Christian author Eric Metaxas has had his show kicked off YouTube for violating its content restrictions in what the program’s producer described as a “hatchetjob.”
Mr. Metaxas, author of bestselling biographies on theologians Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther, said that “The Eric Metaxas Radio Show” channel was banned permanently for violating YouTube’s community guidelines.
A second channel, “Eric Metaxas,” which posts primarily his television appearances and has 4,500 subscribers, is still active. His radio show can still be accessed on Rumble.
“I’m all hopped up. I’m crazy because I got knocked off of YouTube permanently,” Mr. Metaxas said during his Tuesday show on Rumble. “People don’t realize it — this is a huge financial hit, but you know what, it’s because we’re over the target.”
He said the show, which had 215,000 subscribers, tried to avoid running afoul of YouTube by removing some content.
“We even took down everything that we thought might offend them in the Communist Party, and they still knocked us off totally,” Mr. Metaxas said. “They didn’t just take us off for two weeks or something. It’s an extraordinary thing. We’re living through strange times.”
FINALLY… Youtube decided that because we violated their “community standards” my show has been entirely kicked off their platform. In related news, the CCP and the North Korean govt don’t like our videos. So would you PLEASE subscribe to us on @Rumble?https://t.co/vIs0Pn4nFq
— Eric Metaxas (@ericmetaxas) June 1, 2021
The move follows the removal this year of prominent conservative channels run by former White House senior adviser Sebastian Gorka and LifeSite News.
The conservative Media Research Center’s Newsbusters called the Metaxas show “just the latest casualty of Big Tech censoring views they don’t like.”
Chris Himes, the show’s digital media producer, said the channel was banned after receiving three strikes in a 90-day period, the latest for an April interview with lockdown critic Naomi Wolf, which YouTube said “violates our medical misinformation policy.”
The video was titled, “Naomi Wolf Sounds the Alarm on Vaccine Passports and a Social Credit System in America.”
“We got 4 strikes (3 and an initial warning) over the past few months,” said Mr. Himes in an email, adding, “we were a few days from one of the warnings expiring. So they whacked us.”
He said it “seemed more punitive and subjective than rational. Why did it take 2 months to issue the violation? #hatchetjob.”
The Washington Times has reached out to Google, which owns YouTube, for comment.
The other three violations were for shows that YouTube said advanced “false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of the U.S. 2020 presidential election.”
Mr. Metaxas, a conservative public intellectual whose show is syndicated by Salem Radio, also hosts an event series in New York City called “Socrates in the City.”
A supporter of former President Donald Trump, Mr. Metaxas has written three children’s books featuring “Donald the Caveman” as the hero.
His latest book is “Fish Out of Water: A Search for the Meaning of Life” (Salem Books, 2021).
Health, The New York Today
