vox day, eric raymond, and the lambda conference blacklist

[solarbird]

LambdaConf – a functional programming conference – invited an active and overt white supremacist as a speaker. A bunch of people signed a petition protesting that; LambdaConf told them more or less to fuck off. Now the neofascists are targeting all the petitioners, and Eric Raymond, noted open source developer, has jumped in endorsing a do-not-hire blacklist.

What makes this vaguely relevant here is that our old white supremacist and neofascist Hugo Award-scamming pal, Vox Day, has jumped in on the side of the neofascists, and is the one organising the blacklist. When I went checking to verify that Eric Raymond screencap, I also checked comments, where he’s stridently defending Vox. What a clusterfuck of horrible people this is!

And somehow, at the same time, you have the Horror Writers Association appointing fascist David A Riley to their award jury, and people are fighting over what’s wrong with that.

Now, Nick Mamatas argues that there’s a bit of a difference, in that awards are specifically bringing an entire aesthetic to a function, and Moldbug – the LambdaConf white supremacist speaker – was only going to be talking about code. True, but for me, it’s not really different, just different in degree, because developers are making decisions that affect the aesthetics of real life, all the time.

Take that flap recently where a GeoIP company sent every person looking up an IP address’s geographic location to a specific address in the middle of the US if they didn’t have an actual, correct hit for that IP address. They literally chose an old woman’s farm as their default, because it was the nearest address to geographical US centre.

As a result, she’s been facing years of abuse from strangers, because the company never thought somebody would look up some woman’s address online and go harass her.

They outright said that. Tell me that’s not bringing an aesthetic to software.

And just as much as that sort of programming aesthetic, there’s simple flat out personal safety. White supremacists – like misogynists – don’t believe that everybody in the room is an actual person, right? Unless the croud is whites only, or male only, or both, of course. Preferably both.

Take Dave Sim as an example of an overt misogynist. I won’t be in the same room with that man. Preferably not the same building; certainly not at the same event. That’s because he quite literally believes that women are not people, and that women exist only to drain off of real people, meaning men.

If I have to be in the same room with him, I want a gun, because I don’t trust him not to attack me or some other woman. I think it’s very unlikely, of course. But I’ve read his writing about women, and I would not rule it out. And if we woke up tomorrow and found he’d cut up some woman and put her parts in a dumpster, I would have exactly zero surprise.

And given that this shit happens, and happens routinely, I don’t think that’s irrational. I think it’s called real life impact.

So in the case of an overt white supremacist like Moldbug, you’d have to be profoundly stupid – on an emotional/empathetic level at very, very least – to think people of colour aren’t going to have the same reaction. Because that also happens, in real life.

And I don’t think most of these people are stupid. I just think they’re fine with that.

Which is much worse.

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This is part of a collection of posts on racism, sexism, and homophobia in geek culture, covering a variety of specific subtopics. A sorted list of posts can be found here.

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Comments

[vatine]

One of the most mind-boggling things is that one of the reasons ESR supports this is "SJWs were de-platforming" (I think that means 'removing the possibility to speak out', but I am not 100% sure) and from what I understand, he's actively advocating "de-platforming". Now, I am of the firm belief (incorrect as it may be) that if you're trying to hold moral high ground, you should bloody well not do the bad thing you're accusing someone else of, in oredr to curb their bad behaviour.

They literally chose an old woman’s farm as their default, because it was the nearest address to geographical US centre.

My understanding is that it was accidental and they simply rounded the lat/long. Still inexcusable. They totally SHOULD have checked that no one lived there. They totally SHOULD have exposed margins of uncertainty in the API (because people use geo-location for a reason and if yo go "this is somewhere in the US", you should say "it's in this box" or "it's in a circle, with radius 1750 miles, centred on ...". And, yes, it definitely is expressing an aesthetic (actually, multiple aesthetics, including "we don't care about careful API design").

I'm not sure what the reasoning about the choice of location in Ashburn was, though (that's the Virginia man, who is in a similar, but less fraught, position).

[solarbird]

In particular, you shouldn't take the thing you're complaining about and then ramp it the fuck up into space like this.

The protesters were going, "Don't give him a speaker slot, we won't support your conference if you do." The neoreactionaries and white supremacists are going, "We will drive you out of the industry with a blacklist forever."

And I just had to type up a response to someone on the Livejournal echo who was saying they don't think this guy is actually a white supremacist, and I'm going he explicitly endorses racial slavery, what the fuck else do you need? and bracketed that with presumption-of-ignorance, and I'm really, really hoping that's actually the case, because if I know people who think "endorsement for race slavery by Western Europeans over Africans" isn't "white supremacy," I have no fucking idea what to do about anything anymore.

[numb3r_5ev3n]

You know what trend I am ready to see die a swift death? The fact that white supremacy is even considered to be a thing which is acceptable in the United States of America.

This is why I wish I were a necromancer. Not so I can raise the dead to make them do my evil bidding, but to be able to say things like, "Hey, I have located the ghost of your grandfather, who fought Nazis in WWII. He's been telling me about the time he helped to liberate prisoners from a death camp, and what condition they were in when he found them. He has a few words for you about Hitler. And in case you're still skeptical, here are the ghosts of a few of the victims who didn't make it. Well. I'm sure you all have a lot to talk about."

Or, "Here, there are some souls here who would like to share some memories with you about the reality of slavery in the Old South that you want so desperately to rise again. Here you go! You're welcome!"