There seems to be more and more public acknowledgement (and in fora like this one) of the myriad leftist 1984-style attacks we are currently witnessing - every bit as bad as the McCarthy era led by the right.
As appalling as the behaviour of these people is, that growing awareness can only be a good thing.
Remember when the government went around arresting and undermining anything and anyone that was even slightly left-wing? People in power being called out by groups on Twitter is definitely the exact same thing and absolutely not a false equivalence.
They are getting low level employees fired from their jobs, though. They have a lot of power in educational institutes, media organizations and HR departments.
> They are getting low level employees fired from their jobs
This is an interesting intersection. It either implies that all employers are left-aligned (not true) and therefore willing to fire employees that hold right-leaning opinions, OR that low level employees are so expendable that it literally any reason can get them fired if enough people complain.
> OR that low level employees are so expendable that it literally any reason can get them fired if enough people complain.
It's mostly this. When you're a small-medium business, the last thing you want is negative PR and people canceling or DDOSing you because one of your employees wrongthinked.
I think HR departments just want to offload risk and they'll take advantage of loose labor laws to offload an employee who got mobbed online.
I don't ascribe a right or left bias to them. It's the mob that has the bias (perhaps because of age or ideology or certainty or something else) and the mob uses the technology and then the HR department responds by firing the employee.
> the mob uses the technology and then the HR department responds by firing the employee.
Do we need to coin the term "DDoE"? Distributed Denial of Employment. It's a hack against the socio-political system that targets find themselves in, not too dissimilar to Swatting.
Definitely, didn't mean to ascribe it to one side or the other. I mainly see posters on HN referencing instances of "the left" getting people fired.
It has more to do with aggregate action, which has recently been made possible with platforms like Twitter, than with the particular ideological stances.
My personal experience is a lot of HR departments do have a left-of-center bias to them, especially at the lower-levels (but at times reaching all the way to the top). A few reasons:
1) HR departments tend to skew female, and women on average skew somewhat more left-of-center than men do
2) They often have special teams for "diversity & inclusion", which inevitably tend to be filled with people with left-of-center political views
3) They'll put requirements like "commitment to diversity & inclusion" in job descriptions, which can (ironically) act as a filter to remove political diversity. Those phrases can get copy-and-pasted into job descriptions in other departments too, but while for many in engineering/sales/etc it is just compliance boilerplate with little real significance to the hiring process, HR really means it.
Of course this isn't universally true, I'm sure there are some HR departments out there full of Trump supporters. But most of the people here would not be working for those kinds of companies.
Who knows, maybe, maybe not, but it doesn't necessarily follow that those ideals are being taken seriously, and more importantly that they also follow through in confirming the allegations (they often seem not to), and just are worried about their branding when a perceived 'toxic' person is associated with their brand. Companies generally worry about revenue more than they worry about ideals, no matter what is claimed. I'm not saying that cynically, either, I think that's what investors and boardmembers care about and for obvious reason.
They are bullying and harassing people, and trying to lump that in with "criticism". To make it worse, when they get called out on it, the left goes to victim blaming. It is just gross, like when people point out what a girl was wearing in a sexual assault case.
You can criticize, you can ignore and you can boycott. Instead too many people (look at the response to JK Rowling) are threatening death and rape. Or are harassing employers until they capitulate.
The vast majority of the criticism Rowling has received was not death or rape threats. Why do you ascribe that behavior to the entire "woke-left" (I'm assuming thats who you meant by "they"). Do you not think that targets of the right ever receive rape or death threats? These are not characteristic of the left. There is not some "woke-left" governing body directing people and asking some to give cover so that others can issue rape threats. Why do you choose to focus on them exclusively?
I don't understand why I can't condone bullying or rape threats. I am on the left, I hate it when the right does it too. There is this sentiment though that bulling, threats, doxing, and getting someone fired are "consequences" of free speech. Even though this is happening to people I happen disagree with, I still don't think it is right. I don't think the entire left is like this, but I never have to read to far down on Twitter before I find someone exhibiting these bad behaviors.
Arresting someone is not how intimidation works. If you arrest someone, your intimidate gets the light of the court.
Leftist extremism is exactly avoiding the court system by applying pressure to rob people of their livelihood - a much more immediate, public, and potent method of intimidation - and an excellent way to set an example to others who might speak against the theocracy.
There was the case of the guy working for the company involved in the Obama campaign who published a paper based on a study of an african-american professor saying that historically speaking violent riots will lead to more right leaning people voting. He got called out a racist, made to apologise, got fired and ostracised in his research community. Would you say he got boycotted?
Maybe not, but I still see it in the same general category as a boycott, because: if nothing illegal is actually going on, then what can anyone do to stop it, except impose authoritarian restrictions on free speech? If the company/institution wants to ignore people, fine, but they’ll have to deal with the consequences. (If those consequences are personal, e.g. death threats, then those should be nipped in the bud. But my feeling is that they’re usually financial or reputational.)
I was interviewing a candidate last year for a software engineering position. Interview was fine and he was capable. I decided to find him on Twitter.
He said immigration was ruining the country, and that there are too many Indians / Chinese in the Bay Area. About half of my organization either have an H1B visa or a green card.
Am I a McCarthyist for rejecting him outright without hesitation?
Progress happens when people go outside of their comfort zone to explore new thoughts, but it sounds like you'd prefer to write-off the candidate instead of taking the opportunity to change their mind.
A while ago I interviewed a candidate for a software engineering position. He seemed quite capable. I decided to find him on Twitter.
His feed was full of things like, "All Cops Are Bastards", many images of the hammer & sickle, and generally hating on white people. He even retweeted an illustration of the White House burning with a hammer & sickle flag being raised in front of it along with the caption "my 2020 goals".
Actually... I lied. The person I described is Steve Klabnik. Despite throwing around extremely offensive imagery and calling for violence against members of certain professions and races, that guy can get a job anywhere he wants. Meanwhile if someone simply says, "all lives matter" or makes an OK sign, they risk getting fired. The double standard could not be more obvious.
FWIW, I would not hire this person. I personally lean right, but I will not hire anyone who posts their political opinions publicly, whether left or right. IMO it shows poor judgement and that you will likely be an unproductive employee, concerned instead about things that have little effect on your life at work.
McCarthy was a senator in high levels of government. When I consider who I'm employing to be around the people around me, I expect them to be judged on their merits of the job, not their country of origin or visa status.
You can criticize H1B programs and their abuse, but saying there are too many Chinese and Indians explicitly and rejecting them for that is not "McCarthyism".
> I expect them to be judged on their merits of the job, not their country of origin or visa status.
So do I and so do the vast majority of people who want less immigration.
> and rejecting them for that is not "McCarthyism".
To be fair to the parent - it would be if you tried to make sure they weren’t hired anywhere.
You were making a biased and snap judgement about a candidate - but that happens a lot in the interview process - same as if you rejected an African American candidate because you didn’t think they would fit in.
What would you do if one of your existing employees was found to have that kind of twitter account?
One is a statement made by a candidate that is at best insensitive to people of different races.
The other is a poorly specified scenario where a black person does not fit in? For what reason do they not fit in? Is it because of their race or something else.
As appalling as the behaviour of these people is, that growing awareness can only be a good thing.
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