Rep. Crenshaw Slams Google After Employee Labels Shapiro, Peterson, PragerU ‘Nazis’

BY PETR SVAB

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Tex.) criticized Google after its internal email showed an employee labeling conservative commentators “Nazis.”

Crenshaw called it “pretty disturbing,” “wholly irresponsible,” and possibly inciting violence, as he questioned a Google executive during a June 26 House hearing.

The internal email was published on June 25 by Project Veritas, a right-leaning investigative journalism nonprofit.

“Today it is often 1 or 2 steps to Nazis, if we understand that PragerU, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro et al are nazis using the dog whistles,” said Google employee in the email, which seems to be discussing a feature that recommends to viewers more videos to watch on Youtube, a video sharing platform owned by Google.

The employee proposed that if Google can’t identify “far-right” content and, presumably, stop the suggestion feature from recommending it, the feature should be disabled.

PragerU was founded by conservative commentator Dennis Prager and produces educational videos on conservative ideas. Jordan Peterson is a Canadian psychologist who is in opposition to some postmodernist ideas popular on the progressive left. Ben Shapiro is a conservative political commentator.

“Two of three of these people are Jewish, very religious Jews, and yet you think they’re Nazis. It begs the question: What kind of education do people at Google have so they think that religious Jews are Nazis?” Crenshaw rhetorically asked.

UPDATE: @RepDanCrenshaw Asks Google Exec About Leaked Email that calls @benshapiro @jordanbpeterson @prageru “nazis” pic.twitter.com/QkQTVh67kP

— Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) June 26, 2019

“Three of three of these people had family members killed in the Holocaust, Ben Shapiro is the number one target of the alt-right. And yet you people operate off the premise that he’s a Nazi.”

He went on to argue that since “there’s this common thread in this country that [Nazis] are bad and that they’re evil and that they should be destroyed” then if Google labels people as Nazis “you can make the argument that’s inciting violence.”

Response

“Google opines so neutrally on Shapiro, Prager U and me,” Peterson responded in a June 26 tweet.

PragerU is already suing Google and Youtube for restricting access to about 100 of its videos.

“It’s a complete absurdity and they are weakening the meaning and the significance of the word ‘Nazi,’” Craig Strazzeri, PragerU chief marketing officer said in a phone call.

He pointed out that Prager spent a major part of his career speaking out against the evils of Nazism and argued that labeling him as a “Nazi” is an excuse for Youtube to suppress PragerU’s content.

“They pretend and they lie to be politically neutral and yet we have internal documents, internal communications of their own employees calling us Nazis and encouraging the other employees to do something about it,” he said.

Youtube issued a statement in a June 26 tweet:

“We’ve had a lot of questions today…clarifying, we apply our policies fairly and without political bias. All creators are held to the same standard.”

We’ve had a lot of questions today…clarifying, we apply our policies fairly and without political bias. All creators are held to the same standard.

— YouTubeInsider (@YouTubeInsider) June 26, 2019

More Leaks

Aside from the email, Project Veritas published on June 24 a video showing Google employees and internal documents backing the allegation that Google infuses its political worldview into its products without disclosing it to its users.

The exposé corroborated from multiple sources that Google uses a doctrine of “fairness” to tweak its products in order to surreptitiously push its users toward its preferred political worldview.

One employee caught on hidden camera—Jen Gennai, head of Google’s Responsible Innovation—even appeared to say that Google’s goal in some of its efforts was preventing President Donald Trump or anybody like him from getting elected again—an assertion confirmed by another insider, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Google spokespeople didn’t respond to information in the exposé and referred The Epoch Times to a June 24 Medium blog post by Gennai instead.

Gennai said that her talking about the 2020 election referred to Google’s efforts “to help prevent the types of online foreign interference that happened in 2016.”

Russia ran an influence operation before the 2016 election, but mostly on Facebook and Twitter.

Gennai didn’t mention Russia in the Project Veritas video. She said though, that breaking up Google, as advocated by some lawmakers, would “make it worse” since the resulting “smaller companies who don’t have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation.”

“It’s like a small company cannot do that,” she was recorded as saying.

Follow Petr on Twitter: @petrsvab