You linked a blog post and cannot explain why it’s racist. You only think it’s racist because you disagree with it. It could be 100% factual and true but because you disagree it’s racist.
As to whether this DHH person has said any 'vile far-right stuff' I do not know since I don't know the character, am not interested in this distribution - plain Debian + Xmonad does just fine for me - and do not want my operating system to dictate my politics in any way. But... there is always that but, isn't there?
For years, nay decades by now it has been practice to label those who do not toe the Party line and follow whatever diktat handed down from on high on any number of subjects as 'Nazi', 'Fascist', "${identity_group}phobe" (this needs double quotes for expansion to work), to throw bucketfuls of epithets at those who refuse to obey the order to put black squares on their web things, who dare to insist that war X was in fact started by party Y, that a hulking man with a bulge in his pants is in fact just that and not a woman, etcetera.
...and hardly anybody, here or elsewhere in 'polite society' dared to say anything about it for fear of being labelled themselves, here on this site for fear of being greyed out or shadow-banned. So DHH says nasty things? That is quite possible. If it is so he is just like all the others who say nasty things like I described above. He may even aim his remarks at some of the same people, quite possibly so because those who think for themselves are often disliked by those who want to do their thinking for them.
> London is no longer the city I was infatuated with in the late '90s and early 2000s. Chiefly because it's no longer full of native Brits.
with a link to the Wikipedia page on ethnic groups in London showing that there aren't as many white people in London as there used to be. His usage of "native Brits" dog whistle might be silent, but choosing to link to that particular Wikipedia page is a bit telling.
Further into DHH's blog post, he describes Tommy Robinson's organized marches as being "normal everyday Brits." Freedom of association and all that, but White supremacist, xenophobic marches aren't exactly my idea of "normal everyday Brits" activity. He also attempts to equate these marches with legitimate free speech cases like Graham Linehan, trying to make it all seem like reasonable pushback, as if this is just another historical moment of the isles being "invaded".
Naturally, DHH can't help himself, so 701 words into the article we get a lovely link to articles about Pakistani rape gangs. We're not dealing with subtle implications anymore.
> London is no longer the city I was infatuated with in the late '90s and early 2000s. Chiefly because it's no longer full of native Brits.
As someone who isn't white and was born in the outskirts of London, I took particular offense at that passage, but that's might be more of a personal problem for me.
DHH could have elided what he was really saying by using different words, not linking to that particular Wikipedia page, not mentioning Tommy's march, not trying to frame that march as just this nice lovely fellow out for a little walk. And so on and so forth.
He didn't though. The "demographic change" as you so nicely put it is that the people's skin colors have changed. A surface level of reading might justify putting "presumably compared to recent immigrants" in parentheses, and if you don't care to read it more deeply that than, I can see why one might walk away concluding that people being offended by DHH's statement are just looking for reasons to be offended.
A deeper reading of the words DHH chose to use in the order he used them, one might instead walk away reading that his objection is truly just skin deep. There's nothing to complain about this "demographic change" other than people's skin color isn't white in that one paragraph. Sure, it's entirely his perogative not to want to live somewhere simply based on people's skin color there, but, well, that's racist.
If you don't see that or think it's not offensive, that's entirely your own perogative. That's why linking to DHH's own words is important in the discussion. Everyone's free to draw their own conclusions based on the words he used and how they want to interpret them.
DHH is entirely free to believe whatever he wants and want to live wherever he wants, for whatever reason. Just that if it boils down to I don't like the skin color of people who live there, you shouldn't be surprised when other people don't want to work with you, even if you did create Ruby.
I've been reading the latest few pages of his blog (especially the touchy stuff) and it's opinions largely in line with mainstream conservatism in most of the developed world: not everyone is a Nazi, take pride in your flag and nation, have kids, "woke" / DEI / affirmative action is bad, migration in Europe is a crisis.
These are not taboo or even uncommon topics and many have majority support depending on where you're from (the national flag is less controversial in Canada than the UK; woke is dying faster in the UK than Canada.)
I don't agree with all of it, but I've not seen anything "beyond the pale" - simply someone voicing political opinions in a civilized way. And I'm not sure what else I would expect. My own wife doesn't share all of my political beliefs, yet this is the expectation for people who contribute to FLOSS, and other parts of our lives?
I quite enjoy living in a pluralistic liberal democracy where I can interact with, befriend, and live side by side with people whom see the world differently than I do. And I especially appreciate that this extends even to the strongest topics and religion. People shouldn't avoid code for its creator's beliefs any more than they should boycott a coffee shop because the barista is of a different religion.
