Hey everybody, today we're debating, de-platform or debate, and we're starting right now. With Demon Mama's opening statement thrilled to have you here, Demon Mama, the floor is all yours. Hello everyone, my name is Demon Mama, I'm a political edutainer here on YouTube, and I do a lot of debate. So I'm here today to discuss de-platforming and debate as tactics for challenging bad and potentially harmful ideas and positions. So first I think I will start by defining de-platforming. De-platforming by my measure is a cooperative social act of protest that involves boycotting or bringing attention to violations of the terms of service of various media platforms such that that platform can enforce their TOS appropriately against the violator of that TOS. I want to make sure that we don't go into this conversation confusing de-platforming with government censorship or the censorship of art or crackdowns on journalism because these are not the same thing. And while there are many, many tactics that could be considered de-platforming, some of them more extreme, some of them more mild, it would be in my opinion foolish of us to disregard the value of de-platforming as a broad tactic. De-platforming is an incredibly common social phenomenon which allows for society or social groups to potentially solve issues with hateful or truly dangerous ideas without involving the government or any government entities. It has been practiced for most of human history, from people refusing to attend speeches to people outright protesting those speeches. And in and of itself, it can be considered a act of freedom of speech in its own right. While some figures in modern politics have decried de-platforming as some sort of horrible tactic of fascists or whatever, in truth it is nothing more than one tactic in a large societal toolbox in which we counter various ideas. I think it would be foolish of us to disregard de-platforming as valuable and I've brought quite a lot of interesting information for us to discuss as a part of that broader conversation. So thank you very much for having me here today and I'm looking forward to discussion this back and forth. James and with you, Tom. Absolutely. Thanks so much, team and mama, for that opening statement. And want to let you know, folks, if it's your first time here at Modern Day Debate, we are a neutral platform hosting debates on science, religion and politics. And folks, want to let you know we have many more juicy debates coming up, including the one that you see on the bottom right of your screen with Vosh and T-Jump next week, as that's going to be an epic one. And so hit that subscribe button if you haven't already, as well as that notification bell so you don't miss it. And with that, we're going to kick it over to Tom for his opening statement. The floor is all yours, Tom. Thanks James for hosting us. Thanks, team and mama for showing up. I appreciate the conversation. So my position on de-platformer debate is that you should pretty much always debate. De-platforming is really not a useful idea. You don't have the right to determine what other human adults have the right to listen to. Secondly, they could be right. The people you do platforming could be right. Just de-platforming them because you disagree and you think they shouldn't have a platform is obviously wrong because they could just use the same tactic against you. If they're the ones who have the platform, they can just say, oh, no, well, we don't like what you're saying. So we're just going to ban you so you can't say it. And obviously that's wrong, seeing how what would happen if it was applied to your own ideology shows why the same tactic can be used to restrain true ideas just because you don't like them. Like that's what China does, China de-platforms anybody who doesn't say exactly what they want to say or what they want to hear. So clearly de-platforming can be abused in many cases.  And clearly that's wrong. You don't have a right to infringe on someone else's freedom to listen to a speaker they want to listen to. You don't have the right to stop that speaker in a platform that you didn't pay for that isn't yours just because you don't agree with what they're having, what they have to say. That's clearly something that's wrong. Secondly, de-platforming doesn't solve any issues. It doesn't accomplish anything. Now debate doesn't really move a lot of people like as a professional debater I know you don't really convince a large population of what you're actually saying. It's usually in the single digits at best. But when people do come to your ideology like Jordan Peterson being a huge movement, it wasn't that his arguments won people over as much as they already had this ideology or the similar values invested in who they were as people. And then they had some figurehead in order to associate these values with so the beliefs essentially were already in the people or the right the same values that they had. So de-platforming Jordan Peterson wouldn't have stopped those people from believing the things they already believed. All they would do is just get rid of their figurehead, the thing that they can associate those values with. And the same is true of any kind of platform or debate topic. Really, the speaker isn't convincing all these people. They're just giving someone or the providing someone to which they can identify the same values to their audience. And the reason this is important is because when you see this in society, you can recognize that those values are there. Like these people have these values. And this is something we need to address, whether it's good or bad. And if you just de-platform the person, you would never know this. You wouldn't have the same information and demographics on who has these positions, why they have these positions. You wouldn't have the opportunity to engage with these people, to learn how to motivate them. And debating them is a great opportunity to do this because you can learn what the most powerful arguments on their side are that are convincing the vast majority of people or that they do identify with. And then you can learn how to counter them. One of the biggest threats in de-platforming is that, well, the opponents could be right. They could actually have a good point that is counter to whatever your ideology is. And you're just dismissing it, brushing it out of the rug, when in fact you should be addressing it. Because when you do address the positions of the other side, it makes your ideology better. That's the benefit of debates. To quote the fundamentals of chess, 1883, the only way to get smarter is by playing a smarter opponent. And so if someone you disagree with and you think is wrong is getting a large following because their arguments are very compelling to people, you shouldn't de-platform them because you disagree. You should be addressing what they're saying and make more compelling arguments and learn from what they're doing. And I think that this idea of just discarding anyone who we disagree with is clearly fundamentally wrong and immoral, especially because you're deciding what other human adults should be allowed to listen to, which is clearly not okay. And I'll conclude there. Thank you very much, Tom, for that opening statement. Want to let you know several things, folks. First, our guests are linked in the description, so we encourage you to check out those links. And that includes if you are listening via the Modern Databate podcast, as we're thrilled to be available on podcast now. All of our debates are both on YouTube and there. Also, want to encourage you folks, want you to attack the arguments, not the person. And so 99% of you do a great job of this.  And also, though, folks, really want to do let you know about this as well. In particular, that's actually it. All right, thanks so much. We'll go into the open dialogue. Want to let you know both Tom and Demon Mama, if it gets too rowdy, we will break it into three-minute intervals as people really do want to hear what you have to say. And so that way we can interrupt, or I should say prevent any interrupting, and that way the people do get to actually hear you. So thanks so much and the floor is all yours. Yeah, there's a lot of things I could respond to here. There were a couple of points brought up that I sort of, I feel like I already addressed. I don't think that this discussion is relevant to state censorship, like we discussed in China, that in my opinion is not an example of deplatforming. That is an example of state and government censorship. In addition, deplatforming is, it's not as simple as just being like, well, just respond to whatever bad thing someone is saying. For example, to give an extreme but illustrative example of this, anti-Nazi people were not given a platform to respond to Nazis during Nazi Germany. There is problems with the idea that all people are given an equal platform. Many times the reason why deplatforming is taken as a tactic or is undertaken as a tactic or an attempted deplatforming is taken as a tactic is simply because there is an imbalance in who is actually getting an opportunity to speak. In addition, there are examples of times where people are not being honest or are not even remotely approaching an issue with any sense of honesty. A great example of this is cult recruiters. This is a bit of an anecdote side note, but just so you know where I'm coming from on this, I grew up in a cult. So I'm very, very familiar with how cults operate with how they recruit people. And one of the things that cult recruiters will do is they will get themselves in front of the largest audience possible, not because they expect to win any debates or convince anyone's minds, but because they're hoping to find people in the audience who are vulnerable to their message that they can rope in to their cult. And people like this, I think it is important the type of messages that they're creating are not easily contested in something like debate and need to sometimes be called out by other tactics such as de-platforming. An example of this, like what I would think is a valid example of de-platforming would be say a large YouTuber was regularly putting out very, very racist, insightful rhetoric, which is already in violation of YouTube's TOS. And people decided we've had enough of this, we are going to report this person for violating the TOS. And then YouTube discovers, indeed they were violating the TOS and removes their platform from them. That is a valid example in my opinion of de-platforming that I think we can agree both falls in line with the existing TOS of the website, but also I would hope with people's general moral understanding of things. Now, there are some people who allege that there is massive examples or there were examples of bias or whatever, but we would have to talk about specifics in order to get into that because I think that there's bias all the time. There is bias on all platforms without question, obviously, but that doesn't mean that de-platforming is any less valid. De-platforming doesn't necessarily have anything to do with contesting truth or avoiding truth or even disagreeing with ideas that you don't like. It has more to do with saying, hey, this person is, and this is usually the case with regard to de-platforming is usually putting out a message that acts as a call to action for people. Like you said, a figurehead who is looking to motivate the people in the audience to some sort of end. De-platforming is most commonly used to contest, well, frankly, a lot of Nazis, people who go up and are hoping to rile up a crowd into some sort of act of violence. Now, I'm very, very big on free speech. I think free speech is incredibly important as a foundation of any democracy, but no person on the planet is a free speech absolutist or even like a purist. There was not one. No one believes that anything should be able to be said without any repercussions whatsoever. This goes as far as America, which is a particularly strong place for free speech. We have laws that prevent you from shouting fire in a crowded theater or something along those lines. And there are all kinds of different examples. I just want to give you heads up that we probably have to kind of kick more into dialogue mode as we're going on about four minutes, unless you guys want to do like legitimate rebuttals where we have each of you go for like five or something minutes, but otherwise, just want to let you know. Yeah, I mostly wanted to address those things. If you have something you want to contest, feel free to pop in. Yeah, because most of that is completely irrelevant. So like none of that really mattered. So violating TOS isn't de-platforming, you violated the TOS. De-platforming is false flaggings of violating the TOS of using vague language to de-platform someone who's done nothing wrong, which happens all the time. That's really the main... No, that's not what that means. You can't just... Yes, yes it is. Hold on a second. Hold on one second. Okay, hey, both of you, both of you stop right now. Tom, so I do want to, to be fair, to give Tom like the same amount of time. So that was about four minutes. And so let's give Tom about another three minutes and 50 seconds or so. And then I promise we'll kind of go into maybe three minute or two minute intervals.  That's not a de-platforming. De-platforming is like what happens to Ben Shapiro when he's talking to people saying literally nothing illegal and people get him banned or kicked off campus because they disagree with what he's saying. Those are examples of de-platforming.  They weren't given a platform. That's also de-platforming. This is not just simply a social tool. This is a tool that many different groups of people use to prevent an ideology. And it's predominantly been used by governments to kill religious people mostly and atheists. So yes, de-platforming does apply to governments and it's not about violating TOS. I don't care about the TOS.  Violating illegal, kicking the legal people who've done illegal things off perfectly fine, I'm okay with that. If you violated a terms of service, that's an actual clear term of service in a platform. Yes, that's perfectly fine. Using vague language to kick people off who you disagree with, not fine. So obviously I wouldn't agree with not de-platforming literal Nazis who literally wanna kill people. Like clearly that's perfectly fine. De-platforming while you want. If they're it's illegal, de-platforming. But it's not okay to de-platform people like Ben Shapiro or kick them out of college campuses because you disagree with what they're saying or to scream over them or to take the stage with the microphone and yell so people can't hear them speak. Those are bad examples of de-platforming. Are they social tools? Yes, are they right? No, they're clearly wrong. It's wrong to do those things. Okay, so you've said a couple of contradictory things in your response here. You've said simultaneously that someone being rightfully banned off of a platform in your mind is not an example of de-platforming. But then you also said that it is an example of de-platforming. You've literally just contradicted yourself. So it seems to me you contradicted yourself. No, no, no. So I stated that violating a clear term of service is fine. You can kick someone off of that. Violating vague term of service, not in the same way. No, I'd say that's perfectly fine. So I would say de-platforming.  