When Boundaries Disappear: Erez Levin on TABOOS, Antisemitism & Moral Accountability

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In this episode of Signal & Noise, hosts Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with Erez Levin—former Google leader, ad quality advocate, and cultural reformer—for a wide-ranging conversation about speech, norms, and the dangerous space between censorship and permissiveness.

Erez has spent his career challenging broken incentives—from paid media’s obsession with outcomes over quality to workplace norms that quietly discourage responsibility. In this conversation, he turns that same lens toward culture itself, introducing his TABOO framework: a call to restore shared social boundaries around overt bigotry, dehumanization, and the endorsement of violence—without reviving cancel culture or state censorship.

The discussion explores how cancel culture unintentionally weakened society’s ability to enforce real moral limits, why antisemitism has become a visible stress test for eroding norms, and how both the “woke left” and “woke right” exploit the same failures from opposite directions. Erez makes the case that social consequences are not censorship, that forgiveness must follow accountability, and that societies collapse not when speech is free—but when nothing is out of bounds.

This episode isn’t about partisan politics. It’s about guardrails, courage, and what happens when no one is willing to hold the line.

Topics include:- Cancel culture vs. consequence culture- Antisemitism as a warning sign, not an exception- The woke left, the woke right, and tribal immunity- Why taboos protect pluralistic societies- How norms fail—and how they can be restored.

Read the full transcript below:

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Brett House (00:01)

Hey everybody, welcome back to Signal and Noise with my co-host Rio Longacre. I'm Brett House and today we've got a very special guest who I'm thrilled to talk to. Rio knows him well. I'm getting to know him. His name's Erez Levin. He is a self-proclaimed media futurist and ad quality evangelist. I'm reading some of the stuff from your LinkedIn and I think it gets funnier. A pro social engineer and a paternity leave de-advocate, which

Erez Levin (00:28)

Dev-i-cate.

Brett House (00:31)

I thought, was that a dad-vicket or a de-advocate? A dad-vicket, okay, so you're in favor of paternity leave. I thought something, when I read it, quickly skipped. I thought I read de-advocate. De-advocate. But you're a principal advisor, you run your advisory firm, your own advisory firm, you're a long-time Google employee, like almost a life or 13 plus years, right?

Erez Levin (00:35)

Dadvicket.

Rio (00:55)

And as of Digiday, I think a whistleblower too, so.

Brett House (00:58)

And as a senior transformation lead supporting agency Holdco and Opco, ⁓ companies on priority tech solutions across Google's ad buying platforms. So you're super technical. You know the industry, ad tech, martech, et cetera. And you went to school in the great state of New Jersey, where I'm podcasting from right now at Rutgers. So, ⁓ Eris, welcome to the show and tell the audience a little bit about yourself and if I missed anything critical.

Erez Levin (01:18)

I did. Thanks for having me. What can I add that I didn't already ⁓ elaborate on in my LinkedIn? ⁓ Yeah, I think some folks in the ad industry might be familiar with me. But yeah, I think at a high level and where it's relevant to this discussion, I like changing things for the better, I guess. I don't know. I've been fortunate to, especially in my time at Google, be able to affect some big change. ⁓ and see sort of positive ⁓ progress and innovation from some of the things that I identified. And I got a little bit addicted to it. And the example of paternity leave at the time, very few men at Google were taking their full paternity leave and taking off. I realized this through a friend that it was such a huge boon to society, to women, to gender equity, to men, to dads, to divorce rates, like all these things. And I said, like, ⁓ I'm going to help make this a norm.

And so I sort of championed it, got thousands of men to take their leave and made that sort of the default now. once I saw I was able to do that, ⁓ I keep looking for those opportunities.

Brett House (02:29)

It's very cool. Yeah. Was that in partnership with like the human resources department? You probably, that was sort of in addition to your day job.

Erez Levin (02:39)

I tried to work with them. They ⁓ helped a little bit, but honestly, a lot of these changes require sort top-down and grassroots sort of movement. And so I sort of did both approaches.

Rio (02:49)

This one's cultural, right? I mean, can see why grassroots is going to be maybe more effective.

Erez Levin (02:54)

Yeah, we had to do both for sure.

Brett House (02:55)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, and and Rio and I are both fathers. I got two boys that are older, one's in college now, and I do remember friends of mine when they were really young that just honestly weren't able to bathe their kids at night, they were at work all the time, right? So just like the simple experiences of the ABCs and the giving the kid a bath and putting him down and doing all that stuff during the week, which is so precious, and you only get it once, right? ⁓ You know, ⁓ I knew a lot of...

Rio (03:22)

Well, twice if you have two kids, I guess, right?

Brett House (03:24)

Yeah, twice if you have two kids. I knew a lot of people that just didn't experience, didn't see it. was literally outsourced to their wives.

Rio (03:28)

Yeah, Brett, ⁓was at a big four firm, I got zero. Like they offered zero. Like you had to take vacation or go into, one guy went into disability. I couldn't believe how awful and stingy it was. was like a dis, and they kind of shamed you. Like the work culture was very macho. People would work all night and you were like publicly shamed of the company if you did anything like that. So I'm glad, like kudos to you for fighting for that. That's awesome.

Erez Levin (03:41)

and So I. Well, at the time, that was the thing. I had an easy job because Google gave this really generous policy and said that they supported it, but no one took it. So all I had to do was sort of shift that norm was help make it the norm, right? Help people identify that this is a thing that the company wanted you to do. So yeah, it was a cultural shift. It wasn't a policy change. There were some things later on, but that's what I always like anchor on. What's the collective action problem that we can help just sort of shift the norm towards.

Rio (04:19)

So speaking of fighting for things and trying to make the world a better place, Eris, you know, a of the pod, friend from the industry, really excited to have you on because this is an important conversation I really think we need to have. mean, I've been following all the stuff you've been doing about outcomes versus quality, then versus quality. I mean, it's great, but I actually think this is just as, if not more important, the topic we're going to delve in today. And what I like about this, and I think this continues on that thread that you've been pulling about, identifying things that are maybe important but make people uncomfortable. And this one really, I think, does make people uncomfortable. this is going back to the topic you've been promoting on social media, what you're calling your taboo campaign, which really aims to reestablish clear social lines about culture, speech, and what you see is a dangerous erosion, to quote what you've been saying, a dangerous erosion of taboos, especially around hate and hate speech.

So really, I think this is a really interesting discussion, especially following what's happened in last two years, right? This incredible rise of anti-Semitism, this incredible rise of hate that really almost feels like for me, it out of nowhere. We're going to dig into that a little bit, but this isn't really supposed to be about politics. We might go into that a little bit. I'm more looking to understand your views on norms, accountability, and how, it healthy for society not to have natural taboos about things? and how do we balance that with censorship. So I think this is going to be a really interesting media discussion about a topic that again makes people uncomfortable, but we should be having.

Erez Levin (05:57)

Yeah, I agree. To be honest, I don't think it's that uncomfortable of a conversation. ⁓ This can dovetail into things that are uncomfortable, but from all the conversations I've had on it, ⁓ it's very commonsensical.

And so people do have some ⁓ concerns and challenges and reservations, ⁓ but we're generally talking about things that I think the vast majority of, at least, I'm talking to Americans, Americans, Westerners, they're appealing to the common values that we all hold. And so ⁓ it's generally, hopefully not too uncomfortable for anyone here in the conversation we're listening.

Brett House (06:39)

Yeah. So before we jump into that topic, because it's certainly going to be a lion's share of the conversation today, and I'm hoping listeners are excited to hear what Aris has to share about that. Let's talk about your your bona fides in media and advertising. You've been spending a lot of time, and we talked about this at Advertising Week, talking about quality of our outcomes in paid media, really pushing back based on your Google experience on sort of cheap reach, know, kind of hollow KPIs or metrics. race to the bottom optimization. ⁓ What first pulled you towards, yeah, vanity metrics. Yeah, what pulled you towards that mindset? What did you see on the ground, know, at Google and otherwise? And what do you think, you know, some of the biggest challenges that we have as an industry overcoming that?

Rio (07:12)

your vanity metrics, you spend a lot of time on that, especially from the platforms, right?

Erez Levin (07:28)

Yeah, so I studied, I loved marketing since I was a kid. I studied undergrad, I then later did sort of like a mini MBA. I understand the fundamentals of marketing and I think from even my early days at Google, even though I was enamored with search and we thought we were solved wanna makers, I saw all these issues, right? Even back then, branded ads taking most of the conversions, these blended CPAs and CPMs and CPCs and all this stuff and I was like sort of always this cognitive dissonance. but I went into the ad tech world again, this excitement, we're gonna fund the open web, but I kept seeing these things breaking, things that sort of violated those principles of marketing effectiveness that.

