I would not want my children working for Google. I would not want my sons to be subject to that kind of ritual defamation and professional ruin for expressing the “wrong” opinions. And I would not want my daughter to have the kind of power over her coworkers that women do in the identity-liberal culture of Google. I want all my kids to work for employers that care about justice in the workplace, but do so within a context that — as James Damore suggested in his memo — treats employees as individuals.
.. I do not believe I am the only one who observes this Google mess from outside and sees the company and its ideological mob of backers behaving like the kind of lunatics Mark Lilla calls out in his anecdote. These people would be toxic to work with. On Quillette, four scientists respond to the controversy. Here’s an excerpt of what Rutgers psychologist Lee Jussim has to say about the Damore memo, and the commentary about it on the Gizmodo site:
This essay may not get everything 100% right, but it is certainly not a rant. And it stands in sharp contrast to most of the comments, which are little more than snarky modern slurs. The arrogance of most of the comments reflects exactly the type of smug self-appointed superiority that has led to widespread resentment of the left among reasonable people. To the extent that such views correspond to those at Google, they vindicate the essayist’s claims about the authoritarian and repressive atmosphere there. Even the response by Google’s new VP in charge of diversity simply ignores all of the author’s arguments, and vacuously affirms Google’s commitment to diversity. The essay is vastly more thoughtful, linked to the science, and well-reasoned than nearly all of the comments. If I had one recommendation, it would be this: That, before commenting on these issues, Google executives read two books: John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind.
.. I have personally been in a situation in the workplace in which a perfectly ordinary thing I said that was directly related to my work almost turned into a Human Resources situation that could have cost me my job and my career, had I not decided that this was not a hill I was prepared to die on. My accuser had a laughable case — seriously, if I told you the details, most of you liberal readers would agree with me, I’m sure — but the accuser also had power within the culture of that particular workplace, because of the accuser’s identity as a member of a favored class. I judged that I was unlikely to win any showdown. After that, though, fear of false accusation seriously affected my work. I avoided that co-worker, and when I could not, was careful not to say anything that this person could construe as hostile — even though it meant I was not able to do my job as well as I had before.
.. if you are put on trial in the court of the Human Resources Department, you will not be treated as an individual, but as a member of an oppressor group. The people passing judgment on you will consider themselves virtuous to find you guilty of heresy.
.. Damore’s mistake was to believe Alphabet (Google’s parent company) CEO Eric Schmidt’s recent claim that Google runs itself according to “science-based thinking”.
No, it doesn’t. It runs itself according to the religion of Identity Liberalism. There is no “right” and “wrong” there; there is only “good” and “evil”.
.. The problem is only partly that it’s criteria for judging the fairness of a workplace are contradictory and unfair, as Dr. Miller points out above. The core of the problem is that identity liberalism construes disagreement as heresy, and viciously punishes heretics.
And it is therefore impossible for identity liberalism, and the institutions that embrace it, to self-correct, because all criticism is treated as evil. The critic finds himself, like Damore, defending not his thesis (which may or may not be wrong), but his moral worth.
.. Over the past decade a new, and very revealing, locution has drifted from our universities into the media mainstream: Speaking as an X… This is not an anodyne phrase. It tells the listener that I am speaking from a privileged position on this matter. (One never says, Speaking as a gay Asian, I feel incompetent to judge this matter.) It sets up a wall against questions, which by definition come fro a non-X perspective. And it turns the encounter into a power relation: the winner of the argument will be whoever has invoked the morally superior identity and expressed the most outrage at being questioned.
.. What replaces argument, then, is taboo. At times our more privileged campuses can seem stuck in the world of archaic religion. Only those with an approved identity status are, like shamans, allowed to speak on certain matters. Particular groups — today the transgendered — are given temporary totemic significance. Scapegoats — today conservative political speakers — are duly designated and run off campus in a purging ritual. Propositions become pure or impure, not true or false. And not only propositions but simple words. Left identitarians who think of themselves as radical creatures, contesting this and transgressing that, have become like buttoned-up Protestant schoolmarms when it comes to the English language, parsing every conversation for immodest locutions and rapping the knuckles of those who inadvertently use them.
.. What happened to James Damore at Google is that he was made a scapegoat for violating a taboo.
A Google employee inflames a debate about sexism and free speech
James Damore said personality may explain the gender gap in tech
James Damore, the young Harvard-educated software engineer later revealed to be the memo’s author, but biological factors. Women are more interested in people and emotions, he wrote, and tend towards “neuroticism”, meaning they are more anxious than men and worse at handling high-stress jobs.
.. In the end, Google decided it was better to be labelled intolerant than complicit. “This isn’t a question of legality or policy. This is a question of virtue-signalling,” says the boss of a prominent tech startup, reflecting the view of many in the Valley.
.. The company may become more of a target for those who accuse Silicon Valley’s firms and bosses of being intolerant of politically conservative opinions. American universities, which are supposed to encourage diversity of thought, are also criticised for catering to identity politics by, for example, excluding conservative thinkers.
Real Men Might Get Made Fun Of
“How to build a better white guy” is a conversation that could turn academic fast, replete with all the jargon that the sneering class finds so tedious: intersectionality, emotional labor, systemic oppression, the dreaded “privilege.” But when I sat down with my friends, only one question sprang to mind, and it was personal, not pedantic.
“Do you ever stick up for me?”
.. So, if you care, how often do you say something? Maybe you’ll confront your close friends, but what about more powerful men, famous men, cool men, men who could further your career?
