The Cheka Lives On

Google: Toxic and Censorial

It would seem that Google has a toxic work environment.  At one level, this may be surprising; at another, not so much.  For years we have been "blessed" with storied accounts of how laid back, chilled, yet incandescently creative the company's work environment was.  It was a cool, cool, cool place to work.  The coolest place in Silicon Valley. 

The idea of an 8.00am to 5.00pm work day was long gone.  Encouraging creativity, lateral thinking, working outside the box, and having fun was all the rage.  But now Google has unmasked itself.  Underneath the appearance of free, lateral thinking lies the truth: Google is closer to replicating Soviet Russia at its worst.  Its work culture has now been labelled toxic.

Employees at Google used internal company message boards to advocate political violence, recruit for a hard-line left-wing activist group and even propose public "trials" for ideological opponents, documents filed in court suggest.

The nearly 100 pages of internal emails and message board postings are contained in a class-action lawsuit filed by former employee James Damore in California on Monday, accusing Google of discriminating against white people, men and conservatives.  Damore was the author of a controversial internal memo criticising the tech giant's "politically correct" diversity policies. He was sacked last year for "perpetuating gender stereotypes" after the memo was leaked to the media and went viral.

Screenshots of messages attached to the complaint show Google employees attacking conservatives and white people, advocating political violence and even sharing "how-to" guides to join Antifa, a violent left-wing anarchist group reportedly classified as "domestic terrorists" by US Homeland Security.  "Get in touch with your friendly local Antifa," one employee wrote in response to an anonymous thread in January 2017 titled "Whelp, guess it might be time for revolution", in which the questioner asked, "How do people cope with this? I've never been part of a military or war effort before, I guess I can be useful as IT support or for hacking."  [NZ Herald]

Now, all this might seem to be free-spirited debate--a bit like London's Hyde Park, or the Agora in ancient Athens.  But consider: a Google employee was fired for "perpetuating gender stereotypes".   So, not so "free-spirited" after all.  As we have seen many times before, the Left lacks sophistication and subtlety in its position and argumentation: shouting down the opponent is a hallmark of an empty mind.
  It appears that Google employees have spent all that unstructured work time creatively emptying their minds of reasonable, rational thought and instead laterally retreated to a condition of blind, ignorant prejudice. 

Here is one example of subtle, acute reasoning deployed by one of Silicon Valley's finest:

In August, employee Tim Chevalier wrote that there was "literally only one reason an anti-fascist would be violent towards you: you are a fascist.  People don't commit anti-fascist violence except in response to fascist violence," he wrote. "It's perfectly reasonable to expect a violent response to the expression of hate speech because hate speech is itself violence."

Mmmm.  So if a self-styled anti-fascist walks up to you in the street and king hits you to the ground it is proof positive that you have acted and spoken violently.  It is "literally the one reason" such an event would occur.  His words, not ours.  The fallacy of affirming the consequent is boldly displayed by one who, allegedly, is the sharpest of the sharp.  Old Tim, however, was not alone.

Another employee, Rachel Blum, wrote, "If you subscribe to an ideology that, as a matter of fact, wants to kill people because they are different — and has, by the millions — then you deserve being punched in the face. Repeatedly." 

Another post shows Google manager Kim Burchett suggesting a public blacklist of political conservatives inside the company, who would be subjected to "something resembling a trial" before being added.  "I am considering creating a public-inside-Google document of 'people who make diversity difficult'," she wrote.  "I am thinking of something like a Google doc that accepts comments, and which calls out those Googlers who repeatedly make public statements that are unsupportive of diversity, with links to those statements so that readers can decide for themselves.

"The list will be open to contributions from others, but I personally will be the judge of what is included and what is excluded. I will do my best to represent the individuals fairly, compassionately, and in context.

We are going to have conformity on this diversity thing, folks.  And, yes, we had to  mention it.  Underlying all this is a strong streak of good, old-fashioned racism.

A large number of messages show employees attacking white people. One post promoted an online workshop titled "Healing from Toxic Whiteness to Better Fight for Racial Justice", while another advised that "if you are white/male/heterosexual/[insert majority group here], there are times to just shut up and listen".

"By being a white male you are in a privileged class that is actively harmful to others, whether you like it or not," another post read.  In a separate post, employee Scott Bruceheart wrote, "Dear all the white people: do not put the burden of relieving your systematic racist discrimination on the people that aren't white. It is not the responsibility of the victim to end the victimisation. It is the responsibility of the victimiser to stop being terrible."

Google, the coolest place in the world to work, is about to be hauled into court to explain its toxic, discriminatory, hate-filled, retributive work environment.  If you own any Google shares, time to quit them, folks.