A new video showing a comedian's battle with an anti-vaxxer is going viral on Twitter and TikTok after the anti-vaxxer showed a very strange understanding of the words "free speech."
The video comes from comedian and YouTuber Walter Masterson, who frequently attends right-wing rallies and community meetings to interview attendees on their views. A recent conversation he had—or tried to have—with an anti-vaxxer went seriously sideways.
When the anti-vaxxer began pontificating about "free speech" and then belligerently shut Masterson down for attempting to correctly define the phrase, Masterson's reaction to the moment was instantly relatable.
See the video below.
WARNING: NSFW language
Masterson captioned his video "Anti-Vaxxer explains 'Freedom of Speech' in the most ironic way possible," and he couldn't have worded it better.
As so often happens with right-wing anti-vaxxers, the agitated anti-vaxxer, whom several people have identified as Proud Boys member Randy Ireland, began defending his view by pontificating about free speech.
When he appeared to begin launching into the usual right-wing definition of free speech--the right to say whatever you want whenever you want without consequences--Masterson interrupted to give the real definition of free speech as written in the Constitution.
"Freedom of speech means the government doesn't get involved."
The anti-vaxxer then exploded, immediately and belligerently shutting Masterson down with an intolerant tirade.
"Shut your fu*king mouth, because I'm not asking you what freedom of speech is, okay?!"
Masterson then turned to the camera with a desultory look of pure disbelief that said it all as Alanis Morissette's "Ironic" played.
Masterson's definition is of course absolutely correct. The Constitution's definition of free speech as written in the First Amendment states:
"Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."
Since Masterson, or any other citizen, does not constitute "Congress," their push-back against another person's opinion does not constitute an infringement of their free speech.
But of course not a single day goes by that a conservative doesn't make the argument that their Constitutional rights are being tyrannically quashed simply by dint of the fact that someone disagrees with them.
So naturally, Masterson's video had people alternately laughing and shaking their heads.
Anyway it will surely be not time at all before scores of conservatives miss the point entirely and begin sharing Masterson's video as an example of the left's assault on free speech. Sigh.
@NBCNews/X
@donny_rover1879/X
@RealCandaceO/X
@joekent16jan19/X
