A conservative software engineer at Google recently published a blog post claiming that the tech giant has become dominated by “outrage mobs and witch hunts.”
In a recent blog post to Medium.com, a conservative Google software engineer named Mike Wacker detailed how the internal company culture at Google has become dominated by “outrage mobs and witch hunts.” Wacker first takes issues with Google’s stance on “hate speech” and its failure to define exactly what the term means. Wacker writes:
Google has long claimed to be a nonpartisan company, yet like many other tech companies, they also maintain many policies against “hate speech”. How do we reconcile these two apparently conflicting goals? While this statement came from a spokesperson for Facebook, it could just as easily apply to Google, Twitter, and many other tech companies.
We’ve always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology.
An astute reader will notice that this response does not actually answer the question; it merely shifts it from one point to another. Instead of asking, “Is Google a nonpartisan company?” we instead ask, “Does Google apply a nonpartisan definition of hate speech?”
Wacker then notes that employee petitions have been used by Google staff on a regular basis to force the tech firms hand in a number of political matters:
These outrage mobs against “hate” have become honeypots for toxic, hostile, and uncivil discourse. While some of their rhetoric is so outlandish that you have no choice but to laugh it, the psychological effects that these outrage mobs have on their targets is nothing to laugh about. Just read this excerpt from Kay Coles James about her own experience with Google’s outrage mob:
In 1961, at age 12, I was one of two-dozen black children who integrated an all-white junior high school in Richmond. White parents jeered me outside the school, and inside, their kids stuck me with pins, shoved me in the halls and pushed me down the stairs. So when the group of Google employees resorted to calling names and making false accusations because they didn’t want a conservative voice advising the company, the hostility was reminiscent of what I felt back then — that same intolerance for someone who was different from them.
I won’t lie, that was a tough part to read. But if you ask the outrage mob, that wasn’t the real problem. The real question was this:
So the real question to this is whether or not we think there’s value in having the Grand Wizard of the KKK on this board.
What sort of alternate universe do you have to live in to think this sort of rhetoric is OK? And what sort of alternative universe do you have to live in where you would turn a blind eye to that rhetoric?
Wacker notes that one of the key individuals that called for Kay’s removal from the council was Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who referred to Rep. Marsha Blackburn as a “terrorist” and advocated for censorship of the Republican Senator. According to Lemoine: “If you think that trans women aren’t women then you can either keep it to yourself or GTFO (Get The F*ck Out)”
Wacker himself even received what appeared to be a veiled threat of termination at the company over his role as the creator of the republicans@Google mailing list:
At Google, I have been the owner and the creator of the republicans@ mailing list. When I first created that mailing list back in October 2016, my humble ambition was to create a community for Republicans at Google and help make the company a little more friendlier for Republicans. It would suffice to say that my actual experience has thrust me into a much larger role than I could ever have imagined (a topic which I could spend an entire post on).
My role as the republicans@ owner has also made me a prime target for the outrage mobs and witch hunts. On March 6, 2019, I was pulled into a meeting of my own with my management and HR. During that meeting, I received a final written warning, and I received a verbal offer of 8 weeks of severance pay if I left the company. That verbal offer of severance was an implied threat of termination. While they never said it explicitly, it was clear that if I didn’t take that offer, they would invent some pretext to fire me shortly thereafter.
Wacker finished his post by noting that outrage culture at Google has only appeared to get worse in recent years, and left unchecked will continue to do so especially when backed by Google HR.
If left unchecked, these outrage mobs will hunt down any conservative, any Christian, and any independent free thinker at Google who does not bow down to their agenda. Anyone who stands up to them will be hounded until they either shut the fuck up or they “get the fuck out”. Furthermore, Google HR has clearly shown that they function as an accessory to these witch hunts.
As I said before, once you control who belongs at Google, you can control what content belongs on Google.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com