In this episode of Australia Censored, Andrew Lowenthal returns to the series, and sits down with the Institute of Public Affairs’ Director of Law and Policy, John Storey, to discuss the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, and how mainstream media outlets sought to mislead the public about the events in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Andrew Lowenthal the CEO of liber-net, a digital civil liberties initiative. He worked on the “Twitter Files” and is signatory to the Westminster Declaration on free speech.
In this episode, Andrew and John also examine the irony in Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s comments who warned against misinformation about the incident circulating online. Also, on the agenda is the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, the US election campaign more broadly, is free speech on the rise, and Australia’s proposed misinformation and disinformation laws.
Below is a transcript of the show.
Andrew Lowenthal:
The problem is for the elites is that if you have a process of discussion and dialogue and that you use that process to come to the truth, you might come to the wrong conclusion, which is not to their benefit. Because what is to their benefit ultimately is their control, their political power. That is the main message is that you should not undermine our political power at the end of the day.
John Storey:
Hello and welcome to another edition of Australia Censored. I’m John Storey, the Director of Law and Policy at the Institute of Public Affairs. Today, we are very lucky to have a returning guest, Andrew Lowenthal. Good day, Andrew. How’s it going?
Andrew Lowenthal:
Very well, how are you doing?
John Storey:
Very good. We’re fortunate to have Andrew behind the scenes here because he’s returned from Spain where he normally lives to his homeland of Australia. Just a reminder, Andrew is the CEO of Liber-net, a digital civil liberties initiative. Andrew, there’s been a fair bit of happening in the space of free speech since we last spoke all the way back in February, but the most dramatic events of recent times has been that just a few days ago there was an assassination attempt on former United States President Donald Trump.
And there is actually a very interesting free speech issue to do with those events, which we’ll get into. But just to kick things off, what are your thoughts on what happened?
Andrew Lowenthal:
Well, it certainly seems have changed a lot of things. If it keeps going the way it’s going, it looks like now everyone thinks there’s going to be a Trump presidency. That obviously will cascade down a whole number of different things in terms of what free speech issues and big tech. I think JD Vance, the vice president picked that also just came out. It’s been quite critical of big tech as well.
And so, I think there’s going to be quite a number of changes. Also, this panic that’s been happening recently about this project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation. I think they have some quite strong things they want to do around free speech and big tech as well. So, there’s everything appears to be moving quite significantly. And in terms of, again, as someone who came from the left, it’s very, very strange for me, but it looks like the right has taken up the mantle much more of free speech generally, not always, but more than the left does now.
And so, in that sense, this will probably be… I mean, I’m going to not completely make a prediction, but it looks like it’s going to be better for free speech than certainly the Biden administration, but there’s probably not very much that would’ve been worse.
John Storey:
Yeah. Well, I mean, getting to the events themselves, I want to read a quote to you from Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. This was shortly after the attack took place. “I urge Australians to exercise caution when reading unverified reports of the events, and to seek out credible news sources. Social media platforms can be instantaneous distributors of rumours, innuendo, and weaponized mistruth. Many Australians would’ve seen examples of this over the weekend.
We all need to be on guard against those seeking to use misinformation to create division. So, the Prime Minister wants us to use credible news sources to get our information. So, I just thought I would read a couple of the headlines from news sources that I’m sure our Prime Minister would put in the credible basket. So, this is CNN’s headline immediately after the assassination attempt. Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at rally.
This is the Washington Post. Trump escorted away after loud noises at Pennsylvania rally. And just to continue, USA today led with Trump removed from stage by Secret Service after loud noises, startles former president. So, if you trusted the mainstream news sources, the impression you would have is that there was a loud noise. Donald Trump got startled and fell over.
I got my information from Twitter now X, and within minutes I understood that there was an attack. It seemed to have hit the President. There was blood, he was okay.
He raised his fist in the air, which those iconic images that the shooter was killed. I got that from social media and I felt that although, yeah, there are people with their weird spins and whatever, to me, I think you’re far more likely to get a fair assessment at least of this event than you would’ve gotten from a lot of the mainstream media sources. Is that something you agree with?
