Introducing Our New Season: The Real Free Speech Threat

Drilled

Critical Frequency

True Crime, Earth Sciences, Social Sciences, Science

4.8 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2023

⏱️ 3 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Around the world, climate and other environmental protestors are being harassed, attacked, and arrested at an alarming rate. Laws are being passed that levy life-altering prison sentences and fines on protestors arrested near anything deemed “critical infrastructure,” which is defined so broadly it’s hard to find a public space that wouldn’t be near it anymore. Corporations are suing protestors and NGOs, comparing protest to organized crime. Governments are growing increasingly comfortable branding environmental protestors as “domestic terrorists.” And so far the media is largely participating in the rhetorical “othering” of protestors, opting in most cases to focus on the disruption that protest causes rather than the change it seeks, and to marginalize activists. In this print and audio series we’ll take an in-depth look at how climate protest has evolved in recent years, where this backlash is coming from, how it’s grown so quickly, and what it feels like to be someone who’s concerned enough about the future of humanity to join a protest, only to find themselves facing police violence and several years in jail. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Lately, when we hear about free speech, it's usually stuff like this.
0:10.2	These companies went on a rampage, de-platforming conservatives beginning with,
0:14.1	at the time, the setting president of the United States.
0:16.8	But there is an actual free speech threat happening right now,
0:21.8	and it's not about people being able to spread lies or insults with no consequences.
0:28.4	I'm talking about the way governments all over the world
0:31.5	are suppressing environmental protests.
0:35.9	Are you telling the dogs to bite the protesters?
0:40.8	The dog has blood and it's nose and it's mouth.
0:43.5	You can see the activists from just a world have just been dragged away by police very quickly
0:48.7	bundled into the van.
0:50.1	This isn't new. Any time environmental activists have succeeded, there's backlash.
0:56.4	And sometimes it's violent.
1:07.6	In many parts of the world, the assassination of environmental activists,
1:11.9	journalists, and lawyers has been far too common for far too long.
1:17.3	In these struggles, many people were assassinated.
1:20.5	Many people were wounded amongst them, my mother,
1:23.4	but the case that is she was murdered in 2016.
1:28.0	I guess I really didn't understand what he was up against until the actual night that he was killed.
1:38.9	Still, what we're seeing now feels new.
1:42.5	Nowhere is safe, no one is safe, even in countries like the United States,
1:47.3	which has the broadest free speech protections in the world.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -549 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Critical Frequency, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Critical Frequency and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.