Google’s main purpose under Sundar Pichai’s leadership has been to reconstitute a global caste system, rewarding those categories of humans and companies that hew to a left-wing ideological line, and rendering invisible those who do not.

The people of India should take pride in the efforts its government has taken under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi to weaken the caste system, which the nation inherited from time immemorial. And it is ironic in the extreme that just as that great nation begins to come to terms with that ingrained system of inequality, a man of Indian descent is using his company’s vast power and resources to reinstitute that system on the planet as a whole. 

As usual, Shakespeare gets there first, in this case in The Merchant of Venice, where Shakespeare describes a society that allocates rights on the basis of social degree. Here’s Shylock, answering Antonio, the plutocratic Merchant who has come to Shylock for a loan:

Shylock: “Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances:
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
And all for use of that which is mine own.
Well then, it now appears you need my help:
Go to, then; you come to me, and you say
‘Shylock, we would have moneys:’ you say so;
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur
Over your threshold: moneys is your suit
What should I say to you? Should I not say
‘Hath a dog money? is it possible
A cur can lend three thousand ducats?’ Or
Shall I bend low and in a bondman’s key,
With bated breath and whispering humbleness, Say this;
‘Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;
You spurn’d me such a day; another time
You call’d me dog; and for these courtesies.”

The gabardine was a full-length black wool coat Jews were required to wear, even in sweltering Venice, in certain centuries accompanied by a yellow patch sewn into it to signify their status as Jews. A caste system indeed.

Meanwhile, today Google, users who are disfavored by the search giant are routinely shadow-banned. People and companies are led to believe that posts they are publishing are public, when in fact they are blocked to everyone except those users themselves. Cloaked, invisible. And when this censorship involves search results, it can result in the death of a business.

Substitute the word “Jew” for the phrase “someone Google dislikes” and you begin to see the bigotry that is at work here.

India’s civilization was a bit beyond the awareness of Elizabethan England, but in Merchant, Shakespeare paints a clear picture of a society where rights are doled out by social degree.  Here’s Shylock in the fateful courtroom scene, noticing something that not one other person in the play pays any attention to:

Shylock: “You have among you many a purchased slave,
Which—like your asses and your dogs and mules—
You use in abject and in slavish parts
Because you bought them. Shall I say to you,
‘Let them be free! Marry them to your heirs!
Why sweat they under burdens? Let their beds
Be made as soft as yours and let their palates
Be seasoned with such viands’? You will answer,
‘The slaves are ours.'”

And here’s Portia, dressed as the lawyer Bassario, pulling a switch on Shylock by asserting, late in their negotiations, that his legal status as an alien in Venice renders him subject to a law that does not apply to the city-state’s citizens:

Portia: “Tarry, Jew:
The law hath yet another hold on you.
It is enacted in the laws of Venice,
If it be proved against an alien
That by direct or indirect attempts
He seek the life of any citizen,
The party ‘gainst the which he doth contrive
Shall seize one half his goods; the other half
Comes to the privy coffer of the state;
And the offender’s life lies in the mercy
Of the duke only,…
Down therefore and beg mercy of the duke.”

We can substitute Sundar Pichai for Portia, and have him intone the words, “Tarry, conservative…” and we would have the scene as it is being enacted today.