And people do it, right? Is it correlation or causation when we're talking about attribution? And so every time I pulled on little threads, the sort of the illusion that we were in that this all worked, the system was all working great for everyone started to crack and it became more more obvious to me. fortunately, I was actually in a role and you know, I give Google so much credit like it's their fault. They made me this way. Like they told me to fight for like look around corners, fight for effectiveness evil, all this kind of stuff. And so I was constantly doing it I was rewarded for it, not with money, not with fame. Like I was not, never like achieved a senior level, but I made my impact and people that did appreciate that I was sort of fighting for the right things. And I was able to sort of earn my seat at the table in various situations because of that. And so I felt good about what I was doing and it worked well, but at some point ⁓ Google changed a little bit and didn't want me fixing those things anymore.

Brett House (09:04)

Yeah, yeah.

Rio (09:05)

So they stopped using a Don't Be Evil, didn't they?

Brett House (09:07)

Yeah, well, I think of it as sort of the hypothesis, right? The early days, the hypothesis, and then the thesis, this is Hegel, right? And then the thesis, right, which is the don't be evil, and then the antithesis, which ⁓ is probably what you started to sense, at least like thematically stuff that was happening, the monopolistic behavior, all that sort of stuff that kind of rubbed you the wrong way, I'm assuming.

Rio (09:10)

certain point.

Erez Levin (09:30)

That's right.

Rio (09:32)

Errors, can we have both quality and outcomes? Can we have both ors in either or?

Erez Levin (09:38)

we must have both. ⁓ That's not even a question. The problem to me is outcomes, they're really easily gamed, they could be a vanity metric, there's all these issues, but then there's a bigger issue with outcomes, I believe, as a term itself, which is ⁓ it generally implies or is generally measured in a single point of time, and most advertising has its impact over both the short and the long term. And so when you consider quality, inherently have to think quality is only defined based on its likelihood of driving an outcome. But then you ask yourself like, this level of quality drove us this type of outcome in the short term and this type of outcome in the long term and these proxies and we should be comfortable with proxies. But I think the outcome is the North Star is much more dangerous. It's basically what we've had for the last 10, 20 years. ⁓ Quality will inherently make us think twice and think about what are those best proxies to effectiveness.

Brett House (10:35)

Yeah, you think, just on a side note on that topic, do you think the CHEF GPT ⁓ adds a release last week on Friday? ⁓ I do think that is anything different than what we've seen before? I I sort of, put out a post on LinkedIn that there's this shift towards sort of trust-first monetization, trying to preserve the customer experience, the relevance, right? As opposed to sort of injecting advertising. almost interruptively into the consumer experience. I mean, do you think what they're doing is the right shift? Is it different than what we've seen before? What do you think?

Erez Levin (11:14)

I don't think they have much of a choice, but I'm not optimistic for the company or for ads and AI services. I think trust is sort of the main reason why users, and I started to write it out and I'll post it at some point, but there's a really simple difference between traditional search and AI search, which is traditional search. Ads are on the top and users are okay with that because they're not expecting this really concise answer.

With AI, users want just the answer right away. And so you can put ads underneath. and some people will scroll down and they'll click on them, but far fewer people will click on them. And why would they? Because the best answer was already up top that the super smart AI already told them. And so I think AI ⁓ ads work if there's a discount, if they can say like, okay, these are the two best running shoes. Here's a third option that's offering you 20 % off. That's a great ad. ⁓ But for a normal price ad, why would I pick the fourth place? or worse when the AI already gave me the best three recommendations.

Rio (12:15)

Well, but question like search ads worked well in my opinion. Big reason was because of an incredible intent data, right? And you think about, and I think over time it's become more obvious or like it's become less obvious what's an ad versus what's an organic search listing, which is a problem in my opinion. think that's really in shitify the Google experience, right? Now you have a whole page of ads and it's hard to tell which ones, which used to be very obvious. So I think that with the incredible even better intent data they have with AI searches, if the ads are done the right way, that it could be even better experience. Because look, I personally like guys, maybe if people don't want ads, they should be able to opt out of it. If you pay $200 a month, you probably shouldn't get ads, right? But should a freemium user or user paying 20 bucks get some ads if they're really good ones, I don't see why they can't be very effective and not diminish the experience at all if the UX is done.

Erez Levin (13:11)

Yeah, I think that like it gets down to the user wants the answer. They want the best answer and they expect the AI to just give them the answer, not the thing that they were paid the most to recommend. They can do both. I think I agree. They can be respectful, but most people are just going to trust the AI organic answer because it was was given to them. If you look on Google for any of these things, for the best sheets or the best shoes or something else, the organic and the organic listings are like review sites.

Brett House (13:24)

Yeah.

Erez Levin (13:40)

Google isn't telling you this is the best thing. The AI will. And that one you might trust while you still sort of trust these systems. So once it gets into advertising, this is going to be messy. I'm not optimistic about ⁓ ads in AI. There's a market. It's a tiny fraction of what we sort of are replacing or cannibalizing.

Brett House (13:46)

Yeah. Yeah, and Jim and I just had their UCP announcement, right? The universal commerce protocol, which injects commerce into the answers. But that's generally aligned to questions specifically about product, right? So somebody's asking for recommendation on X, the top five running shoes ⁓ for outdoor cross-country running.

And then it would be injected into that response. So there's a certain relevance built in. Are you hearing anything else about, you know, UCP and what that's going to look like?

Erez Levin (14:34)

I don't follow closely, I sort of, the competition, while there's still competition in the AI space, they're all competing to give users the best answers that they possibly can, not the best ads or the most relevant ads. And so this is like, they're kind of in opposition to each other. And I think it's gonna be really challenging, especially if Gemini can just hold out and say like, we won't do ads, go ahead, go use OpenAI, let people get annoyed there. Maybe they'll get annoyed or maybe they won't, ⁓ but Gemini can just hold out.

Rio (15:04)

Well, Google has such an advantage, right? They have the frontier models, right? They have the own chips, right? They have the data centers. They have everything, right? So it's a huge advantage. And you're right, they can probably wait everyone out. But I also think that they've been, I mean, they're an advertising business. If anyone's going to get it right, it's probably going to be them. But I think we digress a little bit. How about we get back to the topic at hand here, because we could probably talk about this all day. ⁓ Looking at the taboo topic.

Maybe we start with, I mean, let's just maybe take it out back a few years, looking at cancer culture. You've been very vocal that you feel cancer culture didn't just silence and ruin people and ruin their lives, it removed some shared guardrails that as a society we probably underestimated the importance of. Maybe we can talk a little bit about this. Do you think it did any long-term damage that people are maybe underestimating?

Erez Levin (15:58)

Yeah, it did indeed. And there's a lot of root causes here. So without going too deep. ⁓You know, reading the coddling of the American mind many years ago is sort of what started to give me a sense of what was happening and where these things were starting. Obviously cancel culture sort of permeated and we saw that and everyone really understood that viscerally without even being able to define it very well. ⁓ And then there was a great book a few years ago called the canceling of the American mind, which was a follow-up to the coddling from one of the co-authors of that group, Greg Lukianoff and Ricky Schlott. And that was super eyeopening for me.

And this is all actually in the context of October 7th. ⁓ So I, giving a little bit of like background and context here, I was born in Israel. I moved to the US as a kid, still always had sort of close ties, spent a lot of time in Israel, ⁓ identify as a culturally Jewish, ⁓ proud Israeli, proud, very proud American, and always have been. ⁓ But I'm also very, like I came from the left politically, not far left. but I was always like leaned left on most causes and issues. ⁓ But I really pride myself. I've always tried to be, or at least in the last few years, very... ⁓sort of non-tribal, right? I struggle with feeling and being hypocritical. Like if I could call out a thing and then they sort of call out an example and I'm not judging the opposite side, then that didn't sit right for me. And so I've always tried to be, especially the last few years, become very, very principled in how I think about things and making sure that I sort of have that principled approach. And that brought me, let's just fast forward through my ⁓ political ⁓ partisan journey to

Brett House (17:19)

Yeah.

Erez Levin (17:46)

⁓ October 7th, which was obviously a terrible thing, but October 8th, that was the first crash of these taboos being violated, right? Everyone's big shock when people are celebrating.

Rio (17:56)

Well, what was wild to me areas like on October 8th before the Israelis look, I mean, I've lived in Israel a couple of times. I'm Jewish as well. And, you know, I, I'm also my entire adult life I've voted for Democrats and always felt myself more, I wouldn't say a progressive, but more of a liberal, right? Where I, you know, I just, you know, the toxicity of the, of the right in Republican party always turned me off. And I, although I always consider myself a moderate, right? So, but I mean, that was such a surprise to be October 8th.

