InfoWars Editor-at-Large and popular conservative YouTube commentator Paul Joseph Watson joined Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow on SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Daily, Friday, to discuss YouTube’s purge of conservative, libertarian, and centrist accounts.
“Calling in from London is someone I’m very excited to talk to, Paul Joseph Watson. He’s an editor-at-large at InfoWars,” welcomed Marlow. “You probably most know him from his YouTube channel which is wildly popular, and I’m excited to talk to Paul because he’s a smart guy. This is an important topic we’re going to get into, and most importantly people don’t want me to talk to him. I’m not supposed to talk to you, Paul.”
Watson laughed, before Marlow continued, “Let’s get right into it. YouTube is threatening InfoWars in particular, they say you’re one strike away from the YouTube ban, and I’m surprised they’re even giving you fair warning.”
“Well, this all came about, and this is what’s amazing to me, Alex, as a result of basically a CNN lobbying campaign. Last week they put the article up that you just mentioned saying that we were one strike away basically from a YouTube ban, which is what happens afterwards,” replied Watson. “We’re back to one strike, by the way, they revoked one of them. This started a chain of events which people are now calling the YouTube purge.”
Watson then explained that though the purge was largely affecting right-wing accounts, there were also centrist accounts being sanctioned, noting, “Yesterday they took out Sargon of Akkad, who is a self-described liberal centrist. He’s been locked out of his account. But people who have discussed, for example, the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, that is what appears to be the moral contrived panic that YouTube took advantage of to take out many of these right-leaning accounts.”
“Just last night, Jerome Corsi, who is our bureau chief… He’s been in the White House press briefing room… His account has been completely terminated. So it seems like they’re using this contrived moral panic that came about as of the Parkland students becoming public activists, so you can’t even question them beyond the pale, they use that to then target the conservative right-leaning and even centrist accounts,” he declared. “And now, YouTube has come out and admitted that they made a mistake. That it was all just a mistake. Meanwhile, the accounts keep getting suspended… Mike Cernovich put up a public video documenting a street protest of Antifa radicals chanting death threats against conservatives, and that video got taken down for community guideline strikes. So that’s why people are calling it a purge, because it really does seem very widespread across all these different topics, and not just on the right.”
When asked if he thought free speech was deteriorating, Watson replied, “Oh, completely. This is the worst I’ve seen it in terms of social media, ever.”
“It’s just so ironic because our videos are getting flagged for harassment and bullying… That’s the excuse they use to take them down, and eventually take the channel down,” proclaimed Watson. “CNN can go to an old lady’s house in Florida, stick a camera in her face, accuse her of being in bed with the Russians, harass her to the point where she has to retreat into her home, and that’s completely fine. That’s not harassment. That’s not bullying. A national news organization basically exposing an individual, a seventy-five-year-old woman. You have Pamela Geller’s daughters, now being exposed on Twitter by the Daily Beast to the point where they have to close down their Twitter accounts. Pamela Geller has received numerous credible threats and death threats from Islamic terrorists, but that’s not bullying, that’s not harassment.”
“We’re facing the regressive left which is openly applauding, celebrating, and popping champagne corks over free speech being dismantled. You asked, Alex, when it started. Obviously there’s been a build-up since the demonetization controversy, but I mean I warned back on August first, which is the day when YouTube announced the ADL… the Anti-Defamation League, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, would be empowered to flag ‘offensive, harassment, bullying’ content and take it down on YouTube,” Watson expressed. “The ADL thinks a cartoon frog is hate speech, the ADL thinks the OK hand sign is hate speech. Those are the people policing content. We’re going to have problems. The SPLC listed Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an ex-Muslim reformist, and Maajid Nawaz, a Muslim reformist, as anti-Muslim extremists. Painting a target on their heads for jihadists. These are the people who are now deciding what’s offensive, what’s within the acceptable limits of conversation, on YouTube. So, obviously that is going to create an environment where conservatives get censored not for conspiracy talk, or edgy content, but merely for opinions alone.”
“Now when you have a group like the SPLC, whose entire business model is based around fanning the flames of hysteria over hate speech, obviously they’re going to characterize completely normal content, in some cases like with PragerU, as something other than what it is,” he added. “And that’s where we’re going to have big problems with YouTube, and it’s already happening.”
After Marlow asked Watson why he hasn’t left YouTube and moved onto another platform, Watson responded, “It’s completely pointless. You have to be on the battlefield where the audience is. Right now that is YouTube, you can’t just shift to a different platform and put in the number of hours it takes to become popular on YouTube.”
“Alex, I don’t think people understand how hard it is, how much work it takes to establish a presence and a dedicated audience on YouTube, which is why the left hates the right. I mean I joked, Alex, to the New York Times about six months ago that YouTube was a right-wing safe space, because while left-wing late-night comedians may have a good presence on there, in terms of a community, the left really doesn’t on YouTube,” he concluded. “It’s centrists, it’s skeptics, it’s conservatives, and I think that’s related to the fact that the left, by and large, are somewhat lazy. You have to have a personality to be successful, you have to have content that resonates on YouTube. Generally speaking, on the left you have like Jimmy Kimmel with ten different people writing his scripts every night. The left, as individuals, are quite poor at those things, which is why they’re quite poor at YouTube. Obviously, you’ve got some successful channels, but in terms of a community, they’re really getting their butts kicked. I mean my channel and Alex Jones’ channel have more subscribers than CNN. CNN is a global network with millions and millions of dollars of funding, compared to InfoWars, which is reasonably sizeable, and we have greater reach, which is why they’re panicking. They can’t compete with us, so they have to shut us down.”
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Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington, or like his page at Facebook.