Jason Hartman plays a Flash Back Friday episode where he hosts Joel B. Pollak. Their conversation centers around his book: See No Evil, 19 Hard Truths the Left Can’t Handle. Joel also discusses his background as Senior Editor-at-Large and In-House Counsel at Breitbart News in Los Angeles, California, and also Editor of Breitbart California. He gives us insight into running for Congress. The two examine the monologue versus the dialogue media and why government funds media.
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Jason Hartman 1:00
It’s my pleasure to welcome Joel Pollack to the show. He is senior editor at large for Breitbart News Network and author of the new book See No Evil 19 hard truths the left can handle. Joel, welcome. How are you? I’m great. How are you doing? Good. And you’re coming to us from Los Angeles today. Right? I am. Yeah, my hometown. Let’s dive into some of these 19th trues that the left can handle? What are some of your favorites?
Joel Pollak 1:35
Well, I break them up into three different groups. And one group is truths that are 100% on the conservative side, that the left has to try to marginalize or eliminate in some way, then there are issues where there’s an argument on the left side, so that you could actually have a debate between left and right if the left ever allowed that to happen. And then the third group is issues where the left actually may even have the better argument, for argument’s sake. But they don’t even want to allow conservative dissent. So each of these cases involves different tactics from the left in terms of silencing debate, but the approach is always the same. They don’t want to have to defend their ideas. They don’t want to tolerate other ideas. So they suppress conservative ideas.
Jason Hartman 2:22
And the left will say, well, that’s not true. They all say that they’re the open ones. They’re the more open group, aren’t they? Aren’t they supposed to be the more tolerant group? But interestingly, that doesn’t play out by any objective standard in practice,
Joel Pollak 2:39
does it? No. And in fact, we have several objective standards by which it is disproven. That’s the first truth that the left can handle that it’s actually opposed to truth. The left likes to think of itself as standing for truth and rationality and science. And on every issue, it is the opposite. We can measure the intolerance of the left simply by looking at something like for example, the rate at which speakers are disinvited from university campuses. Nine out of the 10 most frequently disinvited speakers are conservative. Now, if the left were truly open and tolerant and everything it pretends to be, you wouldn’t see that, presumably you’d see something like 5050 split. But that’s not what we see. We see nine out of 10 and by the way, the nine who are disinvited are fairly mainstream conservatives. They’re not right wing extremist the 10th. If you’re interested in the liberal, who is on that list is Bill Ayres. Bill Ayres has been disinvited, I’ve had goers on the show. Yeah. Right. And you know, he’s controversial because of his background in domestic terrorism. And so he’s been disinvited a few times. But that’s how crazy You have to be on the left to make that top 10 list on the right, you just have to be a prominent conservative and the left disinvited from campus or shout you down during the lecture so forth.
Jason Hartman 3:54
Right. By the way, john stossel did a really good piece on that on how there’s just no free speech on college campuses and universities have just been taken over by the left. I mean, it’s it’s just mind boggling how biased they are. But I guess that’s what happens when people work 12 hours a week and can’t get fired. And you know, it’s just a whole institution when you say disinvited, you mean these speakers were booked to speak at some event or some assembly on it on a college campus. And then they were uninvited or I would think they would just never get the chance in the first place. Because it’s not like it’s a secret where these people all stand on the left and right,
Joel Pollak 4:34
well, sometimes there’s no secret and activist groups on campus still decide that this is too much for them. I mean, the best case or worst case, as it were, is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the former Muslim who is a very articulate critic of Islam and its treatment of women. She used to be a Somali refugee in the Netherlands. She was then a Dutch parliamentarian and then moved to the United States. She was supposed to receive an honorary degree from Brandeis University, very significant in that Brandeis was founded as a refuge for Jewish students who were excluded by the quota systems in the Ivy League 100 years ago, and they were going to honor her with a degree. She’s been very outspoken against radical Islam and so forth. And then a group of students and faculty on campus decided that it was too controversial to have Ayaan Hirsi Ali because she has criticized Islam. Therefore, it was offensive to Muslim students to have her invited and so they actually not only disinvited her but rescinded the honorary degree. And as she wrote later, in the Wall Street Journal, they turned in a moment of honor into a moment of shaming. And she wrote