In case anyone was left wondering, the New York Times has gone out of its way yet again to prove that the paper is no supporter of free speech. Their latest attack on free speech, though, is so biased and dishonest that in just one article the New York Times has reached a new low.
The article in question is a nearly 5,000 word piece titled “The Making of a YouTube Radical” written by a man named Kevin Roose. In this fact-free rant, Roose covers the story of a young man who was supposedly “radicalized” by watching conservative content on YouTube.
“Caleb Cain was a college dropout looking for direction,” Roose wrote, “He turned to YouTube. Soon, he was pulled into a far-right universe, watching thousands of videos filled with conspiracy theories, misogyny and racism.”
According to Kevin Roose and the New York Times, it was videos from popular conservatives such as Ben Shapiro that “radicalized” Caleb Cain.
But what does the paper mean when they say that Cain was radicalized? Thankfully, Roose goes on to explain this for us, saying, “Mr. Cain never bought into the far right’s most extreme views, like Holocaust denial or the need for a white ethnostate, he said. Still, far-right ideology bled into his daily life. He began referring to himself as a “tradcon” — a traditional conservative, committed to old-fashioned gender norms. He dated an evangelical Christian woman, and he fought with his liberal friends.”
This is what Roose and the New York Times consider to be radical. To the New York Times, embracing traditional conservatism, arguing with liberals, agreeing with the most fundamental facts of biology, and dating a Christian are all examples of far-right radicalism.
In an article that was apparently important enough to be featured on the front page of their website, these examples were the best that the New York Times could come up.
There were no examples of someone embracing white supremacy or becoming a radical racist because they watched conservative videos. To the New York Times, the fact that someone is able to access and embrace information outside of liberal thought is problem enough.
The fact that Roose and the New York Times considers this to be a problem is the main thrust of their article. Roose goes on to blame YouTube and its algorithms for introducing Caleb Cain and others to conservative ideas.
Though Roose never offers a solution to this problem outright, the solution that he is getting at could not be more apparent – Roose would like nothing more than for YouTube to censor conservative voices altogether. To him, this is the only way to prevent young people such as Caleb Cain from becoming “radicalized” by conservative content.
In more accurate and honest terms, censoring conservative voices is the only way to prevent people from being exposed to ideas outside of leftist thought.
Roose concludes his rant by arguing that it is impossible to get a useful education on politics from watching YouTube videos, despite using nearly 5,000 words to explain how Caleb Cain did just that. Rather, according to Roose, trusting the mainstream media and, consequently, trusting leftist papers such as the New York Times is the only real way to learn the truth about politics – and any voice outside of the mainstream media need to be silenced.
Keep in mind that Roose is not alone in this position. The editors at the New York Times chose to both publish his dishonest article and feature it on the front page of their website. Even for a paper that has grown accustomed to reaching new lows in the past few years, going after free speech in this manner has got to be as low as the paper has ever sunk.
The real danger, though, is that YouTube and other platforms are all too willing to listen when those on the left cry for more censorship. Already, YouTube has demonetized countless conservative channels and, in some cases, banned them from the platform altogether.
According to Kevin Roose, the New York Times, and the rest of those on the far-left, this censorship is necessary in order to prevent “radicalization”. According to anyone who supports our Constitutional rights, it is nothing more than a dangerous and dishonest attack on free speech.
