Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee have issued subpoenas to three left-wing groups, including a news outlet, demanding that they turn over their communications and financial records as the Trump administration escalates its McCarthyist crackdowns on those with left-wing views. The committee has demanded documents from BreakThrough News, a left-wing news outlet…
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“Existence is struggle,” says Marc Steiner. “It always has been, and always will be.”
In this podcast series, we’ve looked at the attacks on free speech rights today in the United States. We looked at the history and how movements and organizations have stood up for and exercised free speech in their work. We looked at how social media, AI, and disinformation are undermining our free speech, and at how people are responding in the United States and abroad.
In the final episode of this series, we’re focusing on what free speech means within the context of the life of one person who has been through it all — co-host Marc Steiner. He turned 80 earlier this year.
In this episode, Michael Fox sits down with Marc to discuss all of these incredible layers of his life, from fighting civil rights and community organizing to underground newspapers, street theater, education, and journalism. What do they all mean for him, how do they all add up to nearly seven decades standing up and fighting for free speech, and how they fit into the battle for free speech today?
“You have to step back and really listen to what people are saying so you can bring out their truth so others can wrestle with it,” says Marc. “And if they need confronting in their process, you confront it and push back. Which is why when I think about what we do, how important it is — We have a critical role to play in bringing understanding to the world. The truth lives in every corner. And you have to listen. No one has a hold on it.”
In our conversation, Marc says right now the battle for free speech is more important than ever.
“I think we’re politically facing the most
When activists in Ireland heard that Peter Thiel’s secret club, Dialog, was planning to meet in the Irish countryside, they launched a campaign to stop it. They succeeded.
Peter Thiel is a Silicon Valley tech financier and the founder of the companies PayPal and Palantir who donated lavishly to Trump’s 2016 presidential run. In 2022, he financially backed 16 far-right congressional candidates. Thiel’s company Palantir has come under fire for supporting both the genocide in Gaza and the immigration crackdown in the United States.
Leaks about Dialog dropped in June, revealing information about Thiel’s 20-year-old elitist invitation-only organization and its planned Irish conference in August. Meeting topics included World War III, battlefield technologies, building a cult, and improving your sex life.
The meeting was to be held in the five-star Powerscourt Hotel in County Wicklow, Ireland. Several grassroots Irish groups — including Your Tech, Their Deaths and North Wicklow Against Genocide — created #DropDialog, a campaign to get the conference cancelled. They planned several protests at the Powerscourt Estate. They didn’t have to. News broke on July 3 that the event had been cancelled.
“Media reports say the genociders’ event, the Dialog conference, will not be hosted at Powerscourt Hotel,” they wrote, in a statement on the #DropDialog website. This is a victory for all people of conscience who mobilised against it and shows that direct action works! We issue a warning to any other hotel or venue on the island of Ireland who may consider hosting these individuals. Genociders, warmongers and technofascists are not welcome in Ireland. Power to the people!”
Jude Farrell is a founder of the group Your Tech, Their Deaths. She is a former
Disinformation is impacting our lives. Much of it is being pushed by unregulated Silicon Valley tech companies and their billionaire owners. But people in Europe are pushing back.
In this episode, Michael Fox goes to Spain, to look at how members of the Spanish far right have been inspired by Charlie Kirk. Then we look at grassroots organizing against Big Tech in Ireland, media education initiatives in Finland, and European measures regulating Big Tech.
“This has now been a topic of discussion very much in Europe,” says Finnish educator Saara Salomaa. “Should we actually trust any US tech companies, or should we try to get rid of US tech companies as soon as possible?”
Michael is joined in the episode by Laura Flanders. She is the host of Laura Flanders and Friends on public television — formerly known as the Laura Flanders show.
The Battle for Free Speech Podcast is a production of The Real News Network.
Hosted by Michael Fox and Marc Steiner. Theme music by Michael Fox, Jordan Klein and Daniel Nuñez. Other music from Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound. Production and Sound Design by Michael Fox and Stephen Frank. Editorial support by Kayla Rivara. Research by Ben Schweiger.
Guests
Sergio Villanueva
Jude Farrell
Saara Salomaa
Iva Nenadic
Many thanks, also, to Ilona Taimela for taking the time to speak with me about media education in Finland.
Resources
Here is a link to TikTok about the Puchaina Avocado videos.
Follow The Battle For Free Speech on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.Support Michael Fox’s reporting at patreon.com/mfox. Never miss an episode — sign up for The Real News newsletter at therealnews.com.
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Michael Fox: Hi folks. Just a quick heads up before we get started. There are a few
This is really a tale of two countries: the United States and Brazil. In both countries, far-right presidents come to power — Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro. In both those countries, the presidents spent several years unraveling democratic institutions and public policy. Both presidents then ran for reelection. Both presidents lied about their country’s voting systems in order to undermine the elections and whip up their base.
Both those presidents lost their reelections — Trump in 2020. Bolsonaro in 2022. They both claimed fraud and tried to carry out a coup to stay in power.
But that is where these two paths diverged. In the United States, President Donald Trump continued to peddle his lies about the elections. He created his own social media platform and he used it to push his agenda. He was reelected in 2024 and returned to power. In Brazil, however, the country’s Supreme Electoral Court blocked former President Jair Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years, because of the lies he told about the country’s electoral system.
It wasn’t censorship. it was a different interpretation of free speech. One that said the right to free expression must be balanced with the other rights in the country and the country’s democratic system. The United States doesn’t agree. And the Trump administration has been pushing to bend Brazil toward its definition of “free speech.”
In this episode, Michael Fox journeys to Brazil to understand the lengths that the country has gone to fight disinformation.
Michael is joined in the episode by Maximillian Alvarez, editor-in-chief and co-executive director of The Real News Network and the host of the Working People Podcast.
The Battle for Free Speech
Instead of the state determining what will be taught in university classrooms, students must be free to hear and consider even officially disfavored ideas presented to them by professors, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. More than two years after oral arguments in a case challenging the 2022 law dubbed the Stop WOKE Act, two out of three judges on a U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th…
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