Nazi Website Gets Shut Down. Here’s Why That’s a Threat to Free Speech.

A white supremacist website was effectively shut down after one CEO’s order to pull service. Is free speech under threat when a site can be banned from the internet based on ideology?

Michael C. Moynihan, correspondent for “Vice News Tonight” on HBO, joined Glenn on radio Wednesday to talk about his interview with Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, who essentially banned the Daily Stormer from the internet by denying service to the Nazi site. Is there any way to make sure private companies stay neutral on free speech without bringing in more government regulation?

“We’ve come into a country that is now so fearful that I think that reason has shut down,” Glenn said.

Cloudflare offers a service that protects websites from denial-of-service attacks, which happen when a site is targeted and overloaded with bad requests. Without being shielded by Cloudflare, sites can be kept offline. A helpful analogy is that Cloudflare is like having security that protects you while you speak in public.

Moynihan talked about the difficult balance between not bringing in more regulation and ensuring that a range of opinion is available on the internet.

“We lurch into this area when companies like Cloudflare, Twitter and Facebook accrue so much power and influence that people say, ‘Hey, you know we really should regulate them like public utilities,’” he said.

Instead, people need to realize that more speech is the answer, not censoring repugnant speech.

“The Nazis should be shut down. I want them shut down, and I want them shut down in debate,” Moynihan said. “I don’t want them shut down by companies or by the government.”

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: Only 37 percent of Americans can name any of the rights protected under the First Amendment. There are five of them, by the way. Just in the First Amendment, there are five rights. Can you name all five?

If you can name all five, you are very rare. But only 37 percent can name any of the rights. And this is going become very, very important because there are some things that feel good and there are some things that you just feel like, that's right. That's right, as a knee-jerk reaction.

Like, these Nazis have got to be shut up. Yeah, it does feel right, doesn't it? I mean, I don't want that. I don't want the Nazis around me. I don't agree with the Nazis. The Nazis have led to a lot of, you know, really bad, horrible things. Understatement of the century.

I don't think they should be able to -- wait. Wait. Wait. Because the First Amendment, it's only there because you need to protect the rights of everybody. And the only right of free speech that really needs protection is the stuff that everybody goes, "Right. We got to shut that down. That's crazy."

The CEO of Cloudflare, which is -- which controls a lot of who gets on the internet and who doesn't get on the internet. The CEO's name is Matthew Prince.

And a few weeks ago, he made a decision by himself to begin to regulate the internet. Michael Moynihan from Vice spoke to him.

VOICE: I found The Daily Stormer repugnant. I am not shedding a tear that that content isn't online anymore.

But one of my fellow employees came up to me the day that we took it offline and said, "Hey, is this the day the internet dies?"

VOICE: There wasn't a due process. You woke up one morning, and you said, this is bad, and I'm going to do something about it.

VOICE: The thing that was the tipping point for us was I woke up one day and opened Twitter, and there were a whole bunch of screenshots of some of the people behind the site saying, "Cloudflare actually supports us, and the upper echelons of their leadership are white nationalists."

VOICE: But that's easily dismissed, though, isn't it?

VOICE: You're absolutely right, but what it had become was such a distraction that we couldn't have the really important conversation about what role should Cloudflare be playing in regulating the internet. And so I am deeply concerned that I had the authority and the power to wake up one morning and say, "You know what, I'm done. These guys -- I'm sick of this. So screw them. They're off the internet."

(music)

GLENN: That seems like a circus and kind of disturbing. Nobody should have that power.

Michael Moynihan from Vice joins us now. Michael, when you talked to him, I could see your frustration. I could see -- I'm watching it -- because I'm thinking the same thing you are, "Do you realize what you're even doing or saying?" What were you left with?

MICHAEL: Yeah.

Well, what I was left with was a few things. I mean, I don't like to ever use the phrase "free speech fundamentalist" because I don't like to associate the word "fundamentalist" with free speech. But I am somebody who is a free speech absolutist.

Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare, knew that going in. And I told him, look, I understand why you did it. You're a private company. You can do what you want.

