Free Speech Isn’t Free by Roosh V

free speech isn't free

While reading Free Speech Isn’t Free, Roosh’s harrowing account of how the left has tried to deprive him of his right to speak his mind and share his ideas, I thought of a story from the life of Irish independence leader Michael Collins. During the latter stages of the Irish War of Independence, when Collins was orchestrating an insurgency against the British, his niece was hired as a secretary to an official in the occupying British administration. When he got the news, he spat out, “How the hell did these people ever get an empire?”

That’s what I have to say in regards to the Trigglypuffs and AIDS Skrillexes of the world: how the hell did these people ever get any power?

Roosh’s answer: they’re useful idiots. Free Speech Isn’t Free is more than a memoir: it’s an examination of Roosh’s evolution from hedonistic playboy to neomasculine patriarch. The book’s focus is on how Canadian feminists—in concert with the media and government—sought to shut down the final two stops on his world tour last year through shaming, lies and physical intimidation. However, Roosh also discusses his political awakening, as he pieces together the last pieces of the cultural Marxist puzzle.

Because of this, I wholeheartedly recommend Free Speech Isn’t Free to anyone who cares about preserving Western, white culture and freedoms.

The book opens with Roosh discussing why he launched his world tour and the process by which he prepared. Much like in his previous memoirs, we see a personal side to Roosh that he doesn’t present in his blog writing, as he talks about his stuttering problem and his efforts to overcome it. The chapter also discusses the logistics involved in organizing the tour and the mistakes he made along the way:

The biggest job, by far, was preparing the speech. My experience in Toastmasters showed that it takes one hour of preparation for each minute of a speech. At a planned time of 45 minutes, I knew I was in for a serious commitment. First, I edited the speech’s written draft into its final form. Then I read it out loud about ten times to get a feel for how it comes across when spoken, continuing to edit along the way. Then I began reducing the speech to an outline, where I’d take a sentence of the speech and replace it with a short phrase. When I came across the short phrase in the next practice run, my mind would hopefully remember the longer sentence it represented. This process took about three weeks since the speech was so long, until I eventually reduced the 6,099 word speech into a 734 word outline.

Free Speech Isn’t Free is written in the same didactic style as Poosy Paradise, Roosh’s previous book, but because this book is more philosophical and less literary, the tone actually works. The only real weakness is in some of the book’s dialogue: Roosh reveals that it was a number of conversations with friends of his that led him down his current political path, and these sections read like Socratic dialogues instead of discussions between actual human beings. However, given the heady stuff that Roosh discusses in the book, this is forgivable.

The book goes through Roosh’s six stops on his world tour—Berlin, London, Washington, D.C., New York City, Montreal and Toronto—in sequential order, building to the crescendo of what happened to him in Canada. Reading about minor incidents during the first stops (for example, Roosh hired a hostess for the London event that turned out to be a feminist double agent) steadily prepares the reader for the five-alarm fire down the road:

Mark said, “The Bible will help you resolve that. The more that a society goes away from God’s word, the more it will suffer, and so you’ll inevitably see Christianity’s resurgence in some form. It makes sense if you look at how the United States was started by the Pilgrims, who wanted to get away from what they thought was decadent British society. History will repeat itself, and we won’t have long to wait to see it.”

The book’s emotional center is in the Montreal and Toronto chapters, where Roosh details the trials he went through and how he fought back against the angry horde screaming for his head. As someone who was tangentially involved with Roosh’s pushback via Return of Kings and his forum (I couldn’t be more involved because I was dealing with a more serious personal crisis), these chapters shocked even me. Part of me was left wondering how Roosh is even alive after what happened:

After shaking their hands and instructing them to sit down, I said, “We’re going to the venue in teams of four. Only thing I ask is to turn off your phone until 6pm, just in case there is a mole on the list. Make any calls or texts you need to now. From this point on, if you see anyone using their phone, you need to confront them and ask why since everyone will have agreed to turn them off.” Then I made a mistake: I didn’t verify that their phones were turned off.

While reading Free Speech Isn’t Free, I kept thinking back to the alternative right cucks who spastically smear Roosh as a “rapist” (based on out-of-context book excerpts or a clearly satirical post he wrote) and laughing. It’s easy to talk shit when you’re a 19-year old NEET who’s never gotten your dick wet: when you’ve actually had to pay a physical price for your free speech, you develop a more mature outlook on life.

While I haven’t gone through the hellish ordeal that Roosh has, I’ve had to pay my own price for my free speech. I was physically threatened by #BlackLivesMatter flacks for daring to “infiltrate” their protests; I was booted off of Twitter due to false reports from said flacks; I’ve been doxed and my parents have been harassed by radical leftists, all because I dare to speak my mind and oppose the lies of the day. The wages of honesty used to merely be social exclusion and unemployment; now they include imprisonment, violence and murder.

Unpopular people will always accuse popular people of saying things solely to get attention because it makes them feel better about the fact that nobody cares what they have to say. All writers—indeed, all creators—want attention, it’s just that some people are better at getting it than others, and those people are better at winning hearts and minds than others. This corner of the Internet is as close as you’re going to get to a meritocracy in this world, so don’t hate the player, hate the game.

You may not like some of the things that Roosh and I say, but the reality is that we have skin in the game and you don’t. Until you’ve had to report a stalker to the police or physically disguise yourself to keep leftist thugs from spotting and attacking you, you have no idea of the enormity of the evil we face. This is why whenever some permavirgin with an anime avatar claims I don’t “belong” in the alt-right, I just laugh in his face.

Free Speech Isn’t Free is a punch-to-the-gut reminder of what the forces arrayed against us are capable and willing to do. Carl the Cuck may be an impotent weakling on his own, but he has the media to amplify his voice and the government to back him when the fists fly. We are facing an organized machine that will do anything to maintain its power: lie, cheat, steal and kill. While I’m not half as pessimistic as Roosh is—I believe this is a war we can and will win—his experiences show that we cannot afford to be lazy or apathetic.

My biggest criticism of Free Speech Isn’t Free is the book’s structure. Roosh clearly intended it to be a self-contained volume about his world tour when he began writing it, but roughly a third of the book is dedicated to a lengthy appendix on the Return of Kings tribal meetup outrage that occurred earlier this year. While the book is a riveting read from beginning to end, it would have been stronger if Roosh had rewritten it to better incorporate this story instead of tacking it on.

But this is a minor point. Free Speech Isn’t Free is by far the best book I’ve read this year, and one that you absolutely need in your collection. As hokey as it sounds, freedom isn’t free: we get it by fighting for it. Roosh is fighting for his freedom, I’m fighting for mine, and you need to know how to fight for yours.

Click here to buy Free Speech Isn’t Free.

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