Dhh and Omarchy: Midlife Crisis
Postedabout 2 months agoActiveabout 2 months ago
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The post critiques DHH and Omarchy, sparking a heated discussion about their ideologies and the implications of supporting controversial figures in the tech community.
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Nov 6, 2025 at 6:32 AM EST
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Pity, because DHH is a weapons-grade plum, to borrow words from Sue Perkins, though she never used them against DHH - it's just an apt title.
If I write an essay called "I love cabbage" and then fill it with all the ways I hate cabbage, how would you link to it?
It's OK to call out people for being disingenuous.
But he already primes the reader to take his viewpoint by shoving it in there, instead of treating the reader like a person able to make up their own mind, probably because he doesn't trust the reader to reach the exact same conclusion as he does.
Do you friends say things like "You should watch this film, it is very funny" and "Don't watch that film, it is boring"? Or are they more likely to say "This is a film which exists" without context?
The purpose of communication is to express our ideas and convince people. It is entirely appropriate to say "Here is an article and some context you need to know before reading it."
That's especially true when the article hides its true intent. When DHH writes about supporting a violent and racist criminal (as he has) he doesn't say "I like this thug" - instead he attempts to hide that.
So, yes. Retitling the articles is an excellent way to cut through the double-speak presented in them.
"Is there any chance for these people, who are shielded by their well-paying jobs, their exclusively occupational media diet, and stimuli all happen to reinforce the default world view?"
So many people (mostly American men) are insulated from reality. To use their pejorative language - when it finally intrudes on their safe spaces, they turn into little snowflakes.
How is it possible to look at the infinite diversity in the tech world, with a million opinions on matters trivial and profound, and then declare that only you have all the right answers?
"They're insulated from reality" the Marxist chortled just moments after unironically claiming men can be pregnant.
The ruse is up. Calling anyone right of Mao a Nazi doesn't work anymore.
I don't like what DHH has become or what he says (nor do I have any interest in Omarchy, I prefer Fedora (for many years)/KDE (recently but loving it) anyway) since "As I remember London[1]" was the final straw for me (of lots of straws) but on the flip side but if you only ever use software written by people you ideologically align with you are going to have a bad time.
[1] https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64
The issue is how wide the tolerance is before you decide as a group people need excluding, if you set that too narrow you end up with an immediate conflict, if you set it too wide you risk your open community becoming dominated by one group.
I'm centre left (by European standards) and would definitely be considered "woke" by the people who use it as a negative epithet but I think many open source communities set it too narrow still.
People have a right to their opinions even if I don't agree with them just as I do, there is a line where active opposition is required for me but a lot of the time I disagree with where that line is.
One reason to actively oppose DHH is that he actively opposes anyone who calls him out, going as far as squashing valid criticism at his own company and ousting them from positions in open source projects (the whole ruby central case).
Even if you don't think he's a nazi, he's shown himself to be a bad actor who doesn't play by the rules.
That's also a kind of behaviour that leads to community vibes going down the drain and other bad actors (nazi or not) taking over.
You can legitmately call out those people for the views they hold, you don't need call them something they aren't.
It would be as stupid as calling me a Stalinist because I'm slightly left of centre, it ends the debate because why would you debate someone you called a Stalinist.
I don't have to like DHH or his views but he's not a fascist.
If DHH wanted to argue about, say, different taxation strategies or deregulation or supporting our monarchy - those are all things which we can have a reasonable debate about. I don't have to agree on your stance on free school meals and student debt, but we can get along just fine.
https://gizmodo.com/godwin-of-godwins-law-by-all-means-compa...
Glad that's not what happened, DHH is not a Nazi.
He has also quite clearly taken a nazi or ethnonationalist stance. If we allow the term "nazi" to refer to people other than literal card-carrying members of the German Nazi party up until 1945, he fits the description accurately.
No he hasn't. Holding heterodox opinions isn't being "a bad actor."
>He will continue to drive away sane people from the communities he's a part of.
He's driven insane people from the communities he's a part of. Sane people will flock to them.
>He has also quite clearly taken a nazi or ethnonationalist stance.
No he hasn't. There's nothing wrong with promoting or protecting the interests of native or indigenous people over those of immigrants or foreigners.
And he is an ethnonationalist. In "As I remember London", he claimed Britain was a third native brit, then backed it up with a wikipedia link showing a third of London was white. So in DHH's mind white = British. There's no other way to interpret that, and he hasn't corrected it.
His company, his rules. He banned activist employees from using work as a platform to proselytize their grievance politics.
>In "As I remember London", he claimed Britain was a third native brit, then backed it up with a wikipedia link showing a third of London was white.
This is what happens when you only read posts on Bluesky/Mastodon. He claimed London was only a third "native Brit" which is the factual reality, backed up by Wikipedia. He didn't include "all Whites" just "White Brits." White Brits are the only native Brits to Britain.
>So in DHH's mind white = British.
Wrong. White Brit = native Brit, which is factually correct.
>There's no other way to interpret that
Correct, no other way to interpret the facts.
>and he hasn't corrected it.
"He hasn't removed the wrongthink!"
But even for a faulty ethnonationalist concept of nationality, the data point makes no sense. I'm white and born in Finland. By your logic, if I move to the UK and become a naturalized citizen, then I would be a native. Which is obviously not true. So the one third figure is both racist and incrdibly stupid.
Native means you're born somewhere. Equating nationality by skin color is ethnonationalism. So I guess congrats, you're a nazi.
There's no "thinking" White Brits are the only Brits native to Britain, they are. It's not ethnonationalist, it is an indisputable fact.
>the data point makes no sense
If you bothered to read his blog post, not just Bluesky/Mastodon comments, the data point makes a lot of sense.
>I'm white and born in Finland. By your logic, if I move to the UK and become a naturalized citizen, then I would be a native.
Here is where you're wrong. You would not be native, you would still be a foreigner. Finns are not White Brits. Russians, Austrians, etc. may all be White, but they are not White Brits, and are therefore not native Brits, even if they move and gain citizenship.
>So the one third figure is both racist and incrdibly stupid.
Neither racist nor stupid, just wrongthink.
>Native means you're born somewhere.
White Brits are the only indigenous Brits.
>Equating nationality by skin color is ethnonationalism.
Glad that's not what I nor DHH did.
>So I guess congrats, you're a nazi.
So I guess congrats, you're a genocidal Maoist-Leninist-Marxist.
The indigenous claim is also funny, because that would refer specifically to Celtic peoples in Britain. And the modern white British population is not predominantly Celtic, and definitely not indigenous. The Anglo-Saxons, e.g., are not indigenous to Britain.
Which leads to the most hilarious point of your post, where you first equate nationality with skin color (in a particularly misguided way) "White Brits are the only indigenous Brits", and then immediately deny that you are equating nationality with skin color.
That's a decent self-contradiction speedrun.
I don't get it. You clearly hold ethnonationalist views and aren't afraid to express them, so I wonder why you're afraid of admitting that you are an ethnonationalist. Be honest about it.
Good luck to anyone wanting only ideologically compatible software. They'll end up with pretty much nothing left to use.
Same applies to companies that produce goods. It's a never ending hole.
Just like boycotting your favourite chocolate company because they try to undermine breastfeeding in developing countries. Yes, it hurts a little; that's the point of sacrifice.
Cloudflare have always been like this. They previously defended hate speech because it made them money.
Some people are just nasty. They like to bully other people and now believe they have a social licence to do so.
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