Seth Dillon, the CEO of The Babylon Bee, discussed the importance of standing for the truth, regardless of the cost on Sunday at AmericaFest 2023.
Ironically, Vimeo permanently suspended a conservative nonprofit’s account for posting a talk Dillon gave about censorship.
“Think of the irony of that for a second,” he said. “You can’t even talk about how they’re censoring you without them censoring you. I agree with Dave Chappelle, it shouldn’t be this dangerous to talk.”
Those who love censorship want submission from others. They want conservatives to stop fighting, stop telling jokes and to stop telling the truth. They aim to raise the cost of speaking freely so high that conservative would rather keep their mouths shut and avoid penalties, he added.
“That’d be the easy thing to do,” Dillon said. “No more headaches, no more suspensions, no more disruptions. All it would cost us is our integrity. All we have to trade for a little piece of mind on a platform is truth itself.”
He recounted how Twitter blocked The Babylon Bee out of its account for awarding Rachel Levine its award for Man of the Year following the USA Today’s decision to name Levine, who was born a man, as its “Woman of the Year.”
One of the challenges of being a comedian in 2023 is coming up with jokes that are funnier than what Democrats are actually doing in real life, he said.
There was talk amongst Babylon Bee employees that there would likely be consequences, which Dillon said is intentional on the part of those who censor.
“They count on you thinking this way,” he said. “They know if they can make you afraid of being deplatformed, you’ll do their job and censor yourself.”
For every case where those who censor take down a post, Dillon said there are likely 1,000 cases of soft censorship where users bite their own tongues.
“Make them censor you,” he said. “Never do the tyrant’s work for them.”
Trans activists got hold of the Bee’s post right away and reported it to Twitter as hate speech. The hate policy at Twitter pre-Elon Musk prohibited “misgendering” people. The Babylon Bee’s account was locked. But, if the company would simply delete the tweet and check a box that acknowledged it engaged in hateful conduct, it could be restored.
“That’s not just censorship, it’s subjugation,” he said. “They wanted us to bend the knee and we refused.”
Dillon quickly put out a post declaring the company would not delete the post. They were almost immediately mocked and taunted by Leftists who predicted they would cave. But that only made Dillon more firm in the decision.
Conservatives need to use comedy and jokes to challenge, refute and ridicule bad ideas before they spread like the “mind viruses” they are, he said.
He praised Elon Musk for standing up to the woke mob and not allowing advertisers on X — formerly Twitter — to hold money over his head to get what they wanted. And Musk has taught conservatives many things through the ordeal.
“One lesson is he’s teaching us to stop caring about what freedom might cost us,” Dillon said.
A student recently failed a quick because they answered a man could not get pregnant, Dillon said.
“That’s insane. The most appropriate response to these ridiculous ideas is not logical argument but laughter,” Dillon said.
Trying to reason with people who believe these woke ideas is like trying to give medicine to a dead man, he added.
The satire isn’t about hatred, either. Dillon said The Babylon Bee doesn’t hate Rachel Levine, liberals or Joe Biden.
“We don’t have any of these people,” he said. “We just love the truth and the freedom that we enjoy in this country to speak it.”
Comedy used to expose the bad woke ideas also angers and exposes tyrants. Tyrants, Dillon said, cannot stand to be mocked.
And it is also unifying. People do not have a right to not be offended that trumps everyone else’s right to speak freely. Dillon said people need to not take themselves so seriously.
Dillon highlighted a study that showed what a difference one person speaking up can make. It was a conformity test. And it showed that when just one person said the right answer, the conformity rate dropped from 75 percent to just 5 percent.
“Because one person was able to say truth,” Dillon said. “That is significant. It dropped from almost everybody conforming just because everyone else was doing it to almost no one conforming.
“It’s important to speak the truth boldly even if it costs you something — especially if it costs you something. Courage is contagious. Evil prevails when good men do nothing. I think that’s very obviously true. But it’s also true that madness prevails when sane men say nothing. We can’t preserve sanity with silence.”