Bodies were still not even buried yet. Israelis hadn't even done a counteroffensive to actually do anything about the fact that people were kidnapped and 1,200 people have been slaughtered. And people were protesting already, accusing them of genocide. I I could not believe what I was seeing. And then the people that I felt politically were on my side, the people, and I always have felt, right, that...I should be fighting for a society that's more free, more open, and more accepting of difference and diversity. And I always felt that that's not only the right thing to do, but that was the smart thing to do, being a minority, right? That you want to be on that side. But to see the people on, to see many of the people on the left completely...almost like invert reality and make accusations that I felt weren't true. mean, I just felt like that I couldn't believe what I was seeing. So it was a really shocking time. So I hear what you're saying. it started in October 8th and it hasn't really stopped.

Erez Levin (19:28)

Yeah, and that... Go ahead, Brett.

Brett House (19:28)

Yeah, no, I remember the, god, sorry, ahead. Yeah, no, I remember a friend of ours, and Rio and I have ⁓ our own little ⁓ trust groups that we text about a lot of these topics that, you hadn't, you know, not being Jewish, but most of my friends being Jewish, I'd sort of culturally been aware and sensitive, but I hadn't really done deep dives into the topic of what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be Israeli, what it means to be a Zionist, how are these things being defined?

Right. And October 8th, same thing. I had my Jewish friends from Brooklyn texting and just almost like it, not in hysterics, but in sort of fear going, you're not going to believe the things that I'm hearing from people in our own school groups, social networks. Right. And it's exactly what Rio said. It was this this backlash. And what I wanted to do was just triple double click into where foundationally culturally in the last 30, 40 years. I none of us are naive enough to know. that this kind of thing wasn't possible again. But I'm like, where is this coming from? And that's when we started diving into not only the history of the region and of the people, so to speak, of your people, but also this notion of an oppressor versus oppressed sort of system, right? Which was a very black and white read of history to me. And there was so much nuance, yeah.

Rio (20:51)

I mean, I went to college after that, right? I mean, so that was kind of alien to me too. I I graduated college in the mid-90s, right? That was not really yet a thing. So I think that it obviously, it became a thing and that it seems to paint the entire worldview of people. And I think that, you know, looking back to cancel culture, I think that was the, those were some early warning signs that this was going off the rails, right? That there was this, this oppressed or oppressed worldview. that was going to, I think, have some really uncomfortable outcomes for a lot of people starting October 8th and so we cut you off, Eris, but go ahead and continue your answer.

Erez Levin (21:23)

Yeah, was all sort of part of my journey. So I started reading so many books and obviously having a million conversations. So The Canceling of the American Mind was one really, really foundational book for me. And there were a lot of others as well that talked about sort of this like idea of neo-Marxism and oppressor oppressed and sort of that framing and how we got here. And this is not a new thing. This is not five years, 10 years. This is really going further back of this like sort of long game, ⁓ which I could identify because I was at Google, right? Like I was in a place where this stuff was really seeping in and becoming more normalized, even with really moderate, you know. ⁓ pragmatic people looking at these things, I fell for it to a degree, right? I wasn't out there to the max, but I saw it. ⁓ I saw sort of these narratives and they made sense because I'm an empathetic person. ⁓ But I think the combination of the oppressor oppressed and ⁓ this idea of cancel culture and this idea that at the core and what I identified right away is that self-censorship is really the root of all of the issues because people were seeing, I saw this at Google, you see somebody teaching some oppressor versus oppressed thing and you're kind of like, I don't know, that seems a little discriminatory, right? Like that's a little reverse discrimination, but no, you can't say it if you say you get accused. And so this idea cancel culture was just so strong. And I realized I have to, and fortunately going back, I'd built up a little bit of a reputation on LinkedIn for just being a good guy, right? I'm advocating for paternity leave, for gender equity,

Rio (22:42)

seems a little off, right? But you couldn't say anything,

Erez Levin (23:01)

all of this stuff and I felt like I'm not gonna get canceled because like no one's gonna accuse me of being like a racist or a bigot or anything else like I have a ⁓ really good reputation and I'm coming out there on LinkedIn especially what that I ⁓ you know what nothing stuck anyone who tried like it failed because no one's gonna be like they're like no I know eras he's a good guy and

Rio (23:14)

Or was that true?

Brett House (23:17)

Did you have a very good reputation?

Rio (23:17)

Did they try to accuse you?

Erez Levin (23:29)

and none of my texts, I didn't say anything hateful. I'm like, hey, these are important conversations we should be having. And I'm getting pings from people on the side saying, thank you for speaking up, even people that were scared to like my posts. And so I felt ⁓ like almost a duty that I needed to continue to speak these things and fight these battles.

Rio (23:48)

fact, people would be scared to like your posts. I mean, I find that so dystopian.

Brett House (23:54)

Yeah, it's almost like signaling. Like if you signal this, right, if you don't include your pronouns on your... And I got an email from a former company that literally stated if you don't show your pronouns within your email, that could be considered a negative signal to those in that group that have chosen to select a specific pronoun, right? And I'm like, to me, that is a relatively illiberal statement, right, to say...you know, because I'm not signaling anything. I'm just choosing not to represent my own pronouns as as just a right, freedom of speech. Right. And I'm not signaling against any other norm, any other identity or personal value at all. Right. But the feeling and I think that's what you're getting at eras is that is that you feel like either you're being typecast. Right. Because of who you are, you know, you could be, you know, we won't even go into the details.

And people can assume that you are one of the oppressors versus the oppressed, right? And you get typecast and put into that box, and then suddenly people are afraid to like your comments.

Rio (25:01)

Well, but I'm glad to hear nothing stuck. mean, that is good to hear, Erez. Because yeah, you are a good guy, have a good reputation. I mean, that should go a long way.

Erez Levin (25:04)

By then. And it helped, There are other people telling me they wish they could say these things and they just didn't feel comfortable doing it. So I felt like that responsibility. And so yeah, so that was ⁓ my journey. And I think we can fast forward because things have just gotten crazy over the last two years, even crazier. And it took me some time. There were a lot of things that I was sort of identifying over time. And really only in the last few months did it really materialize for me. And that word taboo. ⁓which is what I sort of identified. This is the thing that's wrong. And I've done a lot of research and I've really thought about this and had a lot of conversations. But that is to me what the biggest danger we have in society because taboos, if you think about taboos, it's a big term, it can mean anything like picking your nose in the conversation, like that's taboo. ⁓ But taboos are generally things that society

Rio (26:03)

Probably should be.

Erez Levin (26:03)

Yeah, society shuns, right? Like mostly society thinks society or it could be a subculture, it doesn't have to be all of society, but sees a sort of this like non, you know, non acceptable behavior, speech or behavior. And since time immemorial, ⁓ like when we were literally like living in, you know, tribes, if you committed a taboo, you potentially get shunned out of society and experience not just social death. probably real death. And that was the idea of cancel culture. was so painful that now that social death doesn't necessarily equate to real death, but we are so allergic to it. And so we generally try to conform.

Within some bounds to our society. So that's the role of taboos have played and played very important roles, right? They protected the tribe from something sometimes really dangerous. Now, taboos change over time. They change with culture. They change with norms. They change with laws, ⁓ things that were taboo around slavery. Let's say when we had slavery or with slug segregation, it wasn't taboo to say the N word.

Now it is taboo, right? So that is how like the laws and the norms have changed. What I think are the timeless, sacred, essential norms that society cannot allow to erode are around hate, ⁓ bigotry, like overt bigotry, dehumanization, and the endorsement of violence. Those are ones that if we permit, ⁓ we get into really big trouble and we can see multiple examples throughout history, including the Holocaust, ⁓ which Holocaust Remembrance Day is coming up, that show us what happens when these things become tolerated and then normalized.

Brett House (27:48)

Normalized.

Rio (27:50)

Yeah. So

Brett House (27:50)

Yep.

Rio (27:51)

It sounds like you're kind of drawing a straight line. You're saying cancel culture, the stifling of speech kind of resulted in people being afraid to speak up. And it seems like this is almost encouraged. mean, we start, talked about what we saw on the left in terms of accepting, you know, incredible antisemitism and insane behavior, but like on the right too, right? They, know, the woke, I mean, I know we both listened to trigonometry, right? But Constantine Kissian, I love his, talks about the woke left and woke right, how this kind of the horseshoe theory they kind of meet.

Meet in this insane place, right? So I think that it sounds like you're drawing a straight line and saying cancel culture, stifling of norms, like forcing people to be afraid to speak up. Yet I think encouraging people who, yet at the same time, somehow encouraging hate speech and not giving people the ability to speak up against it. seems like that's the argument you're making. I'm sorry if I'm paraphrasing you.

