Speaking to a crowd of over 1,500 young patriots at Turning Point USA’s 2019 Teen Student Action Summit, Dr. Gorka was honored to give a very personal speech about why he fights for freedom. In the speech, he spoke openly about the family history that influenced his views and the moments that changed his life forever, and what motivates him to continue fighting against the slings and arrows of the Left, the lies of the FakeNews Industrial Complex, and the relentless attacks against all who love America.

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GORKA: Can I just tell you, I have never been so excited to be standing behind the stage there, being told that there are 1500 young patriots here? And when I see the little commercial from Heritage, the conservative mothership, and the Gipper comes on, and you all start cheering!

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Wow, you know your stuff. So my name’s Sebastian Gorka, I was former Strategist to Donald Trump, and now I have a national radio show called AMERICA First.

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Thank you. And that was me with a guy called Brian Karem, who spent two-and-a-half years verbally abusing Sarah Huckabee Sanders. And I thought it was time to give him a little bit of a patriotic response.

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I don’t have a script, I just want to tell you a story today. But first thing’s first, I was impressed with the questions you asked the previous speaker, and the personal stories you were sharing. Let me ask you a question first: How many people here, hands up, have been criticized, made fun of, or been insulted because of your views?

Wow. OK, alright. This is for all of you, and everybody else who’s worried about what might happen to you because of your political views in today’s America.

Imagine a young boy. He’s 15 years old, and he’s experienced the horrors of war. In this case, he grew up in Hungary, in Budapest, a beautiful city in central Europe. They called it “the Paris of the East.” And he was 9 when World War II erupted. By the end of the War, his home city was devastated. Three out of five buildings had been bombed. Three out of five. When the Nazis were surrounded at the end of the War, they blew up every single bridge over the Danube, it was devastating.

But this young boy finally, one day, had hope. He had a sense of a brighter future, after years of death and destruction. Why? Because he heard that great men – the Prime Minister of England, the President of America, and the Soviet Premier – had sat down in a faraway city called Yalta. And they’d come to a peace agreement. And in that peace agreement, the devastated countries that had been occupied by the Nazis were guaranteed their freedom. Guaranteed their freedom.

They would be allowed to have elections. They would be allowed to choose their own governments again, to be independent. So he had hope. But then what happened? If you know your history, in the next three years, wherever the Soviet troops ended up after the War, which was all throughout Central Europe – Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, you name it – Russia took control.

This isn’t theory. This isn’t somebody spouting off Socialist theory at a rally. It was real life. If you stood against the Socialists, you’d be intimidated. If you kept standing up against them, you’d be beaten up. And if you didn’t give up, you’d be killed. So by 1948, when he started college, his country was again occupied, taken over. Not run by Nazis, but run by Communists. One party, controlling everything, reporting back to Moscow.

It had become a satellite, a slave nation, like all the others in the region So what did this young man do? He said, “I’m going to resist.” As he started college, “I’m gonna fight back.” But not with a gun, not with a bomb, but with information. So he found 8 like-minded patriots, Christians, in college. And he created a secret student organization, an underground organization, that was going to spy on what the Russians were doing, how they were stealing his country for Moscow, and then sending that information out to the West, to some free country that could potentially use that information against the dictatorship in Moscow.

And they were very successful. They found a man who had freedom of passage across the Iron Curtain, who smuggled their information – this isn’t a joke – written in invisible ink, in innocuous letters, between the innocuous lines, they’d write in that sensitive information, he’d smuggle it to Vienna. And then he’d established contact with a Western intelligence agency, in this case it was MI6, the British equivalent of the CIA. He said “Here’s the information, use it to undermine Moscow and to try and get Hungary to be free again.”

The bad news was, once that information arrived at MI6 headquarters, it worked its way up the chain to a certain man. That man was colloquially known as Kim Philby. Look him up one day, after your conference. Because Kim Philby is one of the five greatest traitors of Judeo-Christian civilization in recent history. He was a member of something called the Cambridge Apostles, a group of British students who had been recruited by the forerunner of the KGB in college and they worked their way into British government, into the intelligence services, to work for Moscow, to help our sworn enemies.

