Dear Friends,
It’s no fun being told to shut up. Sure, it sucks when your White Nationalist uncle shouts you down when you offer a land acknowledgment at Thanksgiving.
Lee Camp
It sucks even more when you’re a comedian and the Oligarchy (i.e., Big Guv/Big Biz) cancels you every time you reincarnate your platform.
Enter Lee Camp: America’s most censored comedian. If Lee had only focused on keeping it light and funny. If only he hadn’t made the mistake of using his platform to provide astute, well-researched commentary on the critical issues of our time.
But, no. Lee had to go and have an opinion. It’s almost as if he thought the First Amendment mattered.
The marginalization of Lee Camp started with an appearance on Fox News in 2008. Fox invited him on to the show to say funny stuff (watch the clip here).
Instead, he called Fox News a “parade of propaganda” and “a festival of ignorance.” Well, that’s actually pretty funny. And astute. But Fox News’ hosts aren’t known for their sense of humor, or their ability to take a joke.
Fox News never invited Lee back. Surprise, surprise!
Thus began Lee’s extended odyssey of censorship and rebirth. Despite having opened for a whole lot of funny fellows in the past — including Jimmy Fallon, Tracy Morgan, Lewis Black, and Dick Gregory; despite Lee’s material being genuinely gut-busting; despite his audience’s appreciation of his willingness to call out war and injustice, Lee found himself increasingly marginalized.
And it’s only gotten worse in recent years.
In 2012, I invited Lee to Des Moines to headline an event to raise funds for my legal defense against a frivolous lawsuit filed by Leonard Boswell. Boswell later dismissed the lawsuit. Like I said, it was frivolous.
Lee and I have kept in touch over the years and have been guests on each others’ platforms. Despite being censored, Lee’s platform is still way bigger than mine, which might explain why I’ve only been canceled/censored twice (once by Democrats, once by Republicans — hey, I’m all about bipartisanship).
Last week, Lee was again a guest on my show. We discussed the many insidious ways the ruling elite has censored him. I asked if he’d had any competition for “most censored comedian,” suggesting Stephen Colbert might be in the running.
“If Colbert gets kicked off his show and then they ban his Youtube channel, ban his podcast on Spotify, ban his TikTok page, shadow ban his Twitter, shadow ban his Facebook, then we can talk,” says Lee.
Wow! That’s a whole lot of cancelation. “Facebook was my biggest platform for years. I had 330,000 followers. Then Facebook decided in 2016 to cap me at 330,000. I never gained another follower,” says Lee.
So, why all this censorship? Certainly, Lee’s regular criticism of crony capitalism vexes the billionaires running the federal government and the uber-rich tech bros who control most social media platforms.
But perhaps his pointed criticism of the Israeli government accounts for the biggest part of Lee’s cancelation. Among other things, Lee’s been unafraid to call out the use of the Hannibal Directive on October 7, 2023.
The Hannibal Directive was first employed by the Israeli military in 1986. It allows the army to use any force necessary to kill its own soldiers and civilians to prevent them from being taken captive. The Directive has been widely criticized by human rights organizations as a blatant violation of international law.
Lee says, “I’ve written about this extensively, and people need to understand this is not my idea, this is not my analysis. Top Israeli officials have admitted to this. You can read about it in Israeli media. Haaretz has written about this. One of the top level people to admit to this is Yoav Gallant, the former defense minister. The guy running the Israeli military at the time of October 7 has said publicly they used the Hannibal Directive.”
“The other thing people need to realize is Israel knew October 7 was coming for a long time, a year ahead of time at least. The New York Times put out an article [discussed here in Le Monde, where there’s no paywall], saying Israel knew it was coming.”
At this point, perhaps some of you want to yell, “Anti-semite, anti-semite” at Lee. Well, Lee is Jewish. And more and more Jews — in the US, in Israel, and around the world — are increasingly critical of what is clearly and plainly a genocidal land-grab by the current Israeli government, paid for in large part by American tax dollars.
Lee: “Zionist does not mean Jewish. Zionist means a supporter of the Israeli state. There are more Christian Zionists in the United States than there are Jews in the world. There are anti-Zionist Jews, like myself. Israel has worked hard to conflate these words, confuse them, to get people to think that anti-Zionist is antisemitic.”
I hope you’ll listen to our conversation.
Please check out The Lee Camp Show on Spotify.
Also, check out Lee’s Substack.
But wait, there’s more from last week: CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL PROGRAM.
Here’s the line up, with links to individual segments:
(01:06) Lee Camp: America’s most censored comedian — LISTEN
(10:44) The hard truth behind Israel’s Palestinian genocide, with Lee Camp — LISTEN
(31:04) Don’t use bees as a weapon — LISTEN
(34:34) Catholic Church sees growth — LISTEN
(40:11) Oyster farmer vs. Democratic Establishment — LISTEN
(46:31) Tucker Carlson’s mea culpa — LISTEN
(52:44) May garden Q & A, with Kathy Byrnes — LISTEN
Thanks for reading, listening, and taking action. And if you’re a central Iowa resident, remember to support the local businesses and nonprofits that help underwrite this platform.
Ed Fallon
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