“If you can’t stand up for a human being that you respect, and love, and appreciate, and if you can’t stand up for a principle that you believe in, if you can’t stand up when somebody’s doing something that isn’t right—then who are you?”
Katherine Brodsky was at the peak of her journalistic career, writing about technology, film, and culture for publications such as Variety and The Washington Post, when she fell victim to the cancel culture mob.
“People were sending me threats. They were trying to reach out to my employers, or past employers, to make sure I was unhireable … People were attempting to dox me. So it just really spiraled beyond anything I’ve ever experienced,” says Ms. Brodsky.
In this episode, we dive into her new book, “No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in the Age of Outrage,” and discuss her views, as a Canadian, on the recent federal court ruling against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Watch the clip:
“I’ve been a liberal voter. So, I’m the Trudeau target demographic, although I wasn’t a huge fan. And I’ve even voted left of that, at a certain point. But the idea that you can just ignore a huge segment of your population and just paint them as evil and racist, and labels that didn’t even make sense that he gave them, it was very terrifying to see. And I went from not maybe liking him very much—because he was very virtue-signally, and I don’t think he was particularly smart—to really actively being afraid that he had this authoritarian streak,” says Ms. Brodsky.
🔴 WATCH the full episode (1 h 2 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S0206KatherineBrodsky
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek: Katherine Brodsky, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Katherine Brodsky: Thanks for having me. Does it mean that I’m a thought leader now that I’m on the show?
Mr. Jekielek: I think so. In your book, it’s actually very interesting because I think of your book like a written version of American Thought Leaders and some of them indeed actually have been on the show. A number of them have been on the show, but even the format is similar. I feel a kinship there.
Ms. Brodsky: Oh, excellent. I’m glad I could inspire you. Just kidding. I think you’ve done it earlier than I have, so you predate me.
Mr. Jekielek: Absolutely. The central theme of your book, and there’s multiple incredibly important themes, but one of the things that really jumped out to me is how central is the concept of bullying, this thing from childhood, we don’t really think about it. We think we’ve gotten over it. I experienced it myself and responded to it in different ways. You’ve made me actually reflect on this from the book, but how central this is to the whole societal dynamic today. Why don’t we just start there?
Ms. Brodsky: That’s a great place to start. It’s interesting because I too have been quite massively bullied throughout high school. It’s interesting because the experiences that I’ve noticed in society as of late and things that I tackle in my book, as well as my own experience have very, very strong similarities to bullying. In fact, I don’t know how you could distinguish it from bullying.
The only difference might be that there is some sort of a puritanical motivation or self-righteousness that maybe bullies in high school didn’t necessarily have to the same extent. They bullied you because you talked a little funny or you looked a little funny or you just didn’t quite fit in, but the tactics are very similar. It’s not one individual doing the bullying, it’s a number of individuals doing the bullying.
There’s huge similarities and none of us really fully recover from it. But sometimes the bullied become the bullies, which I always found really strange. Because for me, if anything, when I’ve recovered from the bullying, it made me more empathetic towards other people who might experience the same. I think about how I might’ve felt and what I can do about that.
But some people actually become bullies, and once somebody is a victim, sometimes they can’t wait to become the victimizer. My dad told me this story. That’s the story that stuck with me. In the military, it’s kind of a tradition to bully.
Mr. Jekielek: Haze?
Ms. Brodsky: Yes, haze, exactly, the hazing ritual. That is something that’s very common in many environments, but in particular, in the military, and it can be quite terrible. But what he had noted was that the same people who were hazed quite terribly couldn’t wait for that new fresh crop of people to come in so that they could haze them.
In some ways, it’s very relevant to what we’re seeing in our culture. A lot of times it’s people who have seen themselves as victims in the past. Now, they have a bit of power and they can’t wait to haze other people.
Mr. Jekielek: This phenomenon of cancellation, as we’re discussing this, it’s mass bullying, isn’t it?
Ms. Brodsky: I would definitely say so. Again, it’s the same tactics. It’s about a group of people coming at you. You see a pattern in my book, not all the people who’ve had this experience were necessarily women, but a lot of times they were. It does happen a little bit more frequently with women and primarily because that’s one of the powers of mechanism is words and attacking people and canceling people and ostracizing them. Those are very powerful weapons that people use to take out their targets.
Mr. Jekielek: You’re saying that the women do the bullying or the women are the bullied or both?
Ms. Brodsky: It can be both because women like to bully other women quite a bit. But I noticed that women do bully more frequently than men. That said, it’s not exclusive to women. Certainly you see men bullying men, and men bullying women as well. It’s just that in society in general, men can be a little bit more likely to take up their fists and settle it in a more aggressive way. Women tend to use their tongues a little bit more and fight with their words.
Mr. Jekielek: That’s a trend that a number of people describe even in the scientific literature. The effect of all this is something that you mention, and it’s actually another central theme in your book, which is that there is this silenced majority. Before we dive into your whole story here, because you were part of that silenced majority initially, tell me about that.
