Framework, the maker of repairable laptops, is embroiled in a controversy, as the company and its CEO are openly supporting people with, well, questionable views.
If you know a little bit about PR in social media space, you might note that, right out of the gate, a project by a vocal white nationalist known for splitting communities by their mere presence, is not a great highlight choice for an overtly non-left-right-political company like Framework. Does it get worse from here? Sadly, it does.
↫ Arya Bread Crumbs
The questionable views we’re talking about here are… Let’s just say we’re not talking about milquetoast stuff like “we should be a bit stricter with immigration” or “lower taxes on the rich”, but views that are far, far outside of the mainstream in most places in the world.
Let’s ditch the superlatives and review David’s post objectively:
- He thinks that even if you were born in the UK, you only count as British if you’re white.
- He wouldn’t consider living in London specifically because it has too many people of color.
- He uses racist tropes to accuse Asian men of being dangerous predators who attack white women.
- He pushes debunked conspiracy theories about immigrants replacing white people.
- He finds a march where speakers called for banning all non-Christian religions and ethnically cleansing immigrants “heartwarming”.
- Finally — and maybe most alarmingly — he argues that all of the above is normal and not extreme.
You can use whatever word you want to describe all that. But if you, like me, didn’t realize that this is who DHH is, we can probably agree that he’s way worse than we thought.
↫ Jake Lazaroff
Framework has stated in no uncertain terms that it is supporting and embracing people like this. That’s a choice they are entirely free to make, but I, and many with me, then, are entirely free to choose not to buy and/or promote products by Framework. I still sincerely hope that all of this is just a massive breakdown of PR and common sense at Framework and its CEO, but since they’ve already doubled-down, I’m not holding my breath. This whole thing is going to haunt them, especially since I’m fairly sure a huge chunk of their community and users – who are buying into hardware that is, in truth, overpriced – are not even remotely aligned with such extremist views.
I care deeply about Framework’s mission, but I don’t give a single rat’s ass about Framework itself. There are countless alternatives to Framework, some of which I’ve even reviewed here (like the MNT Reform or the NovaCustom V54), and if you, too, feel a deep sense of the ick when it comes to supporting extremist views like the above, I urge you to take them into consideration.
Thank you for raising this here
It’s really scary to see open source spaces openly supporting white supremacist transphobes. It’s already scary enough that they’re gaining power everywhere, now they are making it hard to turn to tech to escape their hatred
That is the issue when we have both nationality and ethnicity described with the same word. An issue with inherent ambiguity of natural language.
And this issue is the same in many different places.
Or sometimes the opposite. For example, all Turkish citizens are Turk by constitution. However some prefer to be called Arab, Kurd, or some other ethnicity.
This is a deep rabbit hole. But a remnant that comes with moving from multi-ethnic empires to nation states.
From their point of view: “What do you call a English person who is English by ethnicity?”
I’m not sure we can find answers that will satisfy everyone.
Turkey in particular is very weird in that regard: “All Turkish citizens are Turk by constitution (there is no ‘Kurdish minority’, for example), but Greece should recognize a ‘Turkish minority’ in Thrace (despite all Greek citizens also being Greek by constitution)”.
Personally, I think that for the purposes of interacting with a government, your nationality/citizenship should be your ethnicity. The government has no obligation to give special treatment to ethnic minorities (for example, allow them to file taxes in the language of their ethnicity, with all the administrative burden this brings).
This is all fine and dandy, until you come across countries like: Sweden, Finland, Canada, the UK itself. There are states that are made of multiple nations and imposing a single language for everyone is a sure recipe for tension and conflict.
There are cases and cases: Brazil has seen tons of immigrants from many different countries over centuries but the social and economic structures of the country doesn’t allow one to function without speaking Portuguese. Other countries, intentionally or not, end up favouring newcomerts to keep their culture and language.
At the end of the day, there’s no sure recipe. Each country is a country. Go force the Quebecois to submit their papers in English and get ready for a bag of hurt.
