Anti-Google ‘terrorism’ endorsed by editor for S.F.-based Salon

The increasingly militant targeting of tech workers in the Bay Area now has a champion: an assistant news editor for the San Francisco-based online magazine Salon. Here’s a sample of Natasha Lennard’s astonishingly glib endorsement of “terrorism” targeting Google workers and presumably any other techie whose company and lifestyle she doesn’t like:

“Intimidation tactics targeting the employees of major corporations are nothing new and have a history of success: Indeed, animal rights activists achieved some major victories in securing the closure of animal testing facilities in the ’90s and early 2000s through the intimidation of key investors. This intimidation was deemed terrorism, but, hey, it worked. The Google protesters appear to be paying homage to this model. Their manifesto ends, ‘We’re coming for you next,’ and echo the Animal Liberation Front’s haunting slogan, ‘We are everywhere.’ …

“Whether targeting individual Google employees is an effective tactic is not really my interest here. Certainly, I concede that it will hardly uproot Google’s hegemonic position, nor will the surveillance state be dismantled. Andrew Leonard cited one Bay Area resident describing the latest militant anti-Google  protest as ‘a group of people violently broaching civic norms.’ I say: precisely. Civic norms in our current epoch entail the forgoing of privacy, the enabling of a totalized surveillance state, the steady displacement of poor residents by wealthier implants in all major metropolises. The world’s richest 85 people has as much wealth as half the world’s population put together. These are our current civic norms; they deserve some violent broaching.”

What’s striking about this isn’t just Lennard’s endorsement of terrorism. It’s her righteous tone — her confident presumption that she holds the moral high ground.

It may be far more excessive, but her prose shares the tone of the Nanny Staters who want to tell people how to live.

I’m appalled by this. But I also welcome it. What’s happening in San Francisco is only likely to further the tech community’s embrace of libertarian values.

If the biggest wealth creators in the 21st century strongly believe in individual liberty and value the entrepreneurial spirit more than the glories of government, that’s a good thing.