[_heimdall]

Are you arguing for a system where employers consider your political views before hiring you?

And no this is not an attempt to in anyway belittle what Nazi German did during WWII. Assuming the employee you are referring to has never been engaged in such acts, though, that feels like a very slippery slope.

[sneak]

Yes. Discrimination in hiring with regard to personal viewpoints (ie adult decisions, not built-in traits) is one of the best ways we have to shape society for the better.

As private entities, we have freedom of association - including freedom to shun certain groups. Use it!

[ivell]

Once we start that, we cannot control if it is going to shape the society for the better or worse. Should feminists be prevented from joining a company? How about pro-choice rights activists? And one persons better society would be totally different from the other person's better society.

We should aim to reduce discrimination not encourage it for select causes.

[sneak]

> Should feminists be prevented from joining a company?

Depends on the views of those doing the hiring.

Should you be allowed to not hire racists?

You are literally arguing against freedom of association. We get to choose with whom we do business! That is our right, as well as the status quo today.

I don’t hire smokers or ex cops, as I think they are unintelligent and assholes, respectively.

If it were legal I would never hire a practicing theist or anyone ex-military, as they are signs to me of low intelligence and poor moral character.

You have the right as a free person to discriminate against any non-protected group in service of your company and business.

Someone’s opinions are fair game for evaluation. Think Windows is better than Linux on servers? Keep moving. Think being a culture warrior in the US is a prudent move? Same deal.

All other things being equal, I prioritize people who have lived in multiple countries over people who haven’t. This necessarily means I am discriminating against those who have not.

There are a million attributes we can use to make hiring decisions. It’s not only legal, it’s prudent.

[godelski]

For anyone not understanding this comment and similar ones try this for me: replace "speech" with "encryption" and "Nazis" with "pedos and terrorists".

Here's the thing, authoritarians use abhorrent groups to justify authoritarian laws. It creates a power creep. Even well meaning rulers will push for more autocratic power with the justification that they can do more good with it. But unless you can place strong guarantees that no malicious ruler can come to power, you should evaluate powers as if they are the ones wielding it.

It's the entire concept of Turnkey Tyranny. A thing we are actively watching being exploited in America and across Europe. Because you can't prevent a malicious ruler from gaining power in a free society, but you can greatly limit their ability to do harm. But this can't be done with myopia.

[_heimdall]

Would you say the same for other types of discrimination?

And how can you so clearly differentiate between what is and is not an adult decision vs a built-in trait?

[lenkite]

What is a "built-in trait" ?

[myrmidon]

In my view, this whole stance is completely indefensible, and it frankly shocks me every time I hear this from the progressive side of the political spectrum.

You want to introduce additional discrimination at every workplace in order to get rid of viewpoints you don't agree with?! This is honestly closer to Nazi ideology than the actual Nazi would probably be that you want to discriminate against.

How would you ever prevent policies like this from being leveraged against minorities? How could you ever make sure that you are never gonna be a "Catholic church against Galilei" equivalent?

You do realize that such a policy would've been used like 30 years ago to exclude every pro-LGBT person from hiring, after being used against anti-racial-segregation advocates in the decades before and everyone in favor of womans voting rights well into the 20th century?

If you want some totalitarian society that enforces state-sanctioned viewpoints I would kindly ask you to build your own, preferably as far away as possible, because that stands diametrally opposed to the principles the US was founded on.

[sneak]

Please continue to tell me how my refusing to hire cigarette smokers, functioning alcoholics, Floridians, people who don’t read books, or people who are overtly rabid about US patriotism is the same as embracing Nazi ideology. I’m quite curious about your logic here.

[myrmidon]

I'm not throwing around the Nazi analogy lightly here:

Discrimination against outgroups/dissenters/opposition was basically the central domestic tenet under the Nazi Regime ("Gleichschaltung"), aiming to root out opposition and dissent in any form. A lot of this happened long before setting up extermination camps.

In my view, every person is free to pick who they work or associate with, but hiring discrimination achieves little and opens the door for extremely harmful abuses of this very mechanism.

People are not really gonna stop drinking, smoking or rabidly patrioting just because you won't hire them, they're just gonna hate "your" class of people more, and behave the same way towards groups they don't like.

A society where every progressive person refuses to hire rednecks is also a society where every redneck refuses to hire colored people, immigrants, LGBT people/advocates, feminists.

Not only that, but the majority of society was very obviously wrong about the merit of a lot of viewpoints in the past, and the system you advocate for would have a much harder time admitting/fixing such mistakes in viewpoint valuation (slavery, apartheid, sexism, religious intolerance, racial discrimination, LGBT discrimination just to name a few).