I wanna be clear that I'm making sure that I'm responding to your argument. So in your opinion, de-platforming is solely defined as when you, as when somebody does something that you don't like that results in somebody getting off a platform. You wouldn't say that somebody, so in this previous conversation, you have defined de-platforming. You just said right now that you don't consider somebody being rightfully banned from the platform an example of de-platforming. So what you're defining as de-platforming is basically anything bad. How am I supposed to be able to argue with you if you did? I mean, you just did. You literally just did. So I literally said my definition of de-platforming is when you use vague language to ban someone who's done nothing wrong. Okay, so let me just ask this again one more time. I just wanna be clear. Do you think that someone who has said all kinds of racist TOS violating things being reported accurately and being removed is an example of de-platforming? No. Or is it only when, so you've defined, this is what I was saying, you define de-platforming by default as bad, as a bad thing that happens. How are you supposed to have a discussion, a meaningful discussion if you define de-platforming as when people do something I don't like to get rid of somebody? I think that my position and my definition of de-platforming is much more accurate. Yeah, so I never said that. So I didn't say that at all. You just tried. Okay. I'm running into.  Sorry, I'm just running into some basic communication issues here with how we go forward. I don't know how you can simultaneously say that someone being removed from a platform for, after being reported right correctly for violating TOS isn't de-platforming, but someone being removed because of something in TOS that you don't like is de-platforming. That sounds to me like you've defined de-platforming as when something that you don't like happens and that doesn't seem like a coherent definition of de-platforming to me. To me, it is much more rational and meaningful and you can actually have a conversation about de-platforming if you recognize that it is actually a set of actions. There's a broad set of actions. And I would agree that yes, there are examples of de-platforming being unjust perhaps or based off of vague TOS, but like de-platforming has many forms. You can't just define de-platforming as when something I don't like happens. That's not a coherent definition. That is what you're saying. You are saying that. You've just asked you three times. Like government have de-platformed people. That's bad. Definitely that's bad. And you can de-platform Nazis who advocate violence. That's perfectly fine. I'm okay with that. But when I'm talking about the bad kind of de-platforming. You're doing it again. You're doing it again. Is somebody getting banned off of a platform rightfully? Is that an example of de-platforming or not? Sure, in the most general sense and not the kind of arguing against. Okay, so now we've figured out where it is. You are not actually against de-platforming. You actually support de-platforming when it's just and you don't support it when it's unjust. So now we can actually change sort of now that we've established the basics and you're no longer contradicting yourself. We can proceed to talk about you literally were. You literally were. This is why I was having a hard time responding to you because you were saying that in your mind it is not de-platforming when somebody gets rightfully banned. But now you have concluded that it is. You switched your position. So just being banned is just being banned. Like I wouldn't call that de-platforming. De-platforming is specifically just leveraging some big language or taking away someone's right unlawfully. That would be I usually use the word de-platforming to be the negative. Yes. So yes, this is what I'm saying. You are arguing. You are saying. Oh my goodness. So I don't care if you don't understand the language here is the difference between killing and murder. They both involve the same act which is a literal de-platforming. You literally remove someone from the platform. But de-platforming itself would be more like the murder, the wrong kind. No, no. I mean, I disagree. I disagree with this strongly. Like that's like, I would argue that the word de-platforming is a very broad term. I think every definition, if you look up the term de-platforming online, every single definition would have that as a much more as the broad term. Whereas you could say an unjust de-platforming or a illegal de-platforming would be a totally, would be an example of like what you're saying a murder. It seems foolish to me to come into a discussion. Do you think that when someone says we're arguing against de-platforming, we want literally every single human being to have a platform? Do you think that's the argument? No, I never allege that.  I don't know. No, I understand the better than you do. So like I said, if I take your understanding correctly, what you're saying is that if someone is against de-platforming and we accept your definition of de-platforming, then that would mean that we should give every single human being on the planet a platform. What are you talking about? What are you actually talking about? De-platforming means to remove anyone from any platform and someone is against doing that, removing anyone ever under any circumstances. And that's what is required to be against de-platforming. That's insane. I think I do you disagree with the idea that de-platforming is when you remove someone when you remove the platform of someone who currently has a platform, is that not a coherent definition? Like I feel like you're just- It's been a lot of sense, yes, but no one- Yes, but that's what we're talking about. That's what I set it out. And if you wanted to be clearer, you could have communicated that, but you're not- So zero people who are against de-platforming say that we should give every single person a platform or we should never ever take anyone off their platform. That's not a position. No one holds that position. Okay. So then do you mind stating your actual position then? Because I'm very confused as to your position. Like the one I said in the opening, using vague language to remove someone who has a position you dislike, who've done nothing wrong. But you also defined in your definition, you defined de-platforming as government censorship and which would be legal in that place. I feel like you have an incoherent definition of de-platforming. But if we want to move forward and we want to talk about different forms of de-platforming, I think that we could perhaps, maybe we can agree on this particular definition for the purpose of this conversation. Can we agree that we're talking about de-platforming in a broad sense and then we can drill down as to whether certain examples of de-platforming are good or bad? Because right now as I feel like we can't proceed and maybe it is on me, maybe it's on you, but I really don't feel like your definition of de-platforming is conducive to a meaningful debate. This shouldn't be that hard. It's just general understanding. When anyone in like any YouTube says we're against de-platforming, they literally do not mean just removing anyone from any platform. They're not using it in the general sense. Can it be used in the general sense? People do all the time. People talk about, people say that Donald Trump was de-platformed, but Donald Trump repeatedly broke with the TOS. Or do you think that he was- Do any of those people think we should never ever remove anyone from a platform ever? Is that- I have no idea nor do I care. I mean, do you think, wait, here's a quick question. Well, here's a more interesting question. I mean, you're basically, I don't know who you're arguing with or what you're in. Like I'm very confused as to the way that you're approaching this conversation because I thought we were here to discuss but the merits of de-platforming and whatnot. And it just seems like you're having a different conversation. So if we're gonna talk about a specific example like Donald Trump, like I would say that that was a perfectly good, a perfectly good, perfectly legitimate form of de-platforming that was not done by a government. It was done instead by, like I defined, a cooperative social act of protest. And in this case, he was also removed, not only was he removed because he was causing harm for using his platform negatively, but he was also removed because he was violating TOS at such a ridiculous rate that the company decided to remove his platform. Is that something that you would disagree with? I haven't looked at all into Donald Trump's de-platforming. Okay, I mean, because that's like, I don't know. Like that is one of the biggest examples of de-platforming I could think of in recent memory. I thought, I would assume that that would be something important to weigh on. I mean, that's probably the biggest example of de-platforming in the entire world right now. Again, so I don't care about Donald Trump. I don't research Donald Trump. I do care about de-platforming and when it's wrong. So obviously no one- So can you do an example of that that we could discuss? Yes, the examples I used before like Ben Shapiro and people being kicked off college campuses who were legitimately invited, who've done nothing wrong, who haven't advocated for racism or violence in any case. Oh, okay. So hold on a second to touch on that one. So when you say people getting, you went from a very specific example to a very broad claim. So you were saying that one such tactic of de-platforming is pulling the fire alarms on Ben Shapiro. Yes. Yes, I would agree. That is one such tactic of de-platforming. One that I think is not very effective and not very good. But I don't think, but there's other forms of de-platforming. There are many forms of de-platforming. You yourself have admitted to this, but also said that you didn't believe in that. But if we're gonna both agree that there are many forms of de-platforming, can we not acknowledge that like, hey, maybe- Okay, let's be more specific. It is wrong to de-platform anyone who has not done something that legal and is not advocating for violence. Okay. So what do you feel about something like say, what if YouTube took down an account that was, let's just to come up with an extreme, very clear-cut example. What if there was an account that was doing like, say, blackface and they were making extremely racist, extremely distasteful blackface skits and that violates YouTube's TOS, but it's not illegal under US freedom of speech law. Do you think that that is an example of de-platforming that would be just or would you believe that is unjust? Because what you just said would indicate that it would be unjust for YouTube to remove that channel. Like there has been blackface in many old comedies and they're perfectly fine. Like the, forget the major comedians of the 1960s and 70s, not the actual blackface of the 40s. Like if someone just banned you for just using blackface, yes, that would be wrong. If someone was denigrating an entire race deliberately, then and was specifically doing it to aggravate people, then yes, that would be fine. Wait, but just to aggravate people is not illegal. You stated that it would need to be illegal. I think from my position, because I do support de-platforming and I think that de-platforming is a broad coherent definition of many different tactics, I would say that YouTube has every single right to remove a channel that churns out horrifically racist garbage and blackface all the time. You're saying that you're okay with that and that YouTube should not be allowed to remove a channel like that. Do you really believe that?  It is currently against their TOS to do that. But are you saying that you don't think- I don't care about any of that garbage. I care about political ideas. Wait, but that's very important. But those are political ideas. Those, wait, do you not think that those are political ideas? Tom, before you respond, I do want to mention, Tom, your mic is a little bit low. For some reason it seemed like maybe either demon mamas went a little bit louder during the debate or yours went a little bit lower. So just to be sure you're balanced. All right, I'll turn it up a little bit. Thanks, Mark. So yeah, so I'm not concerned like with comedy sketches. I don't know how those count as political ideas. I want to make it illegal, essentially, to ban someone for talking about an idea, a political idea, and expressing an opinion that you dislike. That's the part of the deep platforming that is wrong. Like if someone is genuinely being racist and stoking like hate and violence, sure, that's fine. I don't care. That's essentially the same as hate speech, which would be illegal in America. So that is illegal. Well, many forms of hate speech are not illegal in America. They're just not liked socially or they're punished socially. We have many, many ways.  And there are all kinds of things that would be classified as hate speech elsewhere that are allowed here.  Like what if you just had a show where all that they did was just read out factual but out of context statements or while doing blackface, while actively making fun of and making political statements about black people in America. Is that the sort of thing that you would say which should not be able to be removed because they're making political speech while doing something horrifically damaging and offensive? Like, do you not believe that like you can influence things without explicitly stating like, hello, this is the racist channel. Like to me, it seems very obvious that someone's messaging can be taken in whole and that they don't have to literally say like, hello, I'm logging in to tell you to go do bad things. They can simply imply that very heavily with everything that they do and that YouTube would be well within their rights to say this is not the type of stuff we want on our website. Yeah, sure.  I'm talking about things like Ben Shapiro, that this is the kind of- Okay, but well, I mean, you do realize that many of the things that Ben Shapiro has said in the past, like when he said that, and let me just, I think I have this quote right here. I don't know if this is word for word, but I believe he said that Palestinians, and this is a quote, so please don't get mad at me. This is not me saying this, this is Ben Shapiro. Said that Palestinians are animals who live in open sewage. I believe was one of the statements he made on Twitter.  I have no idea, I can't comment on something I've never heard him say. Okay, because, well, I mean, these are available public statements that he's made on Twitter, for example, and Twitter does have rules against that type of hate speech. And yet, as of now, he still has a platform on there, but many people would argue that he shouldn't have a platform because of statements like that. Everything I've heard him say is just logical criticism of the different ways that the communists have been engaged. I've never heard him say anything racist. Do you want me to bring up that, like a photo of that? Because I can share that on the screen if you want me to bring some of the statements he's made about Palestinians in the past. Sure, yes. Yeah, let me get that for you. If you have something else you wanna say while I bring that up, I'll get that real quick.   Occasionally that can be interpreted in such a way. As long as what their platform is there for is to present ideas that you disagree with, it's wrong to ban them. You should be addressing what they're saying. So how can I, oh yeah, I can share my screen here. Let me just bring this up real quick. One moment. Ready for you. You're muted. Are you saying something? So we can see your screen share, demon mama, but we can't hear you. I'm not sure if you're, if you actually- There we go, how's that? Can you hear me now? Yep. Yes. Okay, excellent. So this is an example of the tweet, this was the first screenshot I can find of it, but this is one of many tweets he made during this particular period and all of them are available on the internet archive. Here he says, Ben Shapiro says, Israelis like to build.  