I'm curious if your opinion on this extends to, say, IG Farben providing Zyklon B to the Nazis (or IBM providing information services to same). At some point 'politics' just becomes 'ethics'. Participation in an activity is not "neutral", it is endorsement.

"Just following orders" isn't even a valid defense for soldiers - why should it apply to corporations who are free to refuse business?

> I'm curious if your opinion on this extends to, say, IG Farben providing Zyklon B to the Nazis

Wasn't IG Farben already taking in political money to find such chemicals?

> Research by Fritz Haber of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry led to the founding in 1919 of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung mbH (Degesch), a state-controlled consortium formed to investigate military use of the chemical.

of which IG Farben was a part. So it seems like this would suggest to not add politics (la military weapons research) to engineering

What's "political money"? Does it come in different denominations to regular money? Should IG Farben have refused to do business with the Nazi regime on ethical grounds?

I'm confused - should companies pick and choose who they do business with, or shouldn't they?

Well it'd be a company explicitly avoiding getting into politics wouldn't it?

I don't think anyone has spoken against companies getting to pick and choose in this chain, just on what merits they should pick and choose on

Aren't we a bit abusing the historical terms lately? Do you know what Fascism is? Do you know the difference between Fascists and Nazis? What is the difference between them two and the Communists?

Yeah far right authoritarians are fascists by definition.

No. Fascists are authoritarians by definition, but the one-dimensional spectrum of "rightwing" and "leftwing" is not suitable for any treatment of fascism that is based in history.

"Fascism" and "right-wing authoritarian" are synonymous, and that loss of nuance is giving us blind spots

EDIT: "Fascism" and "right-wing authoritarian[ism]" are [not] synonymous

From Merriam-Webster: "In simplest terms, fascism refers to a specific way of organizing a society: under fascism, a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people in that society, and allows no dissent or disagreement."

"Left" and "right" here don't mean a whole lot in regards to fascism imho, just as Hitler and Stalin weren't all that different.

Fascism is anti-conservatism, too. You can't call conservatives "fascists" then.