Unless you're totally, totally vanilla, and can guarantee that you will never express a controversial thought or opinion, there is little reason to take the risk of attaching your Real World identity to your comments and leaving an opening for the online mobs.
Now here's the real thing: not only did Eich back those reprehensible politics, he by all indications continues to do so. Heck, I'm probably one of the more vocally left-wing posters here, and I was a proud libertarian nutter ten years ago. My politics have wildly shifted and I am personally embarrassed by some of the idiotic beliefs I once held--but I'm not ashamed of the journey I took to get here and I own the whole damn thing. "I believed it then, with the best information I had, and when I got better information, I changed my mind." If Eich had been a neutral actor, had mildly believed something and shifted with those public mores instead of financially supporting them, had said "you know, I believed that then, I've grown as a person, and because of X and Y I no longer believe it"? Nobody would have had a beef. But he'd supported it concretely, and apparently picked that hill to die on in his moral calculus. So he, metaphorically, did.
There is a lesson of the Internet to be learned here, though: you will be viewed through the lens of history and you will probably be viewed through it during your lifetime. You don't have to be uncontroversial. But you do have to be just, be generous, and be good in your dealings. Or you will be judged harshly, and I'm honestly pretty okay with that.
I feel like a large number of people didn't seem to grasp this, I agree with everything you posted here and said similar things when that whole ordeal happened.
> My politics have wildly shifted and I am personally embarrassed by some of the idiotic beliefs I once held
I too have experienced this and I too will not try to hide or whitewash my history. I was who I was then, for better or for worse, and that doesn't mean I'm the same way now. In fact I like to try to correct my previous self as publicly or more so than the original statement so it's easy to see that that opinion was old and has changed since if stumbled across.
> "you know, I believed that then, I've grown as a person, and because of X and Y I no longer believe it"
I would have been the first to defend him if he had done this and would have been outraged if the same outcome had happened under these new circumstances. He didn't, and so I'm not.
> There is a lesson of the Internet to be learned here, though: you will be viewed through the lens of history and you will probably be viewed through it during your lifetime.
Exactly, I have full confidence that comments I've made under usernames I used prior to using my real name will one day be linked to my current identity. So much that I've seriously considered linking them myself now and disputing any views expressed that I may no longer hold in a couple of blog posts. It's why I switched to my real name, it's a constant reminder that my name is attached to everything I write even if I don't use my real name.
>You don't have to be uncontroversial. But you do have to be just, be generous, and be good in your dealings. Or you will be judged harshly, and I'm honestly pretty okay with that.
Agreed.
I'm always disappointed when my colleagues don't understand that I'm not against Eich for his opinions. This isn't a free speech issue. I'm against him for donating money for the express purpose of harming other people [1]. And he (and others) did, for five full years. And popular opinion certainly doesn't justify it.
It pains me just as much that the Mozilla board chose to promote him to CEO, knowing his past already.
[1] just like corporations aren't people, money isn't speech. Ridiculous rulings can change the laws, but they can't alter self-evident truths. We have a warped Supreme Court at the moment that also thinks racism is over, and that 170-year (or ones beyond the heat death of the universe) copyright terms are okay because the constitution only bars infinite terms.
Eich is obviously of a different opinion vis a vis the harm caused by Prop 8. The question is, if one political fasion can be successfully characterized as "exclusively harmful" by its opponents, is it worth the risk of having your Real Name attached to any political comments?
Since we don't know now what will one day be considered a "lens of history"-style retrospective, perhaps the most prudent course of action would be to engage in discussion anonymously only. If we believe that one should be able to express political opinions without reprisal, we should deeply value the protection of anonymity.
The entire affair recounted in the article shows that if you make the wrong person mad and they have the right friends in the right places, you will face very real consequences merely for expressing a different opinion. In the case of the article, the difference in opinion was whether juvenile jokes like "fork my dongle" are funny. In the case of Eich, the difference in opinion was whether Prop 8 helped or harmed. Who knows what it will be when they come for you?
Eich's forced resignation is a free speech issue. We can't value free expression or free speech if we witch hunt everyone who refuses to recant their contrarian political positions. You're pretty OK with this now insofar as you, for whatever reason, happen to agree with Eich's shamers, but please be aware there's no guarantee that your political opinions will always be in favor. Would you be singing the same tune if you'd been dragged in front of the McCarthy Committee and/or blacklisted for being "vocally left-wing"?
I don't want to imply that private entities are not within their rights to choose not to hire someone with whom they disagree politically. They are within their rights to do so, but that doesn't mean it's good behavior. If we value meaningful freedom, we need to take a serious look at our shaming, revisionist political culture and do what we can to curb jumps to hostility, incivility, or shaming. Sometimes people disagree, and that's OK.
Suppose someone does oppose the Civil Rights Act. Should this person be stripped of their right to work? Should they be placed in prison for holding a "dangerous" or "exclusively harmful" political position? Is it OK if they oppose it on procedural grounds, i.e., they believe the Civil Rights Act has good ideas implemented incorrectly or suboptimally? What if they actually reject the modern racial narrative? How do we tell which oppositional arguments are legal and which aren't? Will you be publishing a guidebook on this soon so that we can make sure we never get caught on the wrong end of the "lens of history" (which, by the way, for any meaningful value of history, can't be viewed in the lifetime of the author)? Should annual endorsement of the Civil Rights Act become a precondition for the maintenance of American citizenship?
What really troubles me about this conversation is that you are persistently trying to reframe attacking the basic humanity of other people as "disagreeing". This is far, far more substantiative than a disagreement. Eich and his weird tribe are welcome to believe, in their heart of hearts, that gay people are lesser and unworthy human beings. They do not get to hurt people who've done them no wrong. Eich decided it was his place to put his money on the line and fight against the rights of people who demanded them, and you don't get to call off a fight you picked and agree-to-disagree when the fight goes against you.
Pity the man. He's not allowed to be the CEO of Mozilla. At least we all agree he's a human being, even if he can't do that for the people he'd have had reporting to him.
EDIT: Also, how Brendan Eich is an argument for on-line anonymity again? All the actions that led to him getting fired were tied to his off-line identity.