This is not a difficult issue. So this is the sort of thing. And by the way, there's many, many, many of these. I don't see anything wrong with this tweet. I'm sorry, you don't see anything wrong with saying something like Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage. Yes. So the Israelis- Would you, okay. Wait, that's true. That's true. Hold on a second, hold on a second, wait, wait, wait. Please, please, hold on. Before you go off on another thing, I'm gonna stop sharing my screen at this point. Well, I wanna address exactly this tweet.  So that's true. And live in sewage is a reference to the economic situation and the fact that the government doesn't do anything to stop the terrorism and to build- Sorry. Central Platte healthcare like the Israelis are. So yes, both of those don't, neither of those seem to be like racist. It's talking about the politics. Okay. Well, real quick, if that's true, if that's true, would you mind repeating that statement, but instead saying in your own words? Yeah. Would you mind just stating in your own words? If you don't believe that's racist, would you mind just restating that in your own words so that we can get you on record as saying that you do believe that, you do believe that it is a true statement in your mind? Is it a true statement that the Palestinians are launching rockets into Israel so they like to believe that? That's not what we're saying, though. I would like you to restate exactly what he said in your, because I mean, you said you agree with it and you don't think it's racist. So if that's true, I'm asking you to put your money where your mouth is.  Okay. Well, thank you. And their government is crappy and doesn't care about healthcare. So they like to live in sewage. Okay. So I mean, I think that we've kind of gotten to the point here. I mean, if you don't think that there's any problems with that statement that anybody could have issues with and you also are willing to repeat it yourself. I am very impressed. You were willing to put your, I'm impressed you're willing to put your words there and say that, but I think that most people out there, and maybe I'm wrong and I'll appeal to the chat for a lot of this. What do you think is wrong with it? What do I think is wrong with it? Oh, I think that making a statement about all people, like saying all Arabs live in open sewages and disgustingly racist statement, it is akin to- Would you think that's the point he was making? I don't care what the point he was making was. Why does the point matter when you use language that is explicitly stating that an entire group of people is bad? I would say that's very bad. It's also explicitly in violation of Twitter's TOS. Twitter's- Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. Twitter's TOS explicitly states that they do not allow the broad generalization or hatred thrown towards groups of people, which Arabs are a group of people. That is an entire ethnic and racial group on the planet. And I'm sure, I mean, we now know how you feel about Arabs, but which is a little bit weird to me and odd. No, again, this is the problem right here. It's like you're completely misrepresenting everything, both- How is that misrepresenting? How am I misrepresenting anything? You just- Because it's a short hand for Hamas, the Hamas government, the people, the Arab government- Wait, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Do you think that anytime like a racist uncle goes off on a rant and starts dropping n-bombs that he's only talking about like bad, specific bad people, that is not what was said in the tweet, neither literally nor even in the implication. What is very- The implication is specifically- What is very clear, excuse me, excuse me, I was talking, I was talking. You're wrong, so you're wrong. You're strong and invoking me. No, I'm not, I'm sorry. I'm in bed. That's right. I apologize, I apologize. You're going to jump into two-minute intervals just to be sure that you guys have, you could say plenty of time to respond to each other. So let's see, I'm gonna flip a coin just to see who actually goes first with this two-minute interval. Tom, your heads. You can go first. Gotcha.  So everyone in the audience here today has now seen the tweet. We know that this is a real tweet. You can go verify this on your own time if you want to. This is just one simple example. There are many such examples of obviously, blatantly, any reasonable person who has any sort of seriousness would recognize that saying Arabs like to blow things up and live in open sewage is absolutely a racist statement. And absolutely by any reasonable metric violates most social media websites, TOS, but very specifically Twitter's TOS. Now, Tom here has stated that well, because he agrees with that statement and was willing to repeat it in his own words, saying that he believes that Arabs blow things up and live in open sewage, I think is a disgusting sentiment for the record.  But that because he agrees with this, that that is somehow a okay thing to say and that people should not be mad about that sort of thing. I think that's an absurd position to take. I think that people have an absolute right to push back on that sort of thing. And also I think everyone has an absolute right to let Twitter know that something that is against their TOS is being propagated on their platform. Simple as that. Tom, about the same amount of time, which was a minute and 10 seconds. So yeah, it's just straight up delusional. Arabs does not mean all Arabs, it means some. Like clearly he didn't say all Arabs. He wasn't making a generalization about literally everyone in Arabia specifically since this was about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Like just understanding basic context in English, understand that this isn't about all Arabs. This is about specifically the Palestinians and the Hamas and the Palestinian government. Not about the Palestinian every single individual. Like interpreting his words that way is just delusional and misunderstanding them. And that should absolutely not be banned. That would be a perfect example of bad deplatforming and just abusive power because you say something he doesn't like. Clearly that wasn't the point. That was never the point. And understanding that way is just incompetence. Like no, that's not what the words mean. Learn what the principle of charity is. Learn what the context with the tweet was. It's specifically about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Like this is really easy to understand the fact that some people can't shows how they aren't capable of really rationally understanding the points of words. Okay, so to respond to that, first of all, if he wanted to say some, he could have said some. He didn't. And secondly, I would attest that even within the framework of the context, the context doesn't change it at all. The idea that you can say an entire ethnic group of people, which he has, by the way, they're Palestinians, but he has interestingly chosen to use the word Arab instead. Seems a bit strange to me, but that he would generalize that entire group of people is still both against Twitter's TOS and is also a repugnant statement. Now, I believe that there is room for repugnant statements to be spoken. People are allowed to have bad opinions. I think lots of people have bad opinions. But what we're talking about here is deplatforming. And a platform is something where you can stand on and give your opinion to the world. And I don't believe that anyone is entitled to a platform. I believe that people have every single right within our free speech to express their free speech in response to someone else, especially if that person is standing on a platform, like say Twitter, that people could speak up and say, hey, this is really bad. Here's why it's bad. And here's why we're pushing back against it. And then of course, there's hanging over all of this, the fact that the example that we're using here is obviously and blatantly in violation of Twitter's TOS. If you go read the Twitter TOS right now, you will find that broad generalizing statements like ex-group of people like to blow things up and live in open sewage is absolutely against TOS, which is, you know, I think that that's fair.   And also, like, it's a different conversation if we wanna talk about whether we think Twitter's rules for platforming and TOS are valid or not.  And when I give you examples of when Ben Shapiro has done something that is either in violation of TOS or is an affront to large amounts of people and people respond, you then sort of waffle around. Two minutes, go ahead. So yeah, this is the problem with the woke ideology. The context doesn't matter. Like clearly that's false. Like the context specifically matters in every case. Taking something out of context is literally like most of the fallacies. So saying like gamers like Lego Star Wars, is that a generalization about all gamers? No, like the word itself does not imply any percentage or amount, doesn't do that. So this misrepresentation that the word itself is in the affronts to the majority or a lot of people is false. That's why it's not a violation of the service because it didn't do that. It literally didn't do that. That's just the subjective interpretation of the woke ideology. They just want to interpret it that way because they don't want to apply the principle of charity and understand the context. Because the context doesn't matter apparently even though literally that's everything. Everything is context. Context is the most important thing. And so trying to take the words and interpret it in the most despicable way so that you can de-platform someone is clearly wrong. Like that's such a terrible ideology. It's immoral to do that. Like the fact that someone didn't say something in the most precise way possible and you're going to vilify them for that. Like that's such, that's disgusting. That's such a terrible ideology as a whole. No, this was specifically just think about the context, apply the principle of charity. This is specifically about Hamas and the Palestinian government. Doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the world, the rest of the Arabs. The rest of the Arab is in Palestine. Literally not. If you just ask Ben about this, would this statement apply to literally every Arab? He's probably gonna say, no. Like just basic logic here. Okay, so I would push back very strongly on the idea that charity or logic has anything to do with what we're talking about here. In fact, and again, I feel like we're having a basic communication issue. I don't know if you're listening or if you're like processing some of the things that I'm saying to you, but I specifically said that even in context, this is even fully in context, this is inexcusable. First of all, he's specifically, and again, I don't wanna go too far into it. It's just it's very interesting to me that you're willing to like fight on this hill so hard. Because I mean, he specifically refers to two ethnic groups, Israelis and Arabs. He's not, he makes no indication that he's only talking about one group of people or only bad people or anything. And even if he was, I don't know that that would make it any better. Like, I mean, I think that I have a hard time believing that you would be okay with, like that you'd be willing to sign off if say, like if I was to walk up, and this is just an example, this is not my genuine belief. But if I was to say white people are racist, I have a feeling like most people will go, hey, that's not true. Not all white people are racist.  Is what you've been arguing here is that you should have no problem with me making that sort of statement. Or if I said something like, I don't know, white people are murderers. Yeah, so if you're not making a generalization, your intent was not to generalize and that's pretty understood easily by the context. And yeah, there was nothing wrong with you. But there's nothing in that context that would indicate that he was not generalizing. He specifically chose the word Israelis and he specifically chose the word Arabs. I feel like you're... I feel like you're... After events that were relevant to that conflict? Wait, hold on a second. Do you think that if like, I mean, I don't know how to like, I don't feel like... Well, like the context was really obvious. Maybe I'm wrong here, but like, just because something happened near that or whenever that event happened, doesn't justify any statement associated to that event. So like for example, if after 9-11, you know, a lot of people were very, very hurt and stressed and it was an incredibly horrible time. But if your uncle went on a rant about Muslims right after 9-11 and was just tearing into Muslims and saying horrible racist things about them, saying they're all this and they're all that, I don't think that we would say, oh, well, clearly he's only talking about the Muslims who were involved in 9-11. That would be ridiculous. We could recognize that your uncle was being racist. And I would say that regardless of its proximity to those events, it is very clear that Ben Shapiro is being racist. But again, I don't entirely know why you're like so devoted to defending this particular opinion. I don't, it was like, it sounds to me more like this, so far your approach on this discussion has been mostly to do free PR for Ben Shapiro, which is fine. I'm not, who am I to tell you what to do with your platform? But I was here to discuss whether people should have the right and whether it is okay to engage in the act of deep platform. And I would argue there are many cases in which it is indeed okay. After all, once again, this is not a matter of government censorship. We're not talking about whether I think the government should be able to imprison people for having opinions. I strongly disagree with that, obviously. However, I don't think that people like Ben Shapiro, racists, open racists like Ben Shapiro are entitled to getting to speak on a private university campus.  Right? Or do you disagree with that? I disagree with like most of what you said there. So I think that this deep platforming him because you subjectively think he's racist because of your misinterpretations and uncharitable interpretations of his tweets, which in context clearly refer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and their government and Hamas, which are- But you're doing, right now you're doing PR for Ben Shapiro. Let's talk about, okay, hold on, then let's come up. Let's move away from Ben Shapiro specifically. No, I'm not gonna move away from Ben Shapiro. I'm gonna continue with my points as I stated. Okay. You banning him because of the reasons you just listed is an example of deep platforming, which is just garbage. It is a failure of your ideology.  You're not actually providing an argument as to why something is bad. No, I- Wait, wait, wait, wait here. Don't interrupt, I just did this. I said, you not applying the context to the tweet and misinterpreting it in such a way in the most despicable way you can and then wanting to ban him for your subjective label of him being a racist when the context does not support that at all is wrong. Okay. I don't think that I was particularly uncharitable in making the claim that it is at the very least very prejudiced to say something like Arabs live in open sewage. I think that most people, even probably the right-leaning members of this audience that are listening right now will agree that that is at the very least a very prejudiced statement. I don't think that your attempt to frame me as some sort of extremist here is a little bit ridiculous. However, let me offer an alternative. Let me offer an alternative. Let's say that there is a racist, somebody we know. Let's say the grand dragon of the KKK, okay? Like, let's say the most racist person you could imagine, okay? Let's say that they get an offer to go on a college campus, a college campus that is say maybe 60% black people, okay? Like the students are six, this is a thought experience because I wanna see where your position is on this. So let's say that the board of whoever for this college invites the grand dragon of the KKK, an obvious racist, a guy who is clearly racist to speak at their school. And the students say, wow, we really do not feel comfortable with a vowed racist coming onto our school and getting a platform to speak horrible, hateful ideology, ideology that if implemented would result in those students who are concerned becoming slaves. They have a actual say in what would happen if this political idea was to catch on. Would you say that the school should not have any right or the students should not have any right to speak out against the platforming of that racist? I'm sure they should be able to speak out but they shouldn't be able to forcibly remove him. What do you mean by forcibly remove?  