While censorship of political and religious conservative views on YouTube is nothing new, it is now definitely escalating with a particular intensity.
Some background: During the height of the plandemic, references to YouTube’s obedience to the ’Cancel Culture’ occurred in the least likely videos, from psychics ruminating about future events while tap dancing around references to ‘covid’ (“Cross your fingers subscribers, I should not have mentioned the ‘c’ word!”), to electric car videos where the creator expresses fear that the video will be taken down because they inadvertently mentioned “the plague.”
In 2020, YouTube was having a ball canceling channels over charges of “misinformation,” as if the latter was an objective reality rather than the stillborn child of an agenda-ridden (Left) narrative.
That agenda was best summed up by Edward Furton, an ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, when he told the Catholic News Agency that YouTube is not staffed by scientists, “but by engineers and technicians who understand little to nothing about scientific matters.”
Furton went on to say that YouTube “favors a liberal ideology that supports abortion not only here at home but throughout the world,” and that “such a view revokes their claim to moral superiority over others.”
YouTube’s plandemic censorship scourge occurred during the reign of Susan Wojcicki, CEO of the company since 2014 and whose retirement earlier this year in February led to the appointment of Neal Mohan, who is of Indian descent and YouTube’s former Chief Products Manager.
Wojcicki, who studied at Stanford and later at Harvard, became an “urban legend” of sorts because she once housed the founders of Google in her garage when they were just starting out.
A progressive Democrat since her time as a garage landlord, during her many years employed by big tech, Wojcicki earned over $765 million and gave some of that money away to progressive causes.
In 2016, she contributed $50,000 to the Hilary Clinton Victory Fund. That same year saw a $365 contribution to the Democratic State Committee (Delaware), as well as a $2700 gift to Kamala Harris for Senate. In 2015, she pledged $2700 to Friends of Schumer-Democrat, a funding name that sounds vaguely like an oil spill on the Potomac.
This is not a lot of money when your net worth is as high as Wojcicki’s, but it was certainly wasted money, especially in the case of Hilary Clinton, where there was no victory but a defeat that in ‘Hilary-land’ is still an active bitter herb.
As for Neal Mohan — who by cosmetic standards is not as glamorous looking as (the blonde) Wojciciki — Fortune describes him as “possessed with process and framework,” which is somehow a more fitting description for a piece of Ikea furniture.
Wojicicki, who even liberals say was the worst thing ever to have happened to the platform, waxed poetic about Mohan when he assumed the role of CEO in February.
“He has a wonderful sense for our product, our business, our creator and user communities, and our employees,” Wojcicki wrote in her 8-paragraph farewell address.
In response, Mohan Tweeted:
“It’s been amazing to work with you over the years. You’ve built YouTube into an extraordinary home for creators and viewers. I’m excited to continue this awesome and important mission. Looking forward to what lies ahead…”
Mohan, of course, is a company man who is expected to follow Wojicicki’s censorship trajectory.
Mohan was the one responsible for eliminating YouTube’s ‘dislike’ video button, claiming that its existence encouraged “bully attacks on small creators,” although this does not explain the times You Tube erased high volume marked dislikes for Hillary Clinton and Church Schumer speeches in the name of “saving face,” sometimes known as erasing evidence that Clinton and Schumer are not that well-liked.
There are a million censorship stories in YouTube City, so many in fact that in 2021 U.S. Senator Mario Rubio sent a letter to Wojicicki raising concerns about the platform’s censorship of religious and politically conservative viewpoints.
“I write to you regarding a concerning series of actions by YouTube to censor or otherwise restrict the speech of its users, particularly ones of religiously or politically conservative backgrounds,” Rubio wrote. “A combination of high-profile moderating actions have recently made headlines and raised questions over a pattern of apparent political and religious bias on YouTube’s part.”
Those conservative viewpoints included a 2020 Heritage Foundation video on gender dysphoria, and a speech by former President Trump that was removed because of “misinformation.”
In February 2021, YouTube (under Wojicicki) banned the conservative Catholic LifeSiteNews, founded by John-Henry Westen in 1997, for alleged misinformation about Covid-19.
LifeSiteNews was founded as a Catholic conservative anti-abortion advocacy website by the Canadian Campaign Life Coalition. It has since expanded its editorial periscope to include a vast array of cultural and religious issues, from the suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass, to severe criticisms of (globalist) Pope Francis.
John-Henry Westen’s LifeSite interviews are distinctive because of their depth and thoughtfulanalysis – including shows like ‘The Prophet Priest: The Truth of Father Malachi Martin Revealed’ and ‘Queen Elizabeth’s Chaplain Became Catholic?’
Devoid of advertising gimmicks, LifeSite and Westen’s videos in particular attract over 300,000 subscribers with an average of 50,000 views on its main show.
The channel’s high number of subscribers speaks for itself, despite liberal Catholic opposition like Commonweal Magazine which lambasted LifeSite in 2021 with charges that it “feigns journalistic accuracy but misleads through omission.”
In 2021, even flamboyantly liberal publications like the National Catholic Reporter protested YouTube’s blocking of a theologian’s talk on the Christian view of sex as a “content violation.”
The ban was enough to inspire San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone and Focus on the Family President, Jim Daly, to write in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that,
“Today’s sexual politics function as a new kind of fundamentalism, one that presents a deep problem to a diverse and democratic society…. Social media enables the new fundamentalism, enforced by the mysterious rules of big tech’s quasi-monopoly…”
YouTube’s infamous ‘three strikes within a 90-day period and you’re out” rule caused Catholic commentator, Patrick Coffin to be sidelined because of spreading covid “misinformation.”
“The left doesn’t want to debate, they want to delete,” Coffin said of his banishment.
On April 11, 2023, it finally happened: LifeSite News reported that YouTube, under the Mohan “process and formation” regime, had permanently deleted the Westen Channel because Westen spoke openly about “the evils of abortion, depopulation, actual case studies of nefarious vaccines, and transgendersim.”
While Westen’s work can now be heard on audacity.com in a strictly audio format, other Catholic commentators like Taylor Marshall, Timothy Gordon and Kennedy Hall are like sitting ducks or bowling pins waiting for You Tube to strike.
It’s not a question of when YouTube will strike, but when.
The words of a crusty old Democrat come to mind:
“Once a government [the YouTube empire] is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures….”
https://www.frontpagemag.com/youtube-silencing-catholic-voices/