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June 7, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson entered the fray over YouTube demonetizing conservative comedian Steven Crowder during his Thursday broadcast, calling on Congress to intervene in the broader issue of online censorship.

Earlier this week, the Google-owned video giant cut off all revenue from Crowder’s channel, in response to demands by Vox personality Carlos Maza, who accused Crowder of “homophobic” humor and inspiring harassment of him personally. Crowder responded that Vox was trying to silence his frequent fact-checks of their videos.

On Thursday evening, Carlson commented on the story and interviewed The intercept cofounder Glenn Greenwald, a “married” gay man who said he personally deems Crowder a “contemptuous cretin” but nevertheless opposes YouTube’s action against him.

Quipping that YouTube’s supporters think “you shouldn't be allowed to mock talentless Vox writers,” Carlson called Maza a “classic archetype on the left,” a “fascist posing as a victim” whom “no sensible adult” should take seriously.

Greenwald said that, despite his feelings about Crowder, he doesn’t “want to live in a world where our discourse is policed and determined by benevolent overlords, who runs Silicon Valley companies […] YouTube caved in, not in defense of the marginalized person, but in defense of the powerful one, the one who despite being gay and Latino works for a major media conglomerate.”

“Imagine going into journalism and then begging corporations to silence and censor people,” he added.

“The real question,” Carlson said, was why Congress allows this to continue. He argued that Congress has recognized YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter as “the modern public square” via federal regulations that give them “special immunity from being sued for defamation or fraud. Immunity that we don't have on this channel, for example.”

“You guaranteed that to them through your representatives in the Congress,” he said. “And yet in return, these tech companies violate the terms of the deal every minute of every day. They're not open forums. There are ongoing exercises in control and censorship. The question is, how long will the rest of us stand for this?”

YouTube also announced this week it will be removing “thousands” of “extreme” videos pushing “hate,” which Crowder said includes “at least a few hundred are ours. They didn’t make a delineation between white supremacists and jokes. They didn’t make a difference between Nazis and this program.” Also caught in the dragnet have been history videos on the Nazis and even videos by the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center purporting to expose hate rather than promote it.

The conservative movement is divided on whether government should intervene to stop online censorship, and how. National Review’s David French argues it’s a problem only private market action can justly solve, while Human Events advocates establishing “platform access” as a civil right. The Trump Justice Department is currently looking into a potential antitrust case against Google.