Erez Levin (28:40)

No, no, it's great. It's actually like a really important nuance here and it's something that took me some time and I'm still trying to push this narrative out. So, ⁓Greg Lukianoff and Ricky Schlaff who wrote the Canceling the American Mind and Greg runs FIRE, which is the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. And I respect both of them so much and everything that Greg is doing, I donated to FIRE many, many times. ⁓ But he sort of promotes this narrative. He's so anti-cancel culture, which I understand, but he promotes this narrative of opinion absolutism and nobody should be fired for sharing their opinion. And I'm trying to tell him, actually there are opinions that people should be fired over. Like universally, everyone would agree they should be fired, not just can be, but should be. And this is the nuance that it took me some time and it was Charlie Kirk's actually assassination that ⁓ helped solidify a lot of this for me. Like it really came into clear sight of what's cancel culture and what is a sort of inappropriate response, consequence culture, whatever you call it. And the way that I saw it, and I know how much time you guys spent online after that, there were, I'd say three types of responses that I saw directly from Charlie Kirk's assassination. There were probably most people that sort of publicly responded. were horrified, sad. It doesn't matter what you thought of him or not, whether you knew anything about him, you were like, that's terrible. That's a terrible thing. He shouldn't die. He shouldn't be killed. Exactly. And then you had a second group, and these people I call the remorseless.

Rio (29:55)

That's horrified, right? That average person just thought it was super messed up. I think most people probably didn't even know who he was, right? But I think, yeah.

Erez Levin (30:11)

These people literally went out there and just said, like, he was a jerk, he was a Nazi, I don't care that he's dead. They just had no remorse for him. Then there was a third group, yeah.

Rio (30:21)

I know a lot of people who said things like that.

Erez Levin (30:23)

Yeah, exactly. And then there was a third group and those were the rejoicers. Those are the people that were celebrating it and were happy and were saying, yes, and yeah, get Ben Shapiro. Get you Ben Shapiro next. Now what happened was very interesting. And I immediately like everyone had the visceral reaction to that third group and said, that is awful. Like everyone knew it right away. What happened was interesting. Some people online, probably more on the right and Charlie sort of fans, they started a whole website that had ⁓ named every single person that was in group two.

Rio (30:32)

They're the ones who lost their jobs too, right? Yeah.

Erez Levin (30:53)

or three, the remorseless or the rejoicers. And they said, these are the people they tracked down their names, where they worked, who their bosses were, and reached out to try to get all of them fired. And what happened by and large, and I was there defending the remorseless, I was defending them and saying, hey, that's okay, that's inbound. But what happened is basically the taboos held naturally. The people who rejoiced got fired, the people who were remorseless did not get fired.

That's how the taboos should work. And so when they were tested, society basically responded to them the way that they should. The problem as I see it is that we are not forcing people to respond to these. So when someone stands on the street and says, kill all the Jews, I support Hamas or whatever else, know, sort of crazy taboo violations, not just against Jews, against any group, ⁓ kill, kill Ben Chip, you know, kill anybody. ⁓ Those things, nobody is testing it. No one is saying that person must lose their job or that person must be sort of pushed back against.

Rio (32:19)

were talking about how like there's three groups of people and you feel like the taboos held the right way. It's interesting if you look at what's going on in the Middle East, I would say the three groups probably looking at the protests here are probably very similar, right? You have your people who were holding up signs saying they love Hamas and from the river to the sea or slaughter all the Jews, right? There are people doing things like that, right? And I think you have a small group of people who are saying this is great, we support it. I think you have a slightly larger group of people who are saying, I don't have a problem with, I wouldn't do that, I don't endorse it, but I don't have problem with it either. Then I think you have a majority of the people who saying this is messed up, they probably shouldn't be doing that at all, right? So I think there's the three groups that example is probably, can be applied to different situations.

Erez Levin (33:05)

Yeah, and the

Brett House (33:06)

And what I think and I think you can apply that same logic right around those sort of you know those three things were sort of seen in October 8th. Right. They were seen after the Renee Good killing. Right. And coming from the right in the extreme. I think some of this taboo culture is being sort of usurped or undermined by you know our commander in chief. ⁓ Right. And it's in its true and it's trickling it's trickling down.

Rio (33:31)

He doesn't help, that's for sure.

Brett House (33:35)

you know, just the type of rhetoric that you see, which I know to a degree is hyperbolic rhetoric to get some to some underlying sort of goal. Right. ⁓ Oftentimes, I'm not sure how in control and in five dimensional chess he's actually playing there. But point is, is that's the type of rhetoric that's being passed down and heard everywhere you go, every feed you look at, every social media feed. Our kids are seeing this. Right. And it's and I think it's ⁓It's making us more coarse and crude and we're starting to forget ⁓ the taboos, right? That are sort of the, I think of the taboos as sort of the cultural context, that it's the rules of engagement around culture. can vary by culture and you have to know what that context is and abide by it just as a simple ⁓ means of respecting your fellow person, right?

That that that's in my wife is Japanese and there's a tons of context where you go into a conversation and you've got to know the unspoken context and be able to read between the leaves to not be sort of castigated culturally for being just completely oblivious to what's going on. And I think we've kind of lost which is easy to do in Japan. Yeah exactly. So it's so it's interesting to see ⁓ your perspective and it seems like you're saying that.

Rio (34:48)

Which is easy to do in Japan. You sit in the wrong seat, you can get in trouble, right?

Brett House (34:59)

that taboo has this application, regardless if it's if it's you wrote neo Marxism right on the opposite side of that spectrum is neo fascism right and they both are I think equally illiberal right meaning they're going against classic not progressive but classic liberal ⁓ philosophies and approaches to kind of modern civilization and culture right. It's you're saying it's that it's not one side of the other.

Erez Levin (35:28)

⁓ far enough.

Brett House (35:28)

It's these norms that everybody needs to abide by because it's being abused by the extremes on the right and left.

Erez Levin (35:33)

Yeah, and that's actually so the two root causes I believe the two biggest root causes for why these taboos have eroded one is Starting with that sort of oppressor oppressed where we've almost normalized and permitted These taboo violations as long as it was against an oppressor

Right? Like you couldn't be right. You could say kill whitey, right? Like that you people got away with saying those things because they're the oppressor and then obviously even in a more like intellectual academic way We've normalized some of these things but the other one and this speaks to it and this is absolutely a problem on both the left and the right Is this idea of you know, no enemies to the left. No enemies to the right. We've become so hyper hyper polarized hyper polarized that if you are and I fell in that trap, right I

Rio (36:14)

or the radicalization of both.

Erez Levin (36:20)

wasn't a crazy partisan. But if when I was a Democrat, like if somebody on my side, a Democrat violated maybe not the most crazy taboo, but something else, my default is to want to defend them. My default is to protect them in some way. And this is just normal tribalism that you cannot totally avoid, right? It's going to be natural. But this is where we have to push back and say, guys, let's have principles here. If somebody, Charlie Kirk's death, if people on the far left or the far right were celebrating this or anyone else,

Pick the Democratic, the Minnesota congressmen that were shot. Like this has to be a universal and I came up with principles that we can apply in a way where you don't have to worry about what side you're on. Did somebody violate explicitly this taboo? Well, then they must face social consequences for it. And that's a very important point.

Rio (37:11)

It's interesting. mean, I think one outcome of what you're describing is the polarization is the radicalization, right? And I think it gives us a bunch of false choices, right? And the example of, you the Democrats wanting to, like no enemy to the left or public is no enemy to the right. It's gotten us to a really toxic place. I actually am independent now and I actually feel it's been kind of liberating, right? To not feel like I have to defend anyone. I've noticed too, as some friends, like I will...

I think being independent, I think the president, mean, I think he's generally, 95 % of what he does is pretty awful, but you know, like a broken watch is still right twice a day. You know, there are some things he's done that maybe, I don't know, closing the border was the worst idea in the world. And I think having a sane integration policy is probably not a bad idea, but there shouldn't be a choice between, like, but I don't think what ICE is doing is great. They shouldn't be like brutalizing people and raiding, it's crazy, right? So, but it's like, This, but that shouldn't be our two choices. It shouldn't be binary between ICE raiding, like raiding cities and like arresting people for no reason versus an open border where 10 million people streaming over. So I think this, like the polarization has given us this false choice between those two when the reality is we should have, be able to have nuanced discussions and nuanced policies that are probably take the best from both sides.