So, but okay, but those aren't the, but as God, we're doing it again. Those aren't the only ways of the platforming somebody. So let's say that this isn't the platform, hold on a second. So let, it can be, what if you speak out against them and the school decides, actually, we don't think this is a good idea to have this guy here. That's perfectly fine. The school invited him, the school. Okay, but do you realize that you do realize that that is what you're talking about? Now, there are certainly probably sometimes where people have done things like pull fire alarms or whatever, but the vast majority of times that we're talking about deplatforming, it is students speaking up and saying, we're not comfortable with this hateful person being on our campus, please don't, please uninvite them. And then they get uninvited. And you just stated that you're perfectly fine with that. Yeah, so like if the school invited them and the school chooses to uninvite them, that's fine. If a student group wants to invite a speaker and another student group wants to uninvite that speaker, that's not fine. Okay, why? Because you don't have a right to stop someone else from listening to speakers they like? What if more people in the second, are in the second group than in the first one? What if there's like five people on a campus? Well, hold on, what if there's five? Well, but it's a little bit more than that, right? Surely you acknowledge that like a speech isn't just a matter of attendance, right?  And what if the vast majority of, in this hypothetical we're talking about, the black students there aren't comfortable with filling out an auditorium full of racists who are gonna be there. What if the school, what if those students who go to that school, who might wear the jersey associated with that school do not want to have their name publicly associated with somebody like the Grand Dragon of the KKK? What you're doing is you've boiled the situation down to an almost like child-like version of it, where it's like, it's like, oh, one group has just as much of a right as any other group to just have whoever they want there and that it's all self-contained to one room, but it's not, these things are important. If you have the Grand Dragon of the KKK, go and speak at your college and all of the students who go to that college are going to be associated with that. That's part of the thing. You wear your jerseys, you wear your colors and you're gonna have newspaper articles about this school having the Grand Dragon there to speak and to talk about the problems with black people and all that, that's horrible. And I think it's perfectly rational for students to say, I don't wanna be associated with that. I don't think we should be associated with that. They're paying for the school. They're paying to go there. They're a part of the community of that school. And if more students say, hey, we don't agree with this, then it seems perfectly reasonable to me that the school goes actually, we were gonna have you here, but we don't think this is a good idea after all. Please don't come. So definitely not. If the student group is using their money to buy out a room and pay for it, what they have the right to do and someone else is trying to infringe on that right, no, that's wrong. You shouldn't do that. They have a right to hire that. They have a right to buy out the room. They have a right to pay for the speaker. They have a right to pay for the plane and stopping them is wrong.  I don't care. If someone wants to get out of the room and spend their money, they have a right to do that. Wait, do you realize that like, what you're talking about is nonsensical to the issue at hand, right? Like schools have their own internals. A group has a right to invite a speaker and stopping them because you disagree with what they're saying is wrong. Schools, wait, wait, but schools, okay. So I'll explain something for the viewers. Schools, and of course, there are some variants from school to school, but schools offer charters to student groups. Student groups are not just some magical entity that can do whatever they want.  One of those rules is most frequently that at the end of the day, the school gets final say on whatever happens. It's well within their legal rights. It's well within their, in my opinion, ethical rights to be able to say, actually, this person that you've invited, you've invited the grand dragon of the KKK to our mostly black campus and we're not okay with that. You're not allowed to do that. And then they can refund them their money. Of course, obviously it would be bad if they stole their money. We're not saying, we're not talking about that. It has nothing to do with what we're talking about here. Do you not believe that the school has the right to turn that down or do you just think that schools should be legally bound to give a platform to anybody because any student group asks? No, definitely. If it's in the school's property that the school can do what they want, it's a private property. Okay, so then what are you arguing with? If they're like, it's different property and not school-owned property, then it's wrong. Okay, but what do you, this sounds like a made-up example. Has there ever been a time? Like, what are you talking about? Ben Shapiro, same thing. Okay, Ben Shapiro, what? Like, do you have a specific example? I'm trying to do a college campus, left the college campus to a different organization still was de-platform. De-platform? In what way? How is he de-platform? Explain.  Okay, but we've already acknowledged that there are tactics like pulling fire alarms that I don't think are good or great. I literally opened this entire conversation with saying that there are forms of de-platforming I don't think are good. Just like there are forms of all kinds of things I don't think are good, but that nonetheless shouldn't be discarded entirely. So if you're mad that people pulled the fire alarms on Ben Shapiro, I'll agree with you that pulling the fire alarms is not a good way to go about doing this, but I don't know how you can denounce de-platforming as a whole when you've spent this entire time that we've been talking, the entire time we've been talking here, you've been agreeing with nearly everything, single example I bring up as a valid form of de-platforming, but then you go, but one time somebody pulled a sprinkler and that means we need to throw out de-platforming as an idea all together. Right, because I think you're still stuck on the misunderstanding of language you have at the beginning. People who say they're against de-platforming are not against supporting all platforms of all people ever. So there are- But I'm not alleging that. You're arguing, you're the one who's arguing against a straw man. I'm not alleging that anybody holds that position. You're inventing a straw man that you're fighting against right now. So if you're just aware of the climate around the topic, the people who are against de-platforming, Sargon, Bingeapiro, those kinds of people, none of them say all de-platforming is literally always bad. No one says that. Right, but they also make all kinds of claims about how they've been de-platformed. And when you actually look into the details of it, sometimes it's literally just that they got uninvited by a school which was within its rights, which you just 10 seconds ago admitted was perfectly valid, that a school has the right to do that. So again, no one is saying that literally all examples of de-platforming are bad. That's not a thing. But you did though, you opened your statement by saying that you're taking the position of the anti-de-platforming. Like you- Go ahead. So this is the problem that we're having is that like your position is unbelievably nebulous. So if there's examples of de-platforming that you really don't think are good, then that's fine. Maybe we can discuss those. Like for example, we both came to an agreement on the idea that pulling fire alarms is a pretty bad way to de-platform somebody. But that's not the only way that de-platforming is going. And you're lumping all of these together. You're saying that because Ben Shapiro once was de-platformed by a bad tactic that every other time he's been de-platformed is also bad. But that's not true. There's been, I mean, I could talk about Milo Unopolis. I could talk about Donald Trump. I could talk about a lot of people who've been famously de-platformed and most of the vast majority of their de-platformings have been 100% legitimate by your own words. So what's the problem here? What's the position you're holding?  Well, I did say it in the intro. Like, again, no one thinks all de-platforming is bad. There is a certain category of de-platforming, which is usually what is referred to as de-platforming. When you misuse the TOS or use vague language or kick someone off because you disagree with them, based off usually political ideas that they've said or done nothing wrong.  I mean, you can make that claim, but I believe, listen, I think that there are a lot of people who believe that Ben Shapiro is racist and they have a good reason for believing that. You are just, you're the one who's dismissing everything.  So, but I mean, I could, I mean, I've covered Ben Shapiro a lot on my show and I could tell you that the statement, that one tweet is just one offhand example. There's many statements he's made. He's made a lot of very, very, very questionable statements about black people in America that I think that many black people would have every single, they would be totally reasonable in saying this is a racist statement.  But, It's just an example. So again, Okay, but I mean, he's the example you keep going to. He's the example you keep going to. And when I brought up other examples, you basically dodged the question, you dodge actually talking about it. So I'm just a little confused as to where your position actually like actually stands here. It just feels like you're sort of vaguely mad that Ben Shapiro got deep platforming. Well, again, I've said this like four times. I don't know if you're listening or not. I am using deep platforming against just vague terminology to hurt or deep platform someone who's done nothing wrong. They're just talking about political ideologies, not super racist trying to harm people. But surely you acknowledge that like doing something wrong is a matter of, I mean, that's why we're here arguing, right? Doing something wrong is a matter of opinion. Like people might think there are, you aren't the only person who determines right and wrong, right? So like, for example, there are probably lots and lots of people who genuinely believe and I would be one of those people in this particular case that Ben Shapiro has done a lot of things very wrong. You don't seem to think so, but you're not the only person surely you acknowledge that if we're trying to be reasonable and logical here and actually talk about the issue and not just our feelings, that if there are many, many people who feel like, or have concluded or have an argument for why Ben Shapiro has done something wrong that they are well within their right to express their desire to not have him have a platform, right? Right, so I agree with you there. I think that saying someone's done something wrong is very subjective. And so if you want to de-platform one, you need some objective standard to actually justify this and not your subjective opinion. Cause I think that's the problem. Well, there isn't an objective standard. That's not like, that's the thing. There cannot, it's impossible to have an objective standard on something like that. That's a map. It is an opinion by definition. Why not? Like how do you have an objective standard on whether something is good or bad that's ridiculous, that is absurd. So you can just say if they've committed a crime, that's an objective standard. So it's easy to make an objective standard. I don't know why you don't have an objective standard. So if they've committed a crime, if they've committed a crime, then you would say that is the only standard. So again, we're back to the same- No, no, no, I didn't say only. You said it's impossible to have an objective standard. Yeah, it is impossible to have an objective standard for good or bad speech. That is a, it is an inherently subjective position. We disagree all the time. Like, what are you talking about? So there needs to be an objective standard of when it's okay to de-platform someone and when it's not. Okay. But you can't, there isn't like that's not, like that that's not possible. Like you can't have a single one. I just told you, if they have a crime, that's, I just did it. So, so, so you're- So, wait, hold on. Is that what you're advocating for? No. This is just an example. So you said it's not possible- Wait, wait, wait, stop. Like, oh God, this is so confusing. Why do you, are you arguing for positions you don't hold? Because you said it's not possible. I just showed you it's possible. So it is possible to create an objective standard for to do this. Okay, I guess you could create, I will concede that it is possible to create, it is possible to create an objective standard. For example, you could say that the only way that legally, and by objective, I mean, as objective as you can get, which means the state enforcing it, you're correct in saying that there is a way to create an objective standard, which is a state enforcement based on the legal system of the state. However, I think that's an extreme that doesn't really make much sense for what we're talking about here. And what I would like to follow up with is asking, wait, hold on a second, hold on a second, please. I would like to follow up by asking you, what do you actually believe? Because if you don't think that say these schools were in their right to deplatform Ben Shapiro based on what we've discussed previously, if you don't think that Twitter is in its right to deplatform Donald Trump or any of these things, what standards are you actually advocating for? Because what I'm advocating for is that I think it's perfectly fine for a website like Twitter to say, no, we don't allow racist statements on this website. Here's what we define as a racist statement, and you did this and we're kicking off the platform. Sure, so explicitly clearly stated statements are good. I would say that things that do not harm other people are not advocating for violence, things that are just expressing opinions like Ben Shapiro and political stuff. Okay, but we can acknowledge though, that we can acknowledge though, you said it in your own words that some of Ben Shapiro's words could very easily be interpreted as racist, right? Yes, it could be interpreted as racist, and it can be interpreted as not racist. So then there we have that problem again. You are not putting forward that objective standard that you claim that you want to. In fact, what you're stating right now is you're showing right now that- In context, do you want me to add in context? But I mean, the defined context, do you see how complicated this gets? I think that platforms should have the right to remove people who violate their TOS. And as long as they're reasonably clear, as long as it's not like, I mean, I mean, actually, honestly, I think that a website should have the right if they really wanted to kick off anyone that they want. But I think that that's because of a matter of how we handle platforming at all. However, in this particular case, what you're talking about is your building now and you're advocating for a non-objective, a subjective standard that fits your worldview. And you're saying that's the one that's okay, but everybody else's isn't. That's what you've just advocated for here. You're saying basically, okay, so then can you explain to me how that's not the case? Well, yeah, like I said, if you provide a clear set of terms of service, yes, that's perfectly fine. If it's vague and kind of wishy-washy, not so fine. That's not okay because it can be misused in the way you want. So very clear statements like don't do racism and they do racism. Yes, that's perfectly fine. It was very clear. So Twitter right now has a rule against racism. So don't do racism. Now I would argue that many, many people, probably people who are on the moderation team of Twitter would read that former Ben Shapiro tweet and conclude that that is indeed very racist. I think that many of the people in the audience right now and again, once again, even right-leaning members of the audience can admit that that particular tweet is a great example of something that could be very easily and I think rationally read as racist. So what you're saying is then you think it is okay, you would be behind Twitter getting rid of Ben Shapiro's account. Is that correct? No. I'm following your own logic here. So I would say that you have to actually apply the context, apply the principle of charity. Okay, those are good things. Whatever that means. Do you want to define that for everybody? Yeah, go ahead.  