Whistleblower: Google Employee Compares Prager, Shapiro to Nazis

Conservative watchdog Project Veritas published emails Tuesday reportedly showing a Google employee comparing conservative personalities Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and Dennis Prager as "Nazis."

A message excerpted from a larger thread on "transparency and ethics" appearing to be from a Google employee named Liam Hopkins and sent to 17 other staff members, reads: "Today it is often 1 or 2 steps to nazis, if we understand that PragerU [Prager University], Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro et al are nazis using the dog whistles you mention in step 1. I can receive these recommendations regardless of the content of what I'm looking at, and I have recorded thousands of Internet users sharing the same experience."

Hopkins also discussed the idea of identifying and disabling, "far-right content."

"I don't think correctly identifying far-right content is beyond our capabilities. But if it is, why not go with Meredith's suggestion of disabling the suggestion feature? This could be a significant leap in terms of user trust."

The email was published a day after Project Veritas released a report on Google's alleged plans to affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential elections and "prevent" the next "Trump situation."

That report included secretly recorded video of Google's Head of Responsible Innovation Jen Gennai saying, "Elizabeth Warren is saying we should break up Google. And like, I love her but she's very misguided, like that will not make it better, it will make it worse, because all these smaller companies who don't have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation, it's like a small company cannot do that."

Gennai said Project Veritas "selectively edited and spliced the video to distort my words and the actions of my employer, and published it widely online."

"Project Veritas has edited the video to make it seem that I am a powerful executive who was confirming that Google is working to alter the 2020 election. On both counts, this is absolute, unadulterated nonsense, of course," she wrote on a post published on Medium.

"Google has repeatedly been clear that it works to be a trustworthy source of information, without regard to political viewpoint. In fact, Google has no notion of political ideology in its rankings. And everything I have seen backs this up. Our CEO has said 'We do not bias our products to favor any political agenda.' He's somewhat more powerful and authoritative than me.'"

PragerU, a nonprofit video platform that espouses conservative explanations on often-controversial topics and was founded by Prager, in response to the report, pointed out Prager is Jewish and has spoken against "anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, Hitler, etc."

Shapiro tweeted he would "love to discuss" the leak with YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.

"Do you think your employees should be cavalierly labeling those who militantly hate white supremacy 'Nazis,' and then shaping algorithms on the basis of such lies?" he writes.

On Twitter, the National Rifle Association's Dana Loesch called the email "insane," while LiveAction's Lila Rose said it was "incredibly troubling."