Thought Crime: Mozilla CEO Forced to Resign by LGBT Lobby Over ‘Opinion’ on Gay Marriage

[Apr 4, 2014]
21st Century Wire says…

Our forefathers warned us to beware of mob rule.

Mozilla announced yesterday that its co-founder Brendan Eich (photo, left) is stepping down as CEO following LGBT lobby protests over his support for California’s Proposition 8 ballot measure that outlawed same-sex, or ‘gay’ marriages in that state (the measure was later deemed unconstitutional following a federal court appeal).

Most mainstream media outlets are attributing his resignation to a boycott announcement by popular online dating site, OkCupid.com, who urged its users not to access their dating site through Mozilla’s Firefox browser, but to use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Google’s Chrome instead. But there’s a bit more to the story than this…

The internal storm began to brew when two gay software developers decided to launch a boycott of Firefox in protest against Eich’s new CEO appointment.

This appears to have snowballed into a full-blown feud within Mozilla over Eich’s personal views – which appear to have run contrary to those of Mozilla Chairwoman Mitchell Baker, who then fired what looks to be the deadly PR round on March 29, when she first blogged that “Mozilla supports equality for all, explicitly including LGBT equality and marriage equality.”

Prior to resigning, CEO Eich clearly stated his position to the Guardian on Wednesday this week, “There’s a difference here between the company, the foundation, as an employer and an entity, versus the project and community at large, which is not under any constraints to agree on LGBT equality or any other thing that is not central to the mission or the Mozilla manifesto.”

Baker responded on Thursday stating, “We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public.”

The only problem here is that Ms. Baker doesn’t seem to want to include Brendan Eich in her culture of ‘sharing beliefs and opinions’.

Baker then goes on the explain why Mozilla Corp forced Eich out, and how it is ultimately accountable to its ‘communitarians‘. She explains, “This is meant to distinguish Mozilla from most organizations and hold us to a higher standard. But this time we failed to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community.”

She then added, “Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it”. “We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves.”

“We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better.”
At little over dramatic maybe, but it’s indicative of a US online tech industry seemingly dominated by a liberal herd. The polarity seems subtle at first glance, but the rifts are there: driving a Toyota Prius is considered virtuous, while Tweeting a conservative quip can trigger a firestorm.

Clearly, Eich and Baker’s differences could not be resolved, making for a very toxic working environment. What’s irrefutable here is that Baker chose to undermine her executive colleague in a very public manner, as Baker used her position to push her feud with Eich into the public domain, enabling her to then leverage additional support from the LGBT lobby as a result.

In a corporate setting, this precedent certainly opens the door to abuse. This scenario could be used by any employee of any company who feels they have unaddressed grievances – not just ideological ones, but personal ones – against a senior colleague, and then draw in a third party, like an LGBT lobby, in order to settle a personal score and assist in removing someone from an organisation. This creates a false “consensus”, followed by a tidal wave of online “campaigns” (see image, left) and petitions – where an innocent person can quickly be convicted in a Kangaroos Court of minority public opinion, underpinned by the highly spurious, if not dubious justification of “protecting the “ethos of the company”.

Eich is also one of the creators of the computer language known as Javascript, and has been widely recognised as one of the single most important contributors to the modern free internet.

What exactly Eich’s personal views on Prop 8 have to do with the ‘ethos’ of Mozilla is not clear. Mozilla’s Firefox browser was created by the Mozilla Foundation in 2003, a non-profit organization who supports the open source project run by Mozilla Corp. The mission of the non-profit is “putting individuals in control online.” The CEO’s personal opinions on hot social issues do not come into play at all with the functionality of Firefox, nor should they.

Ruling in Divided America

America has never been more divided along radical political lines as it is today. In many ways, a divided society suits the establishment in its will to rule with no emerging opposition to it. Radical activist groups play a key role in maintaining this vacuum of social solidarity. The age of social media means that, with a snap of the finger, special interest mobs can swarm corporations and individuals. Mobs rule by fear. It’s time to coin a new term: social racketeering.

