Roberto C. Sánchez <robe...@debian.org> writes: > On Fri, Apr 02, 2021 at 06:18:51PM +0200, Zlatan Todoric wrote: >> >> On 4/2/21 16:56, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote: >> > On Fri, Apr 02, 2021 at 03:49:04PM +0200, Zlatan Todoric wrote: >> > > On 4/2/21 09:20, Craig Sanders wrote: >> > > > TEXT OF OPTION 5 >> > > > ---------------- >> > > > >> > > > Debian refuses to participate in and denounces the witch-hunt against >> > > > Richard >> > > > Stallman, the Free Software Foundation, and the members of the board >> > > > of the >> > > > Free Software Foundation. >> > > > >> > > > ---------------- >> > > > >> > > > >> > > I sincerely think debian-vote should be read-only for non-DDs because >> > > this >> > > person is not a DD (afaict) and is just polluting our list with such >> > > non-sense. >> > > >> > Zlatan, it is clear that you disagree with Craig's mail, but that is no >> > reason attack him personally as you have done. >> Attack? I stated that he is (afaict) not a DD. He used 'witch-hunt" term, >> which is just a pollution of the list. People throwing random words from >> past with no connection to present doesn't give me any hope that they mean >> good nor that they think about their actions. > > Using the word 'witch-hunt' is an expression of an opinion. Perhaps > 'character assissination' might have been less opinionated, though still > very much a loaded term. Incidentally, the use of "witch hunt" in > modern English is idiomatic. It has nothing to do with hunting actual > witches or with any sort of extreme punishment associated with > historical real witch hunts. In the modern usage it is about punishing > someone (frequently someone who is a part of the group but not at fault) > so that the larger group or its leaders can feel as though action has > been taken to deal with some "evil" which has been exposed.
You'll need to ask Craig what he actually meant by that. My assumption would be that it was an allusion to McCarthyism, and the associated anti-communist moral panic in the 1950s that Arthur Miller dramatised in The Crucible. The term's been given a recent retread as a thing that strong-man leaders use as a weapon against investigative journalists who are doing their jobs, but I doubt Craig meant that. The problem I see with his proposal is in the way it uses the term 'witch-hunt' as though it is an undisputed fact that such a thing is currently in progress. The way things normally go in a witch-hunt is that some people are accused of something, then those in authority coerce the accused into naming conspirators, and then people start inflating the charges being made in order to distance themselves from the accused and prove their own purity -- defending any of the accused just gets you added to the list of wrongdoers. A consequence of that is that the middle ground becomes a very dangerous place to be, and people flee to the extremes in order not to be accused of being on the other side of the argument. Is that really what we're seeing? This GR seems to encompass a pretty broad spectrum of options, and I don't think there was that much in the way of accusing people of being as bad as the person they were defending, or anything of that sort. I hope that people are not being attacked in private -- indulging in such behaviours would definitely be a Code of Conduct violation, but I think even that would fail to qualify as a witch-hunt, because the intimidation needs to be made obvious to the wider group for something to qualify as a witch-hunt. Cheers, Phil. -- |)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560] HANDS.COM Ltd. |-| http://www.hands.com/ http://ftp.uk.debian.org/ |(| Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34, 21075 Hamburg, GERMANY
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