E-Pluribus |September 25, 2025
Google admits to COVID censorship. Debate group removed from campus. The left's violence problem?
A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
Elizabeth Nolan Brown: Google Says Biden Admin Pressured Company To Remove Content
There is undeniable evidence that the Biden Administration pressured social media platforms to censor factual information during the pandemic. Defenders of these restrictions insisted the policy was not technically censorship—“they’re private companies!” and the government was only “suggesting” content moderation—but now Google has conceded that it was indeed deplatforming YouTube creators at Washington’s behest:
Senior officials in the Biden administration, including some White House officials, “conducted repeated and sustained outreach” and “pressed” Google- and YouTube parent-company Alphabet “regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate [Alphabet’s] policies,” the company revealed yesterday.
While Alphabet “continued to develop and enforce its policies independently, Biden Administration officials continued to press [Alphabet] to remove non-violative user-generated content,” a lawyer for Alphabet wrote in a September 23 letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan. Administration officials including Biden “created a political atmosphere that sought to influence the actions” of private tech platforms regarding the moderation of misinformation.
The company will now restore the accounts of certain content creators removed as part of efforts to tamp down on misinformation related to COVID-19 or the 2020 presidential election. “YouTube will prove an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the Company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect,” the letter said.
These announcements came in response to Judiciary Committee subpoenas sent as part of the committee’s investigation into government efforts to “weaponize” tech companies to suppressing disfavored speech.
Jennifer Kabbany: Conservative ‘Fearless Debate’ group removed from Tennessee HBCU amid student uproar
Charlie Kirk’s signature political activism was his college debate tour; he’d engage any student on any political issue they wanted to discuss. A conservative group sought to honor Kirk’s memory by setting up a table and debating students at Tennessee State University. They were quickly chased off campus by irate protestors flashing middle fingers—who then threw trash at their car as they drove away with a police escort. The College Fix reports:
A conservative “Fearless Debate” group was removed from Tennessee State University on Tuesday amid an uproar in which students surrounded the group and aggressively taunted, surrounded, and yelled at them, videos show.
The group states they wanted to honor Charlie Kirk’s memory by having debates on college campuses, but critics say their unapproved visit, Make America Great Again hats, and inflammatory language — “DEI should be illegal” and “Deport all illegals now! Let’s talk” — was to blame for the raucous reaction at the HBCU.
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Cam Higby, a leader of the debate effort, told WKRN Nashville: “If you want to talk to people who disagree with you, you go to the place where people disagree with you.”
The group posted on X: “To the Leftists asking ‘why would you go to an HBCU to have debates?’ Our answer is simple: why wouldn’t we go to an HBCU? Do leftists not believe that black people have the same rights as everyone else to participate in a dialogue about America’s future?”
Daniel McCarthy: The Left’s Triple Threat to Free Speech
There’s been lots of talk in recent days about conservative hypocrisy on free speech: when right-wingers we’re routinely cancelled, they loved the First Amendment. Now that they have political power, they happily silence their opponents, making the very same “hate speech” accusations they once detested.
At Chronicles Magazine, Dan McCarthy calls shenanigans on this accusation. The left’s rhetoric really does encourage violence, he claims, and we can’t have free speech in any meaningful sense if people are being assaulted or killed for their political opinions:
First there are those in the liberal elite who downplay violence in the name of any cause they deem righteous—remember CNN describing a George Floyd-related riot in 2020 as “fiery but mostly peaceful”?—while labeling Donald Trump, the MAGA movement and conservatives as fascists, threats to democracy and outright Nazis.
Few of the columnists and pundits who employ this rhetoric dare to complete the thought, of course: if Trump really is Hitler, if Republican government means the end of democracy, then what follows?
Just as the incendiary rhetoric of respectable liberals provides a framing and permission structure for all-too-often literally incendiary acts of antifa intimidation, the violent but usually less than lethal mayhem of the activist left sends a signal to bolder radicals.
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Activists stirred up by this language menace everyone from the think-tank scholar Charles Murray to the independent gay reporter Andy Ngo.
First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of the press don’t apply wherever antifa and the intolerant left are given free rein.
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Tyler Robinson wasn’t forced to do what he did by media hype calling Kirk a fascist or by antifa thugs showing it’s possible to get away with hurting people – but he surely wasn’t discouraged by it.
Yes, free speech includes freedom for hateful speech.
But free speech can’t exist at all without freedom from intimidation by the likes of antifa.
Those who act on liberals’ violent rhetoric, whether by harassing speakers or by killing them, must be rooted out and punished.
Around X
Speaking of hypocrisy, Ian Miller wants to know where all the defenders of Jimmy Kimmel’s free speech rights disappeared to after Google’s censorship admission.
Displaying a stunning lack of self-awareness, CNN anchor Jake Tapper declares Jimmy Kimmel’s three-day suspension from his late night show the worst example of censorship he’s ever seen.
Investigative reporter Catherine Herridge corroborates and elaborates on Google’s recent admission that the Biden White House was leaning on the social platforms during COVID. The government was apparently pressuring journalists, too.
