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Microsoft-Owned GitHub Fires Employee for Stating of Trump’s Insurrection: “Nazis Are About”

Danielle from Leaf and Core
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The GitHub logo a strange lookinc creature with the tentacles of an octopus and a cat-shaped head, but a strangely human-like face. Somehow it's kinda cute. Just over a week ago, Trump supporters did what they had been planning to do for some time. At the encouragement of Trump and select Republicans, they “Stormed the Capitol.” The seditious siege lasted only a few hours, but struck at the heart of American democracy. An enemy hasn’t occupied the U.S. Capitol since the War of 1812.

American’s felt emotional trauma watching the terrorist insurrection unfold. Many of us had witnessed other terror attacks on the United States that permanently reshaped our country, and last Wednesday held a similar feeling. Among the throngs of Trump supporters attacking the hill were his out and proud white nationalist supporters. They waved Confederate flags, symbols of a stain on U.S. history, our use of slavery for hundreds of years, in our Capitol. Perhaps most stomach-churning of all was the presence of neo-Nazis, welcomed by the Trump-supporting crowd, occupying our seat of government. One wore a shirt that read “Camp Auschwitz” and “Work brings freedom.” The latter is a translation of the phrase “Arbeit macht frei,” the ominous words that welcomed Jewish prisoners to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Another Trump supporter wore a shirt with the phrase “6MWE.” It stands for “6 Million Wasn’t Enough,” a reference to the six million Jews the Nazis killed during the Holocaust.

That Wednesday, a Jewish GitHub employee who lost family in the Holocaust shared a post on one of the company’s Slack channels, one specifically for Jewish employees. He said, “Stay safe homies, Nazis are about.”

He was right, Nazis were about.

GitHub fired him for it.

There Were Nazis About

“I did not know that, as a Jew, it would be so polarizing to say this word. We grew up saying [Nazi]. It was a story we told because we had to— the decimation of whole lines of ancestry were at the hands of people who went by that title.”

– Fired GitHub Employee

The fired GitHub employee wished to remain anonymous. These same people who storm the Capitol are well-known for harassment campaigns against Jewish people, women, and minorities online. He didn’t want the same.

There were Nazis about at the insurrection last week. This is a fact. We have photographic evidence of neo-Nazi’s at the deadly insurrection at our Capitol. The GitHub employee stated he only wanted to warn employees of their presence. He said he has friends and family in Washington D.C., and similarly wanted to warn any GitHub employees that might be in the area. This wasn’t even a political statement. Warning people that there is an insurrection lead by hate groups that specifically hate this group of people isn’t political. Potentially saving lives by telling potential victims of violence that there are people who hate them in an area is not a political act. It’s not inappropriate either. Telling Washington D.C. friends and colleagues to be safe when they should, in fact, be extra careful, is the right thing to do.

I could see firing someone for their political beliefs. After all, Nazism could be considered a political belief. Firing someone who wants to kill people is a perfectly reasonable stance. But ignoring the fact that there was a murderous mob that included actual Nazis, talking about a political event shouldn’t be against a company’s rules either. Even just talking about an unruly rally. Putting all politics aside, why would it be problematic to discuss a major event involving potentially thousands of people? This was history in the making, for better or worse. Your children will learn about this in history textbooks. Why is a current event off limits for discussion?

Photo: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

And let’s not forget, he wasn’t calling all Trump supporters Nazis, he wasn’t calling conservatives Nazis. He was calling self-labeled Nazis exactly what they were: Nazis. While you could make an argument that calling all conservatives “Nazis” would be divisive language that makes for a hostile working environment, surely calling Nazis what they want to be called isn’t divisive. Facts cannot be divisive.

Not the First Incident at GitHub

The United States was (is) keeping large camps along our southern border. There, ICE was tearing families apart, caging children, and arresting parents, putting them in mass holding cells. To this day, around 600 children will never see their parents again. During this time, many software engineers refused to work on projects that would contribute to actions that the U.N. defines as a form of genocide.

