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"Within days, Citi had put him on administrative leave and his name was removed from the company’s internal directory. He was later terminated. “Mr. Gelinas is

• iron0013 6y ago
  Violent treasonous political cults do not currently constitute a protected class, oddly enough.
  • ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    You missed the point entirely. A bad guy was nailed this time, great. But he wasn't kicked out because he was a bad guy, he was kicked out because he was a liability to the corporation. The mechanisms for outing and booting out this guy works just as well against people you support, like union organizers or whistleblowers or even simply those whose politics doesn't line up with the interests of the business. The sword doesn't care who wields it or who it cuts.
    • iron0013 6y ago
      Union organizers and whistleblowers should and in many cases already do have protections specifically encoded into law. Far-out political cults that routinely slander and threaten violence against their opponents do not serve a particular purpose in the workplace and thus have no similar protections. This guy’s employer correctly pegged him as an embarrassment that had the potential to harm their bottom line and showed him the door. That’s how the labor market under capitalism works.
    • gamblor956 6y ago
      The mechanisms for outing and booting out this guy works just as well against people you support, like union organizers or whistleblowers or even simply those whose politics doesn't line up with the interests of the business. Union organizers and whistleblowers have specific legal protections because they are deemed not to be engaged in political activities but in legal activities (like organizing a union or revealing fraud or criminal activity). Businesses are otherwise mostly free to terminate workers over their political beliefs unless the business operates in a state which includes political affiliation as a protected class (like California, but notably not New York or New Jersey).
    • NotSammyHagar 6y ago
      There are people with specific legal protections. Amazon and Google would seem to be in jeopardy potentially for firing union organizers. Because so many Republicans and/or businesses support right to work laws (firing for any or no reason) this is a consequence. Since that guy became a Repub., it's reasonable to assume he supported that and never thought it would impact him in that way. So think about that everyone who thinks unions and work rules have no point.
    • shadowgovt 6y ago
      Indeed, but we've addressed that by making it illegal to fire an employee for union organizing or whistleblowing, not by breaking the sword. In the general case, the societal value of having this sword around is recgonized.
      • kls 6y ago
        To be clear I was not advocation for the removal of the banks right to remove him and certainly not arguing for the government to have the ability to step in. Just highlighting that I personally believe it is a bad path we are trudging along.
  • kls 6y ago
    I am not inferring that their politics or cult like leanings are acceptable, but if he is not bringing it into the workplace then I find the practice reprehensible. At one time this was done to people of other belief systems / political leanings (communist in the US as an example). At some point in the future a different social contract will exist and items like this set a precedents for the same to be done to them. I am against it no matter what their belief system is.
    • iron0013 6y ago
      You absolutely still can be fired in the United States for publicly identifying as a communist. Hell, you can be fired for merely demonstrating against police brutality.
      • tssva 6y ago
        In most of the United States you can be fired for absolutely no reason whatsoever except the boss wants to.
        • iron0013 6y ago
          Yup
        • shadowgovt 6y ago
          There are protected classes of worker, but the burden to prove the firing was due to protected reasons is on the worker.
      • kls 6y ago
        I am in no way arguing that you cannot, just making the observation that social contracts change and a secondary and personal point that I find the practice detestable. I do not want someone to loose their livelihood because I disagree with them on their personal ideology and I certainly don't want to loose employment because someone disagrees with me on my personal belief system. The US communist witch-hunt is a great example because McCarthyism led to a good number of people who where not communist but where still undesirable to the current (at the time) social contract, being blacklisted by just throwing a communist label on them, which resulted in their lives and livelihood being destroyed.
• wdb 6y ago
  Personally, I can understand Citi, they are now getting associated with a right wing conspiracy theory, which cause violence throughout the world.
• lowiqengineer 6y ago
  Would you say the same if he was a member of ISIS but hadn’t committed any terrorist acts yet? It’s no different.
  • kls 6y ago
    If they have not committed a crime or aided in a crime, I personally don't have an issue with it as if they have not committed a terrorist act they are by definition not a terrorists. Lets move the hypothetical situation a little what if they are not a member but are sympathetic to the grievances that ISIS has (not all of them are unfounded)? Are they guilty of fire-able ill thought at that point? I don't argue that this guys ideas are savory nor those of ISIS my point is there is a lot of ideas that people from all walks of life find unsavory. I am sorry but I just fundamentally disagree with cancel culture, which to me this is a byproduct of. To me the harm is greater than the cure.
• anonuser123456 6y ago
  If you take an active position to promote lies and conspiracy in your personal life, why would your employer not reasonably believe you would do so at work? There is a difference between legitimate political opinion and promoting false conspiracy. Note that most of these conspiracies are defamatory in nature. Also, QAnon borders on calling for the violent overthrow if the government. It's narrative literally calls for it. So no, not out of bounds for an employer to terminate. Nothing 1984 here.
