Let's just say that in the 33 or so years that I have known "Eric the Flute" personally, he has always acted creepy and irrational, but he really went off the deep end after 9/11.
> racists and men's rights activist should troll somewhere else.
There are definitely many of those in the comment threads on Eric's blog. But are you saying that ESR is himself one of those? Because I've seen no evidence of it myself.
[Edited to remove the 'gun nuts' bit, because ESR proudly self-identifies as same; it was the racist / MRA thing I was questioning.]
Eric Raymond doesn't believe he's a racist. Eric Raymond also doesn't believe that there are more than about 30 active white supremacists in the country†. One wonders what one would have to do to reach the level of "racist towards black people". Here's something I'm confident doesn't reach that level for Raymond: the belief that the average African American has an IQ so low --- borderline mentally disabled --- that they can't be properly instructed in the handling of a firearm.
† (he knows this because his Kung Fu instructor, who consults with "the Feds" on "counter-terrorism", informed him of this --- this is presumably a different source than the one that reliably informed him that Iran had dispatched a death squad to kill him)
Will a screenshot suffice? I don't know whether he scrubbed his blog or just managed to get it deindexed (it's apparently been hacked at least twice in the past few weeks and he's not sure how, only that it's getting re-hacked after he installs new strong passwords) and there's a limit to how much work I'll put into securing an apology, but if you'll take my word for the authenticity of a screenshot I captured and posted myself --- and you should --- then here you go:
I never saw that before, but it's consistent with his past words and behavior.
Since duncan asked for citations:
Here's ESR having a tantrum and throwing down the gauntlet during Russ Nelson's "Blacks are lazy" scandal that embarassed OSI and rocked the open source community: he insisted OSI get into a mud-fight against political correctness, and he called people in the open source community who disagreed with Russ's "Blacks are lazy" blog posting "fools and thugs":
Note that although Russell withdrew the article, and admitted it was badly written, Eric S. Raymond is on the record as having defended it by accusing people asking Russell to step down as being "fools and thugs". Note that "thug" has been called a "dog whistle" term for "n*gger".
Eric S. Raymond wrote: “The people who knew Russ as a Quaker, a pacifist and a gentleman, and no racist, but nevertheless pressured OSI to do the responsible thing and fire him in order to avoid political damage should be equally ashamed,” Raymond said. “Abetting somebody elses witch hunt is no less disgusting than starting your own.”
“Personally, I wanted to fight this on principle,” Raymond said. “Russ resigned the presidency rather than get OSI into that fight, and the board quite properly respected his wishes in the matter. That sacrifice makes me angrier at the fools and thugs who pulled him down.”
I mean, that clip is kind of the tip of the iceberg with ESR's published record here. And it's not just anti-black and anti-Latino racism; here's another choice example:
We could go on for quite some time about women if we really wanted. Or we could just look to the front page of his blog, where he's posted a long, arduous defense of "casting couch" sexual harassment.
Jesus fuck. You read that stuff regularly??! I would throw out my blue highlighter after marking that up. I haven't read any of his filth in years -- he's gotten much worse than I remember. It looks like he's metastasized.
Please, you have google, use it! Don't pollute this discussion with links to his site, or quotes of his words.
Maybe Iran dispatched a death squad to kill him, as revenge for the time that he threatened Bruce Peren's life. Wooooooooo!!! Be careful: you can laugh yourself to death reading his blog.
Considering the replies to this comment, could you either point out how they're inaccurate, or alternatively apologize and withdraw your support for ESR as a non-racist?
On many of the points he raises, no - they're not racist, they're factually correct, and point (IMO) to socio-economic and cultural problems. For example, the known issue about measured IQ in the black population being > 1 std dev less than the mean for the rest of the USA.
Having read through the material posted, though, it's clear he supports the idea of racial profiling and similar; literally judging individuals in part by their membership of a racial group, which is the very definition of racism.
I'm in the process of penning a blog post which will go into this in more detail, and which I'll invite him to comment on. I like to think (Don Hopkins' fearful warnings to the contrary) that he is a mostly reasonable person who could be convinced to change his opinion.
It will also contain a strong rebuttal of his points around agency and consent in the casting couch article, which are dangerously wrong.
So yes. With the caveat that it applies to only a subset of his stated opinions on race - I apologise and withdraw.
So have you cured ESR of his sexism yet? Let's see your promised strong rebuttal of his latest sexist post, please. Did he respond by admitting he's wrong, apologizing and turning over a new leaf?
Have you also written a strong rebuttal of his racism too, or are you going to let that slide? Is it your opinion that ESR and Trump and Hitler are not racist and shouldn't be taken to task for it, because only a subset of their stated opinions on race are racist and incorrect?
Precisely where do you draw the line where that subset of someone's stated opinions being racist becomes intolerable -- 10%, 50%, 99%?
Is it perfectly OK with you if Scoble and Weinstein and Trump only sexually assault a subset of the women in their respective industries?
There's an essay by him defending Timothy McVeigh, and another one where he makes that rotten old "affirmative action is racism!!!1!" argument. Plus, I seem to remember, gives pretty much the impression that all black people are gang members on welfare to him.
Then, there's the really-not-as-smart-as-he-thinks biologism trying to explain "why women are different than men". It's actually funny how there's this never-ending supply of people posting those arguments, promoting them as some sort of intellectual revolution, completely unchanged from ESR's heyday (early 80s?) to today's google-memo-writers.
