Linux communities beware of #PewDiePie fans

Regardless of PewDiePie’s personal #politics (which clearly, at the very least are problematic), it is fairly well known by anyone who has been following him for any number of years that the vast majority of his fan base are enthusiastic fascists.

Now #PewDiePie , who’s content centers around PC gaming and Windows, has decided to switch to #Linux and published a video encouraging his followers to do the same. This means a very large number of his #fascist fan base is going to be switching to Linux.

Now many Linux communities are going to be forced to more explicitly choose their politics. Like the parable of the Nazi bar, if the community remains politically neutral, it will become fascist in short order.

A few things to be wary of:

People asking you not to be “too political” or to “focus on the technology, not the politics” is a classic and highly effective fascist ruse to get moderators to lighten up on fascist elements posting in their community.
People complaining about free speech rights. The #Internet and the #Fediverse is already a domain where people can speak freely about their politics by running their own server and building their own community with few to no government constraints. You don’t need to compromise on whether fascists have the right to free speech in your community.
Arguments over your code of conduct (CC) and “safe spaces.” Keep them up-to-date. Research other people’s CCs, learn about the history of why these CCs came to be, learn about what the function of each clause of the code is included and phrased the way it is. These were usually designed to make explicit the fact that a community wants to be a safe space where underprivileged people can feel comfortable expressing themselves, and it is very easy to make people afraid to express themselves. Fascists understand these CCs and the concept of “safe spaces” were explicitly designed to exclude them, and often attack these ideas.

politics 

@ramin_hal9001 this is the exact type of elitism that drives people away from linux in the first place. sure, people may have fucked up political views, but that doesn't mean they should be barred from using an operating system. as long as people discussing linux online keep their political views out of the discussion, is it really that big of a deal? you'd never know anyway.

generalizing all of pewdiepie's millions of fans as all being fascist is also completely overblown and ridiculous. most people who watch him don't even know about the stuff pewdiepie did. i really doubt a bunch of neo nazis have taken over a youtuber's community that's mainly focused around content for teenagers if i'm not mistaken. sure, bad people exist in every community, but that shouldn't paint your entire view of that community negatively.

personally i think we should welcome people who are learning about linux and excited to use it with open arms. this is our chance to get *millions* of new users on linux. when more people switch to linux, the entire community benefits because it means software devs are more likely to want to support linux. sure, there will be people on forums being rude and entitled, but we do what we've always done: ignore them and move on.

tl;dr, don't generalize entire communities based off a few bad people in them and remember that increased linux market share benefits us all
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re: politics 

@mjdxp @ramin_hal9001 This is kind of a weird response?

Like, you're arguing that it "doesn't mean they should be barred from using an operating system", but nowhere in the original post was that even suggested?

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