Narrative Warfare: First They Come Into The Garden. Now The Culling.

Ben Swann appeared RT almost two weeks ago to explain what the strategy is behind YouTube's move to delete channels deemed "not commercially viable". In short, it's a ruse.

Ben argues that this is the "two" of a one-two punch. The first part was the massive demonitization wave, which--as it often the case for these strategies--is not meant to feel that devastating as it is initially feared to be. Sure, some folks got knocked out by it, but most adapted by substituting other avenues for revenue; this was the subject of later complimentary moves to deplatform, which is the subject of another post for another time.

Because there was no real follow-up right away, most hit with demonitization fell back to sleep and assumed that they could just make some additional adjustments as required; some of these are sensible, such as opening accounts on other services and paralleling content uploads there or engaging in simultaneous live-streaming to multiple locations. Yet YouTube remained the dominant on-demand video site for both livestreaming and archival video, and as such being deplatformed here is a significant (if not crippling) loss wherever you are in most of the world.

Why?

Because most followers will not go with you to an external site if you got big on YouTube, especially if you got big here first. A similar thing happens to people who get big on Twitch and then move elsewhere, for whatever reason; most users are unwilling to leave the biggest player of a given scene. The folks who did weather deplatforming well already had their own sites and thus impact was minimal; see the examples of Red Ice and Info Wars.

And, as Ben Swann points out, this is meant to be nothing more than a pretext to eliminate wrongthinkers who threaten control over the Narrative. Google is entirely on board with using their power to shape the Narrative, and thereby interfere with electoral processes no matter where they are; the United States remains their most vital concern for now, but this is hardly limited to the American context. Expect this to be applied to channels in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, continental Europe, and all over Central and South America soon enough.

And, of course, it's by no means coincidental that this will always coincide with what the Thralls at CIA and its counterpart agencies want done for Empire. Empire must fall.