By LISA MASCARO and ALI SWENSON (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended himself Thursday in opposition to accusations that he traffics in racist and hateful on-line conspiracy theories, testifying at a House listening to on authorities censorship regardless of requests from exterior teams to disinvite the Democratic presidential candidate after his current antisemitic remarks.
The Republican-led Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is amplifying GOP claims that conservatives and others are being unfairly focused by know-how firms that routinely work with the federal government to attempt to stem the unfold of disinformation on-line.
In opening remarks, Kennedy invoked his well-known household’s legacy in decrying the complaints of racism and antisemitism in opposition to him.
“This is an attempt to censor a censorship hearing,” mentioned Kennedy, the son of Roberts F. Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy defended his social media posts, which have delved into race, vaccine security and different points, as neither “racist or antisemitic.” He mentioned his household has lengthy believed within the First Amendment proper to free speech.
“The First Amendment was not written for easy speech,” Kennedy mentioned. “It was a speech that nobody likes you for.”
Republicans are desperate to elevate Kennedy after he introduced in April he was mounting a long-shot Democratic main problem to President Joe Biden. Kennedy’s presidential marketing campaign chairman, Dennis Kucinich, the previous congressman and previous presidential contender, sat within the entrance row behind him.
The Big Tech firms have adamantly denied the GOP assertions and say they implement their guidelines impartially for everybody no matter ideology or political affiliation. And researchers haven’t discovered widespread proof that social media firms are biased in opposition to conservative information, posts or supplies.
The prime Democrat on the House panel, Del. Stacey Plaskett of the Virgin Islands, mentioned the Republican majority was giving a platform to Kennedy and others to advertise conspiracy theories and a rallying cry for “bigotry and hate.”
“This is not the kind of free speech I know,” Plaskett mentioned.
The listening to comes after a federal choose lately sought to halt the Biden administration from working with the social media firms to observe misinformation and different on-line postings. An appellate court docket briefly paused the order.
The panel’s chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, stood by the choice to have Kennedy testify. In his personal opening remarks, Jordan portrayed what he claimed had been examples of censorship, together with a White House request to Twitter to take away a race-based submit from Kennedy about COVID-19 vaccines.
“It’s why Mr. Kennedy is running for president — to help us expose and stop what’s going on,” Jordan mentioned.
A watchdog group requested Jordan to drop the invitation to Kennedy after he advised COVID-19 may have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese individuals.
In these filmed remarks first printed by The New York Post, Kennedy mentioned “there is an argument” that COVID-19 “is ethnically targeted” and that it “attacks certain races disproportionately.”
After the video was made public, Kennedy posted on Twitter that his phrases had been twisted and denied ever suggesting that COVID-19 was intentionally engineered to spare Jewish individuals. He referred to as for the Post’s article to be retracted.
But Kennedy has a historical past of evaluating vaccines — extensively credited with saving thousands and thousands of lives — with the genocide of the Holocaust throughout Nazi Germany, feedback for which he has generally apologized.
An group that Kennedy based, Children’s Health Defense, at present has a lawsuit pending in opposition to quite a lot of information organizations, amongst them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust legal guidelines by taking motion to determine misinformation, together with about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines.
Jordan mentioned that whereas he disagreed with Kennedy’s remarks, he was not about to drop him from the panel. Speaker Kevin McCarthy took the same view, saying he didn’t need to censor Kennedy.
Ahead of the listening to, Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia mentioned Kennedy holds “vile” beliefs. “By promoting Mr. Kennedy, Republicans are deliberately providing a platform to amplify hate speech,” he mentioned.
The panel needs to probe the way in which the federal authorities works with know-how firms to flag postings that include false info or downright lies. Hanging over the talk is a part of federal communications regulation, Section 230, which shields know-how firms like Twitter and Facebook from legal responsibility over what’s mentioned on their platforms.
Lawmakers on the panel wereare additionally listening to testimony from Emma-Jo Morris, journalist at Breitbart News, who has reported extensively on Biden’s son, Hunter Biden; and D. John Sauer, a former Solicitor General in Missouri who’s now a particular Assistant Attorney General on the Louisiana Department of Justice concerned within the lawsuit in opposition to the Biden administration.
Morris tweeted a part of her opening remarks during which she described an “elaborate censorship conspiracy” that she claimed sought to halt her reporting of Hunter Biden.
Another witness, Maya Wiley, the president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, strayed from her ready remarks to implore the lawmakers to think about how necessary it’s to have platforms the place Americans can share views — but additionally “how deeply vital that they be based in fact, not fiction.”
The U.S. has been hesitant to manage the social media giants, at the same time as exterior teams warn of the rise of hate speech and misinformation that may be erosive to civil society.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com”