But forget label for a second. Even after reuniting as many families as it could under court order, the United States could not find the parents of around 600 children. Those children just don’t have a family anymore. Orphaned by the United States.

No one in tech wanted to take part in this. One of the businesses where employees refused to work on projects was GitHub. 150 employees signed a letter telling GitHub, owned by Microsoft for over a year by that point, to cancel a $200,000 contract with ICE. GitHub said the money wasn’t an issue, and even donated $500,000 to immigration-related charities, but still kept the contract. Many GitHub employees left over it, uncomfortable with aiding in separating children from their families.

Not the First Incident at Microsoft, Either

Microsoft has a long history of sexism.

Most of Microsoft’s issues have been sexism. The company has famously hired erotic female dancers for company parties. The closest they got to something like this wasn’t intentional, however it was their fault. They “Tay” AI chatbot they put on Twitter quickly learned to spew racism, sexism, and antisemitism. Microsoft could have anticipated this level of trolling, really, if they had asked anyone online from those groups if there was anything they should consider before bringing it online. But they were short of diverse employees, and we got Tay, the racist AI.

Microsoft’s Tay started off so kind.

Microsoft isn’t going to be happy about this. The company bought GitHub in June of 2018. Before then, there wasn’t much competition for GitHub. However, GitLab and BitBucket have brought competition to the online code repository industry. As a result, Microsoft could be concerned about one of their properties being seen as one that fires Jewish people for being critical of Nazis.

Tay turned to hate very quickly. These were actually more tame examples

If you had heard that a Jewish employee was fired for criticizing Nazis, you could be forgiven for thinking it happened in 1930’s Germany. Instead, it’s in 2021 America. The parallels are all too familiar.

GitHub Silent, Workers Angry. An Industry Watches.

GitHub’s only response was co condemn the attack on the U.S. Capitol. But here’s the kicker. GitHub CEO Nat Friedman put this line in his message to employees:

“Antisemitism, neonazis [sic], and white supremacy – along with all other forms of racism – are vile and have no place in the world, and especially no place in our community.”

They’re not firing Nat Friedman for saying “neonazis,” are they? Why not? What did he do that was different? GitHub claims that they fired their employee due to a “pattern” of behavior, but couldn’t cite examples. All we have to go off of is this one Jewish GitHub employee who was fired for calling a Nazi a Nazi.

So far, at least 200 GitHub employees have signed a letter demanding an explanation. That’s just shy of 12% of GitHub’s workforce. It could lead to protests or a walkout at the company, as GitHub hasn’t given a suitable reason for this employee’s firing yet.

https://twitter.com/shelbyspees/status/1349070271366369281?s=20

Meanwhile, much of the tech industry uses GitHub. Nearly every developer has at least one GitHub account, likely more if they use a company-specific account. GitHub is a company that hosts code. It’s a lot more than that. You can use it to collaborate with coworkers, launch scripts, merge parts of code, review code, keep records, and maintain a build pipeline, so you can test, build, and deploy apps and services. Software repositories like GitHub are vital at any company. Many developers even use a web-based repository like GitHub for their personal projects, so they have a backup and can potentially collaborate with others.

The tech industry needs software like GitHub, but it does have other competitors. Others have found better ways to execute code and provide an all-in-one solution for writing and building software. If a company is on the fence, the last thing they may want is to be associated with a company seen as a promoter of antisemitism. The business reasons alone could cause some companies to leave GitHub behind. It’s just not good for business to be associated with Nazis.

GitHub’s CEO also mentions that they’re “investigating.” It’s possible that one manager who sympathized with Nazis (or, as we say, a Nazi), made a large fuss about this employee to HR, and moved to terminate him. It’s possible that GitHub could fire the people involved and give this person his job back, though, looking at how they handled the ICE situation, that’s unlikely. He might not want his job anyway. After going through this and, presumably, other issues, he stated in his last message to coworkers that he doesn’t want to work in tech anymore, that it’s too toxic, too insular.

He was just fired for being Jewish and warning people of the presence of Nazis. I can’t blame him.

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