DHH Is Worse Than I Thought
jakelazaroff.com
jakelazaroff.com
For context I live in central London and quite like the diversity but I don't have a problem with people debating it and saying they'd prefer it different. In fact I think it's healthy to have an open debate.
It is most certainly NOT calling "anyone having doubts" a "racist".
It is calling one particular person's astonishingly racist post as exactly what it is.
I think jakelazaroff twists things rather - I'm after something DHH actually wrote.
As I said - I'm after something DHH actually wrote.
No xenophobic racist with an ounce of sense is going to write something like "brown people are rapist criminals who have invaded our lands and must be cleansed". It's absurd to maintain we must provide that as proof or it didn't happen.
The whole thing reminds me of Hillary's calling Americans deplorable so as to stop Donald Trump. Didn't that work out well?
>There's absolutely nothing racist or xenophobic in saying that Denmark is primarily a country for the Danes, Britain primarily a united kingdom for the Brits, and Japan primarily a set of islands for the Japanese.
with no mention of Brits being defined as "white British people". I'm not sure the source for the Brits=white thing?
He says 1/3 of London is now native brits. Given this article he links to, how else might you interpret that? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_London
> 59% of Londoners were born in the UK! How could it possibly be that only a third of them are native Brits? The article’s first section breaks down the demographic data in a table. The first ethnicity listed? “White British” at 36.8% as of the 2021 census. Ah.
Where is the logical flaw here? How could you read the original DHH quote as anything other than “non-white Brits are not native Brits”?
From DHH’s blog post:
> Don't give up. You survived the Blitz. Britain will be back.
What do you think this means?
Neighborhoods change character and demographics. It’s pretty normal in large, multicultural cities.
The last time I felt DHH deserved headlines was in the early 2000s. Since then I think we're just forced to hear from him because he's good at soundbites.
prolific self-published author of free things on the internet sometimes also sold as books
> software engineer
along with many others who wrote great things in 2005! but what lately? the setup script called omarachy?
> entrepreneur
again, we're two decades from anything I'd call entrepreneurial
babies have born and can vote since the last major wave DHH made, but he's great at soundbites and attention cycles
Also some gems like: https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy/commit/af72a45dbd4358bca...
> Remove non-existent vibe-code hallucinated options and clean up theme files
or https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy/commit/4fedfbe9f19303046...
There's also Omakub[0] which was sort of a precursor to Omarchy that gives users the `wget <some url> | bash` as a means of installation where the install script is a thin wrapper around another `eval $(wget <some url>` that then git clones a repository and executes a 3rd script.
That's definitely the kinds of patterns I'd expect some prolific software engineer to use and also encourage complete novices to Linux to be comfortable just piping arbitrary wgets into a shell
The un-squashed commits are just the tip of the iceberg, but the installation method is the most egregious.
Omarchy's distribution and install is the kind of thing I'd expect to see from a college project, not a leader in the tech world. I don't see DHH as a leader in anything except controversy and clicks these days, though, so the cheerleading around Oma-anything confuses me.
Only a person deeply ensconced in an information bubble could assert this. DHH’s opinions are only surprising and disquieting to a tiny minority of social justice fundamentalists.
The reason this is so uncomfortable for them is because it’s a clear signal that normal middle-of-the-road opinions are (thankfully) becoming normalized once again after the socjus fundies held everyone hostage for over a decade.
The fever is breaking, though, and such people are being revealed for what they actually are: a tiny group of rather unhinged extremists. The rest of us normies are relieved to just be getting back to regular life again.
Hmm. What do you think his opinions mean?
It's funny to me that those who tend to jump to calling out "information bubbles" seem to be the ones most ensconced in them. It's not just you; for example, the most recent DHH blog ("We've all had enough of this nonsense") ranting about how people are trying to "cancel me from Rails" contains a sentence full of links calling the outpouring of support overwhelming, and every single link is a link to a Twitter post. It's equivalent to a pro-LGBT candidate boasting that they have overwhelming public support because they polled everyone at the Pride parade.
I'm actually convinced that many people who claim "that normal middle-of-the-road opinions are becoming normalized once again" believe this _solely_ because of the overwhelmingly hard-rightward shift of political beliefs on Twitter. These people don't seem to understand that Twitter is not real life.
Like DHH, though, I am staunchly anti-multiculturalism. This has nothing to do with genetics or identity groups; it has everything to do with beliefs. Search your own convictions, and you’ll likely find that you feel the same way as DHH and I: you likely want your neighbors to not be ardent believers, for example, that women are inherently 2nd class citizens.
See? We’re already on the same page. You’ve just been misled into thinking that anti-multiculturalism is somehow related to the poison of one specific identity-based movement (white supremacy). You should attempt to discover how and why you’ve been duped, and by whom.
I never claimed that you use Twitter or that you were one of the "Twitter is not real life" people I was referring to.
> Like DHH, though, I am staunchly anti-multiculturalism. This has nothing to do with genetics or identity groups; it has everything to do with beliefs. Search your own convictions, and you’ll likely find that you feel the same way as DHH and I: you likely want your neighbors to not be ardent believers, for example, that women are inherently 2nd class citizens.
Beliefs are held by individuals, not by cultures. To conflate the two sounds dangerously close to racism to me. So no, I don't feel the same way as you or DHH about this. It might be true that I don't want my neighbors to believe that women are 2nd class citizens, but there are plenty of people who believe that anyway in my own culture, so I don't see the this point and multiculturalism as being connected. The logical thing to do in this case is to espouse anti-mysogynism, not anti-multiculturalism.
