TechGoogle

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy Blasts Google for Linking California GOP to Nazism

By Abigail Abrams
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy speaks at a news conference
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy speaks at a news conference announcing a new division on Conscience and Religious Freedom at the Department of Health and Human Services Jan. 18, 2018 in Washington, D.C.
Aaron P. Bernstein—Getty Images

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy slammed Google on Thursday for listing “Nazism” as one of the ideologies of the California Republican Party.

“Dear @Google, This is a disgrace,” McCarthy tweeted along with an image of a Google search result showing Nazism as an ideology of the California GOP.

In another tweet, McCarthy also called the results “the latest incident in a disturbing trend to slander conservatives.”

The reference to Nazism appeared in Google’s “knowledge panel,” which offers summarized search results drawn from a number of sources including Wikipedia. The results changed to eliminate the ideologies during the day on Thursday, according to Vice News, after the website reached out to ask Google about the controversy.

A Google spokesperson told the site it does not politicize search results and that the “Nazism” listing for the California Republican Party was not implemented by a Google employee.

“We regret that vandalism on Wikipedia briefly appeared on our search results. This was not the the result of a manual change by Google,” a Google Communications account tweeted in response to McCarthy. “We have systems in place that catch vandalism before it impacts search results, but occasionally errors get through, and that happened here.”

Still, other conservatives expressed anger at the situation as well. Donald Trump Jr. tweeted his displeasure, and linked the Google results to another tech complaint he had this month. He told his followers last week that Instagram provided a warning message saying posts with his name often “encourage” harmful behavior.

This latest tech controversy comes shortly after the Republican National Committee and President Donald Trump’s reelection committee sent a letter May 17 asking Facebook and Twitter to address political bias on their social media platforms.