• cookingmyserver 6y ago
  > To me this becoming the norm is chilling and echo's in my mind as 1984 becoming a work of non-fiction. I think the real chilling thing here is your attack against freedom of association while ironically complaining that the world is becoming more like 1984. Sure, like all rights freedom of association has its limits, especially around protected classes and unions in the business world. But should the government really step in and force me to continue to employ a holocaust denier just because he makes me a lot of money? Should the government really stop me from kicking out a dude dressed in a KKK outfit from my store?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • disown 6y ago
    > But should the government really step in and force me to continue to employ a holocaust denier just because he makes me a lot of money? Should the government force you to keep muslims, lgbt, minorities, etc ( protected classes ) even if you disagree with their views? "Free association right" > Should the government really stop me from kicking out a dude dressed in a KKK outfit from my store? What about a burqa or an lgbt flag? But then again the guy was doing his stuff at home in his private life, not in someone's store. Do you think people should be banned from stores for what they wear in their homes? So you agree that it's okay for companies to terminate lgbt employees? People can be fired for what they do in their private lives? What happened to "as long as it's legal, people's private lives shouldn't be used to fire employees"? If what he did was illegal, sure that's grounds for termination. But firing people for what they legally do in their private lives, it's what people here rail against normally. Seems like people have no principles, just political agenda.
    • cookingmyserver 6y ago
      The answers to all of your questions here are highly dependent on the context of the question. Is the view expressed by the party of a protected class tied to their class and does it infringe on another persons rights? The answer will depend on the answers to those two questions. > Do you think people should be banned from stores for what they wear in their homes? > So you agree that it's okay for companies to terminate lgbt employees? Yes and no. LGBT employees are protected under sex discrimination. I believe you are trying to frame the idea that freedom of association can defeat class based protections by targeting related attributes such as rainbow pride clothing worn by a person at home. Such attempts to circumvent class protections have been repeatedly struck down as unconstitutional because (1) they are not applied to all individuals (2) they are made in bad faith and (3) they have no use other than to target the protected class. I implore you to do research into the current stance of US Supreme Court rulings that define, limit, and explain class protections. My personal stance is very similar to that of the current SCOTUS stance and all of your questions are answered by their cases. > Seems like people have no principles, just political agenda. Unfortunately, the execution of one's principles are mistaken for the implementation of a political agenda.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• shadowgovt 6y ago
  Banks are hyper-conservative. General knowledge that a bank continues to employ a conspiracy theorist can have negative consequences for their bottom-line because the actual business sector a bank operates in is "trust," and being perceived as employing the easily-duped raises trust questions.
  • kls 6y ago
    I don't understand why society is so hell bent on punishing people for thought crimes. To the extent that they make trouble for corporations, in effect forcing their hand, into the position of separating that person from their livelihood. Society is a social contract and the baseline of that contract is we engage with people where we align and we disengage where we do not. Specifically in a capitalist society one of those strong alignments tends to be on the area of productivity. So alienating an individual from one of the areas that they actually align will tend to push them further into the fringe and worse yet they may become productive in that fringe. My issue is belief systems like the one this person possesses tend to flow from a few underlining fountains and they are fear, a feeling of marginalization, true mental illness or a traumatic experience and as a society as a whole, we should use reason to get to the underlining issue and fix it not cast them out and further limit our ability to actually remove the fountains that these ideas come from. It is worth noting again, I am not advocation for Citi to not have the right to dissociate nor am I advocating for the government to step in. Rather trying to highlight this new culture we are forming of "I don't want to hear you and if I do I want you punished" is directly related to the fact that both sides are radicalizing. Further on a similar but tangential note, but directly a product of this effect, academia used to be a safe haven for diversity of thought, imagine if in their time, Nash or Turing (to a certain extent it was on Turing) would have faced the same academia establishment of present day but applied their societies contract onto their thought. We would certainly lost valuable and productive work that they did. Modern Academia still preaches the dogma of diversity of thought and ideas that was a hallmark of being the torch bearer of free thought of academia since the enlightenment. Now it has transformed into the arbitrator and filter of what is enlightened thought. My only observation is that, where we are heading is a dangerous path. I don't know each personas political leanings on this site but it worth noting no matter which side, almost half the population disagrees with you. It may not feel that way due to ones local social climate as well as ones choice of online engagement but that is the reality. It is also worth noting that QAnon is a fringe element and while almost certainly right wing do not represent the majority of the right wing the same can be said for Antifa or NAMBLA not being representative of the left. I bring this up because this is the core of my problem here, it is trickling into everything. At this point I feel a need to note, that while the above paragraph will certainly cast me as a right winger, I contend that I am not. I consider myself to be a liberal in the classical enlightenment sense. I hold views across the spectrum and most of them would be considered left of center. I generally don't get into my political views but I think it is important in these times to specifically spell it out, as a great many immediately dismiss an argument if they mentally tag it as dogma from the other side.