We lurch into this thing -- and you were just talking about the expansion of government power. You know, we lurch into this area when companies like Cloudflare and Twitter and Facebook accrue so much power and influence, that people say, hey, you know, we really should regulate them like public utilities.

You know, I don't want that at all. And I think Matthew Prince should be able to do what he does.

In one clarification, by the way: Cloudflare doesn't host anything. Basically what they do is they protect websites. They protect websites from denial of service attacks. And for listeners who don't know what that is, it's essentially you can hire people, you can do it yourself, to press a button and to flood a website with bad data to keep it offline.

So Cloudflare will protect you from that and essentially keep you online. So what Matthew Prince did, when he removed that protection from The Daily Stormer, is he said, you know, you guys can go offline at any minute. And it's sort of effectively what happened.

But, you know, I really like Matthew. I think it's a fascinating thing that he did wake up and say, "I do have too much power." Most people who have too much power don't say that. They -- they relish it, and they envy having that much power.

So, you know, I like the fact that he did that. But I don't buy, to be totally frank, when he says, you know, I just wanted to start the conversation.

Okay. The conversation is started. I'm on Glenn Beck's radio show talking about it. You are on our program on HBO. Let them back on your network.

No, that's not going to happen.

And The Daily Stormer -- and one must do the throat-clearing thing and say it is the most repugnant website.

GLENN: Oh, it's awful. It's awful.

MICHAEL: A series of repugnant, fascist websites, that harass people, troll people, et cetera.

But, you know, they can't find a home online now. And you do get into some sticky territory. Because when GoDaddy, the enormous company GoDaddy said, "You're not going to be on our network," GoDaddy was actually not hosting them. They were a DNS provider. And basically what that means is when you type in "Daily Stormer" into your browser, the DNS provider translates that word into a series of numbers and directs you to it.

So it's essentially not like we're not allowing the pedophile to buy a house in our neighborhood. It's actually taking them off the map and taking the street signs down. But I have a certain amount of faith in the American people and people everywhere that if they see this stuff, they will be repulsed by it and they will be convinced by it.

GLENN: Only 37 percent of the American people can name their rights protected under the First Amendment. What gives you the feeling that -- when I see people -- I have faith in the American people, are going to stand up against this, when they don't even know what the First Amendment protects.

MICHAEL: Yeah, I don't -- I mean, I don't have that much faith in them.

GLENN: Yes, okay. All right.

MICHAEL: Glenn, I want it -- they may not have freedom of assembly, but not freedom of petition. Pretty specific things.

GLENN: No, no, no, no. Only 37 percent can name any of the rights.

MICHAEL: Name one. Well, one of the things you'll notice recently, and it kind of collapsed my confidence in people and kind of their understanding of constitutional rights is this idea that exists in Europe that does not exist in the United States, you know, of hate speech.

GLENN: Yes.

MICHAEL: We do have hate crimes, and as a conflation of those things, which I think are also in a way problematic of prosecuting people for the things that are going through their heads when they commit crimes that are already on the statute books. But I routinely talk to people who say, "Hate speech. We can't have hate speech," which doesn't exist. And as you said in your intro, there is a reason that we have First Amendment protections. And most people don't understand this. And that is not to protect my speech.

GLENN: Yes.

MICHAEL: It is to protect the most loathsome speech that is out there. And when we grimace at hearing this stuff, it doesn't mean that we should take this away because it will influence other people and make them bad people.

The entire purpose of the First Amendment is to protect the speech over repulsive, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing psychopaths like those who run The Daily Stormer.

GLENN: So, Michael, what is the answer here? Because we have -- we've come into a country that is now so fearful, that I think that reason has shut down.

And -- and so people are not in a place where they can say, "You know what -- I mean, let's -- can I -- let's take it from another angle. Everybody has an opinion. Very few people have a different perspective."

And that's important that we look at things with perspective. We're -- it feels too good to say, "The Nazis and Antifa should be shut down," to the average person. How do you make the case?

