A Can of WORMS - Part IV - They Would Even Attack RMS for Criticising Autocrats (Saying This is "Politics")
In Part I and in Part II we talked about the sorts of attacks we see against RMS, who started GNU/Linux 43 years ago (1983; Linus Torvalds was literally a kid back then). Part III dealt with another troubling facet and now we sit on a modest trove of interesting new material, which will be spread out for sporadic but fairly steady publication. It will go on until March or April most likely (maybe even longer).
An hour ago an associate told me that Ruben of Rubenerd.com spoke of American politics in his blog, where he already gets a share of abuse (more so when it's picked up by dens of trolls such as Reddit of 'Hacker' 'News'). I spoke to him about it several times in the past; I told him it would be wasteful paying much - or even any - attention to these corporate propaganda hubs, which are manipulated from above by unscrupulous charlatans.
This is his latest:
"Though Ruben does not say the F-word explicitly," an associate argued (the F-word is Freedom by the way, "he embraces those ideals."
"That is why the usual herd of shills and astroturfers have him in their sights."
They have, and I've seen some really malicious messages about him (if not sent directly his way). Since we don't enable comments on our articles we've hardly got the same problem; we didn't abandon comments due to abuse though.
And "it's windy at the top" etc (common wisdom), so the more influential one gets, the more abuse one attracts. This is why my wife and I, for instance, got so viciously abused for a number of years. We reported this many times to the police (as laws had been breached) and eventually filed 3 lawsuits [1, 2, 3]. "The squawking and vociferousness is just an indication that he's on the right track," an associate says of Ruben. "Rather than feeding the astroturfers and their trolling, ignoring them would lessen their effect."
Indeed, but this is not a panacea.
This brings us to RMS. From what I've heard and based on my understanding, the FSF and other friendly interests cautioned him not to reply to any random troll online (like 4Chan trolls baiting him over E-mail). Some other people - less friendly or less supportive voices from what I can gather - urged him to lessen his public writings about politics or some more difficult ethical or moral questions (e.g. abortion, consent age, Middle Eastern politics, religion).
Quite frankly, RMS should be able to write about whatever he wants, and not have any middlemen or moderators pre-filter what he adds to his personal sites in the clearly-labeled political notes. Some people want him censored or prefer for him to self-censor.
Should he forsake his freedom for comfort?
Nope, bad idea! That would be a giant win for the trolls and people who generally don't like him (concern trolls), as it can embolden them and they would then ask for more and more at some random intervals.
You simply cannot appease bad actors by doing anything suggested by them. You can either ignore them or show them the way out.
RMS is turning 73 very soon and at his age he probably doesn't give much of a damn what random trolls online say to him or about him. Good. That's intellectual maturity and the path towards life-long, principled activism.
Conforming to society's perceived expectations isn't how effective activism can ever be done or was ever done in the recent past. Capitulation by adaptation is not a strength, it's a giant loss. It's like people who say "anti-cheat" (rootkits) for "Linux" are a step forward. What next? Back doors? Screenshots taken and uploaded to "the cloud" every 5 seconds? █