Big tech's continued crusade to silence conservative views has Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis preemptively ditching YouTube for the alternative video social media site Rumble.
Gov. DeSantis has been silent on his YouTube channel for 3 months and posted a 45-second video on Rumble.
"Some of our biggest media conglomerates, who claim to be avatars of the First Amendment and free exchange of ideas, they really become cheerleaders for censorship," DeSantis says in the video posted Thursday from one of his recent news conferences. "If something doesn't fit the overriding narrative, then in their view it's better that it get left on the cutting room floor. It's best that you edit it out of existence, rather than actually tell people the truth.
"I think what we're really witnessing is Orwellian, the big tech, corporate media collusion and the end result is that the narrative is always right. Well, I don't think that's what the American people want – certainly not people here in Florida."
Rumble welcomes DeSantis, a rising star in the Republican Party who is being billed as a potential GOP presidential candidate as soon as 2024.
"Gov. Ron DeSantis is a longtime proponent of free speech and has been at the forefront of the effort to de-monopolize Big Tech," Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski said in a statement, The Epoch Times reported. "He understands firsthand, Americans' distrust of monolithic tech companies and the danger they pose to free expression and free markets.
"In fact, YouTube recently removed from its platform a video of the governor and a handful of Ivy League-educated medical experts discussing the downsides of prolonged pandemic-related lockdowns. Rumble, on the other hand, invites robust and civic dialogue on our platform, including Gov. DeSantis' insights and expertise."
DeSantis' coronavirus pandemic response has been hailed by Republicans as first in the nation, while Democrats and liberal medical professionals have criticized his message, leading to the censoring of his April 12 video, DeSantis said.
"Google and YouTube have not been, throughout this pandemic, repositories of truth and scientific inquiry, but instead have acted as enforcers of a narrative, a big tech council of censors in service of the ruling elite," DeSantis said, the Times reported.
"When they took down the video," he continued, "they were really continuing what they've been doing for the past year: stifle debate, short-circuit scientific inquiry, make sure that the narrative is not questioned. And I think that we've seen already that that has had catastrophic consequences for our society."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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