MICHAEL: Oh, yeah. No, it feels great to say the Nazis should be shut down. I want them shut down. And I want them shut down in debate. I don't want them shut down by companies and the government. And what I often hear as comparisons to European countries. And I'll give you one that is actually quite helpful. The Germans from -- in the de-Nazification process from sort of 1945, up until I would say the American occupation ended, was a helpful thing and it was a good thing. And I understand the instinct to ban Nazi symbols, to ban Mein Kampf, to ban Nazi rhetoric, and to ban Nazi-affiliated parties. I mean, been trying to ban the NPD, which is the sort of post-Nazi party for quite a long time.

And they're pointed to as a success story. Because you cannot have The Daily Stormer on a network if you are Google in Germany. I mean, you have to take it off your search engine.

After Charlottesville, which, you know, was a couple -- three, 400 idiots raging through Virginia and making a national and international spectacle, a similar Nazi march happened in Berlin that was larger. And every year, on the anniversary of the bombing of Dresden and on Rudolf Höss' birthday, Germans take -- certain Germans, fascist Germans take to the streets and they march. David Irving's books are banned in Germany. Holocaust denial is banned in Germany. Nazi symbols are banned in Germany. And the only copy that you can get of Mein Kampf in Germany is one that has been annotated recently by scholars.

So you can't pick that up and get that on the internet, of course. This has not prevented hatred and fascism from laying down roots again in Germany. And you see this -- now, they haven't been incredibly successful in the political process. But do they exist? They certainly do. And I would say there are more Nazis -- my guess, and I'm just going to say, I'm guessing, to sort of preface this -- is that proportionally, there are probably more Nazis in all the European countries that ban Nazi propaganda than there are in the United States.

GLENN: So Matthew Prince was hiding behind -- in some regard hiding behind. He is a private individual and a private company, I think do have the right to choose who they work with. So we're balancing a couple of rights here.

MICHAEL: For sure.

GLENN: However, we are --

MICHAEL: I don't want to have his rights -- I don't want to regulate his rights. No, you're right.

GLENN: Correct. And I don't want to either. However, we're entering a time where Google and Facebook, in particular, they control so much, that, you know, if Google gets up in the morning and says, "You know what, you're just not going to be able to search for Vice anymore," depending on who is in power and what is popular, et cetera, et cetera, that's extraordinarily dangerous. How do you balance this? What is the answer? Have you come up with one?

MICHAEL: Yeah. Well, one of the things -- I once pitched a story, and the people at Google gave me a very quick and a very swift no. And I probably should have pitched it a different way.

But I noticed that essentially Google around the time of the innocence of Muslims controversy was acting essentially as a parallel state department. I mean, they were interfacing with foreign governments. They are talking about policy and about what stuff that their citizens can see.

And that gave me, you know, this sort of free speech absolutist, a sort of a chill. And somebody also who doesn't want the government involved in this and saying what Google can and cannot do.

I do not think they're a public utility. There are plenty of other options. I mean, if it's a case -- if it's a monopoly of one internet provider that is, you know, running the show in an entire city, that's problematic. But, you know, there is Yahoo. There are other search engines out there. But, yeah, there isn't any easy answer to this, other than to kick up a lot of, you know, dust when this happens. You notice that the ACLU, for instance, has been pilloried by so many people, I think primarily on the left, for saying that these guys that are marching in their jackboots and shaved heads through Charlottesville have the right to do that. I mean, I think the first battle is convincing people, as you said, about understanding constitutional rights. But people do have the right to these opinions. And we have a right to debate them. And we should debate them. I think the biggest problem right now is the fact that, you know -- you know, younger people today -- and people I talk to routinely, don't believe that free speech should be an unfettered right. They believe it's something that should be qualified, if it lurches into the territory of, you know, racism, sexism, homophobia, et cetera. That is my bigger concern. Because I don't see it -- right now, I see, you know, Facebook sort of regulating stuff in their own way, but I see a lot of people going away from Facebook.

