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Alt-Right Activists Call For Google Boycott After Employee Is Fired For Anti-Diversity Paper

Matt Novak Avatar
Matt Novak
Alt-Right Activists Call For Google Boycott After Employee Is Fired For Anti-Diversity Paper

Google fired a software engineer yesterday in response to public outrage over the man’s 10-page screed against women being represented proportionally in tech companies. But the firing has become a call-to-arms for alt-right voices on the internet who are crowdfunding money for the engineer, James Damore, and are now calling for a boycott of Google.

The calls for a boycott have gained steam on Twitter, where names such as Mike Cernovich, Michael Tracey and Paul Joseph Watson have joined the chorus of people with usernames such as CNNisRetarded, TheMuddyCuck and Grammar Nawtsy in being angered by what they call “diversity crybullies”.

Some of the calls to boycott the tech giant refer to getting “red-pilled”, a term popular in alt-right circles for when people see reality clearly. The term comes from the 1999 sci-fi film The Matrix, where the hero takes a red pill to see the real world around him. In this case, alt-right activists believe that getting red-pilled means you can see the misandry inherent in Google’s decision to fire the engineer.

Others on Twitter have been brainstorming alternatives for Google services, which can be a rather daunting challenge for people who have bought into the Google eco-system. Duck Duck Go and Bing have been floated as good alternatives for search, while Vid.me has been held up as a good alternative to YouTube. Google, of course, owns YouTube.

Some of the most caustic voices have said that “only Jews use” Google now. Others seemed to claim that Google was a Nazi-like organisation, replacing the O’s in the Google logo with swastikas.

Others were more direct in their accusations, saying that Nazis literally run Google.

Plays on the Google name like “Guulag” have also popped up.

Popular alt-right conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich has added to calls that Google become at least 50 per cent Republican, saying that political affiliation should “be a protected class under anti-discrimination laws”.

Cernovich has even proposed that the US Department of Justice demand to see what kind of political affiliation exists at every company and enforce some kind of quota. At least I think that’s what he’s calling for since tech companies themselves aren’t registered as political parties.

Journalist Mike Tracey, who claimed he was viciously assaulted by US Representative Maxine Waters in an infamous video, chimed in to say that he hopes the workplace environment at Google is as “unpleasant as possible”.

Others claimed that Google was simply too big and that any boycott of the company would be ineffective.

But frankly, the alt-right isn’t filled with the smartest people on the internet. Some have called for campaigns to contact Google’s advertisers, a move that has been attempted in the past by those affiliated with Gamergate.

Google doesn’t have advertisers in the same way that a newspaper would, obviously. They facilitate the sales of ads and basically own the entire market online. But again, these aren’t the brightest people around.

WikiLeaks has taken up the software engineer’s cause, claiming that the firing was censorship and offering to hire James Damore.

It’s not clear what kind of job Julian Assange has offered Damore, nor whether the two have been in contact.

But for now the alt-right calls for protests against Google are likely to continue, as new hashtags spring up to fight for Damore’s right to create what his former employers allege was a hostile work environment.

If these people think that Google firing an employee for passing around a sexist screed is an assault on free speech, wait until they hear what the Jeff Sessions US Justice Department has in store for journalists.

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