DHH and Omarchy: Midlife Crisis
blogs.gnome.org
blogs.gnome.org
"Is there any chance for these people, who are shielded by their well-paying jobs, their exclusively occupational media diet, and stimuli all happen to reinforce the default world view?"
So many people (mostly American men) are insulated from reality. To use their pejorative language - when it finally intrudes on their safe spaces, they turn into little snowflakes.
How is it possible to look at the infinite diversity in the tech world, with a million opinions on matters trivial and profound, and then declare that only you have all the right answers?
"They're insulated from reality" the Marxist chortled just moments after unironically claiming men can be pregnant.
The ruse is up. Calling anyone right of Mao a Nazi doesn't work anymore.
I don't like what DHH has become or what he says (nor do I have any interest in Omarchy, I prefer Fedora (for many years)/KDE (recently but loving it) anyway) since "As I remember London[1]" was the final straw for me (of lots of straws) but on the flip side but if you only ever use software written by people you ideologically align with you are going to have a bad time.
The issue is how wide the tolerance is before you decide as a group people need excluding, if you set that too narrow you end up with an immediate conflict, if you set it too wide you risk your open community becoming dominated by one group.
I'm centre left (by European standards) and would definitely be considered "woke" by the people who use it as a negative epithet but I think many open source communities set it too narrow still.
People have a right to their opinions even if I don't agree with them just as I do, there is a line where active opposition is required for me but a lot of the time I disagree with where that line is.
One reason to actively oppose DHH is that he actively opposes anyone who calls him out, going as far as squashing valid criticism at his own company and ousting them from positions in open source projects (the whole ruby central case).
Even if you don't think he's a nazi, he's shown himself to be a bad actor who doesn't play by the rules.
That's also a kind of behaviour that leads to community vibes going down the drain and other bad actors (nazi or not) taking over.
You can legitmately call out those people for the views they hold, you don't need call them something they aren't.
It would be as stupid as calling me a Stalinist because I'm slightly left of centre, it ends the debate because why would you debate someone you called a Stalinist.
I don't have to like DHH or his views but he's not a fascist.
If DHH wanted to argue about, say, different taxation strategies or deregulation or supporting our monarchy - those are all things which we can have a reasonable debate about. I don't have to agree on your stance on free school meals and student debt, but we can get along just fine.
https://gizmodo.com/godwin-of-godwins-law-by-all-means-compa...
Glad that's not what happened, DHH is not a Nazi.
He has also quite clearly taken a nazi or ethnonationalist stance. If we allow the term "nazi" to refer to people other than literal card-carrying members of the German Nazi party up until 1945, he fits the description accurately.
No he hasn't. Holding heterodox opinions isn't being "a bad actor."
>He will continue to drive away sane people from the communities he's a part of.
He's driven insane people from the communities he's a part of. Sane people will flock to them.
>He has also quite clearly taken a nazi or ethnonationalist stance.
No he hasn't. There's nothing wrong with promoting or protecting the interests of native or indigenous people over those of immigrants or foreigners.
And he is an ethnonationalist. In "As I remember London", he claimed Britain was a third native brit, then backed it up with a wikipedia link showing a third of London was white. So in DHH's mind white = British. There's no other way to interpret that, and he hasn't corrected it.
His company, his rules. He banned activist employees from using work as a platform to proselytize their grievance politics.
>In "As I remember London", he claimed Britain was a third native brit, then backed it up with a wikipedia link showing a third of London was white.
This is what happens when you only read posts on Bluesky/Mastodon. He claimed London was only a third "native Brit" which is the factual reality, backed up by Wikipedia. He didn't include "all Whites" just "White Brits." White Brits are the only native Brits to Britain.
>So in DHH's mind white = British.
Wrong. White Brit = native Brit, which is factually correct.
>There's no other way to interpret that
Correct, no other way to interpret the facts.
>and he hasn't corrected it.
"He hasn't removed the wrongthink!"
But even for a faulty ethnonationalist concept of nationality, the data point makes no sense. I'm white and born in Finland. By your logic, if I move to the UK and become a naturalized citizen, then I would be a native. Which is obviously not true. So the one third figure is both racist and incrdibly stupid.
Native means you're born somewhere. Equating nationality by skin color is ethnonationalism. So I guess congrats, you're a nazi.
There's no "thinking" White Brits are the only Brits native to Britain, they are. It's not ethnonationalist, it is an indisputable fact.
>the data point makes no sense
If you bothered to read his blog post, not just Bluesky/Mastodon comments, the data point makes a lot of sense.
>I'm white and born in Finland. By your logic, if I move to the UK and become a naturalized citizen, then I would be a native.