I don't think Facebook is going to be the biggest thing in ten years, much in the way that Internet Explorer doesn't have to be broken up by the European Union because it was going the way of the dodo. So I think the technology changes. And I think there's a lot of stuff out there, where people can get this information. It's not really going anywhere. But I don't like the mindset. That's the thing that bugs me the most, is that we really have to get rid of this stuff. If it infects people's minds, then we're done.

GLENN: Michael, thank you for your time.

What do clay pots have to do with to preserving American history?

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Editor's note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

Why should we preserve our nation’s history? If you listen to my radio program and podcast, or read my columns and books, you know I’ve dedicated a large part of my life and finances to sourcing and preserving priceless artifacts that tell America’s story. I’ve tried to make these artifacts as available as possible through the American Journey Experience Museum, just across from the studios where I do my daily radio broadcast. Thousands of you have come through the museum and have been able to see and experience these artifacts that are a part of your legacy as an American.

The destruction of American texts has already begun.

But why should people like you and me be concerned about preserving these things from our nation's history? Isn’t that what the “big guys” like the National Archives are for?

I first felt a prompting to preserve our nation's history back in 2008, and it all started with clay pots and the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1946, a Bedouin shepherd in what is now the West Bank threw a rock into a cave nestled into the side of a cliff near the Dead Sea. Instead of hearing an echo, he heard the curious sound of a clay pot shattering. He discovered more than 15,000 Masoretic texts from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D.

These texts weren’t just a priceless historical discovery. They were virtually perfect copies of the same Jewish texts that continue to be translated today. Consider the significance of that discovery. Since the third century B.C. when these texts were first written, the Jewish people have endured a continued onslaught of diasporas, persecutions, pressures to conform to their occupying power, the destruction of their temple, and so much more. They had to fight for their identity as a people for centuries, and finally, a year after the end of the Holocaust and a year before the founding of the nation of Israel, these texts were discovered, confirming the preservation and endurance of their heritage since ancient times — all due to someone putting these clay pots in a desert cave more than 2,000 years ago.

I first felt a prompting to preserve our nation's history back in 2008, and it all started with clay pots and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So, what do these clay pots have to do with the calling to preserve American history? I didn’t understand that prompting myself until the horrible thought dawned on me that the people we are fighting against may very well take our sacred American scriptures, our Declaration of Independence, and our Bill of Rights. What if they are successful, and 1,000 years from now, we have no texts preserved to confirm our national identity? What kind of new history would be written over the truth?

The destruction of American texts has already begun. The National Archives has labeled some of our critical documents, like our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, as “triggering” or “containing harmful language.” In a public statement, the National Archives said that the labels help prepare readers to view potentially distressing content:

The Catalog and web pages contain some content that may be harmful or difficult to view. NARA’s records span the history of the United States, and it is our charge to preserve and make available these historical records. As a result, some of the materials presented here may reflect outdated, biased, offensive, and possibly violent views and opinions. In addition, some of the materials may relate to violent or graphic events and are preserved for their historical significance.

According to this statement, our founding documents are either “outdated, biased, offensive,” “possibly violent,” or a combination of these scathing descriptions. I’m sorry, the Declaration of Independence is not “triggering.” Our Constitution is not “outdated and biased,” and our Bill of Rights certainly is not “offensive and possibly violent.” They are glorious documents. They should be celebrated, not qualified by such derogatory, absurd language. Shame on them.

These are only the beginning stages of rewriting our history. What if they start banning these “triggering” documents from public view because they might offend somebody? Haven’t we torn down “triggering” statues before? What if we are no longer able to see, read, and study the actual words of our nation's founding documents because they are “harmful” or “possibly violent”? A thousand years from now, will there be any remnant to piece together the true spirit behind the nation that our founders envisioned?

The Declaration of Independence is not “triggering.”

That is why in 2008, I was prompted to preserve what I could. Now, the American Journey Experience Museum includes more than 160,000 artifacts, from founding-era documents to the original Roe v. Wade court papers. We need to preserve the totality of our nation’s heritage, the good, the bad, and the ugly. We need to preserve our history in our own clay pots.

I ask you to join with me on this mission. Start buying books that are important to preserve. Buy some acid-free paper and start printing some of the founding documents, the reports that go against the mainstream narrative, the studies that prove what is true as we are continually being fed lies. Start preserving our daily history as well as our history because it is being rewritten and digitized.

