Reports: Google Fires Another Conservative Employee Who Spoke Out Against Company's Bias
John Wacker is a right-leaning Google employee who recently wrote an open letter describing an ideologically insular, intolerant and retaliatory culture within the tech and information behemoth.
Writing at Medium, Wacker exposes what he calls "outrage mobs" and "witch hunts," describing concerted and targeted efforts by leftist employees to get the company to freeze out or sever ties with right-leaning events and individuals. He describes the internal and external
credibility crisesGoogle faces, concluding that a vocal element of his colleagues are seeking to control who is permitted to work at the company as a means of ultimately controlling the broader public's access to information (emphasis mine):
These outrage mobs and witch hunts don’t just target outsiders like CPAC and [Heritage Foundation president] Kay Coles James. They also target insiders and Google’s own employees. But whether the target is external or internal, the goal of these outrage mobs and witch hunts is the same: to control who belongs at Google. More importantly, if you can control who belongs at Google, then you can also control what contentbelongs on Google. If the people who work at Google — or who feel psychologically safe expressing their opinions at Google — are only the ones who think that CPAC and Kay Coles Jame are hateful, then don’t be surprised if, one day in the future, hate speech is used as a pretext to censor CPAC or Kay Coles James and remove their content from Google’s platforms.
He goes on to explain how leftists at Google weaponize HR complaints in order to shut down opposing viewpoints, chronicling a number of right-leaning statements or comments that were formally reported, prompting action. This included one employee's defense of author Jordan Peterson's opposition to government enforcement of pronoun-related language, and another's criticism of the Women's March over its anti-Semitism problem and lack of inclusivity toward pro-life women. Meanwhile, Wacker writes, left-wing employees routinely engage in hateful, incendiary and bullying language with impunity (
click through for several examples). Google's Human Resources department has "completely abandoned any pretense of enforcing any sort of objective and impartial standard," he warns. Wacker says that as a high-profile Republican at the company, he was a frequent target of HR harassment via frivolous complaints, resulting in formal admonitions, and even an offer of a severance package as an incentive to leave Google. His
Medium piece was published on May 21st. Roughly a week later, Wacker
appeared on Fox Business Network to share his concerns with a national television audience:
Last night,
the Daily Caller and FBN host
Trish Regan reported that Wacker was fired by Google the day after his television appearance (Wacker has not directly tweeted about this, but he
has retweeted reports about this apparent development, which suggests that it's true). If his claims are accurate -- and it appears as though he's kept records, and has solicited evidence of abuse an intimidation from other affected employees -- this very much smacks of anti-whistleblower retaliation. And it's the
second prominent instance of a right-leaning employee at Google speaking up against enforced groupthink, then promptly losing his job. These firings only appear to confirm the premise of the dismissed parties' allegations about how "justice" is meted out at Google.
Reports: Google Fires Another Conservative Employee Who Spoke Out Against Company's Bias
