Naomi Wolf: 'Your Body is Where Totalitarianism Takes Place' | CLIP

Well, I'm really glad you're looking at that word, because like incitement, misinformation is a word that can close down a democracy. Misinformation presumes that some information is allowed and other information is not allowed. Whereas in America, free speech means people are free to say really stupid things or wrong things or things that don't bear scrutiny, but that's how we get smarter and smarter, is that we have open debate and we see where stupid ideas fall apart, and we are exposed to different points of view and people can criticize or question the experts. What's really scary and fascistic about the word misinformation, the tech companies and now the Biden administration are constructing it this way, is that there's this layer of professional experts who are blessed by the administration or by big tech or by pharma or all three, right? And you can listen to them. You have to listen to them. And anyone, no matter how credentialed, and this ranges from Peter McCullough, who was deplatformed for a while, he's had 500 academic citations ranging to, well, me and my, you know, having written in every major news outlet for 35 years to, you know, president of the United States, and we could go on and on. Anyone who's critical or a man or woman in the street, you know, who has every right, every bit as much value in his or her opinion as anyone's, they're not allowed to question. And if you go against the diktat, really, from these priestly knowledge cast, then bad things can happen to you. And I think in my own experience, and now in Eric's experience, and many people who are being deplatformed, it's not just reputational percussions. It's major business repercussions. I mean, when AWS, which is a server, tells conservative platforms that they will not host their platforms or payment processors say, we're not going to process payments to you. And these are not terrorist organizations, right? Then we've reached a kind of digital Stalinism. You describe yourself as a distressed liberal. Yeah. That's an interesting formulation to me. I could see many layers there, potentially. You're going to make me cry. I mean, what can I say? You know, it's not a secret anymore. I think many people from the pure left, and I see myself as a classical liberal, left liberal, something's wrong. I worked really hard to elect Joe Biden. I campaigned for him. I mean, we ran campaigns for his policies. I worked really hard using my voice to defeat President Trump. And I think there are a lot of things wrong with conservatism that we can talk about if you like, but classical liberalism, individual rights, freedom of speech, my body, my choice, equality, right? Equality of opportunity has been almost besmirched. And what has arisen really quickly in its place, and it really got consolidated since November, I feel, is a kind of very totalitarian CCP style or fascistic ideological rigidity that I don't recognize, you know, that celebrates. I mean, I knew we were in trouble when a bunch of conservatives were deplatformed and left wing friends and allies and colleagues on social media were cheering. Like that's, there's no one who reads history thinks that's good. You know, no one who reads history thinks they'll stop with the other side. They never stop with the other side. The whole, I am not an anti-vaxxer. I want to make that really clear. That's been part of the, you know, baseless and wrong attacks on me to discredit what I think is some very important journalism around Ralph Baric and gain of function and around other things involving criticisms of the lockdown and so on. But I don't believe in medical coercion. And I know that totalitarian states, like I read history, I wrote the end of America, your body is where totalitarianism takes place. Right. And there, there are reasons that in a free society, there are laws saying, you can't see my medical records. You can't force me to take a medical procedure. You can't force me to have an abortion. You know, you can't, you can't force me to have a child. Right. And maybe as a woman, I understand the danger of the state invading the body, you know, more than people who don't think about gender and feminism. But the history of totalitarianism is the state saying, you will do this with your body, whether you want to or not. Because once the state can do that, you, there's no resistance. You can't push back after that. And so, when I see the left embracing a kind of cult around medical coercion and a cult around not asking questions, and, and kind of rolling back the enlightenment and like literally left wing friends of mine and loved ones have said, don't send me peer reviewed studies, because I don't want to know, you know, that, that you've got evidence that contradicts the kind of comforting layer of very expensive propaganda at the top, right? I don't want to see it. These are, these are sophisticated, educated people. Some of them are journalists. Don't send me peer reviewed published studies that will show that I, you know, that these guys are wrong. Don't send me information about the CDC, having a foundation that gets $12 million a year from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and from pharmaceutical companies. Don't tell me there's something wrong with what has become a kind of pantheon of gods who are unquestionable. That's not the left. You know, that's not the left I respect. That's not the noble tradition of, especially I'm Jewish, the Jewish liberal tradition of back to the 19th century and before that, you know, critical thinking, questioning authority, aggressive, you know, skepticism about a priest class and, you know, experts. I mean, we're the people who kept asking questions. Many other people did as well, but I can't believe that the left, with its long tradition of fighting for free speech, you know, Ginsburg, the Howell trials, the Lady Chatterley trials, you know, the, the whole movement of, you know, literacy and, and education of working people and, you know, public education, free public and libraries. That's, those are, should be our legacy as well as everyone else's. And we're just giving it up and saying, you know what, we want to join this cult because it's in power and not joining it is scary. It's terrifying.