Right-Wing Anti-Google Rally In Atlanta Is Canceled

ATLANTA, GA — Scared for their own safety, organizers have canceled plans for a far right-wing rally Saturday at Google's offices in Atlanta.

Atlanta was to have been one of nine locations for March on Google. On the heels of the Charlottesville, Virginia, rallies by white supremacists gathered under the "alt-right" banner, the events were meant to support James Damore — a Google employee fired after he posted a controversial manifesto criticizing the company's diversity policies.

But, on Wednesday, organizer Jack Posobiec posted on the event website that they were being scrapped due to safety concerns.

"The Peaceful March on Google has been postponed due to credible ... terrorist threats for the safety of our citizen participants," he wrote. "Despite our clear and straightfoward (sic) statements denouncing bigotry and hatred, CNN and other mainstream media made malicious and false statements that our peaceful march was being organized by Nazi sympathizers."

In his post, Posobiec used the term "alt-left." That term is not one recognized by political analysts and is seen as a way of trying to create moral equivalency between the so-called "alt-right," which encompasses people with white supremacist and other extreme views, and their critics.

The demonstrations had been planned for Google locations in Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Los Angeles, Mountain View, California, New York, Pittsburgh, Seattle and Washington D.C.

In his post, Posobiec claimed someone had threatened to drive a car into one of the rallies. In Charlottesville, 32-year-old Heather Heyer, an anti-racism counter-demonstrator, was killed when a so-called "alt-right" member slammed his car into the group with which she was demonstrating.

He said he and other organizers "hope to hold our peaceful march in a few weeks' time."

Damore's internal memo criticized Google for what he called the company's excessive commitment to gender equity and diversity and ignorance of biological differences between the sexes. It was leaked to the media and Damore was fired for "advancing harmful gender stereotypes," according to Google.

The 10-page critique claimed the company's diversity initiatives result in discrimination against men and said that biological differences between men and women may actually account for the struggles women have faced in the tech industry.

Damore has said that he does not associate himself with the so-called alt-right and would likely not attend one of the rallies.

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Event organizer Posobiec has been described as an "alt-right provocateur" by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors the activities of hate groups. He organized the "DeporaBall," a Trump inauguration event attended by white nationalists and other extreme-right activists, and is known for spreading conspiracy theories and other far-right propaganda on Twitter and elsewhere.

He used social media to help spread unsubstantiated rumors that former Democratic National Committee worker Seth Rich was murdered for leaking emails to Wikileaks and fanned the flames of the so-called Pizzagate conspiracy — which claimed, with no evidence, that Hillary Clinton helped run a pedophile ring out of a pizza restaurant.

Photo via Google