On August 25, 2025, at 1:02 AM, I received an email out of the blue from YouTube, informing me that my channel (@finnegansache) was removed from the online video giant because they falsely claimed, without citing a single example or evidence of wrongdoing, that they “found severe or repeated violations of our harassment policy.” I appealed this decision, but it was denied. Two weeks ago, a video in which I had made a minor and quite commonplace joke about Trump dying entitled “Proof That There is No God,” which was removed for not following the Community Guidelines. I tried to appeal the video, but lost, much to my surprise. (YouTube has, in the past, been very supportive of its creators.) Then on Saturday, I was surprised that another video of mine entitled “Make Derrick Van Orden’s Life a Living Hell,” which was critical of the Wisconsin fascist’s policies, was also removed. When you get three strikes on YouTube, that’s it. Curtains. Finito. Over the weekend, I was obviously unable to post.

So I decided to send a polite message to YouTube Senior Director of Content Policy Michael Grosack. I found his page on LinkedIn. I falsely believed that Grosack was a reasonable creator-friendly man. This was my message:

Dear Michael:

I am a left-leaning creator who has posted his TikTok videos to YouTube without any major problems in the last few years. I have regularly offered jokes and mocking commentary to alt-right types. Nothing has changed all that much in the way that I have produced my videos. But in the last two weeks, there has been an uptick in YouTube inventing pretexts with which to (a) silence me from YouTube and (b) create phony “violations” so that my channel can eventually be pulled. I’ve been hit with two completely phony “community guidelines violations” in the last two weeks for making a joke about someone dying (which I have seen thousands of other people do) and for suggesting that a hateful alt-right politician’s life should be turned into “a living hell.” In no way did I urge my followers to harass these figures. In these extremely anxious times, one should be free to kvetch about the horrific assaults on women, people of color, LGBTQIA members, and, of course, the poor Dreamers and green card holders who are being ignominiously detained by ICE without due process.

YouTube has long been a platform that has encouraged democratic discourse — until recently. I have good reason to believe that I’m being falsely targeted by an insider who works at Google. Because shortly before the second strike, I received some strange comments on my website from a Google employee (IP address traced back to Google).

At present, YouTube is now more committed to censoring its users than TikTok is. I never thought I would ever write this sentence, but here we are. And as the senior director of content policy, you are obviously the person responsible for these needless crackdowns on left-leaning types like me.

I would like to believe in YouTube again, but these two recent efforts to silence me by a moderator really make me feel as if YouTube has now been co-opted in the same manner in which CBS capitulated to Trump with the 60 Minutes settlement. You guys are Google, man. You should not have to cave like this.

These two strikes were put on my YouTube account (@finnegansache) as political retaliation, not because I violated any policy. I take your community guidelines very seriously. But if the moderators stretch the meaning of the community guidelines, well, then we get into ANIMAL FARM territory.

I respectfully request that you review these two videos, understand the comedic intent behind them, and remove these two strikes from my account. I also respectfully request that you initiate an investigation on this moderator who has targeted me, as it stands to reason that he is censoring under progressive creators on your platform.

If you want to be the dominant platform for content creators, then silencing us for the most minor (and conveniently interpreted) infractions tells me that YouTube and Google actively despises its users. Please demonstrate with tangible evidence and action that I am wrong. I would very much like to be wrong on this.

Thanks and all best,

Edward Champion

Two days later, Grosack not only blocked me on LinkedIn from the ability to send him a message. But he also pulled my channel with the false “harassment” claim I have described above.

Approximately 17,000 videos of mine have been deleted by Mister Grosack. I have no ability to download these videos in any way. Many of these videos contained rare footage of authors (some dead), intellectual commentary with noted figures during the last two decades, short films, musical compositions, and the like. My YouTube channel was a way for me to reflect how one man lived and though in the 21st century. And even if Grosack completely despised it, as a member of a putative democratic republic, his obligation was to ensure that this vital history was preserved.

Now I may have backups for a good chunk of my material. But I also have no way of checking it against my former channel, because that is no longer accessible to me. I know for a fact that some rare footage I had of the late Edmund White is now permanently erased, thanks to Michael Grosack, who is now keen to use his authority to erase literary and cultural history, especially as experienced by progressives and left-leaning creators like me. In recent years, I had transferred my TikTok archive to YouTube and I had not experienced any major problems until the last two weeks, in which minor criticisms of Republicans were falsely conflated into “harassment.” And obviously Michael Grosack is the chief person responsible for this incredibly cruel and destructive decision to erase all of my content, which is as immoral as the vandals who destroyed the Great Library of Alexandria.

It was the notorious Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels who once said, “It would not be impossible with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.”

Well, Michael Grosack is a man who has gaslighted me with these false claims of harassment. He really wants me to believe that a square is a circle, when I know for a fact that a square is a square. He wants me to believe that I have somehow done wrong — without producing a scrap of evidence — by making a few modest jokes that I have heard repeated ad infinitum in some form not only on YouTube, but on every other social media platform.

Michael Grosack is an incredibly dangerous tyrant who is no different from Joseph Goebbels. And if this fascist within Google can destroy all of my content with the click of a button, what’s to stop this bearded despot from doing the same to other progressives?

It is now abundantly clear that Google and YouTube now side with the fascists. It is clear that I apparently rated enough to cause Mister Grosack to bend the rules completely to whatever monied and political interests that this untrustworthy and immoral chickenhead now believes in.

YouTube is clearly not a sanctuary for the Left — at least not while lying authoritarians like Michael Grosack, inventing falsehoods to falsely ban creators they don’t like, are employed by YouTube.