I'm quite happy to continue this discussion, but "what are the similarities of this to Nazi tenets" is the least interesting aspect to me.

[sneak]

I’m not a government and I have no legal authority to build extermination camps. It’s not the same thing.

> A society where every progressive person refuses to hire rednecks is also a society where every redneck refuses to hire colored people, immigrants, LGBT people/advocates, feminists.

Yes, I’d like to live in that world. Freedom of association is a good thing, and a powerful force to shape the world for the better. If idiots want to kneecap their businesses, they should be allowed to.

[dotancohen]

  > ie adult decisions, not built-in traits

What if my neighbor was born gay (can't help it), but I just decide that I want to try gay this week? Is it fine to discriminate against me, but not him? I made an adult choice this week.

[HumanOstrich]

ಠ_ಠ

[array_key_first]

> Are you arguing for a system where employers consider your political views before hiring you?

Yes? Such a system already exists and is currently in place in virtually every country in the world.

If I go online and trash talk anyone, that might prevent me from getting hired.

Similarly, if I work someplace, and I call my boss a jackass, I might get fired!

You're trying to invoke "political" as a sort of shield here. No, it's not just politics.

Its called being an asshole. Assholes might be unemployable because that's how human socialization works. Have you met a Nazi that isn't an asshole? Because I haven't. So, there you go.

[_heimdall]

> If I go online and trash talk anyone, that might prevent me from getting hired.

> Similarly, if I work someplace, and I call my boss a jackass, I might get fired!

Those examples have nothing to do with your specific political views. Both issues there are about how you engages with others and are a reasonable example of why you might cause problems on a team. The specific views you would have shared rudely have nothing to do with the actual problem at hand.

[array_key_first]

> Those examples have nothing to do with your specific political views.

Yes they do - as I've said, you can't invoke politics as a shield.

You can be fired for your beliefs. Politics are a belief. So you can be fired for politics.

If you're trying to say that you can just be an asshole in private - sure. If you share your political beliefs, it's no longer private.

Most companies don't want to hire people they think are assholes.

Ultimately, it's very simple human behavior. I don't want to work with people who suck. You don't either. Okay, so we must discriminate based on politics or other beliefs.

Hiring, in it of itself, is just discriminating. We're discriminating based on skills, personality, beliefs, and fit. That's what hiring is.

There's only a select couple of things we can't, or shouldn't, discriminate on. Politics isn't one of them. If you think black people need to be exterminated or whatever, there's no gun to my head making me hire you. No, I'm not gonna hire you.

[_heimdall]

Okay, I'll try to take this from the top.

> Yes they do - as I've said, you can't invoke politics as a shield.

That isn't the issue at hand. You are describing using ones political views against them simply for them holding those views, not someone being an asshole and attempting to justify it as a political act.

> Most companies don't want to hire people they think are assholes.

Sure, though they would base that on behavioral tendencies rather than a political survey.

> Ultimately, it's very simple human behavior. I don't want to work with people who suck. You don't either. Okay, so we must discriminate based on politics or other beliefs.

Ultimately you're the one worse off for viewing people this ways. Views and beliefs don't make a person suck, actions do.

[array_key_first]

Your identity as an asshole versus your actions as an asshole are really not too different. It doesn't matter much.

If I know you have political views X, you already fucked up. This is a tree falling in the forest problem.

You're claiming that somehow, magically, people are being discriminated by their political beliefs without ever acting on them or saying them.

Okay how? How is that possible? If I know your political beliefs, you've already taken political action.

> Ultimately you're the one worse off for viewing people this ways. Views and beliefs don't make a person suck, actions do.

Yeah and what begets actions? Beliefs.

Theyre completely inseparable, that's just a fact of life.

[zahlman]

> If I know you have political views X, you already fucked up. This is a tree falling in the forest problem.

Yes, that's the exact point the other person is making. The resulting consequences are, and should be, a consequence of that fuck-up, and not a consequence of the value of X.

[_heimdall]

If you know I have political view X, I have shared my view. That doesn't mean I have acted on them.

Do you view holding or discussing a certain view as acting upon them? Is a distaste for Republicans in America today, for example, tantamount to acting on said distaste and assassinating someone?

[wahnfrieden]

Their politics were expressed as behaviors: proclaiming "I'm a nazi" publicly, taking over leadership of GNAA from Stormfront's administrator, etc. These were not private beliefs that were uncovered through surveying. There was no survey.

