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Comment by Crito | Hacker News Reader

You would not judge a CEO for publicly admitting to being a racist? I do not believe you. I think that you are lying, either to us or to yourself.

Calling something "Ideology" is not a "get out of criticism free" card. You are free to have whatever political beliefs you desire, but we are all free to criticism you for your political beliefs. Our criticism of political beliefs is just as political as the beliefs that we are criticizing; it is fundamentally illogical to put political beliefs above reproach.

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Maybe it works for sociopaths?

> Calling something "Ideology" is not a "get out of criticism free" card.

Of course. It is after all entirely different than:

Calling someone "Gay" is not a "get out of criticism free" card.

Or:

Calling someone "Jew" is not a "get out of criticism free" card.

Or:

Calling something "Black" is not a "get out of criticism free" card.

Or:

Calling someone "woman" is not a "get out of criticism free" card.

Or:

Calling someone "Muslim" is not a "get out of criticism free" card.

Right.

Obviously our public sphere is full of criticism of Islam (a.k.a. islamophobia), Black people (a.k.a. racism), women (a.k.a sexism), Jews (a.k.a. antisemitism), Gays (a.k.a. homophobia).

And YES I would take a racist for CEO - if he is more qualified than others - each and every time. Because I truly believe in a society where gender, sex orientation, race, religion, ideology - do NOT matter.

See, this is a paradox. You can't have that, and you just admitted it. Cultural Marxism is full of paradoxes like that. It's impossible to truly have society where gender, sex orientation, race, religion, ideology - do NOT matter. Thank you very much for providing evidence that you see a paradox there as well.

Given that hiring/firing people is a key part of being a CEO, a racist CEO would result in hiring/firing/not promoting talented, capable people based on irrelevant factors. Speaking purely from a business perspective, this will give the company a disadvantage and negatively impact performance.

"Ideology" is too broad of a term the way you are using it: after all, believing that COBOL the ultimate programming language for all use cases could also be labeled an "ideology", one that would make somebody a poor CTO.

Similarly, beliefs that certain groups of people, based on unrelated criterion like gender identity, are inherently inferior to others or deserve lesser treatment, do materially impact the workplace.

Unlike the previous two examples, somebody's personal beliefs about things like religion or their cultural background have nothing to do with job performance.

> Obviously our public sphere is full of criticism of Islam (a.k.a. islamophobia)

Islamophobia, racism, etc., are not criticisms. Criticism is the application of reason and intelligence for the purpose of analysis and improvment. Bigotry is the assumption that "others" are worse simply by their being "other". Nothing you listed is criticism, it is various forms of bigotry. In bigotry there is no desire for dialogue, simply judgement and superiority.

> And YES I would take a racist for CEO - if he is more qualified than others - each and every time. Because I truly believe in a society where gender, sex orientation, race, religion, ideology - do NOT matter.

Those two sentences are incongruent. You cannot claim to champion a society where gender, race, etc., do not matter, and then turn around and state your acceptance of a racist CEO.

Unlike homosexuals, religious groups do actually try to recruit people (especially children), mind you.

Gay parents would likely be fine with their children being heterosexual.

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