Okay. Well, I think that it is the most rational and logical conclusion that when somebody chooses specifically to use two terms for ethnic groups and then makes a broad, very vicious, very toxic aspersion about those groups that the intent and purpose of those words was to be racist. I think that's perfectly reasonable and many people would also agree with me. I'm sure many people in the audience does. So if that's the case, then once again I ask you, would you be okay if right now Twitter launch, it just got rid of Ben Shapiro's platform on Twitter? Because anybody thinks that doesn't understand English. Okay, so it's just because you like it. And again, we've come to the conclusion again. I've demonstrated this, wait, I've demonstrated this logically throughout this conversation that at every point, your own arguments, when you run up against a wall with your own arguments, you don't actually believe in what you say you're believing. I point out that many people, hold on, let me finish, wait. Don't struggle. Come on, let me finish. I've let you speak for like 10 minutes and said like. Wait, that's fine. You've chosen not to talk, but I'm laying, I'm in the middle of a sentence. No, you keep interrupting me. Tom, Tom, I'm in the middle of a sentence right now. We're gonna give you like 30 seconds to wrap this point up, demon mama. And then we will give Tom several minutes to respond. It has been a little bit in terms of the time, but to be fair, Tom, it's open dialogue so you can, you know, we'll give you a chance.  Yeah, sorry. I'm trying to be clear as possible with my words. I apologize if that means that I talk a little bit too much or something like that. I apologize. What I'm trying to say here is that I have laid out the fact that many people could and rationally would conclude that that tweet is racist and that if you believe that websites have the right to enforce a TOS, that he should be de-platformed and that it would be perfectly fine if he was.  That is your feeling. You are just saying you like Ben Shapiro and you're favorable to Ben Shapiro and therefore you don't think he should be banned, which to me is a illogical and that's fine if you wanna have an illogical position, but that is an illogical and inconsistent opinion. So yeah, like always, you just completely misrepresent everything I said. One, I don't even like Ben Shapiro. This is just an example. So every time you say that is complete gibberish. Secondly, no rational person would interpret that tweet to mean all Arabs. Zero rational people. It is not rationally possible to interpret that to mean all Arabs. Because obviously he doesn't think all Arabs like to live in sewage. Does he literally think that? No. So a literal interpretation of these words is insane. Clearly. How do you know that? How do I know that? Yeah, how do you know he doesn't believe that? With certainty, I don't. I'm just using induction based on everything I said. You're going based on your bias, your own feelings and concluding that. But other people might conclude otherwise based on his words because we've acknowledged that those words are not particularly super clear. No, I'm going off his other words.  Like no, like you could ask him, do you literally think all Arabs like sewage? What do you think he's going to say? I mean, we already have his words on it. He already said, I showed this to everyone. Everyone watching right now saw the tweet with their own eyes. Arabs like to blow things up and live in open sewage. He said it with his own words. We don't even have to go anything else like that. Are you for real right now? Like again, this is one of those examples where we're just coming down to, I mean, I'm sorry, maybe we'll borrow Ben Shapiro's own words here, but facts don't care about your feelings, Tom. And the facts of the situation are that your argument is incoherent. You don't actually have a standard that you would stand by for de-platforming. You just don't like in this particular case that maybe you don't like Ben Shapiro, but regardless, you don't like that Ben Shapiro could be fairly de-platformed. And when I ask you why, and I inquire using reason and logic, you don't actually have an answer for that besides I feel like people who think that's racist are stupid, but to me, that's not an argument.  That's just you venting your feelings. And once again, facts don't care about your feelings. Right, because that's quoting out of context. You're not actually taking the context. As you literally said, the context doesn't matter. I didn't say that literally. I said explicitly that the context makes it just as bad. I said explicitly the context is just as bad. I can look back again, I'm pretty sure you said the context doesn't matter, but again, just taking this quote out of context, not applying the principle of charity, like these are known fallacies in philosophy. We know this is dumb. You doing this is dumb. This is not my opinion. This is just standard philosophy. Not applying the principle of charity to what he's saying, not applying the context and understanding what he's saying is ridiculous. That is an objective standard. That's a standard in philosophy. Like you have to take the words, apply it to the most rational way possible. It's in the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict. To think that a human being could rationally think that literally all Arabs live in sewage or like to live in sewage, could any rational human being really think that? Wait, wait, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Like I feel like you're almost comedically refusing to acknowledge what he's actually saying there.  Like if somebody spends a lot of time talking about, I don't know if somebody was to say something like, like Ben Shapiro did about Palestinians, or in his words, Arabs, quote unquote. If somebody was to say that about black people, I think you could very reasonably conclude that that person doesn't have very good thoughts about black people in general. I think what you're doing here, I think what you're doing here is you're not, you're not actually applying anything about charity.  The fact of the matter is that in this particular example and in the hypotheticals that I brought to you, in these examples, we can conclude that somebody is capable of being racist and that people are capable of using their free speech to advocate that that person no longer has a platform to project their racism or their hate or their toxic political ideologies or anything along those lines. So could you have meant that the Palestinian government was the problem that had nothing to do with Arabs and the individuals? Is that a possible interpretation of what he said? I don't believe so. No, I think that that is an absurd thing. When you make a statement like, and I'll explain to you why, although again, we are fixating on this one tweet. It seems like you really want to like, again, do PR for Ben Shapiro, but let me explain to you. When you specifically highlight Israelis versus Arabs, which are two ethnic groups, and then you say that Arabs like to blow things up and live in open sewage, to me, that is pretty hard to, it would be very, very irrational to stretch that out and say, oh, he's actually talking about the government officials, that it's the government officials who like to live in open sewage and not the people that he's talking about when he explicitly highlights two ethnic groups.   So any rational minds can interpret this tweet as saying that the Palestinians, the Arabs he's talking about, like to bomb people as in shoot rockets into Israel, because that's the point. And that- But why didn't he say rockets instead of bombs? I'm just asking, I'm wondering what's going on. Like if you're talking about literalism. We do have to give- They're synonyms. We do have to give Tom a chance to respond. Go ahead, Tom. Like language, language. Even mama, you did interrupt them. So that is fair for me to jump in here. Okay. So again, any rational minds can interpret this to mean that, oh, the Palestinians and Hamas who are launching rockets into Israel every day, Arabs like to shoot bombs. Like a pretty accurate statement there, referencing the Hamas and the Palestinians who like to attack Israel. And they like to live in sewage, referencing the bad healthcare system that the Palestinians aren't doing, the Palestinian government isn't doing anything about. This is clearly not about the personal preferences of the Arabs themselves. No, this is not clearly remotely about that. This is a contrasting the two governments. He's literally saying this is an easy choice because when he's talking about the choice between who should you support Israel or should you support Palestine? Israel provides healthcare. Palestine doesn't. The context of the suite is apparently clearly obvious. Like the fact that you can't see this is just, is baffling to me. I strongly disagree with your prescription here. I think that you are granting a almost comical amount of undue, not even, I wouldn't even call this charitable. You're just lying about what was being said. You're making, you're reading into his words a very convenient narrative to your viewpoint while also showing that you actually agree with him about these sentiments. And I think that's very clear to everyone watching. I don't really know if we can go much further back and forth on this particular topic. You've already shown that you agree with his sentiment and that you don't think that there's any possible way. Well, you've actually contradicted yourself. You've said, you do believe it's possible for people to rationally conclude that that is racist.  And so I don't know. Like it sounds to me like, I don't know. It sounds to me like you're more interested in doing defense for Ben Shapiro than actually coming to any truth on this particular matter. I could be wrong. But personally, I think what was said there is racist. And I do think that regardless of whether Ben Shapiro is individual tweet is racist or not, that as a general rule websites like Twitter, YouTube, and also the denizens of college campuses have every right to use their free speech to push back on potentially dangerous or harmful people coming on there. Now, do I think there are some examples that are extreme? Sure, but we haven't really discussed any of those. And in fact, you've sort of spent your time here defending one of the most extreme and clear cut examples of obvious racism and violation of the TOS in the name of what? I don't know, trying to say that like, I don't know. Again, I'll leave this one up for the audience to determine whether they think that your statement about your statements about Arabs are reasonable or not racist. But I have a feeling that a lot of people are going to recognize that that is a racist statement. Whether you agree with it or whether you agree with the racist statement or not, it is nonetheless a racist statement. And I can only hope that like people aren't as dishonest as the way that you've been framing it because I really don't feel like that is an honest analysis of this tweet. And I don't think that if you were to read any other tweet from anyone else who wasn't Ben Shapiro, who you seem to have come on here to defend, that you would come to the same conclusions. Yeah, I just think pretty much your entire position is completely delusional. If you look at Ben Shapiro's work, he specifically talked about this issue a lot. This is not something he's quiet about. He specifically said the things I've said many times. And if we were just to ask him, what did you mean by this tweet? My interpretation of yours. I'm willing to bet a large sum of money. I'm gonna be the one right here. I'm the one who's giving him the charitable interpretation. Actually, if I'm not mistaken, he actually spoke about this tweet and he made an apology for this tweet because he said that it was racist in his own words and apologized for it. Definitely, you can interpret it as racist, but I think his intention, what he meant by it, wasn't at all. Which is why he apologized. Well, but he disagrees with you. So this is where I've revealed the information that he did in his work. Don't interrupt, don't interrupt. He apologized because his intention was not racist and it came across as racist because he made a mistake in the way that he phrased it. So you made the error here.  I'm sorry, I should be clear. If somebody, just because, first of all, just because somebody apologizes for something doesn't necessarily mean that they didn't do harm with the language that they chose. But hey, guess what?  And then they later go, but I was just kidding, ha ha. That doesn't mean that they didn't do something that's in violation of the TOS.  You've basically said, you've basically projected onto Ben Shapiro the idea that he didn't actually mean it. And they've also assumed that his apology is 100% good, that there was no harm done by the words that he said. And even he admitted that the words that he chose, whether they misled people or whether they accomplished what he wanted and he's just trying to save face PR given that he's literally a professional rhetorician, that this statement, the language used was very, very bad. Let's put it that way, in his own words. So I just don't know where you're coming from on this except for to say that you're now bending over backwards to continue defending Ben Shapiro. And for what? I don't understand. I don't just not, even talking about the same points I'm talking about, I don't care about Ben Shapiro. That's not the point here.  