These people sound like they teleported straight out of a sociology classroom from 2017 or 2020 and didn’t catch what year it is. This whole puritanical bully culture is completely dead. Get out of your echochambers, and read the room already.
If you think rails is worth forking, fork it.
If you think it shouldn’t be used, don’t use it.
If you can’t be around a diversity of viewpoints, especially opinions that offend you, then get out of the kitchen.
It’s so typical of these people to wish everyone else to build the future they believe they deserve.
For a political action, the blowback has been several thousand-fold larger than the support. So far I’ve seen the tailwind creator, shopify ceo, reactjs creator, creator of ladybird browser, writer of pragmatic engineer, many prominent people in the rails community, and so many others speak out against this fork.
The letter (more like a resume blacklist) has shown that the Overton window has shifted enough to where people can comfortably and publicly call out obviously dumb nonsense.
I say good luck to em ... as they say in their notes:
"We do not want to restrict DHH's freedom of speech, he can write and say what he likes. However, free speech is not "freedom from the consequences of that speech", and we as a community are completely free not to associate with people who hold views we find abhorrent."
I get it. Basically, "I don't want to associate with assholes". That's not unreasonable.
> GitHub issues are disabled on this repo to keep it on-topic and reduce argumentative discussions that go nowhere. Feel free to discuss this in all the usual places though.
I get that GitHub Issues for controversial repos tends to invite trolls, but "discuss this in all the usual places" guarantees there will be no traction.
I’m sure they don’t care today, but since these people proudly slap their names on their jeering comments, I imagine that someday their leftist children will read them and feel disgusted at the mocking cruelty. Will the authors feel shame then, I wonder? Or just more anger? The present political climate might make them feel righteous and invincible, but it is only a feeling.
From the linked DHH writing: “There's absolutely nothing racist or xenophobic in saying that Denmark is primarily a country for the Danes, Britain primarily a united kingdom for the Brits, and Japan primarily a set of islands for the Japanese.”
To clarify, who are the Brits exactly? Do the Irish, Scottish, and Welsh count, and who gets to say that? Also, the Ainu were there before the Japanese.
Yeah, I do think there are some interesting questions in this area, but the idea that a country is primarily a country for X is hugely problematic and racist in many parts of the world, and has led to countless civil wars. The most obvious one being “Israel is primarily a country for Israelis.”
But one of the legacies of colonialism is the Middle East and Africa being carved up in lines that didn’t match the underlying cultural groups.
> the idea that a country is primarily a country for X is hugely problematic and racist in many parts of the world
That’s true in some parts of the world. But the opposite idea — that the people who’ve lived somewhere for thousands of years have no moral claim to their inheritance over the people who just arrived — has been equally destructive in other parts.
> one of the legacies of colonialism is the Middle East and Africa being carved up in lines that didn’t match the underlying cultural groups.
That’s a bad thing, is it? Is diversity not their strength?
A stable country is a country that is primarily a country of X. What constitutes X may change over time, but it works fine if it is slow and gradual.
> But one of the legacies of colonialism is the Middle East and Africa being carved up in lines that didn’t match the underlying cultural groups.
If it is not gradual and you have Y and Z beside X, is when trouble start. Middle East and lot of African countries is the example of this. Those people where unable to live together (too many cultural differences) in their home country, why should be different in Europe, where cultural differences will be even higher ?
That’s the point—- definitions of culture and identity can change over time. Since I’m from the US, I don’t have much more to say about lands belonging to people, but my comment about Japan is meant to highlight problems with the idea of islands being naturally “for” people.
>That was then. Now, I wouldn't dream of it. London is no longer the city I was infatuated with in the late '90s and early 2000s. Chiefly because it's no longer full of native Brits. In 2000, more than sixty percent of the city were native Brits. By 2024, that had dropped to about a third. A statistic as evident as day when you walk the streets of London now.
One of the core tenets of liberalism is that multi cultural societies and nations are just as good as mono cultural ones. what are you trying to imply here with the africa and middle eastern examples
Oh that’s a core tenet? Since when? Did Adam Smith write about that? John Locke? Thomas Paine? Heck I’ll even take a Milton Friedman citation if you have one.
Probably since about early 1990s. Maybe I should say civic nationalism instead of multiculturalism but I think most liberals would reject the idea that ethnicity or heritage were important in determining nationality.
this is categorically different from multiculturalism. all cultures are not equal, and some are antithetical to liberal values. a diversity of people is good, but as much as possible society should prefer a common banner and shared loyalty, or view of civic duty. America has for a long time shown that there can be a combination of national identity and ethnic and religious diversity.
to that end, i think arguments for or against different degrees of immigration are valid and worth engaging (as opposed to shunning under false labels).
Good point. British people don't really exist. What are even English or Scottish people? French people? European people? Where does it start, where does it end? We don't know.
We don't know what a white person is. No idea, no clue. Where could we even start?
Funnily enough, though, those considerations never seem to apply to Palestinians, native Americans, indigenous Australians, etc. There is only a certain group that is somehow impossible to define precisely, yet is the primary target of those considerations.
That’s my point. There’s not really a singular “Brit” unless you designate one group to decide, and various other groups may also want to be considered British or not. Since I’m from the US, I won’t say more, because I’m sure there’s more to this I’m missing.
This is a big conflict in modern liberalism and democracy. If the british people vote for an ethnostate what are we supposed to do. subvert multicultural ideas? or subvert democracy?
It’s fucked how normalized this sort of “Britain/US for Whites” rhetoric has become over the last few years. London is and always will be a global city. And praising Tommy Robinson as some sort of hero surely involves a degree of brain damage.
Honest question: would it be any different if someone were to write a piece complaining about the cultural identity of, say, Japan being lost due to American or European immigrants/tourists?
I don’t see a lot of people talking about Britain losing its cultural identity without also using dehumanizing language to describe the “invaders.” I mean, look at the closer to this article:
> You survived the Blitz. Britain will be back.
It’s pretty clear that the author thinks that Britain is at war and that the “invaders” are not real Brits, regardless of their legal status. Given the political coalition that DHH seems to proudly support, I assume he would be in favor of “remigration” (forceful expulsion of non-whites) just like Musk and others in these circles.
This is all just very faintly disguised racism.
FWIW, if someone wrote an article talking about how they respect London’s diversity, and how immigrants bring value to the country, but that the ratio of native to immigrant feels off, I would at least respect that (while disagreeing).
I agree I think he probably goes too far in that post. Some of what he says at the beginning sounds like an opinion on cultural displacement (perhaps a reasonable discussion), but he veers into more fear-mongering and generalizations about specific groups.
"We do not want to restrict DHH's freedom of speech, he can write and say what he likes. However, free speech is not "freedom from the consequences of that speech", and we as a community are completely free not to associate with people who hold views we find abhorrent."
I get it. Basically, "I don't want to associate with assholes". That's not unreasonable.
If you think rails is worth forking, fork it.
If you think it shouldn’t be used, don’t use it.
If you can’t be around a diversity of viewpoints, especially opinions that offend you, then get out of the kitchen.
It’s so typical of these people to wish everyone else to build the future they believe they deserve.
Do the work, or go to hell.