Ms. Brodsky: My hope is, and from what I’ve observed in society and having many, many conversations with people, is that a lot of the issues that they’re seeing in society, including this trend towards intolerance towards different ideas, the canceling of individuals, these bullying mob attacks, those are not things that most people are actually approving of. In fact, a lot of them will voice that privately. But the problem is that they are afraid of becoming victims or targets themselves, and therefore they don’t speak up about it. That’s what I really wanted to change.
But part of my own story is that I wouldn’t say that I hadn’t spoken out at all, but certainly my voice was much more of a whimper as I was starting to see things in society that were just not something that adhered to my moral philosophy and my principles. I started having conversations with people a number of years ago.
I’ve always expressed dissent when I didn’t agree, but it was very private and there were definitely many, many topics that I was certainly afraid to broach or I'd be much more cautious as to who I talked to. Definitely, I would consider myself one of the silenced.
Mr. Jekielek: Katherine, it would be great for our viewers to become familiar with who you were prior to raising your voice, maybe initially with a whimper, but then more and more.
Ms. Brodsky: Ironically enough, I was one of the people who was meant to be using their voice. Most of my career has been as a writer in different forms. I usually describe myself as a storyteller, but I was a journalist. I wrote for Variety, The Washington Post, Guardian, Newsweek, WIRED, and all sorts of publications.
I wrote mostly on culture and I did a lot of interviewing. I did a lot of stories about tech and film and culture, but I wasn’t an opinion writer. I wasn’t somebody who was necessarily adding my own context into the stories I was writing. I also worked quite a bit in the film industry as well, producing some of the behind-the-scenes content. It was interesting, because to me, I was an objective observer of the world and not politically involved at all.
Mr. Jekielek: One of the things that I’ve noticed about you as we’ve gotten to know each other over the past few years is that sometimes it takes a little while for people to come out and have a voice, not because they’re necessarily afraid, but just because they want to be sure they got it right. But you observed that something was happening.
Ms. Brodsky: Yes, I absolutely was observing. You’re actually spot on with your assessment because sometimes people perceive me as being a bit wobbly. I don’t always speak with such certainty because I’m often undecided about certain questions and I’m going back and forth. If I’m going to come out and say something that I really believe in, I have to actually really believe in it and be pretty convinced that I’ve got it right. Still, I’m always willing to change my mind.
It’s much more impactful sometimes when people speak with absolute certainty. It can be more charismatic and more persuasive. But for me, what I was quite certain that I was seeing in the world, especially in journalism, was that things were shifting away from objective reporting. I was fortunate enough to work with editors who really honed in on some of my stories with really good questions to help me push my stories further, to be more accurate, to not be putting any kinds of opinions in them, and have that level of objectivity.
Instead of this kind of objectivity, I was pretty much seeing activist journalism happening. The other thing that I was seeing is that certain stories just weren’t allowed to be told, and it had this chilling effect. It wasn’t like somebody was saying to you, “You can’t tell that story,” you just kind of knew. I noticed that.
I had an editor who was very, very enthusiastic about me writing an op-ed at the time. It would’ve been my first op-ed. I had this really different take on something that was happening with the current news, and it didn’t quite conform to the societal norms at the time, even though in my mind I was just investigating something that was quite obvious. I found additional facts about the story and I thought it was worth tackling. I’ve had another experience with a very large publication that killed a story because it very much went against a particular narrative.
That was something that really stuck with me and really struck me. It does have that chilling effect. I never even pitched to any of these editors again. But that is a real problem, and I was very, very critical of journalism at the time. I started really speaking out about what was going on. It wasn’t about an ideology. It was really very much about the principles.
I was somebody who grew up in very liberal environments with freedom of speech, being able to challenge ideas, and having the opportunity to discuss. That was so fundamental and actually very much embedded in these very Left-leaning institutions, and suddenly it felt like it was abandoned. I wasn’t sure how that happened or what was going on, but I knew that it was happening.
Mr. Jekielek: In your book, No Apologies, Bret Weinstein talks about how the idea of having challenging opinions and scientific opinions is central to the idea of doing science at all.
Ms. Brodsky: It is the scientific method.
Mr. Jekielek: Right, exactly. I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but it’s just so bizarre that there’s this idea that we work through scientific consensus or that someone actually is the science. That’s the one that has become one of my favorites, or at least can represent the truth of science at a given point.
Ms. Brodsky: Exactly. When somebody challenges me, I see that as a service to me. Often people respond to that and they’re trying to defend their positions and they see it as an attack. But to me, when somebody disagrees with me and they do it thoughtfully, it’s a gift, because it allows me to refine my own perspective.
Sometimes I‘ll go back and I’ll have the same perspective, but it will be stronger because I'll understand exactly why I believe what I believe, or maybe there’s some cracks in what I’m thinking and I need to adjust it a little bit, so I see that as a gift. We need that opportunity, and you’re not going to get that opportunity if you’re only talking to people who absolutely agree with you.