Andrew Lowenthal:
Yeah, no, I would absolutely would agree. And I think that it’s more about a crisis of authority both in the mainstream political parties and in the mainstream media. And there’s good reason that people have lost a huge amount of faith in the mainstream media when the mainstream media go out and say, “Oh, people are believing this, and that, and the other. And they shouldn’t be believing that. Why aren’t they believing us?”
They always put the blame at the feet of the everyday citizen and saying, “Oh, because you believe misinformation, because it’s you’re not intelligent, it’s because you’re an extremists, it’s because X, Y, and Zed.” And there’s never any self-reflection, like, well, what have we done? For example, the headlines that you read out that might have meant that people have less and less and less trust in us. And there’s just… I mean, in Australia, I didn’t see any move towards that reflexivity or reflection on that phenomena. One thing that was also quite interesting that I saw in Australia was this, it was actually almost for the left and the right, some of the messaging because one of the pieces I read in the ABC was about Blue Anon.
So, these people who are Democrats who they were being labelled Blue Anon as they left-wing conspiracy theorists who thought that maybe the attack was stage, et cetera, et cetera. So, the message more generally is, “Believe us, believe the mainstream media, don’t question anything,” because, I mean, I think it’s also fine. There are some weird things that can’t be explained very, very quickly in that attempt at assassination. It’s fine to interrogate things where you take it, you can take it too far, but given the history of assassinations in the US and it being such a huge event, you should be asking a lot of questions and then people will go through the evidence and you can actually trust the people a lot more than the elites think you can. Well, the problem is for the elites is that if you have a kind of process of discussion and dialogue and that you use that process to come to the truth, you might come to the wrong conclusion, which is not to their benefit.
Because what is to their benefit ultimately is their control, their political power. And that is the main message is that you should not undermine our political power at the end of the day.
John Storey:
I think at a minimum there was a catastrophic failure. I don’t know if it’s incompetence or whatever, but how someone got this close. There’s legitimate questions about this and it could be simple incompetence. What I think ironically, and look, I personally probably wouldn’t take it much beyond that. I don’t think we need to go much beyond that.
But if your intention is to prevent people from taking it to that next level and say, “It must have been a set up and Biden was down in the polls,” or, “It was on the left. Oh no, this is Trump.”
Andrew Lowenthal:
Yeah. It was staged.
John Storey:
“Trump’s a TV star and this is his finest hour sort of thing.” What makes people more likely to do that is when they see institutions, the media, the government act rather conspiratorially.
Andrew Lowenthal:
Yeah. And so, you’re not allowed to have a discussion about that. And I think all those questions are fine. But most often they’ll probably will turn out to be incorrect, but I don’t see that if there’s a conclusion that people draw from there that leads specifically to some possible violence, then okay, you need to stop that. But to stop people having the conversation I think is ridiculous. Even if they have a far-out idea, lots of people have far out ideas, sometimes people’s far out ideas, maybe the earth is round for example, or which used to be a far-right idea revolves around the sun turned out to be true.
So let people have the discussion. I don’t think we should be so terrified of where the discussion is going to end up. But I think the reason you see elite panic around this is because where it ends up is not in the interest. But it’s similar to the messaging say around Covid, which is trust the experts. They know everything.
Trust the experts on this instance, trust the experts on this, the experts on this other journalists, you should not contradict them or have more questions than you are allotted. But then, you ask, “Well, what’s the point of the whole education system if it’s not to enable people to critically analyse media and consume media in a way with a critical eye?” The message from what you just read out from Albanese is don’t be critical of the media. Just believe what they tell you if they are from a major institution. That doesn’t seem to be, to me the right kind of message.
John Storey:
The disjoint between what we all saw with our own eyes and the media reporting in this case is a good segue to talk about another significant event in the free speech space in Australia since we last spoke, which was the stabbing attack in a church in Sydney where a bishop was attacked. And the response of Australia’s eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant was to try to censor the video footage of that from the internet, not just in Australia, but because of VPNs and whatever internationally as well. And a couple of thoughts on this. Firstly, I really don’t see that that footage was more graphic or worse than the footage of assassination attempt on Donald Trump. I mean, there’s blood across his face.