Here is where you're wrong. You would not be native, you would still be a foreigner. Finns are not White Brits. Russians, Austrians, etc. may all be White, but they are not White Brits, and are therefore not native Brits, even if they move and gain citizenship.
>So the one third figure is both racist and incrdibly stupid.
Neither racist nor stupid, just wrongthink.
>Native means you're born somewhere.
White Brits are the only indigenous Brits.
>Equating nationality by skin color is ethnonationalism.
Glad that's not what I nor DHH did.
>So I guess congrats, you're a nazi.
So I guess congrats, you're a genocidal Maoist-Leninist-Marxist.
The indigenous claim is also funny, because that would refer specifically to Celtic peoples in Britain. And the modern white British population is not predominantly Celtic, and definitely not indigenous. The Anglo-Saxons, e.g., are not indigenous to Britain.
Which leads to the most hilarious point of your post, where you first equate nationality with skin color (in a particularly misguided way) "White Brits are the only indigenous Brits", and then immediately deny that you are equating nationality with skin color.
That's a decent self-contradiction speedrun.
I don't get it. You clearly hold ethnonationalist views and aren't afraid to express them, so I wonder why you're afraid of admitting that you are an ethnonationalist. Be honest about it.
For me the term has specific far-right connotations; specifically the persecution, or desire to persecute, non-nationals or non-indigenous (or whatever term you'd like to use for the most ancient and rooted culture of a nation).
Your definition is apparently different: what is it?
Btw, the Anglo Saxons did not replace the native English; they were ultimately assimilated into the tribes they conquered. Many (most?) English can trace their genes back to the earliest settlers.
The persecution and vilification of other groups is a natural consequence of being an ethnonationalist. DHH also does this, of course, as he paints a false narrative in his blog text that brown people are dangerous.
Identifying with your tribe is a completely different idea. Your tribe (or nation) is not defined by ethnicity, but by culture.
If you believe a cultural identity should be tied to the political state, that's called civic nationalism. Most countries were founded on some form of nationalism during the 1800s, so you're onto something there. These were ideas that grew out of the German idealist philosophy, and it's no coincidence that nationalism in Germany eventually developed into the ethnonationalist Völkisch movement, which was the precursor to the Nazi party.
---
The English culture _is_ the Anglo-Saxon cultrue, so the Anglo-Saxons couldn't have replaced them yes, but only because no such group as the English existed before the Anglo-Saxons arrived.
"the Anglo Saxons did not replace the native English" is a ridiculous statement on multiple levels. You've outdone you previous self-contradiction speedrun, now the contradiction is in the same sentence.
I've never seen him even imply this; and I'm afraid I simply presume accusations of racism on the internet to be false and malicious unless they come with hard evidence.
> Identifying with your tribe is a completely different idea. Your tribe (or nation) is not defined by ethnicity, but by culture.
Fine, I can go with that. Does that mean that people from other cultures are not of this nation?
> no such group as the English existed before the Anglo-Saxons arrived.
Who built Stonehenge? If you're just being pedantic (and your next reply is likely to be something like "the word English is derived from Angle"), then let's instead refer to them as the peoples who already inhabited the British Isles.
> You've outdone you previous self-contradiction speedrun, now the contradiction is in the same sentence.
I honestly don't know what this sentence means.
Re nation: a nation is the socially constructed identity I was talking about. It can be mono- or multicultural, and people from other cultures may be integrated, it's all vibes-based depending on the nation. But one thing is clear, if you're born into a culture you are part of the culture, and so through a civic nationalist logic you are automatically part of that nation. Also note that nation does not equal state or country.
RE stone henge: that was ~6-4000 years ago, many thousand years before the Anglo-Saxons, so all we have to go on there is material culture, because it's prehistoric. As far as I can tell from a quick wikipedia read, a first part was built by neolithic farmers from a material culture associated with Anatolia, modern day Turkey. A second part may have been constructed by the Bell Beaker people (referring to material culture again) who arrived later. There was also an existing hunter-gatherer substrate before these other groups arrived. That substrate was mostly replaced by the neolithic farmer culture, which was in turn mostly replaced by the Bell Beaker culture. This replacement was a fairly long process, and the gene pool was also largely replaced during both of these transitions.
Both of these transitions are long before the Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, etc., the labels we currently associate with Britain.
And the last point is my mistake, I thought you were the same guy as before, but your statement's premise was contradictory. You can't replace yourself, can you.
I didn't read it that way at all. I certainly didn't see him "painting brown people as criminal". I read it predominantly as the musings of a man afraid to lose his culture in the same way the Cockneys lost theirs. Now it's my experience that most fears are exaggerated - and perhaps his fears are exaggerated - but that doesn't mean they aren't legitimate. At the very least, they need to be heeded, because - as no one famous ever said - feelings don't care about your facts.
