Posted on 10/15/2019 7:58:16 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Dear Mr. Brin:
Fifty years ago this week, when I was a 21-year-old college senior, I was in the Soviet Union, sent by the government of Israel to smuggle in Jewish religious items and smuggle out names of Jews who wanted to escape the Soviet Union and could then be issued a formal invitation to Israel.
I was chosen because I was a committed Jew and because I knew Hebrew and Russian. I was no hero, but the trip did entail risk. The Soviets did not appreciate people smuggling out names of Soviet citizens who sought to emigrate, information the Israeli government and activist groups in America used to advocate on their behalf.
My four weeks in the USSR were, of course, life-changing. This young American, lucky beyond belief to have spent his entire life in the freest country in the world, experienced what it was like to live in a totalitarian police state. People feared merely being seen speaking with a Westerner, lest the KGB arrest and interrogate them. People arranged to meet me at a certain tree in a certain park and only spoke to me while walking to avoid eavesdroppers. I met with Jewish engineers, doctors and professors who could find no work because they were known to the government to be "otkazniki," or "refuseniks" -- Jews who had applied for exit visas to leave the Soviet Union and been refused permission. I'm sure you know of them from your parents.
I left the Soviet Union angry and grateful -- angry there are people who have the audacity to tell other people what they could and could not say, and grateful beyond measure to have been born in America, where no one could tell anyone what they could say. From that day to this, I have never taken freedom, especially freedom of speech, for granted.
Why I am writing to you about this?
Because, beyond my wildest dreams, two things are happening in America.
One is that for the first time in America's history, free speech is seriously threatened.
In 1977, when Nazis sought to march in Skokie, Illinois -- those terrible human beings chose Skokie because it was home to many Jewish Holocaust survivors -- virtually every liberal and conservative organization, including Jewish organizations, defended the Nazis' right to march. Because in America -- and only in America -- it was understood that even if the most loathsome speech was not protected, all speech was at risk.
That has changed.
Today, decent people -- people who abhor Nazism and every other form of evil, left or right; people like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro and Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- are shouted down, threatened, disinvited or never invited to speak at America's universities.
The other thing that is happening is even more frightening. The company that you co-founded, Google, the greatest conduit of speech in world history, is also suppressing speech. I have asked myself over and over: How could the company founded by a man whose parents fled the Soviet Union do this?
It so boggles the mind that I have to hope you are simply not fully aware of what your company is doing.
So, in a nutshell, let me tell you what Google has done to one organization, Prager University (better known as PragerU). Every week, PragerU releases a five-minute video on virtually every subject outside of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). Some of the finest minds in the world have presented these videos -- including professors from Harvard, Stanford and MIT; four Pulitzer Prize winners; three former prime ministers; liberals; conservatives; Democrats; Republicans (including never-Trumpers); gays; and, of course, many women and members of ethnic and racial minorities.
Yet YouTube, which Google owns, has placed hundreds of our videos on its restricted list. In addition to the inherent smear of being labeled "inappropriate for children," this means no family that filters out pornography and graphic violence, no school and no library can see those videos. Among those restricted videos is one during former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper defends Israel. Had someone told me 50 years ago that a company led by the son of Soviet Jewish refuseniks would suppress a video by a world leader defending the Jewish state, I would have told them they were out of their mind. That's one reason I can only assume, or at least hope, that you are not fully aware of what your company is doing.
Or how about a video series I present on the Ten Commandments? YouTube is suppressing a number of those, too. When Sen. Ted Cruz asked a Google official why Google restricted one of my videos on the Ten Commandments, the official responded (it's on YouTube) that it was because the video "contains references to murder."
In fact, PragerU has repeatedly asked Google over the past several years why any of our videos are on the restricted list, and we have received either a runaround or silence. We have never received a substantive explanation. We have no desire to see government intervene in private business to protect free speech. But your company has availed itself of protections under law that shield it from liability for defamation, copyright infringement, etc. Your company's arrogance is such that a vast number of Americans -- liberals as well as conservatives -- are worried that the major conduit of speech in the Free World doesn't care about free speech.
Mr. Brin, along with millions of other Americans, I fought to bring your parents from a land with no freedom to the Land of the Free. None of us has ever asked for anything in return. It was our honor to work for liberty in general and for Soviet Jewry specifically.
What Americans most want from immigrants is that they help keep America free. I never had any doubt that those leaving the Soviet Union would fulfill that mission.
Until now.
Freedom of speech is the most fundamental of all freedoms. It's what your parents yearned for and bequeathed to you. Please don't help take it away from those who made it possible -- the people of America.
Sincerely yours,
Dennis Prager
Suicide seems to be embedded within Judaism.
Not sure why. One anecdote about Masada can’t be genetic.
But Prager forgets - Marxism and Bolshevism are Jewish endeavors. Jewish “liberalism” isn’t; it’s a survival tactic aimed at disrupting hostile host states in the Diaspora.
Of course in Russia it backfired.
But the notion that Brin might have common ground with Prager based on his own parents escaping Soviet Russia is misguided - there were and are many True Believers. They helped overthrow Czarist Russia, built the secret police state (look up the name Genrikh Yagoda) and sustained the Russian military industry with competent scientists and engineers for decades.
Brin’s parents were part of that. Why did they leave? Probably just greener pastures. They didn’t object to the Soviet state in principle.
The SOB lucked into the venture capital jackpot casino. But he was probably raised to be a good little Chekist, not some born again Capitalist. So he’ll just laugh at this and think what a sucker Prager is.
Google has literally become the incarnation of the Ministry of Truth.
Here is a link to the Stephen Harper video on Israel (I assume)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXy4NXbuE-k
Does anyone know where I can find something that corresponds to being on a “restricted list” or being labeled “inappropriate for children”
In order to be a liberal, one must be willing to overlook massive levels of hypocrisy, not to mention glaring logical inconsistencies reaching to infinity. Sergey Brin is not the first in this category and certainly won’t be the last.
Under the banner moto of “Don’t Be Evil “ the have become some of the evilest SOBs on earth.
Talk about passing on a deal
If you don't like YouTube's policies, you are free to not subscribe or view it, or start another version yourself. If it were the Feds pulling down the sites in question you would have a valid argument. But that's not what's happening here. Until someone proves some kind of nexus between Google and the Feds, this is a nothingburger.
Bkmrk.
Hah. Never knew about that.
The future of the internet was murky then...and a lot of VCs ain’t that bright to start with. Just greedy...
For organizations with very large market share and activity in many public arenas questions of effectively engaging in violations of the First Amendment certainly exist. Consider the many public universities which use Google for multiple purposes, or public schools which rely on it. Also, if Google's attempt to change the outcome of elections by censoring certain information were to be conclusively established, then the parties involved have violated the same kind of election laws which leftist Democrats are using to attack associates of Trump and other conservatives with criminal charges.
The author is also appealing to Brin to personally chose a different approach. He isn't saying that Brin should be prosecuted, or sued, he is saying Brin should respect the fundamental American values. What's wrong with that? Isn't it reasonable to criticize publicly owned companies whose conduct is anti-American?
Try searching for episodes of Hogan’s Heroes. Plenty of clips marked on YT.
The Google model is not free speech. It's the control and dissemination of approved ideas.
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