There were people killed nearby. There was some pretty graphic footage. I don’t think it’s too over the top, but I don’t think it was any worse than that stabbing attack, which was grainy. You couldn’t really see that much, but they tried to censor that for some reason, no attempt to censor this footage. But it raises a really interesting point that even things that… I mean the reason for taking down the Wakeley stabbing video was that it’s graphic, so with a harm prevention goal and also that it might incite hatred in the community sort of thing.
Well, I think those things equally apply to the Donald Trump video, but that’s the motive to protect our sensibilities from seeing this graphic footage. I understand that up to a point, I certainly don’t want a little kid just opening a social media and necessarily seeing this stuff straight away. But it also demonstrates to me that, yes, look, some things on the internet are a little confronting, but we’re adults and we can choose to watch it or not watch it. And we really need to see this stuff for ourselves. We cannot trust the media. And I think this demonstrates that if the eSafety Commissioner got her way, this sort of footage would not be seen on social media on the internet.
No, no, no. Get your sanitised version from the mainstream media and it’s clear we cannot trust them. And so, I do see this is I think further vindication of the attempts by many to oppose that move by eSafety Commissioner to censor. And of course, the federal court’s decision to withdraw the injunction, preventing it being seen.
Andrew Lowenthal:
There’s definitely a lot of similarities. I must say, I found the stabbing attack a little bit more graphic than this. I mean, depends if you see the footage in the stands where obviously there was a person killed in the stands behind Trump. Although I haven’t seen any footage that was very showed that directly you see him get clipped on the ear and et cetera. But what you don’t see is anyone in the United States saying, “Hey, Australia and the rest of the world, you need to take this footage down,” which is essentially what Inman Grant did.
So, there’s one question, which is… Because I can imagine you have some footage that really was much worse than the stabbing attack that you 95% of Australia would like line up and say, “Yeah, that really is horrible. That shouldn’t be up.” So, there’s that question, but there’s just the other question of can you tell the rest of the world what they can and cannot see? Regardless of how awful it is or not, you just do not have that jurisdiction. And the mentality itself is quite concerning to think that, “Well, because someone can get on a VPN, they could find this footage one way or another.”
I mean, you’re talking about a very small amount number of people who are going to seek that out. And regardless, they’ll probably find it. That’s a different question to use this drift net dynamite fishing approach to every single problem when I see a lot of the technology allows you to fine tune things anyway is ridiculous and also tells you that the agenda is probably something else. And again, it goes back to this general paternalistic form of government that we seem to have entered into over the past 5 or 10 years that authorities set themselves up as the protectors of the people, which in some ways it is what the government’s meant to do, but it seems to have an entirely new flavour, very talking down, finger pointing, we know better than you, you can’t be trusted, we’re going to look after it one way or the other, sit back down. And that’s clearly not.
I mean, maybe in Australia it might work for a little bit longer. In the US it really does not seem to be working as a political approach. And then, again, if you talk about mainstream misinformation, we’ve just had the last three plus years of mainstream media telling us there’s nothing wrong with Joe Biden and calling people who say, “Oh, he’s got dementia, he’s got this, that, or the other, cheap fakes, conspiracy theorists, spreaders of misinformation, et cetera.” And no wonder that people aren’t trusting them. Literally, almost anyone could see for the past several years who was tuned into anything other than a mainstream media channel that there was a serious, serious problem.
And then, one night they all just switched the narrative and say, “Oh yeah, it looks like there might be something wrong because someone politically decided that it was time to try and get rid of him and get a new candidate in there.” So again, no wonder people aren’t trusting mainstream media where they literally, they are spreaders of misinformation quite frequently. So, I think the exciting thing, and the good thing is that all this seems to be starting to come to a head. And so, I think there’s going to have to be some kind of reset because so much trust has been lost and obviously now a lot of Democrats and these various elites in the US know they’re going to lose. It’s going to take a miracle to not lose this election on their path.
