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Any press is good press. Filter out any mention of fashtech so that you can't be tempted to respond to it.
The picture is an example in #mbin. Lemmy might have it too
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this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2026
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Friendly reminder that lamenting your native country losing its identity and making you a minority is not inherently xenophobic, racist or fascist. Would you want that to happen to you?
Not trying to defend DHH per se but I think people are twisting words around and blowing things WAY out of proportion to fit some narrative. I've read the posts in question and he has not actually called for any violence nor wished anyone to get hurt. He has not claimed anyone doesn't have a right to exist. Not everyone is the best at articulating their thoughts properly, and we shouldn't default to assume the worst possible intent. Without actually talking to the guy and getting real clarification, I'd say it's a bit too dangerous to make such wild sweeping claims like I keep seeing.
Or this one:
Let's rephrase this a different way:
"When illegal immigrants overwhelm a city, you deport them"
How do you know that's not all he meant? People are taking great liberties interpreting subjective terminology here.
If you're going to have a kneejerk reaction and act like only your opinion matters and nothing could possibly change it, well that's not reasoned and rational debate, is it? Just downvote and move on I guess if you disagree with me.
Also, the irony of people on lobsters hating on the guy while their own site runs on Rails, seems completely lost on them.
This very much reads like concern trolling.
What is this even in reference to?
It is inherently, by definition, xenophobic and potentially racist (if race is involved). Fascism just often plays on those vices.
To quote Merriam-Webster, xenophobia is:
So yes, it's xenophobic.
I don't care if it does. I've been both a minority and majority in various times of my life. It only mattered when interacting with people who dislike minorities (or majorities).
Is he using "gypsy" to refer to illegal immigrants? Said dictionary provides no definition that matches it, though I know it's often used as a derogatory term to refer to Eastern Europeans (especially Romanians), regardless of legality (and for that matter most of Europe doesn't check visas for international travel within those countries anyway).
Im not sure of the general context here, but in the UK gypsy was mostly used to ( derogatorily ) refer to the Romani.
Also commonly called "travelers" due to their nomadic nature.
As with a lot of derogatory colloquialisms its usage has mutated/changed over time and differs between geographic areas.
Modern usage is generally aimed at the groups of people who nomadically move around in large caravan convoys, they may or may not descend from (or identify as) Roma.
They have a poor reputation.
If you've ever seen the movie Snatch , the group that brad pitt is a part of is one example of "gypsies".
Best I can tell, they are "Irish" gypsies but many different variations exist.
DHH's post "As I Remember London" which I inferred from this post referring to Omarchy as "fashtech" and based on other recent posts about the same thing.
I don't see any fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners in the referenced post. I don't want to explicitly link it in case that would anger the mods somehow, but it is easy to find.
You may criticize his nationalism, immigration views, or rhetoric as exclusionary or ethnonationalist. But IMO calling him fascist requires showing more than concern about demographic change.
I don't know, you would have to ask him. I was just pointing out that it's not objectively obvious as to their intent and I don't think people are reacting fairly, rationally or even attempting to use critical thinking.
Unfortunately social media amplifies outrage because it generates clicks, and attempting to have calm and reasonable discussions is often simply downvoted and ignored.
In this way I find that tech-central sites with active commentary like reddit/lemmy/phoronix/etc. are quite often just as cancerous as Facebook and such. You would think a lot more technical people would be more rational but I haven't found that to be the case the majority of the time.
As someone who doesn't give two shits about DHH, I legit had no idea what the post was referring to, so I've read the article.
It's grossly xenophobic and racist. The entire article is premised on the notion that non-"native Brits" are not actually British and do not actually embody British culture. This is fallacious for two reasons:
It then attributes the supposed shift in culture to a shift in demographics rather than globalization and cultural mixing online that we've seen impact countries like South Korea and Japan.
The best interpretation I can give for the article is a Boomer's incoherent ramblings, and the default interpretation I'd have is that he's a white supremacist as he seems to look down on those he considers foreign.
This statement, taken literally and without context, would be easy to make (again ignoring anything but the literal text). However, given the contents of the article, this is not what he's saying. I'll rephrase this statement to what he's saying, with connotations made explicit:
Not racist? Not xenophobic? Lol.
You cannot lament your personal ideal of your country being diluted or ruined by the influx of people of other races without a significant amount of fear or hatred. Otherwise it wouldn't be an issue in the first place. The very thought requires othering a group of people determined to be undesirable.
I disagree. I think it is possible to feel concern about cultural change without holding fear or hatred toward a specific group of people.
People might push back against change not because they're out to get anyone, but simply because they like how things are working now and worry that change will just cause a mess.
This is true, but not what his article does. It expresses concern about the changes he observed and attributes those changes towards a specific group of people (those he views as foreign). Context can't just be ignored.
Those feelings cannot be rooted in anything except xenophobia. Mollifying the language doesn't get away from the root of where such sentiments even come from.
people are using the word facist wrong. they are watering it down. but the guy is racist. he wasnt lamenting about illegal immigrants he was complaining that brits were no longer white. he did this by referencing a graph that showed the oercentage of british citizens (not illegal immigrants). this graph showed a percentage of white and non white and he referenced that exact percentage.
It's possible he is actually racist, I don't know, but I agree with you that the word fascist is being thrown around much too easily.
The problem I see is people don't seem willing to have good-faith discussions or accept that other equally valid perspectives can exist.
Out of sheer curiosity I said this to my local LLM: