Donald Trump threatens to shut down NBC and other TV news networks that criticise him
https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-threatens-shut-down-150300346.html
Donald Trump threatens to shut down NBC and other TV news networks that criticise him
October 11, 2017
Donald Trump has threatened to shut down NBC and other American networks, saying that they peddle fake news.
“With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!” Mr Trump wrote in a tweet.
(more…)
Black Lives Matter’s newest phrase: “Liberalism is white supremacy”
According to the student newspaper at the College of William and Mary, the ACLU recently tried to host an event called “Students and the First Amendment.”
However, five minutes after the event began, Black Lives Matter protestors started shouting loud enough to prevent the ACLU from being heard.
The ACLU suggested that both Black Lives Matter and the ACLU be allowed to speak. But the Black Lives Matter protestors would not allow the ACLU to be heard. After 30 minutes of not being allowed to speak, the ACLU canceled the event.
Statements shouted by Black Lives Matter protestors included
“liberalism is white supremacy”
and
“the revolution will not uphold the constitution”
Afterward, the college’s Black Lives Matter chapter posted the following on its Facebook page:
“Tonight, we shut down an event at William & Mary where Claire Gastañaga, executive director of the ACLU of Virginia, was speaking. In contrast to the ACLU, we want to reaffirm our position of zero tolerance for white supremacy no matter what form it decides to masquerade in.”
I’d like to thank social justice warriors for drawing my attention to Ben Shapiro’s excellent speech at UC Berkeley
Although I’ve watched plenty of brief clips of Ben Shapiro at YouTube in the past, I’d never before watched an entire speech of his.
However, after social justice warriors tried to prevent him from speaking at UC Berkeley, I decided to watch the entire thing.
And here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP_9cRUzqMw
The speech itself makes up only the first 28 minutes of the video. I watched the entire 28 minutes. And I loved it. (The rest of the video is a Q&A, which I did not watch.)
So thanks to all the people who drew my attention to the speech by trying to ban it.
In the speech, Shapiro repeatedly condemns white supremacy. He criticizes the alt-right for being against western civilization. And he cites statistics which prove that having a baby out of wedlock, not racism, is the biggest cause of poverty.
UC Berkeley is offering counseling for anyone who was traumatized by Shapiro’s speech.
Sweden prosecutes woman for truthfully saying that immigrants were pooping in the streets
Sweden: 70-Year-Old Woman Prosecuted For Complaining About Migrants Defecating In The Streets
May 2017
A 70-year-old Swedish woman is facing up to four years in prison for complaining on Facebook about migrants defecating in the streets.
From Fria Tider (translated from Swedish with Google):
A 70 year old woman in Dalarna prosecuted for hate speech after writing on Facebook that immigrants are defecating in the streets, writes DT.se.
According to the prosecution, the woman via Facebook wrote disparagingly of people with a foreign background.
In a post from 2015, she has written that immigrants “set cars on fire and urinate and defecate in the streets.”
This violates the law on incitement to racial hatred, according to the prosecutor.
The accused woman in police interrogation admitted that she wrote the post, but denied that she committed a criminal act.
The evidence against the 70-year-old woman is a screenshot from Facebook.
The penalty for incitement to racial hatred is imprisonment not exceeding two years or, for petty offenses, fines. If the offense is considered to be grave sentenced the defendants to prison terms of between six months and four years.
She’s being dragged into court and threatened with jail for a two year old Facebook post which is factually correct.
While the Western media and leftist “human rights” groups will whine about attacks on free speech in places like China and Russia, in Sweden and Germany they’re throwing people in prison for writing “anti-migrant” Facebook posts.
Here’s the “hate speech” video (i.e., speech against Islamic terrorism) that got a U.S. tourist arrested in Canada
Here are two videos by a YouTuber who calls himself “Wild Bill for America.”
The first video is a speech that he gave when he was in the U.S. In the speech, he criticizes Islamic terrorism.
In the second video, he explains how he was arrested for “smuggling hate speech” in Canada because he was planning to give the exact same speech in Canada, and he had the text of the speech on his IPAD that he was carrying with him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZUmYQYDaw8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwaMpTLUmX0
Here’s the 1996 clip from “Bill Nye the Science Guy” which is currently being censored on Netflix
During the original 1996 broadcast of the “Probability” episode of the TV program “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” there was a segment that explained how a person’s gender is determined by genetics.
