Not at all. When companies give power to employees, they expect that it be used responsibly and roughly in line with the goals of the company. If I give somebody root access and they just rm -rf everything because it seems like fun, or because they're trying to prove some sort of point, then I'm going to fire them.

Google correctly gave employees a lot of power to have internal discussions because they thought that would benefit them as a company. And the great bulk of people used that responsibly. Damore didn't and paid the price.

Someone abusing root access to destroy data doesn't compare at all to punishing unpopularity in a falsely "open" forum. Analogies tend to suck in debates, but yours is particularly bad.

The problem was not just "unpopularity". Many people at Google have surely said many unpopular things, and Google didn't fire them.