Combatting Racist Abuse
This week Drew DeVault is trying to blame his perverse sexual interests on "Kiwi Farms" (no direct link), which he repeatedly mentions. How convenient a blame-shifting move. I never went to that site, but I heard it is very vile, racist, and dubbing it "politically-incorrect" would be an understatement. It sounds like the sort of audience that Microsoft Lunduke targets.
Having had to deal with Microsoft Lunduke trolls and 4Chan trolls (same or overlapping group) over the years, we can understand why some GNU/Linux forums are apprehensive about letting him be mentioned or interjected. Racism follows this "brand" and other forms of intolerance blend in with racism. This repels and drives away amicable contributors/regulars.
My wife and I have been subjected to a lot of racist abuse in recent years (a High Court judge acknowledged we neither invited nor deserved this) and since we believe in free speech (not without consequences) we do our best to document this phenomenon. Some people cannot tolerate us documenting this phenomenon. It this escalates (threats and worse), we contact the police, as we last did a few months ago. There is a difference between being racist and threatening physical violence, though the former can sometimes lead to the latter.
In the area of technology (not just Free software) we must distinguish between people saying insulting things and saying ("joking" according to them) foolish things about acid burns, acid attacks, and all sorts of verbally-graphic violent actions.
The cognitive association or parallel between bigotry and violence isn't elusive or baseless. It's a well proven correlation. The former serves to justify the latter, or convince others to do the latter.
Take racism seriously. If things slip out of hand, there will be no good people left to confront it. █