I wonder if he thought nobody would discover his past.
Well…probably? It was 30 years ago after all.
I’m actually not on board with making this guy resign. Yes, being involved in a Nazi hate crime is terrible and completely fucked up, but he got caught and punished, it was as a juvenile, which isn’t supposed to stay on your record, and apparently he gave it all up because he realised that it was in fact fucked up. What - he’s never allowed to have a job now? Or only never allowed to be good enough at it to build a successful company and make a bucket of money?
Now if he’s been caught funnelling a bunch of money to hate groups now, by all means kick him to the curb. But apparently that’s not the case.
He probably could have survived if he was convicted of other crimes back then. The KKK and white supremacy groups are not something most people would forgive . Same would be true for murder,rape, child molesting , etc. I guess he will have to sell his ownership of the business as well.
To me, the strangest part of that article is how it casually mentions Palantir as if it’s as common as Google or Microsoft. Has Palantir become so mainstream that everyone has a passing familiarity with it?
Back around 2000 a guy was CEO of a streaming company in CA and then someone found out he was wanted for armed robbery in NJ. He was sent back to NJ but I don’t remember hearing what happened to him.
No. I can attest that not everyone has heard of Palantir.
ETA: The article was published in something called Tech Crunch. Their readership might very well know what Palantir is.
Anne Perry is still happily publishing books, despite having been outed as a psychopathic murderer in 1994 (Heavenly Creatures). And her publication rate didn’t even seem to slow down at the time.
Making people resign for 30-year-old crimes just seems like a way of entrenching all the current Nazis in their Nazi-dom forever. If you know that you’re never ever going to be accepted in civilised society if you repent, the smart move is to stay a Nazi, seeing how many alt-righters make bank quite effectively by marketing to current existing Nazis, and flying their fascist flag high.
I just found out about Anne Perry earlier this year. She’s not running a company so people can choose to buy her books or not. Also people in entertainment and sports often get a 2nd chance after crimes. For example Mike Vick went to prison for dog fighting and returned to the NFL. Mike Tyson went back to boxing after a prison stint for rape . Martha Stewart did time in prison. Various rappers have done jail time.
Boys will be boys amirite?
OJ was making money after he beat the double murder charge when many people thought he was guilty.
" The KKK and white supremacy groups are not something most people would forgive"
Unless you become a member of Congress or the Courts.
Robert C. Byrd, was a recruiter for the Klan while in his 20s and 30s, rising to the title of Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops of his local chapter. After leaving the group, Byrd spoke in favor of the Klan during his early political career. Though he later said he officially left the organization in 1943, Byrd wrote a letter in 1946 to the group’s Imperial Wizard stating “The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia.”
Edward Douglass White, a Democrat and the Chief Justice of the United States, was a known member of the KKK in his home state of Louisiana, where he had served as U.S. Senator.
Hugo Black, a Democrat, joined the Ku Klux Klan in order to gain votes from the anti-Catholic element in Alabama. He built his winning Senate campaign around multiple appearances at KKK meetings across Alabama.
Theodore G. Bilbo, a Democrat, the Governor of Mississippi and U.S. Senator for Mississippi.
John Brown Gordon, a Democrat and the U.S. Senator for Georgia, was a founder of the KKK.
Joseph E. Brown, a Democrat and the U.S. Senator for Georgia, was a key supporter of the KKK.
Elmer David Davies, a Democrat and a Federal Judge.
And the List goes on and on. Twelve more names on the Wiki page.
Amazing that no Republican was a member of the KKK!
Why didn’t he just throw out the ties?
The dude was in some heavy shit as a kid, did like NO ONE at the company know?
Is it an actual ‘company’ company, or a half a dozen programmers, two salesfolk and a data warehouse?
And he founded it - he wouldn’t have ever had to have a job interview or have his references checked
But what about this stuff from 75 years ago? Surely nothing has changed and everything from WW2 era is still relevant! It’s almost like all the racist bastards were in the South, and the South was Democratic. How does the South vote again, nowadays?
Was he made to resign, or did he decide on his account that he didn’t want to spend every meeting fielding questions about his past rather than his current business? Or did his shareholders decide they didn’t want to risk their investment losing value and/or their being tainted by association, along with all their other activities?
It’s not just a question of individual guilt or rehabilitation in the abstract. It’s whether it’s worth the bother in the situation you happen to be in.
I found out more info about the company here - so, smallish-medium pre-IPO startup … I’m guessing that he’s a 51% shareholder himself (at least, that’s the way the founders of the one startup I was involved in in the '00s did it). So possibly it’s him safeguarding his **own **investment
It is one thing to be a member of the Klan like Hugo Black, but Black was not involved AFAIK in shooting up a synagogue. That is unforgivable.
And, as a Democrat today, I’m sure that you would feel the same way if it were shown that it was the GOP that was full of KKK members 75 years ago. And all would be forgiven because it was such a long time ago. Sure. If there were GOP Klansman 75 years ago, you’d still be using it as evidence that Republicans have always been racists.