On Tucker Carlson Tonight, Glenn Greenwald blasted YouTube for demonetizing right-wing online shock jock Stephen Crowder’s channel in response to a vicious, years-long campaign of homophobic rhetoric the latter has directed at a gay Vox journalist, Carlos Maza.

“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.”

Carlson, literally cackling, agreed, saying: “That is such a good point!”

As to the power dynamics at play, Crowder has roughly four million subscribers to his YouTube channel and has amassed more than 833 million views on the site. In comparison, Maza is a journalist who has 122,000 followers on Twitter and covers tech and media issues for Vox Media, which is partially owned by NBCUniversal and Comcast.

“I find Crowder to be a contemptuous cretin. I think he is a bully and bigot. He did not just criticize Carlos, he mocked him for being gay and Latino and sent a lot of harassment his way. That’s the point,” Greenwald said. “Censorship advocates want our brains to just go to the first level of: ‘Do we hate their person and are we glad they are being censored?’

Last week, Maza published a long thread on Twitter detailing years of harassment and anti-gay slurs that Crowder — and, at his direction, Crowder’s fans — have aimed at Maza, calling him a “lispy queer” among other insults. He also claimed that Crowder doxxed his private phone number, after which he was bombarded with messages from strangers.

Since I started working at Vox, Steven Crowder has been making video after video “debunking” Strikethrough. Every single video has included repeated, overt attacks on my sexual orientation and ethnicity. Here’s a sample: pic.twitter.com/UReCcQ2Elj — Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) May 31, 2019

The Vox journalist went on to single out YouTube, not Crowder, for enabling the harassment he has faced. He equated the hateful rhetoric that he endures to violations of the online platform’s terms of service that forbid bullying and harassment.

That being said, I’m not mad at Crowder. There will always be monsters in the world. I’m fucking pissed at @YouTube, which claims to support its LGBT creators, and has explicit policies against harassment and bullying: https://t.co/K9XJGAP7Xp pic.twitter.com/4GUfTDuOXS — Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) May 31, 2019

YouTube eventually responded, and has now prohibited Crowder from running ads on his online channel as well as linking to merchandise he sells. Greenwald slammed the move as tantamount to censorship.

“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.”

Carlson tried to connect the demonetization of a channel Crowder enjoys on a private company’s online platform with an assault on Crowder’s Constitutional right to free speech free from government interference. “You don’t have to be a fan of Crowder or anyone to see this as a threat to one person’s speech is a threat to all of our speech,” he asked.

Greenwald agreed. “In reality, this power to censor was not one they wanted. It was one that was hoisted upon them largely by journalists who demanded they remove voices from the Internet. Imagine going into journalism and begging corporations to silence people.”

Watch the video above, via Fox News.

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