YouTube claims that the censorship of Giorgia Meloni's speech was a "mistake". The video platform, owned by Google, removed a video of the winner of the Italian election after it went viral despite being hosted without problems on YouTube since 2019.
In the video, which corresponds to the World Congress of Families held in Italy in 2019, Meloni defended the family and the nation while criticizing the new gender ideologies and the policies of international elites that seek to do away with individual identities. This content was removed by YouTube on the grounds that the video violated its community guidelines.
A day after the video was taken down, YouTube admitted it made a mistake and restored the video. "After careful review, we have determined that this video does not violate our community guidelines and have reinstated it," said a spokeswoman for the platform.
We enforce our policies regardless of the political views of the speaker and when it is brought to our attention that a video has been removed in error, we review the content and take appropriate action, including restoring the relevant videos or channels, as we have done with this video.
YouTube did not clarify the reasons for the removal of the video or why the video allegedly violated its community guidelines. The truth is that Meloni's speech reflects a conservative vision of politics and got thousands of views after the electoral victory of Meloni's Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d'Italia) party.
Meloni's speech and censure of conservative politicians
Meloni's speech defended the natural family, motherhood, procreation and Christian identity. In addition, he criticized the prevailing political, social and economic order:
Everything that defines us is now an enemy, so they attack national identity, they attack religious identity, they attack gender identity, they attack family identity. I can't define myself as Italian, Christian, woman, mother, no. I must be citizen x, gender x, parent 1, parent 2. I must be a number, because when I am just a number, when I no longer have an identity or roots, then I will be the perfect slave at the mercy of financial speculators, the perfect consumer.
Giorgia Meloni, who after her electoral victory is shaping up to become Italian Prime Minister, directly addressed several controversial issues, such as surrogacy, abortion and gender ideology.
Above all, I say that those who defend practices such as surrogate wombs, abortion in the ninth month and the attempt to block the development of children with drugs at the age of 11 are 'unpresentable'.
These are messages that seem to displease YouTube as they caused the removal of the video. Finally, the platform had to rectify and the content is now available to users. In any case, it seems clear that the big companies owned by Big Tech do not seem to feel comfortable with certain speeches of conservative politicians. Recall that the social network Twitter deleted several messages from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for questioning the confinements during the covid pandemic and permanently closed the account of former President Donald Trump after the events of January 6, 2021 on Capitol Hill.
After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.https://t.co/CBpE1I6j8Y
- Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) January 8, 2021