Those countries were always a union of different nations, so they recognized different ethnic groups since their founding. In other words, they took the administrative burden of allowing those different ethnic groups to file taxes in their own language upfront as a condition for the union. For example, in the UK, government websites are available in both English and Welsh because supporting Welsh was a condition of having a Kingdom that’s United (UK). But countries that didn’t do that upon their founding don’t have to recognize different ethnic groups later and take an unexpected administrative burden. If you become a citizen of a country that has one official language, you are expected to have learned that official language as a condition for becoming a citizen.
I only randomly read the linked articles; had BaseCamp been mentioned, I would more certanly have read them. Oh, so this person got even weirder.
This is what I wrote to them the other day. No response yet, and I don’t expect one. But I hope at least someone at their company takes positions like mine seriously and might help them reconsider their alignment with evil people.
Hello,
I am writing to you as a formerly potential customer of yours. I’ve followed your company from the beginning, I adore the idea of user-repairable computers and you seemed to truly care about your customer base and any potential new customers.
After seeing your company not only gleefully support the bigoted and fascist-aligned developers behind Omarchy and Hyprland, but to then double down and fully embrace the hatred and racism and sexism espoused by those developers rather than even entertain the notion that you may have made a mistake, makes me very uncomfortable and unable to support your company. I had planned to make my first purchase from you, a Framework Desktop mainboard, within the next couple of months to replace my aging AMD 5600GT based mainboard. Now that you have come out as fascist aligned and fully supportive of bigots and racists, I can no longer in good faith spend any money with you.
I will now have to pay more to get a full PC from Minisforum or Geekom or another of your competitors, rather than replace just my mainboard and keep my existing case and power supply. You see, your active support of bigotry and hatred has a knock-on effect of causing more e-waste rather than less, which is against the mission statement you insist you believe in.
Actions have consequences, and your company’s actions surrounding this issue speak volumes about who you really are and what you really care about. While I am not directly affected by the words and actions of your new fascist friends, many of my friends and colleagues are BIPOC and/or LGBTQIA+ and/or immigrants, all of whom are targets for the hatred and violence of those you have aligned yourself with.
Shame on you. Be better.
While I 100% agree with the sentiment of this post, the Novacustoms is not an alternative to the framework laptops, primarily because they only offer nvidia GPUs.
From a security pov and such they are far worse, coreboot is a plus, but what use is a free firmware if you then have to install a bunch of non-free kernel level stuff.
What I’m saying is that with framework acting this way we only the one option, the MNT reform. I feel that sending people towards a different company with huge problems doesn’t really help.
How to be sure that anything is completely nazi-free, given that nazis may hide they views? Who decides what is nazi and what is not (imagine Israeli project vs. a pro-Palestinian contributor)? Do the maintainers even can legally execute judgement (they may be blocked by copyright or free-speech laws)? Does it even help the cause, or just pushes people into bubbles where they views are not challenged?
The guy in question thinks it’s totally normal and non-controversial to call for physical violence towards trans people just out and about in the world.
This isn’t a “this guy has some problematic views” it is, this guy is using his platform to normalize physical violence against people who already suffer huge amounts of physical violence.
And then of course there’s the blog posts on his company blog where he just openly talks about being a white supremacists.
This is about deciding who you give money to, willingly. I wouldn’t invite this man into my house, and I don’t want him to have money I worked for.
It’s not that hard
Maybe you can’t make it nazi free if some hide but you definitely can kick out known nazis.
Discussing with nazis makes no sense, they don’t approach discussion in good faith.
The author of the article has some interesting (useful?) reflections about your first and last questions. They say that’s going on in a lot of open-source communities — white supremacists hiding their views because they know their colleagues will find them repugnant — and this seems to be a fairly effective way of keeping many communities pleasant and functional, even if it further polarises said white supremacists.
Well shit…. Thank you for bringing this up to my notice, I’m definitely going to express my displeasure at directly supporting (forum support for customers who install it on their device is different) these projects… *sigh* Hopefully they can do the right thing and retract it, or at least make some concrete statements and future changes to avoid such clearly anti-freedom and bad-faith communities direct support (whether money/hardware or highlighting them to encourage people to use the software).
I spent about 6 hours reading through the links in the article, then the links they cited, then the 3rd layer of citations in addition to trying to find every piece of first-hand evidence I could find and well, there’s not a lot of evidence to actually support the all the claims made.