.. One of the subtlest and most pervasive is social ostracism — coding empathy as the fun killer, consideration for others as an embarrassing weakness and dissenting voices as out-of-touch, bleeding-heart dweebs (at best). Coolness is a fierce disciplinarian.
.. People of color not only have to deal with racism; they also have to deal with white people labeling them “angry” or “hostile” or “difficult” for objecting.
.. “SJW” is an acronym for “social justice warrior,” a sarcastic pejorative that purports to refer to online progressive zealots who cross the line from activist to moral scold. In practice, though, the term usually means “anyone asking me to adjust my behavior for reasons I deem annoying or frivolous,”
.. The “dirtbag left,” in contrast to these “warriors,” promises a world in which you can have it both ways: You can be good without ever seeming uncool in front of your buddies, you can be an advocate for social justice without ever considering there might be social forces beyond your ken, you can be a crusader for positive change without ever killing anyone’s buzz, you can be a progressive hero without ever taking identity politics seriously.
.. She testified that she and female colleagues were not invited to a business dinner with Al Gore, the former vice president. “It was said that if there were women there, the conversation would be tempered,” she said, “and it was because women kill the buzz.”
.. I’m frequently contacted by young women weighing the (iffy) benefits and (massive) costs of calling out sexism in their male-dominated industries. I always think: Why is this even our responsibility to fix?
.. One of my podcasting friends told me that he does stick up for women in challenging situations, like testosterone-soaked comedy green rooms, for instance, but complained, “I get mocked for it!”
Yes, I know you do. Welcome. Getting yelled at and made fun of is where many of us live all the time.
Speaking up costs us friends, jobs, credibility and invisible opportunities we’ll never even know enough about to regret.
.. But I need you to absorb that risk. I need you to get yelled at and made fun of, a lot, and if you get kicked out of the club, I need you to be relieved, and I need you to help build a new one.
How Hungary Became a Haven for the Alt-Right
The increasingly illiberal European country offers shelter to a growing number of international nationalists.
.. Orbán’s “refugees” have been moving to Hungary, and Budapest in particular, for years. A small clique of Identitarians, or aggrieved nationalists from Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and elsewhere, all motivated by their disdain for their home countries’ commitment to liberal values, have found an ideological match in his Hungary, where two extreme far-right parties, the governing Fidesz and Jobbik, the largest opposition party, make up most of the National Assembly.
Jobbik is the first European political party to champion a border wall. Its members frequently express open anti-Semitic and anti-Roma sentiments, and prioritize the preservation of “Hungary for the Hungarians.”
.. they have created a structured propaganda circuit, in the hopes of spreading their ideas far and wide.
.. At the center of the scene is a publishing house called Arktos Media. It is routinely referred to as the preeminent publisher of the alt-right
.. Dugin’s “ethnonationalism,” a belief in the creation of ethnically homogenous nation states, has been championed by white nationalists, who argue that Europe and America are innately white nations.
.. Arktos titles largely promote a viewpoint it characterizes as “alternatives to modernity” that are critical of liberalism, human rights, and modern democracy.
.. he argues that multiculturalism and liberal human rights—what he calls “cultural Marxism”—have been the dominant culture since the fall of Nazism, and outlines how transforming this culture space is necessary for political and social change... In 2014, Jobbik’s popularity surged, thanks to a platform that pledged to preserve Hungarian ethnic purity... These are people with an almost medieval view on the world and they find a safe haven in Hungary,” Kréko told me... multiculturalism is the supreme enemy.. Both believe in draconian immigration laws based on ethnic and racial preservation... 20th-century intellectual fascist Julius Evola’s A Handbook For Right-Wing Youth.. Evola, who White House chief strategist Steve Bannon quoted in a 2014 speech at the Vatican, is considered by academics as “possibly the most important intellectual figure for the Radical Right in contemporary Europe.”.. Marton Gyöngyösi, another key politician in Jobbik credited with calling for all Jews in Hungary to be registered on a list... Jobbik’s resistance to immigration, he said, is limited to people from “Africa or the Middle East,” because they do not share the same “cultural values” as Hungarians, as opposed to the “Austrians or Polish or American people who come to our country and who share the same civilization, the same religion, or the same values or way of life.”.. Friberg has sought to obscure his violent transgressions under a cover of intellectual legitimacy... He has spent his far-right career repackaging eugenicist ideology by rebranding the same or similar material with words such as “identitarian,” “traditionalist,” or “archeofuturist.”.. Michael Polignano, co-founder of Counter-Currents, moved to Budapest in 2016, and joined the nationalist scene. After moving to Hungary in January 2017, men’s rights activist Matt Forney wrote:“Imagine there’s no leftists. It’s easy if you try. No protests in the streets, and in front of us, only cute white girls. That world exists, and it’s called Hungary.”.. YouTube and Twitter personality RamZPaul, who has lived in the Hungarian capital off and on since 2013, tweeted in February to nearly 35,000 followers: “Budapest is like Paris of the 1920s. #Hungary.”.. British Nationalist Party leader Nick Griffin .. has been deeply involved with a radical Christian organization called “The Knights Templar International,”.. a resettlement campaign called “Operation Ark” for “refugee” South African Boers to relocate to rural Hungary.. Breitbart is now rumored to be opening a Hungarian office in the near future.. these nationalist internationals are creating a sanctuary from which to broadcast anti-globalism across the globe.