Erez Levin (38:27)

And I'll add to that. So, you know, I've been a big advocate for voting reforms for a long time. I think that's at the root cause of sort of that polarization and this sort of like lesser of two evils that we're always choosing between. It's going to be really hard to solve this taboo problem when it comes to elected officials. when it comes to the pundits and celebrities and these people at the top, it's gonna be hard to directly cancel them and affect them. What I wanna do is reach the mainstream.

Brett House (38:56)

Yeah. Are they gerrymandering themselves into office? Is that what you're suggesting? Yeah.

Erez Levin (39:00)

That's exactly what it is. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're they're non-competitive district. 83 % of our congressional districts are non-competitive. so you're only Democratic Republican is always going to win. ⁓ And so you never.

Brett House (39:12)

And it's reinforcing

Rio (39:13)

Yeah, the primary is a reelection,

Brett House (39:13)

that tribalism. They're like, I'm not speaking to the middle, the norm, the mean across American society. Yeah, I'm speaking specifically to this contingent that's been gerrymandered. And I have to speak to the tribe in the tribe's language, right? Which is bulk.

Erez Levin (39:19)

No, the primary voters.

Rio (39:21)

Well, you'll lose if you do that.

Erez Levin (39:30)

And if I don't, then somebody else is gonna come and speak to that tribe in the more tribal language than me. And that's the biggest risk, right? Is getting primaried, ⁓ not somebody beating you from the other side. ⁓ So, and that's, you know, we're gonna try to solve that. We're working on solving that and it's gonna happen slowly but surely. But in the meantime, this is something that everyone can do is just look at the people around you and who are they cozying up with. So the other example that I think is really, really helpful here is thinking about the KKK, right? David Duke and the KKK were clearly violating these moral taboos, right? What they were advocating for. Now, the KKK was...

Rio (40:09)

That was the consensus, yeah. That was the consensus. Maybe there's a few crazies, but generally everyone accepted these people outside of the pale, right?

Erez Levin (40:11)

It was because everyone agreed. Every... Call it.

So they wore masks, right? Because if they didn't, what would happen? They would lose their jobs, they would lose their friends. No one would be able to publicly associate with them even if they did, they were sympathetic to their cause in some way. Why? They were toxic, they were social pariahs. No one, no politician could say, you know, could hold their hand around David Duke and expect to get elected because they'd lose all these moderates. These people would say, no, no, no, that's an inviolable taboo. So we need to do the same thing today, right? This is where I got really frustrated and this part of the road I led to, ⁓and this was with the Democrats, it's with Republicans too. Mamdani is a perfect example. You could say he hasn't violated an egregious taboo explicitly himself, but he is cozied up with people who certainly have. Tucker Carlson, could argue, you could argue, okay, maybe he hasn't, but he's friends with, he's having Nick Fuentes on. You should not be allowed to associate those people become toxic. Now, if you're going to interview them and really challenge them and make it clear to your audience, I don't subscribe to those taboo views.

Rio (41:03)

no problem.

Brett House (41:09)

of the app.

Erez Levin (41:18)

that's okay. But if you're not, if you're leaving it ambiguous and you're basically letting your audience believe you're trying to appease the sort of normals and normalizing and sort of ⁓ sanitizing these taboo violators and their views, that to me is deserving of social consequences. And I think we're seeing that a little bit with Megyn Kelly, for example, that some people are saying, you know what, like you're too cozy, you're too cool with Candace Owens saying her things, which are clear taboo violations.

Rio (41:46)

She's kind of someone still has a top three podcast globally. mean, I think that's what's so like she's like the things she's saying are completely insane. She was saying how there was an Egyptian plane there. So he's Egyptians plus Mossad plus like his own organization killed him.

Erez Levin (41:53)

The ability to be, there's, yeah, listen, there's anonymous, anonymous,

Brett House (41:53)

Yeah, with.

Erez Levin (42:02)

yeah, I mean, listen, we're gonna struggle here in the digital age. There's anonymous people, have global audiences, ⁓ whatever money is behind it, clicks and eyeballs and everything else. So we can't get Candace to zero followers. There's always gonna be people, or some people just wanna watch the train wreck, and they're just curious sort of watching on. But the thing is, no one, 18 year old kid, a 16 year old kid or somebody else shouldn't be going out there and saying like, I love Candace Owens, she's the best. If you say that, huge red flag, right? Like everyone around you should say, never say that publicly.

Brett House (42:35)

Oh, well, I was up at parents weekend at Syracuse and my son, Miles, who is not a, maybe I shouldn't name him, but who is not political in any respect. We were talking about the Charlie Kirk assassination just as a topic because it was all in front of us, And try, you know, just at dinner and he started quoting as, you know, evidence what he'd been watching on TikTok, which was, you know, that it was a conspiracy theory, right? And so I, you know, had to. spend some time with him to talk about the charlatan and narcissist that is Candace Owen that is that is selling crackpot theories to a gullible public through social media with no investigation, no physical evidence. This is an investigative journalism. This is just charlatanism in the modern age. And yet, you know, not these nonpolitical 18 year olds in college that don't know any better and aren't aren't, you know,

particularly well read maybe on the topic, are taking it as potential fact. And that is shocking to me, right? That that even should be considered. It's beyond the pale.

Rio (43:39)

Well, errors. How much of this, like how much of this crazy behavior do you think is like a consequence of cancel culture? Because if you cancel things, if you say, can't say these things, there are going to be people that say, I don't care. This is edgy. I'm going to do it anyway. I mean, how much of this, I mean, cause I think that's, I think they're probably related, right? As soon as you tell someone something's forbidden, it's going to become more attractive to certain people. Comment.

Erez Levin (44:03)

I totally agree, I understand where that's coming from, but ultimately consequences can be more powerful than the allure.

You tell someone that if you go out there and say, hate X group, you will lose your job, you will lose your social standing. People won't do that. Maybe they're gonna go online and they're gonna find ways to do it, but most people can't survive those consequences. And those are deserved, right? This is something that is universally believed. So I think there's like a moral case. Now there's something really, really important here in sort of my principles and how I'm approaching this, which is...to differentiate this from cancel culture and this is really clear not just ⁓ Cancel culture is usually like a fringe offense, right? It's something that only a small group as opposed to these universal moral Taboos that everyone agrees is wrong, right? Maybe somebody will say like I don't think it's so wrong to say I hate the Jews Well, can I say I hate the blacks? No, okay, then that's the taboo, right? You can get them to sort of understand even if they're they're sort of like partisan and tribal in nature but the really important part is ⁓ offering grace and forgive

And so cancel culture was universal. You got socially canceled. That's it. That's it. Like a death sentence. You don't like come back. People find their ways back, but almost in these alternative spaces. They never sort of like fully renounce, you know, get their sentence commuted. What we have to do and the example here that I gave Charlie Kirk's, the people that were celebrating that day, all of them in my opinion. deserve to lose their jobs. Any employer, any employee, their fellow coworker should say, I don't feel safe working with this person that wants to see people killed for their speech. So that person should lose their job, but every single one of them should be able to come back. I don't know if it's a week later, a month later and say, I have reflected, I am sorry. I realize just how wrong that was. Like I was caught up in the mob, everything else, good excuses, bad excuses, doesn't matter. But if they truly renounce those bad taboo views they had and they're not like then double back and going to their friends and being like, fuck those guys, like kill them. Sorry for cursing. But unless, if they're not doing that, we have to let them back into polite society. Even the KKK and one of my favorite examples, I don't know if you guys have heard of Daryl Davis. He was a blues drummer, I believe, a famous blues driver, a black guy. And he, think a clan member went to a show, like accidentally saw him and was like,

Brett House (46:05)

yeah.

Rio (46:05)

Okay.

Erez Levin (46:26)

I didn't know black people can drum that well. And Darryl Davis is like, are you kidding me? Like, here's this like X, Y, and Z, the most famous drum. They became friends. Darryl Davis befriended multiple Klan members, like over a dozen, if not more, got them to disrobe, right? Just by having the conversations with them. And so I think anyone can be reformed, can be saved. That's a lot of work and I'm not gonna assume like, ⁓ let you violate your taboos as much as you want and maybe one day we'll convince you not to, no, you're gonna suffer consequences today for violating these taboos. We all must sort of agree on those. And then if you decide to say, you know what, that's not worth it to me or you truly reform, then you come back and you stop violating them.

Brett House (47:10)

And how much ⁓ well, let me let me one comment before I ask my question is that that my the term cancel culture it to me seems tribal by definition. It seems fundamentally left to right. Right. It seems fundamentally, you know, the woke left canceling the right. Right. And and I don't think what you've described in some of these cases with the Charlie Kirk assassination could could be considered right. Left. Right. So so do we should we use

terminology that isn't triggering because I cancel culture in a sense is possibly triggering as unidirectional and is pointing the finger the blame for sort of the balkanization of our country on one side of let's say a political ideology spectrum. mean is that what do think about that?