Or by behavior do you mean that public support of terrorism isn't grounds for an employer to avoid hiring or termination? That the standard for that would be actual terrorist acts?

[_heimdall]

I'm not sure who the they are you're referring to here, sorry. If anyone acted on their opinions and discriminated against someone, or worse, of course an employer could consider that.

The whole conversation here, though, was whether someone's beliefs alone are enough to discriminate against them in a hiring process. My argument has been that beliefs or opinions shouldn't be discriminated against, but actions are fair game.

[wahnfrieden]

Yes. Naziism is terrorism. People lose their jobs for publicly supporting terrorism. The employee was self-proclaimed "Nazi" (including to quote, "I'm a nazi", posted publicly while working there) per views and advocacy. They also took over leadership of "GNAA" from Weev (a Nazi with Nazi tattoos etc.) while employed at Cloudflare (I won't type out what it stands for here)

[zahlman]

Even Wikipedia does not describe that organization (I assume you don't mean the Greater Nashville Apartment Association...) as itself an extremist organization. (It is also described as defunct.) By its very nature, statements by its members (which you have not evidenced) cannot be taken at face value. Auernheimer's views are his own. The only identification I can find of a possibly other leader of the organization (who you have not named) leads to nothing that confirms any detail of your story - not the supposed Nazism of that person (assuming it's the right person), nor employment at Cloudflare, nor any knowledge on their part.

In short, I can find no good reason to believe this.

[mschild]

Part of being a Nazi means the sincere believe that the Aryan race is superior to all others and that eradicating them is a sensible goal.

Thats not a political view. Its one of racism and finding genocide acceptable. I would sincerely hope that any sensible person would refuse to hire someone like this.

[_heimdall]

I can't say that I have seen any party documents floating around, but I'll take your word for it here. A person having those views or beliefs still isn't a crime, acting on them is.

A person in a workplace can have whatever views they want. Holding a view in no way prevents them from being able to do the work well. Its a different story if they cause a problem at work, but that is viewpoint agnostic - anyone starting political fights or worse at work is a problem.

[short_sells_poo]

A person is entitled to hold any political views they wish, and a business is entitled to not hire them for those views. Just like freedom of speech does not entitle you to a platform or give you immunity from the consequences of saying things.

[mschild]

> I can't say that I have seen any party documents floating around There are quite literally millions of well recorded documents, pictures, movies, personal accounts of affected people available about what Nazism did and does. If you do need a place to start, feel free give the Wikipedia article a read and use the underlying sources to learn more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism

[_heimdall]

The Nazi Party no longer exists and you're linking to ideology in Germany at the time. We could similarly link to pretty terrible political party views of Republicans or Democrats over our history.

By no means am I defending Nazism here, I would take huge personal issue with any holding those views. That's entirely separate from the topic here though, and I don't agree with discriminating hiring processes based on political views regardless of what they are. If someone can go to work, get the job done, and be a net-positive member of the team I have no reason to act against them.

[hobs]

Not hiring people who wish the majority of your employees death is a super low bar, you should try to make sure you can get over it.

"How many people in the office do you view as vile subhumans who should be purged from the world because of how they were born?"

[_heimdall]

Not hiring people only for personal views they hold is just a weirs bar to set. Judge people by their fit for the role and their actions. Attempting to both uncover and judge a person's beliefs is a losing battle at best.

[hobs]

It is not a weird bar at all when the "personal view" here is being a Nazi. The action of believing in Nazism is actually a disbarring for any role of trust, integrity, or value in our society.

Being a Nazi is not a protected status (yet) and you should expect to be fired immediately if you espoused those views anywhere, at all.

[wahnfrieden]

(Just not when employed at Cloudflare.)

[dotancohen]

The Azov brigade are not Aryan.

[mschild]

Not sure how they are involved in this discussion nor do I know their current ideology besides the media reports, but collaborators were/are not uncommon. Abraham Gancwajch, for example, seemed to have no issue with betraying his people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Gancwajch

[dotancohen]

I was giving example of a non-Aryan Nazi body.

[godelski]

Be careful with your reasoning. Remember that the current ruling party in America (as well as growing movement in Europe) is using the same rhetoric to go after liberals and trans people.

The problem isn't that any sensible person supports genocide, it is that insensible people can get to power and trick normal people into thinking genocide is necessary or not happening at all. They do the former by saying "if we don't commit genocide then they will commit genocide against us".

