Time and a place. I only see these kind of online spats refracted through people’s reactions like this one. Invariably I find myself asking how someone’s unattractive idea even came up there in the first place…
Over my time in the world I have chafed against the boundaries of “professionalism” and “courtesy” and “a valid topic but not what we’re here to discuss right now”… but… sure seems like those might help here.
Maybe it’s the old-school small-l liberal in me, but I feel like we lost something socially constructive in dissolving the boundaries between public and private thoughts, school and work and home and pub and church thoughts, the office and the flawed human occupying the office…
People openly signaling they don't care about your feelings and rules are rarely missed. But as a former antisocial outcast myself, I always try to be nice to everyone and show them the light, prefer warnings to kicks and kicks to bans. Politics is really not that serious, decent people can have wildly different views.
It's always been political and always will be, whether people believed or not. And now matter what is being done on the ground to make it otherwise, it will always be in vain.
I told my children “you don’t have to be nice. I expect you to be cordial and respectful. Don’t be a door mat that people walk on.”
I fully expect immigration to grow as an issue in the coming years. Global warming and climate change may make immigrants of those currently deriding immigrants today.
I totally agree that one can decide for themselves to be nice or not nice to anyone, but I wonder as adults is it the right course of action to block/kick someone out as soon as they disagree with you or say, write something you don’t like or when just simply have a difference of opinion. I think that’s very childish and when did we stopped simply to agree to disagree and move forward.
The example in the post is quite obvious with Nazi symbolism. But what if someone express their opinion, which is very conservative, or nationalistic like as an example I love Switzerland and I want Swiss people to prosper and have everything. Would that be incentive because they are excluding rest of the world?
> The example in the post is quite obvious with Nazi symbolism.
Why can't we be adults and agree to disagree on Nazism? If I think Hitler did nothing wrong and you think Hitler was the most evil man on this planet, why can't we just treat this as a difference in opinion and just build cool stuff together?
Of course I agree with OP that one can't be nice to Nazis. But he should have also mentioned that one should not be nice to anyone who kills innocent humans. Not just the Nazis.
Well black people can be citizens, they can be born in the UK. In additon, which "Native Brits" are indigenous to the UK, and do we need to look at how much French/Roman blood etc.?
White Europeans are of course not native to US or Australia.
Because DHH openly calls for murder of "immigrants" (read: non white people, even if they've been there for decades and been more productive members of society than DHH has ever been.), and it's not even a dogwhistle anymore.
>When wolves get out of control, you shoot them. When gypsies take over public spaces, you deport them. This isn't hard, it isn't cruel. It's the basic logic of self-preservation.
(in addition, the concept of Native <any european country> is nonsensical. Europe is at the confluence of migrations and has been for millenia. Attributing "whiteness" as a distinctive attribute of europeans is at best ignorant, and at worst another racist rally point. Go tell the greeks they're white, see how they like it.)
It can be perfectly reasonable to remove people who are being completely inappropriate and/or egregiously insensitive. I think reducing it to simple politics is a distraction though. At the end of the day, people who are making everyone around them uncomfortable and causing everyone else to feel excluded/hated/marginalized probably deserve to learn that behavior is not tolerated, because that's often one of the only things that can get it to change.
Their opinions don't have to be political and your opinions don't have to be political. If someone is making the space worse for everyone, then maybe they're not good for the space. Maybe the space is not good for them. You would be doing good for both sides by stopping them from harming the space, and stopping the space from further enabling the problematic behavior.
I have personal experience with not changing until it became clear enough that certain behavior was driving away everyone and everything I care about. It didn't matter to me how much people told me it was bad, or tried to convince me to stop. What worked was seeing people leave over it, over and over, until I couldn't take it anymore. I had to change. You would be helping these kinds of people, and the community at large, by seeing to the consequences of their actions.
Why is your bar that they must be hurtful to everyone? What do you suggest to do when they direct the same behavior only a certain group in the space? You say that it does not have to be political and I agree, but what if it is? What if they see that group as a legitimate target for political reasons?
It's easier to make my point about behavior that is unquestionably harmful, like what's discussed in the article. Nothing I said can't extend to less clear-cut cases; honestly my entire point is that you should weigh decisions like this based on whether behavior is harmful to the community (or vice versa) rather than based on either side's "politics".
> What if they see that group as a legitimate target for political reasons?
It doesn't matter. I wouldn't engage with whether or not they think they're acting in a justified manner. If the behavior won't stop, the behavior is harmful, and the community would be better off without it, then sometimes you just have to kick someone out.
The reason why I say politics are a distraction is because I don't think you need to bother to explain that someone is politically incorrect or how you are less so. You can, but none of that is actually relevant in a majority of cases. Removing someone from a community is not about being more correct or about them being incorrect, it's for the good of the community (and/or the good of whoever you're removing).
For the better part of two decades I frequented a particular forum, and one of the most common reasons people tended to eventually get banned wasn't because of any particularly egregious political opinion, but because whatever opinion they held they tended to turn every thread they participated in anywhere into either a thread about that or a thread about them.
> They accused me of being 'political' – the very thing an open source project shouldn't be, I'm told. It only divides people. Let's just focus on the technology. Surely we can all get behind building amazing, fast, cool websites!
