How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps

by Ben Shapiro

grounds. In June 2019, YouTube demonetized comedian Steven Crowder after Crowder did a lisping imitation of Vox writer Carlos Maza, even though Crowder hadn’t violated YouTube’s terms of service.21 In December 2019, YouTube formalized a new policy that bans videos that “maliciously insult someone” based on protected attributes. In practice, this meant that YouTube actively considered whether to take down videos that included President Trump mocking Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas” over her false claims of Native American ancestry. This is speech-policing, pure and simple.22

Foreign countries have taken all of this to its logical extreme: overt governmental restrictions on speech, all in the name of the emotional sensitivity of statistical rarities.

others.” Tayler explained that Forstater had failed to recognize that a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) from the government did not merely change a person’s legal sex for purposes of government documentation—it magically changed the sex itself. And failure to recognize the incredible, godlike power of government represented a fundamental breach of human dignity.

In New York City, businesses can be fined up to $125,000 for not using the preferred pronouns of transgender people, and up to $250,000 if they do so as “a result of willful, wanton, or malicious conduct.”

pronouns. As Professor Eugene Volokh of UCLA Law School says, “people can basically force us—on pain of massive legal liability—to say what they want us to say, whether or not we want to endorse the political message associated with that term, and whether or not we think it’s a lie.”25