In August 2017, Google software engineer James Damore circulated a 10-page manifesto opposing diversity and claiming biological differences make women worse at engineering (see Essentialism). The contents of the manifesto were leaked to the tech press [1] [2]. Damore was subsequently dismissed.
Subsequently, Charlie Warzel wrote about Damore's ties to the right-wing media and suggested that the incident was planned:
A week ago, James Damore was anonymous. Now, the Google engineer who lost his job after he wrote a viral antidiversity screed has become an icon of the alt-right, with more than 40,000 Twitter followers (literally overnight) and a dedicated online constituency.
This didn't happen by accident: Damore's swift lionization as a casualty of both unchecked social justice warring and an unregulated Big Tech monopoly that silences dissenting voices is the work of a well-oiled pro-Trump media machine, one that's able to instantly bring its brand of digital insurgency to any skirmish. And in the case of Google, and Silicon Valley as a whole, the new right is digging in for a long, hard fight, with Damore at the center. [3]
In January 2018, Damore, together with David Gudeman, filed a class-action lawsuit against Google for discriminating against conservative white men.
