Google has blocked a conservative think tank from advertising with the tech giant after an academic essay and debate on multiculturalism was posted on its website.
The highly respected Claremont Institute – founded in 1979 – attempted to let its audience know about its Gala Dinner honoring Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on May 11th in Los Angeles.
Instead, the group was met with a warning which stated the advertisement was in contravention of Google's “race and ethnicity in personalized advertising”.
Somebody must have determined we were offering 'racially or ethnically oriented publications' – Ryan Williams
Claremont Institute alumni include radio host Mark Levin, Andrew Breitbart, TV personality Guy Benson, James O'Keefe, Human Events editor Raheem Kassam, Fox News host Laura Ingraham, former National Security Adviser Michael Anton, columnist Ross Douthat, Ben Shapiro, as well as conservatives in the legal profession and in government from across the spectrum of the political right.
"Somebody must have determined we were offering 'racially or ethnically oriented publications', wrote Ryan Williams, President of the Claremont Institute on its American Mind website.
"This is news to us. The Claremont Institute has spent forty years teaching all who are willing to listen that the meaning of the proposition that all human beings are created equal is the central, animating principle of American political life."
The think tank also revealed that after two hours of conversations with Google officials, they were informed there was no appeal process, and that the essay entitled 'Defend America – Defeat Multiculturalism' needed to be removed from the internet in order to fulfill Google's demands.
Williams went on:
The naïve observer of Google’s policy and action against us might conclude that merely to mention race and ethnicity is forbidden. Not so: we are unaware of any report of Google censorship of the numerous progressive groups that promote the prevailing creed of identity politics based on race and ethnic identity. The trouble with Claremont’s argument is its furtherance of a politics that counts people as individuals rather than members of racial or ethnic groups.
What Google is really doing (like Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms) is policing the terms of American political debate to advance acceptable establishment ideology. In First Amendment parlance, Google is in the viewpoint discrimination business, and its target is heresies like ours against the prevailing orthodoxies of our time.
This latest attack on conservatism by Big Tech comes hot on the heels of the Day of the Long Knives, when Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, Paul Joseph Watson, and others were stripped of their Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Mr. Watson has been tweeting about suing Facebook under UK law (where he lives) in order to make an example of the fact that calling someone a "violent" or "dangerous extremist" comes with consequences.