I would argue that picking an obviously Nazi-coded avatar is in itself political.
It is a deliberate decision to select such an avatar. Nobody picks that symbol by accident. They know exactly what it signals, they know how people will react, and they know that the laissez-faire culture of tech is a perfect ground to normalize this shit.
If there is a not being political rule, then it is perfectly reasonable to ban people like this because they obviously are political.
> DHH, you're not welcome in the Nuxt community, because you say that Black people aren't 'native Brits' and call for the mass deportation of 'gypsies'.
100% agree. Niceness is NOT for white supremacists, and no, I am not debating whether DHH's politics are fascist-adjacent or what % of them are pure fascism.
DHH's politics and the man himself will get only shunning and ridicule from me. He's, after all, one of the weird little guys of FOSS: https://drewdevault.com/weird-guys/
I have no idea why I clicked on that link, but honestly, it must be exhausting to try to care about that stuff consistently. Maybe I’ve gotten old, or have other priorities in life, but I can’t think of being so much into anyone’s yet alone FOSS people’s lives/choices/politics/etc.
Half of these people are trying to actively make life worse for you, or someone you know. We care about that stuff because otherwise people like DHH will want to get you shot if you're black, or people like Stallman will want to sexually harass you if you're a woman.
If you have the privilege of being able to forget about it: congratulations. If you're part of those potentially at risk: closing your eyes just makes their jobs easier.
Over my time in the world I have chafed against the boundaries of “professionalism” and “courtesy” and “a valid topic but not what we’re here to discuss right now”… but… sure seems like those might help here.
Maybe it’s the old-school small-l liberal in me, but I feel like we lost something socially constructive in dissolving the boundaries between public and private thoughts, school and work and home and pub and church thoughts, the office and the flawed human occupying the office…
Of course, this criticism is very popular amongst Scots who live in Scotland which is still overwhelmingly Scottish even in the major cities.
I fully expect immigration to grow as an issue in the coming years. Global warming and climate change may make immigrants of those currently deriding immigrants today.
Me, not being nice: Don't use language to be priggish and confuse. We got enough of that going already.
The example in the post is quite obvious with Nazi symbolism. But what if someone express their opinion, which is very conservative, or nationalistic like as an example I love Switzerland and I want Swiss people to prosper and have everything. Would that be incentive because they are excluding rest of the world?
Why can't we be adults and agree to disagree on Nazism? If I think Hitler did nothing wrong and you think Hitler was the most evil man on this planet, why can't we just treat this as a difference in opinion and just build cool stuff together?
I've got a feeling that the author does not hold the same opinion when it comes to white europeans not being native americans.
White Europeans are of course not native to US or Australia.
>When wolves get out of control, you shoot them. When gypsies take over public spaces, you deport them. This isn't hard, it isn't cruel. It's the basic logic of self-preservation.
(in addition, the concept of Native <any european country> is nonsensical. Europe is at the confluence of migrations and has been for millenia. Attributing "whiteness" as a distinctive attribute of europeans is at best ignorant, and at worst another racist rally point. Go tell the greeks they're white, see how they like it.)
Their opinions don't have to be political and your opinions don't have to be political. If someone is making the space worse for everyone, then maybe they're not good for the space. Maybe the space is not good for them. You would be doing good for both sides by stopping them from harming the space, and stopping the space from further enabling the problematic behavior.
I have personal experience with not changing until it became clear enough that certain behavior was driving away everyone and everything I care about. It didn't matter to me how much people told me it was bad, or tried to convince me to stop. What worked was seeing people leave over it, over and over, until I couldn't take it anymore. I had to change. You would be helping these kinds of people, and the community at large, by seeing to the consequences of their actions.
> What if they see that group as a legitimate target for political reasons?
It doesn't matter. I wouldn't engage with whether or not they think they're acting in a justified manner. If the behavior won't stop, the behavior is harmful, and the community would be better off without it, then sometimes you just have to kick someone out.
The reason why I say politics are a distraction is because I don't think you need to bother to explain that someone is politically incorrect or how you are less so. You can, but none of that is actually relevant in a majority of cases. Removing someone from a community is not about being more correct or about them being incorrect, it's for the good of the community (and/or the good of whoever you're removing).
I would argue that picking an obviously Nazi-coded avatar is in itself political. It is a deliberate decision to select such an avatar. Nobody picks that symbol by accident. They know exactly what it signals, they know how people will react, and they know that the laissez-faire culture of tech is a perfect ground to normalize this shit.
If there is a not being political rule, then it is perfectly reasonable to ban people like this because they obviously are political.
100% agree. Niceness is NOT for white supremacists, and no, I am not debating whether DHH's politics are fascist-adjacent or what % of them are pure fascism.
DHH's politics and the man himself will get only shunning and ridicule from me. He's, after all, one of the weird little guys of FOSS: https://drewdevault.com/weird-guys/
If you have the privilege of being able to forget about it: congratulations. If you're part of those potentially at risk: closing your eyes just makes their jobs easier.
Comparing DHH to a Nazi, which you obviously intended by choosing your “unrelated wink wink start example, is just bullshit.
“Black people are not native Brits” so very obvious facts are now radical?