Of course, if those YouTube (“Don’t Be Evil”) people stood for anything like they claim, they’d welcome it. But let him tell it:
In 2013, I included the story of the Namibian genocide as part of my award-winning documentary The Biology of the Second Reich, which examined the impact of Darwinism on German ideology leading up to the First World War. After receiving nearly 90,000 views on YouTube, the documentary was effectively shut down by YouTube through the imposition of an “age restriction.” This meant that after late 2018, only adults logging into YouTube were allowed to see it. I appealed the age restriction, but YouTube is the land of faceless decisions by algorithms, and the repeal was summarily rejected without any personal interaction.
My documentary did include historical photos that were disturbing, especially some of the photos from World War I. But a quick search of YouTube at the time turned up many videos that employed far more graphic historical visuals without being “age restricted.”
I considered trying to protest YouTube’s double standard, especially since YouTube was effectively censoring a story about scientific racism and African genocide, but I decided that YouTube probably would be impervious to further complaints, and so I dropped the matter.
A few days ago, I decided it might be time to re-edit my video:
John West, “African Genocide: The Horror of Scientific Racism” at Evolution News and Science Today (July 20, 2021)
… But in our current cultural moment, it may finally be time to tell the story of Darwinian racism. I’ve removed some (but not all) of the disturbing imagery from the original film, and I’ve made it shorter. I hope it now passes YouTube’s censorship and more people will be able to see it for the first time. My documentary only tells one part of the story of racism, and it also only tells a part of the story of the influence of Social Darwinism on Western imperialism, which certainly extended to other nations besides Germany. Yet I hope my revised film will add something to the current conversation.
John West, “African Genocide: The Horror of Scientific Racism” at Evolution News and Science Today (July 20, 2021)
Briefly, Darwinism made racism “science.” At one time, it was simply mythology. “My folks were gods. Yours were mud,” etc. Now, along comes Darwin’s The Descent of Man and people thought they had science-based “Tree of Life” types of reasons for their beliefs.
For how John West’s doc got dumped at YouTube, see:
YouTube Places Restriction On Vid On Scientific Racism On the part of the Second Reich in German Southwest Africa: Apparently, it was considered too awful for a general audience so John G. West, the producer, has edited it, in the hope of keeping it up. (July 7, 2020) [That apparently didn’t work so he has had to edit it further.]