It's racist. All right, just interrupting, well, let's see. Sorry, I mean, I thought this was a relatively fine back and forth. I just wanted to say right there, I never stated that that's my conclusion. I also stated that it was reasonable that other people would come to that conclusion. I never, I was very careful walking into this to discuss this from a position of trying to remove my own perspective or be clear about my own bias. I do believe that that is a racist statement, but I also understand that many other people would conclude that and that even if other people don't think it is, that the fact that so many people would conclude that means that it's probably a valid and eligible example of something that should be de-platformed. Right, and I would say that's a mistake. I'd say that interpreting the words in a racist way, even if it was carelessly speaking, is an error if you don't put it in the context, which is clearly not racist. Like the context was not racist. If you understood what he was saying, then you can ask him to clarify that, asking him to apologize for that, that's fine.  Like clearly if they said something like, I'm gonna kill you or something like, yes, clearly that's bad. Words that can clearly be interpreted as not racist and are specifically about a contextualized point, no, you shouldn't ban people for that. That's not correct. Okay. But even recognized again, recognized again that Ben Shapiro himself, as far as I know, issued an apology for this tweet because it was racist because he chose words that made that quite clear that that's what it is. So I just don't agree with your, I don't agree with this seemingly impossible, nebulous standard that seems only to justify not getting rid of people who make racist statements when they do. Sorry, but yeah, I think that platforms have a, I believe that platforms have the right to remove someone who's making their space toxic. I believe that students have the right to push for the Grand Dragon of the KKK or Ben Shapiro or anyone to not come on. And if there's a majority of those students who conclude that that's fair, I think that's perfectly fair, well within their freedom of speech of themselves, the freedom of self-determination of the college. Given that, let's see. So what we'll do is given that demon mama had the opening statement, Tom will give you a really short wrap up and then we'll jump into the Q and A. Yeah, my standards apply the principle of charity. It's not really a vague standard. This one coming in from, thanks for your questions folks. Beef Wellington, do wanna remind you folks, our guests are linked in the description. We do appreciate our guests as the guests are the lifeblood of the channel. And so you can find their links below so you can hear more from them regarding this issue and many others. Jumping into the question and answer, Beef Wellington, thanks for your question, said de-platforming someone only further radicalizes them. It removes them from civil discourse and runs them underground and forces them into echo chambers, making it worse. I disagree with that claim. While yes, it usually does. The individual who is de-platformed usually does go to a smaller or quieter place. The idea that it will only have bad outcomes is not reflected in reality. In fact, that was what I had prepared for us to talk about today. I have an entire document discussing the de-platforming of two particularly controversial figures, both Nick Fuentes and Milo Yiannopoulos, both of whom indeed have moved to more extreme platforms but their reach has been diminished so greatly that only their most rabid fans still follow them. In fact, it is so drastic that I could go on about this for an hour about Milo Yiannopoulos specifically, how he was going on campus after campus after campus pre-de-platforming. And then after many of his absolutely atrocious statements about, and I'm sorry to have to bring up this term even, but child sexual abuse, when those statements were made public, he basically lost not only most of his websites, but since then has been removed from almost every platform. His reach is incredibly, incredibly diminished. And I would argue for relatively good reason. And in fact, the places that he used to inhabit putting out these horrible opinions are much cleaner as a result.  And I think that's a fine thing. I think it's fine for that platform not to have him on there. Gotcha. And this one coming in from, Sunflower says, Dieben Mama, the act of banning people has existed online forever. The word quote unquote, de-platform was not even used in online circles until recently. Okay. Yeah, de-platforming is not just banning. There are many forms of de-platforming. That was literally my opening statement. De-platforming comes in many forms. In some cases a ban could be one of them, but there are many different ways of de-platforming someone. Another way to provide a specific example to this question, the person asking this question, well, a perfect example of this is say a college campus that after polling its students concludes that someone would be dangerous to have on campus saying, sorry, we're not giving you a speaking deal because it wouldn't be good for our students. That's another form of de-platforming. De-platforming is a broad term. This is pretty well recognized. This next one from B. Wellington says, social media is the new public square. Interesting billionaire tech oligarchs to decide the fate of public discourse is a dangerous path to go down. I would agree with you on, I would agree with you 100% on that. I don't trust unaccountable tech oligarchs as the answer. However, that doesn't mean that I think that they shouldn't have the right to curate their spaces. I think we need a better solution. I believe that some form of publicly owned social media alternatives would be a very, very good start to begin with that. But as it stands right now, for as much as people want social media to be the new public square, it's not there yet. And I do agree with you that, like I strongly agree, like I'm hugely critical of these corporations. I spend all kinds of time talking about this on my channel. Myself have suffered a very unfair ban at the hands of YouTube, which was thankfully resolved. But I agree with you that tech oligarchs, like commanding this is not good, but that is the state of the world as it is. We're talking about a different issue. I do agree that's a problem, but we don't fix it by saying that you can't take people who are doing racism off your platform. Sorry. Gotcha. Decepticons forever. Thanks for your question. Crock comments says Cosby was taken off the air even though his show wasn't intrinsically harmful media. The creator was just unsavory for the networks. Yeah, that happens. And there are some examples where I would say that somebody being taken off the air is fair and there were some examples where I think it's not fair. Yeah, I don't think you can make a generalization because of Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby is one such example. I mean, what Bill Cosby did was very upsetting to many people. And I mean, if you look at the history of his show, his show was mostly kids television. So a lot of people concluded, hey, maybe we shouldn't have this guy who's being accused of multiple rapes and has now been convicted, I think, of two of them.  I don't know, that doesn't seem too unreasonable to me. But there are some examples of unreasonable times. But again, those are individual examples that we could discuss if we wanted to. Gotcha. And Oliver Katwell, thanks for your superjet. Said one, should neither debate nor deplatform the question of hitting that like button. Please do. Have you enjoyed this debate tonight, folks? If it was a fun one, which I think this was a juicy and fun one, and we really do appreciate our guests, please do hit that like, especially if you want to see another one of this same topic or these same debaters as we are excited about the future. And we have a lot of juicy debates coming up. Beef Wellington, thanks for your question. Said what's to stop the government from labeling criticism against it as quote unquote hate speech and using social media as a tool to silence dissent? I mean, there's a lot that would stop them. I mean, in America, we have constitutional protections from that. The government can't declare criticism as hate speech because we have a constitutional process that would prevent those laws from being enforced and carried out. Obviously our constitutional process isn't perfect, but that is one of the things that would prevent it. I think that's not, again, I don't think that government censorship is the same issue as deplatforming. It's, they're not the same. I do think that perhaps the government could participate in deplatforming, but there would need to be evidence of that. As far as we know, the US government doesn't even have that much of a say with regard to social media. For example, we know that enemies of the US still have their platforms on Twitter. Like literally like terrorist leaders have had their platform on Twitter for some reason, which I think is a criticism of Twitter, but we know that the US government doesn't have some sort of like seeker control over Twitter. We have a pretty robust system of freedom of speech, and I'm thankful for that. Got you on this next one coming in from Steven Steen, says, I love James. Thank you, Steven. And Baran Vanjee says, demon mamas, do we throw people? I don't understand this question, but maybe either of you will get it in terms of the context in what it refers to from the debate.  That sounds pretty, that sounds like a, I'm sorry to do this, but that sounds like they're trying to make a reference to like a racist stereotype about some countries. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, Matthew Shepard died in America. So I mean, we're not exactly the best place ever on gay rights. I'm sure we're better than other places, but no place is perfect. And some places are way worse than others. Right now in America, all over the country, there are states that are pushing to unban conversion therapy, which is torture. So I don't know. I think that people should perhaps be a little bit more informed on this issue before trying to make sort of like dog whistles or stereotypes about other countries. I can't remember. That issue didn't come up during the debate, did it? I don't think it did, no. And I didn't think so. Bob Loblong, thanks for your comments that demon mama is correct. Rhetorically, I'm skeptical though. They think you're correct. Just everybody's a critic, I tell you. Don't worry, demon mama. Yeah, that's true. I get my share. Tony, thanks for your question, said, what I want to be able to stop people from speaking because my feefies. What? OK. Sorry, I don't even read that. Baron Mungi. You guys said, OK, Baron Mungi says, I don't care how racist he is, freedom of speech.  OK.  Twitter owns their platform for better or worse. And they can decide if they want racists screaming on their platform. And as it turns out, they don't because it makes their platform terrible.  But when he goes into an online establishment like Twitter, which is owned by Twitter, again, for better or worse, whether where you fall on that whole thing is not related to this question, they have a right to say we don't want racism on here.  As it turns out, there's a lot of people who aren't white that use Twitter. And if there's lots of racism on there, they might not use Twitter. So Twitter has decided they don't want racism on there. I don't know what the big deal is. Got you. And this one coming in from Ron Nechidness says, allegedly, this is a quote from Ben Shapiro. What does the what does Tom think of this Shapiro quote? Quote, if you wear your pants below your butt, don't bend the brim of your cap and have an EBT card. You have a 0% chance you'll ever be successful in life. I don't understand what most of that means. But I think it's a generalization that if you don't dress in accordance with society, then you probably are less likely to get a job. I don't know what an EBT card is. Got you. This one coming in from actual socialist trash. My favorite name. It says, not much to say today. Love you, demon mama. Like and sub to modern day debate for pics of James in a mankini. Those yet to come. And Baran Vanjee says, demon mama, sounds. Let's see, let's see. They said, demon mama, I don't like what you s- Therefore, okay. Yeah, so we're looking for more substantive questions, folks. P. Baran says, if theoretically Shapiro was trying to generalize in the tweet, how would he have written it differently? Oh, is that for me? No, I don't think so. I think that's for me. Okay. So he could have written it the exact same way with that intention. But the goal is that you, if you can interpret it to be the other way and he didn't intend it, then it would be wrong to ban it. So if there is a context in which like he was a KKK member or something and said that, then you'd put it in context when he probably was trying to be racist in case it would be justified to remove him. If the context means it was just bad phrasing and his intention was not to be racist, then it would be wrong to try to ban him for that. Gotcha. And this question coming in from P. Baran, from B. Wellington says, de-platforming always leans in the left-leaning political person's favor, terms of service are vaguely defined and arbitrarily enforced. Lefty mobs violate the same rules such as doxing and harassment and don't get banned by Twitter. Social media bias is obvious. I'm glad it's nice that you feel that way, but that's simply not true. And I would challenge you to produce any evidence, any actual meaningful evidence that that's the case. In fact, the latest study, one that I was just reading the other day and admittedly I haven't finished reading yet because I haven't had time, but the latest study on this actually proves that social media still has a bias against left-wing people. A great example of this as an anecdote is that every single I am, I am a trans woman and every single video that I post that has the word trans in it or talks about trans issues gets demonetized immediately. So that's just an anecdotal one and the current research seems to say the opposite, but you're entitled to feel whatever you want. Gotcha. And this question coming in from Brandon says, middle guy, best guy, I don't know who that is at me. I don't know, but thank you for your kind words. They say love you, James. I think I don't know what you mean by middle, but nonetheless, Will Stewart, thank you for your question says, demon mama, how can saying, quote, Arab be racist when it isn't an ethnic group? Is saying North Americans, quote unquote, racist? I mean, we all know that like these, I mean, this is a very, very pedantic quote. Like yeah, technically it is an ethnic or a regionalist prejudice, but we all know what it means. We know that people refer to racial groups when they use terms like that. Like this is just, you're just being pedantic. Like we all know that this is the case. Like that's sorry. That's not like a particularly serious question. Like that's like being like, I don't know.  We know what's being talked about. Like this is just, you're just splitting hairs. Gotcha. And this question coming in from Oliver Katwell comment more. So says though not a fan, I respect that Ben Shapiro publishes a list of quote unquote dumb stuff I've ever done, which includes the Arab tweet in question. Then looking at other questions, Baron Von G, this might be something you've roughly speaking addressed demon mama. So let me know otherwise if you wanna respond. They said, even if Shapiro is racist, he still has the right of freedom of speech. And what are we going to censor next?  So what? I mean, again, this is, I don't think that this is an example of like government censorship. I think that's like just patently false to make that that equivalency. These are very different things. And who knows, like, I don't think that it's a matter of censorship. I think that it's a matter of a company and a community that uses that company's product, having a right to speak on their own. Again, Ben Shapiro has still, will always have his right to free speech.  