Somebody must have a copy of what is happening now and what has happened in the past. I hope things don’t get really bad. But if they do, we need to preserve our heritage. Perhaps, someone 1,000 years from now will discover our clay pots and, Lord willing, be able to have a glimpse of America as it truly was.

Top 10 WORST items in the new $1.2 TRILLION spending bill

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Biden just signed the newest spending bill into law, and Glenn is furious.

Under Speaker Johnson's leadership, the whopping $1.2 TRILLION package will use your taxpayer dollars to fund the government through September. Of course, the bill is loaded with earmarks and pork that diverts money to fund all sorts of absurd side projects.

Here is the list of the ten WORST uses of taxpayer money in the recently passed spending bill:

Funding venues to host drag shows, including ones that target children

David McNew / Contributor | Getty Images

Money for transgender underwear for kids

Funding for proms for 12 to 18 year old kids

Bethany Clarke / Stringer | Getty Images

Border security funding... for Jordan and Egypt

Another $300 million for Ukraine

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

$3.5 million for Detroit's annual Thanksgiving Day parade

Icon Sportswire / Contributor | Getty Images

$2.5 million for a new kayaking facility in Franklin, New Hampshire

Acey Harper / Contributor | Getty Images

$2.7 million for a bike park in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia, a town with a population of less than 2,300 people

$5 million for a new trail at Coastal Carolina University

$4 million the "Alaska King Crab Enhancement Project" (whatever that means)

FRED TANNEAU / Stringer | Getty Images

There is no doubt about it—we are entering dark times.

The November presidential election is only a few months away, and following the chaos of the 2020 election, the American people are bracing for what is likely to be another tumultuous election year. The left's anti-Trump rhetoric is reaching an all-time high with the most recent "Bloodbath" debacle proving how far the media will go to smear the former president. That's not to mention the Democrats' nearly four-year-long authoritarian attempt to jail President Trump or stop his re-election by any means necessary, even if it flies in the face of the Constitution.

Meanwhile, Biden is doing worse than ever. He reportedly threw a tantrum recently after being informed that his polls have reached an all-time low. After Special Counsel Robert Hur's report expressed concerns over Biden's obviously failing mental agility, it's getting harder for the Democrats to defend him. Yet he is still the Democratic nominee for November, promising another 4 years of catastrophic policies, from the border to heavy-handed taxation, should he be reelected.

The rest of the world isn't doing much better. The war in Ukraine has no clear end in sight, drawing NATO and Russia closer and closer to conflict. The war in Gaza is showing no sign of slowing down, and as Glenn revealed recently, its continuation may be a sign that the end times are near.

One thing is clear: we are living in uncertain times. If you and your family haven't prepared for the worst, now is the time. You can start by downloading "Glenn's Ultimate Guide to Getting Prepared." Be sure to print off a copy or two. If the recent cell outage proved anything, it's that technology is unreliable in survival situations. You can check your list of supplies against our "Ultimate Prepper Checklist for Beginners," which you can find below:

Food

  • Canned food/non-perishable foods
  • Food preparation tools
  • Go to the next level: garden/livestock/food production

Water

  • Non-perishable water store
  • Water purification
  • Independent water source

Shelter

  • Fireplace with a wood supply
  • Tent
  • Generator with fuel supply
  • Go to the next level: fallout shelter

Money

  • Emergency cash savings
  • Precious metals

Medicine

  • Extra blankets
  • Basic first aid
  • Extra prescriptions
  • Extra glasses
  • Toiletries store
  • Trauma kit
  • Antibiotics
  • Basic surgery supplies
  • Potassium Iodate tablets

Transportation

  • Bicycle
  • Car
  • Extra fuel

Information

  • Birth certificates
  • Insurance cards
  • Marriage license
  • Immunization records
  • Mortgage paperwork
  • Car title and registration
  • House keys, car keys
  • Passports
  • Family emergency plan
  • Prepping/survival/repair manuals
  • Go to the next level: copy of the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and other important books/sources