That’s part of the radicalization that we’re seeing where people go further and further into their echo chambers on the Right, on the Left, and in multiple disciplines because they don’t have that push and pull that’s really necessary to refine ideas and to keep them sane.
If you’re just having people affirming exactly what you believe, you gravitate further and further to some extreme levels. That is fundamentally a very dangerous thing, and that is what I’m currently seeing in our society, unfortunately.
Mr. Jekielek: As you note in the book, James Damore observes that is what happened to Google at an institutional level, having no competition. Then that has the proclivity to get fixated on ideological things as opposed to having to face the needs of the populace or develop the product so that it will actually work for people as opposed to developing the thing they want to develop. Before we go there, I want to talk about this moment where you suddenly became outed as a thought criminal, how that happened, and what you realized.
Ms. Brodsky: Yes, definitely. Thought criminal is an apt descriptor of this. There was an inciting incident and somebody referred to it as my genesis story, essentially like a superhero or a supervillain. I don’t know yet which one I'll be, and it depends on people’s perspectives and how they judge me.
Basically, I ran a group for female writers and they had different offshoots that dealt with how to find work and advice on science writing and arts and business and all sorts of things. I did an offshoot, and since it was already a group for women, I had to maintain that. That group was for female writers and specifically focused on employment opportunities. We had some mentorship programs within, some resources, and jobs that we would share within the group.
What happened was somebody shared a job opening at Fox News and all hell broke loose basically. People started really attacking her, piling up on this person, and really were quite savage to this individual. As the person who runs the group, I felt like I had to step in. I made a post that I thought was pretty neutral. I just said, “Let’s avoid personal attacks and let’s not have politics in the group. Let’s come together instead of how we’ve been coming apart so much over the last few years.”
I thought that was a pretty PC [Politically Correct] post, but apparently people did not agree with me. They started calling me a white supremacist, and said that I‘d soon let the KKK recruit for my job board and all sorts of things. It really just spiraled. They also said, “You can’t take politics out of a group that’s meant for women because that’s inherently political.” I said, “Okay. I don’t want politics in here, so I’ll open it up to everyone,” which I was fine with anyways.
That in particular caused things to really escalate. It got to the point where people were sending me threats. They were trying to reach out to my employers or past employers to make sure I was unhireable. For example, one of the images that I really recall is the mobs with torches. It just said, “We have long memories.” Talk about bullying. People downloaded my content and people were attempting to dox me. It just really spiraled beyond anything I’ve ever experienced.
However, what I was also getting at the same time were also messages of support. This takes us back to this idea of the silent majority because a lot of these people were saying, “Look, I see what’s happening to you and it’s actually really wrong, but I feel really ashamed because I’m too afraid to speak up.”
Then on top of that, I was getting a lot of messages from people who were sharing their own stories of how the bullies went after them and how they’ve lost their employment opportunities, how they’ve left their careers, and how they lost their communities. All of those things were happening. I was really overwhelmed by all of that and I felt like I had two options. I was really at a crossroads.
One option was that I could just remain silent and let this fade away. To be honest, it would have, because the mob only has an attention span of a couple of weeks. The other option was to take a stand. I took a stand and wrote a piece for Newsweek.
The other thing that was happening, they were writing little articles on me as well. It was somewhat prominent, but it wasn’t quite in that very public sphere at that point. I was worried about making it public and felt it was probably going to ruin my entire career. People were warning me not to do it.
While I did share my own personal story, the article was really about how we’re heading towards this culture, or already in this culture of such intolerance towards different ideas and different people, and the importance of having that tolerance and having that dialogue. I found a backbone within me that I didn’t think really existed.
I published it and waited. It’s funny, now I feel so distanced from it, but at the time it was deeply emotional. As much as I hate using the word, I realize now that it was quite traumatic. I am a bit of a people-pleaser. That’s in my nature. I don’t like chaos, I don’t like conflict and confrontation. Those are probably the things I have the most anxiety about, but now I’ve grown thicker skin.
But that piece, it was called something about the virtuous bullies basically, and I called them bullies. I called them out for what they were and they faded away. Instead, I ended up having a lot of people who came out and really resonated with the piece, people who shared their own experiences.
I started building a community and also looking into the phenomenon a lot more. Even though I was already aware of what people call cancel culture, I don’t think I realized quite the extent, because we often only hear certain stories of perseverance concerning celebrities and big stars. We don’t really hear about the average person who just has their 9 to 5 job.
I felt like writing this book, and I really wanted to reach people and empower them so that they understand what the scale of the problem is and why it’s important, and how it affects every part of our society, be it arts, science, tech, or academia, and also take away some lessons from those people in terms of what they learned and what their path was. That was my intention in writing the book.