Erez Levin (47:57)

Yeah, I mean, think that's what it's become because everything's become so hyper partisan. It's sort of turned into that. ⁓ And it's the default, right? Like you are on the left and you commit a taboo and the right tries to cancel you. You can count on people on the left defending you. And even if their best defense is, well, the right did it too. And that's what you see too often.

Rio (48:19)

Well, the people on the right say now that they're canceling people, say, the left started it, right? I mean, there's a lot

Brett House (48:24)

Yeah. Yeah. So how much responsibility do you place on him? You know, I've talked about my son's own experience with ⁓ Candace Owens and such social media, social platforms. How do you think that's impacted discourse? How do you think it's, you know, and my supposition ⁓ is that is that there is there's an underlying mean of just American specific society that actually kind of really drifts towards the center.

And that these extremes aren't reflective of the overwhelming majority of the population. And social media is maybe a megaphone for the extremes. It's kind of like statistics. know, the people that are likely to put a five-star Yelp review or a one-star Yelp review are the extremes. They're not the mean. Yeah. So what do you think about social media and its sort of nefarious or even positive ⁓ impact on American culture and some of these things?

Rio (49:09)

but they give the most reviews.

Erez Levin (49:20)

⁓mostly nefarious, mostly negative, right? In all the ways people are willing to say things online that they would never say to someone in person, the ability to be anonymous, the ability for somebody to say a terrible thing and have 50,000 likes. You don't know who those, those could be bots, those could be from outside the country, but it seems there's social proof that comes from that. And that person doesn't get canceled. And so you create those permission structures. That's what every time a taboo does not get.

Sort of receive consequences, it creates the permission structure. So October 8th, very few people were coming out there and saying like, we support Hamas. If they did, they actually, I laugh, ⁓ Mia Khalifa, that's her name, the porn star, she came out and said something and she got canceled because it was like within that week. But if she'd like waited three weeks and said that same thing, it would have been fine because all of a sudden people started tolerating these things. And so the permission structures just increase and increase over time until it spills into actual violence.

And so ⁓ to your question, social media is a big part to blame ⁓ and we can't do much about it. There are some things that I would love to see done, policies within the platforms and things like that. What you did with your son I think is really, really interesting. ⁓ This is like one of the other narratives and I decided not to like focus on it, but we need to bring shh.

Brett House (50:37)

I hope it's interesting in a good way. ⁓

Erez Levin (50:39)

Yeah, yeah, no, you did the right thing. did it. That was a good parenting thing, right? Like there's a one I thought about us. We need to bring shame back. Shame is a really powerful tool and society needs it. Like taboos, most taboos you actually respond to somebody if somebody isn't being malicious or really hurtful, you respond with a little bit of shame, a little bit of prodding, right? You weren't necessarily shaming your son, but you were kind of saying like, hey, let me educate you. And if you don't get educated and you do this, like you're gonna sound like an idiot, you're gonna, like all these bad things will happen to you, including maybe getting canceled, right? Including like all these other things. And so, I want the I'm super empathetic person. Let's envelop the people when they violate a taboo unless they're going out there and saying the most vile thing, which we're not going to be able to like through love convince them. But most other people need to be corrected. So when 18 year old kids or whoever else are following Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens, I'd love all their parents to get involved with them and say, like, this is bad. Those are bad people. I don't care if he tells you some other things and he's right. The clock is right twice a day. Like you said, Rio,⁓ That could be true and it's okay. You can like those things that he says about this, but you also have to be very clear that there is a line. ⁓ And so I think that's the sort of angle.

Brett House (51:59)

Yeah, make it human, right? Make it human. Make people feel something. Like imagine you in this scenario. Imagine you in this seat. Look through these other, this, right?

Rio (52:09)

like that guy he met that drummer who is black guy you realize well this guy's is cool like maybe my beliefs were mistaken right so I think I think there's something there Brett yeah that's interesting so I

Brett House (52:14)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Coming out coming out with facts just doesn't do the job that does it because facts are sort of removed from human empathy and human feeling. And that's what people respond to.

Erez Levin (52:23)

It's also, yeah, it's also like I have, I've had a lot of debates now on social media about this and somebody saying like, no, no, no, you can't, ⁓ no consequences, just refute the facts. I'm like, they're not using facts, they're just hate, right? Somebody is saying, I hate black people, there's no facts that's gonna probably get me to change their mind. And so if my options are let them say that and let them continue to be employed or, instill social consequences, I think the choice is really clear, especially when we know what happens if we let these things go unpunished.

Rio (52:59)

So looking at social, mean, like, it's gotten, I mean, trolls, bot farms, racist, crazy people, I mean, it's a place where, it gives them a place where they can be anonymous, they can say the worst things, and I think, you know, especially if they're anonymous, maybe there are no consequences, right? But it's funny, I mean, I don't use Facebook a lot because I got so sick of, like, my liberal friends and my conservative friends just fighting. It just was so toxic. I just checked out, right? I said I've had enough of right, but I still am on X mostly because all of Ad Tech is on X, right, and you are and a lot of people that I really respect and I think are super witty and say some interesting and fun things are on there, but it is a really toxic place. So, and I always get asked by friends, why are you still on there? And I say, well, you know what? Yeah, there's lots of garbage, but if you just ignore the garbage, you curate your feed, there's some amazing discussions. You'll go into all the news organizations left, all the scientists left, but looking at Ad Tech and tech, there's some amazing content on.

Erez Levin (53:58)

There's lots of great things on X and you just have to learn how to avoid the cesspool that exists. So fortunately it works for me. Not that I feel great after reading it because I'm seeing the worst things about the world, but I'm seeing really interesting perspectives, but I've been very active. I mean, don't know how much you see. I'm there calling out and trying to normalize this term, like taboo. Right, it's a thing that when you say to people, not everyone knows exactly what it means, but as you articulated people, ⁓ and then when someone sees it getting violated, it becomes really easy to identify and then agree. Punishments are warranted here.

Rio (54:35)

Think that'll work on the actual people who are just maybe misguided, but I mean, think so much of the activity is driven by foreign intelligence services, bot farm. I mean, a lot of the biggest shit posters, right? It turns out they were like Pakistan, Nigeria, or like India, something. So a lot of them were actually based in other places. A lot of the people were spreading the most disinformation and hatred. I thought that was pretty interesting, but that is a good point. I mean, if people are posting terrible stuff there should be consequences. I don't think we should restrict speech. think that is a slippery slope.

Erez Levin (55:08)

And I think just making those taboo views shameful, right? So Nick Fuentes says all of these terrible things. ⁓ Kanye West comes out with a song called Hail Hitler and everyone thinks it's funny and everything else. But the more that these things are sort of seen as taboo.

People will feel ashamed listening to them. I'm not saying like don't listen to them, but like you should feel a sense of shame to in any way support or align with. And if you mentioned the word Nick Fuentes, like say his name and say, I think he's a terrible person in X, or Z ways, but he did say this interesting thing here that was totally unrelated, right? Like that's okay. He's not wrong on every single thing he's ever said. ⁓ but the ability for sort of to create that like moral shame, I think for especially young people, ⁓ but even others that will defend them because they're a part of their political tribe. Like that's Hassan Piker. Like how many people are following Hassan Piker because he's sort of in the democratic socialist and you know, maybe they're Jewish and they don't like all of these things, but they don't associate it as much.

Rio (56:13)

I could not believe the New York Times gave that guy a puff piece. I mean, I couldn't believe it. I mean, it's like, do they do any research? Yeah.

Erez Levin (56:17)

So they should be shamed for it, right? Like imagine they did it for David Duke. Imagine they did that for David Duke.

So they should be shamed, right? Like all of these people, anyone who is enabling these taboo violators, it should be shamed for it.

Brett House (56:31)

Who defines the taboo? Who defines the set of taboos? And I think culturally, the US obviously is a melting pot. It's the meeting point of multiple cultures around the world, so you don't have the homogeneity of a place like Japan, where everybody knows what the context is and the taboos are. Some might be egregiously outdated, but because they haven't had to deal with sort of constant change and constant adaptation.

To kind of multiple perspectives and backgrounds, right? The US doesn't have that. We're a messy democracy. How do you actually create some sort of norm that everybody can agree on without going back into the tribal battles of like, that's not a taboo. Yes, it is. No, it's not. Yes, it is. ⁓ How do you actually get to a base level of that?

Rio (57:13)

kind of where we are now.

