Google Fires VP over Bizarre Anti-Anti-Semitic Rant
yahoo.com
yahoo.com
2. Part of his statement rings true. Like how can you be anti-Semitic when you are also a Semite.
3. The west should really pay attention. The same propaganda techniques Arab governments have been using for decades to demonize Jews is being used on social media, talk radio, and the news.
4. Unfortunately, this firing feeds into the long held conspiracies that Jews are infinitely powerful and any criticism of them will get you silenced. Might there be other reasons he was let go. There is subtext in the article that points to it. But the narrative is he was fired for holding anti-Semitic views.
There is no contradiction here, and his pointing it out was a bizarre tangent to me. "Semitic" by definition refers to the semitic religions, but "anti-semitic" is used nigh exclusively in both spoken and written communication to mean anti-Jewish.
Bobby Fischer for example is a very high profile person. Candace Owens is another.
The word ‘Semite’ is a product of the abhorrent ‘race science’ of the time in Europe that purported to divide up peoples according to pseudo-scientific fashion of the time. It is only now used in the field of linguistics where eg. Arabic and Hebrew are both Semitic languages. This has nothing to do with antisemitism.
This is also why we write it as one word rather than hyphenated with a capital S.
Thank you. This is the kind of information I come for on HN.
Nope. The word Semite was coined in 1771 by August Ludwig von Schlözer to refer to a family of languages and their people. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/18229/summary
From the wikipedia article, the gentleman who first used the term “Aryan race” (in the context of language, not ethnicity) later said:
> These two sciences, the Science of Language and the Science of Man, cannot, at least for the present, be kept too much asunder; [...] I must repeat, what I have said many times before, it would be as wrong to speak of Aryan blood as of dolichocephalic grammar.
Both statements are true. Language is often weird like that.
It's much more scientific to be separated into 33,000 psychometric bubbles that can fold instantly into narrative-compliant political frames based on whoever can pay journos to write headlines that game SEO and HFTs instead.
Reminds me of something... Oh yes the current race/gender ideology sweeping the West at the moment.
It is sad how little grace (and perhaps reading comprehension) we have. How does this culture change?
That said, perhaps Google decided that the risk of a bad interpretation is far too great (which would make sense) if they keep him employed.
2) I suggest 'reading comprehension' may help us find that in many cases these stories are not as redemptive as the author may think.
If there story were two paragraphs, and he 'saw the light' by the end of Uni or something.
If you're going to do this kind of writing publicly as an executive, you literally need to have some kind of PR person help you do it, so that you can frame it in the right way. Most people don't have a very good instinct for how things will be received.
And unfortunately many people will misinterpret it, and so there's always a lot of risk in it, it's a hard story to tell. But it probably can be done carefully.
While I personally wouldn't do it and also think it comes across as kind of weird and unsettling I also think that what you are saying is based on your own cultural perspective. Let's take a few steps back and look at it. Is it really that bad if you talk about having a harmful belief in the past and how you let go of that? Should you be fired overt that? I think Google just chose the easy way here; Fire the person involved, least chance of having a controversy.
I don't know where you live but I can tell you in most western European countries there is a very strong hatred against Jews under Arab migrants. This hatred is also passed along to newer generations. A blog post this might actually make the world a bit of a better place instead of a worse one...
Using one's platform as a way to talk about personal racial views beyond the basic "don't be racist, and try to judge others based on their individual qualities" is unprofessional no matter what one's viewpoint may be. (I suppose an exception to this would be when your profession involves analysis of different groups of people, such as in diplomacy or sociology.)
Imagine a flight attendant using the in-cabin PA system to advocate that everyone should read How to Win Friends and Influence People. The message posted on LinkedIn may have been positive in a way, but at the same time a Developer Relations professional is supposed to use that kind of platform in a more topical manner.
Edit: I'm not usually one to complain about getting downvoted but I personally believe this is a fairly circumspect comment about using a professional platform in an unprofessional manner, and I'd appreciate if one of you would explain your distaste for it.
I wouldn’t fire him for it, preferring to have his views challenged but it also sounds like there were other factors to do with his management style that played a part too.
It’s a shame because I feel like he meant well but it also belies poor decision-making for someone at such a high management level in a major corporation.
goto/distraction[1] alone would be over the line in some of the places I've worked
[1]: https://www.slideshare.net/paulsmarsden/google-deck-on-digit...
Despite possibly not realizing he'd get fired for it just out of making people very uncomfortable ... it's interesting to note that these stories are often not quite as redeeming as the author's might think they are.
It was over publicly confirming Google hires and tolerates Anti-Semites.
That he grew as a person and changed his thoughts but was fired is a tough one.
Free to have an opinion (even a overtly racist one) but not free from the consequences.
It seems to me that there is some base level of education you need to be in technology. My belief has always been that education helps eliminate racism. I think I need to let go of that belief.