The other allegation I will (partially) unveil has a similar format:

1/22/2019: You wrote in the activists-us@ group: “The definition of ‘Google’s values’ that matters is the one used by Google’s activists, who could only be described as ‘nonpartisan’ in the same sense that the Women’s March could be described as inclusive towards pro-life Jewish women.“ Other members of the group responded that your statement was percieved [sic] as hateful/incendiary/inflammatory. [redacted]

Now normally, I leave the activists-us@ group alone, but in this circumstance, a member of Google’s US public policy team responded to their hate-thread about CPAC, confirming that Google would not be a sponsor of CPAC this year. In my tenure as the republicans@ owner, few things have alienated conservatives at the company as much as the CPAC debate, so in this instance, I decided to go to bat for my fellow Republicans. Thus, I decided to write a response to that member of the US public policy team, even if it meant wading into the activists-us@ group. Here was the full email I wrote:

This decision is a travesty. Few things have alienated conservatives at Google as much as the CPAC debate, and the US public policy team’s decision here will only further that alienation. It’s clear that the demands of the dominant activist tribe matter more than principled pluralism at this company. With all this talk of respect at Google, I can’t help but come back to the wise words of John Stuart Mill in On Liberty. In a paragraph on the topic of intemperate discussion, Mill writes, “The worst offence of this kind which can be committed by a polemic, is to stigmatize those who hold the contrary opinion as bad and immoral men.” When the anti­-CPAC petition promoted by activists­-us@ is literally titled, “Google, Don’t Sponsor Hate,” it’s clear that this dark art of polemics is well and alive at Google. The clear undertone of this debate has been that conservatives are both hateful and evil. I’ve had this running joke that Google is full of social justice activists who are dedicated to ridding the world of the evils of Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and John Kasich. That joke takes on a new life of its own when the anti­-CPAC petition lumps Marion Maréchal­-Le Pen and the NRA into the same overly broad, hopelessly vague category of “hate”. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has insisted time and time again that Google is a nonpartisan company, but more and more those words seem like empty words: all talk, no action. Both internally and externally, a narrative has begun to emerge that liberal political activists are calling the shots at Google. It’s really hard to refute that narrative when the US public policy team engages with activists­-us@ “in the spirit of communication and good faith” to inform them that Google has caved to their demands, and that Google will not be sponsoring CPAC this year. Somewhere, a document exists that explicitly defines Google’s values, and perhaps those values could be described as non­partisan, but that definition does not seem to be the one that matters. The definition of “Google’s values” that matters is the one used by Google’s activists, who could only be described as “nonpartisan” in the same sense that the Women’s March could be described as inclusive towards pro-­life Jewish women. Or, to quote a rather prescient headline from David French of The National Review, “In Outrage Campaigns, It’s the Internal Mob that Matters.”

Given all the hateful, incendiary, and inflammatory rhetoric that was deployed by the outrage mob against CPAC, it is beyond belief that this email was the one that got punished. For example, the person who accused me of being incendiary was also the same person who compared black conservatives who spoke at CPAC to Jews who spoke at a Holocaust denial conference.

But on the bright side, at least we now know the definition of “hate speech” that Google HR uses: anything that Google’s activists perceive as hateful. And to explain just how insane that standard is, at one point, I asked one of these activists if I had correctly summarized their views: “So to be clear, Google can’t fund groups that espouse pro-­life views, and if Google does, then ‘How do we expect women to work here?’” Their response: “Correct.” (There was one non-activist who pushed back against that claim, but none of the activists pushed back against it or even seemed to be remotely bothered by it.)

Now that doesn’t mean you can’t espouse pro-life views at Google. You are still free to espouse pro-life views so long as activists don’t perceive those views to be hateful, incendiary, or inflammatory. Just remember that some of these activists also think that women can’t be expected to work at Google if it donates to groups that espouse pro-life views.

(As for the second part I redacted, debunking that part would require additional context and would require me to publish many more emails as relevant context. While publishing those emails would certainly be advantageous to my position, here I have opted to redact that second part instead of debunking it. I think I’ve already made my point by now.)