Comment by srid
1 year ago
I've been following the actions and discussions of these activists in NixOS community since November last year.
Note that you can't discuss this open letter -- or any issues of that nature -- openly in the official places (NixOS Discourse & Matrix), because there is a risk of getting tarred as "fascist" or "concern-troll" before getting banned. Someone named Ailunarenth respectfully engaged in such a discussion only to get banned:
https://twitter.com/sridca/status/1782200842571198962
If you post in Discourse, it is likely to get "unlisted" (meaning censored from Google and other search pages) by the mods. A case in point: you can't reach this post without a direct link (the open letter alludes to Jon Ringer being one of these 'fascists'):
https://discourse.nixos.org/t/objection-to-minority-represen...
I myself got banned for a picture of a steak and a link on my website, back in November last year:
But none of this is surprising because "ejecting fascists" (where 'fascist' means "someone whose opinion I don't like") has been the theme of these activists since 2021. See the downvotes in this sensible comment: https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/98#issuecomment-902913333
> "ejecting fascists" (where 'fascist' means "someone whose opinion I don't like")
Source: https://hachyderm.io/@leftpaddotpy/112248186696362113
What they wrote: "there's a lot of work still to do on getting fascists out of the community and everyone is quite exhausted from the fight to get this passed. however. the fascists will get kicked out."
And where they wrote, in a post right below, that "fyi: if you still have concerns please talk to piegames, they're very involved in making this happen" - the person "piegames" being referred to here is a moderator of NixOS.
That discourse link is the dictionary definition of concern trolling: Appearing to be open to be convinced, but not being so. Appearing to care about minority concerns, but then disregarding them (while attempting to eliminate the entire concept of someone having limited perspective with a tired "we're all human"). Appearing to understand that the current status quo of who is engaging with the Nix community is disappointingly limited, but refusing a solution because it's not as good as a hypothetical nonexistent option defined as "doesn't involve something I don't like" while putting responsibility for conjuring the option on everyone but him.
Yeah, what an annoying person, I wouldn't want to work with him either. At least most people with this world view don't cloak it in a layer of reasonable sounding but devoid of substance discourse that wastes everyone's time.