Mr. Jekielek: Initially, you had all these people reach out to you. Some of those people were no doubt what we would call conservatives. At The Epoch Times, I never thought about whether we were conservative or liberal. We didn’t really think in those categories until 2015 and 2016 when we started being pejoratively called conservative. I didn’t even realize it was a pejorative. In Canada it’s the name of a political party. It’s just very different in the U.S.
But it was very much a pejorative. You even mentioned in the book how you kept a distance from so-called conservatives, whether or not they really were. Please tell me about that and the change in your thinking and even what that means or how that’s used.
Ms. Brodsky: I was always a little bit more open-minded about people on different political spectrums because I was always willing to talk to anybody. But even then, despite that, I definitely had some biases against conservatives. Certainly, you’re right, if somebody is being called a conservative, there is a slur-like element to it.
The people that reached out to me, I would say they were really all over the spectrum. In fact, a lot of the times the people who were affected by it were people more predominantly on the Left, because it was their own tribes canceling them, or it was people who hid the fact that they were conservative.
I had a lot of people like that reach out because how awful is it that you have to hide that you’re a conservative, but I think a lot of people do. A lot of the people, because they were targeted more just for being conservatives, took up this mantle for free speech and being anti-cancel culture, because that was really affecting them.
At first, I got to know many more conservatives than I used to. I just didn’t really have many in my circle just because of the nature of the industry I was in. I got to know them and I got to know their perspectives, and it wasn’t entirely what I had been told throughout my life.
Now, there are definitely some that meet that stereotype of being these alt-Right, or white supremacist types. They do very much exist, and I’ve also come across them, but that’s not the vast majority of people that I have encountered. We have different perspectives on things. But what I’ve realized is often we want to solve similar problems, we just have different approaches to how we want to go about it.
It’s been quite a journey for me to get to know that group of people. In the beginning I was even like, “Maybe I’m a conservative and I just didn’t know it.” I quickly realized that that is not the case just because of how I look at the world and some of the values that I have.
What bothers me a lot about all of this is I really didn’t use to think about it much. Yes, I view myself as a liberal, but it wasn’t a big part of my identity. I didn’t care so much about somebody’s political orientation. It wouldn’t even be a question that I would ask.
Now, everyone’s divided and they divide themselves as well. They put it in their bios on social media and they won’t talk to the other side, and they'll actually state that in their bios as well. I’ve seen that on both sides of the aisle.
Even in the beginning, some people that I’ve engaged with, because I was a liberal, which they could tell from the publications I’ve written for, they would immediately be very, very angry towards me. I know that happens very much on the other side as well. There is a dehumanization that’s going on.
But ultimately, this is also a part of the stifling of ideas. I’ve had conversations with communists actually, and I’ve had conversations with people very much on the Right. There are some things that I agree with that might be considered traditionally on the Left, and some things on the Right.
Frankly, I don’t even see it as these two sides anyways. You need to look at things and say, “Look, here’s the best idea. This idea is going to really help this issue.” Nobody should really care if this is traditionally Right or Left as long as it helps people. But unfortunately, we have a rivalry going on and an inability to compromise or work together and find some solutions together. That causes a lot of chaos and a lot of problems don’t get fixed.
For example, something that I’ve noticed that both people on the Left and the Right would be pretty keen on fixing and even investing money in is homelessness or mental health issues. Mental health issues are something that seem to really unite in the conversations that I’ve had. People are pretty united and want to do something about it and increase attention, even increase funding, even though conservatives might be traditionally against putting as much money into social programs. Yet, they’re not talking to each other, and so the problem gets completely ignored. That’s something that was part of my discovery process.
Mr. Jekielek: Some of these ideas, you could use the term Leftist or far-Left, that dominate in our society today are ideas that don’t withstand scrutiny, yet we are implementing them. For example, the current border policy would be a great example of something which is by any rational standard, a horrible failure.
But because it can’t withstand scrutiny, it ends up being something that’s beyond reproach, which is the purpose of creating this silenced majority. Perhaps this was Herbert Marcuse’s evil genius when he came up with this repressive tolerance principle where you can’t tolerate people that aren’t part of your team because they’re regressive and we need to push forward with the revolution.
Ms. Brodsky: Again, it’s this positioning where people are very just defensive of their ideas instead of coming together. Something like the border, and I have no real expertise there, but it is something that a lot of people on both sides are pretty concerned about.
I would say that people on the Left would have a very difficult time voicing that, because it will potentially come across as racist, even though it really shouldn’t be. If you’re going to have borders, you do have the right to enforce them. You might disagree with the idea of having borders, which is fine. You can have some arguments for that, and I’ve had them myself. But if you believe that borders should exist, then you should support those borders being enforced.
With conservatives, what I find is that there is a very aggressive way of talking about it. They’re right to bring it up, but what’s happening is that you have one side that’s just vilifying anything that conservatives say or any issues they bring up and instead cling to these potentially bad ideas no matter what, which is a terrible position to take because you’re just causing chaos.
On the other hand, you have a group of people who are just very fed up with being ignored, and so they’re getting more aggressive. That precludes a very good conversation or a working relationship between the two, where really they should be working on some things together because they can. Again, they can balance each other.
