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Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

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Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#141
post #12

I don’t understand how a company where 5% of the workforce is responsible for the product that drives 95% of the revenue is so seemingly vulnerable to employee pressure. I can’t imagine Bell Lab employees had all that much leverage against Ma Bell.

I’ve often wondered this myself. Google has literally thousands of engineers working on search alone. I can’t even fathom what they’re all doing. And then what is everyone filling their time with?

Posting to HN via Tor.

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascism tends to have these attributes: * dictatorial power * totalitarian one party state * embrace of political violence as a means to silence opposition * strong opposition to Marxism, liberalism, conservatism * radical nationalism * nationalist economic policy through protectionist schemes See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#Definitions What about a group of employees collectively organizing and protesting…

Fascism tends to have these attributes: * dictatorial power * totalitarian one party state * embrace of political violence as a means to silence opposition * strong opposition to Marxism, liberalism, conservatism * radical nationalism * nationalist economic policy through protectionist schemes Funny, but if you just erase the word "Marxism" then you also have something which resembles the Soviet Union under Stalin. I…

> Under National Socialism, control by the state was so complete, the private ownership meant nothing.

Sure, state control is a hallmark of fascism/totalitarianism. However, the USSR did not have a socialist mode of production essentially because of the lack of worker control of the state (and therefor the means of production).

I would argue that if the state owns the means of production, then the state must necessariy have some kind form of democratic control by the citizens in order to be considered socialist. The USSR may have had this very early on, but as Stalin rose to power it slipped away and became what is known as state capialism.

There needs to be a distinction between a "socialist country" (as in, a country with a socialist mode of production where the workers control the means of production) and "country rules by socialists" (USSR, China, Cuba, etc) where the means of production is centrally controlled by a government not representative of the population.

As far as I'm concerned, no socialist countries have ever existed for more than a handful of years.

In other words, Marxism, at its core, is at odds with fascism in a fundamental way, and Marxist-Leninists (and by extension Stalinists and Maoists) are fundamentally at odds with Marxism.

I think you can draw a parallel between "people who think they support Marxism" and fascism, but drawing a parallel between Marxism and fascism is a stretch.

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting I did not realize that about the first one! I can imagine a company thinking they could take the wind out of it by supporting it. An escalation of conflict was probably better for the protestors than the company at that point.

It wasn't officially supported by the company. Note that f7aeb9 said "as far as I am concerned".

Not officially, but the experience of someone there says they perceived them as unofficially supporting it, that managers and others did a variety of things to encourage it in a seemingly coordinated or at least consistent way, which is interesting.

And like I said, I can see why they would do this as a strategic move, I don't think it implies anything about the justness of the cause either way or the actual morality of the company either way, just a strategic move.

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#144

Someone posted preliminary sit-in attendance numbers. Attendance ranges from 50-150 per office in the larger offices. Anecdotally, I've seen very little discussion and energy this time compared to the walkout. Back then, one couldn't walk 20 feet without hitting some kind of exhortation to join the walkout. This time, more people might find out about this sit-in through this HN story than through internal channels. T…

> Posting through Tor for obvious reasons. Because the protest is such a matter of indifference at Google that... you need to take extreme measures not to be identified talking about it?

There's no reason for them to even tell us that they're using Tor, except to raise the specter of some retaliatory bogeyman.

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In exactly the sections I quoted. For example: "nip in the bud" We could have a big discussion about the definition of the word retaliation, and under a lot of very reasonable definitions it's fine to me if we don't call it "retaliation" The point is, Google is an organization that acts and reacts within a hugely complex system. I wish it was more acceptable for their employees to critique them, even if these critiqu…

This literally makes no sense to me. In your view, what action could they have taken other than "letting him do whatever he wanted" that would not have been retaliation? Retaliation has the legal definition of a negative job action in response to a protected activity. They explicitly found they did not do that. Trying to redefine retaliation to include a negative job action in response to an unprotected activity make…

Oh! I did not know that retaliation had a legal definition. Super relevant here and apologies for not knowing that -- glad to have learned something today

To reiterate, my gripe is not about anything "legal". Rather, my comments are focused on how our milieu responds to corporate actions

A huge Q.E.D. for my point: my original comment got flagged!

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fascism" is used today to refer to "bad thing I don't like". It's a mistake to interpret diction literally. Yes, it would be lovely if people used the word "fascism" to refer to right-wing, ultra-nationalist, authoritarian political movements. But that's not how people use words and the ship has long since sailed on that particular word. According to George Orwell "fascism" has a been a synonym for "bully" since 194…

[flagged]

Could you please stop using HN for ideological battle?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascism tends to have these attributes: * dictatorial power * totalitarian one party state * embrace of political violence as a means to silence opposition * strong opposition to Marxism, liberalism, conservatism * radical nationalism * nationalist economic policy through protectionist schemes See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#Definitions What about a group of employees collectively organizing and protesting…

Fascism tends to have these attributes: * dictatorial power * totalitarian one party state * embrace of political violence as a means to silence opposition * strong opposition to Marxism, liberalism, conservatism * radical nationalism * nationalist economic policy through protectionist schemes Funny, but if you just erase the word "Marxism" then you also have something which resembles the Soviet Union under Stalin. I…

You could just go to AskHistorians and get an actual, not- made- up answer to the question of whether Nazis were "socialists", in the conventional sense. It's asked often enough that it's in the FAQ:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/europe#wiki_...

(Answer: no).

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascism tends to have these attributes: * dictatorial power * totalitarian one party state * embrace of political violence as a means to silence opposition * strong opposition to Marxism, liberalism, conservatism * radical nationalism * nationalist economic policy through protectionist schemes See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#Definitions What about a group of employees collectively organizing and protesting…

Fascism tends to have these attributes: * dictatorial power * totalitarian one party state * embrace of political violence as a means to silence opposition * strong opposition to Marxism, liberalism, conservatism * radical nationalism * nationalist economic policy through protectionist schemes Funny, but if you just erase the word "Marxism" then you also have something which resembles the Soviet Union under Stalin. I…

Given that Fascists universally destroy Socialist Orgs, and openly, wantonly, slaughter every concieveable kind of socialist, from anarchists, to hard stalinists, to simple trade unionst social democrats, it kind of beggars belief that someone can hold this sort of opinion. Theres a tee shirt company "Right Wing Death Squads", you should look them up and then maybe do some digging on why their shirts bear pictures of helicopters with people being thrown out of them. Or maybe why the first people to fill concentration camps in Germany were communists and socialists. Or, really, just read any history of fascism not written by a fascist or a fash-sympathizer. But then you might not be moved to drop hot garbage like this.
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