what she would have told them had she been allowed to give the speech, which was the importance of academic freedom against political correctness. But there you have it, that’s how This usually happens. Where there’s a speaker who’s invited who’s either relatively non controversial is in the case of conflicts arise, for example, who’s in the political arena, but otherwise, not particularly offensive to anybody? Or Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, who was also disinvited, and then somebody picks a bone with it and the universities run away as soon as they can. Another example is George Will who was invited to a women’s college in California, Scripps college, and was disinvited when someone under the column he wrote a couple years ago questioning national statistics on sexual assault on campus. He pointed out the mathematical impossibility of some of these statistics where I think something like 20% of women were supposed to have been targeted by sexual assaults. And yet he pointed out if you actually compare the numbers of reports to the numbers of crimes, I forget how he did it. Very simple, very simple math not hard. When he said this, this had to be a drastic over estimate and for questioning those numbers. He was disinvited from campus. So that’s usually how it goes. The foundation for individual rights in education fire.org has done incredible work documenting these incidents. And they have noted a dramatic upward trend over the beginning of this century, really since the late 90s. Until now, there has been this rapid acceleration of dis invitation. And conservatives are almost always the target. I have heard about many of those cases for sure.
Jason Hartman 7:13
You know what’s interesting, I came up with this theory many, many years ago, and I believe it was about 15 years ago, I actually published an article on it in a trade journal about the monologue media versus the dialogue media. And if you look at it, certainly back then, and still today, although to a lesser degree, I’d say the old media that I call the monologue media, the movies, television, book, publishing, newspapers, The New York Times, the LA Times, etc. Of course, write all of this media, where the reporters or the movie producers, or whatever it is, where they get to tell you something, and you get to listen to monologue media, it’s a one way conversation. That’s all been controlled by the left for a very long time yet, the newer media, and at the time, I’m saying this the dialogue media, I call it that was before social media. But But that was the blogosphere and talk radio was controlled by the right, pretty much I mean, Air America was a spectacular flop on talk radio, as we know. And my theory is that the dialogue media, your ideas have to be able to withstand the scrutiny of debate. And if you’re on air American, all you’re talking about is how much you hate george bush. That’s just not a very, I don’t know, it’s not a very real conversation. But talk radio at the time, certainly compared to other media went deep. Whereas television was just a soundbite. Right. And a one way thing and I understand that newspapers have op ed pages and so forth. But that’s tiny compared to the overall volume of the publication. I think that’s what happens. The left is scared of debate, because I don’t think their ideas can really withstand it a lot of the time. You know, as you pointed out with these universities, they just the open crowd doesn’t want any opposing ideas. They might as well just get in with, you know, Kim Jong Hoon, who he doesn’t like opposition to his ideas either.
Joel Pollak 9:20
Right? And that’s becoming how our political debates happen increasingly, where you don’t have a discussion, you just decide to marginalize the other side. I mean, we’re seeing it in the Hillary Clinton campaign last week. She went after Breitbart News directly. You know, we’ve been around for a while. We’re definitely on the conservative side. And sometimes we were deliberately provocative, but I don’t think a rational person would argue that we deserve to be somehow destroyed or taken off the airwaves. We have a radio show or to be expunged from the internet. They’re not just saying we have nowhere to access their fundraising often they’re actually soliciting donations from their supporters. On the basis of a promise to end us, and that’s what the state of debate has become in the hands of the left right now.
Jason Hartman 10:09
So that’s completely absurd. I mean, the idea of ending any media is absurd, unless it’s supported by taxpayers. Why is it that we have these taxpayer supported media with an agenda, clearly a left leaning media agenda supported by public money? I mean, Breitbart is not you don’t get grants from the government, do you?
Joel Pollak 10:35
Right, we did not get
Jason Hartman 10:37
anything, any idea that can’t be sustained by a free market? Shouldn’t be there. It’s just completely absurd that we have, you know, and that’s not a comparison to what you’re saying. But that just shows you the massive chasm here in thinking, right, they think you should be closed down. And yet this government supported media that is left leaning should be allowed to continue. Instead, you can’t make this stuff up. It’s crazy.