Then people get increasingly frustrated to the point that some people are seriously discussing civil war, which is absolutely insane. I hope it’s not remotely realistic, but that is the mindset that’s happening. A huge part of that is happening because there’s a side that feels like they’re not being listened to at all, and they’re vilified, and so they become radically defensive.
Mr. Jekielek: Then many people that I’ve spoken with on the show, and you’ve spoken with some of them as well, would argue that it is indeed by design, because the purpose of this is to break the system, as much as people that might be involved in that aren’t aware that is the true motive.
Ms. Brodsky: I don’t think it’s by design, but I know a lot of people think that it is. I just don’t give people that level of credit. You know how bureaucracies work, and I know how these institutions work, and I know how politicians function. Yes, I’m sure there’s some political levers of power that are being taken advantage of, absolutely.
But I don’t think that this whole idea of breaking society or breaking the United States is intentional as much as it is a consequence of certain intolerances of certain kinds of people taking power and wanting to cling to that power and oppressing those who do not fit their model of perfection. It’s a level of idealism that may be not ideal for society, but is being forced down on people. But I don’t necessarily think it’s like, “Let’s break these institutions on purpose.” I really don’t.
Mr. Jekielek: Okay. It could also be that there are some people that have that intention and a whole lot of people that don’t. For example, the Chinese Communist Party has that very specific purpose and has, for example, the tool of TikTok to be able to sow these kinds of things into society.
One example that comes to my mind is all of a sudden after October 7th, you had all these young people going around saying that Osama bin Laden had a good point, because they had heard from an influencer that Osama bin Laden’s Letter to America was a very important and thoughtful document and had a lot of good points.
Ms. Brodsky: They’re taking existing rifts and existing narratives that already exist in society and are being pushed from the inside. Then they take advantage of them and they magnify them and they amplify them. You’re right about the CCP and also Russia and many other players. I’ve looked into disinformation, the real kind, the kind where governments are intentionally exploiting social media platforms.
They are paying influencers. They’re spreading fake news which they actually create. They even create entire news channels that aren’t real to spread fake stories. That’s all happening, and a lot of governments are actually involved in that. It would be silly to think that that’s not happening in the US. It’s tracked and proven in the U.S., in Canada, and in the West.
I do think that they’re taking grains of truth, and that’s where the best lies operate at their peak. They take grains of truth and they manipulate them. I even see that with Putin. He’s exploiting this anti-woke narrative to which there is a lot of truth. There is this wokeness that people talk about and people stand up against it. He’s trying to get the group that’s standing up against it by exploiting that narrative and amplifying it and also manipulating it for his own means. You can’t just completely invent something. You have to take it from an existing system, but you can absolutely grow it. This is what’s happening.
Mr. Jekielek: Absolutely. Let’s take your own experience and these 16 other experiences which you chronicle, each that has a lesson with it. What would you say is the biggest lesson of all for dealing with this milieu, if you are secretly a freethinker and you’re trying to figure out what to do because of the challenges of being canceled potentially or facing your peers?
Ms. Brodsky: Yes, that’s a great question. There is a reason why my book is called, No Apologies. I am a Canadian, and we apologize even when people step on our foot.
Mr. Jekielek: Stereotypically, yes.
Ms. Brodsky: Stereotypically. It’s true, actually. But I do believe that no apologies means to stand up for the things that you really believe in. It doesn’t mean never ever apologize for something. You should apologize for something if you were wrong. If you got something wrong or if you did something wrong, you should absolutely apologize for it.
But if you believe something to be true and you’re standing up for something, you should do that unapologetically, and you should do that firmly. If you don’t do that firmly, it is seen as a sign of weakness. But more importantly, the fundamental principles should be there. You should stand up for the things you really believe in. You don’t have to stand up for everything. You can choose what you stand up for. It should be something that’s really meaningful to you, that’s a universal value that you have, or you just stand up for a friend.
This is what we see so often. In many of the stories, you see how quickly people turn on other people and become part of the mob just so that they can fit in or they can just stay silent. They don’t stand up for their own friends. Often it’s not because they believe whatever the mob is chanting at them, it’s because they don’t have the backbone to stand up for someone that’s an important person in their lives.
If you can’t do that, if you can’t stand up for a human being that you respect and love and appreciate, and if you can’t stand up for a principle that you believe in, if you can’t stand up when somebody’s doing something that isn’t right, then who are you?
Mr. Jekielek: You’re just reminding me of something. I don’t have a lot of regrets in my life. I’ve chosen a certain path through my life, but I do have a few, and they’re very stark. One of them is from pretty early childhood, like grade school, and it’s precisely that betrayal of someone who was a friend in order to be part of the larger group, which is something I really wanted. I'll never forget that, and it’s very difficult for me to even forgive myself for that.
