Google recently blacklisted from its app store PragerU for hate speech. Prager University Foundation is a 501(c)(3) educational organization that offers a free alternative to the dominant left-wing ideology in culture, media, and education. In its suspension notice, Google said, ”Your app contains content that doesn’t comply with the Hate Speech policy. Your app contains content related to the following violations: Content or speech asserting that a protected group is inhuman, inferior or worthy of being hated.” The controversy is swirling around a video that tells the stories of an Arab Muslim born in Israel and US Navy SEALS who witnessed Muslim extremism. That’s the stated reason, but it goes far deeper than that.
Hate speech is defined by many sources similar to this found in Britannica “hate speech: speech or expression that denigrates a person or persons on the basis of (alleged) membership in a social group identified by attributes such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, physical or mental disability, and others.” By definition, if one remotely offers criticism of anyone involved in most any group, it could be considered hate speech. If, for example, one quotes passages in the Bible concerning homosexuality or deviant sexual behavior, it is considered hate speech. If, in the case of PragerU, someone is criticizing Islamic extremism (even terrorists), Google considers it hate speech because the terrorists are part of a religious group. So criticizing Hamas is hate speech because they are Muslim and a “social group.” Get it?
The broad definition of hate speech allows the media, corporations, nonprofits and members of any of these groups to claim that criticism of what they do is hate speech. In the case of PragerU’s app, hate speech is being used to censor an organization that doesn’t align with Google’s leftist agenda. PragerU’s website says, “Google is using Soviet-style tactics and attempting to silence us. According to Google, sharing the stories of a former Palestinian refugee, an Arab Muslim born in Israel, and brave U.S. Navy SEALs who witnessed the horrors of Muslim extremism constitutes “hate speech.” This is a blatant attempt to silence truth and censor speech.” Trouble is, this is not a violation of the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech because it is not the government that is doing the censoring.
When the government colludes with a corporation to censor free speech it becomes a constitutional issue. Such as the Department of Justice, FBI and others coercing big tech media platforms to disallow dissenting information such as what we saw with COVID, Hunter Biden Laptop, 2020 election information. They called it “disinformation,” “hate speech,” whatever. Big tech media platforms are promoted as open forums, but they make people agree to abide by their policies in order to use the platform. Those “policies” are used to censor those with whom they disagree. The definition of Hate Speech is so wide sweeping that most criticism can be applied as hate speech whether it is or not. Hate Speech perverts Free Speech. As in Acts 4:29, “And now, Lord, look upon their threats, and grant to Your servants to speak Your word with all boldness.”
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/hate-speech
