
How the cancel culture was leveraged against RMS - antoviaque
https://blog.dachary.org/2020/02/10/how-the-cancel-culture-was-leveraged-against-rms/?ref=h
======
sersi
RMS comment was entirely reasonable if rather perilous to write: "We can
imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented
herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein,
he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his
associates”.

In no way did he ever say that "an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely
willing”", just that she could have presented herself as being willing... The
thing is there's no denying that Marvin Minsky was extraordinarily stupid to
associate with someone who had a prior conviction as a sex offender and
furthermore to have sex with anyone when invited by that person but that
doesn't change the fact that RMS argument was mischaracterized and should not
have resulted in him resigning...

This kind of mischaracterization and excessive outrage destroys rational
discussion between people. It just creates a culture of fear and forces people
to hide behind anonymity when engaging in any discourse over this.

~~~
jeltz
As far as I know Minsky declined to have sex with her. Yes, he was stupid to
associate with a convicted rapist, but he was at least smart enough to not
have sex with girls accompanying the rapist. Not a high bar, but still a bar
he cleared.

~~~
dachary
At the time Epstein was not a convicted rapist. However he certainly was a
shady character and it is likely Minsky had every opportunity to distance
himself from him. But he did not.

------
kstenerud
Even more telling is how quickly this article was flagged and erased from the
front page.

Cancel culture has existed in one form or another since the dawn of time, and
it seems that nobody is above this behavior; not even the HN crowd.

~~~
n9
Have you ever had to work with RMS when young women were in the room? Have you
ever been called by a woman who has locked herself in a conference room to get
away from RMS? Have you ever had to deal with the legitimately batshit crazy
narcissism of RMS and decided that the guy was capable of pretty much
anything? Well, I have. I have dealt with him a small number of times for no
more than a couple of days together and in those short times he did literally
dozens of things that indicate he is either nuts, a total calculating
mysoginist or worse, and that he is unable to be made aware of the fact that
you don't touch women's asses without their consent, that you don't corner
young women in a room, and the list goes on. He can't be told. He doesn't
believe it. He's not all there. And THAT is why he took the fall. I'm
absolutely sure that this was the straw that broke the camel's back for MIT
and everyone else that has had to deal with his shit.

~~~
kstenerud
So basically, if I understand correctly, the ends justify the means.

He was an unstoppable monster who could only be brought down by lying about
him, and everyone in on the conspiracy should be hailed as heroes.

~~~
n9
nope. the means justify the means. what I am saying is that in this situation,
in this society, in this instance, I see a lot of people saying a lot about a
lot of things that he did that should have ended his role at MIT and should
have resulted in a conversation about how to keep someone like him from doing
these things again. And, more than that: I myself, a person, a real person,
really saw him do some of those things, too -- enough of those things, in fact
that just what I saw myself would justify "the ends." no one needs to lie. and
many people didn't, I think. And I know that _I_ haven't.

------
oefrha
> In both cases there were many witness who did not intervene for fear of
> being the next target.

That’s the heart of the problem, and I see no solution at all. Every
successful offensive operation makes them more powerful.

------
teddyh
See also: _Low grade "journalists" and internet mob attack RMS with lies. In-
depth review._

[https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/](https://sterling-
archermedes.github.io/)

------
pjc50
The big problem is that far too many people care about the man who lost his
job and far too few people care about the underage woman who was coerced.

If this happened again, exactly the same arguments would be made as to why the
woman should not have reported it and why nothing should happen to the
perpetrators.

~~~
zzzcpan
_> The big problem is that far too many people care about the man who lost his
job and far too few people care about the underage woman who was coerced._

It's actually the opposite, far too many people get easily influenced by
propaganda, hence why the man lost his job.

On top of that the man lost his job is a fact, but a claim of an underage
woman who was supposedly coerced is not and is not verifiable, it's just white
propaganda. If people weren't so naive and accepting of propagandistic
authoritative claims, this wouldn't have happened.

~~~
n9
There are many, many, many reports. The fact that you are focusing on one and
then questioning the veracity of just that one report to make an argument like
this is vile. Vile. As in if this is the way you're rolling you are vile.
Literally a perpetrator of rape culture. Many reports means that if you don't
have mitigating information you listen instead of speaking. Me? I witnessed,
with my own eyes, RMS committing acts that merit is firing. And it would seem
that I am far from alone.

------
olsonjeffery
Glad this post is flagged, because it's a bad, disingenuous argument that
elides the central truth: RMS's dirty laundry was dragged into public view
AFTER he made firing-worthy comments on a university listserv. The chain is
causality is blatently misrepresented in this piece.

Here is the bulk of the email that got RMS rightfully roasted:

>The announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin Minsky:

>“deceased AI ‘pioneer’ Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting one of
Epstein’s victims [2])”

>The injustice is in the word “assaulting”. The term “sexual assault” is so
vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation:

>taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y,
which is much worse than X.

>The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference reports
the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein’s harem.

>(See [https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-
jef...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jeffrey-
epstein-sex-trafficking-island-court-records-unsealed.)) Let’s presume that
was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it).

>The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some
unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing.

>Only that they had sex.

>We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she
presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced
by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from
most of his associates.

>I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is
absolutely wrong to use the term “sexual assault” in an accusation.

>Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a
specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism.

------
pron
Thoughts by someone who -- unlike most commentators on the subject -- has
actually worked with Stallman for years:

[https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-
depa...](https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-
rms-18e6a835fd84)

~~~
ggreer
It should be noted that Bushnell has disliked Stallman ever since Stallman
dismissed him from the Hurd project due to inactivity. It’s not clear how much
of what Bushnell says is true. I haven’t stumbled on anyone willing to
corroborate his claims and a couple people directly contradict him.