Joel Pollak 11:05
Yeah, it’s absolutely crazy. And yet, this is what we face. And I think that probably one of the best reasons to support Donald Trump, whether you love him or hate him, is he is the figure in this election that is standing up to that, or even if he’s not doing so directly, all the time, who represents the antithesis of that suppression that that cult of political correctness. And to me, that’s reason enough to stand with somebody, there’s almost nobody I wouldn’t stand with precisely for that reason. The fact that Hillary Clinton attacks, Breitbart and other outlets, I think is reason for people to go to those outlets to make a point, because we do not want our politicians telling us what we can and cannot read what we can and cannot watch. You know, the whole basis of the citizens united court case now. So vilified on the left, was that Citizens United, a political group wanted to make a film about Hillary Clinton. And the Federal Election Commission was going to ban the film because it fell outside a certain period, the Supreme Court justices correctly said, Well, we would have no question throwing this case out, if it was about banning a book. So why would we even consider banning a film? And I think that’s a question Hillary Clinton doesn’t get asked. But that’s what the left wants. They want to ban films, movies, and websites that don’t sit well with their worldview. Ironically, of course, it’s conservatives who are accused of repression because of stances against violence in film and sex on television, or whatever. But real repression comes in with Democrats who want to control the way you think about the world.
Jason Hartman 12:38
Yeah, no question about it. And then when you get to the gun control debate, why is it that we are never virtually never anymore? We used to talk about it when, when one of these gun violence episodes happen, but now we’d never talk about the Hollywood movies. In fact, one of my liberal friends, it was interesting on Facebook in the same day, you almost couldn’t believe this was the same human being did this the same day, shortly after the Orlando shooting, he posted that it’s easy to call your friends list on Facebook by whether or not they support the NRA or support any second amendment issue. Right. Okay. He said that. And then later that day, he posts about the movie Deadpool, which if you’ve seen it is about this wacky sort of superhero guy. And there’s just a massive amount of gun violence. In that movie. It opens with this massive shooting seen. And so of course, I commented and asked how and he posted how much he liked the movie, right? And I commented on that thread saying, I thought you were against guns and gun violence. And he immediately unfriended me, of course. But, you know, it just shows you how this mind how can it be one brain? I can’t even put the two together. You know, you’re here. He says he can’t even discuss with anybody gun issues. yet. He’s supporting a massively massively violent movie and recommending it to others. I don’t get it. Where’s the outrage against these Hollywood movie producers who are showing scenes over and over again, of violence that are literally being copied? They were copied in Columbine, there was a copy of a movie scene pretty much okay, the trench coats etc. But nobody wants to talk about this of course, right?
Joel Pollak 14:34
Well, my personal favorite is Matt Damon, who wants gun control, but is on has lots of bodyguards, right? All over Hollywood. He’s on billboards, buses, pointing a gun at someone in the middle distance. People don’t seem to realize that you can’t trash the Second Amendment and retain the first. So it just sort of disappointing but that’s the hypocrisy. And I talk about that in my book. I talk about that in the chapter about guns. How Hollywood has has so much hypocrisy as far as that goes. But yeah, look, we’re always served by having more voices, not fewer voices. And that’s always been the philosophy of Breitbart, where we’ve tried to be a new voice. We’ve also tried to crack open the media for more voices. And I think that’s the best solution our founders envisioned for democracy, freedom of speech is there to protect the views you already agree with, but to protect views that may offend you. And I think we need to remind people that absolutely, because who gets to be the person or what gets to be the entity that gets to decide if we start to implement censorship in any form, even if it’s censorship, by name calling and calling someone a racist if they didn’t support Obama, these just absurd things? That’s a form of censorship. It really is. And the quote is often credited to Voltaire maybe wrongly, I’m not sure, but it is, I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death, your right to say it. And that is a philosophy that any free society I think needs to embrace, because if you don’t, then who gets to draw the line
Jason Hartman 16:19
who gets to decide what gets in and what is out? There just cannot be anything that is excluded. You know, there can’t be any type of censorship like that. You know, grazie. Yeah. Give us a couple other examples, if you would, before we wrap it up of you know, suppressing debate suppressing truth. I like the way you’ve divided it into three sections, suppressing dissent, debate or truth. Islam really blows my mind. For one, because the left will say that they support gay rights. They support women, yet here, at least on the radical side, and we all have Muslim friends. Okay. I’m pretty sure everybody does. I certainly do. Who are the nicest people you ever want to meet? Okay. But I mean, there is something deep within that sect that is not supportive of women or gays. I mean, it’s pretty much impossible to deny that yet. The left, I don’t know how they can hold these two contradictory ideas at the same time.
