YouTube is acting increasingly as a propaganda arm for the political and media elites, censoring content that does not conform to the Leftist agenda. Now it is going even farther, putting restrictions on content that is designed to counteract Leftist indoctrination and inform young people in particular of uncomfortable truths that the Left would prefer they (and you) did not know. On Wednesday, the Young America’s Foundation (YAF), a conservative youth group with chapters on many college and university campuses, revealed that YouTube had put an age restriction on a video of a speech from one of their recent conferences. The offending video was a hard-hitting presentation about the human cost of socialism. It’s easy to see why the elites, as they do their best to railroad us into socialism, would find that threatening.
If there is anything that young people aren’t being taught in today’s woke public schools, it is the devastation that the socialist ideology of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of the Democrat party’s key figures has wrought upon the world. And so at YAF’s recent Exposing Communism Seminar, George Harbison, a writer, speaker, and conservative activist, gave a presentation entitled “The Victims of Socialism.”
To be sure, some of Harbison’s presentation is disturbing stuff: images of people suffering in gulags, or being summarily executed, or starving as a result of socialist economic policies. We see piles of the skulls of those who were executed for the cause of social justice, and other images of the abject misery that socialism inflicts upon human society. Harbison, meanwhile, offers a precise, sober, and meticulously documented narration that ties the images together and makes it clear that socialism is not or should not be an attractive political option for anyone today.
That’s not the sort of message YouTube wants the peasants to hear. So shortly after Harbison’s video was uploaded onto the platform, YouTube sent YAF a message: “We have reviewed your content and determined that it may not be suitable for viewers under the age of 18…. We age-restrict content when we don’t think it’s suitable for younger audiences. This means it will not be visible to users who are logged out, are under 18 years of age, or have Restricted Mode enabled.”
Well, of course. We don’t want tender youth learning that the gift-bag of taxpayer-funded goodies that their political heroes are offering them comes with a very serious catch, or that the policies of those heroes have all too often historically led straight to totalitarianism and mass government-sponsored murder. That might make them reluctant to vote for Democrats, and we can’t have that, now, can we?
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YAF’s response was trenchant, striking right at the heart of YouTube’s hypocrisy: “YouTube has censored our ‘Victims of Socialism’ video, stating it is not ‘suitable’ for children. Meanwhile, content featuring drag queens and transgenderism is available on-demand to viewers of any age.” YAF spokeswoman Kara Zupkus said that the organization was planning to appeal YouTube’s age restriction, adding: “YouTube’s decision to restrict Young America’s Foundation’s educational video on the dangers of socialism is disturbing. The point of such a powerful video is to awaken the next generation in ensuring that socialism never takes hold in America. High school students will now only be able to access politically correct, censored information that Big Tech deems ‘suitable.’ It is a sad day for free speech and for education in America.”
Yes, we have been having many such days recently. Old Joe Biden, after all, only won the Democrat party’s nomination for the presidency by selling out to the party’s socialist wing. A Gallup poll published Monday showed that only 38% of Americans have a positive view of socialism, but if the political and media establishment, as well as the social media giants, have anything to do with it, that number will soon be much higher. George Harbison and YAF are doing the job that all of America’s public schools ought to be doing. In a sane world, YouTube would be featuring the video of Harbison’s presentation and placing it prominently in the recommended section of any video singing the praises of socialism. Instead, YouTube is doing all it can to make sure that the people who need to see this presentation the most will have no access to it.
Well, it could be worse: YouTube could have banned the video altogether, but from the looks of things, that sort of draconian action is likely in the works as the Left grows progressively more authoritarian. Meanwhile, there’s always Rumble.
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