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Op-Ed

Mike Huckabee: No One Is Safe from Google's Dangerous Political Discrimination

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Everyone knows “First they came…” the famous prose-poem by German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller. It explains how the Nazis rose to power: they came for one group after another, and the narrator wasn’t part of those groups so he said nothing — until they came for him and there was no one left to speak up for him.

This same formula for taking power has been seen in a variety of situations less dire than the Nazi takeover of Germany. We’re seeing it now all around us, as leftists take over one aspect of our society after another by using threats and accusations of racism and other “-ism’s” to intimidate anyone who would defy them into silence.

For instance, for several years now, Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) have tried to paint conservatives as deluded and paranoid for thinking that the internet giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Google were targeting them for censorship. It was a neat trick: trying to silence people into being afraid to protest being silenced.

But maybe we’re finally at the tipping point. I told you about the DOJ opening a sweeping investigation into alleged antitrust violations by Big Tech. Now, some new developments are erupting all over.

A longtime senior engineer at Google told Project Veritas, “I think it’s ridiculous to say there’s no bias” at Google … “I think everyone who supports anything other than the Democrats, anyone who’s pro-Trump or in any way deviates from what CNN, The New York Times are pushing, notices how bad it is.”

He says Google used to be a great tech company to work for until the 2016 campaign got rolling, and then “the angle that the Democrats and the media took was that anyone who liked Donald Trump was a racist, even a Nazi, and that got picked up everywhere. Every tech company, everybody in New York. Everybody in the field of computer science basically believed that.” He said, “I see Google executives go to Congress and say, ‘It’s not manipulated, it’s not political. And I’m just so sure that’s not true.”

Guess what happened to that engineer one day after that interview appeared? Google placed him on “administrative leave.” I’m curious: was it for badmouthing Google or not being a Trump-hating leftist? Either way, it’s telling that Google’s first reaction was not to look at their own practices and see if they really were that bad, but to silence (or “de-platform”) their own longtime employee.

Force of habit, maybe?

Meanwhile, one of the hottest new tech items is an app that lets users restore news and posts censored by big social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and determine what they’ll see in their newsfeeds, wresting control of content away from the biased algorithms and putting it back into users’ hands. Check it out here.

And finally, the reason I started by referencing, “First they came…” — most Democrats either dismissed or delighted in conservative complaints of online bias and censorship. They didn’t realize that if Big Tech has the power to selectively censor conservatives, they can do it to anyone who isn’t perfectly in line with their ideas, and if not stopped, they eventually will. Now, even Democrats may be starting to wake up to that danger.

Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has filed a $50 million lawsuit against Google for allegedly discriminating against her to harm her presidential campaign. She says that after the first Democratic debate, she was the most-searched candidate on Google. But for reasons Google has never been able to explain, the search giant immediately suspended her Google Ads account and kept her offline for hours while people were looking for more info on her.

Interestingly, her lawsuit cites an expose of Google’s internal bias published by one of the left’s most hated and maligned conservative sites, Breitbart News. Strange bedfellows indeed!

Gabbard told The New York Times, “Google’s discriminatory actions against my campaign are reflective of how dangerous their complete dominance over internet search is, and how the increasing dominance of big tech companies over our public discourse threatens our core American values. This is a threat to free speech, fair elections and to our democracy, and I intend to fight back on behalf of all Americans.”

Gabbard’s campaign added that “if Google can do this to Tulsi, a combat veteran and four-term Congresswoman who is running for the nation’s highest office, Google can do this to any candidate, from any party, running for any office in the United States.”

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There is little that Rep. Gabbard and I agree on, but I am in full agreement with her on this. The Founders gave us free speech and an open marketplace of ideas so that everyone could make their case and the people could sort out the wheat from the chaff. Anyone who is afraid to let other points of view be heard must also be afraid they can’t intellectually defend their own ideas.

This is why, personally, I want all the Democrats to keep talking as much as possible. Especially AOC and her “squad.”

The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.

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Mike Huckabee is the host of "Huckabee" on TBN Sat/Sun 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, a Fox News contributor, author, former Arkansas governor, bass guitarist and grandfather to six of the cutest kids in world! He's also a special contributor for The Western Journal.




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