The videos and channels related to the war in Ukraine were taken down for violating content guidelines, including removal of videos that referred to the invasion as a “liberation mission”.
The platform is hugely popular in Russia, where, unlike some of its US peers, it has not been shut down despite hosting content from opposition figures such as Alexei Navalny. YouTube has also been able to operate in Russia despite cracking down on pro-Kremlin content that has broken guidelines including its major violent events policy, which prohibits denying or trivialising the invasion.
Since the conflict began in February, YouTube has taken down channels including that of the pro-Kremlin journalist Vladimir Solovyov. Channels associated with Russia’s Ministries of Defence and Foreign Affairs have also been temporarily suspended from uploading videos in recent months for describing the war as a “liberation mission”.
YouTube’s chief product officer, Neal Mohan, said: “We have a major violent events policy and that applies to things like denial of major violent events: everything from the Holocaust to Sandy Hook. And of course, what’s happening in Ukraine is a major violent event. And so we’ve used that policy to take unprecedented action.” »
“I spent 835 days cycling around the world through countries people repeatedly warned were too dangerous to visit – and I was always welcomed with hospitality.
“Today in Reading, on my second day bike touring in England, I had a bike grabbed and stolen less than 5 metres from me. The bike and everything attached to it, gone in a second.
“I’m sorry not to be sharing my usual positive, restore-your-faith-in-humanity message, but I guess bad things happen everywhere and not just in countries with a bad reputation. I’m absolutely devastated.” »
“It was doubly painful because of all the countries that I’ve cycled through – particularly places where people had warned me that they had a bad reputation, that I was going to be a victim of theft or crime there – and you just don’t really expect it in Reading.
“Unfortunately that was the end of the tour.” »
A time traveler from the 1930s would have no difficulty identifying the Putin regime as fascist. The symbol Z, the rallies, the propaganda, the war as a cleansing act of violence and the death pits around Ukrainian towns make it all very plain. The war against Ukraine is not only a return to the traditional fascist battleground, but also a return to traditional fascist language and practice. Other people are there to be colonized. Russia is innocent because of its ancient past. The existence of Ukraine is an international conspiracy. War is the answer.
Because Mr. Putin speaks of fascists as the enemy, we might find it hard to grasp that he could in fact be fascist. But in Russia’s war on Ukraine, “Nazi” just means “subhuman enemy”— someone Russians can kill. Hate speech directed at Ukrainians makes it easier to murder them, as we see in Bucha, Mariupol and every part of Ukraine that has been under Russian occupation. Mass graves are not some accident of war, but an expected consequence of a fascist war of destruction.
Fascists calling other people “fascists” is fascism taken to its illogical extreme as a cult of unreason. It is a final point where hate speech inverts reality and propaganda is pure insistence. It is the apogee of will over thought. Calling others fascists while being a fascist is the essential Putinist practice. Jason Stanley, an American philosopher, calls it “undermining propaganda.” I have called it “schizofascism.” The Ukrainians have the most elegant formulation. They call it “ruscism.” »
First published 2022.05.19 »
Guilty mind?
Former President George W. Bush: “The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean of Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/UMwNMwMnmX
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 19, 2022
Update 2022.05.20 »
Seth Meyers takes a closer look at former President George W. Bush accidentally confessing to being a war criminal »
#StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦
