AUSTIN, Texas — Calling the right to speak freely “the single most sacred principle in human history, after my own comfort,” free speech advocate Chet Vandermolen on Wednesday demanded the immediate removal of a large and growing list of speech he dislikes, describing the request as “the most pro-speech thing I have ever done.”
“Let me be absolutely clear: I believe in free speech without exception,” said Vandermolen, 47, founder of the Institute for Unlimited Expression, standing beneath a 30-foot banner reading SAY ANYTHING and a smaller banner beneath it reading (EXCEPT THAT). “Which is exactly why this speech has to go. It is making the free speech environment hostile for people like me, who are trying to enjoy it.”
The list, delivered to four social platforms, nine school boards, two cable networks, a podcast and the community bulletin board of an Applebee’s, runs to 4,112 items and is sorted into categories: “Lies,” “Dangerous Lies,” “Things That Are True But Rude” and “Tone.” The longest category, at 2,987 entries, is titled simply “Him.”
Vandermolen took questions afterward, but only those submitted in advance. “Open dialogue requires structure,” he explained, as aides walked a man holding a hand-lettered sign reading WHAT ABOUT FREE SPEECH? toward the exit. “That gentleman is welcome to say whatever he wants in our designated Free Speech Zone, which is in Oklahoma.”
Vandermolen said the Institute applies its standards evenly, through a review process he described as “neutral, rigorous and conducted entirely by me.” Under the process, a statement is protected expression if Vandermolen agrees with it and “a clear and present vibe” if he does not. Asked to give an example of speech he disliked but would defend, he thought for nearly a minute and then named a cereal commercial from 1994.
The Speech Sorter™
You be the judge. Decide whether each statement deserves protection or removal, then see how the Institute ruled. Its standard is applied evenly to every statement. The standard is Chet.
Identical statements may receive different rulings depending on who said them. This is called consistency. Rulings are final, except when Chet changes his mind, at which point they were always the new ruling.
The public mood suits him. In a national survey released in November 2025, roughly three in four Americans told the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression that free speech in the United States was heading in the wrong direction. Vandermolen said he was one of the three. “And I know exactly who the fourth one is,” he added. “I’ve reported him.”
The Institute’s literacy arm, Read Freely, has so far challenged 311 library books for being “anti-free-speech,” a category it defines as any book in which one character disagrees with another. Schools have been obliging. PEN America counted 6,870 instances of book bans in U.S. public schools during the 2024–25 school year, more than 80% of them in Florida, Texas and Tennessee. “I’m not banning anything,” Vandermolen said. “I’m curating the marketplace of ideas. Every marketplace has a bouncer.”
Vandermolen insists he is part of a proud tradition, and he keeps a binder of precedents to prove it. In March 2024, a federal judge threw out a lawsuit that Elon Musk’s X had filed against a nonprofit that published research on hate speech on the platform, writing that “this case is about punishing the Defendants for their speech.” Vandermolen called the ruling “a dark day for free speech,” then clarified that he meant the lawsuit’s free speech, which had been the suing.
In September 2025, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who had written that the agency “should promote freedom of speech,” told a podcast that broadcasters could deal with a late-night host’s remarks “the easy way or the hard way.” ABC suspended the show indefinitely that day. Vandermolen keeps the clipping framed above his desk. “People on both sides do it,” he said. “That makes it bipartisan, and bipartisan makes it fine.”
Dr. Lorraine Ashby, who has spent six years reading Vandermolen’s filings at the Center for Noticing Obvious Things, said they are remarkably consistent. “Every one of the 4,112 requests cites the First Amendment,” she said. “As far as we can tell, he stopped reading at ‘Congress shall make no law’ and took it as a job opening.”
For supporters eager to help, the Institute on Wednesday launched a self-service portal that lets anyone file a takedown request in the name of free expression, “so the work of protecting speech no longer falls on one man and his three lawyers.”
File A Free Speech Takedown Request
Protecting speech has never been easier. Pick what you want gone and why, and our system writes a letter defending your right to make it disappear.
To Whom It May Concern,
In defense of liberty, and of my afternoon,
A Lifelong Free Speech Absolutist
Takedown requests are forwarded to the platform, the school board, your neighbor and your neighbor’s employer. The “Defend it instead” feature has been in development since 1791 and is expected to launch shortly after it stops being inconvenient.
Vandermolen’s critics responded Wednesday by demanding his own immediate removal, a move he called “a chilling assault on free expression” and they called “the one thing we will ever agree with him about.” At an afternoon rally on the Capitol steps, both groups chanted “Free speech!” at each other for 40 minutes, each side confident the other was the reason it was getting so hard to hear.
Asked at the close of the event whether a free speech advocate should ever demand the removal of speech, Vandermolen said the question was a fair one, that he welcomed it, and that the reporter who asked it had been added to the list under “Tone.”
At press time, Vandermolen had added this article to the list as well and released a statement defending HuckFinn’s absolute right to publish it somewhere else.
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