> a nation is the socially constructed identity I was talking about. It can be mono- or multicultural, and people from other cultures may be integrated
...or they may not be...
> But one thing is clear, if you're born into a culture you are part of the culture, and so through a civic nationalist logic you are automatically part of that nation.
All that is true, but as you just pointed out, there is not only one culture, so which culture are you born into, and is it compatible with the other cultures you have to live with? A nation also has to function; and for a democratic nation to function, it has to be united on the fundamentals. Regardless of the cause, it is quite clear to me that a good deal of trust has now broken down between different communities in my country. That needs to be addressed, not lazily dismissed as mere racism.
And leftists in particular have no business dismissing it as mere racism; because, if we want to get into causes, I'd just like to remind everyone reading this that the idea that we can and should divide and categorise people by their race has been aggressively and exclusively pushed for the last decade or more - and successfully mainstreamed - by the left. Now we all have to reap what they've sewn.
DHH's fears are all feeling no fact. The "Pakistani rape gangs" targeting "white british girls" and trying to tie brown people to increasing theft is made specificly to paint brown people as dangerous. No mention of the fact that the perpetrators were all native brits, part of whom had Pakistani heritage, no mention of the fact that white people are more likely to commit child sexual assualt in general, no evidence provided for the idea that brown people commit theft. DHH is clearly associating the crimes with perpetrators at the resolution of skin color, because he does not give any other information.
A nation is not a state, it cannot be democratic. A nation is a socially constructed group identity, it's not the same as your country. A state can be multinational, as the UK is.
Racist ideology, and the very idea of races, comes from right wing ideas like nationalism and colonialism. The right wing historically supported apartheid, Jim Crow, zionism, segregation, the idea that muslims are terrorist, and that black people are criminals and dumb. There are multiple far-right groups pushing false racist narratives for decades, such as the Pioneer Fund (founded 1937) and the Human Diversity Foundation in DHH's native denmark (founded 2022). They are all far-right ethnonationalist groups.
The fact is that the nazi ideology did not disappear after WWII, it just kept out of the mainstream and tried to reinvent itself with a more seemingly scientific public image, claiming to cite statistics and banking on the audience not being able to interpret them.
The left is interested in combating these ideas, which is why it talks about them, because they are dangerous. The left does not generally use the concept of race, which is nebulous, conflating ethnicity, statehood, and cultural identity, like the protonazi Völkisch movement did.
And you usually don't sew seeds. You're thinking of stitches.
They're mostly feelings (which is what I said above), but there are plenty of facts in that article as well.
> The "Pakistani rape gangs" targeting "white british girls" and trying to tie brown people to increasing theft is made specificly to paint brown people as dangerous.
Where does DHH say that the characteristics of the Pakistani rape gangs extend to all brown people, or even to all Pakistanis? You've made that leap all by yourself. And his remark on phone theft doesn't make reference to race at all; nor does the article he links to. They were just talking about the rise in crime, and you again added the racial element yourself. Instead he's criticising the police, firstly for not dealing with the rise in crime, and secondly for their authoritarian behaviour.
As for what he doesn't mention, that doesn't make him far right any more than your failure to acknowledge his points about authoritarianism makes you far right.
> A nation is not a state, it cannot be democratic. A nation is a socially constructed group identity, it's not the same as your country. A state can be multinational, as the UK is.
You're very good at being pedantic on points that don't further the conversation. I think you know what I was getting at. If you don't, please ask for clarity. Otherwise, perhaps you could address the point directly rather than deflect from it.
> Racist ideology, and the very idea of races, comes from right wing ideas like nationalism and colonialism
That's your assertion and I doubt it very much; moreso given the very obvious racism that's been peddled by the left that I mentioned in a previous comment, and that you refuse to acknowledge. And what makes you think colonialism is a right wing idea? Have you never heard of The Soviet Union? Or is that the right kind of empire? More likely, racist ideology is as old as the human race, and is a simple manifestation of tribalism.
But you're right at least that, since the far left have been slandering everyone to the right of Mao as far right - especially if they're a liberal, the real far right are now able to hide in plain sight.
But I'm really not interested in having an argument about which of these rancid ideologies is worse. Frankly, they're largely indistinguishable to me, and are both equally detestable.
> The left is interested in combating these ideas
Some of us are. Some right wingers are as well. Others of us want to use race to sow division. (Did I get it right this time?) And those people, as far as I'm concerned, are the worst kind of racists because they mask it behind feigned compassion. At least the far right are honest about their superiority complex.
