Mozilla CEO faced ‘new fascism,’ Gingrich says

Former Mozilla chief executive Brendan Eich was forced out of the company due to a “new fascism,” Newt Gingrich said Sunday.

During an episode of ABC’s “This Week,” the former Speaker of the House and Republican presidential candidate slammed the decision to get rid of Eich, who resigned as head of the Internet non-profit last week.

{mosads}Eich — who co-founded Mozilla, which runs Firefox, and was brought on as CEO last month — resigned amid online protests over his donation of $1,000 to the campaign for California’s Proposition Eight, which banned same-sex marriage in the state.

In a blog post last week, the company announced Eich’s departure and apologized for the way it handled the controversy over his political donations.

On Sunday, Gingrich criticized the public campaign that led to Eich’s departure.

Too often, he said, is “you have the wrong views, meaning conservative, you have no career.”

Gingrich also pushed back on the idea that Eich left Mozilla voluntarily.

“He was pressured by a public campaign,” he said. “This was not voluntary”