A former think tank program director and antitrust expert suggested he was fired after criticizing Google, warning the rise of monopolistic companies like Google are a threat to society – a fear validated after the company recently warned a conservative website to censor content or lose ad revenue.
Barry Lynn, the former director of the Open Markets program at New America, a prominent think tank in Washington DC, and the author of “Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction,” detailed his firing from the organization after publishing a piece praising the European Union’s decision to fine Google for violating antitrust laws.
“For the last fifteen years, I’ve done my antimonopoly writing and research at a think tank in Washington named New America,” he wrote. “This last June 27, my group published a statement praising the European Union for fining Google for violating antitrust law. Later that day I was told that Google — which provides substantial support to other programs at New America — said they wanted to sever all ties with the organization.”
“Two days later I was told that the entire team of my Open Markets Program had to leave New America by September 1.”
Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former State Department staffer under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who now serves as president of New America, denied Lynn was fired because of his comments on Goggle – yet, in her email to Lynn she suggested he was “imperiling the institution as a whole.”
New America has received more than $21 million from Google, executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, and his family’s foundation since the think tank’s founding in 1999. Schmidt currently serves as chairman emeritus of New America’s Board of Directors, alongside board members including Jonathan Soros, David Bradley (chairman of the Atlantic Media Company), and CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.
“What I also learned is that since the early days of the Reagan Administration, power over almost all forms of economic activity in America has been steadily concentrated in fewer and fewer hands,” Lynn said. “This includes retail and transportation. It includes pharmaceuticals and farming. It includes almost every corner of the Internet.”
“Wherever you work, whatever you do, your livelihood and your liberties are every day more at risk as long as we allow a few giant corporations — especially in online commerce — to continue to extend their reach into and over the world of ideas.”
Lynn’s concerns were recently validated when Google ordered a conservative website, “The Liberty Conservative,” to remove content from a former contributor who attended the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville or lose ad revenue received from Google’s AdSense advertisement service.
Shane Trejo of “The Liberty Conservative” called on all Conservatives and Libertarians to “realize that the Orwellian nightmare enforced by private hands is just as harmful to human freedom as if the dystopia was enforced by the hands of government commissars. The results will be the same, as freedom of expression will be sacrificed to the God of political correctness.”