Erez Levin (57:15)

Yeah, yeah. So this is why I define them like really, really specifically. Like they're the ones that tie directly to sort of our liberal values, right? In the US, Western values, American values, liberal values, whatever that is. So overt bigotry dehumanization and endorsement of violence. Like it's really just those three. There's a third one that's I think a little bit apart and I try not to delve into it. It is a very interesting conversation which is around censorship, which is like blocking speakers. That is actually a taboo, right? It like violates our first amendment and so that one, but that's a little bit more of a university specific, but it's really about hate, right? It's really about these things, hating a group or hating a person based on the group they're in or hating a group just because of that group that they're in. Now, there are nuances. There are exceptions. Do I hate the KKK? Yes, because they are taboo violators, right? Like you can be intolerant of intolerance.

⁓ But otherwise, there's a tolerance is really what it is. We're sort of accepting of everyone in society unless they are socially destructive in this taboo way, not in a, Republicans want to take away abortion. Well, they're doing it by legal means. I don't like all of it. there's certainly like there's there's lots of issues, but very rarely are there like really egregious taboo violations. And if there are, those things need to be punished. So I think that's ⁓it's it's kind of clear. Now, that's not to say it's always clear cut. There are plenty of nuances and I think that we should only punish people when they've egregiously and explicitly violated a taboo. So what we need to do in one of the principles is give people an opportunity to sort of like clarify their views.

Right? Giving them people to retract if they said something that could be perceived as a taboo. So if you talk about crime statistics or something else, right? Those are taboo things. Right? You talk about crime statistics by race or something like that. That's taboo. That's dangerous.

No, you're allowed to talk about those things, but if you do it and try to sort of perpetuate some sort of hateful consequence to create some dehumanization around it, that is a taboo. And so I can say, hey, there's higher crime in this population and you and anyone else should be able to ask me like, well, what do you mean by that? And what's it? What are the implications of that? And if I, if I sort of like.

Brett House (59:34)

Yeah. And if you're not and if you're not intending if you're not intending harm or dehumanization or what or marginalization then then you're not breaking a court taboo. Let me ask you this is where do people go because you've been talking a lot about this you talked a little bit about sort of gerrymandering in in vote voters not voter suppression but voter manipulation maybe. Where where can people go to actually act on some of this stuff to be part of either community groups or.⁓ Are you launching an organization? you part of organizations that you can share with the audience?

Erez Levin (1:00:07)

⁓ So there's a bunch of organizations about voting reform. So open primaries and rank choice voting. So every state basically is doing this on their own and there's some really interesting ones. So definitely look and support them however you can. And certainly if there's a ballot initiative in your state, vote for that. ⁓ What I'm launching right now today is ⁓ starting with the sub stack. ⁓ I'm trying to sort of mainstream this idea of taboo. So I'm calling it holding the line and really just trying to encourage everyone in your day to day who you see, right? Like the taboo.

It only works if we enforce it. We as all of society. This does not come from government speeches always free from legal consequences but the social consequences only work if all people are sort of most people are involved and so what we need to do is start to recognize when you see somebody on the street saying ⁓ kill the Jews or Globalize the Intifada and you know what that means and you see a politician that is cozying up to them and not denouncing them that is a problem right and you decide if you're gonna vote for them, support them, write them a letter, we have to draw that line both within our sort of like normal polite society, but also within our leaders, our political leaders. You can't have a person on your podcast who's violated taboos unless you're gonna challenge them on those taboos. And that's what we need to make it clear.

Rio (1:01:24)

Well, question then,

Brett House (1:01:24)

Yeah, that's a great point.

Rio (1:01:26)

But I think there's an issue with monetization, right? Because a lot of these, know, Candice Owens, I don't know if she believes in any of the crap she's spewing, but I mean, she makes a lot of money on it, right? She was the number one rated podcast for a long time. She was definitely driving a lot of eyeballs. Now, it may be a third of those people there is maybe just be going to watch the train wreck, but people still are going, right? So under Biden and during that period, there was like a lot of prominent conservatives were demonetized, right? There were some were even deep banked. right? mean, so like, is it a slippery slope? Like, does it ultimately lead to that? I mean, like, how do you draw the line?

Erez Levin (1:02:02)

Yeah, so no, I don't think we should deplatform, demonetize anyone else. I want to get the audiences off of their platforms. I want to get people to say, I refuse not just to watch Candice. I don't want to be friends with someone who watches Candice and likes her. This is the power of association. I call it the moral guilt by association. so Zoran Mondani maybe is not guilty of the taboo, but he's buddied up with one of the Al-Qaeda lawyers and whoever else, that makes him guilty. Right? It's okay if he went if he went there exactly he's normalizing and laundering and sanitizing these people and their views. If he went there and said I disagree with him, right? He's he's buddied up with Hassan piker who said ⁓ America deserves 911. If he does not, he can go go talk to us on but make it really clear to the world that you don't agree with him. Because otherwise you're trying to basically get and this is what is happening. They want the far left.

Rio (1:02:33)

Yeah, continues to pack his administration with total nutbacks. There's no doubt. I think the problem is he does agree with him. think he does agree, I think that's the problem.

Erez Levin (1:02:59)

It's possible. It's possible. I like I don't know and I can't know that for sure He needs to make it clear because he is not allowed what I don't want is our politicians They're not allowed to have both their radical audiences, you know far left or far right and the moderates. have to pick. We have to make them pick. And this is, say one more thing. ⁓ But what bothered me, so Charlie Kirk gets killed. I don't know if you remember, Bernie Sanders made like a four minute video, this appeal, and my fellow Americans, and this isn't us, and no violence doesn't have a home, and blah, all these people are praising him. What a great video. And I was mad. I said, what a failure, because what he didn't do and what he needed to do was say, anyone who is celebrating this murder, you are out of my party.

Right? Because I guarantee most of them were democratic socialists of America. And if he does not denounce them specifically, they basically think they're free reign. Right? All he said was like, we don't do violence. Well, those people didn't do violence. They just said violence is great.

Rio (1:03:56)

Well, my concern is they're going to take over the party, right? mean, you know, the Republicans have been taken over by some more extreme elements, right? And I think the same thing's happening in the left now. mean, that's a future I unfortunately see a sliding to maybe if we did this taboo thing, right? It might stop it.

Brett House (1:04:03)

Yep.

Erez Levin (1:04:09)

Unless...This is where we have to draw the line and say we need a brave leader, right? There needs to be a brave, democratic, moderate leader who steps up and says, I'm going to denounce that far left and make clear to everyone in the middle, especially all the Democrats who left to go vote Republican or become independent because they saw the party went too far left and they're making that bet. I think the only one that we saw come close to that was Dean Phillips ⁓ in the last election and it did not work out well for him. I'm not sure anyone else is going to be brave enough to do that, but that's going to be really interesting.

Rio (1:04:44)

Andrew Yang left the party, right? I mean he tried for one cycle and he's great. So, know, Dean Phillips, I mean, they're...

Erez Levin (1:04:48)

Well, he realized it's a systemic problem, right? We need to change the election system in order to make that change happen.

Brett House (1:04:55)

Yeah, the angry centrists of America unite and rise up, right? then the radical citrus gets criticized for not choosing sides. And it's like, you know, we're trying to rise above or beyond this paradigm, right? This black and white, you know, eye for an eye paradigm, which is not having positive effects on our country.

Rio (1:04:59)

Radical centrism.

You wonder how much of this, you wrote up social media before Brett. Like how much of this, like you think about in history, like these new technologies come out, the printing press came out, and I've heard arguments that are pretty persuasive that the Reformation wouldn't have happened if it weren't for the printing press, right? mean, Martin Luther used it to print out things and distribute them, and ⁓ I think you could argue the radio and telegram came out, like telegram and then radio, right? And then we had World War I and World War II and like a horrific period. I'm not saying it was, you know.

That was the only reason. There are obviously other ones as well, it certainly made it much easier to have these conflicts. And you can look at it as, I would think one of the forces that certainly made it happen. So you wonder, social media comes out and then we end up with this prolonged period of radicalization, conflict that, we're not at the end of it now. I I think we'll probably have another decade, right? A society maybe becomes accustomed to these technologies and...I don't even know if laws are required, I think it's more like understanding social norms, understanding that when you go to these things, how you should be acting and becoming accustomed and acting the right way. I don't, we're not there yet. I'm wondering like how much of this instability is at least partially being driven by technology.

Erez Levin (1:06:34)

Yeah, I think that's a there I've seen also compelling arguments that sort of every time there's a new medium of communication Like that's when we see these sort of big, ⁓ you know disruptions It's not just technology, but especially on communication. And so yeah, I think that's a very fair argument ⁓ I don't think there's much that we can do about it right now on the policy side. We're not gonna get Facebook to enact or X to enact certain moderation policies or anything else, like we're kind of stuck in this gridlock we should still push, but I'm not optimistic about those. What I do think that we have the power for and this is why literally I'm dedicating most of my time to this, right? Like I'm doing the quality stuff. That's like a side project at this point. And it's humming and it's moving along and I'm really excited about it. But to me, the stakes of this taboo thing could not be bigger.

