When the So-called 'Cancel Culture' Sees Everything in Free Software Through the Scopes of 'Sex' (Because It Cannot Argue on Technical or Legal Grounds)
Older: Losing the plot (seeing the whole community through the lens of "sex" back in June, too)
THIS article was meant to be very short and concise. But there is a lot to be said about this very long post entitled "Richard Stallman's political discourse on sex" (as if Stallman is some sort of sex activist/idol/maniac or whatever... or... as if he committed some sex crime to speak of).
Stallman isn't a sexual predator, pervert, or criminal. All the hearsay people assemble to craft such a narrative is lousy and unbelievable (or barely believable). I know, as a man, that he tends to stare a lot, both at men and women. There is nothing sexual about it. If he stares at me, I do not try to "read his mind". He spoke about this condition of his in an article in 2021. Maybe the lynch mob participants should go read it (they probably didn't even bother). Don't conflate motive with functional aspects. At one point when I met Stallman in Oxford I was escorted by a man whose staring was a lot more severe than Stallman's due to a medical issue (a terrible condition whose name I forgot). It didn't bother me, I can understand that people behave differently. The guy was an immigrant from South African and he helped arrange Stallman's talk. He was professionally capable, he was nice, his social skills were OK, but he had a biological problem.
I used to think that at least some of Stallman's critics are closeted anti-Semites, but in recent years it become more apparent that even more are ableist (or both).
The long post in question would be easy to ignore, but ignoring something does not make it go away. The post was written by a person who is read by many people and it's like he really spent many days writing this rant instead of writing/packaging some code; plus, he chose the theme of "sex" (in the title) when in fact his fundamental issue is either something else or a fundamental misunderstanding. Some of the complaints are minor nitpickings, e.g. "Stallman consistently refers to police officers" as "thugs". People who believe in freedom tend to view cops negatively. So just because Stallman views cops as class vigilante or untrusted actors (sometimes brutal/violent) he cannot lead the movement he created? A movement that gravitates towards social emancipation? Come on, be real...
Anyway, the core of the rant isn't about the present or anything actually done. Stallman has no criminal record. He said many things over the decades that someone out there disagrees with or finds objectionable. Let's be fair; if you go that far back, and if you write many things every day, nobody is "acceptable" and in fact Bradley Kuhn (who fancies himself Nemesis rather than heir of Stallman) went through the trouble of deleting all his past social control media posts, probably recognising he'd get "cancelled" too.
The people who led the campaign against Stallman included serious perverts, who are even open about their perversions. Then there's Elana Hamasman, who runs petitions against people for all sorts of false reasons while she herself justifies terrorism and genocide. The very same people now run a smear campaign against Professor Moglen, removing a professor of law from his own case, as if it's not OK for someone to appear in a court case that he rightly initiated against a hostile imposter organisation which constantly tries to 'cancel' his colleague and friend over total nonsense.
They complain about respect for cops while they trash the US Constitution, removing people from their own legal cases. Funny, isn't it...
There are old sayings and popular jokes in circulation about how politicians can get away with just about any scandal and even crime (bribery, grifting etc.) except or unless there's something involving a zipper or some genitals - no matter the context. So many people look for sex scandals and sometimes spice things up if not invent (manufacture) scandals, basically seeking to engineer the demise of somebody whose career and personal lives are separate. There's no need for something illegal to be done either, just some rude quote, not even infidelity or misconduct.
My personal assessment is that the latest rant boil down to jealousy combined with boredom. It came from a person who's wasting his life away in Europe (after immigrating from the US to the "Trump of Europe"), where he apparently does some (legal) drugs to pass time. Get the irony? Smoke dope, complain that Stallman does not respect cops. "The drugs only make all the previous problems even worse," one person told me.
Why jealousy? Hare, his latest big project, isn't picking up steam/adoption, so he is begging for attention, maybe out of frustration ("Can I be on your podcast?") and now, having not made headway, he's having a go at the person who made GNU/Linux over 40 years ago (when he was 30). GNU/Linux is growing every week, unlike Hare.
If you keep spitting in the well that nourished you, then over time the village people will stop listening to anything you say. █