In 2017, Netflix aired a version of this episode in which this segment had been removed.
I don’t know if it was Netflix, Nye himself, or some other party that instigated this censorship.
Since YouTube has a nasty habit of removing politically incorrect videos, I’m including links to four videos, all of which have the clip.
The censored footage consists entirely and exclusively of the part where the young lady is talking about how gender is determined by genetics. Some of these videos also contain additional content which was not censored:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5z9s_bimnw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PArom6CRB0Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNpac2TYX5Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sV_W5nFmjA
Oregon fines man $500 because he used math to criticize red light cameras without having an engineering license
Oregon Man Claims State Muzzles Red Light Camera Critique
April 26, 2017
An Oregon man’s public criticism of the mathematical formula used by red light cameras got him in trouble — not with the police but with the state engineering board.
So he’s suing, claiming a violation of free speech.
After his wife got a ticket based on a red light camera in Beaverton, Oregon, Mats Järlström, a Swedish-born electronics engineer, studied the calculations used to determine the length of the yellow light cycle. He concluded it was too short, because it failed to account for the longer time a driver needed to turn a corner, rather than go straight through the intersection.
Convinced the cameras were using an out-of-date formula, he took his message to practically anyone who would listen — local TV stations, a conference of traffic engineers, and even the state board of engineer examiners.
That’s what got him in trouble.
The board fined him $500 and said he was violating a state law by speaking about engineering issues without a license.
“By providing the public with his traffic engineering calculations,” the board said, “Järlström engaged in the practice of engineering.” And since he didn’t have a license issued by the state, he was violating the law, it said.
Now he’s suing in federal court, accusing the state of violating his First Amendment right to speak about a public issue.
“Criticizing the government’s engineering isn’t a crime. It’s a constitutional right,” said Samuel Gedge of the Institute for Justice, a conservative public interest law firm representing Järlström. “You don’t need to be a licensed engineer to talk about traffic lights.”
As many states do, Oregon prohibits a person from practicing engineering without a license. But the state’s board of engineering examiners equates publicly talking about engineering issues with practicing engineering.
“I was fined simply for speaking out and was told that I can’t truthfully call myself an engineer. People should be free to debate any topic, including technical topics like math and traffic lights,” Järlström said.
A spokesman for the state engineering board had no comment on the lawsuit, and the state has not yet responded in court.
Järlström paid the $500 fine. But he isn’t suing to get his money back.
Another Institute for Justice lawyer on his legal team, Wesley Hottot, said the state is essentially requiring a permission slip to debate government policy. “This board and licensing boards across the country think the First Amendment doesn’t apply to them. They couldn’t be more wrong.”
The hypocrites at the ACLU called the police because they didn’t like an opinion that someone expressed
Woman Crashes ACLU Stop Trump Meeting and Urges Snowflakes to Think for Themselves – Cops Are Called
March 11, 2017
Activist Ginger McQueen crashed the local ACLU Stop Trump training session today and began to lecture the indoctrinated leftists.
Ginger urged the snowflakes to think for themselves.
So they called the police on her.
When the officer got there he shook her hand and laughed.
“I crashed the ACLU’s Stop Trump meeting. They called the police on me. The cop shook my hand and laughed.”
– Ginger McQueen
“Yes, the police actually showed up because the snowflakes can’t handle having their ideas challenged or their pictures taken in a public.”
– Ginger McQueen
“The ACLU sued for citizens to be able to film police, but citizens can’t film the ACLU.”
Ginger McQueen
For the curious, here’s the last speech that Milo Yiannopoulos gave before the Berkeley riots
For anyone who has never heard a Milo Yiannopoulos speech and is curious to know what all the fuss is about, this is the last speech that he gave before the Berkeley riots. This speech was given at Cal Poly on January 31, 2017 – just one day before the Berkeley riots.
And while you’re watching this speech, please keep in mind that more than 100 UC Berkeley faculty members signed a petition to ban Milo from speaking at UC Berkeley the very next day. Every Milo speech is different, but this speech from Cal Poly is representative of what these UC Berkely professors, and all of the other anti-free speech social justice warriors, don’t want you to hear, spoken by someone whom they claim is a Nazi.