The problem is who gets to pick who is right and not? The problem is that if you limit the right to limit speech then good rulers won't abuse that power but evil ones will. It's because they are the ones who pick and choose. It's why you have to protect the rights of those you abhor. Because if you don't you build the powder keg of Turnkey Tyranny. Doesn't matter how many signs you put up, eventually someone will light a match. My accident or because they want to watch it burn.

So yes, to protect those groups being persecuted (trans, minorities, and Jews alike) you need to protect the speech of abhorrent groups like Nazis. You don't have to like it. And you don't have to, and shouldn't, protect the actions of Nazis, but you do have to protect the speech. It's exactly why the ACLU has done this in the past because every authoritarian loves to use abhorrent characters to justify overreaching laws.

We're on Hacker News for fuck's sake! How often have we seen the same play but replace "speech" with "encryption" and replace "Nazis" with "pedos and terrorists". It's the same stupid game!

[kiitos]

> The problem is who gets to pick who is right and not?

we all do, collectively, as a society

> So yes, to protect those groups being persecuted (trans, minorities, and Jews alike) you need to protect the speech of abhorrent groups like Nazis.

there is actually a categorical difference between advocating the persecution of minorities, and advocating the persecution of nazis. and furthermore it is actually possible and good for a society to say one of these things is bad and should not be allowed, while the other one is good and should be allowed.

[godelski]

  > we all do, collectively, as a society

I agree. But at the same time do you not recognize that collectively, as a society, Nazis decided to attack Jews, trans, disabled, and others? It's not an easy game to play and I think that's what most people here are trying to convey. In the end very few people think they themselves are evil.

  > there is actually a categorical difference between advocating the persecution of minorities, and advocating the persecution of nazis.

This line is clear to you, but think harder. Abstract just a little and you can see. You program so I am confident you can handle abstraction. (if you can't program, well you're probably on the wrong forum)

Have you ever listened to the right wing talking points these days? I'm not saying you need to believe them, but "know your enemy". They are justifying their hate of minorities by making claims that those people are attacking them. They frame it as self-defense, not offense. It is absolutely critical to understand this, because that's how they have brought people to their side. It is the same way the Nazis did. But again, think carefully, were no one to actually act on said beliefs then how do you know? If you make a "preemptive strike" then you only empower their claims of acting in self-defense. Even if you can justify your "preemptive strike" as a self-defense measure too!

I think you are oversimplifying the problem because you are relying far too much on the obviousness of Nazis being evil. But if you make that mistake you'll have missed the important lesson of how the Nazis gained power and got support from so many people. If you truly believe that evil is trivial to identify then you'll have to conclude that the entire country of Germany one day decided that they wanted to be evil and then the next day they didn't. The ability to flip such a switch would be gravely concerning in of itself, and if unique to Germany then should you not conclude that they should not exist because they have such capacity for evil?

OR you can believe that things are more complicated. That evil creeps and infests. It disguises itself as good, tells you half lies so you have truth to found yourself on (even if that truth is distorted). That the road to Hell is paved by good intentions and that evil can be created by good men trying to do good things.

This is an underlying philosophy to those that acknowledge Turnkey Tyranny. And I say acknowledge, not believe, because look around you. Do you not see these leaders abusing their authoritarian powers? Look at the origins of many of those powers, especially with Trump. They don't all come from right wingers who were playing some long game. He's exploited powers brought in by Biden, Obama, and Clinton, just as he's exploiting powers brought in by Bush, Bush, and Regan.

Evil loves to convince people that everything is simple and evil is clearly identifiable. Why would it not? Do you really believe the snake isn't going to be a snake?

[kiitos]

> do you not recognize that collectively, as a society, Nazis decided to attack Jews, trans, disabled, and others? ... in the end very few people think they themselves are evil.

yes, I agree with you, that society made some pretty bogus determinations, and they certainly didn't see themselves as evil. but in the fullness of time and history their position has been understood as wrong.

> I think you are oversimplifying the problem because you are relying far too much on the obviousness of Nazis being evil.

my point isn't about nazis or the obviousness of their evil. my point is that advancement as a species requires delegation of moral authority to collective government i.e. society. and transitively that the possibility of pathological negative outcomes doesn't somehow invalidate this idea outright. we don't throw away the concept of a judicial system because innocent people can be declared guilty. we work towards eliminating those failures in what is otherwise an essential component of government.

zoom out. think larger. be more empathetic. nazis and maga and all of this garbage are bugs in the system, which we're fully capable of stamping out, in the long term.

[DoctorOW]

> Are you arguing for a system where employers consider your political views before hiring you?

