After Democrats threatened to censor him during last week’s House committee hearing on censorship, Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to hold a “Roundtable on Censorship” next month.
“We’re not waiting for the election to elevate free speech in the public mind,” the campaign for the Kennedy family scion said in a mass email message sent Monday.
Team Kennedy, according to the campaign, has scheduled the Roundtable on Censorship for August 17. Organizers say the event will bring together leading experts and journalists such as Glenn Greenwald, Michael Shellenberger, Sharyl Attkisson, Jenin Younes, and former New Jersey Assemblyman Jamel Holley.
“Each has been a steadfast defender of the First Amendment. You can bet that this panel won’t be censored!” RFK Jr’s campaign email states.
On Thursday, the controversial vaccine critic and son of the slain New York U.S. senator and Democratic Party presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy faced censorship while testifying before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The hearing was convened by majority Republicans.
Democrats, claiming Kennedy had violated House rules against defamatory or degrading testimony, attempted to remove him from the hearing. They failed, losing on a party-line vote.
Kennedy, challenging incumbent President Joe Biden for the Democratic Party nomination, testified at the request of Republicans who assert they want to shine light on alleged abuses of power in the Biden administration.
U.S Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL-25) sought to move the hearing into executive session, attempting to block Kennedy’s further testimony for what she claimed were “despicable” anti-semitic and anti-Asian remarks.
“This is an attempt to censor a censorship hearing,” RFK Jr. said of his fellow Democrats’ moves to silence him.
“Censorship is antithetical to our party,” he said. “It was appalling to my father, to my uncle [President John F. Kennedy], to FDR, to Harry Truman, to Thomas Jefferson, as the chairman referred to. It is the basis for democracy.”
But Democrats have been rather undemocratic to speech they don’t like — speech they have in newspeak-sounding terms taken to calling “malinformation.”
As The Washington Examiner reported, the term “malinformation” originates in the human rights-oriented Council of Europe co-authored report titled “Information Disorder.” The report defines “malinformation” as “when genuine information is shared to cause harm, often by moving information designed to stay private into the public sphere.”
In “other words, “Malinformation is info that is true but inconvenient to the government, that they don’t want people to hear,” Kennedy said at the hearing.
His controversial ideas, opinions, and facts on COVID-19, COVID vaccines and government-ordered lockdowns have been attacked and, in many cases, blocked by Big tech and Big Media.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) last year warned of “Government attempts to label speech misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation,” describing the “Nineteen Eighty-Four”-like efforts as a “nightmare.”
“The government wants to tell you what’s true and what’s false. What could go wrong?” the organization sardonically asked.
It’s nothing new for RFK Jr.
The Media Research Center’s (MRC) CensorTrack.org database last week found Big Tech censored the presidential candidate at least 10 times between April and June.
“The left uses the same tired tactics to achieve their goals: silence their opposition and defame their opponents. It is so predictable but less and less effective. Americans are waking up to their schemes,” MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider told The Star News Network last week on the Simon Conway Show on NewsRadio 1040 WHO in Des Moines.
Kennedy’s campaign said the congressional hearing on censorship “exposed the war on the First Amendment at the highest level of the U.S. government.
“Mr. Kennedy showcased his unwavering support for free speech and forceful condemnation of censorship, all while calling on Congress to lead by example in healing the partisan divide,” the announcement on the roundtable discussion states.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Image “Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on Censorship” by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
