YouTube Tried to Censor Us

If you’ve ever contemplated what censorship in media looks like, here’s an illustration.

At 12:00 PM on February 8, the Capital Research Center released our latest short video entitled “The Dirty Secrets of Democratic Politics.” I narrated that brief exposé on Robert Creamer, the longtime Democratic Party operative whose attempts to smear Donald Trump supporters in 2016 using violent agitators were exposed by the investigative group Project Veritas.

You can watch that video here:

When Project Veritas promoted the video in a tweet that afternoon, we discovered that YouTube had removed CRC’s video for supposedly violating their community guidelines on “hate speech” (see the tweet and image below).

Remember Bob Creamer, who orchestrated @HillaryClinton‘s dirty tricks during the 2016 election? @capitalresearch https://t.co/U3mFzmj0ew

— PVeritas Action (@PVeritas_Action) February 9, 2018

In less than 6 hours, our video—which contains no “hate speech” or other violations of YouTube’s community guidelines of any kind, and even used footage from Project Veritas that has been up on YouTube for well over a year and has millions of views—was flagged for review and removed by a platform supposedly built on promoting free speech.

It isn’t the first time YouTube has censored our work.

In December 2017, the company targeted another CRC video called “Right-Wing or Left-Wing, Identity Politics is Destroying America,” narrated by CRC film and video producer Joseph Klein. (Watch it here.) Despite our nonpartisan critique of identity politics for driving Americans apart, YouTube restricted access to the video—blocking it from view in 28 foreign countries and halting American viewers from advertising, commenting, or “liking” the video. Joseph, who also produced the more recently removed video, wrote about that experience here.

After we fought back and brought these outrages to light, YouTube quietly reinstated both videos. But it’s become increasingly clear: when it comes to allowing free speech, YouTube is willing to break their professed values if it advances their ideology at the cost of conservatives.