If we do not restore these taboos, think about what happens. Imagine that it just becomes more and more normalized to say whatever you want. Imagine you're in a workplace and someone could say, just discriminate openly against Jews. Like we get to a Holocaust like situation and it's not just about Jews. Like everyone lost Germany, when Germany, everyone lost when they had a Holocaust and not just short term, long term, like all of these things, this will be so destructive for

Rio (1:07:52)

Yeah, it destroyed their entire society.

Erez Levin (1:07:55)

It will destroy all of America and the world.

We have to restore these taboos. There is no option. the longer we wait, the more normalized they become, the harder it's going to be because some people are going to double down. Some people are going to say like, you know what, that's me and I'm fine to be outside of play society. And there's a, there's a world they can survive, right? There's enough money to be made from this online grift, but not everyone can. And my view is that we need to say there was always like a far right, a white supremacist fringe, right? They lived underground. They lived in shack somewhere. They were not part of mainstream society.

We have to bring them back. We have to take the far right and the far left, move them out of play society and out of our politics, right? A politician, a po, a politician.

Rio (1:08:34)

together into those shacks.

Brett House (1:08:38)

Yeah, duke it out in the shacks together, right? We'll just let them, ⁓ you know, kill yourselves.

Go on, sorry.

Rio (1:08:46)

Yes, so we're saying put the left and right

Erez Levin (1:08:47)

yeah, no, so.

Rio (1:08:48)

together in those shacks, let them duke it out together. mean, keep them away from society. That may not be bad outcome.

Erez Levin (1:08:50)

That bit⁓ Yeah, you know what, I like them being divided a little bit, although they're uniting more and more, unfortunately. ⁓ But as long as we don't have to take them seriously, as in, ⁓ we don't have to consider their viewpoints for society, right? Like, they might be a physical threat, and they might be a number that like is scary, right? Like whoever hate groups and things like that, they can cause real harm, but our politicians cannot cater to them our normal, our workplaces say that stuff is unacceptable. If you wear a KKK robe, even outside of the office.

You're not part of this company. And if you wear a KKK robe, you cannot ⁓ donate to a politician and get them to sort of sway things. What I want to do, this is not going to solve everything. If we restore these taboos, far from solve it, what it does is sort of sideline all of the most extreme viewpoints. Some of them, I hope, will say that's not worth it. Those consequences are too big. They have no consequences. So why not? They're making friends. They're famous on social media by saying, cool all the Jews. as you sort of, Nick Fuentes is rich and famous in all of these ways, as soon as you start to punish these people, they will decide either I'm going to double down and live in that world and make my money from the internet and annons, or I'm going to say I want to rejoin the mainstream and polite society and just be more normal and not be so hateful.

Rio (1:10:22)

You know, it's interesting. I I almost think that like you can look at anti-Semitism as almost a canary in a coal mine, right? That it's a sign of a society that's going off the rails, right? I mean, look, I mean, I don't think it's specific necessarily about Jews, but I think in general, no one likes this. I mean, no one likes a successful minority, right? They usually become a target. I mean, Jews are the poster child for a minority that's successful. Not the only one, right? There are others too. I mean, I think Asians experienced some of this during like the anti-Asian hate stuff that was going on a few years ago.

I think that was shocking. I think this kind of comes from the same place. But I think it's a society, it's a sign of society that's tolerating horrific behavior, horrific beliefs, and these things are becoming normalized. I think you have a very good point. That's kind of why we wanted to have this discussion. Not necessarily about anti-Semitism, but about this being, I think, a sign of something really gone wrong and how do we course correct.

Erez Levin (1:11:13)

Yeah, and like let's give people a way back. It's so important to me. I don't know what's happened since. I don't know if you saw like a few weeks ago, Kanye West sort of like came out and said like, ⁓ I'm sorry for what I said. And then I didn't hear anything. And what I'm hoping is happening behind the scenes is some of his friends, Jewish friends and rabbis or something else are saying, you know what, don't publicly come.

You gotta do a journey, right? We need to help you really understand everything that went wrong and we wanna understand that you truly understand and are reformed so that when you come out to the world and say, no, I'm changed, we endorse that and what he needs to do is go out and say to all the supporters, everyone who follows him and loves him and say.

What a mistake I've made. Please don't follow me down this path. It leads to rot, right? A moral rot. Forget financial ruin. Forget I've lost sponsorship deals. It ruined me. I was surrounded by hate all the time, blaming this one group that has nothing to do, right? You had a bad ⁓ record deal with a Jew. That is not the Jew's fault, right? Give him that opportunity to come back. He could be a spokesperson for anti-Semitism.

Erez Levin (1:12:27)

But to me, all of these people, like no one is beyond reform forever. We can bring people back into the fold, but we have to use carrots and sticks. And right now there's a lot of people that we first need to lead with a stick, real consequences, and later on we can sort of try to bring them back and say, there's a home for you here in this sort of moderate, more moral world.

Brett House (1:12:51)

Yeah, and I think people are looking for a way back, right? I think the majority, the mean of American public, society in general, think giving people just the right way to conduct discourse civilly, morally, ethically, ⁓ without the wild swings left and right is where I think people generally want to go. yeah, it's almost like AAA.

Rio (1:12:55)

Some are. Although, the society is. It makes sense, yeah.

Brett House (1:13:15)

Right. It's this is, you know, there's like and maybe it is a social media addiction that's driven some of this. And there's been fuel added to that fire, to your point, Rio, about, you know, external actors sort of fueling the fire of American division. Right. Which is which has affected all of us. And it's affected our politics. It's affected our place in the world, how the rest of the world thinks that is. I you should see my my Japanese relatives, how they look at us and how we're perceived now.

Rio (1:13:34)

Definitely some of that, yeah.

Brett House (1:13:45)

⁓ both politically foreign policy as just an American sort of ⁓ body. And I people are in utter shock, right? Just told like there's probably an underlying disgust, ⁓ and shock and, they just cannot believe that our leadership is behaving this way. ⁓ it's, it's appalling.

Rio (1:14:07)

There's this appearance of a society going off the rails. have a friend who moved, he lives in Amsterdam and he has a business where he helps expats relocate. He helps them find apartments and schools, know, because moving to a foreign country can be challenging. He says his phone is ringing off the hook right now. People are hitting him up all the time, you know, from, and I don't think they're all just progressive people. think it's just generally people are, they see the people paying for blood, calling for violence.

Brett House (1:14:09)

Yeah.

Rio (1:14:35)

saying things that they should not be saying, the hatred and the chaos, it's certainly, we're not in a good place. So if this is a way to help us get back Eris.

Erez Levin (1:14:41)

It's our social fabric. yeah, that's sort of like restoring these guardrails of what's like acceptable. There's still gonna be a lot of things that people can say and do, but there are some guardrails that we need to sort of bring people back within.

Brett House (1:14:56)

Yep, well I think ⁓ that's a great ending to this episode and Erez, this is ⁓ different from the topics we've covered, which have been largely tech and data and AI and maybe this will be the episode that sort of is the tipping point for Signal and Noise, right? People are gonna lead and go, wow, they're talking about some really hard things, some really hard topics. Conversations.

Rio (1:15:02)

Yeah. Well now they're independent,

Brett. We can have these more uncomfortable discussions. I don't think this is very uncomfortable in all areas. I I love that you said that in the beginning and this was a great discussion.

Brett House (1:15:24)

Yeah, and thank you for what you're doing and the dedication you're putting to it, it's, you know, and I've heard, this was kind of the first time that I heard full detail around a lot of this, and it's inspiring ⁓ for sure, Aris, and, you know, we're behind you in anything we can do to support, and the audience should look into Aris ⁓ 11's Substack.

Rio (1:15:43)

Yeah, you tell our guests how they can find out more.

Erez Levin (1:15:47)

Yeah, so my sub stack is launching today. It's called holding the line, but it's under my name, E1111, E-L-E-V-I-N-1-1. It's called holding the line. It's just gonna be sort of weekly like essays and writing about taboos from different angles and interviews with folks and really just trying to get people to recognize it, really understand what taboos are, recognize when they see them and understand why we have to impose social consequences, not just on the violators, but on the people who are helping those taboos spread.

Brett House (1:16:19)

Thank you very much. This was great. And thanks, audience, for joining us for this wonderful conversation.

Erez Levin (1:16:21)

Thank you guys.

Rio (1:16:26)

Talk soon.

Erez Levin (1:16:27)

Bye.