And the point about confusing nations and states is salient, because that is exactly what nationalists do. Using them synonymously is a rhetorical device which strengthens a nationalist conception of statehood. It lays the groundwork for ethnonationalist to further confuse the right to citizenship with ethnicity.
I'm not being pedantic here, I'm dismantling misconceptions in the premise of the discussion.
I absolutely don't know it. Reading comprehension is being able to accurately describe what's written; not inferring insinuations and presenting them as fact. You can't even get your first sentence right. DHH doesn't say London is now full of brown people; he says London is no longer full of native Brits. If you look at the chart in the article he links to, you'll notice that many (not quite most) of the immigrants he's talking about are white; but you presume they must be brown. Then you see a subset of Pakistanis mentioned and it just reinforces your cognitive bias.
Try to empty your mind of these preconceptions and read the article again.
> And the point about confusing nations and states is salient, because that is exactly what nationalists do.
Where does DHH do that in the article? Please provide an actual quote this time instead of some vague interpretation.
I'm still unclear what point you're trying to make about nations in the first place anyway. Earlier you said:
> Re nation: a nation is the socially constructed identity I was talking about. It can be mono- or multicultural, and people from other cultures may be integrated, it's all vibes-based depending on the nation. But one thing is clear, if you're born into a culture you are part of the culture, and so through a civic nationalist logic you are automatically part of that nation. Also note that nation does not equal state or country.
So if a nation can be made up of multiple potentially divergent cultures then it's clearly not tied to culture. If it's not tied to state either, then is it just tied to region? If it is, then what value does a nation even have? Why even name it? Britain is a state and a nation. Does that make it nationalist? Is it therefore a lost cause to begin with, as far as you're concerned?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you're from mainland Europe, because your concept of nationhood seems to be rooted in European nationalism.
Definitions for words you clearly don't understand are not "shifting" anywhere.
>And conveniently not responding to the point that native means you're born somewhere.
I've responded multiple times, you're refusing to acknowledge it because it destroys your narrative. Native does not mean "you're born somewhere." Many cows are born in the US, yet they are not native there.
>The indigenous claim is also funny, because that would refer specifically to Celtic peoples in Britain.
No it wouldn't, Celtics displaced Neolithic Iberians before them. Not that it matters, the only extant indigenous group to London are English people, which descend in part from Celtic Britons.
>And the modern white British population is not predominantly Celtic, and definitely not indigenous.
They're a mix, and definitely indigenous.
>The Anglo-Saxons, e.g., are not indigenous to Britain.
But English people are. English people are "are an ethnic group and nation native to England." [0]
And what group do English people fall under? The "native Brits" DHH mentions. White Brits being "the White population identifying as English, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, Northern Irish, or British." [1]
Native Brits, more specifically English people, are the only native people indigenous to London.
QED.
>Which leads to the most hilarious point of your post, where you first equate nationality with skin color (in a particularly misguided way)
I never equated nationality with skin color, only ethnic groups. Russians share the same skin color as White Brits, yet are not White Brits, and are not native to London.
>White Brits are the only indigenous Brits", and then immediately deny that you are equating nationality with skin color.
This is what happens when you get political commentary from Bluesky and Mastodon. You had no clue that White British were an ethnicity grouping, nor did you understand the fact that English people are natives.
>That's a decent self-contradiction speedrun.
Only of you don't understand the meaning of words, which is clearly the case here.
>I don't get it. You clearly hold ethnonationalist views and aren't afraid to express them, so I wonder why you're afraid of admitting that you are an ethnonationalist. Be honest about it.
I don't get it. You clearly hold Anglophobic views and aren't afraid to express them, so I wonder why you're afraid of admitting that you are a Marxist Anglophobe. Be honest about it.
Native quite literally means associated with birth. It does also mean something that's lived somewhere since prehistoric times.
If we use the first definition, then white brits and everyone else born in the UK are native.
If we use the second definition then neolithic farmers with an Anatolian material culture are native. Since they were replaced there are no natives in that sense in the UK.
But there is no interpretation where white brits are native and second generation immigrants aren't.
Yes, and the only current ethnic group birthed in England are the English. British Asians derive their ancestry from Asia, the ethnic group is not native to, nor born from England. They're non-indigenous to the UK/Europe. You inadvertantly proved my point.
QED.
>If we use the first definition, then white brits and everyone else born in the UK are native.
Not at all, the non-native ethnic groups are not native to the UK. Notice how only English people are listed as native to England.
>If we use the second definition then neolithic farmers with an Anatolian material culture are native.
As are their descendants which are the English.
>Since they were replaced there are no natives in that sense in the UK.
