Mozilla lays off 70

Is the white supremacist living according to the law? Do they abide by work regulations and treat everyone equally/equitably (as the org requires)?

I may hate their view point, and want them not to exist, but they feel the same about me I expect.

>Do they abide by work regulations and treat everyone equally/equitably (as the org requires)?

Probably not.

But in any case, why should non-white coworkers be expected to work with a racist just because the person in question (hypothetically) puts on a token display of being tolerant? It's insulting and demeaning to ask them to put up with that.

You seem more interested in defending some implausibly courteous hypothetical white supremacist than in ensuring that real work environments are minimally tolerable for people who aren't white.

If a person is a white supremacist, black supremacist, Indian supremacist, whatever, perhaps through working side-by-side towards common goals they can learn not only to fake non-discrimination but to adopt it as an ideology. If they're functionally equivalent to everyone else in their work I can't see a _reason_ to exclude them other than bigotry.

They're wrong, outside work I'm happy to address that head on; peace doesn't come through uncompromising segregation off people based on ideology.

Presumably you find Muslims, whose religious book demands they murder those who won't convert, to be anathema in your workplace?

Rather than it being demeaning to accommodate people with ideological differences it is essentially human and calls us to the highest standards of non-discrimination, IMO.

>If a person is a white supremacist, black supremacist, Indian supremacist, whatever, perhaps through working side-by-side towards common goals they can learn not only to fake non-discrimination but to adopt it as an ideology.

That's a nice thought, but it's unfair to put the burden of rehabilitation of white supremacists on your colleagues.

>If they're functionally equivalent to everyone else in their work I can't see a _reason_ to exclude them other than bigotry.

The idea of them being "functionally equivalent" is a philosophical hypothetical, not a realistic possibility. (Do you think someone who thinks black people are inferior to white people is going to make fair decisions about e.g. who gets promoted?) But apart from this, it's dehumanising and humiliating to make people work with others who regard them as inferior on the basis of their race.

>Presumably you find Muslims, whose religious book demands they murder those who won't convert, to be anathema in your workplace?

I find Muslims who want to murder non-Muslisms anathema in my workplace, yes. I work with a few Muslims, but curiously, none of them want to do this. But come on, your comment here is borderline trolling, and makes me question whether you're really being serious about white supremacists either.

> curiously, none of them want to do this.

How do you know? If you ask someone whether they're harboring murderous intent, they're obviously going to say they aren't. Most people that actually commit murder will go on to claim that they never had murderous intent, and in the majority of cases, they're probably not even lying. Yet they still murdered.

We can't even understand our own motives and intentions. The internal monologue is a parlor trick, consciousness is a lifelong self-delusion. If we can't accurately conceptualize or reliably control our own behavior, despite living inside of ourselves all the time, what makes us think we can do it for others?

When you're working to accomplish a specific end with a specific group of people, as long as they're providing useful work, adhering to social norms, and not otherwise exhibiting specific malice or triggering physiological fight-or-flight responses within the group, there's no sense getting worked up about whether or not the neuronal spasms that produce consciousness may've been yielding some unconventional theories lately.

"I have this really high-level theory that I feel may characterize typical variations among several major human ethnotypes" -- well, shit man, my brain is doing weird stuff today too. I dreamed about computer-birds. Now, can we stop talking about this and go over your commit from yesterday?

In general, everyone is wrong about everything all the time, and that ought to be good enough for all of us. Let's stop firing useful people over it.

If you think that there's some kind of connection between the (alleged) illusory nature of consciousness and practical issues of workplace politics, then you've probably gone off on an enormous tangent. In any case, I have no idea how you think your main argument gets from A to B, so I can't usefully respond to it. I know that my Muslim colleagues don't want to murder me in the ordinary everyday sense that I know lots of things, modulo irrelevant hyperskeptical scenarios of purely philosophical interest.

>this really high-level theory that I feel may characterize typical variations among several major human ethnotypes

I assume that you don't intend this as a characterization of the beliefs of actual white supremacists (?), so I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

> If you think that there's some kind of connection between the (alleged) illusory nature of consciousness and practical issues of workplace politics, then you've probably gone off on an enormous tangent.

Yeah, I absolutely did. Upvoted.

> In any case, I have no idea how you think your main argument gets from A to B, so I can't usefully respond to it.

It boils down to "professionals should not allow differing opinions on non-work-related issues to negatively impact their working relationships, no matter how strongly they disagree." The fact that no one knows anything about anything just helps people cope with that reality.

> I assume that you don't intend this as a characterization of the beliefs of actual white supremacists (?), so I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

It's a placeholder for any ideology, at least insofar as it remains in the realm of ideology and isn't unduly brought into the professional environment by the accused ideologue.

If someone starts bringing up politics, religion, or other controversial topics at work, redirect the conversation and ignore. If someone dispenses of their personal time advocating for causes that some others may find distasteful or even repugnant? Ignore, live and let live. It's not a professional issue.

Taking adverse action against an employee for using their private time to participate in the political process is not only already illegal in many states, but it's also hugely counterproductive. The ideologue is essentially compelled to lay their career at the problem ideology's altar (often post-facto, because the muckrakers are digging up some ancient LiveJournal entry or whatever). This creates fertile ground for a new internal narrative of heroic and principled self-martyrdom in behalf of the problem ideology. It's a fast track to radicalization, and you've likely just made the ideologue unsure how they're going to pay their rent next month. Bad scene.

If someone really hates the problem ideology and not the individual currently fascinated with it, "fire ideologue" will be pretty far down on the todo list.

tl;dr, If the employee is doing good work and they're not disrupting the work environment, leave them alone.

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Pre-edit: harassment, stalking, direct interference with other employees' lives, threats of violence, and other types of red-flag behaviors should never be ignored, no matter how professionally someone behaves during business hours. Dangerous behavior should always be reported to HR and any applicable civil organization.

Pre-edit 2: This is not medical advice and I'm not your attorney. I'm not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or counselor of any type. As discussed in the grandparent comment, I made all this up mostly on accident, everything I think is surely wrong and dumb, and everything I type should be ignored.