Courage, speaking out in this context or being able to express what’s actually on your mind, what your values are is a muscle. Once you do it a little bit, you get better at it, and you feel more confident that you can do it. But the flip side is also true. As long as you stay silent, it’s very hard. That inertia is very powerful because you can see what happens to people when they choose to do it and then get squashed by the mob as you describe it.
Ms. Brodsky: Yes, and that’s why I would encourage people to do it gradually. If you’re really going to pick that moment to speak up, then you’re in a better shape than those who found themselves on the wrong side unexpectedly because they didn’t have a chance to prepare. To some extent, I was preparing. I definitely wanted to be able to use my voice more before the inciting incident, but it was still very weak.
What’s important is that you start. First, you talk to your friends, people who understand you, who are close to you. Then it becomes normal and second nature, and you have far more authentic relationships because you’re actually saying what you mean and what you believe. Then you start talking to people you meet and you tell them what you believe. Then, it depends. Not everybody has a platform or is going to write a book or go on social media or go on talk shows. Everybody does it differently in their lives, but it has to be normalized.
A lot of times people think, “Okay, freedom of speech, I can say whatever I want.” But you also have a responsibility. It’s not, “Hey, you have to do it this way.” You should reflect and think, “What do I want to do with this fundamental freedom?” Ideally, you say something that matters, that is thoughtful, and in good faith. That’s what I want to normalize.
Mr. Jekielek: There’s a cost to silence. The reason people stay silent is because they have plausible deniability. It’s just a much easier road than taking a position and having to face the ramifications of that.
Ms. Brodsky: There’s a personal cost that people often don’t talk about, and there’s a societal cost. The personal cost is that you ultimately live a life that is not authentic. Like I said, you don’t have real relationships and real friendships because you can’t talk to them openly. I’ve noticed my friendships are so much better now that I’m more open.
With some people, maybe we’re not as close anymore because they’re not as open-minded. But luckily most of my friends are, and we assume the best of each other. That’s why we can say what we want to say. Even if somebody disagrees or finds something a little offensive, we can talk about it and I'll listen to them.
The societal cost is that ultimately you are letting that very radical minority who tend to have the loudest voices and megaphones dictate how society is run. We talk about this in the context of a culture war, and that’s not great. People losing their jobs, that’s not great. People being ostracized, that’s also not great.
But we’ve seen throughout history how it could lead to the ultimate price of people getting killed. We’ve seen revolutions happen where people lose their lives because of a small, very dominant group of people who incite these revolutions. It all starts from the silencing of speech. That’s why it is such a fundamentally important thing.
Mr. Jekielek: Absolutely. To take that a little further, I have learned some core lessons after having done almost a thousand American Thought Leaders interviews, and talking to people challenging some of these grand narratives that are false and dominating our society today.
One of the things I realized along the way was that we’re very susceptible as human beings to this sense that if something is the overall view, even if it’s only 10 percent of a very large group, that group can actually brainwash society because when we believe something is the overall view and it’s very loud and no one is saying anything contrary, we’re pushed in that direction.
With the truckers protest, which is in the news as we’re filming right now, the federal court in Canada has basically deemed the Emergencies Act, which was used to stop the truckers protests in early February of 2022, as unconstitutional and against the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Those protests were some of the most important in recent history, because they broke the narrative. It wasn’t just one person, and it wasn’t a few people. It was a very diverse group of people that said, “No, we’re not going to accept this thing that we’re all supposed to accept.”
Ms. Brodsky: They got to that point because their voice was heavily suppressed and oppressed and vilified to such an extent. It was quite shocking and life-changing in some ways to see what happened during the pandemic. I’m not even someone who’s anti-vaccine myself, but I was very much anti-mandates because I do believe in people’s fundamental right to choose, and a lot of things didn’t quite make sense.
I was one of the people who early on was masking and isolating. I filmed a video about how you should clean everything. I was in that group. But what I saw was how quickly people are able to take a group and vilify them in language that is so enormously dehumanizing, and how quickly your freedoms are able to be taken away without any real discussion, without any vote, without anything. That was very alarming for me to see.
Then with the trucker protest, and I’m not big on protest myself, but people have the fundamental right to protest, what I was seeing and what I started speaking out about with that was how the media was covering it. I would see one Nazi flag or something with a swastika. Who knows who brought that? I’m Jewish, so I would find that particularly offensive, but it doesn’t mean that the whole crowd of people is suddenly rabid anti-Semites or Nazis as it was described.
Then seeing our prime minister, Trudeau, even before the protest began, which was very alarming at the time, already describing them in certain ways. It’s just a population that disagrees, that dares to dissent, and they’re being painted as these absolutely evil individuals. While there are certain things that I feel happened during the protests that I disagree with, like the blocking of the bridge, which I do think is criminal, this idea that this group of people is not entitled to voice was because people were so scared.
That’s where it was coming from. When people are particularly scared, they’re willing to give up their power, and that’s what happens. It was this fear that was dictating it, but people also abandoned their principles. I’ve been a liberal voter, so I’m the Trudeau target demographic, although I wasn’t a huge fan. I’ve even voted left of that at a certain point.
