Ya can’t make it up. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul uploaded a video to YouTube from an interview he did with Newsmax. The subject: Dr. Anthony Fauci’s handling of COVID-19. The Senator is famously a Fauci critic and has sparred repeatedly with Fauci in Senate hearings.
You can guess what happened next. YouTube pulled the video. But of course they did.
But Senator Paul was a few moves ahead of the lefties who run YouTube. He quickly posted this response video to Rumble titled It Is Time For Unfiltered News. NewsBusters reported this:
“Paul criticized YouTube censorship in his response video calling it “very dangerous.” He added:“[I]t stifles debate and promotes groupthink where the truth is defined by people with a political agenda.” Paul later called the incident as a “badge of honor” in a tweet and said that the platform not only removed the second video but also suspended his channel for seven days.
A badge of honor . . . leftwing cretins at Youtube banning me for 7 days for a video that quotes 2 peer reviewed articles saying cloth masks don’t work.
If you want to see the banned video go to Liberty Tree https://t.co/gsTUwuLZGL
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) August 10, 2021
The senator told viewers the reasons YouTube purportedly gave for removing the Newsmax interview. ‘YouTube said the video violated their policy because of my comments on masks and that they don’t allow videos that contradict the government’s guidance on COVID,’ he said.
…He also expressed his concerns about Big Tech’s growing power. ‘YouTube may be a private entity, but they’re acting like an arm of the government censoring those who present an alternative view to the science deniers in Washington,’ he said in the video.”
Meanwhile, conservative radio host John Fredericks reported this:
“Sioux Falls, South Dakota – Yesterday, my email distribution vendor of 15 years, Mailchimp suspended our account for six hours and blocked the distribution of our newsletter.
In so doing, our content to our opt-in subscriber list was delayed for half a day. Our account was locked, and we were not able to send out any form of communication.
The reason given: our content apparently “violated the terms of service.”
No other explanation was provided. We were forced to file an appeal, and finally, Mailchimp unlocked our account, after causing disruption and delay.
While we are well aware of email list or subscriber issues that periodically go under review, we were shocked at our first content lockdown.
Is our non-descript email vendor now deciding on what can go in my newsletter? Are they monitoring political views or determining what events we can cover?
We came within hours of pulling our account and placing it with another vendor.
…The cancel culture is now creeping its way into all aspects of your life, including your electronic communication. It’s real, and it’s scary. It’s George Orwell 1984. Only he was 33 years too early.”
Bingo.
As the old astronaut phrase use to go, “Houston, we have a problem.”
Indeed we do. And it’s a very big problem.
The question, of course, is what to do about this very big problem.
Over at The Washington Times, my old CNN friend Jason Miller, a decided ally of former President Trump (which is why he too is no longer at CNN!), has written a piece that accurately summarizes what has been happening. He writes:
“Over the last year, we’ve seen Big Tech put their thumb on the scale of a U.S. presidential election, censor a president, collude with another president to silence conservative voices, “shadowban” or even de-platform tens of thousands of additional voices, suppress the origins of COVID-19, cancel many who questioned the shifting “science” of Dr. Anthony Fauci, and most egregiously, cover for the dreaded Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the COVID-19 pandemic spread throughout the world.”
Jason’s creative answer to this was to set up GETTR. He describes the new site this way:
“On GETTR, users worldwide can engage in a marketplace of ideas on a platform that challenges Big Tech’s control on information sharing and the public discourse. And the past year has highlighted the need to challenge the status quo now, more than ever.”
Exactly.
I would add, that is exactly the reason this site exists. There is no hesitation here at TheJeffreyLord.com or in my podcasts – The Word of the Lord – to shy away from publishing or talking about those things YouTube and others in Big Tech wish to suppress.
So thanks to Senator Paul for standing up to YouTube and calling them out. We’re only too happy to run his video here. And thanks to John Fredericks for going public with his censorship episode and to Jason for setting up GETTR.
The fight-back against Big Tech is on.
