This article has been updated to include a statement from YouTube about the reason for the full ban of the channels.
(LifeSiteNews) — LifeSiteNews staff weighed in Tuesday on YouTube’s recent crackdown on both the John-Henry Westen Show channel and John-Henry’s personal account.
LifeSiteNews reported that Google-owned YouTube deleted the John-Henry Westen Show YouTube channel on Easter weekend, just weeks after the launch of LifeSite’s own video platform. YouTube also targeted John-Henry’s own personal account, blocking him from posting, editing, or even watching videos on the site. The moves came after YouTube previously terminated the LifeSiteNews YouTube channel in 2021 for “medical misinformation” related to COVID-19 and vaccines.
In a Wednesday statement, a YouTube spokesperson told LifeSiteNews that the Big Tech company “terminated the channels in question for violating our terms of service, which prohibit operating a YouTube channel following a previous termination.”
Prior to the full banning, the John-Henry Westen Show channel received a strike for alleged “hate speech” for speaking out against the LGBT agenda.
LifeSiteNews U.S. Bureau Chief Doug Mainwaring said the censorship sends a “crystal clear” message to LifeSite and its readers.
“YouTube’s message to LifeSiteNews and our readers is crystal clear: Christian, conservative, and patriot voices are not welcome in the public square. Why? Because they hate that you insist that abortion is not ‘reproductive health’ but a form of murder, of infanticide,” Mainwaring said. “They hate you because you reject sodomy, same-sex marriage, transgenderism, the deconstruction of the family, and the indoctrination of your children with their anti-life, anti-human dignity, anti-God, woke ideology.”
READ: John-Henry Westen: YouTube has permanently banned me for speaking the truth
LifeSiteNews senior correspondent Jim Hale suggested that YouTube’s actions against LifeSite over the weekend are the latest salvoes in an ongoing combat against freedom of speech.
“We learned two years ago when they canceled our original channel that YouTube does not believe in free speech,” he said, referencing the 2021 permanent ban of the LifeSiteNews YouTube channel. “Big tech is afraid of honest debates and they’ve created a world where their consumers only get biased information. This is what happens in totalitarian states, but YouTube is actually worse because their audience is worldwide.”
Hale added that YouTube “wield[s] enormous power because when your channel starts getting strikes, you have to start censoring yourself. And that is what life is like in a fascist world.”
LifeSiteNews journalist and editor Jack Bingham argued that the attacks go beyond freedom of speech, specifically targeting true speech.
“The coherence of the pro-life and pro-family message exposes the mainstream narrative for the fiction it is, and thus the oligarchs really have no choice but to shut down any and all messaging that undermines their own,” Bingham said. “Big Tech is warring not just against free speech, but more disturbingly, against true speech.”
He pointed out that YouTube’s “crackdown on John-Henry Westen is just further evidence that the globalists rightly see that their anti-life and anti-family narrative cannot compete with reality.”
Vatican correspondent Michael Haynes similarly argued that the full ban is one of a long train of actions by Big Tech “overlords” to shut down opinions that deviate from the “accepted narrative.”
“The latest move against LifeSite by YouTube – which is the go-to Big Tech site for millions around the globe – highlights the persistent nature of the struggle which we face every day,” Haynes said. “To challenge the accepted narrative on any topic, but particularly those relating to family, health, freedom, and faith is now something deemed to be unacceptable to the overlords of Big Tech who essentially influence much of daily life.”
“YouTube is not just a benign video platform for the enjoyment of videos, but a crucial tool to be used in the hands of globalist elites for the manipulation of freedom and free thought,” he added.
READ: Bipartisan bill to ban TikTok would give federal government ‘terrifying’ new power over free speech
Jesse Waitz, who works in IT for LifeSite, spoke about the moves that his department has made to facilitate a robust infrastructure to ensure LifeSite can continue producing content even in the face of rampant censorship.
“The most recent cancellation by big tech (aka Google) brings into stark focus the total unfairness of the woke left,” he said. “We at LifeSite have had to create our own solutions for video, site search, usage stats, bulk email, and even comments, because big tech has shut us down at every turn. This has cost us thousands of dollars per month, and thousands [of] hours of development time.”
He suggested that LifeSite wouldn’t be facing strikes and bans if it carried water for the prevailing narrative, “[b]ut if you dare to speak the truth you will be stomped on.”
“We have been able to weather this storm because of our devoted team, and our wonderful sponsors, but think of how many other people are out there, that dare to speak the truth, that have been successfully silenced,” he added. “It is a travesty, and it has to change.”
Vienna-based journalist Andreas Wailzer also saw the censorship of LifeSite’s YouTube channels as an ideologically motivated hit but pointed out that the work will continue by the grace of God.
“Big tech, especially YouTube, is targeting LifeSiteNews because we do not compromise on speaking the truth on the most controversial issues of our time,” he said. “This will obviously hurt our reach, but we will keep fighting the good fight and keep speaking the truth.”
“If we are doing God’s work, we will find ways to get this important information out through his grace,” Wailzer said.