YouTube Blacklists Spain’s Populist ‘Vox’ Political Party

YouTube has blacklisted the channel of Spain’s populist Vox Party, in a move that will likely exacerbate claims that Google is actively suppressing right-leaning and conservative content.

“YouTube has deleted Vox’s entire channel without explanation,” the party wrote on Twitter. “The decision to remove the channel is a serious attack on the freedom of expression and dissemination of a political party. We demand an explanation from YouTube and that the account is restored as soon as possible.”

Vox later revealed that YouTube had taken the decision on the grounds that left-wing activists had lodged complaints of copyright infringement.

“YouTube has informed us that the disabling of the VOX channel is due to the complaint made by three people who believe that we have used the content of theirs,” they explained. “The three people who have denounced us are left-wing activists… We have found that other political parties and progressive channels use the same audiovisual resources without being denounced for it.”

The Vox party later used the blacklisting to accuse YouTube of bowing to the demands of left-wing activists, a trend extensively documented by Breitbart News and other conservative news sources.

“We take advantage of this fact to show our outrage at the arbitrary actions of Twitter, Facebook and Google; hypersensitive to the requests of activists of totalitarian Marxism and the establishment,” they continued. “We show our support to all those who, like us, have been affected by these arbitrary actions by those responsible for these social networks in recent months.”

The move provides fresh evidence of political meddling on behalf of Google and other major Silicon Valley firms. In April’s general election, the Vox Party won 24 seats in the Spanish parliament, obtaining around 10 percent of the nationwide vote. The party also recently returned three MEP’s in last month’s European Parliamentary Elections.

YouTube did not respond to Breitbart News’s request for comment.