Skills

  • Cooking
  • Gardening
  • Sewing
  • First Aid
  • Basic maintenance skills
  • Go to the next level: farming/ranching
  • Self-defense training

Communication

  • Family contact information and addresses
  • HAM radio

Miscellaneous

  • Flashlights and batteries
  • Lamps and fuel
  • Hardware (tools, nails, lumber, etc)
  • Extra clothes
  • Extreme weather clothes and gear
  • Gas masks and filters
  • Spare parts for any machinery/equipment

Is Trump's prosecution NORMAL?  This COMPLETE list of ALL Western leaders who served jail time proves otherwise.

PhotoQuest / Contributor, The Washington Post / Contributor, Win McNamee / Staff | Getty Images

Mainstream media is on a crusade to normalize Donald Trump's indictments as if it's on par with the electoral course. Glenn asked his team to research every instance of a Western leader who was jailed during their political career over the past 200 years—except extreme political turmoil like the French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, Irish Revolution, etc.—and what we discovered was quite the opposite.

Imprisoning a leader or major political opponent is not normal, neither in the U.S. nor in the Western world. Within the last 200 years, there are only a handful of examples of leaders in the West serving jail time, and these men were not imprisoned under normal conditions. All of these men were jailed under extreme circumstances during times of great peril such as the Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War.

What does this mean for America? Are Trump's indictments evidence that we are re-entering times of great peril? Below is a list of Western leaders who were imprisoned within the last 200 years. Take a look and decide for yourself:

Late 1800s

The Washington Post / Contributor | Getty Images

Jefferson Davis: The nearest occurrence to a U.S. President to serve jail time was in the case of Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. Jefferson was captured in Georgia by Northern Soldiers in 1865 and locked up in Fort Monroe, Virginia for two years. He was offered a presidential pardon but refused out of his loyalty to the confederacy.

Early 1900s

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Eugene V. Debs: Debbs, a Midwestern socialist leader, became the first person to run for president in prison. He was locked up at a federal penitentiary in Atlanta having been convicted under the federal Sedition Act for giving an antiwar speech a few months before Armistice Day, the end of World War I. Many of his supporters believed his imprisonment to be unjust. Debs received 897,704 votes and was a distant third-part candidate behind Warren G. Harding, the Republican winner, and James M. Cox, the second-place Democrat. Harding ordered Debs’s release from prison toward the end of 1921.

Nazi sympathizers and collaborators: After the end of World War II in 1945, several European leaders who had "led" their countries during the Nazi occupation faced trial and imprisonment for treason. This list included Chief of the French State Philippe Pétain, French Prime Minister Pierre Laval, and Minister-President of Norway Vidkun Quisling. The latter two were also executed after their imprisonment. President of Finland Risto Ryti and Prime Minister of Finland Johan Wilhelm Rangell were also tried and jailed for collaborating with the Nazis against the Allied Powers.

Late 1900s

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The end of the Cold War: The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was one of the pivotal moments that brought the Cold War to a close and marked the end of Communist East Germany. With the fall of the wall and the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), the former leaders were brought to trial to answer for the crimes committed by the GDR. General Secretary Erich Honecker and General Secretary Egon Krenz were both put on trial for abuse of power and the deaths of those who were shot trying to flee into West Germany. Honecker was charged with jail time but was released from custody due to severe illness and lived out the rest of his life as an exile in Chile. Krenz served 4 years in jail before his release in 2001. He is one of the last surviving leaders of the Eastern Bloc.

Lyndon LaRouche: Larouche was a Trotsky evangelist, public antisemite, and founder of a nationwide Marxist political movement, became the second person in U.S. history to run for President in a prison cell. Granted, he ran in every election from 1976 to 2004 as a long-shot third-party candidate. When he tried to gain the Democratic presidential nomination, he received 5 percent of the total nationwide vote. Even though in 2000 he received enough primary votes to qualify for delegates in a few states, the Democratic National Committee refused to seat his delegates and barred LaRouche from attending the Democratic National Convention.