Europe is seeing shocking battles over censorship of speech.

In August, the government of the United Kingdom issued an ominous “Think before you post” statement, saying social media posts that some consider hateful are harmful could get you arrested. “Remind those close to you to share responsibly or face the consequences,” the government warned.

A new documentary called “We Will Not Be Silenced” tells the true story of censorship of a UK-based podcast called London Real. Brian Rose hosts the podcast and he tells me what happened when a widely-viewed episode was deleted and banned by YouTube.

Our conversation below is edited for brevity. The documentary can be seen on X, formerly Twitter, at the London Real TV account.

Sharyl Attkisson: What was the episode about?

Brian Rose: “It was a conversation about Covid, asking questions about masks and distancing, and even talking about the “V” word — the vaccine. We were one of the very early people to be broadcast and then censored by YouTube.”

So those were rational questions to explore. And we later found a lot of people who were raising those questions were on the right track, whereas the government was on the wrong track. But you had an immediate backlash?

“Immediate…That was the first time I had ever heard or felt censorship. I thought it happened to the weirdos, until it happens to you. And my immediate reaction was to re-upload the video and to fight back.”

After that happened to you, what did you see happening on a broader scale?

“Well, it was weird, because I was subsequently de-platformed from Dropbox, LinkedIn, PayPal, all simultaneously. And when I started asking questions, you know, I almost felt silly to even imply there might be some type of coordination, because it just didn’t seem possible at the time … We ended up having to create our own streaming platform … just to prove that we could do it in the face of censorship by these trillion-dollar tech platforms.”

Is there anything you see ordinary people can do when they’re faced with the same kind of thing?

“The real lesson of the movie is, is fear. Fear was weaponized. And it got us to behave in a really small way. And I don’t know about you, but I saw really intelligent people during that lockdown make terrible decisions, and that fear, it just, it made them so helpless … And it’s weaponized in many, many ways right now. And so that’s one of the other things just to be aware of. Also there’s a lot of other platforms right now to share ideas, but still, most people get their news from the big tech companies — Google search, YouTube, even the TikToks and the Instagram. And if they’re banning things, most people are too busy in their lives. They’re in their economic prisons, and they can’t really do the research to really think big. And so I just want people to be aware of these things, and maybe to get the government to be held accountable.”

“Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson” airs at 10 a.m. Sunday, WJLA (Channel 7) and WBFF (Channel 45).