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To clarify, it's Lennart Poettering. This is a systemd joke in poor taste, but that's all it is.
Germany has very tough laws against glorifying the Nazi regime, so if they are Germans it’s not just sick humor but deliberate.
Though Suckless vs. Poetering seems like a Hitler vs. Stalin evil-fights-evil situation best avoided by giving both a wide berth.
However, when you're doing that with strangers in public, for example on the Internet, you're just sending the wrong message and building a space where such takes are normalized. See also "cultural hegemony".
(It says something about the intelligence of neonazis that the paragraph still finds frequent application.)
We shouldn't normalise bad interpretations regardless of our own biases.
They have said they're not, so we should take them at face value. Let's now focus on participating to achieve the shared goals of good user-software without bloat, spyware, and other crap that makes up modern technology.
Unfortunately, that's the opposite. I was very interested in suckless some years ago, and was very disappointed to learn their tolerance (if not sympathy) towards nazism.
> They have said they're not, so we should take them at face value.
Denying affiliation is a classic strategy in psyops. The alt-right and manosphere have established entire PR strategies based on that.
I'd be more inclined to trust a person/collective declaring they anti-nazi (or antifascist if you will), than a person/collective declaring they're "not a nazi" then leaving traces of nazi symbolism everywhere.
The same is true for attributing tainted characteristics to your ideological opponents - just call them "nazi" or "fascist" and anything goes. If they deny that they are nazis or fascists, well, that just proves they are nazis or fascists. This is called a Kafka trap. It is the same tactic used by so-called anti-fascists to legitimise physical assault on ideological opponents, they just simply call them "nazi" and start a "punch a nazi" campaign. It is also the tactic used by Ibram Henry Rogers (who took up the nom-de-guerre "Ibram X. Kendi") to be able to label people racist by stating that those who deny they are racist thereby confirm their racism. What all these tactics have in common is that they do not actually aim to confirm or refute the presence of a given trait, instead they are used to force another trait upon the accused - whether that be "anti-fascism" (which you referred to) or "anti-racism" (which Rogers refers to). Those forced traits tend to carry the name of the thing they supposedly refute while often encompassing elements of the refuted trait: so-called anti-fascists act like fascists, so-called anti-racists call for racism like the following quote from Rogers' "How to be an anti-racist": "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination".
This can be generalised: the opposite of an extreme opinion is another extreme opinion, the opposite of an extremist is another extremist.
> I'd be more inclined to trust a person/collective declaring they anti-nazi (or antifascist if you will), than a person/collective declaring they're "not a nazi" then leaving traces of nazi symbolism everywhere.
Honest question: would you be more inclined to trust a person or collective declaring themselves to be, say, anti-communist than one declaring not to be communist? I have seen a glaring discrepancy between the trust put in so-called "anti-fascists" (who more often than not are all too happy to use the same tactics as the original brownshirts used to spread their ideology) and that put in those calling themselves "anti-communist" with the former being given the benefit of the doubt while the latter are watched with suspicion since they may be "right-wingers". Well, yes, they might lean to the right, just like those "anti-fascists" most likely lean to the left. Whether that makes the one better than the other depends solely on your ideological standpoint and as such is subjective, not objective.
[1] this could even be an option in personal settings, something like 'Show dead [ ]', 'Show politics [ ]'). It would also make the job of policing the forum easier since anything political can simply be flagged as such by moderators or users, just like users can flag posts and replies.
I think you're mistaken in your interpretation, especially given their own clarifications, however let's not derail this thread further, and let's agree that user-friendly non-bloated non-spyware technology is a good goal for all of us even if we pursue them in different groups.
If only it were that simple.
Seems like a lot of what ails modern discourse is simply imagining malicious injury or oppression when we should work on finding commonalities instead of what differences are there.
... then yes, as a general principle, we should take people at face value on the Internet, unless there's a clear reason to do otherwise - which could be a reason to confront the person about their statements. Quite a lot of dysfunction in Internet (and increasingly, offline too) discourse comes from "they say X, but what they really mean is Y" pattern of thinking.
If I wanted to slander someone, believing me, the accuser, over you, the accused, is a good way to break societal trust since nothing can be believed any more.
I see this kind of remark every now and then and I interpret it as 'when we agree I like what you write but when we don't you must be wrong'.
You certainly don't need to engage with every comment made online, but my surprise comes from the lack of articulation on this issue. I am happy to learn and expand my own knowledge where possible. I won't however take certain assertions at face value, especially those that cast aspersions (esp. accusations of Nazism) in an environment whereby it's easy to throw people into a Kakfa trap, accusing them of being racist, sexist, misogynist, or some other piece of slander, without any proper evidence behind it other than personal opinion and interpretation.