Dear Mr. Pichai:

Once again, Google has chosen to play politics and censor, using its market dominant position to do so. While we are disappointed, we are not surprised.

I recently learned that you have inappropriately taken down CPAC’s entire Saturday, February 26th livestream content from our recent conference in Orlando, Florida. In addition, you issued CPAC a “strike” for citing “mis-information” regarding the 2020 presidential election.

Regardless of your personal beliefs and those of your senior leadership (not to mention your absolute liberal bias), there remain very serious questions about the way the 2020 election was conducted. Removing our content does not erase those questions, no matter how hard you try. Indeed, it is telling you offer no evidence that would demonstrate any falsity in the content you censored.

Moreover, your action was needlessly indiscriminate. Aside from a discussion of the 2020 election, topics you censored include: Putin’s thuggery, the rise of antisemitism, and the need to value all human life. But I guess those concepts can be sacrificed on the altar of Orwellian political correctness.

How ironic that during a dangerous time when autocrats like Vladimir Putin deny free people their rights in Russia and the Ukraine, Google would act similarly to stifle differing perspectives here at home.

We all lament the destruction of civil discourse. But make no mistake, Google’s actions to suppress freedom of speech, thought and expression are what truly destroys civil discourse. It is when people are not allowed to express themselves freely that they take matters into their own hands.

Such treatment of Americans cannot stand. CPAC will appropriately use its voice to urge conservatives in state capitals across the country, and the new majority in Congress come November – to pursue appropriate government regulation and legislation to hold Google accountable for its censorship. Neither Google nor its YouTube subsidiary can be allowed to run roughshod over the rights of Americans who are simply voicing their political beliefs.

Matt Schlapp

CPAC Chairman