The idea that you can just ignore a huge segment of your population and just paint them as evil and racist and all the labels that didn’t even make sense, and it was very terrifying to see. I went from not liking him very much because he was virtue signaling and not particularly smart, to really actively being afraid that he had this authoritarian streak. He invoked, was it the Military Act? I keep forgetting.
Mr. Jekielek: The Emergencies Act.
Ms. Brodsky: The Emergencies Act.
Mr. Jekielek: It used to be called the War Measures Act, so I can see why you would say that.
Ms. Brodsky: That’s right. The War Measures Act was only invoked one time, ironically, by his father. Then we have this act that was invoked and it was so unprecedented, and for what? There have been riots in the past, riots that were praised in the U.S. Trudeau kneeled in regards to the BLM demonstrations. It was this idea that you can take one group and apply a completely different standard to them.
Freezing bank accounts completely undermined a democratic society or a liberal society. It was authoritarian. When I talk to other people, they agree. They found that to be quite terrifying and unprecedented. They, in particular, might have even hated the trucker protests. It’s the same thing when I talked to people overseas, they were really stunned. They did not expect that and that treatment was just absolutely absurd.
A good leader is also somebody who listens to the population, regardless of whether that segment of the population even voted for him, because he’s been elected to represent everyone. Again, vilifying a particular group just because he doesn’t like them or doesn’t agree with them, when he could have engaged in dialogue, which would have been far more productive in maintaining some semblance of peace, instead of sending the troops on them, was just a terrifying moment.
That’s why some people say, “Canada has fallen.” I love Canada and I’m an immigrant to Canada. There’s a lot of wonderful, wonderful things about Canada, but this was not one of them.
Mr. Jekielek: I can’t help but think again about this evil genius of Herbert Marcuse’s repressive tolerance, which sets this pseudo-moral framework for allowing for that kind of thinking in the first place. I feel like we’re living in the logic of that moment in many cases. Just very briefly, what’s your reaction to this federal court ruling?
Ms. Brodsky: I was quite relieved actually, to have that federal court ruling. I didn’t expect it. To be honest, I feel like the system is a little bit rigged right now, so I was quite surprised and relieved that that happened. But I know that the government immediately moved forward to repel it, and that’s unfortunate. A lot of Canadians will appreciate that, will feel like maybe the system isn’t completely against them, that there is some fairness inherently in the system, even if the government currently is treating them unfairly.
Mr. Jekielek: Your number one lesson is never apologize if you did nothing wrong.
Ms. Brodsky: But also have a plan B if you do speak out, so that you have some level of protection for yourself. It’s really important to consider the implications. I did not. I went into it idealistically and a bit blind, and I’m trying to figure out my way forward with this. It definitely had a lot of costs in that arena.
But if you are going to choose it, you can be set up for a better outcome, and that’s advice that was given in one of the chapters. If you can set it up where you have a level of independence or you have an employer who is supportive of you regardless, who understands you’re just a good human being who is expressing some opinions, that’s a good thing to consider.
Mr. Jekielek: Was it worth the cost?
Ms. Brodsky: I think so, and I did think of a plan B. I always say this, and it’s kind of a ridiculous pie-in-the-sky plan B, “Oh, if anything, I‘ll open a coffee shop and I’ll work in a coffee shop.” But that would not be a desirable outcome. In my case, I was at the peak of my career when all of this went down. That’s when I had chosen this path. In many ways, I chose it as opposed to just falling victim to it. I could have probably been okay had I just kept my head down and not gone on shows like yours.
But I didn’t feel as a human being that I could live with myself. I found a greater sense of purpose, and I found a more authentic me, which is worth the price, because what’s the point of living if you cannot be an authentic human being.
I’ve gotten to know some wonderful people and had such great conversations. I feel like I’m operating in a different realm because I am around people who are just so much more open-minded. Whether they agree with me or disagree with me, that doesn’t really matter. They’re just human beings who are trying to make sense of the world. We’re all trying to make sense of the world.
We’re going to get it wrong sometimes, and we’re going to say the wrong things sometimes, and we’re going to offend people sometimes. It is not my intention to offend people, but it is something that’s going to happen in the process of figuring things out. I very much want to learn and be curious. Part of that curiosity has to express oneself with words and being able to say things that are a little bit dangerous.
Mr. Jekielek: You said something very interesting because it was almost in the same words that I use myself. Sometimes people will say, “You’re courageous.” This idea of not being able to live with yourself, that might not be exactly the same thing as courage, but it’s still very valuable.
Ms. Brodsky: One common thread that I found in the stories of the people that I interviewed for the book really was that sense of integrity. I don’t think it was courage in the sense that, “Oh, I’m not scared.” Courage actually means doing something when you are scared, so that is one form of courage. But a lot of people were not necessarily brave people inherently. I’m not a brave person inherently. It’s important for people to understand that, because ultimately, you’re right, it is that sense of integrity, that moral compass of being willing to stand up for principles.
