comes to moderation, his more maximalist views about free speech. And Michael, isn't not hard to deny that in many cases, speech can and will lead to violence. And that violence is most often perpetrated

against some of the most vulnerable groups in our society. So if there ever was a threat to democracy, isn't that it? This idea that it's bad for fascist beliefs, so called, to percolate in a democracy. therefore raw censorship power ought to be deployed to stamp out those fascist beliefs is kind of ironic because if one were so inclined one might make the case that that's exactly what a fascist who wielded power would want you to do right to expurgate political speech that the fascist deems to be contrary to their interests or to be somehow intolerable so there's a bit of ironic authoritarianism streaking through some of these complaints

that supposedly Musk is himself this crazed tyrant. You know, in terms of the far right, not having been silenced on Twitter, yes, people who are on the right have been able to make great use of Twitter over the years. However, it seems fairly indisputable from an empirical standpoint that of the prominent figures

who have been purged, from the platform over the past, say, six or so years, they have been on the right. Now, that's not to say exclusively right-wing accounts have been banned. You could find scattered examples of the left-wing accounts having been either banned or downgraded it algorithmically, especially to do with foreign accounts that's associated with like Venezuela and so forth. You can find counter examples. but in the main, it's reasonable to say it's been concentrated among right-wing accounts.

And remember, people who use Twitter are adults. They freely choose to use the platform. They can just as freely choose to not use the platform. And yet you have this constant lobbying, this constant pleading with Twitter to institute these sort of quasi-parental strictures so that adults are not exposed to content that they might find disturbing or might claim causes harm to them. Twitter is basically taking on the role of some kind of overarching corporate therapists. Who's to say what kind of speech can cause emotional hardship?

That's the most malleable concept I've ever heard. There's no way to precisely narrow that down to a set of objective criteria that can dictate what sorts of speech are allowable and what are it. Let's, in our remaining moments, just talk a little bit about billionaires and ownership, because for many people, that is somehow connected. It's part of our debate today that Elon Musk's Twitter is a threat to our democracy. Kyle, we've had many billionaires in the past, or the equivalent of billionaires from the past, William Randolph Hearst, you could think.

Other people who had disproportionate economic power in society, you think Jeff Bezos owning the Washington Post. That's kind of been par for the question. course for 20th century democracy, maybe a lot of 19th century democracy too. So what's different this time, I guess, is what I'm getting at. Why do you think Musk is a particular threat in this regard and that our democracy has not only survived, but thrived under a lot of billionaire patronage of the news media? So first of all, I would say that this problem with a corporation's holding increasing power in this country and being increasingly engaged in civic roles

is a problem and does not exist in a vacuum. It's been a problem for a while. And it seems to be becoming a bigger and bigger problem where you have the kind of increased income inequality that we have in this country. And you have people like some of these tech giants like Elon Musk who are making the amounts of money that they're making.

So a problem, yes, a bigger problem because we're talking about more money and more power in the hands. hands of fewer people. Further, I would argue that when we talk about newspapers, because that's often the argument one will make, well, what about newspapers? What about all these other people, these wealthy people who own newspapers? Well, first of all, Twitter operates like a monopoly, and that's the problem that you have with these social media platforms. There really is no sort of demonopalizing mechanism that exists at this point because these outfits are relatively young. I think hopefully

we'll get to that at some point, but so far the government has not. provided the ability to create competing platforms so that those who don't want to use Twitter as their town square can use another town square or can have other options and make choices. So at this point, if you want to have a civic debate, you're going to have it on Twitter or you're not going to have it. So that's the second thing. The third thing is that newspapers have traditionally been held back by these kinds of libel laws, right? there are certain laws that make it such that newspapers are generally in the,

it is in their best interest to make sure that truth is held up and that untruth, non-truth, falseities, hate is not spread in their mediums because they are liable themselves. They can be sued. And as we know, our media, our federal media laws at this point do not hold any of these owners of these platforms responsible for libel that happens on their platforms. And this is a huge problem. So I would say for all of those reasons, we're looking at a scenario right now. There's a lot more dangerous to democracy than what we've seen in the past and what we see with newspapers. So, Michael, let's have you weigh in on this. I mean, is it any coincidence that Twitter was

bought by the richest man in the world? And I guess people have to worry a little bit the rest of us, the lumpen proletariat, about what it means when the richest man in the world controls, like it or not, one of the big social media platforms. So what extent does that platform actually express what's real about democracy? Why doesn't it express instead what the interests are of this person who enjoys the privileges of their capital, the uniqueness of their power within the economy to, shape not only that economy, but to shape public opinion. Why aren't, why aren't, why shouldn't we be very suspicious of Elon Musk's ultimate motives when it comes to Twitter? Well, it's perfectly reasonable

to be skeptical of Elon Musk and to scrutinize his motives. He is, as you say, an incredibly powerful person. He's the richest man on earth. That alone not just justifies, but necessitates a huge amount. of wariness about his designs. But if the reason for having those skeptical inclinations about Musk is related to this notion of tech companies or the companies that sort of preside over the public square being excessively concentrated in the hands of a few and that a small number of people are able to wield vastly disproportionate influence over managing this public square.