And so, you’re going to see more of this infighting, I think, and hopefully from their reset to something much, much more sensible and maybe even a politics based on honesty, not talking down to people, open dialogue and debate, go back to supporting free speech. So, I think there’s actually a great opportunity right now. I mean, I always imagine, okay, at some point this is going to shift and this is going to turn, what is that actually going to look like? And I guess it’s looking like the last few weeks.
John Storey:
I think that’s an interesting segue to maybe briefly talk about Australia’s proposed misinformation laws. Got a couple of thoughts on these, but just to stay on this issue of the mainstream media, they would be exempt from those laws. And the reporting on this is just the most latest… The assassination attempt is just the most latest reason for going, why would you exclude mainstream media from misinformation laws? What have they demonstrated in recent years that puts them above the rest of it?
Andrew Lowenthal:
Well, they should be exempt and so should everyone else. So that’s the point because they-
John Storey:
That’s a better way to put it.
Andrew Lowenthal:
Because also they’re going to make mistakes, sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally. And you need room to be able to make mistakes. So, people have always make mistakes in journalism and media and then you go back and you correct the record and say, “I made a mistake. And you maintain trust with your audience and you rinse and repeat and continue.” So, this idea that you’re going to come to some final answer, you’re going to get the correct take on reality at the first pass is just not how things have ever, ever worked.
So, it sounds like the misinformation bill is still on ice from what I understand, and I would say to try to bring it back in now. I mean, again, I actually think the Biden’s condition and media essentially conspiring to use a word, alluded word to essentially tell everyone the emperor still does have clothes, makes it pretty hard to say, “Well, the mainstream media should be exempted from this law, but all the rest of you have been pointing out that the emperor has no clothes or you’re spread as misinformation.” So, I think that would be very silly to bring it back up. Hopefully it stays on ice and then it just goes away. But we’ll see. Unless you have more up-to-date information from where that’s at.
John Storey:
The Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said, “Last year before Christmas, we’ve heard the feedback, we’ll be making changes. There’ll be a new bill early in the year… early in 2024, but doing nothing is not an option.” So that was like, okay, there might be some tweaks, but it’s now July, it isn’t up.
There’s talk of an early election. At the latest, there’ll be an election early 2025. So, look, fingers crossed, they’re just going to kick it into touch.
Andrew Lowenthal:
I mean Albanese still is using the word. Clare O’Neill home affairs minister just used it yesterday or the day before as well in a speech and saying it was one of the threats to democracy. So, they don’t seem to have completely given it up. They try to use the stabbing attack as an opportunity to push it again, but then it got dropped within a few weeks. At the same time, they’re really beefing up eSafety.
So, I also wonder if the strategy as well, we’ll have to wait to the right moment for the misinformation for the right or the wrong misinformation to be distributed because at the moment, the clearest information is Biden’s fine as distributed by the mainstream media. So, I don’t know, maybe they’re starting to put more of their eggs in eSafety. I mean we’re reading the tea leaves here. I guess, but-
John Storey:
That’s an interesting point because I do feel that even conservatives tend to… I mean if you ask average conservative, they hate social media. They see that there’s been distortions and shadowbanning. They also think it’s pushed any social issues, whether it’s pornography or cyberbullying, deep fakes and all that. So, I think there is. I actually think the harm prevention side of things is probably resonating a little bit better in the community than this idea that of misinformation which is in advance determining whether something’s true or false and should be taken down from the internet, which is just clearly absurd.
But the idea of harm prevention, but the issue with harm prevention is certainly there are some things that children in particular should be protected from online, but that harm expands and expands and expands until it includes misinformation. And you’re doing the same thing as the misinformation bill would’ve done anyway.
Andrew Lowenthal:
Yes. What we had quite possibly and seemingly might include things like digital ID as well in terms of how do we do age verification online? Well, in order to access over-age teen websites, you have to show your digital ID and that is the way to stop underage children accessing pornography and other things. So, it’s also a way to get that through too. So, I mean, I agree there’s much more bipartisan support on the online safety stuff, and I totally agree there’s some terrible stuff online and terrible effects on children in regards social media. But where are the people proposing mature solutions that respect the rights of adults and don’t use that as a Trojan horse to basically create generalised censorship regime?
