Journalist Glenn Greenwald blasted ‘liberal’ reporters who push for deplatforming and censorship of political opponents. “Imagine going into journalism and begging corporations to silence people,” he told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.
Speaking to Carlson on Thursday, after YouTube demonetized hundreds of accounts for posting content even remotely linked to controversial topics, Greenwald excoriated Vox journalist Carlos Maza, whose clamoring against conservative shock-jock Steven Crowder triggered the crackdown.
“YouTube caved in defense of the powerful,” Greenwald claimed. “That’s what they will always do. Defend the mob and the powerful at the expense of those who are marginalized.”
“It would never occur to me to run to social media companies to beg for censorship,” he said. “In part, it comes with the territory of being a public figure. I don’t want to live in a world where our discourse is policed and determined by overlords who run Silicon Valley companies and will always cater to the most powerful faction.”
A gay Latino journalist with the ultra-liberal outlet Vox, Maza’s year-long feud with Crowder was the genesis of the latest round of deplatforming and demonetizing. Crowder had publicly insulted Maza with homophobic slurs, calling him a “lispy queer,” among other schoolyard taunts. Maza demanded YouTube take action, and although the streaming giant said Crowder didn’t break its rules, Maza tweeted up a storm and the company eventually complied, stripping his channel of ad revenue on Wednesday.
The demonetization didn’t satisfy Maza, who called on YouTube to fully ban Crowder from the platform. Though Crowder’s videos are still online, scores of other controversial figures had their videos deleted – including perpetual liberal bogeymen Milo Yiannopoulos and Gavin McInnes.
Though Maza is a particularly loud advocate of censorship, he is not the first journalist to demand Silicon Valley blacklist people whose opinions he finds offensive. CNN spearheaded the campaign to hound right-wing polemicist Alex Jones off virtually every social media platform last year, and just last month BuzzFeed’s Joseph Bernstein rallied a Twitter mob to force YouTube to block a 14-year-old vlogger who said mean things about Muslims.
Greenwald made a point of mentioning his own same-sex marriage and homophobic insults he faced while living in Brazil, calling Crowder a “contemptuous cretin,” but he defended his right to free speech and slammed the journalists pushing tech companies to restrict it.
Also on rt.com ‘This will not go well’: YouTube cracks down on pundits & journalists after policy change“In reality, this power to censor was not one they (the companies) wanted,” he explained. “It was one that was foisted upon them largely by journalists who were demanding that they remove voices from the Internet. Imagine going into journalism and begging corporations to silence people.”
Seemingly unmoved by Greenwald’s defense of free speech, the same liberal journalists took issue with the outlet where he chose to present it, calling him out for appearing on Carlson’s show, which Vox’s Aaron Rupar described as “the white power hour.”
Greenwald himself hit back on Friday, tweeting, “Liberals are so attached to their fantasy about the goodness of authority that they actually convince themselves that Silicon Valley giants – who they're otherwise willing to malign – are exercising censorship powers in defense of marginalized people against the powerful.”
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