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YouTube removes Nation of Islam channel over hate-speech violations

“We have strict policies prohibiting hate speech on YouTube and terminate any channel that repeatedly or egregiously violates those policies,” says a spokesperson.

Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan on July 4, 2020. Credit: MEMRI.

YouTube has taken down the Nation of Islam (NOI) channel from its platform.

According to YouTube, the NOI channel was removed on Oct. 2 for violating YouTube’s policies against hate speech.

“We have strict policies prohibiting hate speech on YouTube, and terminate any channel that repeatedly or egregiously violates those policies,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “After updating our guidelines last year to better address content that spreads hateful conspiracy theories, we saw a 5x spike in video removals and have terminated over 25,000 channels for violating our hate speech policies.”

NOI did not respond to a request for comment.

The Anti-Defamation League wrote in a July blog post that Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan is the “most popular anti-Semite in America.”

The ADL also noted in that post that Farrakhan said during a July 4 speech “that Jews are enjoined by their religion to poison prophets and that Jews had ‘broken their covenant relationship with God.’ He referred to Jews collectively as ‘Satan’ and the ‘enemy of God,’ and claimed that white people “are born with lie [sic] and murder in their nature.”

Since August 2019, YouTube also has removed several white-nationalist figures from its platform, including David Duke and Richard Spencer in June.

This article was first published by the Jewish Journal.

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