------
overlordofdata
Richard Stallman has been saying hurtful, offensive things for years, and it
doesn't take a cancel culture conspiracy theory for that to have real world
consequences. I saw him speak about a decade ago, and though I've never agreed
with his paranoid rants, I really never cared much either way about him
personally until he started airing his views on child porn. Hearing him in
person really drove home how creepy his is.

------
colechristensen
This keeps coming up.

You don't know why MIT fired RMS. What is known is they didn't have to go to
tabloids or blogs to find people complaining about him, people in his group,
and many historical reasons.

[https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-
appendi...](https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-
a-a7e41e784f88)

------
MaupitiBlue
Who cares about what crazy ideas RMS has about assault? If RMS was giving
money to rapists I might care. That RMS hangs out in /b isn’t on my concern
radar.

I fail to see how being so easily offended is good either for an individual or
society. Quick to outrage doesn’t strike me as particularly mindful or
consistent with best namaste practices.

~~~
pron
The issue of "offense" is a common misunderstanding. Suppose some respected
person at a company says something like, "all French epmloyees are morons and
thieves." This actively harms French employees in the social dynamics of the
company even if not a single one of them was present or heard of it. These
"offenses" are not about feelings being hurt, but about the social standing of
people being actually degraded when people of a certain status express biases
without being confronted and without harm to their status.

I am not saying there can't be pitfalls and dangers, but if you care to know
what the perspective of those of us who are in favor of repercussions for
people who promote dehumanizing views, _that 's_ what we're talking about.

~~~
MaupitiBlue
I agree that you don’t want someone with strongly bigoted opinions leading an
organization. That’s a far cry from ruining someone’s career because they hold
opinions that aren’t approved by a vocal segment of the intelligentsia.

~~~
pron
That's true, except I don't think that's the case here, or in most other
notable cases that some vocal segment calls "cancel culture".

------
1123581321
One of the troubling aspects of all this was John Gruber’s decision to
intentionally lie about Stallman and only write a correction after the
intended effect had occurred. (Intentional because there was no effort to
counteract the effect his original story had on the anti-Stallman effort.)
[https://daringfireball.net/2019/10/correction_regarding_an_e...](https://daringfireball.net/2019/10/correction_regarding_an_erroneous_allegation)

~~~
pjc50
Why have you turned "repeat someone else's misattributed anecdote" into
"decision to intentionally lie"? Isn't that the kind of thing people are
complaining about here?

~~~
1123581321
That’s fair. dang admonished me for my wording as well.

I had written it that way because journalists can choose how carefully to
fact-check what they write, and how much energy and timeliness they apply into
corrections. This gives journalists an ability to “optimistically” publish
errors and give misunderstandings narrative momentum. I believe Gruber wielded
those tool in his Stallman piece and the correction, and I thought the proof
was that he did not to try to correct the perception resulting from his
original story. But, as dang said, I don’t have a mind-reader, so I had broken
the site guidelines by writing as if I knew that for sure.

------
phreack
He was not shunned upon due to an unjust weaponization of cancel culture. He
has a long, documented history of expressing very concerning beliefs and of
extremely inappropriate behavior towards women and the latest comments were
just the straw that broke the camel's back. Here's a short compilation thread
of unacceptable behavior and accusations with sources

[https://mobile.twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/11739031026231...](https://mobile.twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/1173903102623154176)

~~~
ng12
> I'm sure Richard Stallman still thinks sex with teenagers is acceptable.

This is my red flag for someone who's being intellectually dishonest about
RMS. It's also the signature move of cancel culture -- aggressively reducing
someone's opinion to one that can be easily canned as intolerable.

~~~
n9
Using this to erase the many, many reports of his behavior is tragic. You're
pulling one thread and saying that the rest don't exist. This is the central
activity of rape culture.

I've seem RMS at work first hand and my experiences fit right in with the
experiences being reported. I get that people don't want him to be the person
that is being described: this is a natural response. But I am using my voice
to say that just the small bit of RMS that I experienced first had is enough
to justify his loss of position and status. And from the look of it my story
is just one of a very large number of similar and worse stories.

~~~
ng12
> You're pulling one thread and saying that the rest don't exist

That's the thing: most of the oft-repeated threads are unconvincing at best
and plain dishonest at worst. If there better examples of RMS's inappropriate
behavior we should be focusing on those.

~~~
n9
There have been many examples. I myself have typed what I personally witnessed
multiple times. I'll just put it this way today: I saw more than enough for
him to be fired and more than enough for him to be demoted from his leadership
roles. I am a real person, former Senior Director of Engineering at a fortune
50. I saw what I saw.

