Richard Grenell. (Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license) Ric Grenell, who served as the United States Ambassador to Germany and Special Presidential Envoy for Serbia and Kosovo Peace Negotiations in the Trump administration, criticized Big Tech platforms for allowing the Iranian regime to promulgate misinformation and hate on their platforms, Newsmax reported.
Grenell was speaking on a February 3 fireside chat with Iranian Americans for Liberty (IAL) Executive Director Bryan Leib. Leib told Grenell that the Iranian regime released a video in December showing them firing missiles into Israel and a month later released another video showing former President Donald Trump being killed. “Shouldn’t these actions, Ric, by the Iranian regime be a disqualifier for us to sit across the table from them?” Leib asked.
Grenell replied: “What’s really troubling is that the social media companies, Big Tech, have these policies that if you give COVID misinformation, you’re kicked off or you get a warning. But the regime continues to have a variety of social media accounts spewing not only misinformation but violence and antisemitism and homophobia. This is unbelievable that Big Tech allows this to happen and I think we’ve got to constantly raise our voices that this hypocrisy of allowing the hate and the terror to be spewed on social media is unacceptable.”
He added that “the Iranian regime does not allow their own people to use Google but they have Google themselves in their elite ranks. They know exactly that Joe Biden is extremely weak and wanting to have some sort of deal. I can tell you that the deals that the Biden team is cutting will include cash, there is no question about it.” Grenell argued that the U.S. needs to “bring down the government firewalls on the Internet, social media and all information.” “If we’re going to have this big debate in America about perfect information and allowing accurate information to flow, why aren’t we using our technology––which does exist in America and Silicon Valley––to be able to bring down the government firewalls?” Grenell said. “This would allow individuals in Cuba, in China, in North Korea and in Iran, to actually have access to all of this information, to perfect information, and then they would be able to make decisions on their own.
“Nothing will threaten the Iranian regime or the Communist Party of China like giving the people better information,” Grenell added, “and I think that the State Department has done a terrible job of using this as a tool. We have the funds, we have the technology, it should just be done.”
Leib then told Grenell that IAL has met with members of Congress who plan on bringing forth resolutions that would bar Iranian officials––including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei––from using U.S.-based social media platforms. Grenell interjected, “It’s totally sad that we need an act of Congress to get Big Tech to do it when they jump at the chance to kick off conservative or anybody else who say they say is spreading COVID misinformation.” “It’s really the height of hypocrisy,” Leib agreed.
IAL released a statement after the fireside chat echoing Grenell’s comments, noting that Iran was the only country in the United Nations to vote against a recent resolution condemning Holocaust denial and that Iran is the only country that actively promulgates “Holocaust conspiracy theories” on social media platforms.
“We are doubling down our call to action,” the IAL said. “Congress must introduce and pass legislation to restrict the access of Iranian Regime officials who traffic in lies, spread misinformation, and deny the Holocaust. The time is now for action from U.S. lawmakers.”
STATEMENT: Yesterday, we released the below statement as an exclusive to @newsmax!
Thank you to Ambassador @RichardGrenell for joining us in calling on #BigTech to remove IR Regime officials from their platforms! @Twitter @instagram @Meta https://t.co/FOAZpoScQR pic.twitter.com/dHDVrkvUoL
— Iranian Americans for Liberty (@LibertyIranian) February 8, 2022
In July 2020, a clip went viral of an Israeli Knesset hearing in which human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky, who heads the International Legal Forum, asked Head of Twitter Policy for the Nordics and Israel Ylwa Pettersson why Twitter was flagging tweets from then-President Donald Trump but weren’t doing the same thing to Khamenei, “who has literally called for the genocide of Israel and the Jewish people.” Pettersson replied: “We have an approach to our leaders that presently say that direct actions with fellow public leaders, comments on political issues of the day or foreign policy saber-rattling on military, economic issues are generally not in violation of our rules.” Michal Cotler-Wunsh, then a Knesset member, followed up by asking Pettersson, “Calling for genocide on Twitter is OK but commenting on political situations in certain countries is not OK?” Pettersson replied that Trump’s tweet stating “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” was flagged for “glorification of violence.”
I kid you not! At Knesset hearing on Antisemitism, @Twitter rep tells me they flag @realDonaldTrump because it serves ‘public conversation’, but not Iran's @khamenei_ir call for GENOCIDE, which passes for acceptable 'commentary on political issues of the day'. cc. @CotlerWunsh pic.twitter.com/AXwjkrvlql
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 29, 2020
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