07/23/2023 / By Ramon Tomey
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) warned during a July 20 congressional hearing that censorship is the first step toward totalitarianism.
He issued the warning at a hearing convened by the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government (House WFG Subcommittee), which is under the House Judiciary Committee. The hearing also saw Breitbart politics editor Emma-Jo Morris testify alongside the candidate. RFK Jr.’s warning was a response to a question by Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) about the potential ramifications of ignoring the weaponization of the U.S. government, instead of discussing it openly.
“A government that can censor its critics has license for every atrocity. It is the beginning of totalitarianism,” he testified. “There’s never been a time in history when we look back, and the guys who were censoring people were the good guys. All of us grew up reading Arthur Koestler, Robert Heinlein, Aldous Huxley [and] George Orwell. They were all saying the same thing: Once you start censoring, you’re on your way to dystopia and totalitarianism.”
Morris, who testified about the censorship of her reporting on Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell,” said: “I can’t even believe this is a conversation. This is not controversial or taboo. We live in the U.S. and you have the right to say whatever you want, print whatever you want and read whatever you want.”
RFK Jr.’s testimony before the House WFG Subcommittee echoed similar statements he made back in April 2023 during an interview on “Breitbart News Sunday.”
“There is no time in history where the people who were censoring speech were the good guys,” he told Breitbart‘s Joel Pollak. “They’re always the bad guys because, of course, that is the first and last step of totalitarianism – silencing critics.”
The environmental lawyer and health freedom advocate continued: “We’re now in this situation where without free speech, democracy just withers and dies. Free speech is the fertilizer. It’s the sunlight [and] it’s the water for democracy.”
In contrast to the Republican representatives who convened the hearing, their Democratic counterparts used it as an opportunity to smear RFK Jr. for “stepping out of line.” One even went so far as to prevent him from speaking out. (Related: IRONIC: House Judiciary Committee has been asked to censor RFK Jr. in hearing about federal government’s role in censoring Americans.)
Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-VI), ranking member of the House WFG Subcommittee, defended censorship during the same hearing. She argued that certain views should not enjoy the free speech protections guaranteed by the First Amendment. Plaskett also zeroed in on RFK Jr.’s statements, dubbing them “hateful.”
“Free speech is not an absolute. The Supreme Court has stated that “the non-voting delegate said. However, the high court’s restrictions involve “time, place, and manner” for the way free speech is expressed, not the content of speech.
Plaskett accused GOP representatives of forcing social media companies to promote “any conspiracy theories, no matter how harmful. She also implied that subcommittee chair Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) backed death threats toward Nina Jankowicz of the now-defunct Disinformation Governance Board under the Department of Homeland Security. The would-be “disinformation czar,” who earlier testified before the subcommittee, had been subjected to death threats.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), meanwhile, took things a step further by introducing a motion to move the hearing into executive session, ending the public testimony. She cited a congressional rule that provided for an executive session if testimony “would tend to defame, degrade or incriminate any person.” However, the GOP-controlled House moved to postpone the Florida congresswoman’s motion.
Wasserman Schultz’s action led Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to comment: “This is a hearing on censorship that began with an effort to censor Kennedy.”
Watch RFK Jr. warning about censorship being the first step toward totalitarianism during the July 20 House WFG Subcommittee hearing.
This video is from the Son of the Republic channel on Brighteon.com.
RFK Jr. warns: “There is no time in history where the people censoring speech were the good guys.”
RFK Jr. is pro-Second Amendment, pro-First Amendment, anti-war and pro-border security.
Report: Democrats want to censor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in censorship hearing.
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Tagged Under:
banned, big government, Censored, Censorship, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Emma-Jo Morris, First Amendment, free speech, freedom, hearing, House WFG Subcommittee, Kat Cammack, Kennedy 2024, Liberty, RFK Jr, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Stacey Plaskett, thomas massie, totalitarianism, vote democrat, weaponization
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