Not defending them, the Hitler laptop thing seems bad, but within Germany torchwalks are pretty normal and not Nazi associated. For example, there was one as part of a ceremony honoring Merkel as she left office.
There is a difference between a independently organized torchwalk, which especially after Charlottesville internationally gained popularity in far-right circles, and a "Zapfenstrich", a military honor granted to high ranking military/political leaders, which is tradition when the German chancelor/president leaves office.
Yes, there are definitely also normal torchwalks in Germany (I have been part of some as part of church youthgroups). However with all the other information that has surfaced about suckless over the years, it really doesn't look like a coincidence that they choose that as a group activity on their get together over all other possible things you could be doing.
The only reason I know "torch walks" and "far right" are somehow associated is because of this whole suckless thing that keeps coming back. Not everyone has the US news cycle intravenously injected. In my home town there's a yearly torch walk to celebrate the end of the occupation, and this hasn't changed because of Charlottesville.
As for "all the other information that has surfaced about suckless": there really isn't anything other than that hostname. I have actually asked the person with that hostname directly twice, and they opted not to answer. I agree it's not a good look, especially in the context of some other posts from that person. But it's not a good look for that person, not for all of suckless. If you look at all Python devs, or all Rust devs, or all HN posters, or all people 1.86cm in height: there's bound to be some unpleasant people there. It's just how things work.
And if you're going to make an accusation as serious as that then you really need to do better than "surely it can't be a coincidence..." Personally I'd say that a community which coalesced around a particular view on software also happens to have similar extreme political views as something that's rather unlikely.
The entire reason this whole "suckles are Nazis" thing is even a thing is because a single person kept bringing it up on HN, Lobsters and Twitter. As near as I can tell, it's a pretty successful campaign from one exceedingly toxic person with a grudge.
I mean, having just learned about this drama, it sounds like they might be Nazis? Or at least have Nazi tendencies? Sounds like you have to chalk a few things up to coincidence to not even consider the possibility.
Like I said, the only "coincidence" is the torch walk thing. This isn't Elon "I am just throwing my heart out, and oh I also built the world's leading platform for antisemitism and retweeted antisemitic posts" Musk we're talking about here.
It's not the only coincidence, though. One of their hosts is named after Hitler's military headquarters, and one of them has been known to go off about "Cultural Marxism," a very specific term most often used to covertly slip antisemitism into the conversation.
> One of their hosts is named after Hitler's military headquarters
If by "their" you mean a suckless.org host, no, that's not true. A hostname in the outgoing mail headers of one person posting to the mailing list was "wolfsschanze", i.e., a machine on that user's LAN, not a suckless.org server. The person in question was FRIGN. This got attention because he personally repeatedly pestered Lennart Poettering, who noticed that string in the mail headers and called it out on Twitter. https://web.archive.org/web/20190404160024/https://twitter.c...
Lennart correctly noted that this hostname was one person's laptop, but this morphed in the public consciousness to "a suckless host is named after Hitler's HQ".
> one of them has been known to go off about "Cultural Marxism,"
I hear these same two things repeated over and over as evidence of nazism within suckless (example, the Wikipedia talk page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Suckless.org), but it is one person (who, granted, maintains at least one suckless.org project https://suckless.org/people/FRIGN/). I think badly of him as a result, but I don't see any reason to disbelieve the multiple Germans who tell me that torchlit walks are a common German tradition, or to tie it to the Charlottesville march, which was extremely untraditional in the region it took place in.
Again, as I already said, that's the server of a single person. Not "their" (community) server. The post about the "cultural marxism" on Lobsters was the same person, posting on his personal account. And again, as I have already said, I was not impressed by this either. But you can't just extrapolate that to all of "suckless".
notably they did this only a few weeks after the "unite the right" white supremacist riots in Charlottesville, which IIRC is where the whole tiki torch thing started
I don't think it matters. The rise of white supremacist in the US has echos throughout the world as far-right parties feel emboldened. The world follows America for better or worse.
Of course it matters. I was in Germany at the time and it didn't even hit the news. Not every country follows every little grievance that happens in the US every day. A single death due to car ramming isn't notable in a country where dozens of children are shot to death in schools every year.
> Of course it matters. I was in Germany at the time and it didn't even hit the news
This really doesn't matter. For reasons that I won't get into, I pay attention to Dutch news and most things that happen in The Netherlands don't make the news in the US. This doesn't mean you can't pay attention to another countries news. If you have certain ideologies you are more likely to pay attention to media that isn't mainstream.
Yes, there are definitely also normal torchwalks in Germany (I have been part of some as part of church youthgroups). However with all the other information that has surfaced about suckless over the years, it really doesn't look like a coincidence that they choose that as a group activity on their get together over all other possible things you could be doing.