YOUTUBE CONFESSION SHOULD REMOVE ALL DOUBT
Attacking Silicon Valley Censorship of the Second Amendment
BY HAROLD HUTCHISON
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
Silicon Valley – -(AmmoLand.com)- While discussing the existential battle that has resulted from Andrew Cuomo’s politically-motivated abuse of financial regulations, there are other crises that Second Amendment supporters will need to deal with. One of those is Silicon Valley’s decision to take part in silencing certain views.There should be no doubt about this. Project Veritas blew this wide open late last month. A high-ranking YouTube exec is caught on video admitting that they are trying to fight efforts to break them up because, “all these smaller companies who don’t have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation, it’s like a small company cannot do that.”“Preventing the next Trump situation” seems to be so vague, but it really isn’t. What they really mean is to tilt the playing field in favor of their preferred causes and candidates. Think it’s isolated to YouTube? Well, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook censored pro-life ads in Ireland. Think that didn't have an effect on the referendum?Now imagine Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter taking down the accounts of prominent Second Amendment supporters and pro-Second Amendment organizations in the months prior to the 2020 election. In addition, ad buys are rejected on some pretext or another. Meanwhile, Bloomberg’s Everytown, the Giffords anti-Second Amendment group, and anti-Second Amendment candidates flood those sites with propaganda aimed at our rights. How do you think the election will go? Badly may not be an adequate description.Here’s the deal: When the NRA opposed McCain-Feingold long ago, Michael Barnes, the president of the Brady Campaign, explained why, saying “the gun lobby’s ability to obstruct the progress of sensible gun laws” would be reduced. In other words, having lost the arguments on the merits, they are resorting to silencing opposition. Or, at the very least, setting things up to saddle them with massive legal fees to defend against abusive investigations. Money spent fighting abusive investigation is money that can’t be spent fighting for the Second Amendment in the political and legislative arenas. Sound familiar, anyone?Well, in some ways, what Silicon Valley is doing is pretty much the same thing as McCain-Feingold, only it’s on steroids and it is more precisely targeted. While McCain-Feingold had to at least appear to apply equally (that pesky First Amendment), Silicon Valley – at least for now – doesn’t need to.In fact, look at what happened very quickly as the video began to go viral. According to the Daily Wire, YouTube took down the video, citing a “privacy claim” from an uninvolved party. If you believe that, I have a bridge in Chappaquiddick for sale, real cheap. YouTube is even censoring reporting of its efforts to censor viewpoints it doesn’t like – that is how brazen they are being.The fact is, Silicon Valley’s censorship ranks second only to Andrew Cuomo’s abuses in terms of threats to the Second Amendment. The failure of Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox to foresee those threats and take steps to counter them warrants change at the top of the NRA – and Cox’s departure makes that job 25% done. Wayne must step down as part of an orderly transition to new leadership, and a replacement must be found for Chris Cox at NRA-ILA.That being said, the desire for the necessary change at the top cannot override a sober assessment of the threats Second Amendment supporters face. Like the existential fight against Cuomo’s abuses, the existential but less-critical fight against Silicon Valley censorship will be expensive full-spectrum fights. Second Amendment supporters now must ask themselves if hatred of Wayne LaPierre and the NRA is so important that we can ignore the existential threats.
About Harold HutchisonWriter Harold Hutchison has more than a dozen years of experience covering military affairs, international events, U.S. politics and Second Amendment issues. Harold was consulting senior editor at Soldier of Fortune magazine and is the author of the novel Strike Group Reagan. He has also written for the Daily Caller, National Review, Patriot Post, Strategypage.com, and other national websites.