> This seems to me like a way to avoid facing the really hard questions. Questions which begin with this one: where and when and how did Timothy McVeigh learn to think of taking the lives of innocent women and children as acceptable "collateral damage"?
"But the most important reason to reject the argument that affirmative action is racist is that it ignores what racism actually is. The whole point of any racist practice is to preserve and enforce the privilege – the dominance and unearned advantage – of the dominant group by systematically excluding and oppressing members of the subordinate group. This has never been the purpose of affirmative action, either in theory or in practice. It has been just the opposite – a modest attempt to shift the odds away from being so heavily loaded in favor of whites in an environment that is still overwhelmingly white dominated, identified, and centered."
While I agree with your position on affirmative action and not your interlocutor's, there's more than enough direct evidence of white supremacy on Raymond's part to let us skirt this particular unproductive debate and focus on the more obviously objective stuff.
Actually, I'm not totally confident that ESR is really a racist. I think it's possible that he might just be profoundly, narcissistically insecure. The more you read him (I've read every ESR G+ post, every ESR blog post, and every ESR-authored comment on every ESR blog post for the past 2 years), the more you come to realize the truth that every kind of person that is not ESR is somehow intrinsically flawed, while ESR himself is one of the most important people on the planet, almost singlehandedly (if you don't count Dave Taht) responsible for the security of the Internet and of revolutionary movements in Iran, plugged directly into the most sensitive sources in law enforcement (wait 'till you read what he's learned about the Las Vegas shooter; it'll change forever what you thought you knew about ANTIFA, BLM, and Islam).
I think it might be tough to reckon with that kind of overwhelmingly disordered view of the world, and that white nationalism and mens-rights-ism and similar ideologies offer him a mental framework in which his weird belief of himself at the center of the world might just make sense.
I'd be sad, except, seriously? Fuck that guy. In the eye socket, forever.
I've had his schtick figured out for decades, and it's very tired and never changes. The whole "Blacks are lazy" fiasco was Russ unsuccessfully attempting to emulate ESR, the highest complement he could pay to his bro. Which is why ESR defended him so exuberantly. It was an orgy of narcissistic supply.
ESR's schtick: He's always trying to show off how intelligent he is by making a totally outrageous asinine statement he knows isn't true and is totally offensive, and then trying to prove he's so clever that he CAN justify it through mental tricks, verbal gymnastics and gerrymandered taxonomies. He does it again and again. Every one of his posts is just like that.
And his minions eat it up, because he appeals directly and systematically to their prejudices and hatred.
So technically, in a certain sense, no, he's not racist, because he doesn't believe a fucking thing he says. He's something much worse than racist: Eric the Flute is a Pied Piper of racism, someone who feeds and thrives from other people's racism, sexism and hatred.
Hmm, can you think of anyone else who's mastered this technique?
> He's always trying to show off how intelligent he is by making a totally outrageous asinine statement he knows isn't true and is totally offensive, and then trying to prove he's so clever that he CAN justify it through mental tricks, verbal gymnastics and gerrymandered taxonomies.
I'm reminded of this post: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6839. Here he declares himself the most famous programmer ever. Even by his own criteria, notch of minecraft fame is significantly more famous.
Here's instructive to consider, after reading "Are you the most famous programmer in the world? It's a reasonable question to ask", exactly what it is that Eric Raymond has programmed...
His software work is unremarkable (fetchmail is trivial and buggy, and CML2 was rejected by the Linux kernel developers), and he's made his career not by writing software but by attacking real hackers like Richard Stallman and trying to bring down their work, not by actually constructively developing any useful software himself. Attacking real hackers and trying to discourage people from using "free software" isn't "hacking".
When I knew him during the 80's, he would go on and on ad nauseum about his beloved "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle NetNews Reader" and how so much better than every other netnews reader. But he never collaborated with anyone, and he never released it under any license. Much more Bizarre than Cathedral.
I guess I'm coming from a sort of Jamelle Bouie place about how racism describes mostly actions and not people, so I mean, his actions are paint-peelingly racist, but the constellation of fucked up things he believes paints a different picture about the fundamental problem in his psyche, which might not be that simple.
There are many racists and men's rights activists at Trump rallies, but (gasp!) are you saying that Trump is himself one of those? Maybe he's actually an upright ethical human being with extraordinary leadership abilities, who simply panders to racists and men's rights activists, but doesn't actually believe any of the words he says to wind up the crowds at rallies?
The best evidence is all over his blog and Google+ account, but I refuse to link to it. Google for "esr", "Is the casting couch a fair trade?", "low IQ" and "Blacks are lazy" yourself. You're probably going to want to take a shower afterwards. ...Unless that kind of stuff appeals to you.
"The average IQ of the Haitian population is 67... Haiti is, quite literally, a country full of violent idiots."
Or, from a different post:
"... The minimum level of training required to make someone effective as a self defense shooter is not very high... unfortunately, this doesn't cover the BLM crowd, which would have an average IQ of 85 if it's statistically representative of American blacks as a whole. I've never tried to train anyone that dim and wouldn't want to."
Seriously: Don't go there. Don't post to that effect. It will make no difference, and he will thrive from your attention. Don't read there. Don't link there. Don't quote his words. Don't be his flying monkey. The world will be a better place for it. Thank you.
