News/Commentary

YouTube now flat-out, openly censoring journalism on behalf of the Biden administration and Dem Party

June 8, 2022 | | Print Article

YouTube has been accused of censoring journalism — specifically journalism about the Jan. 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol — on behalf of the Biden administration and the Democrat Party at large.

This week, YouTube deleted a New York Post interview of Aaron Mostofsky, a Jan. 6th rioter, that was conducted during the riot last year.

In the interview, Mostofsky says he showed up at the Capitol to “express my opinion as a free American, my beliefs that this election was stolen.”

When asked whether members of Congress should be afraid of him and the other rioters, he replied, “They shouldn’t be afraid.”

According to the Post, YouTube deleted the video on Monday, citing its “elections misinformation policy.”

The policy prohibits “content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of the US 2020 presidential election.”

The Post notes that YouTube deleted its video despite its content being “clearly labeled as a journalistic product.”

And indeed, in a statement, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression official Nico Perrino noted that the interview has been “cited by other news outlets and used by the DOJ.”

This “speaks to its importance as a primary source for historians, other journalists and the general public,” he said.

“The memoryholing of information is a historian and journalist’s worst nightmare. Labeling the expression of certain beliefs ‘misinformation’ to justify removing that expression from content libraries and platforms sets a dangerous precedent,” Perrino continued.

“It restricts our ability to understand people’s real motivations and therefore to understand current and past events. In this case, the fact that the content that was removed was original reporting by a journalist makes its removal all the more chilling.”

Especially when you factor in that YouTube still allows videos questioning the outcome of the 2016 presidential election:

According to journalist and commentator Benjamin Weingarten, YouTube’s decision to wait until now — only days before the start of the Jan. 6th committee’s public hearings — to censor Jan. 6th-related journalism speaks volumes.

“Big Tech is selectively censoring that which is obviously journalism, coinciding with the broadcasting of the Democrats’ hearings about January 6. The committee will make the case that claims like Mostofsky’s of a stolen election constituted dangerous misinformation, inciting a violent insurrection,” he writes for the Post.

“It will try to link individuals and organizations through communications and dollar flows to Donald Trump, demonstrating a conspiracy. In essence, it will be acting as if, and perhaps arguing, that MAGA equals terrorist.”

Which, incidentally, is exactly what the Biden administration wants.

“The Biden administration’s June 2021 National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism states that ‘narratives of fraud in the recent general election. . . will almost certainly spur some DVEs [domestic violent extremists] to try to engage in violence.’ Relatedly, the FBI classified the Capitol breach as an act of domestic terrorism, and the Justice Department has linked defendants’ views on the 2020 presidential election to wrongdoing,” Weingarten notes.

Here’s the kicker, according to Weingarten: “The administration’s domestic-terror strategy had called for ‘enhancing faith in government’ by countering ‘dangerous conspiracy theories that can provide a gateway to terrorist violence,’ and vowed to ‘collaborate on addressing terrorist content . . . with technology companies.'”

“YouTube reinforces this effort by purging ‘dangerous’ rhetoric on election fraud, which must not be allowed to persist lest it incites violence. Big Tech has become a significant partner in enforcing regime orthodoxy by suppressing dissent under the guise of national security,” Weingarten continues.

“Ironically of course, the censorship on election integrity — an issue manifestly at the heart of our politics, robust speech about which is core to the First Amendment — will only further erode trust in the millions who have lost faith in our system.”

There’s a reason alternative video-sharing sites like Rumble have emerged and are now raking in millions of users in traffic.

An increasing number of Americans view big tech giants such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google (YouTube’s parent company) as nothing more than an extension of the Democrat Party.

By censoring legitimate journalism — and doing so exactly at a time that this censorship would be useful to Democrats — YouTube has, it would appear, proven that it is indeed exactly that …

Vivek Saxena
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