Apple, YouTube, and others drop conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. By Rich McKay.
Apple Inc, Alphabet Inc’s YouTube, Facebook Inc and Spotify all took down podcasts and channels from U.S. conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, saying on Monday that the Infowars author had broken community standards.
The sweeping moves are the broadest actions yet by internet companies that previously have suspended or removed some of the conspiracy-driven content produced by Infowars.
Since founding Infowars in 1999, Jones has built a vast audience. Among the theories he has promoted is that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington were staged by the government.
Facebook said it removed Alex Jones pages”for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies.” …
Apple deleted most Infowars podcasts and a spokeswoman said in a statement that the company “does not tolerate hate speech” and publishes guidelines that developers and publishers must follow.
It’s the usual con. On the face of it, banning posts with misinformation and hate seems appealing, and maybe defensible if you overlook the free speech aspects and the long history of censorship used to maintain ruling regimes. But for the sake of the argument let’s run with the notion that there might be some merit in disallowing some speech.
The trick of the PC regulators is selective enforcement. This is widely practiced bureaucratic tool to crack down on people you don’t like.
For instance, in China there are many intrusive laws and everyone breaks several laws a day. So whenever the regime wants to get someone, it punishes them for breaking a law. After all, if they break one of these well-meaning laws, they should be punished right? Protesting the punishment by arguing against the law is pointless, because the law applies to everyone and might be vaguely defensible — it’s for the “common good” no doubt. The problem lies in selective enforcement — who gets to decide who to punish for breaking the law? The person or group who chooses when to enforce the law and when to look the other way it is really in charge, and that would be the Communist Party of China. Superficially it’s all legal and fair, but really it is a nasty dictatorship.
Now move on to Apple, Facebook, etc. Do they apply the same rules about hate speech to say Muslims? The Muslim holy book unambiguously “hates” non-Muslims by encouraging non-Muslims to be badly treated by Muslims. Apple and co. are fine with that — selective enforcement, look the other way. All the PC mascot groups — gays, blacks, Muslims, women, trans, Palestinians, etc. — all include some who engage in hate speech to promote their cause and their kind, but the PC bureaucracy looks the other way. But when a political opponent of the PC bureaucracy disagrees with a PC fantasy, it’s “hate speech,” or “racism”, or PC-mascot-group-“phobia”, etc. — and they are punished.
The excuse given here is that Jones “glorifying violence” and used “dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants”. Ummm, haven’t the PC groups in the US being glorifying violence against Donald Trump and the people who voted for him for the past two years? And don’t they do so in terms that dehumanize? Duh. The women the New York Times just hired who has a long history of nasty anti-white racism: advocates violence against whites? check; dehumanizes whites? check. Selective enforcement, when the very people doing the selecting are guilty of the same “crimes,” has a special name — hypocrisy.
Don’t be fooled by what is going on. And don’t be diverted into arguing whether something is or is not “hate” speech or whatever. The real issue is who gets to decide who should be punished.
UPDATE:
Alex Jones today, who’s next?
