Propaganda does not have to be false, but it does tend to be a little simplistic.
He was going to be the subject of an expedited review at the request of his department colleagues and he attached their letter to him.
None of them had talked to him directly. This is about 25 of his Department colleagues. He hadn't heard from any of them. They sent this letter to the Dean accusing him not only of telling his students not to wear masks in violation of university policy, and they said that a New York State law and there was no such law . . .
and I am not intimidated by students who were wearing masks in class, but we were online so nobody was wearing a mask. But they then jumped into the wild blue yonder by accusing him of explicit hate speech, attacks on students and others in their [school] community; advocating for an unsafe learning environment; assailing his students with non-evidence-based theories, which means conspiracy theories; and microaggressions and aggressions. So, this was like the censorship Trifecta.
I was a Covid heretic because I questioned masking.
I had sinned against Woke etiquette, right, and hate speech, and I can explain what they meant by that. And I was guilty of conspiracy theory. I mean this was really an amazing document.
The Dean went ahead and ordered the review, saying that he had no choice because the university's lawyers had told him he must, which is, I think, probably significant. Let's put that aside.
Meanwhile, I wrote back to my colleagues. I rebutted their letter point by point. I asked for a retraction and an apology. They ignored me. I sent a follow-up letter. I asked the same thing. I said by November 20, please retract this and apologize; there's not a word of truth to it. They ignored me, so I sued them for libel. And the libel suit is ongoing. And one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is I wanted to discuss the status of that suit.
What is the status?
Well, they got themselves a lawyer, and they filed a motion to dismiss. Ordinarily, judges rule on motions to dismiss right away, but the judge in this case waited a whole year. And when he finally ruled, he ruled that we had not proved actual malice, which kind of blew my lawyer's mind because it was abundantly obvious that there was malice here. So we had to appeal. We appealed. We appealed to the Intermediate Appellate Court. They got back to us a few months later. They agreed that there was actual malice, but, and this is what was really surprising, but really dangerous. They ruled that what my colleagues wrote about was pure opinion and therefore protected by the 1st Amendment.
So what you're saying isn't protected by the 1st Amendment, but when they falsely accuse you of doing something, that's protected by the 1st Amendment even though the things that you were saying have the science on your side and you were correct.
All I was doing was recommending that people read the science What's dangerous about this suit is that the decision has set a precedent, whereby anyone in the United States who is accused of libel, and point to this decision and say, "This is just my opinion." So you can say, I know for a fact that Jimmy Dore has sex with goats and he has child pornography on his computer. This is a fact. I know this," and then you sue me for libel, as you have every right to do, and I'll point to this case and I'll say, "Well, this is my opinion." And the court will say, well, yeah, there's a precedent for this, and so it is. So it means that the have-not, those who are weaker in the system, are now at a real serious disadvantage because if this decision stands it will be possible to dismiss any libelous suit on those spurious grounds. Now, we have appealed again. We have appealed to the Court of Appeals in Albany, which is the highest court in New York State, and we don't know yet if they're going to take it. If they don't take it, it's over. I will have lost. That decision will stand as a precedent, and my colleagues will have got away scot-free, although what they wrote about me meets the classic definition of defamation. They made claims that they claim were factual claims, but now they'll be able to say that this is just our opinion, our point of view.
Wow. That's quite a story. I've heard other stories like this from Dr. Jay Bhattachara and Dr. Khierarty. They were shocked to see their own colleagues turn their back on the value of protecting ideas through vigorous debate and freedom of speech, and they all turned their back on it and tried to cancel you, they canceled them. And they tried to get some people fired. Well, you're not allowed to teach that course anymore.
Well, that's right. I'm not allowed to teach the course on propaganda. I have friends and acquaintances throughout the hemisphere who've been fired for various, you know, for Covidian sins, sins against so-called social justice. This is a very, very . . . we're at a frightening place right now it seems to me. Free speech and academic freedom have never been more at risk. And all those Democratic essentials that concern free speech and open debate are now treated as crimes. I'm sure you've noticed that the media coverage of Robert F. Kennedy's campaign. My mind is blown by the shrillness and unanimity of the media, of our free press, the liberal media, and every single outlet out there, every single newspaper, every single magazine, every TV network, they're all saying the same things, which is a clear indication of propaganda. And it's all hysterically negative about Bobby Kennedy's inclination to question or complicate official narratives, whether it's on vaccination generally or the Covid vaccine or Ukraine, or school shootings, you name it because he departs from the permitted narrative, he is a thought criminal. He is a domestic terrorist. He certainly should not be allowed to debate with Joe Biden. You know, Peter Hotez, the fraud who is telling us all to get vaxx'd and boosted for 3 years, the guy, everything he's said has turned out to be dead wrong, he tweets a Vice article attacking Bobby and Joe Rogan. They invited him on to debate, and, of course, he weasels out, but the media is treating him as courageous, saying he should not debate him. He's a victim of harassment, no doubt, by white supremacists.
. . . and Russia.
But I can't believe, I'm in my early 70s, I've seen a lot of things. I never thought I would see the Western press across the board treat debate in a political campaign as a no-no. This is really reminiscent of the press under Dr. Goebbels. Now, having said that I can be accused of trivializing the Holocaust, I guess.
They did that to Bobby Kennedy. He said that about Anne Frank.
Right, right. He said that if Hitler had had the kind of sophisticated surveillance capabilities that they have now, she and her family would not have been able to hide out in the secret annex, right? He was immediately accused of trivializing the Holocaust, even of Holocaust denial. And he apologized, which I thought he shouldn't. I did a Substack post about it. It's not for me to say what he should do but the fact is that he did nothing wrong, said nothing wrong. God knows, he said nothing hateful or even incorrect. But we've come to the point where you really have to watch what you say and that is reminiscent of life under totalitarianism.
