Usually, when Steven Crowder does a “Change My Mind,” he heads to a University campus to challenge the students there on their viewpoints, and as the name of the bit implies, change his mind as well. Reactions to Crowder tend to range from understanding and conversational to rage and tears.
After Crowder became the focal point of the recent YouTube controversy where Vox and Carlos Maza pushed the platform to censor anything remotely offensive to them, Google decided to do a “Change My Mind” and take it straight to a corporate campus, the Google HQ in Austin, Texas.
Crowder noted in the video that he expected to find a lot of opposition, instead what he found was a lot of people who agreed with him despite being political opposites. Only one man actually advocated using violence to silence crowder, and one guy was concerned with chemicals turning the frickin’ frogs gay.
“Not only did everyone find themselves ultimately agreeing with us on the idea of hate speech, but more than ever before, people seemed legitimately concerned,” said Crowder.
“They really pressed us for answers to concerning questions,” he added.
This attempt at a “Change My Mind” episode actually ended up becoming a Q&A with Crowder’s half-Asian lawyer Bill Richmond taking the reins a good deal of the time. People could be seen taking a seat around the table as Richmond spoke and answered questions.
Everyone, including the viewer, ends up learning a lot.
Yeah, also Alex Jones was there.
It’s fascinating to see how many people were actually in agreement with Crowder on the idea that he should have been censored, silenced, or punished in any way due to his opinion. In fact, more people seemed concerned that things were headed in a direction where censorship of simple opinions became a norm.
And they’re right to fear that. At this point, we have a small group of people backed by corporate dollars attempting to define what is and isn’t hate speech. People of all stripes have a right to be concerned, and absolutely should.
Today it’s Crowder, tomorrow it could be them. Leaving the idea of what is and isn’t okay to say to the mob is asking for unstable social ground and that idea should be resisted vehemently.
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