So he was very happy to get these reports, because then he could help identify who these patriots are. And he allowed the cell to run for another 8 months before he could identify the name of every single patriot, every single student. And he sent a secret message for his handler, sent it back to Moscow, back to the KGB with the names of all the students.

Two years later, the young man was now 20. At 2 AM, there was a violent banging on the door of his parent’s home. In burst the Communist Secret Police, and arrested him. They took him away to the headquarters of the Secret Police, a beautiful mansion in downtown Budapest, where in the basement they relentlessly tortured him for being a patriot. Physical torture. He ended up being put through a show trial, a Communist show trial, and at the age of 20 being given a life sentence in prison, for what he believed, because he was a patriot.

He spent two years in solitary. Now think about that for a second. Not two weeks, not two months, two years without human contact. Then two years down in prison coal mines, where he was breaking coal off the surface of the mine, as a political prisoner. And then another two years in the central political prison, until the glorious events of 1956, in October, which are known as the Hungarian Revolution. Where a bunch of students again, and factory workers, said “Enough, we’ve had enough of Communism!” And after 8 years of dictatorship they stood up to their slave-masters, and they fought for their freedom, with Molotov Cocktails, with hunting shotguns, with cobblestones! And for 10 glorious days, that slave nation was free.

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One of the things the freedom fighters did was they captured a Soviet tank. And they thought, “What can we do with a Soviet tank? We can’t take on hundreds of tanks, we’d just be blown away. Let’s use it to liberate our comrades who are locked in political prison!” So they took the tank, they drove it to the political prison, they bust down the gates, and they went through the whole prison, liberating those who had been imprisoned for their beliefs.

And that young man was free. Two days later, the Revolution was crushed. Hundreds of tanks came in from Romania and Ukraine. Thousands of Russian troops came in to crush that young Revolution. And that man was very, very aware of what would happen if he was caught. He wouldn’t be put back in prison. He was an escaped political prisoner. He’d be shot on sight, and kicked into the gutter. So he had no choice. I have to leave the land that I love. But he remembered a promise he’d made three years before to a slightly older prisoner, who said to him, “Hey Paul, if you ever get out of here, will you promise me something? Will you take my teenaged daughter to freedom? Get her out of here.” And Paul, believing he was gonna die in prison, said “Sure George, whatever.” But then he was free, and he remembered his promise to George.

So just before he left the country, he looked up – there used to be a thing called telephone books, long before you were born – looked up George’s address, his old address in the phone book, walked across Budapest to his house, knocked on the door, and said “Hey it’s me, I’m Paul, I’m leaving now, I’ve got to get out of here, I’m on a shoot-to-kill list. Where’s your daughter?” He met this 17-year-old girl called Susan. Underneath a train, clinging on for life, they made it to the Western border with Austria, they gave their last dime to a local farmer who showed them the route through the minefield. They tripped a flare, the border guards almost got them, but they made it to freedom, to a refugee camp.

Now, what has that got to do with you? A story 70 years ago? A long way away, in Europe? Because I want to share with you why I do what I do. Why I decided to work for President Trump, why I called out that lying, abusive punk Brian Karem, in the Rose Garden.

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Why I believe that Turning Point USA is the most important organization in America today, fighting for our freedom. The Heritage Foundation, it’s the NRA, it’s Turning Point USA.

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So you want to know why I shared that story with you? Because Paul was my father.

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Thank you. And Susan became his wife, and my mother.

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And they spent weeks in a refugee camp. So this thing on the border, this is personal for me, because in the refugee camp, they were interviewed again and again and again. And they had to prove they weren’t a threat to the West, they had to prove that they wanted to support the Constitutional order of the country they moved to. They didn’t come across illegally to become a threat to the country, to sponge off the taxpayer. And they became patriots in the UK, where I was born.

So, how does this affect me, and how does it affect you? When I worked in the White House, very soon I was put on the front line in the media, to defend the President and his policies. As soon as that happened, the big guns came out. I had one journalist, one journalist, write 42 hit pieces on me. Calling me a Nazi, a fascist, a white supremacist.

Audience members: Liar! FakeNews!

