Carlson and Greenwald Push Back Against Censorship: YouTube Caved to ‘The Mob and The Powerful’
Shane Trejo
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FOX News host Tucker Carlson had left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept on his show last night where the men both admonished YouTube for implementing Big Brother presumably because a homosexual Vox employee’s feelings were hurt.
Carlson offered a spirited defense of Stephen Crowder, the conservative pundit who offended the Vox blogger during his comedic podcasts prompting the blogger to push YouTube to censor content, claiming the demonetization of his videos is apart of the corporate war on the free press.
“Platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, these are the modern public square obviously. Congress has acknowledged them as such. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act gives tech companies special immunity from being sued for defamation or fraud,” Carlson said.
“The effect is immunity, and that immunity is worth tens of billions of dollars. It’s one of the reasons the owners of Twitter, Facebook and Google are so rich. You guaranteed that to them through your representatives in the Congress. And yet in return, these tech companies violate the terms of the deal every minute of every day,” Carlson added.
“They’re not open forums. They’re ongoing exercises in control and censorship,” Carlson said to conclude his rant.
Backing up Carlson’s points is the fact that independent, non-partisan journalist Ford Fischer of News2Share and history teacher Scott Allsop were also targeted in the purge alongside Crowder and other right-wing voices. This shows that it is more than just conservative provocateurs who are being impacted by YouTube’s truth commission and Orwellian censorship on other digital platforms.
Greenwald largely agreed with Carlson’s take. The openly homosexual liberal believes Crowder is a “contemptuous cretin” for the remarks he made, but believes he should nevertheless have the right to say them.
“I find Crowder to be a contemptuous cretin,” Greenwald said. “I think he is a bully and bigot. He did not just criticize Carlos, he mocked him for being gay and Latino and sent a lot of harassment his way. That’s the point. Censorship advocates want our brains to just go to the first level of, ‘Do we hate their person and are we glad they are being censored?’
“In reality, this power to censor was not one they wanted,” he added. “It was one that was hoisted upon them largely by journalists who demanded they remove voices from the Internet. Imagine going into journalism and begging corporations to silence people.”
Greenwald noted that the giving a platform to individuals like Crowder is far less of a threat than a mob of jackals having the power to shutter voices based on their capricious whims.
“YouTube caved in defense of the powerful,” Greenwald told Carlson. “That’s what they will always do. Defend the mob and the powerful at the expense of those who are marginalized.”
Vox Media is partly owned by Comcast, one of the most powerful media corporations in the world. Their subsidiary, NBCUniversal pumped $200 million into the fledgling media company in 2015. Begging fellow monolithic corporations to censor their competitors may be their only possible chance to stay afloat at this point.
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