The New American, a semimonthly print publication with daily online content, has been banned from YouTube. Thousands of videos–many with hundreds of thousands of views–went down the memory hole on the Big Tech platform forever.
This scrubbing of The New American happened five months ago, in June 2023. YouTube has still offered no reasons, rationale, or explanation for their actions, despite a demand for answers.
Even before the account was terminated, YouTube had been “shadow banning” it for many years. Videos that received millions of views, such as interviews with doctors exposing the government’s lies on COVID and the injections, were promptly removed, too.
But The New American will not be silenced. In fact, even before YouTube decided to censor this critical American media outlet, the publication was relying more and more on free speech-friendly platforms such as Odysee and Rumble.
Multiple videos from The New American on Rumble have already soared into the millions of views, and many more have reached into the hundreds of thousands, far surpassing anything that was possible on YouTube with its rigged algorithms designed to suppress certain information and promote establishment propaganda.
Art Thompson, former CEO of The John Birch Society, which publishes the magazine, responded to the ban by speaking out. “The John Birch Society has been the vanguard of truth since 1958, exposing the problems that beset our country and, more importantly, offering the solutions for them,” he said.
“We’ve been able to not only slow down many of the initiatives of the conspiracy to enslave us, but to stop many of their programs in their tracks,” Thompson continued. “How have we done this? By simply disseminating the truth as to what is going on and who is behind it.”
Thompson concluded that despite being banned on YouTube, “we [The New American] will continue to reach out through alternative social media platforms,” encouraging people to visit the website, thenewamerican.com, to receive content directly.
In order to be eradicated from YouTube’s platform, a channel has to receive “three strikes” within a 90-day window. The definition of what qualifies for content that is strike-worthy is unclear and undefined by the megacorporation.
YouTube “strikes” videos that violate “community guidelines.” These guidelines prohibit content from being posted that YouTube arbitrarily labels dangerous, false, or violent. According to YouTube’s “community guidelines” page, any content that conveys “hate speech,” “misinformation,” “election misinformation,” or “medical misinformation” is a direct violation of their policies and is subject to termination.
These subjective rubrics can lead to the cancellation of any given page, destroying dissenting opinions, and leaving large companies and the government unaccountable and free from public scrutiny.
Benjamin Franklin, a printer, politician, postmaster, and the sage of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, once observed that “If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.”
In the current age of online censorship, this assessment by Franklin is perhaps more relevant today than it was two centuries ago.
America has wrestled with Big Government, Big Pharma, Big Agriculture, Big Business, and now, Big Tech. The introduction of this latest “big” entity has brought about the weaponization of social media platforms against anyone who questions the narrative of the establishment. This discrimination on the part of tech companies poses a direct threat to liberty, justice, and truth.
Now, thanks to Congress, the American people know that Big Government and Big Tech are actually co-conspirators in silencing the speech of Americans.
If big corporations like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram are going to cancel anyone who provides an alternative point of view, then freethinkers must find alternatives and abandon the sinking ship of censorship.
YouTube did not respond to a request by The Liberty Sentinel for an explanation as to why they canceled The New American.