Joel Pollak 17:22
Well, they hold them by explaining that within our context, the problems of suppression of women and persecution of gays are simply an operative, that’s not going to happen. overlook that, and doesn’t happen in the United States. So you can ignore it. And then the problem becomes about non Muslims prejudice and hostility toward Muslims. I don’t think you can ignore it. And I don’t think that American Muslims are speaking out enough against those kinds of repression or persecution around the world. Certainly, there’s no sense of responsibility in the leadership of the American Muslim community for stopping terrorism. You will hear people talk about how Muslim the US are cooperating with law enforcement, they’re frequently often interfering with law enforcement. Also, they object to training about dealing with terror groups, they object to education, of police forces about Jihad and radical Islam. And possibly the worst recent example was in San Bernardino. In December after the Islamic terrorist attack on the government building in a holiday party, where care the Council on American Islamic Relations, actually stepped up to help the family of the terrorists retain custody of the terrorists abandoned child, as well as I believe ensuring and Islamic burial for these two horrendously awful people. And probably the Obama administration will try to re label that incident as workplace violence, just like they did with that other attack in Texas A few years ago, there’s this whole relabeling and redefining the meaning of these things to which I know is tangential to what you’re talking about. So go ahead, but Well, it’s not tangential in the sense that I think words really do matter. You know, and I think, you know, Obama says, what does it matter if I use the phrase radical Islam? I mean, it’s not going to magically solve the problem. And yet he treats not saying the phrase as if it magically solves the problem, you can’t have it both ways. Either words matter, or they don’t. And I think they do. And I think that every time we talk about the need for Americans to accept Muslims after one of these terror attacks happens, rather than the need for Muslims to get their house in order. I think we actually do the terrorists work for them because the terrorists purport to be acting in the name of Islam. And we deny that and yet we behave as if we’re terrified of what they’re doing. And we carry out part of the mission for them. I mean, I think this is anyway, this is one of the areas where you bring these things up, you’re called Islamophobic. And that’s one of the ways the left tries to suppress discussion around this topic, but that’s another form of censorship.
Jason Hartman 19:50
Say, you don’t have to be Islamophobic to bring up these issues and talk about them. They are reasonable things to discuss. So yeah, censorship through mocking people and vilifying them that that’s a form of censorship. It really is. Just grab one more before you go, if you would anything in the three categories,
Joel Pollak 20:11
one of the ones I talk about in the category of debatable is climate change. And I have a degree in environmental science. So I know a little bit about this topic. And there’s a debate to be had a scientific debate. And the left says it’s for scientific debate. So let’s have that debate. But the left systematically ignores or tries to censor data that contradict the alarmist thesis on global warming or climate change. And they use the term denial. And that applies widely. It’s not just people who deny the phenomenon of climate change. It’s applied also, to people who deny the alarmist predictions of you know, New York City underwater. I mean, my favorite is Jerry Brown, Governor of California, saying that LA x airport was going to be underwater, and he had to be corrected by the scientists who pointed out that the sea level was not going to rise anywhere near as much as even under the worst case disaster scenario wasn’t even going to come close. Yeah, so they call you a denialist. It’s a term that’s chosen deliberately because what they’re referring to all across deniers, exactly there. And that’s that places you in a kind of div based moral category, of course, but no one will admit on the left, that the Holocaust was caused by a socialist group. The Nazis were the National Socialist Party, who made prompt socialist promises to gain power. But you know, no one wants to talk about history, because that’s just too many facts, that brain will explode. Right? It’s complicated. Certainly, there’s a very interesting book I reviewed for Breitbart called Black Earth by a fellow named Snyder, who’s a historian at Yale, who points out that the Nazis killed more people in the former communist areas of Europe, that is to say, states that