I’m guessing that Milo has become about 1,000 times more popular than he ever would have been if people hadn’t tried to silence him.
Milo starts speaking at 5:46
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gv3xPifTEE
Disgusting! More than 100 UC Berkeley faculty signed a petition to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking!
More than 100 UC Berkeley faculty members signed a petition to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking.
This is absolutely disgusting.
They ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Here is the petition and the faculty members who signed it. (The document continues after the first set of signatures, and there are other signatures after that first set.)
Milo Yiannopoulos: ‘The Left is absolutely terrified of free speech’
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Yiannopoulos-The-Left-is-absolutely-terrified-10901916.php
Yiannopoulos: ‘The Left is absolutely terrified of free speech’
February 1, 2017
Milo Yiannopoulos blamed “violence from the left” for the cancellation of his scheduled UC Berkeley appearance Wednesday evening.
Shortly after the Breitbart News editor’s event was called off, he posted a statement on his Facebook page:
“I have been evacuated from the UC Berkeley campus after violent left-wing protestors tore down barricades lit fires, threw rocks and Roman candles at the windows and breached the ground floor of the building. My team and I are safe. But the event has been cancelled. I’ll let you know more when the facts become clear. One thing we do know for sure: the Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down.”
In a subsequent interview with Fox News, Yiannopoulos said UC Berkeley is “a liberal campus. They hate libertarians or conservatives who dare to express an opinion on their campus. They particularly don’t like me.”
The self-described “libertarian, gay, Trump-supporting provocateur” said college campuses are places where “you should be able to engage with different ideas.”
Those who attend his appearances, he said, include people who “don’t necessarily agree with me but just want to hear the other side. They were prevented from doing so this evening by violence from the left — the left that is terrified of anyone who they think might be persuasive or might be interesting or might take people with them.”
Video shows left wing thug pepper spraying female Milo Yiannopoulos supporter at UC Berkeley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x643kcoc8FU
YouTube disables Milo Yiannopoulos livestream hours before immigration speech in New Mexico
YouTube has the ability to broadcast events live as they happen, but YouTube decided that it would not allow it in this particular case. Only after Milo Yiannopoulos finished his speech did YouTube allow him to put it up on his channel. So here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmtrDzmDhqU
YouTube Disables MILO Livestream Hours Before Immigration Speech in New Mexico
January 27, 2017
YouTube disabled Breitbart News Senior Editor MILO’s livestreaming ability on Friday, just hours before his speech on immigration at the University of New Mexico.
MILO’s ability to host livestreams was withdrawn from YouTube after his video “MILO At UC – Colorado Springs: Democrats Are The ‘Party Of The Cuckold,’” was flagged and subsequently removed.
“Your video ‘MILO At UC – Colorado Springs: Democrats Are The ‘Party Of The Cuckold’ was flagged for review. Upon review, we’ve determined that it violates our guidelines,” YouTube declared in a notice to MILO. “We’ve removed it from YouTube and assigned a Community Guidelines strike, or temporary penalty, to your account.”
Though MILO has appealed the channel restrictions, YouTube has yet to remove the livestream ban.
Consequently, MILO’s speech at the University of New Mexico tonight will not be livestreamed. The speech will be posted in its entirely to MILO’s YouTube channel after the event as usual, but fans will not be able to watch it live.
At UC Davis, social justice warriors can’t handle the fact that a refugee from a totalitarian dictatorship actually had the nerve to defend Milo Yiannopulos’s right to free speech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5FGDFKeg9k
At UC Davis, social justice warriors use violence and assault, including throwing hot coffee at ABC News cameraman, to cause cancellation of Milo Yiannopulos speech
https://twitter.com/ABC10Frances/status/820110080875982848/photo/1
Frances Wang Verified account @ABC10Frances
My photographer was doing an interview when someone poured hot coffee on him & out equipment. @ucdavis @ABC10
7:27 PM – 13 Jan 2017
http://www.breitbart.com/milo/2017/01/13/reports-leftists-pull-hammers-milo-uc-davis-event-smash-windows/
MILO UC Davis Event Cancelled After Leftists Tear Down Barricades, Engage In Violence
January 13, 2017
MILO’s event at the University of California, Davis has been cancelled after protesters tore down barricades and engaged in scuffles outside the venue. A camerman for ABC10 was also attacked with hot coffee.
