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hypfertoday at 10:19 AM6 repliesview on HN

I think more precise terminology would go a long way here.

What is "a fascist" (in context of being labelled that on the interwebs). That could mean a lot of things.

As a reader, you learn basically nothing about DHH other than that some people might not like him.

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So to fix that:

DHH has always been a very opinionated guy - with not all of those being agreed on, but there being usually some kind of point to them.

Starting somewhere late-ish last year, however, he seems to have dropped deep through the alt-right pipeline and started babbling talking points basically copy-pasted as-is from other talking heads.

So, in essence, he kinda stopped being opinionated, because that would require having an own opinion, and instead started just being yet another person not doing all too well mentally on the internet.

I mean the guy suddenly started talking about "body counts". What's his age again?

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Of course, moral outrage happened but achieved absolutely nothing, because it's not the right tool for the job here.


Replies

graemeptoday at 10:36 AM

He is simply racist.

I do not disagree with what your said, but I think it just boils down to that.

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omnimustoday at 11:12 AM

To be fair DHH became exceedingly unhinged.

For example in his latest blog post he first describes problem of growing populations of wolves that are killing sheep and cannot be shot because they are protected by the state. And then starts to compare the situation with danish gypsies (Romani) in danish cities.

That's as close to fascism as you can get... it's pretty out there on the edge of legality.

I mean I used to respect his (at the time mainly technical) takes and I recommended Basecamp to so many organizations. How has this table turned so much I have no idea.

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inigyoutoday at 2:39 PM

Nothing on this list screams explicitly nazi to me, but this is a long list for things that are believed mostly by neo-nazis. Like heavily complaining that London isn't racillly pure enough. And supporting a prominent political figure who believes every Muslim is a terrorist. And complaining about "woke" all the time.

so it depends if you believe that everyone who supported the nazi party was a nazi, or only the people who actually did the holocaust.

https://blogs.gnome.org/alatiera/2025/11/06/dhh-and-omarchy-...

https://jakelazaroff.com/words/dhh-is-way-worse-than-i-thoug...

rightbytetoday at 10:31 AM

One could argue that fascist run FOSS projects might be working against your interest as a user.

Fascist is not just a silly label. The political collapse of neoliberalism made a lot of closet fascists emerge and they seem quite common among what was earlier thought of as "techno libertarians". E.g. the VPN provider owner (forgot which) just lately.

If there was too much crying wolf 15 years ago, doesn't really matter now anyways.

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Brian_K_Whitetoday at 12:17 PM

They are commenting on Omarchy, not DHH other than as relates to Omarchy. They also didn't recite a wikipedia entry to define what Arch is, or linux, or what distribution means.

watwuttoday at 11:09 AM

I dont think "fascist" and "been a very opinionated guy" are mutually replacable. In fact, insistence on euphemisms like that harmed the discussion a lot and overall culture a lot.