White Supremacy Figured Out How To Become YouTube Famous



YouTube is home to a seemingly endless variety of videos that reach all kinds of viewers and is creeping up on TV as the most watched video platform in the United States. But as John Herrman documented in The New York Times Magazine last month, political punditry on YouTube is vastly dominated by right-wing talkers. Some of the site’s notable right-wing political stars include the always-camera-ready men and women at the Infowars studio, frequently-shirtless 4chan muse StyxHexxenHammer666, and elaborate cosplay cartoon character “Mr. Dapperton.” Although these figures differ vastly in format and tone, their messages are aligned exclusively toward the hard, uncompromising Right, and have been increasingly influenced by their even more extremist counterparts on YouTube. Shorenstein Center on Media fellow Zach Elexy noted in a case study of YouTube commentator Black Pigeon Speaks that in the same way that “liberals, scholars and pundits have failed to give talk radio—which is almost wholly conservative—its due,” those same observers “stand to miss a new platform that, so far, is also dominated by the right wing.” Far-right YouTube personalities are largely aware that they are at the epicenter of political talk on the platform, and openly gloat about their dominance. As a platform, YouTube has served as an alternative media ecosystem apart from the mainstream where any person can contribute to national conversation and reach thousands of people overnight. But the Right’s overt domination of the platform, in addition to political forums on Reddit and 4chan, has created an environment where white nationalists and right-wing extremists can easily inject hateful rhetoric and conspiracy theories into national political discourse by positioning themselves alongside less overtly hateful rising right-wing media personalities. These extremists roleplay as modern-day shock-jock radio hosts as they insert their sexist, racist, bigoted rhetoric—which they excuse by saying they are trying to “trigger” liberals and fight for “free speech”—into the existing stream of right-wing commentary on YouTube. By successfully identifying how right-wing e-celebrities operate and collaborate in the YouTube ecosystem, white nationalists and white supremacists have cracked the code to achieving YouTube success and getting their ideas validated by more popular internet figures, and therefore have emboldened the political base they represent and recruited new audiences. The punditry faction of YouTube, much like cable news, thrives on collaboration and guest appearances on other pundits’ channels. These right-wing YouTube commentators believe that by bolstering one another they can break through “fake news” mainstream media narratives and spread their own flavor of political analysis. The most extreme of these commentators will identify YouTube pundits slightly closer to center-Right than them, and appear on their programs to share their viewpoints. They then use this access to a larger platform to recruit more people to their own pages, where they espouse extremist views with even less restraint. In practice, this means that some of the most popular right-wing social media pundits have validated white supremacists and ethno-nationalist voices by joining these extremists on their programs and allowing them to grow their audiences. And as a result, those voices have quickly recruited a radicalized following and felt emboldened to take their ideologies offline. The nation saw this dynamic play out with tragic results earlier this year, when alt-right activists who had organized online converged on Charlottesville for a “Unite the Right” rally that ended in the death of a counter-protester. On YouTube, major right-wing internet personalities such as self-described “New Right journalist” and social media personality Mike Cernovich and Lauren Southern, a former reporter for Rebel Media, a news site that has acted as an alt-right safe space, validate lesser known extremists by promoting them with their platforms, which reach millions of people every month and routinely earn exposure from mainstream press. Although these two are now attempting to break away from their prior affiliations with the alt-right, they have used their YouTube platforms to validate and share ideas with openly alt-right pundits like Tara McCarthy, who believes a globalist agenda is underway to undermine white people. In May, Cernovich appeared on right-wing YouTuber Brittani Pettibone’s “Virtue of the West” podcast, which is dedicated to discussing the white nationalist ideology of a virtuous Western world under attack by a liberal agenda. Cernovich’s appearance effectively endorsed the legitimacy of Pettibone and her former co-host McCarthy to Cernovich’s much larger audience and exposed potential new fans to the duo, who openly express much more extremist views than Cernovich does. This trickle-down effect is not limited to Cernovich. Many other prominent right-wing social media personalities have appeared on programs like “Virtue of the West.” For example, video blogger Tarl Warwick, who is heralded on 4chan and promoted by major video bloggers like Paul Joseph Watson, has guided his audience to openly alt-right media platforms such as Red Ice. Digital pundit Carl Benjamin, known best as “Sargon of Akkad,” has exposed his regular audience of hundreds of thousands of viewers to white nationalists and their hateful ideologies. This trickle-down exposure effect is a characteristic of all media, but the lack of a gatekeeper on social media has allowed unchecked extremists like McCarthy to harness the power granted by voices such as Cernovich to elevate openly white supremacist alt-right ideologies. Soon after McCarthy scored an interview with Cernovich, she treated her followers to a conversation with Andrew Anglin and Greg Johnson of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer. (McCarthy’s interview with Anglin and Johnson was later removed from YouTube and re-uploaded off-site.) Cernovich’s appearance on “Virtue of the West” is not an isolated event. Every day, all across YouTube, popular pundits with large audiences and connections to those in power are engaging with, promoting and validating extremist YouTube personalities who seek to radicalize their audiences. and promote extreme right-wing politics.