ABC-7 reports “violent interactions with protesters.” Video footage shows protesters jumping barricades and throwing them towards police.
Dutch court convicts man of “insulting” Muslim immigrants
The population of Morocco is 99% Muslim.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/09/europe/geert-wilders-hate-speech-trial-verdict/
Geert Wilders guilty of ‘insulting a group’ after hate speech trial
December 9, 2016
The Dutch far-right opposition leader Geert Wilders was convicted Friday of inciting discrimination and “insulting a group” after a trial over statements he made about Moroccans.
But the court found him not guilty of incitement to hatred and handed down no punishment.
Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), was charged after inciting supporters into a chant calling for fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands in 2014.
According to a court statement, Wilders asked his audience: “Do you want more or less Moroccans in this city and in the Netherlands?”
The audience repeatedly chanted “less.”
The court said that Wilders “singled out an entire group of citizens” and that the message “came through loud and clear.” It convicted him of insulting a group and incitement to discrimination.
But the court found insufficient evidence to find him guilty of incitement to hatred.
The court, which could have fined Wilders, decided that verdicts were sufficient punishment and imposed no further penalty.
The 53-year-old far-right leader has campaigned against “Islamic immigration.”
“Three PVV-hating judges just declared Moroccans a race and convicted me, as well as half of the Dutch population,” Wilders tweeted shortly after the ruling.
Wilders said in a Twitter post ahead of the verdict Friday morning that he will “continue to speak the truth about the Moroccan problem.”
“No judge, politician or terrorist will stop me,” he added.
Wilders has previously called Islamic immigration “an invasion” that will “replace our people” and “erase our culture.”
Among his other policies, Wilders has called for a referendum on the Netherlands’ membership in the European Union, and a full burqa ban.
Wilders, 53, came to international attention in 2008 with the provocative online film “Fitna,” which juxtaposed the aftermath of terrorist attacks with verses from the Quran.
Known as much for his anti-Muslim views as his bleached hair, Wilders has been called “Europe’s Donald Trump” — with his party gaining popularity in recent years.
It’s not the first time Wilders has appeared in court on hate speech charges.
In 2011 he was acquitted of inciting hatred against Muslims, after calling for the Quran to be banned in the Netherlands.
Friday’s verdict comes three months ahead of the country’s parliamentary election in March, when Wilders will be vying for the top job of prime minister.
The opposition party leader will face current prime minister Mark Rutte, whose conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) rules in a coalition with the the Labour Party (PvdA).
Rutte said at a press conference Friday that neither he nor his party would be willing to govern with Wilders unless he retracted his comments about Moroccans.
Wilders has run on a party manifesto focused on a so-called “de-Islamification” of the Netherlands, in which he lays out an 11-point plan pledging, among other things, to shut down all the country’s Islamic schools and close the borders to migrants from Islamic nations.
France banned this TV commercial that shows smiling children with Down Syndrome, so here it is for you to watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju-q4OnBtNU
The Sensitivity Police Strike Again
The court has ruled that the video is — wait for it — “inappropriate” for French television.
December 3, 2016
The word “inappropriate” is increasingly used inappropriately. It is useful to describe departures from good manners or other social norms, such as wearing white after Labor Day or using the salad fork with the entree. But the adjective has become a splatter of verbal fudge, a weasel word falsely suggesting measured seriousness. Its misty imprecision does not disguise, it advertises, the user’s moral obtuseness.
A French court has demonstrated how “inappropriate” can be an all-purpose device of intellectual evasion and moral cowardice. The court said it is inappropriate to do something that might disturb people who killed their unborn babies for reasons that were, shall we say, inappropriate.
Prenatal genetic testing enables pregnant women to be apprised of a variety of problems with their unborn babies, including Down syndrome. It is a congenital condition resulting from a chromosomal defect that causes varying degrees of mental disability and some physical abnormalities, such as low muscle tone, small stature, flatness of the back of the head and an upward slant to the eyes. Within living memory, Down syndrome people were called Mongoloids.
Now they are included in the category called “special needs” people. What they most need is nothing special. It is for people to understand their aptitudes, and to therefore quit killing them in utero.
