When blind conformity is not desirable

Summary: Using the veneer of "diversity" and "tolerance" the Debian Project (to give just one example) is fully engaged in a cull of people who are simply an obstruction in the face of corporate takeover (power-imposed conformism)

Tragically, if not rather outrageously, we're seeing large corporations exploiting/leveraging the very issues that they themselves are the biggest participants/abusers/culprits in. For many generations corporations and their founding oligarchs have attacked people with their racist and sexist policies (ranging from unfair/discriminatory payments to classic slavery, sometimes even genocide) and now they're trying to oust people who are critical of corporate power using political lines, either real or perceived.

Examples aren't absent (short order); there are many of them out there and 'cancel culture' accelerated the pace of this agenda. Yesterday, somebody who had worked on Debian published the following E-mail, which basically shows Debian leadership trying to 'cancel' both a programmer/activist and a journalist (chilling effect) who wrote about the programmer:

 Subject: On coverage of Abbelbaum being "banned" from Debian
 Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2016 09:34:50 +0200
 From: Enrico Zini <enrico@enricozini.org>
 To: andrew.matler@itwire.com




 Dear Editor in Chief of iTWire,




 you may want to do something about this article by Sam Varghese on
 Debian revoking membership of Jacop Appelbaum:
 http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/73441-appelbaum-banned-from-debian-events-after-sexual-misconduct-charges.html




 While the first part is factually correct in its DPL quote, the article
 ends with baseless hints of Debian and Tor having fallen victims to
 manipulations by GCHQ psyops.




 I consider that to be psycological [sic] violence[1] against the various well
 known people who came out to report abuse, and I wish that news coverage
 about this situation could rather contribute to creating a community
 that encourages victims of abuse to speak up.




 Quoting the DPL again, "In reaching their decision, the Debian Account
 Managers took into account the public disclosures from members of the
 Tor project and others, and first-hand accounts from members of the
 Debian community."




 We are not talking about vague rumors spread by a couple of
 infiltrators, we are talking about first-person accounts provided by
 well known and respected members of both communities, with a track
 record of contributions of many years.




 These people who had the guts to speak up deserve credit and respect,
 and the article published on your site gives them none.




 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting




 Regards,




 Enrico




 -- GPG key: 4096R/634F4BD1E7AD5568 2009-05-08 Enrico Zini

As Daniel Pocock put it: "The message that caught my eye was a message from Zini to the editor of ITWire. Zini is disrespectful to the journalist, Sam Varghese and he is lobbying the editor to try and change an existing news report. Zini uses exactly the same fake victims as part of the justification and he even asserts the DPL quote is correct..."

Further, he then noted: "Many newspaper editors would be keen to remove such statements and publish retractions but Zini has pursued a competing goal, lobbying them to make their reporting more adverse to Appelbaum, as the email to ITWire demonstrates."

A separate post said: "The explosive emails reveal that Zini was secretly sending out messages to the media lobbying them to change their reporting to reflect the position preferred by accusers. [...] rogue elements of the Debian community have hijacked the cause of diversity to justify a culture of blackmail."

The right of defence is as important as the right to accuse

I don't know Appelbaum well enough to comment on the allegations (I know that like many others he's deeply inspired by Richard Stallman (RMS) and he linked to Techrights on numerous occasions over the years). One indisputable fact: his activism certainly helped a lot of activists and whistleblowers, i.e. it helped expose crimes and hold people accountable. His supervisor at the university, who examined the evidence, supports Appelbaum. Maybe the allegations 'canceled' Appelbaum as far as the public eye is concerned. But those allegations did not convince scholars. Shades of RMS being 'canceled'... right?

The above E-mail from Zini is very malicious. If Zini had sent me such a mail, I'd blast Zini. This is a sort of censorship-type bullying, which extends from the target to anything or anyone sympathetic towards the target, like those Salesforce cranks who said everyone who supports RMS should also be ousted.

Let's translate this, shall we?

 Subject: On coverage of Abbelbaum being banned 
 [based on hearsay] from Debian




 Dear boss of Sam Varghese,




 you may want to sanction/punish/sack Sam Varghese for
 writing his personal assessment of Debian revoking
 membership of Jacob Appelbaum:




 http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/73441-appelbaum-banned-from-debian-events-after-sexual-misconduct-charges.html




 The article is correct, but to actually go beyond
 the official Debian "script" is not permitted in journalism.




 Journalism is violence against the anonymous sources of hearsay,
 and I wish that news coverage about me would make me
 look fantastic.




 Quoting the DPL again, "In reaching their decision, the Debian Account
 Managers took into account the public disclosures from members of the
 Tor project and others, and first-hand accounts from members of the
 Debian community." [this is a lie by the way]




 I am lying to you about first-person accounts because
 we already made this decisions and we're going to
 look foolish if we admit to have examined low-quality
 evidence.




 Anonymous voices who had the guts to speak up deserve credit and 
 respect, and your articles should be based on anonymous sources whom
 you never even spoke to, nor have I.




 Regards,




 Enrico




 -- GPG key: 4096R/634F4BD1E7AD5568 2009-05-08 Enrico Zini

To be clear, I don't know what happened with Appelbaum and I argued endlessly with some EFF bully, who respects neither Free software nor free speech, basing the opinion of Appelbaum only on hearsay. Never any first-hand account.

At the moment we're seeing a purge of various people whose voices are being eliminated and names tarnished because they're inconvenient to state/corporate interests (overlapping). Appelbaum is a target for the same reason Julian Assange is (and it's always being framed as a crime against women; as a side note, Assange too was a Debian developer) and Pocock -- from what I can gather -- spoke about exploitation of women by corporations (especially Google) and bribes from companies like Google and Microsoft.

"Appelbaum is a target for the same reason Julian Assange is (and it's always being framed as a crime against women) and Pocock -- from what I can gather -- spoke about exploitation of women by corporations (especially Google) and bribes from companies like Google and Microsoft. "If Debian wants to be honest and if it wishes to attract female coders (not women whom it leverages as "political props"), it'll have to quit using these identity politics. There have been other examples where senior and productive members of the Debian Project were threatened and/or 'canceled' simply because of some vaguely-worded allegations pertaining to race and/or gender. We gave an example of it some days ago. One of the most disgusting element of it (to me at least) is the way one's expression of an opinion is spun as an act of violence. As if to deviate from some boring narrative is the moral equivalent of assault (the chief of the Linux Foundation compared condemnation of criminals to... kicking puppies). ⬆