Comment by jim-jim-jim | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jim-jim-jim | Hacker News Reader

I'm neither old nor experienced enough to back this with even anecdotal evidence, but I can't imagine this is a new development; surely most workplaces have always been hostile to viewpoints at odds with contemporary business norms. It's just the norms themselves that have changed during the shift to a globalized economy that favors knowledge work.

Despite the "progressive activist" moniker applied in the article and allusions to radical-left-cancel-this-woke-that blah blah blah from even more sensational sources, the prevailing ideology of the professional class runs in lockstep with global neoliberalism. Having anti-immigrant/Euroskeptic views is a surefire way to draw ire from your colleagues/manager/HR, because you're gumming up the gears of the way business is conducted in this day and age. But you know what else is equally unacceptable in the eyes of most companies? Genuinely progressive stances on labor organization, public ownership, and anti-imperialism. For the same reasons.

Most "activism", especially from within a company, is just cheerleading for the status quo.

I remember things about a generation ago. It wasn’t always rosy; some unacceptable things were causally said. But, there seemed to be less hate for the other team. We seem to live in a hyper-polarized world exemplified by the shift in late night talk shows where you can no longer escape politics. Both teams are playing to win and there is never any rest.

I just about remember the Miner's Strike, and IRA bombs going off in London. Let's not de-polarise the past in our memories.

What has changed is the way dishonesty has spread up the media and political system.

There were certainly polarizing events in the past. Canada has no shortage of important events including the Quebec referendum. But i've never felt like i was under continuous pressure from one news cycle to the next.

> But you know what else is equally unacceptable in the eyes of most companies? Genuinely progressive stances on labor organization, public ownership, and anti-imperialism. For the same reasons.

Why then even bother to work at those places? there are many other places to work, many that share those views.

Sadly for some their only purpose at work is to cause division, they don’t want the work, they don’t want to be in a place were their ideas are dominant because what they really seek is change, by force. That number is growing and is causing all these problem and it will only get worse.

> there are many other places to work, many that share those views.

We might be talking past each other. I don't think there is a private sector entity that empowers workers or opposes the military industrial complex, because these stances are inherently opposed to most firms' profit motives.

Despite the way the issue has been framed, companies aren't being stormed by left-wing radicals. The "progressive activism" decried by this article is myopically centered on representation, language policing, and—presumably in the UK—the validity of the EU. These all dovetail perfectly with the standards of the HR/marketing departments and do nothing that threatens the company's bottom line. This divisive behavior is tolerated because it actually enforces discipline.

Employees haven't been radicalized. "Bodies and spaces" is just the new "did you get that TPS report?"

How can we be talking past each other when you got exactly what I said? You just disagree with me that non profits exists, that cooperatives exists, that employee owned businesses exist, that communions and communities where profit is not a word in their lexicon exist.

But they exists. And not only that, the number of self employed people that share all or some of those values grows every year.

And if all that isn’t enough, there are countries much less imperialistic that would have no trouble letting you in.

Cold corporate jobs are not the only jobs and have never been.

We might've been talking past each other when you said

> Sadly for some their only purpose at work is to cause division

Your implication is that disruption is taking place over issues of workers' rights or anti-imperialism. It isn't for the most part. Those matters pit the company against its workers.

The brand of hostility covered in the article is worker-on-worker, and often occurs with the implicit blessing of the company itself.

My only intent was to draw a distinction, since the latter situation was disingenuously dubbed "progressive activism."

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