There are many quote unquote pro free speech websites. You can still post on 4chan if you want to. There's all kinds of places you can say those things. It's just that like, we acknowledge that like there's lots of places that aren't appropriate for that type of discussion. And as it turns out, Twitter doesn't think that it's appropriate for that type of discussion. You could take it elsewhere.  Like it's their website and there's a community of people who use that who might not want to see it. I mean, that's like kind of saying that like, just because you play guitar that you should be entitled to play Madison Square Garden. That's absurd. They get to choose who gets to play at Madison Square Garden. Yeah, sorry. Gotcha. And this one coming in from Will Stewart said, demon mama, if I see Germans like to have good social programs but North Americans like to eat sewage like McDonald's, would that be wrong? I mean, I think it would be very stereotypical and prejudiced. Yeah. Gotcha. Like what do you want?  This one coming in from Super K Pill says, demon mama, do Ben Shapiro's intentions matter at all in that tweet or any others? If he didn't mean to come off racist and apologized, doesn't that count for something? I think it could, but I don't think it does for the purposes of this conversation. Like intent is, of course we always consider intent but you can never know intent. And if somebody is like displaying a gross negligence towards the responsibility of their messaging, I think that that platform has a right to just be like, yeah, you might not have meant it that way, but you said some pretty bad stuff. Like, I mean, I don't know. Like, I don't know. Maybe my uncle is trying to, maybe my racist uncle was trying to be very, very nice when he said the N word multiple times. But I think that most people would reasonably conclude that that's not the case. And that even if he was meaning it nicely, that it wasn't appropriate for the space that he was in. And Twitter has the right to do that as well. Gotcha. This one coming in from Chris. Chalice says, T jump. Terms like sewage dweller are not literal. Dirty rat doesn't mean the target is literally a rodent with cleanliness issues. Obviously. And the point there was that Ben's intention was not to be racist and didn't intend to be racist. I don't think he is racist. I think that that was a generalization, just a careless uses of the term, which is why he apologized for it and admitted it was a mistake because his intention there was simply to characterize Palestinian Hamas governments. And he just did it carelessly, which is why I don't think it would be okay to ban him. I think intention does matter. And if you can read into it, that there was a reason or intention there that was not racist, then it would be wrong to ban them. It would just be like, okay, you made a mistake. Maybe like a temporary ban. Sure, okay, I'll be fine with that. But just banning them outright because of a clearly not intentioned racist statement would be not a good thing to do. Gotcha, this one coming in from Joashim West. Thanks for your super sticker and bubble gum gun. Thanks for your question. Who said corporations and the state are not independent. They often work together.  I think that's a ridiculous claim and is well out of the context of this particular conversation. If you have examples where you can show that the government like, like I mean, I think that there are examples of the government and corporations working together, but you have to be able to substantiate that, right? Like you can't just make a claim and say that. Like I would say that for example, like regulatory capture is a great example of corporations working with the government and working together against certain people in our country. Regulatory capture, but regulatory capture can be verified. You can point at it with examples. I don't think that I can't think of any examples or any evidence that like the government has been telling Twitter to like not to not allow racism. Like I think that Twitter just came to that conclusion on their own based on talking to their users. So like, I mean, I do agree there are times where governments and corporations work together, but you got to have evidence if you're going to make a claim. You can't just like, I don't know, vaguely conspiracy post. Got Jen, this one coming in from Super K Pilsas.   There's no such thing as a free speech absolutist.  And so I do support free speech, but I think that there are examples of certain types of advocacy that could probably be reasonably evidenced as being harmful. Like for example, I think that like if you're going out and you're giving speeches that are inciting direct violence against a group of people, I think it's perfectly fine for us as a society to go, hey, that's like not okay. This is, yeah, technically we're giving up some of our free speech, but the ability of somebody to go, like the ability of individuals of a minority group to like live their lives without fear of getting like a hate mob incited on them is outweighs the benefit of like letting somebody be able to incite a hate mob. Like I think that there are reasonable and non, like I think a lot of people do scaremongering on this. I just think there's a lot of ways that you can make reasonable free speech laws that are designed specifically to protect free speech while outlawing the most ridiculous and violent and horrible forms of speech that we all agree are bad. Gotcha. And quick comments that you guys might wanna respond to if you don't want to, you don't have to bubblegumgun says the first amendment is a scam, just like the second. Interesting. Then excuse me, but is their name? And they said, love this debate topic, do it again. So glad you enjoyed it. And wanna remind you our guests are linked in the description. We appreciate them and wanna, folks wanna remind you, as always, wanna encourage you to attack the arguments, not the person. And that folks, sometimes when I see people buck up against that idea, I'm like baffled. That some people, I mean, I hope it's obvious that when you attack the person, people are probably going to assume that it's because you can't attack the arguments in a strong way. And so, I just can't fathom how some, it's a really small percent. So I do wanna say thank you to the 99% of you in the chat who are actually polite and reasonable.  Super K-Pill, thanks for your question, says Dima, Dima Mama says, are you, we got that one? Super K-Pill says, T-Jump, do you agree that social media companies have the right to ban whoever they want? Yes, unfortunately, I'm definitely for private property, but I do think there should be some kind of government oversight that makes some kind of regulatory thing that makes it that they can't just ban anybody they want. I would like that. I don't know what that would mean, but it is currently legal and they do have that right. Gotcha. And Juicy, one from Sarah Jenkins, who says, dog, or what is it, Harris said, de-platforming is bad for society, Shermer and Harris explain why, though they think media oligarchs should step up their game. Each of your thoughts? I don't know. I agree with their positions. I don't know, I don't know what that's referencing. FlamencoTV said, de-platforming panders to, I don't, I'm kidding, I don't understand your sentence. No offense, Posadas John says, actually given the context and how Israel prevents Palestine from improving by bombing and keeping them locked in an open air prison, the tweet is racist. I personally do agree with that sentiment, Posadas John. I do agree that there is multiple layers to the badness of that tweet, but admittedly that's neither really here nor there for the purpose of this conversation. But yes, personally, I do agree with that. Chessa, thank you for your question. Said, bigotry and prejudice is bad. Defending it is weird and enabling it. Allowing anything but crime, benefits, racist, et cetera, by equating hate with the First Amendment. I think there's some truth to that statement as well. Like again, we have to, in making any society and organizing ourselves in any society, it is a simple fact that we have, there's a lot of give and take in building a functioning society. And sometimes we have to recognize that if we allow Nazis to freely advocate for violence or freely advocate for persecution of say Jewish people, that that means that Jewish people who live in our country will not have the freedom that they're entitled by the rest of our constitution. So yeah, I do agree with that sentiment in some ways. I think we have to measure these things carefully. I do think freedom of speech is important, but I think that there are reasonable limits that we should acknowledge and look at. Gotcha, and Tony Nadooski says, demon mama, I think that basically he said, repeating we know what they meant, quote unquote, seems like you're kind of, you could say, you could say imbuing their intentions with your kind of own statements. I think they're trying to say that, do you in any way, they're kind of trying to challenge you in saying that we know what they meant is maybe- I think that's in reference to my answer to the previous question about whether it's possible to be, whether it was the right choice of word to say racist when they were targeting Arabs, which is like a broad national and ethnic group. I think that this is just pedantry. What I mean is that when somebody is talking about a broad group of people, if you say it's racist versus it's prejudiced, it's a splitting hairs. So I don't think that you've added anything to that previous question. I never said about Ben Shapiro that we know what they mean. In fact, I was very careful to present about Ben Shapiro, the fact that people could interpret it either way, but a lot of people because of the words that were chosen are going to interpret it in a specific way, including once again, Ben Shapiro himself. So, yeah. Gosh, Will Stewart says, T-Jump, if 100 million people call themselves Arabs, both black and white and multiple other ethnic groups, their source they say is the University of Pennsylvania, is it a racial statement? Not that the intention was to not be racist, no. That's kind of the point is the intention. Can it be interpreted in both ways? Yes, but the rational way to interpret it is to look at the intention and the context. So that's what I think matters, the context matters.  You admitting to regulatory capture admits that you know there is no such thing as free speech under mixed economies. I disagree. I disagree. I think that's a totally different conversation than what we're having here, though. I disagree with their analysis there. I mean, yes, obviously we know there are huge issues with government corruption, but the idea that just because there's government corruption that that means every single conspiracy theory that you dream up is automatically true is silly. That's silly. That's a silly position. You have to provide evidence for the things that you're claiming. And yes, indeed, there are examples of regulatory capture. There are indeed examples of corruption, but provide evidence for that.  Gajah Baran-Varjee says, Freedom of Speech means all platforms. Once you decide a topic is taboo, you can just switch topics at any time what if they decide the transgender is designated as taboo? I have no idea what that sentence means. Gotcha. I'm not sure either. And this one. Did you say it again? Huh? Did you read it again? They had said, Freedom of Speech means all platforms. So I think maybe they're trying to say that if you have real freedom of speech, according to the First Amendment, then you'd be able to see what you want on all platforms. Like Freedom of Speech would apply to private corporations and private property kind of a thing. I think that that's what they're saying, which I know with Demon Mama you'd disagree with. Of course. Yeah.  If you say you're a free speech absolutist, I don't think you've thought about your positions long enough.   This is nobody, no person who's really thought through their position is going to come to that conclusion. That's silly. They also said, once you decide a topic is taboo, you can just switch it at any time. Namely, you can, I think they're saying it's based on someone's whim now. Like it's arbitrary. They can just, now what if they soon say that transgender is a taboo as well?  And I know that firsthand. So I mean, you made an attempt, but like it literally already is taboo and we deal with that. And the way that we deal with that is by pointing out that like, hey, like there are some things that are worthy of being against and there are some things that are not. For example, we do this all the time. We make ethical distinctions.  I think that there is no good argument for why we should treat trans people like myself with a horrific taboo because that's ridiculous. But we probably should treat Nazis with a bit of societal taboo because they advocate for killing a lot of people. They advocate for ethno-states and those are bad things. This is, you're vaguely referencing at the fact that humans conclude that some things are good and some things are bad and some things aren't bad and whatever. Like, yeah, okay. Gashand, this one from FlamencoTV says, de-platforming panders to those who are kind of wanting to carry out their own agenda. Is there, so I know that as a blanket statement, obviously demon mama, you'd disagree with that. I think Tom would probably even largely disagree with that. But I'm curious, like, are there any cases in which people actually are trying to de-platform for their own kind of, some sort of narcissistic, you know, like they only think their own view and this could be on either side of the political, not trying to say it inside. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've been the target of such things like that. I mean, I've had my, like the last, like, I don't know, maybe like two months ago for like a four month stretch, there was somebody who was constantly advocating that I'd be de-platformed. Fortunately, for myself and for many others, I didn't do anything worthy of being de-platformed and also their arguments sucked. So yeah, I mean, people can advocate for whatever they want, but we can do that anyway. Like anybody can say that. It's people's right to advocate for it.  The thing is, I haven't violated the YouTube TOS and I haven't said anything virulently racist. So yeah, I just, I don't know what the question is getting at. Some people, like if you do something and people get mad at you, they might succeed in convincing other people that you didn't do it something right. That's part of free speech. Yeah. Gotcha. And this one coming in, I know we're coming up to the two hour mark. So we're going to wrap up pretty quick here, but let's see. Bubblegum Gun said, you're just saying government is language laundering. What? I don't understand it either. But Rumpley Depew says, Tjump DM, demon mama, can we agree that public universities, deplatforming speakers, because of threats from opposing views and bending to the wishes of a majority student group over a minority group is a first amendment violation and tyranny? I don't know if I'd go so far as to say something like tyranny, but yeah, that sounds pretty bad.  