Don't Let Them Silence Us!

By Michael Brown, Op-ed Contributor Thursday, August 10, 2017

Michael Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and has served as a professor at a number of seminaries. He is the author of 25 books and hosts the nationally syndicated, daily talk radio show, the Line of Fire.

I'm not a conspiratorialist, and I don't believe the sky is falling. But I do know that some major players on the left are trying to silence many of us on the right. Our views are considered toxic and dangerous and discriminatory and hateful. Our views, we are told, belong to a bygone, bigoted era and do not deserve a hearing. Our views, in short, must be suppressed and silenced, and those who dissent will be punished.

The recent events at Google, with the firing of James Damore for his manifesto on viewpoint diversity, along with Google's announcement that it will be working with the ADL to flag "controversial" videos on YouTube, should be a loud and clear warning to any who are still in denial.

But it is not just Google, and, in turn, YouTube, which are controlled by leftwing "progressives." The same is true for Facebook and Twitter, among other internet giants. If they decide that our views are unacceptable, the consequences will be massive.

Every day, my team and I use the AskDrBrown Facebook page, which has more than 535,000 fans, to share all kinds of content, from memes and livestream talks to links to our latest articles and videos. On several occasions, Facebook has shut us down or denied us access to the page after complaints about one of our posts.

Every time, they have subsequently apologized and restored our access, but when things were down, it crippled much of our communication. What if they decide to shut us down for good?

I also have friends whose Facebook pages have been shut down because of "unacceptable" content (specifically, posting what Scripture and medical science say about homosexual practice). To this day, those pages are closed.

Dennis Prager has been fighting a battle with YouTube since last October, when the company restricted access to 21 videos from Prager U. This prompted Prager to ask, "Will Google and YouTube do to the Internet what the Left has done to our universities?"

Not one of those videos violated YouTube guidelines, and every one of them was worthy of watching. Yet today, ten months after the battle began, some of those videos have still not been fully restored.

University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson, who has gained international fame for his refusal to capitulate to extreme transgender activism, woke up one day last week to discover that his YouTube channel, with more than 350,000 subscribers, was down. He also discovered that his Google account, which contained hundreds of thousands of his emails, was also blocked.

He was initially told that he was in violation of Google/YouTube standards, with no further explanation, before his account was quickly restored. This too is a warning we must not ignore.

Things have reached the point that Ezra Levant of Rebel Media, with over 860,000 YouTube subscribers, is already announcing plans in anticipation of being shut down by YouTube.

When it comes to Google, which controls the flow of so much internet traffic, a former engineer there claims that "he personally witnessed efforts from leftists within Google to bias YouTube's algorithms to push anti-PC content off the platform's 'related videos' recommendations." He said, "A number of friends have privately confirmed this to me. I know there are efforts to demote anything non-PC, anti-Communist and anti-Islamic terror from search results. To what extent that has been successful, I don't know."

More broadly, Andrew Torba, chief executive of the social network Gab, said, "Anyone who deviates from the talking points of the liberal left is shunned, shamed and forced out."

Brendan Eich, a highly respected internet pioneer, can testify to this. He was forced to resign as CEO of Mozilla in 2014 when employees learned that he had donated $1,000 to uphold natural marriage in California in 2008. He had broken one of greatest the PC Commandments: You shall not hold a dissenting view, even in your personal life.

Ironically, if you type in "define bigotry" on Google, you get this definition: "intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself." Bulls eye! And now Google has put that definition into practice, not only defining bigotry but practicing it.

What then can we do? Aside from praying for God's blessing on our endeavors, if indeed they are worthy, asking Him to back what He approves, here are several other steps we can take.

1) We must shout out our message more loudly and persistently and accurately than ever before. The more of us who do this through whatever means we have, the better. It will be very hard to censor us all.

2) We need to challenge Google and YouTube and Facebook and Twitter to do what is right, exposing bigotry, intolerance, and double standards whenever we see them. As private companies, they can do as they please, but since they champion "diversity," let's hold them to it.

3) We can support those who develop viable alternatives to some of these other platforms. This may take some time, but there was life before Facebook and YouTube, and there can be life without them. We can also financially support those voices we believe in, thereby helping them to be less dependent on internet-generated income.

4) We should establish other ways to stay in touch with each other. Periodically, on our Facebook page, I post a link to my website, encouraging followers to sign up for my weekly emails and even offering a free e-book. (You can do that here if you like.) This way, if Facebook does shut me down one day, we won't lose contact with everyone.

I'm truly hopeful that the pendulum will swing back towards the middle, where a wide range of dissenting viewpoints can be expressed without fear of censorship or reprisal. This will also allow us to isolate those voices which are truly dangerous, like those of terrorists calling for the murder of innocent people.

But it is not dangerous to express different viewpoints, be they political or cultural or religious, and if we lose our freedoms here, we lose our freedoms everywhere.

Let's stand together, then, with resolution and determination and faith. We shall not be silenced!