“There is no time in history where the people who were censoring speech were the good guys,” Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. told Breitbart News Sunday host Joel Pollak.
Pollak asked Kennedy about his championing of free speech over big tech censorship. The bestselling author, environmental lawyer, and child health advocate has experienced censorship firsthand. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many of Kennedy’s social media posts questioning the wisdom of the lockdowns were labeled “misinformation.”
In his presidential announcement speech last week, the candidate said, “I’m in a lawsuit involving Amazon for censoring one of my books. They were censoring people who criticized the lockdowns while they were raking in money from the lockdowns.”
“I’m wondering if you can make a pitch to our audience about a common cause that you, running as a Democrat, may have with many conservatives who feel that they’ve been canceled or otherwise censored or marginalized in public discourse,” Pollak asked.
“It’s more than a personal aggrievement. It’s really just a direct assault on our democracy,” Kennedy stated.
Kennedy explained that in crafting the Bill of Rights, America’s Founders “put the right to free expression in the First Amendment because all the other rights depended on it—because the government that has the power to silence its critics has license for any kind of atrocity.”
“They also understood just theoretically that the whole basis for democracy was the free flow of information,” he said, adding that democracy’s advantage over “tyrannical and monarchical” systems of government is that “through the free flow of information, the best policies can triumph in the marketplace of ideas.”
“We’re now in this situation where without free speech, democracy just withers and dies. Free speech is the fertilizer; it’s the sunlight; it’s the water for democracy,” he continued. “There is no time in history where the people who were censoring speech were the good guys. They’re always the bad guys because, of course, that is the first and last step of totalitarianism: silencing critics.”
Pollak noted that Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbart “used to say we always need more voices, not fewer voices. The answer to speech you don’t agree with is more speech, not less speech.”