It’s ‘Like a Digital Stoning’—Alec Klein on Cancel Culture & #MeToo | American Thought Leaders

A big theme also, it seems to be in the book, is basically how this information that was put out, it was actually 10 individuals accusing you of these different things ultimately, and how that actually played out in the media coverage. It became almost a completely different creature from what I understand. It's hard to fathom that these things happen, but one of the most outrageous elements about the misinformation that was put out there is that there had been essentially a secretary years ago in 2015 who had filed a claim of harassment against me when she was in jeopardy of losing her job. The university had investigated that claim and found that she actually had lied, and they ruled against her and told her in no uncertain terms that could she even apply for a job at the university again. They reached some sort of agreement with her whereby she acknowledged that I had done nothing wrong, and she was signed this thing saying that she would never talk about it again. Well, she was one of the main attackers years later when it went out in the media, and the university did nothing. They didn't lift a finger to correct the record, because here she was violating the terms of her agreement with the university. They'd already found her to be lying about all this, but the university did nothing to stop her from putting out these false statements that were utterly destructive to my career and life. That's the way these things happen, and there's not much you can do about it. When you're in that hailstorm, when you're getting attacked on social media, it's kind of like a digital stoning, if you will. The more you try to resist it, the harder it gets to even survive it. That's the way that that unfolded. As people are attacking others on social media, they're finding that it's effective, whether the accusations are true or not. They're also noticing that corporate interests and other interests are caving quickly because they don't want the trouble. That's the dynamic we have today, which is why in many ways, cancel culture has gotten much worse over the past few years. As we were talking earlier, I think you found in the media coverage, going back to the media right now, that basically, there were a lot of mistruths that were amplified as if they were somehow factual. This is something, of course, that we see is kind of rampant in at least the legacy media, frankly, everywhere. What do you make of this, and how did this actually impact you in particular? One of the accusers went on television about this and said that I had told a story of a sexual nature. I'll tell you the story right now because I don't think it's a story of a sexual nature. It was that when I was in college many moons ago, there was a girl that I liked, and I had a Hersey's Kiss in my pocket. This girl didn't know that I had the Hersey's Kiss. I asked her, I said, would you like to kiss? She turned to me and thought about it. She said, yes. I was too afraid to do anything about it, so I threw her the Hersey's Kiss, and that was the end of the story. I've told that story as sort of a cautionary tale, which is when you're young, sometimes you may be afraid to pursue what you really want. Anyway, this one accuser told that story. I don't know how she described the story, but she apparently described it as some sort of story of a sexual nature. I actually talked to one of my lawyers about it. I said, is that a story of a sexual nature? These things have a momentum of their own, so when the attacks start, there's almost like this pylon effect, and that happened in my case. There were students whom I had never taught, I didn't know, who put a template on Facebook. I think it was Facebook, I think it was Facebook, in which they said, here's how you can complain about this guy, just fill in the blanks. That encouraged people to put out those complaints. There were other students, again, who I didn't know, had never taught, who put out a petition, an online petition to have me ousted. It was actually my then-wife who was sort of flabbergasted by this. She said, who in their right mind would survive basically having a proverbial billboard on the highway saying, here's how you can attack and take this person down, go at it. That's exactly what happened. It had a life of its own. I remember being utterly shocked that this was happening. I can tell you, by the way, Jan, that as a professor at this university for about a decade, you probably know this and many of your viewers and listeners will know this, is that students do anonymous evaluations. They say whatever they want about the professors. It's kind of a free-for-all. They'll talk about, oh, he's a bad dresser, he's obnoxious. I had 10 years of anonymous evaluations. Never, not once, was I ever accused of any kind of mistreatment of my students. Trust me, if you did something to mistreat them, it would be known, it would have been said. I mean, that's leaving aside the fact that they could walk into any office and complain about you as well. But none of that had ever happened. And I can tell you, that is impossible if you have some sort of track record of mistreating students. It just is impossible. But it didn't matter. This is the world we live in today where cancel culture is based on the accusation itself. It's guilt by accusation, which is a term others have used. It's kind of like the Salem-Woods trials in McCarthyism, in my opinion. Maybe worse, but the idea is that, you know, during McCarthyism, it was, you're a communist, we have no proof of it, and that was the end of it, and your life was destroyed, and people would just walk out of their lives, and that was the end of it. But we're sort of going through that all over again, because it's about the accusation. And then it's the more that they can get others to pile on and add to those accusations, the more effective it is. You've just watched a clip from an American Thought Leader's interview, and as you probably know, I pour my heart and soul into these. YouTube has been censoring some entirely mainstream videos lately, including things like Florida Governor DeSantis' coronavirus roundtable. We've even had some of our own videos removed from YouTube for no clear reason whatsoever. And frankly, I don't find this to be appropriate. I don't find this to be acceptable. I don't want to be sitting around thinking what YouTube may or may not feel like they want to censor. And beyond that, even, YouTube has demonetized us for the past two months. Ostensibly, we're working to resolve the issue, but our hopes are kind of fading when it comes to this. So what is our response to this? Well, we've started our own platform, Epoch TV. Now, Epoch TV is the premium Epoch Times video platform. 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