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On February 25, the RealClear Foundation honored New York Post columnist Miranda Devine, journalist Matt Taibbi, and Stanford epidemiologist Dr. Jai Bhattacharya with its inaugural Samizdat Award.
David Desrosiers, president of the Real Clear Foundation, shared in an interview with RealClear Politics in September that the award was named for an underground literary network in the Soviet Union.
“What does samizdat mean? In Russian it translates to 'self-published'. Samizdat was the underground literary network in the Soviet Union that distributed Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago,'' Desrosiers said.
“Are we suggesting that the American mind and society are closing and becoming more Orwellian and Soviet? Yes we are. That's why we inaugurated the Samizdat Award, to celebrate the great people who expressed Standing up for freedom, freedom of the press, and freedom of science, even at great personal cost.
In an interview with Buck Sexton, Desrosiers shared:
The three people we've chosen to receive these awards capture that.
We have Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, he was the same guy who stood up to Fauci and said, “Hey, the scientific method can handle the crisis.” And in their experience, in terms of science, everything says we're going down the wrong path. He was treated very poorly – and not just by the press and politicians but by his own profession. And what did we see? History vindicated him. He was presented as a mendicant superstitious person, but it turned out that Fauci was the Pope and Dr. J was Galileo.
The same applies for the other two we have chosen. The New York Post's Miranda Devine is another recipient. If someone gave you (Hunter Biden's) laptop, if you don't come to terms with the responsibility that comes with being a First Amendment representative, you'll be a hack.
And the same goes for Matt Taibbi, the second gentleman who's on the receiving end. If you're invited to see behind the curtain at Elon Musk (Twitter Files), and you see this alphabet soup of First Amendment violations – the government shouldn't be doing this, even if a private company wants it.
The trio will join commentator Dave Rubin for a live interview at an event in Palm Beach, Florida on March 7.
“I am honored to receive this inaugural Samizdat Award along with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Matt Taibbi,” Devine told The New York Post on Sunday.
“In an age of censorship and lies, we all owe a debt of gratitude to Real Clear Politics for creating an independent award to recognize truth-telling and honest journalism.
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