Let me preface this with I didn’t know who DHH is until yesterday when I first heard about this from a friend of mine which sent me down this rabbit hole. I still don’t know a lot about DHH’s past but he does seem to generally be a jerk at a minimum from what I’ve managed to process.
Now some clarifications.
1) I could only find evidence of Framework providing financial support recently to Hyprland.
2) Hyprland community used to be toxic but approximately two years ago the main dev put in a CoC and has been actively improving the community and it is overall considered to be a much safer space if not considered an outright safe space.
3) The only direct or indirect support I could find from Framework to DHH was the highlighting of Omarchy through two tweets.
4) Framework leadership stated that they prefer to focus on technology and stay out of politics (yes, I know this is difficult if not downright impossible most of the time)
5) The list of claims made under “review David’s post objectively” takes significant liberties with the truth. I spent about an hour trying to find connections between claims made and parts of the blog post but found them to frequently be tenuous or outright lacking. This doesn’t mean that I don’t believe DHH believes these things (I don’t know enough about him to make such a claim) just that the claims made about the blog post are generally hyperbolic.
At this point I don’t think I would be comfortable metaphorically picking up my pitchfork and torch to march on Framework.
I spent about 2 hours on finding such evidence in original DHH posts. And I also has to report that he for sure has opinions, but is able to express them in a way that cannot be summarized as fascist or someone who. for example, can find excuses for attacking transgender people…
I have to say knew who DHH was, but I always had be exposed only to some technical things he discussed, I was not aware he is also active in commenting politics. I have to say his opinions shouldn’t eliminate/cancel him from any discussions (be it technical or political).
So far I think all these thinks around Framework and DHH are heavily exaggerated.
You must not have looked very hard:
DHH writes: “When much of the media reports a story like this, it’s often without citing the specific words in question, such that the reader might imagine something far worse than what was actually said. So you should actually read the three tweets that landed Linehan in jail, and earned him a legal restraining order against using X. It’s grotesque. ”
He links to lineham’s blog, the tweets he is talking about reads: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”
This is a direct call to violence which DHH is saying isn’t as bad as the reader might imagine. I can’t imagine how much worse that tweet could be.
I don’t think that this is “heavily exaggerated” at all, there is no “Good reading” of this. This is him just saying that it should be legal to call for direct, specific, violence.
Have you actually read his post “As I remember London”?
In which he talks about violent far right protests in a positive light, talks about how it’s dystopian that lineham faced legal consequences for literally calling for physical violence against trans women?
Do you really think that that is “lukewarm”? This is all transphobic and xenophobic stuff. White replacement nonsense.
Please provide a link and quotes of the offending passages.
Have you actually read “As I remember London”
If you read that and you don’t think it’s a problem then I don’t think we have anything further to discuss.
It’s just plainly there, you claim you’ve clicked “several links” but now you’re demanding I read it for you?
What do you expect? There’s no “passage” in there where he says “and I’m a white supremacist” the whole text is white supremacist.
Demanding that the bad guys just say they are evil in a tweet, and if they don’t conclude that what they say is “lukewarm” is just dumb, frankly.
But I’ll do your work for you on the transphobia at least, DHH writes: “When much of the media reports a story like this, it’s often without citing the specific words in question, such that the reader might imagine something far worse than what was actually said. So you should actually read the three tweets that landed Linehan in jail, and earned him a legal restraining order against using X. It’s grotesque. ”
He links to lineham’s blog, the tweets he is talking about reads: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”
This is a direct call to violence which DHH is saying isn’t as bad as the reader might imagine. I can’t imagine how much worse that tweet could be.
This is not a leap, this is not “lukewarm “, if you think it is “lukewarm” to call for physical violence against a particular minority then you’re too far gone to reason with, and I don’t think you actually care about any of the things you claim to care about.
No, I don’t demand, that you read it for me.
I demand, that you quote the offending passages and give a link to them.
If you can’t quote them, you are making shit up.
I’d never read anything political from DHH, just the techy related posts.
All I can say is: MEGALOLZ!
I live in London.
I love London.
…
…mostly, because it’s a diverse city!
