YouTube has done it again. The Internet’s largest audiovisual content platform has removed the latest episode of The Forge, europeanconservative.com’s debate programme, after classifying a conversation about immigration, remigration, and European identity as “hate speech.”
The video brought together French writer Renaud Camus, Austrian activist Martin Sellner, and Harrison Pitt, an editor at this publication and the programme’s host. The appeal was rejected one minute after it was submitted. The decision was final.
The category applied by YouTube does not amount to a judicial declaration that a crime has been committed.
It is a private decision based on the platform’s internal rules, which prohibit the promotion of hatred or violence against groups protected on grounds such as race, nationality, religion, or immigration status. Those same rules provide exceptions for educational and documentary content, as well as debates conducted in the public interest.
The latest episode falls precisely within that category. The recording shows a moderated discussion, without disturbances or direct calls for violence. The participants put forward positions on mass immigration, Europe’s demographic future, and return policies.
YouTube, however, has not publicly identified which passage crossed the line between a debatable political argument and punishable hatred. It is a quick, if crude, way of taking action without explaining.
Frank Furedi, executive director of MCC Brussels, believes the removal represents “a further escalation in the project of silencing the dissident conservative voice.”
“Since the end of the Second World War, the hard-won freedom of speech has never been under such grave threat as it is today,” he told europeanconservative.com.
It is widely known that this is not an isolated case. In July, YouTube blocked a Finnish video critical of Chat Control within the European Union, despite the fact that it consisted of a discussion about a European legislative proposal.
The pattern no longer affects only insults, threats, or violent propaganda. It now reaches political debates based on reasoned arguments. It even affects discussions about debates taking place inside the European Parliament itself.
The data indicate that this is a structural problem. A study published by The Future of Free Speech in 2024 concluded that between 87.5% and 99.7% of the comments removed from samples taken from YouTube and Facebook in France, Germany, and Sweden were lawful. In Germany, 98.9% of the deleted YouTube comments analysed did not violate the law.
So why this censorship? The European regulatory framework increases the incentives to remove first and ask questions later. YouTube is designated as a very large online platform under the Digital Services Act (DSA), which requires it to assess and mitigate systemic risks and provides for fines of up to 6% of global turnover.
The DSA does not order platforms to censor lawful opinions and requires respect for fundamental rights. Nor is there any public evidence that Brussels ordered this specific removal. Nevertheless, the combination of broad rules, automation, and regulatory risk encourages over-moderation.
In other words, censorship comes first; what happens afterwards can be decided later.
WATCH THE FULL PROGRAMME HERE.
