Yesterday, YouTube started to delete my videos on COVID-19, the pandemic. Not one of my videos contains any conspiracy theory. I have spent my entire adult life fighting off conspiracy theories, pseudoscience and other nonsense. All the information in my videos has been thoroughly vetted and researched. Some of it had become obsolete, some of it had been proven wrong by time and accrued knowledge, and then I took pains to correct this information in future videos. My videos are academic, they are stable and solid.
It seems that what I had done to deserve this mistreatment by YouTube is that I dared to disagree with the dogma of universal social distancing.
Many mainstream medical experts agree with me actually. They also say that universal social distancing is a bad idea and that it would lead to a second wave of infections which will be far more deleterious and dangerous than the first one because the population will not have developed herd immunity.
Actually, quite a few countries such as Sweden, United Kingdom until recently, numerous other countries in Africa and Asia, they don’t have social distancing. They have tracing, they have testing, they have many things. They protect the vulnerable populations but they don’t have social distancing.
But it seems that if you dare to question the policies of the administration or more precisely the healthcare establishment in the United States, it is a sufficient basis nowadays for heavy-handed authoritarian censorship.
YouTube is a monopolistic utility. It is a private company, technically speaking, but it controls such a big chunk of the video upload market that it should be regulated as a monopoly.
Monopolies are not allowed by law, by constitutional law to censor speech. YouTube had numerous other options at its disposal.
One idea, YouTube could have added a disclaimer to flag videos that it deems inaccurate, misleading or dangerous. Instead, YouTube chose the reprehensible path of the most unsavory regimes in human history. YouTube chose to muzzle dissent and to digitally execute its barriers.
This may be the most long-lasting damage of this pandemic, which is abating.
The reversal of human and civil liberties hard-won over centuries with bloodshed. YouTube’s egregious misbehavior is exactly what gives birth to conspiracy theories, the very conspiracy theories that YouTube claims to be suppressing.
If one looks at YouTube’s behavior, one is compelled to ask, what gives? What is this happening? Could it have anything to do with the fact that Google is a major beneficiary, economic, financial beneficiary of the pandemic, about to receive massive contact tracing contracts? If this is true, and of course it’s mere speculation, then who can we trust? If our information purveyors suppress utterly legitimate speech of conspiracy theories, not misinformation, utterly legitimate speech, who can we trust and why this is happening?
We gave rise to the Church of COVID-19. It’s a new religion, and like every religion, it has its doctrines, it has its dogmas, and it has its saints.
Dr. Fauci is a saint. Dr. Birx is such a saint. Like in other religions, other nascent religions, like in other young religions, if you dare to question the saints or the dogma, you’re beheaded.
This is exactly what happens to people who dare to question the dogma or its couriers, its messengers. It’s a slippery slope. It’s a dangerous path towards the suppression of free speech regarding other issues, because today you suppress free speech regarding a health care issuetomorrow you may be suppressing political speech.
And the day after you may be suppressing oral speech. In dictatorial regimes throughout history, even the most extreme dictator didn’t start by suppressing the entirety of speech. Even the most extreme dictators in history started by suppressing specific speech, anti-nation speech directed against the nation, speech directed against the majority and for certain minorities, a speech that doubted government policies.
Congratulations, there was an erosion of incremental salami type, you know, sausage. And at the end of which, people discover to their shock and amazement that they can’t say anything without the prior approval of the state. And if they fail to obtain it, they find themselves in very, very dark places.
All my videos are still available, mysteriously, on my other channel on YouTube, which is Vaknin Musings. Vaknin, like my name, V-A-K-N-I-N, Musings, M-U-S-I-N-G-S. One word, Vaknin Musings. There’s a link to the Vaknin Musings channel on my main channel. So if you look at like recommended channels or something like that, you will see a link to this channel as well. All the videos are still available there. I don’t know for how long.
Thank you.