I think you can totally deal with the online safety issues without impinging on the rights of adults, but I’m not seeing… It’s certainly not going to come from the current the safety commissioner that you would need a new person that could clearly articulate a commitment to respecting the rights of adults online at the same time as protecting children. It’s entirely possible, but it’s so politicised at the moment that it’s not going to happen with Julian McGrath.
John Storey:
And that Politicisation is interesting point that you, in a separate chat, earlier you flagged with me that you’d read an article from a left-wing publication that I believe was opposed to eSafety. And we mulled over why the left suddenly might be getting its free speech bones out. And look cynically, I’ve got a few thoughts on that. You’ve had European elections where there’s been a shift to the right. Obviously there’s what’s going on in the United States, Australia it’s a little bit different because we’ve got first-term government.
So, I’m not so certain there’s going to be a sudden shift to the right in Australia, but it probably does focus the mind. I mean, in Europe they think these new right-wing parties, and quasi-fascists. They get all the labels. So, if you believe that then… And they’re politically on the rise, do you really want to create these censorship bureaucracies that could be taken over by your political opponents? There was this perception that, “Oh, well, we are on the left and we’ll always control these institutions.”
Maybe there’s been some recalibration on that. And it’s like as thought as it is, having a free marketplace of ideas is a lot better than handing over censorship to the political.
Andrew Lowenthal:
It used to be the standard position of the left was that because people understood that you’re not always going to be in power. So, something very strange happened where people just the progressive spectrum decided that they thought they were always going to be in power, or maybe they just lost any capacity to see more than one or two or three years into the future. Which, again, is bizarre because you’ve just come out of four years of Trump, and here you are saying, “Actually, we think it’s good if the government interferes with speech online, on social media platforms. We might even support the weaponization of intelligence agencies to suppress speech from the progressive people who used to be out there railing against those same institutions.” So again, the silver lining to all of this is that it’s going to wake progressives up to, “Okay, well maybe we should just go back to the level playing field model.
It has its downsides, it’s not perfect. There’s a lot of free speech out there that is not very nice. It’s rough, and coarse, and can be extremely offensive. But I think that is generally the minority of the discourse, and the way you essentially protect democracies. You protect free speech and the marketplace of ideas.
So again, I think we’re going to see a reset. We have to see a reset.” Otherwise, I think it’s just downhill forever on the progressive side. And for me, that’s really good because I see winning the war is convincing everyone, both sides or there are multiple, probably more than both two sides. That free speech should be the default, like just crushing one side or the other is not actually going to reset and renormalize free speech in Australia or across the world. You’ve got to get the generalised reset of the norm, and this may will be the opportunity to do that.
John Storey:
That level playing field. You talked about that playing field nowadays is online. You’re an online civil liberties expert. You mentioned the Donald Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, JD Vance has some thoughts on big tech to finish out our great discussion, any predictions for where we go with online free speech?
Andrew Lowenthal:
All right, I thought you going to ask me for election predictions, which is always terrifying. Well, I think it’s got to be that reset across the board. You’ve got to get an overwhelming majority of people to agree that this is all the solutions have limits or the least worst solution is free speech. That is where we’ve got to land on these issues. And I don’t want to say that free speech is a wholly negative thing at all, but if your concerns are around hate speech and misinformation, et cetera.
The best possible option is free speech in terms of countering hate, countering misinformation, and then there are so many other benefits in terms of societies advance much, much more rapidly. When you have open and free dialogue, you understand problems much more quickly because people point them out and you have the capacity to fix the problems. You have this exchange of knowledge, you advance science, you advance technology, you advance political thought.
This is why western societies have actually flourished so much is based on not solely, but in many respects, this principle of free speech has been one of the most important principles in building extremely successful societies and we really need to keep it. Because otherwise, I think it’s downhill, but I feel much more positive than I have in the last several years right now, in terms of where things are going.
John Storey:
You seem upbeat, you seem positive, which is good. I think there has been a pushback. There’s still a lot of work to do, but I’d just like to thank you for your time yet again and keep up your good work fighting for online free speech.
Andrew Lowenthal:
Great. Thanks for having me again.
