Watson frequently suggests that ideologies like his represent a sort of new counterculture and boasts about the right wing’s dominance on the YouTube platform. “Twitter is a tiny echo chamber,” he tweeted earlier this year. “I’m not sure the left understand the monumental ass-whupping being dished out to them on YouTube.” And in terms of sheer numbers and visibility on the platform, the YouTube right is substantial. Among the wide range of pundits, ideologues and highly YouTube-specific personalities, a few archetypal examples appear.

Photo From a 2017 video on Lauren Southern’s YouTube channel. Credit YouTube

There’s Stefan Molyneux (around 644,000 subscribers, with videos totaling around 118 million views), an Irish-Canadian who, like Watson, has civilizational, apocalyptic fixations — “The Truth About The Paris Terrorist Attack,” “The Death of Germany,” “What Pisses Me Off About Fake News” — but tends to linger on purported sins of rhetoric, fallacy and logic. He is especially fond of the phrase “Not an argument!” and has pinned a video at the top of his channel titled “Take The Red Pill,” a reference to a scene in the science-fiction film “The Matrix,” in which the protagonist is asked to make a choice between remaining ensconced in a comfortable illusion and being exposed to a harsher reality. (The term was adopted by men’s rights activists to describe their awakening to what they call an antimale bias in society, but it has become a versatile metaphor for reactionary political activation: against feminism, against immigration, against social justice, against the media.)

Lauren Southern (310,000 subscribers), who previously worked with Rebel Media, a right-wing Canadian media company, is something of a roving correspondent, making recent stops in France (“Paris Train Station Overwhelmed With Migrants”), Germany (“Getting Stalked at #G20”) and California (“BATTLE OF BERKELEY”). According to recent videos, she is preparing to join and document the #DefendEurope campaign, a civilian “identitarian humanitarian” effort to intercept refugee boats in the Mediterranean and “make sure that they will be brought back to Africa.”

And Stephen Crowder (830,000 subscribers) is a right-wing comedian and talk-show host whose act is built almost exclusively around saying things he imagines liberals won’t allow him to say, and formulating some of these things into “pranks.” In practice, this means videos with names like “#SJW Feminist Festival Crashed By Crowder ... In Underwear,” and “HIDDEN CAM: ‘Stealing’ Illegal Immigrant’s Jobs!” Crowder, whose chuckling, boyish presentation contrasts with his peers’ more pedantic affectations, nonetheless shares many of their causes. His YouTube profile concludes, proudly, “Hippies and Muslims hate me!”

Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story The New York Times Magazine The best of The New York Times Magazine delivered to your inbox every week, including exclusive feature stories, photography, columns and more. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Recaptcha requires verification I'm not a robot reCAPTCHA Privacy - Terms Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. You are already subscribed to this email. View all New York Times newsletters. See Sample

Privacy Policy

Opt out or contact us anytime

There are countless other forms of political expression on YouTube, but no bloc is anywhere near as organized or as assertive as the YouTube right and its dozens of obdurate vloggers. Nor is there a coherent group on the platform articulating any sort of direct answer to this budding form of reaction — which both validates this material in the eyes of its creators and gives it room to breathe, grow and assert itself beyond its immediate vicinity.

Just ask YouTube itself. In mid-July, the company launched “YouTube Creators for Change,” which it described as “global initiative dedicated to amplifying and multiplying the voices of role models who are tackling difficult social issues with their channels.” Its roster included YouTube personalities from various subcultures — style bloggers, essayistic vloggers, comedians, musicians — and its stated intention was to drive “greater awareness and productive conversations around social issues.” It was an openly and moderately progressive project, in a familiar corporate tradition. It was also rolled out alongside a broader campaign on the site to counter “extremist” content. The ostensible target of that campaign was videos promoting terrorism. But a recent post from YouTube invokes Creators for Change in the service of somewhat broader goals , promising “tougher treatment to videos that aren’t illegal but have been flagged by users as potential violations of our policies on hate speech and violent extremism.”

Write A Comment

The YouTube right has portrayed statements like this as a regulatory threat — a precursor to censorship, or perhaps as some latter-day, private analogue to the Fairness Doctrine. Its members believe that their videos and accounts are doomed to be banned, delisted or stripped of lucrative ads, effectively diminishing their presence on the platform. But for the moment, in Creators for Change, the right also saw a narrative opportunity. In response videos, YouTube and its owner, Google, were cast as an oppressive establishment forcing left-wing politics into users’ feeds. Black Pigeon Speaks published his own video, “#CreatorsForChange — YouTube Propaganda Gets REKT — Yet Again,” in which he quickly segued from the platform’s campaign to a brazen claim that “diversity always leads to fractured societies that always break down.” The comments on YouTube’s original video introducing the program were rapidly flooded with bile. “Meet the rainbow coalition of YouTubers who hate white people!” read one top-voted comment. “I never hated diversity until media began to forcefully push it down my throat,” read another.

It was, for the YouTube right, an expression of power — internal to YouTube, to be sure, but projected outward into the platform’s wider world in a visible and disconcerting way. Its members had, in their view, fended off an intrusion into a venue over which they feel a real and potentially lasting claim. Watson, who frequently portrays his political cohort as victims of censorship on YouTube and elsewhere, tallied the moment as a victory for his team. He captured a collage of negative comments and posted it on Twitter, alongside a laughing emoji. “Politically active YouTube users are so beyond red-pilled,” he wrote, “they’ve basically made it a right-wing safe space.”