Their descendants, the native ethnic group known as English people, are native to the UK.
>But there is no interpretation where white brits are native and second generation immigrants aren't.
Wrong, this is the only interpretation: "The English people are an ethnic group and nation native to England, who speak the English language, a West Germanic language, and share a common ancestry, history, and culture."
You're just wrong on the basic facts now. But that's no surprise, you're a nazi.
Yes they are, sourced above.
>And second generation immigrants are also "birthed" in England (and the rest of the UK).
Immigrant ethnic groups are not birthed in England, which is why they're not considered English nor "native." Their ancestry is foreign. Foreign ethnic groups are non-indigenous to England.
>You're just wrong on the basic facts now.
"Your facts are wrong!" the Marxist chortled just moments after unironically claiming men can be pregnant. All of the basic facts agree with DHH and my comments.
I provided sources, you have not. The facts are: only the English are native to London.
>But that's no surprise, you're a nazi.
But that's no surprise, you're a marxist.
Would you look at this, "non-indigenous minorities" [0]. Lists all the nonnative groups to England, ethnic groups that were not "birthed" in England, nor Europe.
"Recent genetic studies have suggested that Britain's Neolithic population was largely replaced by a population from North Continental Europe characterised by the Bell Beaker culture around 2400 BC, associated with the Yamnaya people from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe."
And you can't use the fact that wikipedia uses the term "non-indigenous" for a group to prove a point about "non-native", when what your arguing is that they mean the same. That's a circular argument, the premise is only true if the conclusion is true.
There's also a category error here, whether a group belongs to non-indigenous minorities says nothing about indigenous majority, which is what you're claiming the English are. They would not be present in "non-indigenous minority" because they are not a minority.
Again, you're the only one bringing up "indigenous" as a relevant concept. Something that neither DHH nor anyone else but you in this discussion is arguing about.
Yes, the source that literally proves my point.
>"Recent genetic studies have suggested that Britain's Neolithic population was largely replaced by a population from North Continental Europe characterised by the Bell Beaker culture around 2400 BC, associated with the Yamnaya people from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe."
And if you continue reading, the English are the descendants of that population, the mix Neolithic and Northern European peoples, even though most of the Neolithic were replaced, the English descended from both.
Thanks for proving my point?
>And you can't use the fact that wikipedia uses the term "non-indigenous" for a group to prove a point about "non-native", when what your arguing is that they mean the same. That's a circular argument, the premise is only true if the conclusion is true.
Those groups are non-indigenous to Europe, which means they are de facto not native to London. There are indigenous groups in Europe and the UK that are similarly not native to London. These two words mean different things.
>There's also a category error here, whether a group belongs to non-indigenous minorities says nothing about indigenous majority, which is what you're claiming the English are. They would not be present in "non-indigenous minority" because they are not a minority.
The only category error here is you trying to claim non-indigenous foreign groups are "native" when by definition, and all sources I've provided, show they are not.
>Again, you're the only one bringing up "indigenous" as a relevant concept. Something that neither DHH nor anyone else but you in this discussion is arguing about.
The only native group to London are the English. The English are White Brits. DHH claimed "native Brits," and "native Brits" are those who are indigenous to the area, the English.
Just like boycotting your favourite chocolate company because they try to undermine breastfeeding in developing countries. Yes, it hurts a little; that's the point of sacrifice.
Good luck to anyone wanting only ideologically compatible software. They'll end up with pretty much nothing left to use.
Same applies to companies that produce goods. It's a never ending hole.
Cloudflare have always been like this. They previously defended hate speech because it made them money.
Some people are just nasty. They like to bully other people and now believe they have a social licence to do so.
Pity, because DHH is a weapons-grade plum, to borrow words from Sue Perkins, though she never used them against DHH - it's just an apt title.
If I write an essay called "I love cabbage" and then fill it with all the ways I hate cabbage, how would you link to it?
It's OK to call out people for being disingenuous.
But he already primes the reader to take his viewpoint by shoving it in there, instead of treating the reader like a person able to make up their own mind, probably because he doesn't trust the reader to reach the exact same conclusion as he does.
Do you friends say things like "You should watch this film, it is very funny" and "Don't watch that film, it is boring"? Or are they more likely to say "This is a film which exists" without context?
The purpose of communication is to express our ideas and convince people. It is entirely appropriate to say "Here is an article and some context you need to know before reading it."
That's especially true when the article hides its true intent. When DHH writes about supporting a violent and racist criminal (as he has) he doesn't say "I like this thug" - instead he attempts to hide that.
So, yes. Retitling the articles is an excellent way to cut through the double-speak presented in them.