YouTube has taken down a video interview by Jordan Peterson of Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., prompting accusations that the Google-owned platform is once again seeking to manipulate national politics and interfere in a presidential election in the U.S.
The interview took place on the Jordan B. Peterson podcast, and is over an hour and a half long. It can still be watched in full on Twitter, whose owner, Elon Musk, hosted the Democrat candidate for a Spaces interview earlier this month.
Rekindling the Spirit of the Classic Democrat | @RobertKennedyJr | Ep.363 pic.twitter.com/RKBm5YT2Vi
— The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast (@JBPpod) June 5, 2023
“Now YouTube has taken upon itself to actively interfere with a presidential election campaign,” said Jordan Peterson after news of the censorship broke.
Now @YouTube has taken upon itself to actively interfere with a presidential election campaign @RobertKennedyJr https://t.co/XmgOYTl3NN
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) June 18, 2023
RFK Jr. also spoke out, calling for public pressure to address the platform’s actions.
“Do you really need Big Tech censors to decide what you should hear? Or would you prefer to be treated as a competent adult who can listen to various viewpoints and come to his or her own conclusions?”
It may be that @YouTube has broken no laws in this blatant interference in the electoral process. In that case, change will come only through public pressure. That’s democracy in action!
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) June 18, 2023
“It may be that YouTube has broken no laws in this blatant interference in the electoral process,” continued RFK Jr. “In that case, change will come only through public pressure. That’s democracy in action!”
The Democrat candidate called on people who disagreed with the platform’s decision to upload videos to YouTube “telling them what you think.”
In a statement to the media, YouTube said it took down the Jordan Peterson interview because of “vaccine misinformation.”
“We removed a video from the Jordan Peterson channel for violating YouTube’s general vaccine misinformation policy, which prohibits content that alleges that vaccines cause chronic side effects, outside of rare side effects that are recognized by health authorities,” said a spokesperson for the tech giant on Monday.
Breitbart News has previously published leaked documents from YouTube, called a “smoking gun” by one whistleblower, that reveal how the company actively interferes in U.S. politics. The documents revealed the existence of a “blacklist” file with politically changed search terms, that allows the company to re-rank search results on topics that are politically prominent, favoring their own handpicked “verified” channels.
The nephew of the 35th President, John F. Kennedy, RFK Jr. has become well known in recent years for challenging mainstream narratives about coronavirus and vaccines.
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News last month, Kennedy slammed the establishment’s embrace of censorship, saying “we’re now in this situation where without free speech, democracy just withers and dies.”
“Free speech is the fertilizer; it’s the sunlight; it’s the water for democracy,” he continued. “There is no time in history where the people who were censoring speech were the good guys.
An economic populist and a critic of open borders, Kennedy has promised to use tariffs to protect American workers if elected President.
The Democrat candidate has also attacked the growing influence of Chinese investment in the American economy, focusing particularly on the communist nation’s purchases of farmland across the country.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.