Feminist Author Dr. Naomi Wolf Weighs In on Events Leading Up to Her Permanent Twitter Ban
Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed liberal, feminist, author, and freedom lover Dr. Naomi Wolf to the newsmakers line to discuss her permanent ban from Twitter after questioning COVID vaccines, citing current state legislation and Moderna website published content.
Leahy: And we are welcoming to our newsmaker line. Our good friend Dr. Naomi Wolf, the author of the 1991 feminist classic, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women.
She was an advisor to Al Gore in 2000. And now the left doesn’t like her because she’s talking about some health freedom issues. Good morning, Naomi.
Wolf: Good morning to you. How are you?
Leahy: I’m glad to have you on. So Twitter has suspended you? Oh, my goodness. What did you do? (Laughs)
Wolf: (Chuckles) Well, that is a good question. I certainly didn’t violate any of the Twitter rules, and Twitter is set up so that there’s no way to know why you’re suspended. There’s no one to call and there’s no editor to challenge this decision about.
I know it’s widely reported that I was de-platformed for reporting on adverse reactions to the COVID vaccine. And it is true that I’ve broken some stories about that which were picked up in many other news outlets, and I’m proud of the reporting I did.
People deserve all the information about any medical process. But I don’t believe that’s the real reason I was actually de-platformed in the act of posting a two-minute video in which I literally read verbatim a press release from a state senator in Oregon named Kim Thatcher, who had introduced a bill to ban vaccine passports and mask mandates in the state of Oregon.
There were a couple of other things that I had posted that day that I also think were over the target, honestly. So that is my best guess about why I was de-platformed.
Leahy: The mainstream media has reported and they apparently know why you were de-platformed, right?
Wolf: Yeah. Which is such terrible reporting. A, nobody in the news media has called me for comment to find out from me why I think I was de-platformed or what I actually said. And a lot of tweets have been taken out of context.
But if Twitter won’t talk to me about why I was de-platformed then who’s talking to mainstream media? Right. It’s almost as if they’re just making it up or else Twitter is leaking to news outlets without giving me the courtesy of contacting me and saying, look we are de-platforming you for this reason.
It’s dangerous and scary, not just because of what happened to me and my 140,000 followers who now can’t talk to me. It’s really much more dangerous and scary for everybody else out there and for democracy because if indeed, the reason was that I was reporting a transparent civic process, a state bill, then that means Twitter and these big tech platforms have the power to silence one side of the aisle or one side of the political discussion even though I’m not a Republican.
Which is the irony. And only let people hear about bills on the Dem side. And we’ve seen the de-platforming of conservative voices across a range of voices and commentators. So that’s really, really scary.
That quickly becomes a one-party state in the Chinese Communist Party model. So that’s super terrifying. And it’s also super terrifying because this is the world that we’re living in now. It’s not going to stop just me.
If somebody says something about the administration that is not okay or reveals some flaw in a product then that industry has a lot of power, it’s really a way to suppress dissent and debate. And that’s just not American.
Leahy: Naomi, in studio with us this morning is our all-star panelist, Clint Brewer. Clint is a recovering journalist, and Clint has a question for you. (Wolf chuckles)
Brewer: I haven’t fully recovered, so I’m going to ask a question live on the air. Ms. Wolf, some of the language around medical freedom concerning the pandemic is not dissimilar to language around pro-choice arguments.
Wolf: Right.
Brewer: You’ve got a nuanced history on the issue of abortion. For the listeners reconcile your positions on medical freedom as it relates to COVID and on abortion. And do you think there’s a growing number of people who share that sentiment that I think you’ll explain?
Wolf: I’m not sure I fully understand your question. I think what you’re saying and I’ve made this point on Twitter is that liberal feminists like myself who are pro-choice, have always had a gospel of my body, my choice and that it is really dangerous and unethical when the state can say, you have to have this baby or you can’t have an abortion or any other kind of forced decision making by the state that gets between a woman and her doctor, a woman, and her body. Is that the analogy you’re looking for?
Brewer: Exactly. And it sounds like a similar argument to medical freedom around COVID. I mean, people should be able to make a choice about masks. They should be able to have a choice about vaccines and control their body in between them and their health care professionals.
Wolf: Yes. I mean, I do agree with you, and I would go further. I think with abortion, good people can reasonably make arguments in both directions. But when it comes to whether or not to wear masks, whether or not to accept an experimental medical procedure, which is still the COVID-19 vaccine that hasn’t completed its clinical trials.
I would go further and say, really, there are so many laws, including the Constitution, that make it unlawful to coerce people to have that vaccine. It’s unlawful. It violates HIPAA, for instance, to have a vaccine passport system.
It violates the Fourth Amendment and the Right to Privacy to ask whether someone’s vaccinated or not vaccinated before they can enter a business, which is what was happening to me when I was in New York City, where the signs like this all over the city.
It violates the Equality Act to say, and I’m hearing from people across the country, you can’t have a job unless you get vaccinated. Your child can’t go back to college unless he or she accepts this experimental vaccination.
I’m not an anti-vaxxer, but I absolutely believe in the rule of law and the Constitution and our human rights law that you need a convention. You can’t force a medical treatment on people.
It’s illegal to experiment on people. That’s the Nuremberg Code. We have a nexus laws in the free world that prevents us from being forced to accept medical treatment or from being experimented on. My condition is not anti-vaccine, and I wouldn’t even call it medical freedom. It’s just Western democracy with its rule of law.
Leahy: Naomi, Yahoo News about 22 hours ago posted this story about you. I’ll read it and get your reaction. ‘Twitter has suspended author Naomi Wolf after she posted outlandish vaccine misinformation on the platform, including a claim that the shots were a ‘software platform that can receive uploads.’ Did Yahoo contact you before they wrote that story? And what’s your reaction to that?
Wolf: Well, they certainly did not. And this is such a gross example of big news outlets that really rely now, and I’m in the news business and I know your guest is there as well. They really rely on a kind of unholy partnership with Big Tech. The language in that Tweet is from the Moderna website.
And they were boasting on the website that their lipid nano-particle technology is like software that you can kind of upload or change in the future. And they were boasting about that as a revenue model, as opposed to a traditional vaccine where you just get it once.
After I reported on that, we did hear that there were going to be booster shots. There are going to be booster shots and it’s not just going to be one injection. I literally used the language off the Moderna website and their analogy.
And the trouble with Twitter, of course, is you can take these out of context. And certainly, Yahoo News has no excuse for taking that out of context.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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Photo “Dr. Naomi Wolf” by Dr. Naomi Wolf.