Christian Hate-Pastor Steven Anderson Is Still Violating His YouTube Ban

It’s been a few months since Christian hate-preacher Steven Anderson was effectively banned from YouTube… but he’s still trying to get around it.

Back in September, I posted about how the leader of Arizona’s (New Independent Fundamentalist) Faithful Word Baptist Church had been posting his recent sermons on a variety of smaller YouTube channels — or having his followers post them for him — to get around the ban that YouTube had placed on his own page.

YouTube responded by banning many of those smaller channels. It was the right move on their part since you’re not allowed to re-upload videos that they say violate their policies or get around the bans they’ve placed on you using deceptive means. But Anderson is still plugging away… so we might as well keep talking about it.

In case you need a refresher, this isn’t about a mere difference of opinion. Anderson has celebrated the deaths of murdered LGBTQ people, called on the government to execute homosexuals with a firing squad, spread Holocaust denialism, promoted misogyny, and more. His sermons are so outrageously awful that 34 countries won’t allow him to step foot within their borders. Last year, he began spreading misinformation about COVID, even urging his congregation (and YouTube viewers) to avoid any eventual vaccines.

YouTube banning his channel removed the easiest way for him to acquire new followers. He could always post his sermons on his website, but without a way to blast those links to followers (or give strangers a way to find him), it was like yelling into a void. But he and his followers continued posting sermons on new channels, listing the specific locations on his website.

So once again, I thought it would be helpful to just highlight where these videos are being posted since November. Just in case anyone at YouTube feels like pressing some suspension buttons…

Bottom line: The past three full months’ worth of sermons were posted on a dozen different channels, some of which have only a few other videos and a few subscribers. A few of them are reused frequently and have thousands of followers. Most of them were created after last summer. Only a couple make any direct reference to Anderson at all.

One of the channels, with the Greek title “δεν πηγαίνω πουθενά,” translates to “I’m not going anywhere.”

The channel names include:

Baptist Lives Matter
Pastor Anderson Solid Gold Hits
Baptist Preaching
KJV Prophecy 1611
Faithful Word Baptist Church Mirror
Lee The Baptist Burner KJV Pastor Steven Anderson
δεν πηγαίνω πουθενά (“I’m not going anywhere”)
MARIAUTUBE 100
The Son of Nun
James King (as opposed to “King James”)
Good King Asa
Pastor Anderson Sermons

It takes a lot of work to spread sermons out like this, but Anderson doesn’t have much of a choice. Where else would he go? Sure, there are other websites that will host his content, but if he wants strangers to find him, he has to be where the video action is at. That’s YouTube. But as we’ve learned from Twitter booting Donald Trump, deplatforming horrible people works. They might urge their followers to go to smaller alternatives like Parler, only to watch those rebellions fizzle out when everyone realizes it’s no fun speaking in an echo chamber. Even the haters want to be where everyone else is at in order to troll them.

For months now, Anderson has directed his followers to ThePreaching.com, which just redirects to the sermon archives on his church’s website. (Ironically, the “Featured YouTube Channel” on that page goes to one that’s been “terminated for a violation of YouTube’s Terms of Service.”)

His website also has links for people to donate to his church. I have previously reached out to those vendors, Process Donation and USAePay, and asked why they’re allowing a hate group to use their services. (Didn’t they have policies to prevent that from happening?) Neither company has responded to my emails.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)