I’d never have dreamed to live here in the 90’s or early 200s. Paris and other European capitals were so much better back then.
I did reply Smashit, with a quote. So what the fuck are you talking about.
There are no links in your posts…
There you go smashIt, the link to the article we were talking about this whole time.
https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64
I’m surprised that you’ve missed this, somehow, given your sophisticated understanding of DHH and his writings.
4 of your posts in and we finally have a quote and a source 🙂
I will look into it tomorrow, as it is now almost 2AM here.
But I have another question for you:
“given your sophisticated understanding of DHH and his writings.”
Please point me to where I claimed that.
You had everything you needed to verify what I said after my second post, or my first post if you had bothered reading the article DHH wrote that most people are talking about.
Instead you imply that I’m lying, instead of spending that time literally just typing “As I remember London” in Google.
And now you’re further implying that it’s my fault you haven’t already done it.
What the fuck man, do you think people don’t notice this?
The only good-faith explanation of any of this is you bring SO familiar with DHH’s writing that you weren’t curious enough to find out what I’m talking about.
Clearly that wasn’t it, so what remains is laziness or bad faith.
Don’t waste your time — @smashIt is far-right so none of that blog post will seem wrong to him.
God Dammit! And I just switched to them this year. Seems I’m cursed – I switch away from iOS to Android and Google start locking it down, I switch from a Macbook to a Framework and it this happens. Sigh… maybe the Amish have the right idea staying away from tech entirely.
That’s weird, given Framework CEO is of indian descend. In other words, non-white.
> the company and its CEO are openly supporting people with, well, questionable views.
> Framework has stated in no uncertain terms that it is supporting and embracing people like this
Did that actually happen? I spent about 20 minutes digging into it and, as far as I can tell, these statements are assumptions (at best). I did learn a lot more about DHH. I am not sure that is what I wanted to do today.
I am happy if you report that DHH is a douche and why you think so. Please inform me that DHH wrote Omarchy. Feel free to express the opinion that Omarchy should be avoided due to this association. Go on to tell me that you do not want to associate with Framework as a brand as long as they associate with Omarchy as a project. That all seems fair. Those are all facts (or factually stated as opinions or values at least).
But, on a site with “news” in the name, do not report opinions as facts. Do not say “stated in no uncertain terms that it is supporting and embracing people like this” unless you can link to those “no uncertain terms” and that they demonstrate the support you claim.
If the CEO of Framework is actively expressing support for political or social views that I do not support, I would like to know. If an employee expressed affinity for a project you do not like, you can tell me that as well. But please do not find evidence of the latter and report it as the former. You state that these things happened. Any evidence? Because you seem to have left that out of the “news”.
I do not use Ruby on Rails but it is not hard to imagine that I might create a RoR app as countless other people have. If somebody was then to write an article that I was a far right nutjob or a Nazi or that I was “in no uncertain terms… supporting and embracing people like this”, I would be more than just offended. If such an article appeared on a news site, I would consider it unethical and far, far, far outside the minimum standard for journalism.
I have been meaning to check out Omarchy as I have seen it praised in quite a few places lately. I doubt that I would have switched over to it. I am very happy with Niri. But I do like to be informed and so it has been high on my list of things to try. I guess I dodged a bullet. What if I would have liked it? Apparently I narrowly avoided having extreme right political and social views. Shame on me for dismissing this risk as just a bunch of config files. If I had posted a screenshot of my desktop, I guess it would very clearly have proven to the world all kinds of nasty stuff about me. Right? Or am I the only one that thinks that is madness and, frankly, injustice of the highest order?
Again, feel free to take political stances and to advocate socials views. I have no objection to that. Please just be honest about what is fact and what is not.
I personally do not see destruction, persecution, isolation, hate, and presumption of guilt as foundations for a strong society. I have no idea why rushing into those has become such a common practice on the Internet or why so many people support this activity as demonstrating good views,
But, more to the point here, I simply do not want to have to research every statement for 2 hours to decide if it is factual or not. At least, I only want to have to do that in the comment section. The article, opinionated or not, should more clearly separate statements of fact from unsubstantiated assertion. Thanks.
