If you performed a simple Google search for the names of mainstream journalists and thought leaders, you would expect to get a link to their profile or a link to their website or news outlet. But Google has served up something far more sinister.
The search giant fed its users dossiers from the disgraced left-wing activist group Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which is attempting to brand supporters of President Donald Trump as “extremists,” “white supremacists” and “bigots.” The group has smeared Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik, podcast host and veteran Navy intelligence officer Jack Posobiec and The Daily Wire host Matt Walsh, to name a few, and it seems Google is more than willing to help push that narrative. Google promoted leftist Wikipedia — which repeatedly cited SPLC — and provided direct links to the SPLC website in search results.
“Google hates conservatives, so it is pushing SPLC filth while it pretends to be an innocent bystander,” said MRC Free Speech America VP Dan Schneider. “There’s no reason SPLC should be one of the first results for Stephen Miller, Jack Posobiec or Chaya Raichick. This is a group that lumps together neo-nazi and Ku Klux Klan groups with freedom-loving Americans, concerned parents, practicing Christians and observant Jews.”
The House Judiciary Committee also reported that when former President Joe Biden’s FBI targeted traditional Catholics, it used SPLC’s write-up on “radical traditional Catholicism,” which it had labeled an extremist ideology.
On Oct. 3, FBI Director Kash Patel announced in an X post that he “terminated” the bureau’s relationship with SPLC. “The Southern Poverty Law Center long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine,” Patel wrote. “Their so-called ‘hate map’ has been used to defame mainstream Americans and even inspired violence. That disgraceful record makes them unfit for any FBI partnership.”
Google, with the help of Wikipedia and SPLC, went after Orthodox Jew Chaya Raichik the hardest. Raichik receiving the brunt of Google’s bias as the search giant both directly and indirectly promoted SPLC seven different times in a search for her name.
Google elevated her “Extremist Files” profile from SPLC’s website as the top search result, above the Libs of TikTok Wikipedia page, which cited the legal advocacy group’s 12-section complaint about the influencer. In its screed against Raichik, SPLC accused her of leading “an anti-inclusive education campaign that relied on conspiracy theory, anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda and the ‘groomer’ slur.” Adding insult to injury, Google’s AI Overview also cited SPLC and Wikipedia as its top two sources.
Wikipedia’s use of the far left group’s content is especially concerning, considering the so-called encyclopedia's own admission that the organization is indeed biased. “As an advocacy group, the SPLC is a biased and opinionated source,” Wikipedia writes in its source guidelines. Nonetheless, the encyclopedia greenlights the radical group as a “reliable source” for its entries so long as it is labeled opinion and given “due weight.”
But Wikipedia and SPLC were not the only far-left articles calling Raichik an extremist that emerged in Google’s search results for her name. The search giant also elevated two articles by the radical activist group Human Rights Campaign. One piece reported Raichik’s addition to SPLC’s “Extremist Files.” The other referred back to the same SPLC profile and linked her to bomb threats against gyms that allowed “trans-women” in women’s locker rooms.
In addition to Raichik, five others were pilloried with negativity by Google’s search engine activism.
The search giant propped up SPLC’s “Extremist Files” profile on Posobiec, as well as his Wikipedia page that cited the profile. SPLC associated him with election denial and accused him of “spread[ing] lies about widespread voting irregularities that never actually occurred.” The disgraced group notably does not label Democratic Party politicians Stacey Abrams or Hillary Clinton as extremists for having denied the results of the elections they each lost.
SPLC and Wikipedia additionally cropped up in searches for Walsh and the name of the late journalist David Horowitz. Wikipedia editors referred to SPLC’s assertion that Walsh is a "peddler [...] of fear and disinformation about LGBTQ people." Citing SPLC, Wikipedia editors further accused the organization Horowitz founded, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, of being “one of 17 ‘right-wing foundations and think tanks support[ing] efforts to make bigoted and discredited ideas respectable.’”
Google also highlighted the Wikipedia pages for podcaster and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Family Research Council President and Marine Corp. veteran Tony Perkins.
Wikipedia editors echoed SPLC’s claim that "Carlson probably has been the No. 1 commentator mainstreaming bedrock principles of white nationalism in [the U.S.]" SPLC also targeted Perkins as an “extremist” for his very mainstream beliefs that immigrants should assimilate into American society, that marriage is between a man and a woman and that parents should be able to choose the best therapy for their children that aligns with their values.
These new findings follow MRC’s previous study, which found that Google had elevated SPLC, Wikipedia and an inflammatory blog at the top of search results in a search for Trump advisor Stephen Miller, who is also Jewish.
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