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Re: Amendment to RMS/FSF GR: Option 5



Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org> writes:

> On Fri, Apr 02, 2021 at 06:18:51PM +0200, Zlatan Todoric wrote:
>> 
>> On 4/2/21 16:56, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
>> > On Fri, Apr 02, 2021 at 03:49:04PM +0200, Zlatan Todoric wrote:
>> > > On 4/2/21 09:20, Craig Sanders wrote:
>> > > > TEXT OF OPTION 5
>> > > > ----------------
>> > > > 
>> > > > Debian refuses to participate in and denounces the witch-hunt against Richard
>> > > > Stallman, the Free Software Foundation, and the members of the board of the
>> > > > Free Software Foundation.
>> > > > 
>> > > > ----------------
>> > > > 
>> > > > 
>> > > I sincerely think debian-vote should be read-only for non-DDs because this
>> > > person is not a DD (afaict) and is just polluting our list with such
>> > > non-sense.
>> > > 
>> > Zlatan, it is clear that you disagree with Craig's mail, but that is no
>> > reason attack him personally as you have done.
>> Attack? I stated that he is (afaict) not a DD. He used 'witch-hunt" term,
>> which is just a pollution of the list. People throwing random words from
>> past with no connection to present doesn't give me any hope that they mean
>> good nor that they think about their actions.
>
> Using the word 'witch-hunt' is an expression of an opinion.  Perhaps
> 'character assissination' might have been less opinionated, though still
> very much a loaded term.  Incidentally, the use of "witch hunt" in
> modern English is idiomatic.  It has nothing to do with hunting actual
> witches or with any sort of extreme punishment associated with
> historical real witch hunts.  In the modern usage it is about punishing
> someone (frequently someone who is a part of the group but not at fault)
> so that the larger group or its leaders can feel as though action has
> been taken to deal with some "evil" which has been exposed.

You'll need to ask Craig what he actually meant by that.

My assumption would be that it was an allusion to McCarthyism, and the
associated anti-communist moral panic in the 1950s that Arthur Miller
dramatised in The Crucible.

The term's been given a recent retread as a thing that strong-man
leaders use as a weapon against investigative journalists who are doing
their jobs, but I doubt Craig meant that.

The problem I see with his proposal is in the way it uses the term
'witch-hunt' as though it is an undisputed fact that such a thing is
currently in progress.

The way things normally go in a witch-hunt is that some people are
accused of something, then those in authority coerce the accused into
naming conspirators, and then people start inflating the charges being
made in order to distance themselves from the accused and prove their
own purity -- defending any of the accused just gets you added to the
list of wrongdoers.

A consequence of that is that the middle ground becomes a very dangerous
place to be, and people flee to the extremes in order not to be accused
of being on the other side of the argument.

Is that really what we're seeing?

This GR seems to encompass a pretty broad spectrum of options, and I
don't think there was that much in the way of accusing people of being
as bad as the person they were defending, or anything of that sort.

I hope that people are not being attacked in private -- indulging in
such behaviours would definitely be a Code of Conduct violation, but I
think even that would fail to qualify as a witch-hunt, because the
intimidation needs to be made obvious to the wider group for something
to qualify as a witch-hunt.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
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