FakeNews indeed. And I got it, I got it, I’m a proxy for the President, they thought Hillary was going to win, they hate me, so they’re going to take it out on me so they can feel better. But then, then they came after my family. They came after my wife, they came after the reputation of my dead mother. Yeah, they started writing about my dead mother. So then, you can relate, the same journalist who wrote the 42 hit pieces, wrote an article about my son in high school, in the headline, calling him a “traitor.”

Audience member: Coward!

They are cowards, they are cowards, and they’re un-American. So there I am thinking, “Is this worth it? Is this worth it?” To have a government paycheck, and to have the quote-unquote media, attack not just me – I get it, I’m a politically-commissioned officer of the President, I understand – but my wife? My mother? And my teenaged son? Then I remembered a story from my childhood.

I lived an amazing life in England. My parents were great. We did well. We were safe. And they were very worldly. And every year, we’d go traveling for vacation, often to France. And there was one vacation, I might have been 7 or 8 years old, and I was on the beach playing, you know, with my G.I. Joes or whatever. And my dad, who was an incredible athlete – when he was arrested, he was on the national crew team – he was, you know, an amazing physical man. Loved to swim, loved sports. And he’s in the ocean, and he comes out of the ocean after a swim and I’m sitting there, you know, oblivious, playing in the sand.

And I see something on my dad, that I hadn’t realized before. I see that he’s got these white lines on his wrists. And he’s way too young to have wrinkles on his wrists. So like a fool, a little kid, I go “Hey dad, what’s that?” With no emotion, without skipping a beat, he looks at me and says, “Son, oh that’s where the Secret Police bound my wrists together with wire behind my back, so they could hang me from the roof, from the ceiling of the torture chamber.”

That’s when my life changed, at the age of 8. Sometimes you can really see a moment where your life takes another path. For me, that was it. Why? Because I knew, from that moment onward, evil isn’t some idea from a fairy tale about witches and forests and dragons. Evil is real, and it walks the Earth.

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And when they came after me in the White House, I remembered that story. And I looked at my wrists, and there were no scars. So I said to myself, “Washington Post, CNN, HuffPo, BuzzFeed, bring it.”

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Because at the end of the day, it’s only words! And our job demands that if my dad can put up with that, guess what? So can we!

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It’s not theoretical. It is frightening today. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation does a poll every year. Last year’s poll found that 52% of Millennials in America would prefer to live in a Socialist or Communist America.

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That, that is why I commend all of you. And that is why I tell you, never ever give up.

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In your darkest moment, when they’re attacking you on Instagram, when they’re attacking you on social media. When like my daughter, they’re putting posters up in your college, calling you a white supremacist, because of your last name, think about the 100 million people murdered in the name of Karl Marx, and never give up!

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We live, we are blessed, we are blessed, I am a legal immigrant to the United States.

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I chose this country. I’m not an American by country, I chose it, because it is the greatest nation in the world!

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So, I want you to take heart. It’s easy for me to fight. I just think of my dad. But think of everybody else who’s suffered, think of the people who risk their lives to come here. Think of the people who protect our nation right now. In your darkest moment, never forget them, and take energy from them. Take passion. I’ll take questions, last thing: If you want to know more about my story and my parent’s story, and why I believe what I believe, what I did in the White House, you can read it all in my book “Why We Fight.” Check it out, “Why We Fight.” If you want to know more, my website is www.sebgorka.com, you can reach me through that website as well. My radio show is AMERICA First, and my Twitter feed is @SebGorka.

Last note, and I’ll take questions. Remember one thing: When it gets tough, when it gets personal, when you feel like crying, when you feel like giving up, when you think you’re alone, remember one thing. There is one, one crucial difference between us and them. We are fueled by love. Irrespective of our skin color, our gender, our sexual preference, it doesn’t matter, we are fueled by love. Love of our country and love of liberty. They are fueled by hate, and that’s why we will always win.

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STUDENT: I find the big liberal lies, the big Left lies, very interesting. And the one I keep hearing recently is that the Socialist policies of Europe are not as far-Left as we think, that they’re very central. And we’re so far-Right, that they seem radical, which obviously, I would strongly disagree with. So what’s your comment?

