Just days after Olympics-centered NBC snubbed an anti-China ad featuring the NBA’s new conservative star Enes Kanter Freedom, he’s back with a new one focused on freedom of speech and America’s embrace of it.
And this time, NBC plans to run it.
The ad is part of a campaign by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education to push free speech rights on college campuses.
In the new ad, starting tomorrow, the Boston Celtics center talks about how speaking out against officials in his home country of Turkey can lead to arrests. After speaking out while in America, he said officials back home arrested his father.
“I remember the first time coming to America,” said Kanter Freedom in the ad. “One of my teammates criticized the president and I said, ‘Dude, what are you doing? They might put you in jail.’ And he said, ‘This is America.’ And he explained to me what freedom of speech means,” said the new U.S. citizen.
He added, “Unfortunately if you use your free speech in Turkey, you’ll end up in jail.”
Since he started speaking out, and changed his last name to “Freedom,” he has become a hero in conservative circles. He will speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
The new ad will run in prime time throughout the Olympics, as well as on network and cable news shows, including Meet the Press, Tucker Carlson Tonight, Fareed Zakaria GPS, and others. FIRE expects to spend $1.5 million airing it.
“Freedom begins with the freedom to speak,” said FIRE Vice President of Communications Nico Perrino. “Authoritarians across the globe use censorship to stay in power and conceal their abuses. We need a culture supportive of free speech to stop them. That’s why Enes’ message that change can only happen with freedom of speech is so powerful.”
In the ad that wasn’t allowed on NBC, the Olympic Games hosted by communist China were called the “Genocide Games.” The ad referenced China’s long record of human rights abuses. NBC has the rights to air the games.
