Maajid Nawaz's Warning To Trump Fans After Media Ban

25 February 2017, 14:02 | Updated: 25 February 2017, 15:22

The dangers of living in an "echo chamber" are far worse when you're the President of the United States, says Maajid Nawaz.

Maajid Nawaz said the extreme left and right of politics are often guilty of creating their own echo chambers, but Trump shunning notable media outlets from a White House press briefing is more sinister than that. 

He said: "When you live in an echo chamber...when someone disagrees with you, you're so shocked by it, because you've never heard it because you think the whole world revolves around socialism, communism, Marxism, Leninism, and Stalinism and Che Guevara, that when somebody says even the slightest thing that you disagree with, you interpret it as a violent assault, and so you respond as if they spat in your face.  

"That's what happens when you live in an echo chamber. Now, Trump supporters who are listening to this, know exactly what I'm talking about.  

"But guess what?  You guys are doing the same thing. You guys are as guilty of living in your own echo chamber as that lot. 

"So here comes the worst part: those students, the loony left on campuses, who are banning speakers, who are burning campuses, and who are trying to tear down statues, just because they don't like history, those students don't have power.  Your president has power.  

"Not only has power. He is probably the most powerful man in the world right now, when he creates an echo chamber, it's far more dangerous than those students trying to tear down statues, ban speakers and burn buildings.  

"Because he has a lot more power to do something about it. And if, and I beseech you Trump supporters, if you can see the danger of those left loonies creating an echo chamber for our students and the next generation of our intelligentsia on the campuses, can you not see the danger of the...world's most powerful man, can you not see the danger in him creating an echo chamber in the White House?  

"Can you not see the danger of Trump living in a bubble that is so tight that he only wants to hear media that praise him and that agree with him and that stroke his ego.  

"Can you not see how dangerous it is to create the world's most powerful, the ultimate echo chamber.  Isn't that something that scares you?  If it isn't, it should.  It should petrify you.

"Because the equivalent of those students at Berkeley University burning down the buildings, the equivalent of those students in Oxford and Cambridge saying 'Rhodes must fall' tearing down those statues at Queen Mary's.  

"The equivalents of those far left activists calling everyone fascist, when in fact they're the fascists, forcing pro Israeli students to barricade themselves in buildings at the UCL, the equivalent of all of that, of Trump doing it, is far worse.  

"Trump has the power to do more than burn a building down and force petrified students to barricade themselves into a room.  This man has his finger on the nuclear trigger.  

"This man leads, as commander in chief, the world's most powerful military force.  And if this man retreats into an echo chamber, and only takes opinions that agrees with him, and rejects everything else as fake news, we are in for a terrible time."