Well that's your personal call to make. And I just have to accept that. I'm not willing to concede publicly liking an essay just because some people are going to be uncomfortable with it. It's political in nature. Are you going to not consider me if I call myself a communist or an anarchist? If I call myself trans-gendered or homosexual? Where's that line for you?
I can totally understand not hiring someone for publicly endorsing Mein Kampf. It's a love-letter to racism. It's the same reason I can understand not hiring a transphobic or homophobic individual. You can't hire someone if brief research turns up that they have hatred for a group of people. What happens when one of your employees or customers falls into those groups?
But what I don't totally understand is how Industrial Society and Its Future falls into that. I get that associating with a murderer is probably bad PR. But I like to think most people would give me the benefit of the doubt and assume that I think killing people is really uncool and not acceptable work behavior. By endorsing it, I'm not saying that I hate some group of people (because the essay doesn't really condemn anyone specifically, besides progressives). I'm not endorsing a call-to-violence (because the essay isn't a call to violence, and actually has a few points where he admits he thinks he might be getting some things wrong). I'm just saying I thought it was a profound piece of writing. Not even that I agree with it, just that it was some reasoned opinions I'd never heard. It's even been submitted on this website before, which is ironically where I found it in the first place.
So Mein Kampf makes people uncomfortable, and that's something that's unacceptable. But where/why does the Unabomber Manifesto make people uncomfortable? If the fact that it was written by a murderer alone makes it an unacceptable thing to find interesting to my employer, I think they're being short-sighted and I regret nothing. They obviously haven't read it or even skimmed the wikipedia page on it. They're not just judging a book by its cover, they're judging a person by a book that they're judging by the name on its cover.
I might find I regret this when I find out that I'm unemployable after school, though. Oh well. Such is youth.
I can totally understand not hiring someone for publicly endorsing Mein Kampf. It's a love-letter to racism. It's the same reason I can understand not hiring a transphobic or homophobic individual. You can't hire someone if brief research turns up that they have hatred for a group of people. What happens when one of your employees or customers falls into those groups?
But what I don't totally understand is how Industrial Society and Its Future falls into that. I get that associating with a murderer is probably bad PR. But I like to think most people would give me the benefit of the doubt and assume that I think killing people is really uncool and not acceptable work behavior. By endorsing it, I'm not saying that I hate some group of people (because the essay doesn't really condemn anyone specifically, besides progressives). I'm not endorsing a call-to-violence (because the essay isn't a call to violence, and actually has a few points where he admits he thinks he might be getting some things wrong). I'm just saying I thought it was a profound piece of writing. Not even that I agree with it, just that it was some reasoned opinions I'd never heard. It's even been submitted on this website before, which is ironically where I found it in the first place.
So Mein Kampf makes people uncomfortable, and that's something that's unacceptable. But where/why does the Unabomber Manifesto make people uncomfortable? If the fact that it was written by a murderer alone makes it an unacceptable thing to find interesting to my employer, I think they're being short-sighted and I regret nothing. They obviously haven't read it or even skimmed the wikipedia page on it. They're not just judging a book by its cover, they're judging a person by a book that they're judging by the name on its cover.
I might find I regret this when I find out that I'm unemployable after school, though. Oh well. Such is youth.