> You’ve just been misled into thinking that anti-multiculturalism is somehow related to the poison of one specific identity-based movement (white supremacy).
No, I was not misled into that; we are discussing DHH here, and I think it's clear from his own words that DHH is referring to some sort of ethnic nationalism. The evidence is only a single click away from his "As I remember London" blog post, if you haven't seen it yet: the very first link in the article (anchor text "no longer full of native Brits") links to the "Ethnic groups in London" wikipedia entry[1]. So he is equating being a "native Brit" with being of a certain ethnic group. Do you share my belief that "ethnic group" and "identity group" are terms that are reasonably close in meaning? If so, then by your own admission, DHH is not espousing anti-multiculturalism, and instead is advocating for some sort of ethno-nationalism.
There may be a place for the idea that “immigrants are Brits too, but we to improve cultural integration.” This is not that at all.
I think you both are engaging in an extremely uncharitable reading of DHH’s “native Brit” phrase.
Hopefully he will clarify more what he means in the future so that we won’t have to guess. In my opinion, though, he is referring to culture and not engaging in some kind of genetics-based argument as you seem to be implying.
We’ll see!
> Hopefully he will clarify more what he means in the future so that we won’t have to guess
No one’s guessing here other than you. DHH has been quite clear in what he’s referring to, and if you don’t see that you either haven’t been reading the responses carefully from me and others, or you are being willfully ignorant.
Edit: just saw the comment in your profile about wanting karma <= 0. Nice trolling! I’ll keep the rest of this post up to remind future me not to engage with those who aren’t serious.
"Britain for whites" and "total remigration" seem to be major throughlines for this movement.
Hey, DHH. You're a wanker, mate. And, speaking as a Londoner, you haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about.
Stick to Rails, something you actually seem proficient at.
I'm not sure he's bringing it up for that reason. He thinks the label is losing its power because it really is losing power over him, because he's becoming more comfortable with it and beginning to accept it. Keep an eye out for if he starts to call himself a fascist "ironically".
The label is losing its power. The central blocs have been labelling everything they don't like as either far left or far right. The party I mainly vote for in my home country has been accused of being far left, when they've stayed to their traditionally left/center-left discourse.
I think there's a case, in Europe, for accusing the mainstream parties of moving the far left/right goalposts so people who vote for these parties are seen as a marginal part of the electorate.
Is being vaguely anti-immigrant actually that far outside of what people people consider moral or acceptable these days? Like, I am shocked how much gets said on HN when H1B's are brought up.
I don't agree with with any of the points in DHH's linked article. But like, DHH acknowledging Tommy Robinson's march existed probably shouldn't subject him to every criticism of Tommy Robinson.
As for Tommy, if you are not familiar with it's worth looking at his Wikipedia entry. He is a violent thug and career criminal. He has been convicted of: fraud, possession intent to supply drugs, assaulting a police officer (whom he kicked in the head while on the floor), entering the US on a false passport, stalking and harassing journalists, contempt of court on multiple occasions (one of which he seriously jeopardised the court trial of some paedophiles) This is not an exhaustive list. And without getting into his foul politics. Lending any credence whatsoever to this man is very telling
Listen - you don't have to sell me on not liking Robinson. But plenty of people participate in political moments without fulling endorsing their progenitors (plenty of iconic activists have problematic pasts), so it seems fair to at least give DHH the benefit of the doubt when it comes to associations. Lest we all be judged by the same standard.
[1] https://hopenothate.org.uk/2025/09/13/britains-biggest-far-r...
I really implore you to reconsider this position. Our world is wrapped up in injustice and political violence because everyone is jumping to extremist positions. And the last thing we need is declaring people guilty merely by association or poor attempts at empathy.
From a good faith reading of DHH's article, it's pretty clear he is expressing empathy for the feelings of the marchers (and even TR) without much care to the particulars (it doesn't sound like he himself marched or was personally witness to them). In the same way we allow for people to feel empathy for Luigi Mangione's motives without accusing them of also being homicidal.
You would be better off digging into DHH's actual problematic idea that he is trying to put forward: that the UK, or more specifically London, should fetishize and emulate the policy of anti-immigration countries. His actual thesis is bad enough and easily debunked without trying to pick apart "dog-whistles" and subtexts.
DHH is expressing a terrible idea, but in good faith. To maybe prove his point for him in an ironic way - Denmark can have actual harmful, racist, anti-immigrant legislation - but because no one cared about the rhetoric that was used they got it done.
“White Brits (or Nords, or Americans) are the only true Brits (Nords/Americans)” is a difficult position for me to have any sort of sympathy or tolerance for, though I’m sure his distressed feelings on this matter are genuine.
And as the article linked points out, the speakers at this march were quite extreme. So it's not as if the march is even defensible in isolation. I think DHH is too smart to be ignorant to any of this.
(I will say I don't condemn everyone who attended the march, I imagine many went with good intentions)
He is not vague about it.
> DHH acknowledging Tommy Robinson's march existed
He did more than just acknowledge it.
> London is no longer the city I was infatuated with in the late '90s and early 2000s. Chiefly because it's no longer full of native Brits.
and linked to the Wikipedia page on ethnic groups in London showing that there aren't as many white people in London as there used to be.
About Tommy Robinson's march, he wrote Tommy Robinson's march
> That frustration [with mass immigration] was on wide display in Tommy Robinson's march yesterday. British and English flags flying high and proud
Tommy Robinson is devoutly anti-Islam and founded the English Defence League.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45332860
774 points | 496 comments | 10 days ago