GORKA: So all this stuff, like Bernie says, “Oh, they’re Socialist countries,” is garbage. All the countries of Europe, to a lesser or greater extent, are welfare states that are built on capitalism. When you have the Danish Prime Minister actually tell Bernie Sanders, as he’s at Harvard, “Will you stop calling my country Socialist? We’re a capitalist democracy,” listen to the guy.

Secondly, these are systems that are crumbling. The welfare states are becoming absolutely internally bankrupt, because how did they get created? Because they were all created after World War II on the basis of what? U.S. subsidies and mercantilism. Stockholm, Sweden, Denmark, were massively powerful mercantilist nations. They made their money by being capitalist across the globe, remember, right? The East India Company. And then what happened? They spent it all. And now they’re spending it on illegal immigrants, they’re going bankrupt.

So again, at the end of the day, you have to inform them, but I’ll give you one piece of advice for everybody. This is the biggest mistake we make as conservatives: Don’t rely on the facts. Because they don’t care, right? Ben Shapiro’s right, they just don’t get it. So you’ve got to pump it with emotion as well.

Like the Wall, people ask me, “How do you argue about the Wall?” Very easy. Do you know how many women and children are being raped? Are being trafficked? Do you know how much money the cartels make? Do you care about women getting raped, and children being abused? What do you do? Well let’s build the Wall!

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STUDENT: I was curious, how do you think the situation with Iran will play out?

GORKA: Yeah, nobody knows. Anybody who says is a liar. All I can tell you right now is they’re tanking. The economy’s collapsing, these things they’re doing in the Straits of Hormuz are a sign of desperation, that’s what I call “rusty saber-rattling” At the end of the day, they will cave because Donald Trump will never give up.

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STUDENT: So I just want to thank you for coming out today, I really appreciate it. And I just wanted to ask you a question that’s not necessarily a politics-.

GORKA: Guys, get to the question.

STUDENT: OK, so, what would you say is a great tip for productivity in general life? And what would you say you do that makes you so productive?

GORKA: chuckles Good question! Wow.

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Two things. Number one: always set goals. Don’t expect to be able to meet them, but if you don’t have a plan, you’re not gonna know even where you’re even headed. So always have a plan, always have goals, set goals. And secondly, and this is a little bit weird if you ask me about productivity, but I say this to everybody. I don’t care what career you’re interested in: Read books.

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Books! Now I’m the last one to talk, I spent, I don’t know, about six hours a day on social media. But at the end of the day, turn the bloody phone off for an hour. Put it down, switch off the computer, and read a real book. Because if you start reading real books – and classics! Classics! Go classics. Within a year, if you read real books, you’ll have a competitive edge over everyone who isn’t reading. And you will be far more effective.

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MODERATOR: This will be the last question.

GORKA: OK.

STUDENT: So what did you ask the President at the Social Media Summit last week? Because the livestream went off.

GORKA: Yeah, what did I ask him? I asked him what is his message to every one of our followers. Because he said that the White House had done the math, and the 150 of us social media influencers in the room had a combined audience of 500 million.

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So we, the alternative media, were bigger than any, any platform out there. Bigger than BBC, bigger than anybody. So I wanted to ask him, “What would you tell our followers?” And it was great, it was Biblical, he said “You are accessing half a billion patriots. You are more powerful than anybody else. So they’re trying to censor you, they’re trying to deplatform you, but don’t be afraid.”

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Alright guys, check out the show, check out the book, if you want to reach me go to SebGorka.com, please follow me on Twitter, and since my old boss loves these, could I ask for a selfie?

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AMERICA First is the newest nationally-syndicated radio show in the United States, part of the Salem Radio Network. The host, Sebastian Gorka PhD., served most recently as Deputy Assistant for Strategy to the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, and is author of the New York Times bestselling book “Defeating Jihad.” His latest book is “Why We Fight: Defeating America’s Enemies – With No Apologies.” You can follow him on Twitter @SebGorka, on Facebook, and on Instagram @sebastian_gorka. AMERICA First is available on the iTunes podcast app, streams live at www.sebgorka.com, and is on YouTube. You can contact him here.