Tensions Rise, Bloggers Flee As YouTube’s Efforts To Combat Extremism Begin

YouTube has been criticized for designing algorithms that are, as The Guardian reported, “drawing viewers into ever more extreme content, recommending a succession of videos that can quickly take them into dark corners of the internet,” and has been toying with remedies that can effectively isolate extremist and terroristic content without censoring speech on the site. In early August, YouTube announced it would no longer allow videos on its site that were flagged for “controversial religious or supremacist content” to earn ad revenue and rack up views from the platform’s “recommended videos” feature. Since that announcement, conspiracy theorists, alt-right activists and “new right” internet pundits have expressed outrage. Videos these social media pundits created that meet YouTube’s criteria for extremism have been placed in a “limited state,” where they exist in a purgatory space without advertising or video recommendations, meaning only a direct link will bring viewers to the video and that the content creator earns no revenue. YouTube’s action served to accomplish two things: It removed financial incentives for these personalities to cater to extremists, and it helped curb a rabbit-hole effect in which the site’s algorithms recommended increasingly more extremist content to otherwise mainstream right-wing audiences and resulted in right-wing extremist YouTube stars receiving otherwise unearned exposure. Leaders of the right-wing political YouTube universe criticized the policy in a myriad of ways, even likening it to Nazism. In a post announcing a national protest against Google (which was later cancelled), right-wing troll Jack Posobiec claimed YouTube was “censoring and silencing dissenting voices by creating ‘ghettos’ for videos questioning the dominant narrative.” Right-wing vlogger Tarl Warwick claimed that the new “suppression feature” would be counter-productive to YouTube’s goals. Infowars editors Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson gloated that they reach millions of viewers and have made YouTube a “right-wing safe space” and that YouTube implemented the new policy because they “realized they were losing.” Now, extremists and white supremacists ensnared by YouTube’s new policy are threatening to leave YouTube and have begun hosting their videos on alternative sites such as VidMe and BitChute. The migration to video platforms friendly to the alt-right is similar to an alt-right push last year to ditch Twitter and join “Gab.ai” after Twitter banned many white supremacist accounts. These extremist YouTube stars have asked their followers to join them on these new platforms and send them money on Patreon (and alt-right alternative Hatereon) to replace the revenue they were previously earning from YouTube advertising. But as Business Insider reported, this effort has been so-far unsuccessful. If white supremacist alt-right YouTubers are able to claim that their demonetization was censorship and successfully motivate their audiences to pick up alternative platforms like BitChute and Gab, they will be able to espouse their extremist views in even more isolated echo chambers and increase the risk for radicalization among viewers.

The Extremists Using YouTube To Get Famous

People Who Enable The Hate