Brent Bozell: Censoring InfoWars ‘Not Just a Slippery Slope, It’s a Dangerous Cliff’

InfoWars host Alex Jones, with eyes and mouth covered by the logos of Apple, Spotify, YouT
Infowars.com; Edit: BNN
Joshua Caplan

Media Research Center Founder and President Brent Bozell warned Monday that censorship of Infowars and Alex Jones signals Silicon Valley is headed off a “dangerous cliff,” not just a “slippery slope.”

Facebook announced Monday morning the technology behemoth unpublished four InfoWars pages from their platform: the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the Infowars Page, and the Infowars Nightly News Page. In a blog post, the technology giant claimed the pages were removed because of content published to the platform by InfoWars violated its “hate speech and bullying policies.” Hours later, YouTube deleted Jones’ channel, as well.

In response to the purge, Brent Bozell issued the following statement:

I don’t support Alex Jones and what InfoWars produces. He’s not a conservative. However, banning him and his outlet is wrong. It’s not just a slippery slope, it’s a dangerous cliff that these social media companies are jumping off to satisfy CNN and other liberal outlets.

This is part of a distributing trend. In recent months top conservatives congressmen have been shadowbanned on Twitter. Pro-life and pro-gun posts have videos are often removed on several platforms. liberal journalists even objected to one conservative outlet attending a meeting with Facebook. Several conservative organizations like Liver Action and the NRA and even the Christian satire site Babylon Bee have complained they had posts removed or censored.

Social media sites are supposedly neutral platforms, but they are increasingly becoming opportunities for the left and major media to censor any content that they don’t like. The lack of transparency is also problematic and as of this release, Facebook, Apple and Spotify have provided no detailed explanation for the ban.

Conservatives are increasingly concerned that InfoWars is not the end point for those who want to ban speech. it’s just the beginning. We are rapidly approaching a point where censorship and opposing voices is the norm. That’s dangerous.

The embattled Silicon Valley company says the InfoWars’ pages were removed after users complained the news outlet published content that possessed “dehumanizing language,” to“describe people who are transgender, Muslims, and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies.”

Following the ban, InfoWars Editor-at-Large Paul Joseph Watson took to Twitter to issue his own warning about censorship of conservatives. “Facebook has permanently BANNED Infowars. For unspecified “hate speech”. They didn’t even tell us what the offending posts were,” Watson wrote. This sets a chilling precedent for free speech. To all other conservative news outlets – you are next.”

“The great censorship purge has truly begun,” he added.

Apple announced Sunday evening they planned to delete the Alex Jones Show along with five other podcasts from iTunes after a similar move by streaming giant Spotify. An Apple spokesperson issued the following statement to discussed BuzzFeed News about the decision: “Apple does not tolerate hate speech, and we have clear guidelines that creators and developers must follow to ensure we provide a safe environment for all of our users. Podcasts that violate these guidelines are removed from our directory making them no longer searchable or available for download or streaming. We believe in representing a wide range of views, so long as people are respectful to those with differing opinions.”

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