#VoxAdpocalpyse and the Guild of Journalists

Vox’s Carlos Maza recently accused conservative YouTube host Steven Crowder of “hate speech.” Corporate media promoted his complaints.

• “YouTube: No, We Won’t Remove These Videos of Racist, Anti-Gay Harassment Because It’s Just ‘Debating,'” Gizmodo
• “YouTube is refusing to punish a star with millions of fans after he hurled homophobic slurs at a journalist,” Business Insider
• “A right-wing YouTuber hurled racist, homophobic taunts at a gay reporter. The company did nothing,” Washington Post

YouTube promptly demonetized Mr. Crowder’s videos, warning him he could start making money again if he stopped selling T-shirts Mr. Maza didn’t like — such as ones that say “Socialism is for Fags.” With nearly 4 million subscribers and 836 million views, Mr. Crowder must have been making a bundle.

Mr. Maza appears to have succeeded in turning off the tap — but then he is a member of two protected classes: Hispanics and homosexuals. He’s also a member of another powerful class: journalists.

Just weeks ago Mr. Maza endorsed harassing political opponents.

Like many others with “verified” accounts, he suffered no consequences.

Some in Congress want to make journalists an officially protected class. In February 2018, presidential candidate and congressman Eric Swalwell introduced the “Journalist Protection Act,” which would “make a federal crime of certain attacks on those reporting the news.” Congressman Swalwell blamed President Trump for creating a “toxic atmosphere.”

Congressman Swalwell and Senators Richard Blumenthal and Robert Menendez reintroduced the bill in March 2019. “Both before, and since taking office, President Trump has blatantly stoked a climate of extreme hostility towards the press,” said their release. It listed several attacks, including a reporter who was punched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. The release didn’t mention it was antifa who reportedly did the punching.

Even without government recognition, journalists are already a privileged group. Technology companies, payment processors, and social media platforms respond to their complaints. Other journalists magnify their gripes. Entire careers can be destroyed by their attacks. In August 2018, companies including Facebook, Apple, Spotify, and YouTube almost simultaneously deplatformed Alex Jones after hostile coverage by CNN’s Oliver Darcy.

In March 2018, Taylor Lorenz of the Daily Beast, perhaps to apologize for reporting an antifa attack at Unite the Right, reported that several popular Instagramers were actually Pamela Geller’s daughters. Media platform Oath dumped them within 24 hours.

BuzzFeed’s Joseph Bernstein claimed Sam Hyde’s show on Comedy Central was the Alt Right’s “very own TV show on Adult Swim.” Despite strong ratings, executives cancelled it.

These campaigns follow a formula.

• “How One Major Internet Company Helps Serve Up Hate on the Web,” ProPublica
• “Why Is Audible Still Featuring Far-Right Author Jack Donovan?”, Truthout
• “Tech Companies Promised To Stop Helping Neo-Nazis Raise Money. They Haven’t,” Huffington Post

These aren’t news stories; they’re demands to deny services. Companies usually obey.

On June 5, YouTube announced stronger measures to “tackle hate.” It would begin “prohibiting videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status.”

American Renaissance had 17 videos deleted, despite our respectful, rational arguments. YouTube entirely deleted other channels, some with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

This policy shift is taking place just a few weeks after a BuzzFeed investigation “exposing” SuperChat as a service political dissidents were using. It’s only two months after a congressional hearing in which Democrats called for a “counter-insurgency” against whiteness and more restrictions on free speech.

In its statement, YouTube bragged about limiting “harmful misinformation,” and said it would “also start raising up more authoritative content in recommendations.” How will YouTube identify “misinformation” and “authoritative content”?

YouTube claims to be fighting “conspiracy theories,” even though some are true. And what qualifies as a “conspiracy theory” depends on who you are. Most Republicans would say it is a conspiracy theory to claim President Trump is a “Russian agent,” but countless videos on YouTube suggest it.

YouTube claims authority over medical matters. If “anti-vaxxers” or “miracle cures” are dubious, what about claims for an all-meat diet, or marijuana, or the healing powers of celery juice? What about channels, such as Oprah Winfrey’s, that encourage belief in angels, psychics, and ghosts?

YouTube said it would “remove content denying that well-documented violent events, like the Holocaust or the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, took place.” Would content denying or justifying antifa violence be removed? Or violence against white South African farmers? Or the expulsion of ethnic Germans from certain areas of Eastern Europe after World War II? It’s easy to find content disputing the Holodomor.

The greatest “misinformation” today is about race. Race is a biological reality. Some mainstream scholars admit this. Racial differences have social, economic and political implications. Race denialism hurts society, and censorship makes it worse.

YouTube’s new policy means journalists have even more power to target, demonetize, and silence people they don’t like. Pointing out double standards won’t matter, any more than it does to Twitter.

Deplatforming’s deeper premise is that Americans are easily fooled and must be nursemaided by people who know better. If voters can’t be trusted to sift wisdom from folly, democracy is futile. So is the jury system.

Corporate and political elites can “manufacture consensus” (to use Noam Chomsky’s phrase) by deplatforming dissidents and manipulating search results. Censoring one party almost guarantees victory for the other.

Sometimes, the specter of “foreign agents” justifies censorship. In December 2016, The Washington Post listed American Renaissance as a “Russian propaganda outlet.”

In an internal briefing, Google (which owns YouTube) identified “Russian interference,” the election of President Trump, and the rise of the Alternative for Deutchland party as reasons to abandon the “utopian” ideal of unfettered free speech. This remarkably candid expression of a desire to control the news — and thereby control political outcomes — was called “The Good Censor.” One concept discussed was giving priority to “authoritative voices” over “have a go” (ordinary people) commentators. YouTube now admits it is doing this: “[I]f a user is watching a video that comes close to violating our policies, our systems may include more videos from authoritative sources (like top news channels) in the ‘watch next’ panel.”

Donald Trump would not have been elected without 2016’s online culture. He should have protected free speech early in his term. He didn’t. Many fervent supporters will be gone in 2020.

“Politics is downstream from culture,” Andrew Breitbart often said. Unfortunately, online culture is downstream from power.

Corporate elites hold this power, but journalists like Carlos Maza help decide who can speak, organize, and make a living online when other journalists obligingly swarm the selected target. (The late Joseph Sobran called them “The Hive.”) In some respects, journalists have more power than politicians.

Censorship will get worse. Affirmative action, campus leftism, and white guilt encourage non-white agitators; YouTube’s spinelessness encourages journalists to attack new targets. They will smear BitChute and Telegram as they did Gab. 4chan and 8chan are under threat. Furthermore, when sensible opinions are demonized and silenced, it drives some people to radicalization and violence — which may be what elites want. “It’s going to get worse,” tweeted Mike Cernovich Wednesday night.

President Trump defeated the corporate media in 2016; in 2012 he revealed his secret. “I love Twitter,” he tweeted. “It’s like owning your own newspaper.” The Internet was an explosion of freedom of the press because everyone could own a newspaper. Freedom of speech was a gift to us because in a fair fight, race realism wins.

Now, journalism is again becoming a closed guild. On important issues, the West has less free speech than China. President Trump should force change, and there is one thing that may force his hand: his political self-interest. Without online free speech, he has no chance in 2020. But does he really even want to win?

We will go on regardless, even if it means the post office and hard copy.

The silver lining is that deplatforming forces us to build new alternatives, new communities, and new tools. A community of white advocates is being created because we are being forced into it. Our opponents are not leaving us a way out. In the short term, this is painful. In the long term, it ensures victory.

Be confident. They are desperate to silence us because they are scared.

We aren’t.