The following letter was mailed today.

Dr. Eric Schmidt, CEO
Google, Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Dear Dr. Schmidt,

I can only imagine the business pressure Google must have been under that led to its accession to the demands of the Chinese Communist government to prevent its citizens from gaining access, via Google, to content that displeases the powers that be. I do not condone it, but I understand it.

What I do not understand is how two of Michael Hoffman’s programs, once available through Google Videos, “do not comply with our [Google’s] policy guidelines.”

The timing of Google’s censorship raises suspicions of, once again, caving in to pressure:

1. Two days ago, David Irving, who has earned his living by writing and speaking and who appears in one of Hoffman’s videos, has been sentenced by an Austrian court to three years in prison for writing and speaking in ways that displease the powers that be.

2. A few weeks ago, Deborah Lipstadt, who successfully defended herself from his libel suit against her (with virtually unlimited financial resources at her disposal), described one of Hoffman’s Google videos as “dripping with hatred.”

I had viewed that video, and while hatred of “Amalek” is the video’s theme, hatred is not the mood of the presenters, unless Lipstadt’s fiat is infallible. Was it for Google? If not, how did the video fail to comply with Google’s guidelines?

Google’s actions invite the inference that the power of Lipstadt (and kindred souls) and the Chinese Communists to induce Google to censor its content is roughly equivalent.

Google has the right to censor its content, but the rest of us have the right to ask what its particular acts of censorship mean.

Sincerely,

Anthony Flood