It’s worth pointing out the obvious problem here – that in 2008, the Proposition 8 Gay Marriage Ban actually passed in 2008 in California with the majority of voters backing the measure, and in a state with a population of 35 million.

So are the millions of Californians – like Brendan Eich, who voted for, or supported the gay marriage ban also “guilty” of this same thought crime, or crime of opinion? Should each voter, and person who wrote out a cheque to campaign for Proposition 8 be identified and perhaps hunted down, and forced to resign from their jobs? If all men and women are created equal, then why not exact the mob’s punishment on everyone classified as guilty by the LGBT lobby? Wouldn’t that be more fair?

The LGBT lobby’s answer to that question would of course be something along the lines of: “We are not targeting everyone who supported Prop 8, only the high profile people (in order to make an example out of them).” This kind of reply is a nicely spun version of, “We hope by publicly toppling Eich, this will serve to intimidate others from opposing the lobby’s will in future.”

This kind of ‘razor blade’ politiking has the following objectives: ruin the man, his career and his future – because he opposed your own social views. In this toxic social environment, ‘activism’ (as some still like to refer to it) has been weaponised.

In a country which purports to champion its citizens’ rights of freedom of speech, expression and more importantly – freedom of opinion, this disturbing trend of minority activist lobbies bullying individuals into submission because of their personal views (clearly the case with Brendan Eich) is simply a mob prosecution of ‘thought crime’, which any radical pragmatist, given the chance, would easily upgrade to ‘hate crime’. Is this Social racketeering, or cultural Marxism? Take your pick. Both are a step backwards, and are highly undesirable conditions in a truly egalitarian and free society.

The Slippery Slope of Tyranny

Uncomfortable to some as it might be, in the United States of America, it is not illegal, nor should it viewed as ‘undesirable’, for an individual to voice one’s opposition – for or against – any state or federal law. The dangers of enabling such a mob tyranny to single out individuals who are not guilty of any real crime are obvious – by crushing support or dissent for any one law, the mob is greasing a slippery slope towards the elimination of not only freedom of speech and beliefs, but dissent for any unconstitutional law. In the long run, this might empower the state over the individual. This might be a hard concept for some to grapple with who only see this issue a small victory nudging forward, but not to anyone with any foresight. Viewed in isolation, gang tackling a person out of his job today may not seem like much, but think about what the next step will look like – a digressive ‘Lord of the Flies’ society where the mobs determine who is innocent and who is guilty – and whether or not any actual crime is committed does not even factor in. Some will argue that we are already there.

Most certainly, gay rights, along with other minority rights of race minorities, disabled minorities, homeless persons, and religious minorities – should be defended. However, there exists a fine line between defending one’s rights and attacking one’s perceived political opponents. The latter is wrong, especially when conducted at the hands of an aggressive, politicized mob.

The fundamental concept which the LGBT ‘collective’ (lobby) do not understand, or are unable to grasp, is basic game theory, where an offensive strategy has consequences. Although it may seem politically vogue today, by exerting radical ‘communitarianism‘ influence through the deployment of fear, intimidation and harassment – any radical minority may in fact be sowing the seeds of their own demise, and society’s too, in the long run. History shows us that such counter-revolutionary movements, especially ultra-conservative ones – are swift and brutal. The only protection against this, is by guarding the inherent rights which we all share, even if that means defending the rights of those whom you may ideologically disagree with.

Targeting individuals and depriving them of their fundamental right to work, expression of a personal opinion, or even disagreement with the lobby, is merely aiding the acceleration of the erosion of universal rights for all citizens, including LGBT ones. Once those rights are gone, they are gone for everyone, and no one will have universal protection under the law, or a ‘Bill of Rights’.

After the LGBT lobby has finished its social cull of its alleged ideological opponents, then a new mob – whether it’s the establishment, or another radical conservative, or religious mob – will set its sights on the LGBT community.

In a free and fair America, LGBT activists should defend Brendan Eich’s right to have an opinion. That would be real tolerance. Anything else is cheap knockoff – phony freedom.

READ MORE LGBT NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire LGBT Files

–

August 4, 2014 | Categories: censorship, consciousness, internet, news, social media, tyranny | Leave a comment