Missouri Senator Piles On Eventbrite After Woke Company Pulled Riley Gaines Event
Eventbrite revealed its political extremism recently, prohibiting Riley Gaines from promoting a college speaking event about protecting women's sports. The company claimed that her event violated its terms of service, while, naturally, allowing listings that took a blatantly pro-Hamas stance.
READ: EVENTBRITE PROHIBITS RILEY GAINES EVENT PROMOTION, BUT ALLOWS PRO-HAMAS LISTINGS
And Senator Eric Schmitt from Missouri is not taking Eventbrite's extremism lying down. Schmitt, according to Fox News, is going after them for their "liberal-progressive agenda to silence and unpublish events that express conservative viewpoints."
Schmitt sent a letter to Eventbrite CEO Julia Hartz, saying that their platform is hypocritical for enforcing "community guidelines" restrictions on Gaines, while allowing anti-Israel events.
"It is worth noting that while this type of content is being removed from your platform, other events featuring individuals who have expressed deeply antisemitic views comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and others who are prominent supporters of the BDS movement against Israel are allowed to host or speak at events listed on Eventbrite," Schmitt wrote.
Schmitt asked Hartz to provide a "a complete list of events that Eventbrite has unpublished for violation of its terms of service and reasoning for unpublishing those events" in order to evaluate how consistently they enforce those terms.
Eventbrite Hypocrisy Par For The Corporate Course
Corporations have frequently chosen political sides in how they enforce their policies, essentially telling the public that conservative views are unacceptable, while extremist, far left views are celebrated.
GoFund Me has frequently engaged in similar practices, and Eventbrite's recent actions are the logical extension of corporate viewpoint discrimination. After being called out by OutKick's Clay Travis, Eventbrite did delete some of the pro-Hamas rallies. While refusing to change course on Riley Gaines.
And even still, some anti-Israel events remain active, including one that says "Stop the Genocide! Free Palestine!"
Yet Eventbrite's terms, if properly enforced, would exclude events calling for violence, harassment or disparaging treatment of Jews: "Specifically, we do not allow content or events that — through on- or off-platform activity — discriminate against, harass, disparage, threaten, incite violence against, or otherwise target individuals or groups based on their actual or perceived race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, immigration status, gender identity, sexual orientation, veteran status, age, or disability.
Schmitt called out how they use those terms to enforce a specific agenda, evidenced by this incident.
"Eventbrite appears to be selectively applying or hiding behind its community guidelines and terms of service to promote a liberal-progressive agenda to silence and unpublish events that express conservative viewpoints that you may disagree with," he wrote.
Calling for fairness in women's sports is unacceptable to the modern left, while nonsensical critiques of Israel as a "settler-colonial state" are part of the woke, progressive vernacular. And many companies, of which Eventbrite is obviously one, view their mandate as enforcing woke ideology instead of providing services to customers.
Hopefully Schmitt's pressure leads to some level of reckoning for hypocritical companies like Eventbrite that pick favorites based on their political ideology.