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Comment by SamReidHughes | Hacker News Reader

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No, they wouldn't. Instead of wasting their energy on having to justify their existence, they'd rightly complain to HR that the manifesto author is creating a hostile, prejudiced work environment for them.

And their media would back them up on this, while calling for the head of the author.

You shouldn't have to fight to justify your right to work, when someone uses generalizations and statistics to call it into question.

Do you disagree with this premise? If so, what if the facts happened to fall against your assumption? How are you so sure that facts and reality are on your side in this question? Are you an expert on the subject? What if the experts disagree with you? Do you then endorse the circulation of such a manifesto, because it's fact-backed?

They wouldn't be fighting for their right to work, they'd be calling a guy an idiot, with tons of examples and evidence, and that'd be the end of it.

A claim like that doesn't even impinge on their right to work.

Then they have to burn their time coming up with examples and evidence to defend against a badly-architected argument in the first place.

... which starts to smell like a hostile work environment. Not that that's, technically, illegal if the hostility is about political affiliation (unless the employee is in California).

It takes about 1 second to come up with some examples.

And the memo would be very reasonable to write if it were true, and if the company were actively discriminating in favor of conservatives, like Google was with women.

For a company discriminating in favor of women, it sure paid out a lot of money for mishandling sexual harassment.

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-09-25...

Trivial anecdotal counter-examples that you can come up with in 1 second are not established, general, consensus-supported, empirically-gathered, peer-reviewed facts.

Since you are focusing so much on facts, let me ask a simple question:

If the facts actually supported the hypothetical line of argument I proposed, would you consider the publication of an anti-conservative manifesto to be acceptable workplace behaviour, under your moral framework, and under the laws of the state of California?

Please don't try to re-frame this question by focusing on whether or not the facts support the line of argument. For the sake of argument, suppose that they did.

I have yet to see conservatives cancel something in the last 12 years.

What do you call it when LGBTQ folk are disowned by their families? I know several such people, and it sure feels like "cancel culture" to them.

I don't recall them treating Snowden particularly well

That one's got bipartisan support.

Unfortunately. Just an example. Gay/Trans rights would also be a good example.

  - Colin Kaepernick
  - They've been trying to cancel Planned Parenthood for as long as I can remember
  - The tea party movement was a frequent practicer of cancelling other conservative voices (e.g. charges of being RINOs)
  - Trump and his base have canceled many conservatives who did not like Trump
  - It feels like the whole "fake news" thing is a form of cancel culture

I definitely have.

https://www.google.com/search?q=conservatives+call+for+boyco...

This really has nothing to do with liberal or conservative. It has to do with who is in power. When conservatives held the political reigns, they "cancelled" all marriages that didn't align with their traditional values. (for instance).

We're faced with many more authoritarians of a leftist persuasion these days, but that doesn't mean conservatives have any fewer authoritarians in their ranks. It's a problem of constraining power in general.

Man....... equivocating "being cancelled on Twitter because you said something misogynistic" with the pre-2005 reality of "same sex relationships will send you to jail in Oklahoma" is a profound lack of perspective, even by the standards of HN.

"Cancellation" isn't censorship and it's certainly not a human rights violation. Get a grip.

There's a lot more to cancellation than losing a twitter account, it's about the instinct to silence and control those who disagree with you. And the underlying process is the same. Conservatives often think they are doing the lords work, and anyone who opposes them is evil and not worthy. And liberals often think they have the market on virtue cornered, and anyone who is opposed is a nazi/racist/xenophobe. And I'm only slightly exaggerating.

Edit: And I should add, that I did pick an example that was unfair to the right since it is worse than what is typically described as cancellation. So i apologize for that imbalance, but my basic point is still that the real issue is illiberal authoritarian elements that appear across the entire spectrum of left-to-right -- regardless of the degree to which they've so far been able to flex their muscles.

The only explanation for that would be not looking. Remember Milo Yiannopolous, cancelled by Breitbart and CPAC? How about Alexander Vindman?

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