Would you put a Nazi and a Jewish person in a room every day (or on a Zoom call or whatever) and expect something productive to happen? Well, no. It's a ticking timebomb. If you have an organization with multiple employees, they'll have to be people who can work together. So as a workplace, you need to either rid your employees of their discriminating views or rid yourself of employees who cause problems.

[lan321]

If they can be professional, yeah? I have diverse private interests that don't really get mixed with work. Don't see why my political interests should. I've worked with people I don't personally like. It's more tiring since there's less chit chat but the work gets done all the same.

[wahnfrieden]

The employee in question did not keep these beliefs private, and posted publicly (and not hiding behind anonymity) about them. They were also a public figure as the "GNAA" president, a hate group, a position they took over from Weev, the Stormfront administrator.

[4ggr0]

your private interests probably don't include the wish for your co-workers to be harmed, killed or at least treated like a lesser being.

[_heimdall]

Is this fictitious Nazi working with a fictitious Jewish person acting on those views or discussing them at work? If not then why should their employer care, and why should we actually support the idea of workplace discrimination?

[wahnfrieden]

This is not fiction. The employee was real.

[DoctorOW]

> Is this fictitious Nazi working with a fictitious Jewish person acting on those views or discussing them at work?

There's a reason I say "ticking time bomb" in my comment. Hypothetical Jewish person keeps kosher for instance. Is that "acting on" being Jewish at work? What about wearing a yarmulke? If that is, how do you rectify it? If you allow yarmulke, is a swastika armband okay? Both are clothing choices depicting "views".

[_heimdall]

I don't care what religion or political views they have. Its a workplace, if either person can't check it at the door then that's the problem to deal with.

Honestly its pretty insulting to both of the people involved for you to assume so strongly that they couldn't be professional that (a) you never give them the chance and (b) you chose to hire only the one who you agree with (or disagree with the least).

[kiitos]

the people talking to you are talking about something very different than simply "political beliefs that you disagree with"

the appropriate level of capital gains tax at the 80th percentile is a political belief that you can tweet about in your personal time and allowing there to be a civil relationship with your colleagues in a professional environment. this is a political belief that reasonable people can disagree with.

asserting the supremacy of the white race is not a political belief that you can tweet about in your personal time while still allowing a civil relationship with your colleagues in a professional environment. this is not something that reasonable people can disagree with.

[close04]

> Would you put a Nazi and a Jewish person in a room every day

Today's Nazis have more diversified targets for discrimination. Concentrated antisemitism was a side effect of the personal issues of the most famous Nazi exponent in history, but they're more about racial supremacy. Today they might be Islamophobic more then antisemitic.

To answer to your question, their thoughts and views don't matter in the office, their behavior does. You can deeply dislike a colleague for various other reasons too but the effect is the same. I don't want to be fired because I unilaterally hate, or even love, my colleague. As long as I don't act on it, that is.

I know people working together in the same office where one's grandfather was in the Nazi military guarding one camp, the other's was a civilian killed in that camp. Whatever their deep feelings, they mind their job as expected.

[wahnfrieden]

What counts as acting? This employee was openly self proclaimed Nazi, member of groups that spread explicitly Nazi ideology online, and the leader of a hate organization (previously led by Weev, the Stormfront administrator, who handed over the president position to them). I don’t understand quick defense of this.

[close04]

> What counts as acting?

Acting is doing something, as opposed to saying something. One of them counts as freedom of speech and hint, it's the one you quickly attacked. It's when you go to work and do your job as per the contract which can demand you not express certain opinions in the office but not in your private life.

> I don’t understand quick defense of this.

You are like those people who gagged Kimmel because they didn't like what he was saying. You will quickly defend firing people just for saying they support abortion rights (which is illegal in many states), or LGBTQ+ rights. You playing the "you defend Nazis" card works both ways. Just like you taking away freedom of speech works both ways. I wonder if choosing a German name was intentionally ironic.

I don't have to like a guy or his opinions to defend a bigger principle.

[wahnfrieden]

This employee organized and led explicitly Nazi ideology hate campaigns. Freedom of speech applies to government. I still don't understand the need to hire organizers of Nazi hate campaigns that advocate for extermination, or (maybe you accept this though) for the responsibility of the public to avoid criticism or organizing boycott of businesses for hiring individuals that publicly advocate for exterminating them. The issue isn't illegality, or advocacy for anything in general, but public advocacy for extermination (of Jews, black people etc.), understanding that a government does not make that illegal (which I didn't advocate for changing).

The username is irrelevant and older than CloudFlare hiring Nazis