The latest Plebity Free Speech Fund recipients are two Oregon educators, Rachel Damiano and Katie Medart. Rachel, Assistant Principal, and Katie, 7th-grade science teacher, were fired from North Middle School in July after they founded I Resolve, an organization promoting policies that counter the advance of gender identity ideology in schools. Rachel and Katie lost their jobs as a result of their lawful expression, making them eligible for our Free Speech Fund, which fights back against cancel culture by supporting those who fall prey to it’s career destroying tactics.
In this episode, Sasha is joined by Hunter College Professor Yasha Klots for a discussion on Soviet contraband literature, censorship, and what we can learn about our current climate from the history of book banning in the USSR.
In this episode Sasha, Nesim and Rozali look at a Tech Crunch article about Substack's recent acquisition of the platform Letter, and the critiques of Substack for allowing certain views to be expressed on the site. They discuss the way free speech is portrayed as a dirty concept, something which militants use to hate monger, and how little or no evidence is provided for claims such as accusations of transphobia.
All around the world, digital tools are being used in various ways to monitor data and control access. Privacy experts have long warned that these digital tools are not easily reversible; they are often repackaged, and repurposed for other means. As always, their calls have been ignored.
In this episode, we discuss the power a few big tech companies have amassed when it comes to who can say what. To have the power to silence even a president indicates a serious issue when it comes to a private company, especially when you start to look at the connections between the government and the tech companies. We discuss the way some of these companies appear to be state actors in some regards, and the need for genuine freedom of speech for everyone, a value which is being corrupted by the tech overlords’ desire for profit and power.
Sasha is joined by psychotherapist and writer Stella O'Malley to discuss her new organization for parents of gender-questioning kids, Genspect. They talk about the gender medicine industry, the nightmare situation many parents find themselves in when they bring their child to a gender therapist for help, the motives of the doctors and other professionals who push this experimental craze, and much more.
Witch hunts in various forms are one of those recurring themes of human history. One variation, known as McCarthyism, has returned recently, at least in the lexicon. The word McCarthyism has been thrown around a lot lately. Like ‘fascist’ or ‘marxist,’ it is a part of the word arsenal deployed in our current culture wars.
Nadine Strossen, former president of the ACLU, joins Sasha to discuss a range of issues that revolve around freedom of expression including cancel culture, at-will employment laws, pornography, and the importance of speaking out to defend those who are under attack for exercising their freedom of expression.