“Terrorist sympathizer” and “successful businessperson” (or “rich person”) are completely orthogonal. Building a successful business does not necessarily change your terrorist sympathisation status. You can be a rich terrorist sympathiser.
feels like sophistry
the article connects the two, so they are not orthonogonal either:
> But even as things got noisy in public, Masad met eerie silence professionally. “My calendar was suddenly empty, because I was talking about Palestine,” he said. “Replit was not a hot company anymore. We did a layoff. And at the same time, a lot of my friends were no longer my friends. I was no longer invited to parties.”
> Potential partnerships dried up. Masad became a frequent topic in pro-Israel tech groupchats, a source said, where some investors accused him of being antisemitic.
> A Replit investor who requested anonymity to speak candidly told me Masad’s public persona has been “really challenging,” and he’s had to defend the founder in investor circles. I asked if Masad had lost business because of his views. “I’m sure the answer is yes,” the investor said.
It also fitted with some @paulg twitter stuff. He wrote a fair bit about both Gaza and Replit.
TIL. Big fair-play to him, and I'm very sincere about it, he must of have left a lot of potential money on the table from possible investors as a result of his view on the genocide in Gaza. Again, fair play to him, we need a lot more people like him in our (pretty sad) industry from this point of view.
What is obvious is that people should be outraged if a successful businessperson is actually a "terrorist sympathizer", because most people, whatever their ideology, would simply consider it to be an outrageous and ridiculous state of affairs if a successful businessperson was allowed to function unimpeded in western society and its business world if they themselves considered the businessperson to be an unapologetic "terrorist sympathizer".
The title is clearly an enagement ploy by the editor because it forces the reader to decide whether they themselves believe the founder is actually a terrorist sympathizer or not. If they don't think so, then it's outrageous that he's been libelled in a such a manner. If they think he is a terrorist sympathizer then it would be outrageous to them that he is allowed to operate unimpeded in western society and its economic realm.
That's why this comment sounds disingenously pedantic and your follow-up comment's detached tone doesn't feel sincere frankly. The article does list specific reasons why he was called a "terrorist sympathizer" and forces the reader to decide whether they themselves would consider the founder a "terrorist sympathizer" given the context in order to come to a conclusion about him in general.