had been dominated in first destroyed by Stalin. That’s where the killing really happened. Very little of the killing happened in Germany itself, or in states that had retained a national identity and rule of law, where the communists had first destroyed the rule of law. The Nazis found it much easier to murder large numbers of people. So the relationship between left wing ideology and the Holocaust is complicated. And you probably don’t need to go into all that to understand what they’re trying to do is just marginalize people. And that’s the opposite of scientific debate. Science is not decided by majority rule, if science were decided, by majority rule, we would never have scientific discovery because scientific discoveries are by their nature, opposed to the consensus. And so you can’t tell me there’s a consensus on climate change that we simply have to accept proper scientific attitude is skepticism, you don’t provide theories to be believed, and you provide theories so that people will try to disprove them, right? You are truly committed to the enterprise of science, you want people to test your theory? Well, climate change, scientists often do the opposite. And there is a debate to be had about what is happening about how much it’s going to cost about what we should do to stop it. But the left doesn’t want to have that debate. They shut it down entirely.
Jason Hartman 22:54
Well, and then there’s this massive inconsistency, too, because the end of the argument on the left is always always population control. We have too many people. I’ve interviewed a lot of these people on the left on my shows over the years, you know, I had a Berkeley Professor on that was talking about the population explosion and global warming and all of this stuff. And at the end of the day, it’s always boils down to there’s too many people, people consume resources. Yet all of these lefty hypocrites keep having children. I don’t really understand why they don’t view a lot of these wacko genocidal maniacs as their environmental heroes. Because you know that I mean, I’m just pointing out like the inconsistency, the ideology. I know, it’s a ridiculous and distasteful example. I completely get it. But intellectually, it’s honest. You know? It’s, it just doesn’t make any sense. So many of these things. I mean, don’t you think that argument always devolves into the population control argument? That’s always the end of the day, the problem? When you go down that funnel, it seems like
Joel Pollak 24:01
I think certainly with some people, there’s that. And that concept has had a tremendous impact on environmental thinking, you know, it’s the old Malthusian idea that we’re running out of resources. And so therefore, we have to have fewer people. But that’s just never been true. I mean, we’ve always found ways to increase productivity. That’s what science is for. I mean, and
Jason Hartman 24:18
people, they don’t view people as a resource. People are a resource, they discover things, they invent things, they solve problems, the environmental left views people as the problem, not the resource. I think people are the resource,
Joel Pollak 24:31
right? That’s absolutely true. And I think there are obviously limits to that. You don’t want to have such a huge population explosion that we can’t provide for people’s education and health. There are reasons that demographic trends in countries smooth out over time.
Jason Hartman 24:47
Oh, sure. As societies become more prosperous, they have less children, you know, and so, let’s help the world get prosperous through free market ideas, not socialist ideas. Because guess where they’re the most prospers. But there’s a great book on that called the bat. I read it about a year ago about Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon and in the gamble over the Earth’s future, it’s fantastically interesting. You’re probably familiar with it. The bet bt. That’s fantastic. Yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. Anything else you want to say to just wrap that thought up? I know, I jumped in and interrupted you a few times. So I just want to give you them
Joel Pollak 25:23
very grateful for the opportunity. And I hope that people will buy the book and read it and provide feedback. You know, I’m available on twitter at Joel Pollak, je LP o Ll AK. And if people want to review it at Amazon, I’m very grateful.
Jason Hartman 25:35
Yeah, and of course, the books available on Amazon and all the usual places and then breitbart.com as well for your other work and writings. But give out that Twitter handle one more time, if you would.
Joel Pollak 25:45
It’s at Joel Pollak. JOELPO ll aka
Jason Hartman 25:49
Joel Pollack, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.
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