How James Damore went from Google employee to right-wing Internet hero

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2017/08/12/how-james-
damore-went-from-google-employee-to-right-wing-internet-
hero/?tid=pm_lifestyle_pop&utm_term=.4883c1734434

A week ago, James Damore worked at Google. Now, he’s sitting for portraits
with Peter Duke, the photographer the New York Times dubbed “the Annie
Leibovitz of the alt-right.”

In one photograph — the user image for an unverified Twitter account
believed to be his — Damore sits in front of a blue background, holding a
laptop. He’s wearing a T-shirt that has one word printed on the chest, in
Google’s font. It reads: “Goolag.”

Damore, a software engineer, was the author of a 10-page internal memo at
Google in which he argued that the company’s current diversity initiatives
were “discriminatory” against those who weren’t women or people of color,
that the company should focus more on “ideological” diversity, and that
the underrepresentation of women in some engineering and leadership
positions in Google’s staff was better explained by biological gender
differences rather than by institutional bias.

[‘I’m not a sexist’: Fired Google engineer stands behind controversial
memo]

The memo went viral at Google and then became news when its existence was
leaked to Motherboard. Damore was fired for “perpetuating gender
stereotypes.” But he quickly became a hero on the right-wing Internet,
where a coalition of anti-politically-correct online personalities, Trump
supporters and the alt-right believed that Damore’s firing was proof that
Silicon Valley was hostile to conservatives — and that something was about
to change.

As his Duke portraits show, that is a role that Damore has embraced. Below
is a look at how he got there.

Step one: The initial reaction

Jack Posobiec ???? ? @JackPosobiec
James Damore did nothing wrong #GoogleManifesto
8:06 PM - Aug 7, 2017
27 27 Replies 230 230 Retweets 627 627 likes

Each component of the Damore’s story read like a fulfilled prophecy for
the right-wing Internet, which has spent years accusing Silicon Valley
companies of conspiring to silence conservatives.

Many of the things Damore argued in that memo were more or less aligned
with this viewpoint: for instance, that “Google’s left bias has created a
politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming
dissenters into silence,” and later, that “we have extensive government
and Google programs, fields of study, and legal and social norms to
protect women, but when a man complains about a gender issue affecting
men, he’s labeled as a misogynist and a whiner.”

aul Joseph Watson ? @PrisonPlanet
The left is at war with reality. James Damore told the truth. For that he
was witch hunted, doxxed & fired.#JeSuisJamesDamore
3:42 AM - Aug 8, 2017
112 112 Replies 1,134 1,134 Retweets 3,059 3,059 likes

Andrew Torba, the founder of Gab — a social network that has pitched
itself as a Twitter alternative for those who believe the platform engages
in too much censorship — told The Washington Post in an email that he
believed “Damore’s memo and firing will be the shot heard across the tech
world.”

Torba believes this week will be the “beginning of the alt-tech
revolution,” an uprising of conservative Silicon Valley workers against
the tech world’s left-leaning culture. Gab’s Medium post on said
revolution is illustrated by a popular meme of Damore, in which his face
has been placed over that of Martin Luther, nailing the Ninety-five Theses
on the door of a church.

[Banned from Twitter? This site promises you can say whatever you want.]

The Gab founder has previously said that he believes progressives have a
monopoly on every major Silicon Valley company, and has built Gab as an
independent, free-speech alternative — one that has been especially
popular with the Trump-supporting Internet and its diaspora. Gab said in a
tweet that it had raised $80,000 for its crowdfunding campaign over the
past week, a period roughly aligning with Damore’s story going viral.

Torba also said that Damore’s memo was particularly well-timed, because
“censorship from Silicon Valley has increased dramatically over the past
few weeks,” He pointed me to this tweet for examples:

Gab ? @getongab
August 2017:

James Damore fired
Sargon banned on Twitter
Diamond and Silk demonetized on Youtube
Drudge's tweet censored

This is war.
10:44 AM - Aug 10, 2017
198 198 Replies 2,916 2,916 Retweets 5,564 5,564 likes

If you’re not steeped in this part of Internet culture, the rest of Gab’s
tweet might read like nonsense. So, briefly, here’s a primer. “Sargon”
refers to “Sargon of Akkad,” the pseudonym for a pundit-style YouTube
personality with nearly 700,000 subscribers who is probably best known for
regularly mocking and criticizing individual feminists and “Social Justice
Warriors” in his videos. He was recently suspended from Twitter, and his
supporters have interpreted the suspension as politically correct
censorship.

Diamond and Silk are also YouTubers. They supported Donald Trump’s
presidential campaign, and have accused YouTube of “demonetizing” some of
their videos because of their politics (although the reality might be a
bit more complicated):

Diamond and Silk® ? @DiamondandSilk
Wonder if @YouTube @TeamYouTube stopped the monetization of our videos
because we are loyal supporters of the @POTUS ....Hummmm...........
10:08 AM - Aug 10, 2017
519 519 Replies 2,691 2,691 Retweets 6,261 6,261 likes

Since Google owns YouTube, Diamond and Silk have become a part of the
Damore narrative, as further proof that the company is trying to silence
conservatives.

