David Celis recently published a thoughtful post on Rails governance in response to the latest troubling blog post from DHH, the creator of Rails. Like David, I’ve also been troubled by DHH’s recent output and the harm it is causing to the Ruby community.

I think it’s worth taking a moment to analyse DHH’s post in more detail and make it clear exactly why it’s so problematic.

In his post, DHH complains that London is no longer a city he wants to live in because it is now only a third “native Brit”. His use of “native Brit” is as a proxy for “White British”. The implication is clear: if you are not White, you are not British.

In the same post he praises Tommy Robinson (actual name Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon), a right-wing agitator with several convictions for violent offences and a long history of association with far-right groups such as the English Defence League and the British Nationalist Party. He then goes on to describe those that attended last weekend’s far-right rally in London as “perfectly normal, peaceful Brits” protesting against the “demographic nightmare” that has enveloped London, despite the violence and disorder they caused.

To all of that he ads a dash of Islamophobia, citing “Pakistani rape gangs” as one of the reasons for the unrest, repeating a weaponised trope borne from a long since discredited report from the Quilliam Foundation, an organisation with ties to both the the US Tea Party, and Tommy Robinson himself. A trope that exists despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of convicted child sex offenders are white men, with Asian men in fact under-represented.

According to DHH, there is nothing racist or xenophobic in saying “Britain primarily a united kingdom for the Brits”, which again let’s be absolutely clear; by “Brits” he means White people.

I’m tired

As a non-white British citizen born and raised in London, I can’t explain just how painful it is to hear this sort of toxic rhetoric being promoted by one of the most prominent and visible leaders of the Ruby community. I experienced my fair share of racism growing up in London in the eighties and nineties from the very people that DHH is lionising in his post. White men who questioned my right to exist. Places and spaces where I didn’t feel welcome or safe because of my ethnic origin. And despite the recent rise in far-right politics, for the most part things are much better. Anyone who has spent even the smallest amount of time in the great city of London knows that it is precisely its rich multiculturalism that makes it great. The migration issue in Britain is complicated and multi-layered and DHH wades into it with all the subtlety and nuance of a bull in china shop, sharing the same old and tired xenophobic tropes.

Unfortunately it isn’t just migrants and non-white people that have come under fire in DHH’s recent writing and social media posts. There have been multiple examples of anti-trans rhetoric . There was the post where he described an ad featuring a plus-sized Black women as “grotesque” and celebrated the ads being replaced with ads featuring “blond babies” (what is it about the baby’s blondness that is relevant I wonder?). There have been the posts veering into puritanical Pronatalism, another favourite subject of the nationalist right. Whether it’s his direct intention or not, there has been a consistent theme of othering and stigmatising in his recent writing. The message is clear: if you are trans, a migrant, black, overweight, childless, have ADHD, then in DHH’s view you are somehow inferior. Instead of raising up and supporting the marginalised and vulnerable, DHH choses to exclude and punch down. This is not something the Ruby community can simply ignore.

I ❤️ Ruby

I love the Ruby community dearly. It’s a community that has given me much joy, and a successful career doing work I love. It’s also a community I’ve done my fair share to help grow and prosper. Through running my local Ruby meetup, speaking at conferences, organising Rails Girls workshops, mentoring those wanting to get into the industry, and contributing to open source, including Rails itself. And in the over fifteen years I’ve been part of the community I’ve met many kind, thoughtful and compassionate people, few of whom I would ever imagine sharing DHH’s increasingly reactionary and toxic views. But from the safety of his blue-tick echo chamber, and despite many in the community voicing their concern and disgust, DHH is able to spin a narrative that any opposition to his views are nothing more than noise from “radical, violence-condoning nut jobs”.

Power and the complicity of silence

My sense is that since the great Basecamp implosion, rather than reflect on how he and Jason may have been at fault for what happened, DHH found solace in ideas that allowed him to frame himself as victim. DEI and “wokeness” were the actual problem, not him. The recent state of US politics has only further entrenched him in these ideas and emboldening him to fully mask-off. All that is to say I don’t imagine DHH is likely to change. Too much of his self image is now tied up in the misguided moral high ground of these right-wing ideals. So what can be done?

DHH holds an incredible amount of power. He has the trademarks to Rails, and sits as the chair of the Rails Foundation. He is also a board member at Shopify, a company that contributes a huge amount to the Ruby ecosystem, both financially, and through the incredible work of the Ruby and Rails infrastructure team. Of the twelve Rails Core members, almost half are directly employed by either Basecamp or Shopify. DHH and Basecamp drives much of the direction for new features that make it into Rails. Unfortunately DHH isn’t going anywhere.

At the same time, the Ruby community cannot afford to let the damage he is causing by sharing his harmful and toxic ideas go unchecked. We need many more voices to speak up and make it abundantly clear that his views are not widely held. Most importantly, DHH needs to hear directly that from the other leaders in our community that his behaviour is not OK and is causing serious harm to the community. That means the leadership at Ruby Central. That means the members of Rails Core. That means the many podcasters and conference organisers. That means Matz himself.

Silence and appeasement will only embolden DHH to continue with the toxicity and for the damage to continue. Perhaps if enough of those in positions of power call him out on his bullshit he’ll at at least follow his own advice and keep his politics to himself. More importantly though, it will send a clear message to the wider Ruby community (and those who may be considering joining it) that the majority does not stand with DHH and his toxic views.