Ruby Central's Attack on RubyGems [pdf]

In the linked article, DHH links out to a wikipedia article titled "Ethnic groups in London"[0].

He then uses a statistic that "only a third" are native brits in 2021, which roughly lines up with the "White British" line in the chart.

You can argue that "white supremecist" is a charged and problematic term, but I'd say that "Here he complains about too many brown people in London." is a fairly accurate representation of the article. I'd say "disgraceful slander" is a bit too strong as a rebuttal.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_London

just double checked, there is a separate section of the article that has the "foreign born" population of london, which is 36%, so he's definitely excluding any non-white english people there.

I used to work at a Ruby on Rails shop many years ago (New Bamboo, now part of ThoughtBot) which is in London.

I got pointed to the blog post, and it was such a strikingly-bad hot take that I had to write a response: http://paulbjensen.co.uk/2025/09/17/on-dhhs-as-i-remember-lo...

In my opinion, initially I thought "Oh David's been sucked into some kind of social media bubble (on X) or disinformation space", but then as I read the post, down to the bit where he started talking about "demographic replacement", I came to the view that this is who he is a person.

It's shocking and disappointing.

No dog in this race but, as an outsider, it's always seemed really odd that some countries (Japan sticks out) are allowed to prioritize cultural preservation but European countries are not.

A very ironic example is that Americans moving to Mexico is seen as bad, whereas Mexicans moving to the US is seen as necessary by the left...

In Canada here, we have land acknowledgements and it's politically correct to say we stole the land and should give it back to the natives. Then when native Europeans want to keep their land, it's white supremacy...

It's a very obvious double standard.

That's an interesting observation and I think it comes down to immigration policy. I haven't actually looked into it but I've heard that Japan basically doesn't allow for long-term immigration, except probably in exceptional cases like PhDs.

Where EU countries (I know this excludes the UK but it didn't for a long time) allow easy long-term immigration by EU policy. Even with Brexit, I don't think that culture of easy immigration is going to just up and disappear. So having a culture and/or policy of easy immigration alongside "well, actually, not those guys" where "those guys" includes anybody who's not already culturally/ethnically part of the nation is, minimally, counter-productive and perhaps a bit hypocritical.

This is only one of many examples over years of DHH’s ideology. Analyzing this one instance (the most recent) does not change anything, this is a drop in a bucket

There aren't a whole lot of people celebrating Japan's immigration policies. Further, their policies have been around for quite some time. It's one thing to continue enforcing decades old policies and quite another to create those same policies today.

Thanks for your post! Is there a way to add a comment there?

You're welcome.

Unfortunately not - the page is a html export from a markdown editor (Typora), not a blog engine.

> it's always seemed really odd that some countries (Japan sticks out) are allowed to prioritize cultural preservation

can we clarify... by whom? just kidding :) whether a country is "allowed" to do something is probably a red herring.

spitballing here, i think folks who engage in criticism of ethnonationalism are most likely to criticize the ethnonationalism they see close to home, as opposed to what might be happening on the other side of the planet.

there are valid critiques of japan's treatment of its nondominant ethnicities, and lots of anecdotal experiences covering the same, but it's a lot easier to discuss the nuances of an issue like this when you're more intimately familiar with the culture and sociopolitical history of a region.

> I haven't actually looked into it but I've heard that Japan basically doesn't allow for long-term immigration, except probably in exceptional cases like PhDs.

Hasn’t been correct for at least the past decade, if you post here there’s a good chance you would be able to relocate to Japan and have permanent residency within 1-3 years.

Japan has one of the most generous immigration policies in the developed world at the moment.