LeFantome,
I agree with this. I didn’t know anything about DHH. I think it’s fair to criticize him and to make others aware of his extreme & racist views…but Framework? I don’t see any evidence for that. I can see boycotting Omarchy, which is directly connected to DHH. I think lashing out at Framework for referencing it seems to go too far though. Don’t we have bigger fish to fry than a business trying to remain apolitical? People can boycott Framework for any reason at all, but as I see it boycotting Framework hurts open hardware and FOSS much more than it helps the minorities targeted by DHH.
The issue I have with Framework in this whole mess is that they actively supported both of those fascist projects with real money and hardware along with singing their praises on various social media platforms. Then, when confronted with the reality of who those Nazis are, they not only continued to support them financially and verbally, they doubled down and said “it’s okay if a Nazi sits in our big tent”. This is not just a matter of not knowing who they were supporting, which, let’s face it, that happens to all of us from time to time (for example, I had no idea about the Hyprland devs being so toxic and bigoted until this blew up).
My personal boycott of Framework is because they were told they were supporting evil, and instead of going “eww, thanks for letting us know and we are no longer associated with those fascists”, they gave the Nazis a kiss and a hug and invited them into the fold.
That is unforgivable and even if right now, today, they say “oops we made a mistake” I will not be their customer, because they were already given that chance and they loudly and proudly chose evil. Fuck them.
Morgan,
I think it could be useful to report the factual information about that. I haven’t seen it and more facts could help people (including myself) to make better judgement calls.
Still, litmus tests that are so aggressive in vilifying people/companies who aren’t really the villains risks backlash and making adversaries of people unnecessarily. Especially centrists trying to be apolitical. What happened to the democratic party in recent elections is illustrative of what can happen when we castigated centrists and independents. Over the years, I agree with what Obama has to say on the topic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/obama-woke-cancel-culture.html
“President Barack Obama in Conversation with Heather Cox Richardson | The Connecticut Forum”
https://youtu.be/EM9B8Qin9ac?t=3803
To be clear, I am not making a defense of racism, discrimination, etc (and Obama wouldn’t approve of his words to imply it either), but rather it’s about having social movements that don’t self-defeat their own interests by being too eager to make everyone out to be an enemy. The republicans exploited this tendency on the left very successfully. I accept the possibility that more evidence could come out and change my mind on Framework, but I’d rather see clear evidence that they themselves are guilty rather than guilt by association.
@Alfman
Thanks. I also think maligning Framework works against the common good. Certainly it is not doing anything to help minorities or even to hurt DHH. Framework is just collateral damage. Friendly fire.
But that is not even what bothers me. If you honestly think Framework’s values are counter to your own, I support you acting on that. And you can even try to convince me. Just do not lie to me in order to do so, please.
> Don’t we have bigger fish to fry than a business trying to remain apolitical?
This appears to be the core issue. It seems a very common stance on the Internet these days that there is no such thing as “apolitical”. If you do not overtly support MY views, that must mean that you “support and embrace” THEIR views. Being reasonable, or neutral, or just wanting to leave politics out of it, is taken as collaboration. This town ain’t big enough for both of us.
I have a relative that supports all kinds of terrible opinions and actions by saying, “All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing”. I rarely debate him but every time he says that I think, “or too much”.
I boycott companies all the time. I am not going to fault somebody for that. But if I want to live in a less divisive world, boycotting a company because they choose to be inclusive strikes me as an odd choice. And I find “guilty by association” to be a dangerous idea.
LeFantome,
I actually think the quote has a valid point about how apathy plays out in favor of the exploiters. Also the famous poem…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came
While their voices could help, personally I don’t like to be critical of people, often in the center, who wish to stay out of the political fray. The condemnation of others using absolute “your either with us or against us” logic is often driven by ideologically purity, but I’m not sure this is a great outcome when it leads to such severe divisiveness and an irreconcilably fractured society such as the one we find ourselves in. My other post ended up in “moderation” state, but references a couple Obama quotes about social progress being more successful if we find common ground.
@Alfman
I always enjoy your thoughtful point of view. I know the poem and it is a powerful reference.
