JAMES DAMORE, GOOGLE, AND THE YOU TUBE RADICALIZATION OF ANGRY WHITE MEN

Damore became an ‘alt-right’ hero after Google fired him over his views on women. Did Google-owned YouTube play a role in reinforcing those ideas?

For the YouTube CEO, Susan Wojcicki, the Google manifesto was personal and painful. After reading the news of engineer James Damore’s 10-page memo criticizing diversity initiatives, her daughter asked: “Mom, is it true that there are biological reasons why there are fewer women in tech and leadership?”

Wojcicki recounted the conversation this week in a widely cited essay on sexism in tech in which she denounced the arguments advanced by Damore as “tragic”. Her reflection did not, however, address the role that her own company’s video platform may have played in spreading the questionable scientific claim that women are biologically less suited to tech.

YouTube has in recent years become one of the most influential and powerful social media sites for conservative commentators and far-right and “alt-right” leaders, who have built large audiences outside of mainstream channels.

And it turns out the video-sharing platform, owned by Google, may even have been influential in the formulation of Damore’s beliefs.

The 28-year-old – who was fired over his memo, becoming an instant hero to the alt-right – appears to have taken some interest in the segments of YouTube that promote the idea that men are better than women at certain jobs, and that diversity programs lead to discrimination against white males.

The Harvard graduate chose the programs of two YouTube personalities with large rightwing followings for his first media appearances this week. At the end of a 51-minute conversation with Jordan Peterson, a University of Toronto psychology professor famous for his anti-transgender views, Damore said he agreed to do the interview because, he said, he was a “huge fan” of the Youtube personality.

Peterson, whose lectures and commentary are popular on YouTube and Reddit, told the Guardian that another Google employee and colleague of Damore had suggested the interview and connected them.

“He’s watched a very large number of my personality videos,” Peterson said of Damore, adding that he suspected that many of his lectures may have influenced the engineer’s memo. “I guess he trusted me.”

Damore is not the only Silicon Valley conservative who has apparently taken interest in Peterson, a highly controversial academic who has been able to build enormous audiences through YouTube. In the days after the memo blew up, Peterson said, he heard from at least 30 Google employees who said they appreciated his work and that he was “trying to seriously address these issues”.

All of his Google-employed fans, he conceded, were men. “They are not happy about being treated like prejudicial fools,” he added.

Although YouTube has faced significant public scrutiny for hosting terrorist propaganda and enabling Isis recruitment, there has been much less discussion about whether, and if so, to what extent, the platform is radicalizing young white men in America who feel under attack by liberalism and disenfranchised by social progress.

Peterson’s personality research is published in respected journals, but his passionate criticisms of leftwing ideologies and “political correctness” that have made the biggest splash online. Last year, he earned the sympathy of the “alt-right” and grew his YouTube fame when he argued that it was his free speech right to refuse to use gender-neutral pronouns for trans and non-binary students.

The academic has also argued that the idea of white privilege is racist, the concept of cultural appropriation is nonsense, modern feminism and women’s studies are dangerous to western society and advancements in gender equality can be bad for women.

None of those views would receive much credibility in mainstream academic circles, and he has proved a divisive figure on campus in Toronto. But among some YouTube viewers, Peterson is nothing short of a celebrity.

Damore’s memo closely echoed several arguments from Peterson’s lectures, such as the claim that women have higher rates of “agreeableness” (which makes it harder for them to be leaders) and higher levels of “neuroticism” and anxiety (making them less suited for high-stress positions). “The research is rock solid,” Peterson insisted.

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