US Senator Ted Cruz called for Americans to be “unruly” and “uncontrollable” in a speech to conservative activists in Florida.

       In an address Thursday to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual gathering of right-wing activists from across the country, the senator from Texas railed against big tech and big government – and, perhaps surprisingly, big business.

       “The Chinese communists and Elizabeth Warren both want to control you. Your assets, your savings, your speech, your life, your children, every decision they want to control, and so we need to break up the means of controlling the citizenry,” he said.

       “I want an unruly, uncontrollable, American, we the people,” he added.

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       In the meandering speech, Mr Cruz then railed against the “woke mob’”, telling the audience: “They want to destroy you, they want to silence you, they want to subjugate you.”

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       He said “there is a pattern of government asking big tech to silence dissent,” Mr Cruz said, citing White House comments about Joe Rogan’s podcast spreading Covid misinformation as an example.

       “Don’t ever apologise to the woke mob,” he continued. “It doesn’t work.”

       Earlier, Mr Cruz began his speech by celebrating that there was “not a damn mask in sight” among the crowd.

       He then called on conservatives to “fight power, fight big government, fight big tech” and declared that he was “bullish on Bitcoin”.

       “Big is bad, across the board. Big government sucks. Big business sucks. Big tech, big Hollywood, big universities. Any accumulation of power that is centralised is fundamentally dangerous,” he said, explaining that Bitcoin was useful because it was decentralised.

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       CPAC, which has traditionally been a testing ground for right-wing conservative ideas and politicians, is being hosted in Orlando, Florida, this year. The tagline of this year’s event was ‘Awake, but not woke,’ and speakers so far have focused mostly on culture war issues.

       Former president Donald Trump is due to speak on Saturday.