Michael Shellenberger
speaker
1,228 appearances
6 recordings
4 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard 18 Feb
Michael Shellenberger’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Thank you.
And back at you and congratulations on coming back to your famous monologues.
And I was really delighted that you did it on free speech and I hope you keep doing a weekly monologue.
I think it's
I think the last 12 years, we should think of it as a woke reign of terror. I mean, really, it starts with Black Lives Matter, ends with the election of President Trump. We discover, thanks to the Twitter files, the existence of this elaborate censorship industrial complex complete with government-run disinformation efforts. How much of government spending is wasted? You know, it's classic Elon.
It was chaos. It was contradictory. The only natural resource is trust. You know, Jordan, I'm filled with a lot of optimism.
Well, I mean, look, Jordan, I think it's a huge moment. You know, we obviously had a massively historic election that also signified a change in the media environment of which you've been a really fundamental part.
I think we saw today, Vice President JD Vance gave a major speech at the Munich Security Summit in Munich, Germany, where he very strongly articulated what I think you could argue is the new national conservative case which included grave concerns around losing Europe to mass migration. It included a strong defense of free speech. And this is now the second time that I think he has intimated.
This time, I think he was softer than the first time that Europe's move towards totalitarianism, particularly this mass censorship that they wanna impose on our social media companies and on us, on our voice in Europe, that that was not only unacceptable, but that it puts our alliance in danger. I mean, he specifically said, It puts NATO in danger.
So I think the Europeans today got a sense of the depth of which America cares about free speech, that free speech for us is a must have, not a nice to have. In Europe, it feels like it may be more like a nice to have.
And I think you finally got administration that's just saying, hey, we're not going to tolerate this censorship and totalitarianism that you're imposing on our companies and attempting to impose on our people.
That is a good question. I am not sure. I believe he did say at the beginning of the speech that they had met, but the audience should check on that. It was a second strong—he actually gave a prior speech as well that was also strong. But yeah, this was a big speech. Of course, there was an assault by a terrorist in Germany. I believe less than 48 hours ago, very dramatic moment.
I don't have the latest in terms of deaths and injuries, but it was he opens with that. He expressed his, of course, great concern and sympathy for the Germans and then pivoted right away to saying, look, you've got a big mass migration problem and we have it, too. And we've got to have we've got to get control of our countries. And I think he also said,
And I think he really spoke for Americans this way, certainly for me, which is that we actually really love Europe. Like, you know, Americans really care about Europe. Like, not just as a tourist destination, we care about it as an idea, as the birthplace of the Enlightenment.
I mean, for us Americans, Europe is where our ideas that our country was founded on were born, but they were never fully realized until you got to the United States and until you had Thomas Jefferson insist against Alexandra Hamilton that we were going to have a Bill of Rights
And that the first thing was going to be free speech and that we weren't going to mess around about it, that this was number one, that we didn't want to have a country without having this guarantee.
And like I said, I just think I don't think Europeans understand the depth of our commitment to that, that really when they start threatening our free speech rights, as they've been increasingly doing, they need to know that they are threatening their security. That it really makes—we're tired. America is tired. Like, we're very, very tired.
It's upsetting to go 20 years of hearing stories of veterans, almost all of whom appear to have PTSD in some way, the combat ones, the struggles they have. I mean, I was with a veteran who lost friends in Afghanistan the day that Biden pulled out, which was a disgrace. So America is tired now. We love Europe. We believe in Europe, but they're testing our patience.
And I think we finally have an administration that can communicate the depth of our concern around their push towards censorship. And they're really they pioneered it. They developed it. A lot of it was, you know, we've certainly done our part to bring it there. But anyway. Western Europe is currently the greatest threat to free speech in the West.
And I think they need to understand that that's a big problem when it comes to U.S.-European relations.
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