Looks like I’ll be putting away my Daring Fireball and Accidental Tech Podcast
shirts for a while. It’s a pity, they were comfy shirts and I thought I was
supporting good people with them.
See, Marco Arment and John
Gruber have, for some
reason, decided that now’s the time to let their privilege flag fly, and it’s
not a good look:
And I can’t help but feel that maybe we were better off before we knew
everyone’s hot takes on everything.The town coffee shop was just a coffee shop. We weren’t publicly shamed for
going there because one of the owners was an ass. It was just a place to hang
out with our friends.
“Pizza is an open-faced sandwich” is a hot take. “Chicago-style pizza is a
casserole” is a hot take. “Brown people are poisoning the blood and soil of
Europe and must be removed” is Nazi shit and that’s the sort of thing that
DHH, the creator Rails and that slop Linux distribution, has been saying.
If I learn today that my neighbors have political views that my “side”
considers unacceptable and unforgivable, should I be able to have dinner at
their house, shovel their snow, or even greet them outside?Should I be condemned for supporting or associating with them in non-political
contexts?Should I be condemned for not publicly condemning them myself?
Yes, if those “political views” are Nazi shit that’s exactly what should
happen.
These are not views about which reasonable people can disagree, like tax policy.
We’re talking about views that deny the fundamental humanity of some people and
whose existence is a call for violence.
If Marco or John were not white, straight, cisgender men, they might have
realized they had to put a lot more work into deciding whether Bob and Van were
safe neighbors. If they were black, brown, Asian, Jewish, indigenous, gay,
trans, or women, they would have known that everyone you interact with at
anything more than the most superficial level needs to be vetted for subtle
signs that they don’t actually see you as a fellow human being–or that even if
they see you that way, they may see your friends or family differently.
They should ask their respective wives whether they ever had to be concerned,
when they lived on their own, whether any of their neighbors might be a
misogynist or worse, or whether they were able to just give straightforward
trust to them, and why. It might shed some light on an unfortunate aspect of the
human experience that they missed out on.
As for me, I’m glad people are finally openly stating that they’re Neo-Nazis
and fellow travelers, and that other people are stating that they’re comfortable
breaking bread with and supporting Neo-Nazis. It’s important to know because the
first step to rooting them out–and make no mistake, they must be rooted
out–is seeing them clearly.
There’s a German saying:
If there’s a Nazi at the table and ten other people sitting there talking to
him, you got a table with eleven Nazis._
Don’t be one of those ten, no matter how nice you may find that one particular
Nazi personally.