Well, they have a right to protest. So I think that's a bad example of deplatforming and I could make a case for why it's a bad example of deplatforming. Like I said, I don't think all, I said this very clearly at the beginning. I don't think all forms of deplatforming are automatically valid, but deplatforming is just a set of tactics. We have to analyze whether it's being used. That's like being like, I don't know, like deplatforming is like a hammer. You can use a hammer for good things. You can use a hammer for bad things. It's about how you use it. Gotcha. And want to let you know folks, at Monday debate, we are a neutral platform. We welcome you from all walks of life, whether it be Christian, atheist, gay, straight, black, white, Republican, Democrat, you name it. We are glad you are here and we hope you feel welcome. So we're going to wrap up, but want to remind you that our guests are linked in the description. We really do appreciate our guests. And so again, folks, want to remind you, as always, attack the arguments, not the person. And thank you so much to T-Jump and Demon Mama for being here with us. It's been a true pleasure to have you. I got to tell you, people have really a lot of positive feedback. People have said that this is the best debate we've had in a while and I agree it's been phenomenal. So thank you so much, T-Jump and Demon Mama. Yeah, no problem. And if any of you out there feeling like you want to ask me some further questions about my positions or whatever, feel free to come by my website, demonmama.com. I always do Q&A afterwards. James, thank you so very much for coming on. And Tom, thanks for going up against me today. Yep, thanks, Demon Mama. Glad to have you on. I'm happy to talk with you and thanks, James, for hosting as always. Absolutely. Absolutely. I will be back in a moment, folks, with a post-credits scene on upcoming debates, like this one you see on the bottom right of your screen. So stick around and I'll be back in just a sec. Folks, thanks so much. Want to say we really do appreciate our guests. We know that this is a fiery one, but I do want to remind you, folks, as always, do, folks, please focus on attacking the arguments, not the person. As we really do appreciate our guests, the debaters are the lifeblood of the channel. If it was just me debating myself every night, it would be a terrible channel. But thanks to the debaters. I think this is a blast of a channel. It's always fun for me. And I want to say thanks, everybody, for being here. I want to say hello to those of you in chat and I'll kind of be switching back and forth between letting you know about upcoming debates as well as saying hi to you in chat. Because they do, like, just enjoy to get to hang out with you. And so thanks, everybody, for hanging out here. And as we mentioned, we hope that you feel welcome. No matter what walk of life you're from, we are very serious about that. We're a nonpartisan channel. And so, really, we only host debates. There's no reason why anybody would kind of feel like, it's kind of like my hope, at least, is that nobody would ever think that there's a reason to think that we're biased. We really do want to give everybody a fair shake. That's our vision and our goal at modern day debate. And we want to carry out that goal next week. When T-Jump will be back debating Vosh on the juicy topic of the super straight debate. That is already up on our upcoming streams. If you check out our main page here on YouTube and want to let you know, folks, we are pumped about that debate. It's going to be juicy and epic. It's going to probably, I got to warn you, folks, if you're new to this channel, even though we are a neutral channel, and even though we do want to welcome you, no matter what walk of life you're from, it is true. You probably will, and I'm included, and I just bite my tongue. You'll probably be offended at some points. Once in a while, you're here or something, and you're like, ah, geez. But nonetheless, we are glad you were here. And we think that it's good to expose yourself to all sorts of ideas. And so we want to say thank you to Demon Mama and T-Jump as we really do appreciate them for hanging out with us. And this is a way of getting people from different walks of life talking. And so I want to remind you as well about the old chat rules, folks, is as long as you're attacking the arguments instead of the person, whether it be the person's appearance or whatever else you might, the 1%. Remember, it's only the 1%ers out there that we have a problem with. 99% of you are fantastic, and we appreciate you being so friendly. And it's only that 1% where sometimes it's like they're, it's like, ah, geez. Now you're attacking the people in terms of their appearances or something else. And it's like, you're clearly trying to just antagonize people. You're not into attacking arguments. You're really not, you could say, in the spirit of this channel. And here's the reason why I am so excited to crush those who oppose this rule. And the reason is we have a vision, folks, to grow and have a positive impact on YouTube. We're excited about the future. Things are exciting as we've just been, I'm just been thankful for all of your guys' support as we've been growing. And it's just awesome to have that impact. And the idea is, if people are trying to harass the guests, it's like, okay, well, great. What we see that you're doing is you're basically reducing the chances that we're going to be able to have that guest on again because who wants to go to a place where they feel trashed? And so that's why I'm very serious.  Why can't I make fun of so-and-so's appearance or whatever else? You don't care about free, you don't care about free speech. And it's like, ah, here's the thing. We have a vision and a goal of growing. And if you're getting in that way, we will crush you and we'll enjoy it. So let me say though, that's only 1%. We want to say thank you to the 99%. As folks, I do want to say, pair, D, bear, good to see you. Thought, sponge, glad you are here, as well as Rivi and how long. And Denkono, thanks for being here. And MacHD 2021, thanks for coming by, as well as Ophir. And thanks, some guy for being here. Eric E, thanks for coming by, as well as Flum666 and just some internet chick. We are pumped that you were here. Want to remind you folks, yeah, we're just pumped to have you. Thanks for coming by. It's always fun. As well as Dothales, thanks for coming by. And Thom Wallbrand, as well as Mihai William, thanks for coming by. We appreciate you. And Chris Cloyde and Eric E, thanks for coming by, as well as Ms.Metal. And Oliver Catwell, thanks for coming by, as well. It was Dank and Deep, Oliver Catwell. You were right about that. And Angry Anchobe, thanks for coming by, as well as Beef Wellington and Apricot Sloth. We are pumped. Thanks for your funny chat there in the old chat, Apricot Sloth. Farron Salas, good to see you. Thanks for your support. Said, like button, hit dear sir. I agree. If you enjoyed this topic, if you enjoyed these guests, if you thought, hey, that was a fiery one, that was a lively one, it was high energy, it was juicy, do hit that like button, as we're excited about this. And that gives us an idea of like, eh, should we host it again? So we do like that kind of engagement gives us a clue, because I actually do pay attention to things like that. I'm like huge on our YouTube analytics, like our stats, looking at how people respond. And so, Lacy Ann, glad you are here, as well as Ms. Metal and some guy, thanks for coming by. Tony Nadooski, thanks for coming by. Said, good stuff. James, thanks so much for your kind words. And glad you love T-Jump's chair. And absolutely, Platium, thanks for mentioning that we do have a Discord, modern day debate has a Discord. And so, want to remind you folks, couple things, with our rules in terms of being respectful or not. In terms of pronouns, we're not telling you, we're not even encouraging you like, hey, please use their preferred pronouns. All I would say is this, don't use the pronouns that they don't want to be called. So if you want to call them, if you want to just refer to it. So for example, like Tom, I don't know if Tom has any pronouns that he prefers not to be called, but as an example, I would never tell you like, please describe Tom as he, like or him. All I'm saying is either call him Tom-Jump, but just whatever you do, don't call him the, don't purposely use the pronoun that he doesn't want to be called in order to antagonize him. So we're pretty, I mean, like, that's as neutral as you get. Like we are very neutral to where we're not going to encourage you to use any pronouns. And that's something that the channel is kind of like, we're working through a lot of these kind of speech things as we have had more controversial debates in which these come up. But we will say this is like, we know when you're trying to, when people in the chat sometimes be like, oh, is that a man or a woman?  You know you wouldn't say that in real life. You know that would be extremely rude. So we know that when people say, is that a man or a woman? It's pretty obvious you're trying to get under people's skin. And so it's like, hey, if you think you're being like, oh, I'm being clever, I didn't use the wrong pronoun though. I'm like, listen, you're still, again, if you get in the way of this channel's goal, which is to provide a neutral platform and to grow on YouTube and providing that neutral platform, if you get in our way, we are going to crush you even if you're trying to claim innocence because you're like, oh, I just asked if there was a man or a woman. And it's like, yeah, you know that you wouldn't say that in real life because it would basically be extremely rude. But Dave Gar says, this is a great debate, still undecided. I wish the debaters took a bigger picture view of the topic rather than micro Shapiro view though. Gotcha. Thanks for your feedback, Dave Gar. And we are pumped. You are here.  You know, I think that we're, we try to look at the intention. So if somebody is saying something, like somebody said, for example, like Tom looks sweaty. I'm like, I'm not going to, like really, like some people would say James, ban them, ban them.  But I'm not going to ban them. And so, you know, I, frankly, no, I don't, I think we're doing a fine job. I like, if you have actual, that's the thing.  And it's like, that's not constructive criticism. But basically, and I'm not saying that you're doing this, but I just want to tell you that it's like, we're open. If you have constructive criticism, if you're like, hey, I noticed this, maybe something to keep an eye out for, I'm open to it. But as of right now, I got to say, I'm not going to ban somebody for saying, Tom looks sweaty. You can call me sweaty. You can say that I look like I'm sweaty, or I have a bad camera angle. I don't care.  But I can't blame a guest for kind of being like, why would I want to go back to modern day debate if people trash me in the chat, or even though it's 1%, because I do think it is a small percent, but they get more attention. And so long story short, there's your answer. And also, Amanda, thanks for your kind words. I love this channel. Thank you, Amanda, for that support. That means more than you know, it really is encouraging. And to Potsall says, great job at all the moderators in chat. Thanks to Potsall. And the Zook said, can I get a shout out, James? Of course you can, the Zook. We're glad you're here. And then let's see. Platinum says, it's good to put their preferred pronouns on screen. I'm open to that. I'm still not going to encourage people to say, like, hey, we encourage you to use this or that pronoun. I'm just going to say, don't use the one that, you know, they don't want to be called. And I think people can actually put it together pretty fast, what the people don't want to be called. I mean, that's why, I mean, that's why they're doing this like, clever, like, is that a man or a woman?  But Be Badass says, just here to drop by with a hello, but going to bed. Good night. And thanks Be Badass for coming by. And then Dothel's glad you're here. Matthew Simmar, good to see you again. And then Jimmy O'Flaugherty, thanks for coming by. And that's funny, your physiques comment. But yes, thanks. Oh, if you're good to see you and obscured, thanks for coming by. I see you there in the old chat. We rarely block people. Like, really it is.  But first, I want to tell you about these upcoming debates. Vosh and T-Jump will be debating the super straight topic next week. You don't want to miss it, folks.  But also, folks, we are excited about this absolutely epic upcoming debate. Is there good evidence for God with Dr. Kenny Rhodes, who's a Christian against the atheist, juggernaut, debater, Matt Dillahunty? That is going to be an epic one, folks. You don't want to miss it. And we are doing a crowdfund for this. So do want to mention, folks, it's only 19 days. It's coming. And it's not even 20 days. So do want to encourage you, if you have not already given to this crowdfund to help make this event happen, want to invite you to join into that with us. And folks, I am absolutely pumped about it. So let me get you that link as I just realized I don't actually have the link in the... I don't actually have the link in the description box. So I am getting it for you now. So do let me know. I'm going to throw this in the old live chat. And please let me know if this crowdfund, the crowdfund mentioned. Please let me know if this link in the chat does not work as we... I don't know if this is going to work. Let me... I don't know. Let me know. As we want to encourage you, folks, this is going to be an epic event. And I want to share with you a few things. One is if you have never done a crowdfund before, it is absolutely really exciting to have this epic event coming up. So we do want to invite you to join us on it. And so if we don't make the goal, the event doesn't happen. We absolutely... we have to make this happen. And we are going to make it happen. I'm determined. So let me share some of the details about this stuff. First, you know what debate this is for. If you have not heard about this, if you've been living in a cave on Mars, with your fingers in your ears, I have to let you know this debate is going to be absolutely epic. As we are pumped, Matt Delanti will be reshorning to take on the Christian Apologist, Dr. Kenny Rhodes. Folks, it's going to be epic. And I want to let you know several other things about this Kickstarter for the next one. You might be wondering like, well, you know, you need to make this goal in order for the event to happen. Well, are you sure you can do it? Believe me, folks, we've already done it. This most recent January. So what is it? Five months ago, we met our goal of raising originally. And we actually broke our goal and went beyond it. And we, as you can see on screen, 143 backers pledged 3,100. And so we are pumped as this is just a small increase for this current goal. And believe me, we are determined. We are going to make it. So we want to encourage you to join us on that mission. And we have already successfully done it. We're going to do it again. But let me show you because you might be like, well, I don't know how to do it. What is Indiegogo? I've never used it before. It's just like Kickstarter. Exactly the same, just different branding, basically. But I want to let you know you can sign in with Facebook. You don't even have to. It's awesome. You don't even have to have an email to enter in with a password or anything like that. So do want to let you know it is actually going to be epic. You don't want to miss it. And so please do sign in through that Facebook sign in as you see on screen. And then please do let me know, folks, have you tried the Crowdfund link as I just want to be sure that the one that I posted in chat and that I I'll pin it to the top of the chat. So if you can let me know if that one works, I just want to be sure because I absolutely want to make sure that you actually can access it if I'm mentioning it. And so thanks for your kind feedback though in the chat.  I appreciate your kind words and want to show you this other thing though. We have a lot of perks. You guys, here are some of the perks. We have a lot of the same ones from last time, plus some new ones. So for example,