Varg Vikernes' (Burzum) YouTube channel deleted via new hate speech policy

The notorious and very racist Kristian “Varg” Vikernes, aka Burzum, has been running a popular YouTube channel for many years, a YouTube channel where he went on long rants, sort of like a racist advice column or podcast. Here’s a screenshot I once took of one of his videos to show a friend while asking them why Varg was allowed to exist on YouTube…

Bonus points to YouTube for serving “Ancestry” ads on Varg’s nationalistic videos! You can’t make this stuff up.

I wondered if maybe his method of writing the racist stuff instead of saying it was his way around censors. Well, thanks to media pressure on YouTube to stop the bullshit, the censors have caught up with Varg and a bunch of other hateful YouTube accounts that were just deleted via a new policy. YouTube writes:

YouTube has always had rules of the road, including a longstanding policy against hate speech. In 2017, we introduced a tougher stance towards videos with supremacist content, including limiting recommendations and features like comments and the ability to share the video. This step dramatically reduced views to these videos (on average 80%). Today, we’re taking another step in our hate speech policy by specifically prohibiting videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status. This would include, for example, videos that promote or glorify Nazi ideology, which is inherently discriminatory. Finally, we will remove content denying that well-documented violent events, like the Holocaust or the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, took place.

Burzum albums are still considered black metal classics (and only nine years ago it was apparently still ok to put Varg on the cover of a respected metal magazine), so it’s especially unfortunate — musically speaking — that Varg turned out to be such a truly rotten dude, and that’s without even counting the church burnings and murder of his former Mayhem bandmate Øystein “Euronymous” Aarsethaside.

Varg claims to have given up playing metal in 2014, but he has been pretty relevant lately in part due to a continued interest in the music he influenced, but especially because of the Lords of Chaos movie that came out this year which is based partially on his life. As many metal sites reported, Varg was not a fan of the movie (though he did not watch it). How did people know? He talked about it on his YouTube channel.

Vikernes’ channel was reportedly removed hours after YouTube’s policy update. He responded on Burzum’s Facebook, writing “Mafia YouTube!”