Recently, there have been concerns about our project collaborating with, apparently, fascists, and/or people who give money to fascists, and/or people who say things that could be considered fascist by people who pay attention to words, and what words mean. It’s kind of annoying that this happened, ngl. So, we wanted to clarify some things.
To be upfront, we are not ending our relationship with people who financially support fascists, and we are not even calling them out as fascist, though we will say this – we do not agree with their values and political positions, whatever those might be (apparently, fascist).
Our project has always been about promoting freedom of communication, advancing human rights, and providing technological tools to escape authoritarian censorship and surveillance. We will continue this critical work. And to do that – this is awkward – we will keep taking money and accepting technical contributions from those who sympathise with the kind of people who, historically, try to restrict free communication, hate human rights (though they sometimes have a different definition of “human”), and impose mass censorship and surveillance. As in, fascists.
We really noodled on this one, and we agree that all of this is kind of a bummer, and incompatible with our mission, but – look, we just want to keep taking their money, because we’ve kind of come to depend on it. Yes, it’s uncomfortable to us, too, but it’s not like all of you are going to suddenly step up and fund us if we actually stop taking money from fascists or those who financially support fascists.
And anyway, at the end of the day, once a fascist gives you money, it’s not even fascist, because now it’s yours. Sometimes in life, you just have to hold your nose, close your eyes, plug your ears, knock on wood, throw salt over your right shoulder (or was it the left one?), say “fascism begone!” three times while turning about yourself, and then (while feeling some whiplash, that’s normal), you can take money from a fascist and it’s fine. This is how things work in the grown-up world.
But we do feel awkward, and we want to resolve this cognitive dissonance that we, as non-fascists, are feeling by continuing to collaborate with maybe fascists. So here’s what we will do:
More formally,
but!
We hope that’s now clear.
We know this decision will be disappointing. We’re also very disappointed about how upset people have been by this. Honestly, some of our friends have stopped talking to us, and that’s been kind of hard. We really wish we could stop relying on money and technical contributions from fascists, or better yet, that they kept helping us, but somehow stopped being fascist. But they probably won’t, and neither will we. That’s just how the world works, because we are the world and that’s how we make it work.
And, while I have you here, let me just say this. This whole thing with calling people fascists, and being upset that this project, or that project takes money from fascists, is developed by fascists, or is helping prop up the reputation of those who are advancing fascist ideas, and that we should stop supporting those projects – it used to be morally easy for us to be onboard with that, but now that people have turned their ire to us, we just want to say, this has all now got out of hand. All of you out there who are acting like we’re collaborating with some Hitler-level Nazis – honestly, log off whatever device you’re on and go touch grass, because we are not, and they are not, and neither we nor they ever will be.
Remember that when real fascism and Hitler-level Nazis were a thing, it was immediately clear to everyone on earth that they were bad bad bad super evil bad and must be stopped at all costs. That’s why everyone immediately said no to fascism and refused to do any kind of work with them, and that was that.
On top of that, that was then and we are now. The era of large-scale state violence and fascist wars of invasion is permanently over. Okay, at least in the good countries the fascists will never get anywhere again and have no chance of holding any power. So, honestly, chill the fuck out.
What matters is that we are not fascists (we showed you that), we do not support fascists, we just take money and rely on support from those who support fascists, and sometimes help promote their brand. Because that’s what it means to be pragmatic. We are grateful to those of you who pressured us into having to say something about this, and would be even more grateful if you stop and move on to something else.
Your favourite project that stands for everything good and against everything bad, which is why all this is very awkward.