And Drudge, of course, refers to The Drudge Report. Gab is referring to an
accusation one of the President’s sons made last week about a tweet of his
being “censored.” He was trying to quote-tweet a Drudge tweet, but ran
into an issue:

Eric Trump ? @EricTrump
.@Twitter - Why are my tweets about jobs and the economy being censored?
#Interesting
10:39 AM - Aug 4, 2017
3,228 3,228 Replies 12,942 12,942 Retweets 22,091 22,091 likes

Because Damore’s memo, and firing, escaped the right-wing filter bubble
and became a real, mainstream controversy, his story took on a much larger
significance. Soon, some prominent personalities were talking about Damore
with the language of civil rights;

Dana Rohrabacher ? @DanaRohrabacher
The mistreatment of conservatives and libertarians by tech monopolies is a
civil rights issue. #googlememo
12:17 PM - Aug 10, 2017
563 563 Replies 3,798 3,798 Retweets 8,178 8,178 likes

Step two: Offer support

Gab, along with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, both publicly offered to hire
Damore after he lost his job at Google. But the onslaught of online
support that headed Damore’s way as the story about his memo blew up was
more comprehensive than that.

WeSearchr, the crowdfunding “bounty” platform run by infamous Internet
troll Chuck Johnson, set up a “fundraiser” for Damore that has raised
$40,000 in a matter of days. The conservative media, picking up on the
initial support of Damore on right-wing Twitter, began to cover the story
as progressive overreach.

His new supporters believed that the only thing keeping Silicon Valley
from a conservative revolution was that an army of secret conservatives
were afraid to “speak out.” And despite what Google said about the
decision to fire Damore, his supporters were ready to read the action as a
desperate attempt to silence him and anyone like him.

Sonya ?? Mann ? @sonyaellenmann
People don't seem to realize that internal backlash against James Damore
isn't universal. Attached survey is from a Google mailing list.
8:06 PM - Aug 7, 2017
61 61 Replies 428 428 Retweets 698 698 likes

If Damore became an outspoken critic of the institutions for which he once
worked, perhaps it would convince others to do the same.

Torba wanted to assure me that this was already in progress. In his email,
he said that “Gab has personally heard from engineers working in
established Fortune 500 companies, inquiring on how they can help us
create the alternative online world — a world based on the principles of
freedom and the freedom to dissent.” And Breitbart has started publishing
interviews with anonymous, disgruntled Google employees.

Others began to go on the attack against the people they blamed for
Damore’s firing, by tracking down the names and online profiles of
individual Google employees whom they believed were outspoken against the
memo.

A few viral, seemingly 4Chan-sourced social media posts highlighted the
names and Twitter bios of progressive Google employees, who were
apparently critical of the memo internally. Conservative writer Milo
Yiannopoulos posted one of those screenshots to his popular Facebook page,
where it has more than 2,000 shares. Some of those employees pictured have
since had to set their accounts to private.

[Google employees face fear, uncertainty in aftermath of divisive memo]

A planned Thursday meeting at Google to address the fallout from Damore’s
firing was cancelled at the last minute, due to concerns about employee
harassment.

Step three: Support accepted

Damore didn’t appear to have a Twitter account before his memo went viral.
On Tuesday, he apparently started tweeting as @fired4truth. The account
tweeted a photo of Damore posing for a photo shoot outside of Google’s
headquarters Thursday, holding up a sign that carried the same message:

James Damore @Fired4Truth
Periscope problems! Live in Mountain View.
4:33 PM - Aug 10, 2017
295 295 Replies 1,526 1,526 Retweets 3,889 3,889 likes

And the first two long interviews he gave after his firing were to YouTube
personalities who are popular on the right-wing Internet:One was Stefan
Molyneux, a popular right-wing, anti-feminist YouTuber who describes his
programming as “philosophy.”

Damore told Molyneux that he decided to write the memo after attending a
diversity training session at the company. There were portions of the
training he “definitely disagreed with,” he said.

“There was a lot of just shaming and, ‘No, you can’t say that, that’s
sexist, you can’t do this,’ and there’s just so much hypocrisy in a lot of
the things that they are saying,” he said.

The other interview, posted Wednesday, was with Jordan B. Peterson, a
professor of psychology at the University of Toronto who runs a popular
YouTube channel that regularly goes after what Peterson believes to be
“political correctness.”

In his 50-minute interview with Peterson, Damore accused Google’s “upper
management” of misrepresenting him, “just to silence me,” he said.

Later, Peterson asked him how he’s doing. “I’ve gotten a surprising amount
of support,” Damore said. “It definitely sucks, but at least I was proven
right,” he added. “The whole culture tries to silence any dissenting
view.”

Both interviews with Damore have hundreds of thousands of views on
YouTube. Two days later, Damore published an op-ed in the Wall Street
Journal.

In just a week, Damore has become on one of the biggest celebrities on the
conservative Internet. He hasn’t indicated yet what he’s doing next — Gab
didn’t say whether Damore had responded to their job offer.

Meanwhile, Damore’s new online army is organizing “Marches” on Google’s
office buildings to protest his firing. Damore hasn’t said whether he’ll
attend any of them.


--
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