It’s not really a secret anymore that the Left doesn’t believe in a level playing field, and that the woke vanguard is censorious, fascist, and unwilling to allow for the fair and open enunciation of opposing points of view. That’s why so many conservatives, including Donald Trump himself, have been banned from Twitter and Facebook, and that’s why Parler, Gettr, Gab and Truth Social exist at all: to give a voice to those who have been denied a platform for having views that don’t correspond to those of the political and media elites. But the censorship is even more far-reaching than that: on Monday, Fox News reported that “the Republican National Committee [RNC] says Google is suppressing get-out-the-vote [GOTV] and fundraising emails by sending millions of GOP election emails to users’ Gmail spam folders, with party leadership threatening to explore legal options to ‘put an end’ to what they call a ‘clear pattern of bias.’” Google, biased against conservatives? Why, the only people who could possibly be shocked by this are working for Mitt Romney and Adam Kinzinger.
RNC officials state that “emails being sent by the RNC to Republican subscribers who use Gmail accounts in the final days of each month are being sent to spam folders.” This is happening on a stunningly grand scale: “An RNC official told Fox News Digital that since Sept. 28, Gmail has ‘suppressed’ more than 22 million RNC emails—358,000 of which were GOTV emails.”
Google, however, professes to be shocked! — shocked! – by these charges. Why, everyone knows that Google is placid, gray, nonpartisan, and thoroughly businesslike! Politics? What’s that? Politics, says Google, has nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with its decision about whether or not to mark a certain email as spam and send it to spam folders. Google spokesperson José Castañeda said mildly: “We enable political committees and other organizations to reach their constituents, donors, and key audiences via email. When Gmail users say that they don’t want to receive an email, we place the email in the spam folder, politics or political affiliation plays no role in this determination.” Yes, of course! That’s all it is. And I have a very, very fine bridge to sell you as well, at a price I think you’ll find eminently reasonable.
The numbers, however, belie Castañeda’s bland technocrat act. “On Sept. 28, Gmail spammed more than 3.1 million RNC emails. The next day, Gmail spammed more than 9.8 million RNC emails, and on Sept. 30, Gmail spammed more than 9.97 million RNC mails.” Those are some busy Leftist censors, and the RNC has complained to Google “for months,” according to one RNC official, but there has been “no resolution.”
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RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel stated: “Every single month, like clockwork, Google suppresses important GOTV and fundraising emails at the end of the month, with zero explanation nor commitment from Google to resolve this issue. We are less than 40 days out from Election Day, and important GOTV emails to our opted-in voters in states that have already started early voting are being systematically sent to spam. Enough is enough. Big Tech bias is undermining the democratic process and the RNC is exploring our legal options to put an end to this clear pattern of bias.”
Nor is the same sort of spamlisting happening to Democrats. Fox notes that “during the 2020 election cycle, an RNC official said the study found that Gmail routed Republican emails to spam at a rate approximately 820% higher than similar Democrat fundraising appeals.” Republican officials now contend that Google’s “disproportionate suppression of Republican emails constitutes an illegal corporate contribution to Democrat candidates,” and they want a Federal Election Commission (FEC) investigation. With good reason: “the Republicans estimate they missed out on $1.5 billion in contributions during the 2020 election cycle” because of Google’s suppression of their emails.
If the Republicans get this FEC investigation, the question will then be whether it will be free and fair or whether it will be staffed by people who hold to the same political perspective as Google, and thus have no problem with the suppression of Republican speech. As the Left grows progressively more open about its authoritarianism and hostility to opposing points of view, ultimately Big Tech, including Google, is going to destroy the freedom of speech, or that freedom is going to be afforded new protections and the tech giants’ ability to infringe upon it will be restricted. It’s one or the other, and the very fate of our free republic hangs in the balance.
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