> I actually think the quote has a valid point about how apathy plays out in favor of the exploiters
Absolutely. I am no fan of apathy and am certainly not a Neville Chamberlain. As you can see here, I do not shy away from a fight. I would never fault anyone for fighting for what they believe in. But I do not believe that “the center” is only for those that want to stay out of the fray. “Be reasonable” is a banner I will fight to defend. Because I do not see doing evil to overcome evil as progress. You learn martial arts to defend yourself and others, not to become the strongest bully. Insert Lord of Rings references here maybe.
> it leads to such severe divisiveness and an irreconcilably fractured society
Humanity’s greatest accomplishment is civilization. Our greatest wars have been fought to preserve “democracy”. Many world religions have at their center the concept of loving thy neightbour. Working together is not just one of our highest ideals, it is an absolute survival necessity.
So I see divisiveness as supremely dangerous. And it appears that many agree with me. After all, isn’t this furor around Framework all about their alleged support for “bigoted” developers (as Morgan called them). The complaint is bigotry.
The complaint is about hate and intolerance. And so I fail to see how hate and intolerance is supposed to be the remedy. To me, that is just more of the same. In my view, DHH and some of his detractors have similar flaws.
But even more important for me than being reasonable is being accurate. There is a post below where I say “I am not here to defend” and the response I got back was “if you continue to defend”. Sigh.
If Ghandi were fighting DHH, he may have created his own desktop to avoid supporting the work of his oppressor. And he may encourage others to do the same. But he would not resort to violence even in response to violence. And, above all else, he would champion truth. To me, that is a model to learn from.
As evidenced in my other comments, I have trouble living up to my own ideals. It is good when people call me on that. Thank you for your thoughts.
Thank you. Thank you for a sane response to what seems to be getting blown way out of proportion. Framework appears in no way to be supporting the questionable points of view, but somehow that’s what’s being suggested. They’re supporting an open source project, that a main contributer to has questionable views, completely unrelated to the project itself. Framework supports those views in the same way that users of reiserfs are murderers and Volkswagen drivers are Hitler supporters.
@PK
Exactly.
There is a big difference between flying in jet aircraft, using magnetic tapes, or driving a Volkswagen and putting on your SS uniform and admiring yourself in the mirror. Some people see an SS uniform where none exists.
There is another German by the name of Fritz Haber. He won the Nobel prize for inventing synthetic fertilizer. Some say that he has saved more lives than any other person in history. He is also known as the “Father of Chemical Weapons” and the poison gasses he created were not only used in Word War I but derivatives of them were used by the Nazis for far darker purposes.
What does it mean to use technology or methods developed by Fritz Haber? Does it make you a Nazi? If you steal his ideas about chemistry, does that mean you support his other views as well?
Should we distance ourselves from synthetic fertilizer? It would literally lead to the death of billions of people. Things are rarely as black and white as we see them.
We all know the “6 degrees of Kevin Bacon” thing (I imagine). I learned the other day that I am one degree of separation from the current Pope. I leave it to you to decide if that is a good or bad thing but, in my view, it does not make me a better or worse person in any way. It certainly does not mean that I can talk for God. The Framework CEO is two degrees of separation from Graham Linehan via Omarchy and DHH. I will let you decide if this is evidence that the Framework CEO is anti-trans or if Omarchy is just Volkswagen.
The CEO of Framework was told that his company was actively (monetarily and verbally) supporting fascists. He replied that Framework is a “big tent” where even Nazis are welcome to join in and work alongside those people they want to kill. It doesn’t get any more clear than that.
@Morgan
> those people they want to kill
I do not want to fight. I am tired. But are you at all aware that nobody expressed any views even remotely map to these words? At least, I missed it if they did.
In my research, which I do not want to do any more of, DHH has not said anything even remotely like that. The closest thing to violence I saw was Graham Linehan telling us to punch somebody in the balls and DHH saying that the police reaction to those words was too strong.
Anyway, I am not here to defend DHH or GL or any other douche-bag. My point is absolutely not that they have said anything good or that anybody should support them. They are not my people. I have not enjoyed learning more about them.
I have only a question for you.
