YouTube is allowing a propaganda channel linked to the white supremacist Rise Above Movement (RAM) to operate on their platform, in a glaring example of how the popular video streaming site is failing to confront right-wing extremism. The channel contains videos featuring RAM’s co-founder Robert Rundo offering advice on street fighting, creating and dispersing propaganda, promoting the white supremacist movement, and a variety of other topics. The media group that created the channel uses RAM’s logo and seeks to cover international extreme right news and culture. The YouTube channel was created on June 19, 2020, and had 12 videos on October 14, averaging approximately 1,560 views per video. The channel contains the media group’s contact information and links to the media group’s website and cryptocurrency donation page. YouTube has been inconsistent in its removal of RAM related content. Despite the platform’s June 2019 announcement on removing white supremacist videos, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found RAM content in August 2019. YouTube removed a video associated with the same RAM-affiliated media group on June 24 for violating the site’s hate speech policies. However, additional reported videos were not removed, despite sharing the same external links and iconography as the deleted video.
Rundo has even joked about the group’s ability to post content, stating that he would use coded terminology to refer to racial groups because “I don’t want to get my videos from YouTube taken down yet.” This strategy follows RAM’s previous attempts to modify their appearance and message to widen their appeal. According to the Los Angeles Times, RAM co-founder Ben Daley told a prospective member to abandon the white power skinhead image, stating that “its (sic) time to reimagine the nationalist look and playbook, we have become predictable that needs to change.” YouTube’s Community Guidelines prohibits hate speech, “content produced by violent criminal or terrorist organizations,” and “content that depicts the insignia, logos, or symbols of violent criminal or terrorist organizations in order to praise or promote them.” The channel in question violates all three of the tech giant’s guidelines
via counterextremism: YouTube Refuses to Remove Channel for Media Group Linked to Rise Above Movement