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Re: Tone policing by a member of the community team [Was, Re: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board]



On Mon, Apr 12, 2021 at 04:55:28PM +0200, Jonathan Carter wrote:
On 2021/04/12 15:37, Michael Stone wrote:
Not true, if someone identifies with fascist doctrine, even if they keep
those views off of the project channels, then they are not welcome here,
no matter where they engaged in those kind of activities.

Does that go for all extremist ideologies or just the one?

Probably all of them. I don't have anything specific in mind, but my
guess is that there would be some edge cases where we disagree on what
would constitute an extremist ideology, I've thought that we should
probably amend our CoC at some point to explain what kind of people are
/not/ welcome in Debian, but that's a matter for another GR :)

Marxists? Maoists? Stalinists? Anarchists? Zionists? Anti-zionists? Militant Quebec nationalists? Royalists? Imperialists? Indigenous resistance groups? Ecoterrorists? Anyone that someone calls a terrorist? Speciesists? Anti-speciesists? Eugenicists? Any government that comes to power via a coup? Any government that maintains power while suppressing popular revolt? Anyone who participated in genocide? Anyone descended from someone who participated in a genocide? Anyone who denies a genocide? Anyone repeating a false genocide narrative? (By the way, you had better be very, very careful about creating the appearance that debian (via the DPL) is taking a position on some of those, because you could get debian banned in various places if you say the wrong thing.)

The idea that "nazis" or "fascists" represent the full spectrum of what can go wrong in human systems, or that understanding complex and emotional conflicts is as simple as "blame the nazis" is simply wrong. I'd go so far as to posit that the only common element in extremist ideologies is the certainty that their own beliefs and tactics are both superior to their opponents', and unimpeachable. I'd further posit that it's possible to have extremist positions on any side of any issue humans can argue about, and also that it's generally impossible to identify a specific point on a continuum of beliefs at which a position changes from "reasonable disagreement" to "extremism".

The idea that debian should or even could create a list of acceptable and unacceptable beliefs in all facets of any participant's life is preposterous. All we can reasonably do is require certain standards of behavior within forums we control or which are immediately adjacent.
Even from people who have declared that their opponent is a "nazi".


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