Are you aware that when you say, “those people they want to kill”, that you have created new facts that escalated quite far beyond what not only Nirav Patel has expressed or supported but in fact beyond what even DHH and GL have said? Regardless of whether you are one of the good guys or the bad guys, are you aware that your words are more extreme than anything you can quote to support them?
It is just a question for you to answer for yourself (or not). I am not typing another word on this. I am sure that most people here would have preferred me to stop long before now.
Be well. I truly hope you find a mainboard you love.
The position of a Nazi is always that non-whites, immigrants, and anyone not strictly heterosexual, must die for the greater good of the white race. That they hold that position is a fact. If you deny that, you deny reality. DHH has said that England must become all white in order to survive. The only way for England to become all white is to kill all non-whites. He wants murder in the name of his race. He also believes in the repugnant “Great Replacement Theory”[1]. Fuck him and fuck anyone who defends that trash. And as much as I respect you from our previous conversations, if you continue to defend that piece of filth, fuck you too. That is where I stand and you can quote me on it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement_conspiracy_theory
Not strictly true, even Hitler initially wanted to remove the jews and other undesirables rather than kill them.
Also nazi’s don’t consider “all whites” to be equal. Most of these people claiming to uphold nazi ideology today would actually have been considered impure and inferior by the original nazis.
DHH lives in Chicago and is almost certainly influenced by American propaganda about what London is like now. I’ve lived in London for the whole 25 years he says it’s changed from being a mostly “native British” (read white) city to a mostly ‘foreign’ (including British descendants of immigrants from the former empire) one. Those people were here in 2000 and are still here in 2025. Their numbers haven’t changed much. What’s changed is that London has become hollowed out by the inflow of money from the world’s super-rich, buying up properties as investments, which means that a so-so family house in a so-so suburban part of London can change hands for the best part of £1m and nowadays people think you’re talking nonsense when you say that is overvalued by five or ten times. There are flats being built everywhere, yet none of them are affordable to ordinary people and almost certainly they’re defective in more than one way anyway. Commercial rents also are going through the roof, landlords are greedy and will force long-standing tenants out, putting all their staff out of their jobs, because a big logistics multinational can pay more.
As for the “Tommy Robinson” protest, it numbered a little over 100,000. To put that into perspective, demonstrations against the Iraq war 20 years ago could pull in more than a million and the first pulled about 3 million. Tommy Robinson is a violent, serial criminal, a shit-stirrer and a self-publicist who has nearly sabotaged criminal trials in sexual abuse cases, a cause he professes to care about. People do wave flags during football tournaments and other big sporting competitions; we just don’t wave them at other times (you see them in main squares and at war memorials) and never have done.
No, but did you read LeFantome and ResonateAvenue comments? DHH is one topic but there is not anything gripable about Framework.
He also condemned Andreas Kling based on a bad opinion in a mastodon thread about one small PR reject comment in 2018 without much research.
I like this site and appreciate Thoms work. I am even longer with it than (albeit mostly quiet) kajaman. But some of Thoms posts drip with frustration and the feel of some radicalization.
Have you read the replies to LeFantome’s post?
The company said they want a “big tent” approach which apparently includes people like DHH. And they are giving them money.
This IS an unambiguous statement that people who argue that trans women being punched for being in public is normal are welcome.
“We’re not political” when you know that IS support. This isn’t hard
Well, only Morgan contradicts and they sound themselfes like an extremist from the other side of the spectrum.
But Morgan is correct, the company DID say they want a “big tent” approach, the fact that only Morgan bothered to read that doesn’t mean it’s any less true.
It is trivial to find out that this is true if you care even a little.
It depends how you interpret big tent. If you view it from a purely technical perspective there is no issue.
But I couldn’t find the post about big tent so difficult to say what’s about.
The “big tent” comment is here: https://community.frame.work/t/framework-supporting-far-right-racists/75986/2
You can’t separate the technology from the people making the technology if the “political views” are “some people just shouldn’t exist at all”.
If you find out that the owner of the bakery in your street’s “political view” is that you, personally, should be run out of town would you continue buying bread from them because it doesn’t affect the quality of their bread?
Because that is what trans people hear when someone who isn’t trans talks about being “apolitical”. There’s not really much room for interpretation here.