Well, that would have been the state of affairs before Musk took Twitter over, right? Twitter was no less monopolistic in that sense before October of 2022. It's just now the ownership has changed hands to someone who people feel is a bit of a bomb thrower, a bit of a troll in his own right. or offends their political sensibilities, has something to do with the sort of intrinsic nature of how Twitter is governed because not much has really changed in that regard from the standpoint of an anti-monopoulist who would like to democratize ownership of some of these tech corporations

or other sorts of corporations. But if you generally are concerned about the over-concentration of power in the hands of a few, in this regard. The last thing you should want is for speech regulations to be unilaterally imposed and for subjective determinations about the propriety of speech to be unilaterally made by these very same officials. The irony of what Kyle and others of her sort of cohort have been advocating is they are trying to endow these tech officials with more and more power. They want a ballooning bureaucracy undergirding these tech officials whereby these sort of untransparent decisions can be made about extremely fundamental issues relating to the nature

of political debate in the United States. You can argue that the market will take care of itself, right? Which, of course, is a favorite libertarian ideal. But the idea that we are going to look to big business in the United States to preserve our civic life and our democracy is really counter to the whole idea of what democracy is all about, which is that the people have control, right? The people self-control. So I would say that is a very scary idea that we're going to look to big business to do that. And we know that big business has not saved us. Economic inequality leads us further and further away from democracy. The insurrection,

January 6th insurrection leaves us further and further away from democracy. Big business could not save us from those things. We had a president who does not believe in democracy. Big Business could not prevent us from getting that president. We also had big business that tried in Florida to protect LGBTQ rights, remember the scenario with Disney, and government pushed back on that. So I think this idea that big business is going to be the answer to save.

our democracy is a bad bet. And I would argue that we need a lot better markers and a lot better protections than just big business to save us. Okay, let's move to closing statements in our debate today. Be it resolved, Elon Musk's Twitter is a threat to our democracy. Michael, you're up first. You've been arguing against the motion. So let's have your wrap up for us. Two minutes on the clock. So the core grievance here, as Kyle has ably elucidated over and over the course of this conversation, is that it's tyrannical or fascistic for Musk to vaguely allude to the idea that with him at the helm of Twitter, speech will be marginally less restricted. There will be marginally fewer constraints imposed on the proliferation of speech.

That's what we're told is tyranny. That's what we're told is fascism. Now, I would think most conventional understandings of what tyranny means, it would be the opposite, meaning Musk would be determined to ruthlessly impose his own standards and expectations as to what sorts of speech are permissible. but that's not at least ostensibly what he's doing. Now, skepticism ought to be applied to Musk. That's a given.

But at least based on what he's claimed about his intent, his idea is to roll back some of these grandiose interventions that the predecessor regime at Twitter had brought about. There's no guarantee that Musk will introduce a perfectly neutral content moderation regime. but if he does the bare minimum of what he says he's going to do and modestly rescind some of these ludicrous and eminently unenforceable policy imposition then that'll be at least a marginal advance

in protecting and cultivating the kind of democratic, free, uninhibited discourse that people like Kyle seem to claim that they favor, but in practice, what they want is a far more stringent and controlled and tightly regulated paradigm of political speech, which is the real gateway to some sort of, quote-unquote, tyranny. Thank you, Michael, for that closing statement. You're listening to our debate. Be it resolved. Elon Musk's Twitter is a threat to our democracy. Kyle's been arguing in favor of the motion, and we're going to give her the last word in today's debate.

The idea that anti-Semitic speech, racist speech, violence speech does not lead to tyranny is simply untrue. And we know this now, and we know historically that that is untrue. So it would serve then to be a truth that we ought to keep anti-Semitic, racist, and violence speech off of platforms where people are discussing matters of public debate. my opponent suggests that protecting marginalized people in the civic town square is a grandiose idea and that it is also ludicrous to try to do that. I would argue that that is not a democratic viewpoint. I would also argue that my opponent would like to suggest to me that believing in democracy and supporting democracy is actually a partisan position. And he's right. It is a partisan position because right now we live in a country

in which there is the only one party, the Democratic Party, that supports our democracy. And the other party, the Republican Party, is currently undermining our democracy with false facts about electoral integrity and with misinformation and conspiracy theories. So if we have a person who is at the helm of our town square who supports a party and political officials and people who in fact do not believe in democracy, then we have a threat to our democracy. Thank you, Kyle. And thank you, Michael.

While Twitter might be a place of some in civility and discord, today we've had just the debate I was hoping for, substantive, on point. I think we explored so many of the key issues and ideas that have surrounded in recent weeks. Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, I just want to thank both of you on behalf of the Monk Debates community for coming on the program today. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants, Kyle Spencer and Michael Tracy. If you have any feedback or reflections on what you've just heard, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. That's MUNK, Debateswithan S.com.

Also, a reminder that our monk members-only podcast is yours free to listen to any time as a perk of our complimentary membership. You can grab yours right now at triple-w, monkdebates.com. To listen to more debates on everything from climate change to religion to geo-politics to the future of human progress, visit our website, triple-w monkdebates.com. Thank you for lending your time and attention to our efforts to bring back the art of public debate, one conversation at a time. I'm your host and moderator, Rudyard-Girfis. The Monk Debates are a project of the Aurea and Peter and Melanie Monk charitable foundations.

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