The truth is most people have a tremendous amount of fear. You just need to persevere through that fear. Like you said earlier, it is a muscle, very much so. I found that very much to be a muscle within me. The level of comfort I have now speaking is very different from when I started. That’s why I encourage people to take gentle steps, whatever you feel comfortable with, and build up that muscle.
Mr. Jekielek: Something that struck me in reading your book and actually talking with our producers is that there’s this price to stepping out. You said it’s worth it, but the other part is there’s the price to the silence. There’s this cost to the silence, and maybe people are becoming more aware of that.
Ms. Brodsky: Absolutely. By the way, I should say, the cost is worth it for me. I cannot say if it’s worth it for someone else. I cannot decide. People have families, they have kids, they have different circumstances. Everybody is in their unique boat. But ultimately, I do think that we have that responsibility.
When you don’t have an opposition, you feel empowered and that you feel empowered to do sometimes very, very terrible things. That is the cost of the silence, and that’s why I said it can be very much a life and death situation. It can cause wars. It can cause genocides when we are not able to stand up and talk.
A lot of the conversation around this stuff tends to go around more of the cultural war side of things, like what is a woman, or things like that. But ultimately, there’s so many things in our world, in our society that we’re not able to talk about, or we’re only expected to stick to a particular narrative. Some of these things lead us to such horrible outcomes. You don’t want one person or one entity deciding what is an appropriate form of speech and what is not.
Privately, I might think, “Well, this person is kind of a jerk and I don’t want to associate with him,” and that’s why we also have free association. If I had my own company, I might have some rules on speech. As a society, we should be encouraging. When it’s a good faith conversation, we should be able to have them.
I’ve talked to some real Nazis, and sometimes it’s productive, and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s being able to show that person that you can have a conversation with them without starting to go off at them. I certainly don’t have particularly positive views of Nazis, but being able to have that conversation sometimes changes their mind, just having a positive interaction with someone who happens, in my case, to be Jewish and I’m not going off at them. They find it puzzling and maybe gradually that will cause them to rethink their hatred.
One of my favorite chapters in the book is about Daryl Davis, because he’s such a role model to me. This is a black man, a jazz musician and civil rights activist who actually took time to get to know people who are members of the KKK and people who immediately hate him. But his whole thing is, “How can you hate me if you don’t even know me?” That is true because a lot of these people are not even familiar with someone like him.
He would have these conversations and he’s been collecting hordes of people who left the KKK. It wasn’t even him saying, “You should leave.” It was just having an opportunity to get to know him, and they couldn’t stay the same. When you have that kind of a potential outcome, it’s worth risking a conversation with someone you don’t particularly like.
He says this in the book, “Some people will go to the grave hating and some people might change.” It might be a small number of people, but I think there’s hope. This is my Pollyanna complex, but I'd rather look at things that way than the alternative way.
Mr. Jekielek: Any final thoughts as we finish up, Katherine?
Ms. Brodsky: What you just brought up is what we’re touching on, because a lot of my time is spent figuring out how we can have better conversations. What are some of the tools to be open enough to also change your own mind, and what questions you should ask yourself? Every canceled person seems to have a Substack, that’s something that I’ve put a lot into, and the same with my social media. It’s something that I spend a lot of time on.
Modeling that kind of behavior is very, very powerful. I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me and say, “Listen, I tried your method, and I managed to have conversations with people that I radically disagree with, and now they follow me.” I had somebody reach out to me the other day and say that, and I’ve had many other people do that, because that can have such an impact. With just having a human being to human being conversation, you don’t know what the impact is going to be.
This is the other big lesson that I learned myself when I was being attacked. Part of me was thinking, “Am I wrong? So many people are coming at me and they’re so angry. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m not seeing something.” I did listen to them very much, but what I was seeing was people who were calling me names, were attacking me, were trying to dehumanize me, and were trying to destroy me.
Somebody said this to me recently, “What’s the point of cancellation? Is it to take away your job? What happens if you don’t have a job? How do you eat? Isn’t the ultimate point of that to basically take away your life?” That really resonated with me. I hadn’t thought about it that way, but it’s actually true.
When you’re hearing things from people who have no morals in the way that they approach it because they think they’re justified, because they think they’re right, those are not the people you should be listening to.
Now, if somebody comes to me in good faith and makes an argument and tells me why they disagree with me, that’s a whole different thing. I will always listen to that. But ultimately, you have to listen to yourself and to your voice and surround yourself with the people that you trust to challenge you, so that you don’t become completely oblivious to what other people are thinking.
Who is it that you want to run society? If you don’t want those very angry, very radicalized voices to be the ones dictating what our world looks like, then you should use your own voice to stand up to that.
Mr. Jekielek: Katherine Brodsky, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Ms. Brodsky: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure being on.
🔴 WATCH the full episode (1 h 2 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S0206KatherineBrodsky
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