The firing of James Damore over his “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” memo will empower the tech alt-right.
To understand why, imagine yourself as a Republican working at a big Silicon Valley tech company.
You agree with Damore that some average differences between men and women probably explain some of why such a high proportion of computer programmers are male. You, however, in no way consider yourself sexist.
What Damore’s termination tells you is that many in your field consider people with your beliefs to be unfit to work with. They hold opinions of you similar to those of former senior Google employee Yonatan Zunger, who wrote about Damore, saying:
“Do you understand that at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you? I certainly couldn’t assign any women to deal with this, a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face, and even if there were a group of like-minded individuals I could put you with, nobody would be able to collaborate with them.” (Emphasis mine.)
If you are on the right, you probably find it hard to imagine that any reasonably person could read Damore’s memo and think that it reveals the author to be sexist, punchable, or a danger to women’s careers. It appears to you that Damore was excommunicated for questioning the progressive diversity narrative in a most respectful manner.
The right calls the kind of people who went after Damore by the derogative…