Full Video - Presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr testifies in online censorship hearing - UPDATED

Democratic presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy Jr testified before a House Judiciary subcommittee on the "Weaponization of the Federal Government".

Robert F Kennedy Opening Statement at "Anti-censorship hearing" at US House of Representatives:

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: I want to put aside my written statement for a moment and address one of the points brought up, an important point, by the ranking member. That this body ought to be concerning itself with issues that directly impact the American people, like the rising price of groceries -- 76% over the past two years for basic foodstuff. The war in Ukraine, inflation issues, the border issues, and many other issues that concern us as a nation. We can't do that without the First Amendment, without debate.

When I gave my speech, my announcement speech in Boston, about two months ago, YouTube, I talked about all those issues. I focused on groceries, I focused on the fact that working-class people can no longer afford to live in this country. I talked about inflation, all the issues that deeply concern you, and that you’ve devoted your career to alleviating those issues.

Five minutes into my speech when I was talking about Paul Revere, YouTube deplatformed me.

I didn't talk about vaccines in that speech, I didn't talk about anything that was a verboten subject. I just was talking about my campaign and things, the conversations we ought to be having with each other about Americans. I was shut down.

That is why the First Amendment is important. Debate, congenial, respectful debate is the fertilizer, the water, and the sunlight for our democracy. We need to be talking to each other.

This is a letter that many of you signed, many of my fellow Democrats. I've spent my life in this party, I've devoted my life to the values of this party. 102 people signed this. This itself is evidence of the problem that this hearing was convened to address. This is an attempt to censor a censorship hearing.

And by the way, censorship is antithetical to our party, antithetical and appalling to my father and my uncle, to FDR and Harry Truman to Thomas Jefferson. It is the basis for democracy. It sets us apart from all of the previous forms of government. We need to be able to talk, and the First Amendment was not written for easy speech, it was written for the speech nobody likes you for.

I was censored not just by the Democratic administration, I was censored by the Trump administration. I was the first person censored by, as the chairman pointed out, by the Biden administration, two days after he came into office.

And by the way, they had to invent a new word called "malinformation" to censor people like me. There was no misinformation on my Instagram account. Everything I put on that account was cited and sourced, the peer-reviewed publications or government databases.

No one has ever pointed to a single piece of misinformation I published. I was removed for something they call "malinformation."

Malinformation is information that is true but is inconvenient to the government, that they don’t want people to hear. And as antithetical to the values of our country.

After I announced my [campaign for] presidency, it became more difficult for people to censor me outright, so now I’m subject to this new form of censorship, which is called targeted propaganda, where people apply pejoratives like "anti-vax"– I’ve never been anti-vaccine, but everyone in this room probably believes I have been because that’s the prevailing narrative. "Anti-semitism," "racism." These are the most appalling, disgusting pejoratives and they’re applied to me to silence me because people don’t want me to have that conversation about the war, about groceries, about inflation, about the war on the middle class in this country that we need to be having.

And by the way, i want to say this on the record. In my entire life, and I'm under oath. In my entire life I have never uttered a phrase that was either racist or antisemitic. I have spent my life fighting, my professional career, fighting for Israel, for the protection of Israel. I have a better record on Israel than anybody in this chamber today. I'm the only person who has publicly objected to the $2 billion payout that the Biden administration is making to Iran, which is a genocidal program. I'm the only one who objected to that. I fought more ferociously for Israel than anybody. But I am being censored here through this targeted, through smears and misinterpretations of what I said, through lies and association, which is a tactic that we all thought had been discredited and dispensed with after the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s. But those same weapons are now being deployed against me to silence me.

I know many of the people who wrote this letter. I don't believe there's a single person who signed this letter who believes i am antisemtitic. I do not believe it. There is no evidence of that.

I'm going to say something more important, and it goes directly to what you talked about, ranking member. Which is the need, this toxic polarization that is destroying our country today and how do we deal with that? This kind of division is more dangerous for our country than any time since the American civil war. And how do we deal with that? Every Democrat on this committee believes that we need to end that polarization.

Do you think you can do that by censoring people? I am telling you you cannot, that only aggravates and elevates the problem. We need to start being kind to each other. We need to start being respectful to each other. We need to start restoring the comity to this chamber and the rest of America but it has to start here.

My uncle, Edward Kennedy had more legislation with his name on it than any senator in U.S. history. Why is that? because he was able to reach across the aisle because he didn't deal in insults. He didn't deal in trying to censor people. He brought home people who were antithetical to what he believed in. He came home almost every weekend with people like Orrin Hatch to our compound in Hyannisport. At that time, Orrin Hatch to me was like Darth Vader. I was an environmentalist and I would say, "Why is Teddy bringing this guy home?" He was effective because he understood that comity and respect and kindness and compassion and empathy for other people is the way that we restore the function in this chamber. But more importantly, we need to gi ve an example in the leadership of our country of being respectful to each other.

If you think I said something that is antisemitic, let's talk about the details. I'm telling you, all the things I am accused of right now by you, and in this letter, are distortions and misrepresentations. I didn't say those things. There's fragments that I said, but I denounce anybody who uses the words that I have said to imply something that is negative about people who are Jewish.