On 19 September Venezuelan broadcaster TeleSUR reported that the YouTube channel of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro had been deleted. His channel page now displays a message stating it has been ‘terminated for a violation of YouTube’s Terms of Service’ with no other justification provided. During an event commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Bolivarian Armed Forces the following week, the President referred to this as ‘censorship’ and YouTube’s owners as ‘imperialist imbeciles’.
More active than the YouTube channels of most world leaders, the account had featured Maduro’s podcasts, his regular Actividades Presidenciales livestreams, as well as recordings of his interviews and speeches. Maduro’s channel had over 223,000 subscribers, according to an Archive.org snapshot from August, and his streams regularly received tens of thousands of views, with some of his videos having viewership in the millions. Erasure of this space for the President to engage directly with the Venezuelan public, as well as being an outlet to speak to the wider world, is clearly part of the US imperialist strategy to destroy the Bolivarian Revolution.
The US Navy is currently targeting civilian vessels in Venezuelan sovereign waters, claiming to be combatting ‘narcoterrorism’. Far-right opposition leader, and US asset, Maria Corina Machado is using her false prestige as a Nobel Peace Prize winner to call for direct US intervention in her homeland. The US government is publicly authorising clandestine CIA operations in the country. While a single YouTube channel may seem the least of the Bolivarian Republic’s concerns at the present, eliminating a major means of international media outreach, when there is such a threat of imminent invasion, should be ringing alarm bells.
YouTube is owned by Google (currently traded as Alphabet), a company with close ties to the US government including both the State Department and Department of Defence. Google’s CEO Sundar Pinchai was one of the notable guests during the second inauguration of US president Donald Trump. This censorship by Google, against a world leader and sovereign state, is not only indicative of the institutional hostility towards Venezuela, but demonstrates the inextricable link between the bourgeoisie and imperialist foreign policy.
The banning of Maduro’s channel follows numerous other instances of online censorship by major social media corporations and government bodies; censorship of media which present geo-political narratives that contradict those pushed by western imperialism.
In March 2022, following the dramatic escalation in the Russo-Ukrainian proxy war, Russian state media company RT saw a mass ban on its broadcasting and social media in the EU, Canada and US. Its website was also blocked by Internet Service Providers. While these governments never had an issue with RT spreading reactionary, far-right propaganda pertaining to immigration, LGBTQ+ people or Covid-19, it could not allow them to present any counter-narratives to Western imperialist propaganda regarding the conflict in Ukraine or other imperialist interventions around the world. Though RT was not a left-wing outlet by any means, these actions proved the hypocrisy of the western powers.
The silencing of left-wing, internationalist outlets Africa Stream and Red.Media are recent examples of this trend. The former, in particular, was successful at bringing western working class attention to neo-colonial struggles in Africa including anti-imperialist struggles in the Sahel. Africa Stream was banned from multiple platforms in September 2024 after the US State Department alleged it had Russian backing. The Germany-based Red.Media was likewise smeared as ‘Russian propaganda’ and deplatformed, in May this year, over its anti-Zionist messaging.
Now in the crosshairs is the US-based Breakthrough News, also presenting strong socialist and anti-imperialist messaging, also finding a large audience for its content on social media. Breakthrough News is also being accused of having ties to a foreign government, in this case China, through alleged financial backer Neville Singham Roy. On 15 September, the US’s House Oversight Committee made an official recommendation for the US Treasury to ‘freeze or seize’ the assets of Breakthrough News and other left organisations supposedly affiliated with Roy.
TikTok itself has been targeted for its Chinese ownership through parent company ByteDance, placing a valuable media asset out of the control of western capital. TikTok has been a platform where leftist content has thrived. This has included the spread of information on the Palestinian liberation movement and footage of Gaza following the start of Israel’s genocidal campaign that began in October 2023. A 2024 US law threatening to ban TikTok unless ByteDance sold the platform to US owners led to capitulations by the company, altering its algorithm as well as hiring IDF militant and Zionist propagandist Erica Mindel as TikTok’s new ‘Public Policy Manager of Hate Speech’.
Liberals have presented a utopian view of the internet as a space for the free exchange of information and ideas. If this freedom ever existed, it is now being severely limited by Western capital, which dominates online spaces. If this freedom ever existed, it is now being severely restricted in the interests of the ruling class. Where there is territory that western capital doesn’t own, as ever, it will use its state apparatus to assert control. It has begun its crackdown on views and reporting that challenge imperialist narratives. It is attempting to ensure that the left’s success in exposing the Gaza genocide can never be replicated. Plurality of ideas and freedom of expression were always liberalism’s greatest lies.
Jay Das Gupta