Down syndrome, although not common, is among the most common congenital anomalies at 49.7 per 100,000 births. In approximately 90 percent of instances when prenatal genetic testing reveals Down syndrome, the baby is aborted. Cleft lips or palates, which occur in 72.6 per 100,000 births, also can be diagnosed in utero and sometimes are the reason a baby is aborted.
In 2014, in conjunction with World Down Syndrome Day (March 21), the Global Down Syndrome Foundation prepared a two-minute video titled “Dear Future Mom” to assuage the anxieties of pregnant women who have learned that they are carrying a Down syndrome baby. More than 7 million people have seen the video online in which one such woman says, “I’m scared: what kind of life will my child have?” Down syndrome children from many nations tell the woman that her child will hug, speak, go to school, tell you he loves you and “can be happy, just like I am — and you’ll be happy, too.”
The French state is not happy about this. The court has ruled that the video is — wait for it — “inappropriate” for French television. The court upheld a ruling in which the French Broadcasting Council banned the video as a commercial. The court said the video’s depiction of happy Down syndrome children is “likely to disturb the conscience of women who had lawfully made different personal life choices.”
So, what happens on campuses does not stay on campuses. There, in many nations, sensitivity bureaucracies have been enforcing the relatively new entitlement to be shielded from whatever might disturb, even inappropriate jokes. And now this rapidly metastasizing right has come to this: A video that accurately communicates a truthful proposition — that Down syndrome people can be happy and give happiness — should be suppressed because some people might become ambivalent, or morally queasy, about having chosen to extinguish such lives because . . .
This is why the video giving facts about Down syndrome people is so subversive of the flaccid consensus among those who say aborting a baby is of no more moral significance than removing a tumor from a stomach. Pictures persuade. Today’s improved prenatal sonograms make graphic the fact that the moving fingers and beating heart are not mere “fetal material.” They are a baby. Toymaker Fisher-Price, children’s apparel manufacturer OshKosh, McDonald’s, and Target have featured Down syndrome children in ads that the French court would probably ban from television.
The court has said, in effect, that the lives of Down syndrome people — and by inescapable implication, the lives of many other disabled people — matter less than the serenity of people who have acted on one or more of three vicious principles: That the lives of the disabled are not worth living. Or that the lives of the disabled are of negligible value next to the desire of parents to have a child who has no special — meaning inconvenient – needs. Or that government should suppress the voices of Down syndrome children in order to guarantee other people’s right not to be disturbed by reminders that they have made lethal choices on the basis of one or both of the first two inappropriate principles.
Totalitarian fascist Donald Trump wants flag burners to be jailed or stripped of U.S. citizenship
Donald Trump just said:
“Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”
This is another reason why I’m glad I voted for Gary Johnson in this month’s election.
As long as a person who burns the flag is burning their own flag (i.e., not one that they stole from someone else), and is obeying the fire and safety laws, then I fully support their right to burn it.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds: ‘Tolerant’ educators exile Trump voters from campus
‘Tolerant’ educators exile Trump voters from campus
By Glenn Harlan Reynolds
November 14, 2016
With puppies, Play-doh and coloring books, safe spaces and therapy sessions turn universities into a joke.
One of the more amusing bits of fallout from last week’s election has been the safe-space response of many colleges and universities to the election of the “wrong” candidate. But on closer examination, this response isn’t really amusing. In fact, it’s downright mean.
Trump’s substantial victory, when most progressives expected a Hillary landslide, came as a shock to many. That shock seems to have been multiplied in academe, where few people seem to know any Trump supporters — or, at least, any Trump supporters who’ll admit to it.
The response to the shock has been to turn campuses into kindergarten. The University of Michigan Law School announced a ”post-election self-care” event with “food and play,” including “coloring sheets, play dough [sic], positive card-making, Legos and bubbles with your fellow law students.” (Embarrassed by the attention, UM Law scrubbed the announcement from its website, perhaps concerned that people would wonder if its graduates would require Legos and bubbles in the event of stressful litigation.)
Stanford emailed its students and faculty that psychological counseling was available for those experiencing “uncertainty, anger, anxiety and/or fear” following the election. So did the University of Michigan’s Flint campus.
Meanwhile, even the Ivy League wasn’t immune, with Penn (Trump’s alma mater) creating a post-election safe space with puppies and coloring books:
Student Daniel Tancredi reported that the people who attended were “fearful” about the results of the election.