@HP van Braam
All it takes to be extremist is to take a mild position taken by one person and attribute it back to them greatly amplified with thoughts they did not espouse at all.
You just said “in your view” back to @kajaman with language that was not just more extreme than his but, much worse, nothing to do with the position he took at all. You seem to believe that you know a lot more a about @kajaman and his views than we have learned from his words here.
@kajaman is inhuman in your view, apparently, and your opinion is that the world would be better off without him. He is somebody you want to kill. It doesn’t get any more clear than that.
You’re trying to whitewash what was actually said. The trick you’re trying to pull is that the OP comment SEEMED to just say “why are you such an extremist” without actually engaging with anything. It is a lazy way to express support for the “the other side” without actually putting your proverbial balls on the table.
Now you swoop in and claim that me simply pointing out what the OP was implying is exaggerating their position.
And you now feel very smart and centrist, I’m sure, but the simple fact remains that saying “you’re being an extremist” is only something you say in opposition to something.
The OP *was* unambiguously complaining that saying “don’t give money to white supremacists and transphobes” is an “extremist* position.
Good job, I don’t know what this makes you. An anti-anti-anti-anti faschist good job 5 stars.
Except the “white supremacist and transphobe” is a regular bloke with somewhat conservative views that were blown out well of proportions by this and linked commentaries. Old good witch hunt.
I provided links and quotes proving that he was not merely espousing “somewhat conservative” views.
DHH writes: “When much of the media reports a story like this, it’s often without citing the specific words in question, such that the reader might imagine something far worse than what was actually said. So you should actually read the three tweets that landed Linehan in jail, and earned him a legal restraining order against using X. It’s grotesque. ”
He links to lineham’s blog, the tweets he is talking about reads: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”
This is a direct call to violence which DHH is saying isn’t as bad as the reader might imagine. I can’t imagine how much worse that tweet could be.
This is not a leap, this is not “lukewarm “, if you think it is “lukewarm” to call for physical violence against a particular minority then you’re too far gone to reason with, and I don’t think you actually care about any of the things you claim to care about.
OR you think that punching trans women for existing in public is merely “somewhat conservative” that is also an option of course.
@HP van Braam
Despite my not actually expressing any real political position, you have managed to completely misrepresent my political views. Impressive.
My point is that, if you are as bad at understanding other people as you have been at understanding me, your extreme summaries of their views are dangerous. Not your views, your summary of others. We should at least know who to attribute these extremist ideas to (to them or to you). Now, it does not really matter much when you do it. As editor of the site, it is quite irresponsible when Thom does it. The only point I care about is in the previous sentence in case you missed it.
But let me see if I can make my point simply enough to be understood…
> The OP *was* unambiguously complaining that saying “don’t give money to white supremacists and transphobes” is an “extremist* position.
Quotes are for establishing things people said. The stuff you put in quotes in the sentence above…NOBODY SAID THAT. I would say “This isn’t hard” but perhaps it is for you. Do you honestly believe that somebody used those words or even expressed those views? You are using quotation marks but the words came from you. Are you aware of that? Nobody is making the argument that you are accusing them of. I have read all the comments here and I do not see anybody making that argument. Do you understand that? At all?
The words you are quoting are voices in your head.
Thom was not quoting anybody either. All I did was ask him not tell me that people said things that they did not. I am sorry if you find my pro-reality stance too political.
> It is a lazy way to express support for the “the other side” without actually putting your proverbial balls on the table.
And now you are invoking genitalia for your character assassination. Are you and DHH having lunch later? You remind me of each other.
Painting me as a supremacist just so you can avoid admitting that you are putting words in people’s mouths makes me mad. I must admit, I am quite offended. So let me “engage” as you have asked me to. I do not want to be lazy.
> The OP *was* unambiguously complaining that saying “don’t give money to white supremacists and transphobes” is an “extremist* position.
No he was not. Honestly, this is just a moronic reading of what he said. You are comprehension challenged. To paraphrase Wanda, apes can read philosophy–they just don’t understand it. No wonder you misquote people. You don’t know what they said.
And here is a political stance for you. Please don’t say “whitewash”. Your open and quotable racism makes me uncomfortable.
Good day.