“For the most part, students just hung out and ate snacks and made small talk,” Tancredi told The College Fix. “Of course, that was in addition to coloring and playing with the animals.”
At Cornell, meanwhile, students held a “Cry-in.”
As the event took place, students — roughly 20 or so, according to the Sun’s video — wrote their reactions and emotions on poster boards with colored markers, or with chalk on the ground. A chilly day on the Ithaca campus, at one point the demonstrators huddled together as what appeared to be a barista brought them warm drinks. Several adults, most likely professors, stood around the group. The event appeared to take on the atmosphere of a funeral wake.
Yale had a ”group scream.”
At Tufts, the university offered arts and crafts, while the University of Kansas reminded students that there were plenty of “therapy dogs” available. At other schools, exams were cancelled and professors expressed their sympathy to traumatized students.
It’s easy to mock this as juvenile silliness — because, well, it is juvenile silliness of the sort documented in Frank Furedi’s What Happened To The University? But that’s not all it is. It’s also exactly what these schools purport to abhor: An effort to marginalize and silence part of the university community.
In an email to students, the University of Michigan’s President, Mark Schlissel, wrote: “Our responsibility is to remain committed to education, discovery and intellectual honesty — and to diversity, equity and inclusion. We are at our best when we come together to engage respectfully across our ideological differences; to support ALL who feel marginalized, threatened or unwelcome; and to pursue knowledge and understanding.”
But when you treat an election in which the “wrong” candidate wins as a traumatic event on a par with the 9/11 attacks, calling for counseling and safe spaces, you’re implicitly saying that everyone who supported that “wrong” candidate is, well, unsafe. Despite the talk about diversity and inclusion, this is really sending the signal that people who supported Trump — and Trump carried the state of Michigan, so there are probably quite a few on campus — aren’t really included in acceptable campus culture. It’s not promoting diversity, it’s enforcing uniformity. It’s not promoting inclusion, it’s practicing exclusion. And, though it pretends to be about nurturing, it’s actually about being mean to those who don’t fall in the nurtured class. Schlissel says he wants the University of Michigan to be “a welcoming place for all members of society,” but how welcome can students who backed Trump feel in the wake of this performance?
A viral (and profane) YouTube rant by Jonathan Pie points out that this sort of fear and “othering” of political opponents is why Trump won, and why Democrats were shocked by his victory. Pie’s right to tell people that they should engage in discussion rather than dismissal of people they disagree with, and colleges and universities should listen to him.
If, that is, it’s not too triggering.
YouTube censors video on … left-wing censorship
This is the video in question from PragerU that YouTube censored for its consrvative viewpoint. The only reason YouTube put it back up was because the Wall St. Journal complained about the censorship. The video is G-rated – it has no profanity, violence, or sex:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXocwzYjcBc
This is the YouTube channel for PragerU: https://www.youtube.com/user/PragerUniversity/videos
YouTube Censors Video on … Left-Wing Censorship
November 1, 2016
What do you suppose happens on YouTube to a video that is a “discourse on the First Amendment and the tactics that progressives are using to limit speech and political engagement by conservatives”? Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, it falls victim to an algorithm with absolutely no sense of irony.
A video titled “The Dark Art of Political Intimidation” was posted last week by WSJ columnist Kimberly Strassel as a PragerU lecture. “Within several hours of PragerU posting the video,” said a WSJ editorial, YouTube placed it in ‘restricted mode,’ making it inaccessible to schools, libraries and young Americans whose parents have enabled YouTube technology filters.”
Conservative radio host Dennis Prager’s idea for PragerU is to give students alternative, non-progressive takes on history, civics and other issues. Of the 100+ PragerU videos, YouTube restricted 18 of them, even though there’s no cursing, no violence or any kind of indecency in any of them.
What the videos have done is run afoul of progressive orthodoxy. YouTube told WSJ that “video restrictions are decided by an ‘algorithm’ that factors in ‘community flagging’ and ‘sensitive content.’” In other words, the algorithm was tripped by progressives trying to limit speech and political engagement by conservatives. Flag a video enough times and the restrictions kick in. Do it often enough and YouTube is your safe space. Extra points for flagging videos that accuse the left of doing exactly what you’re doing.
Unless the WSJ gives YouTube a headache about the system, which it did in the case of Strassel’s video. YouTube lifted the restriction over the weekend.
