[overgard]

Ok but, letting a person speak isn't implicit approval of all their viewpoints. And if his talk is about tech, his political motivations aren't even relevant. I could see the motivation if like, he was going to bring in a wild group of radicals from his appearance or something and that would be disruptive, but as far as I know his viewpoints are pretty fringe.

[al3x]

"Letting a person speak" isn't the only impact of inviting that person to your event, particularly an event that facilitates social gatherings and an ongoing dialogue between its attendees. If we just wanted to exchange information as efficiently as possible, we wouldn't bother with the time and expense of in-person conferences. The event provides a social context, and that's why we put so much monetary and cultural value on attendance in comparison to, say, sitting at home and reading an academic paper or a blog post.

[repetae]

The guy obviously has some rather ugly views, but as far as I can tell he submitted a conference about his technology and unless there's some other evidence that he's not able to separate his politics from his work, why not assume good faith?

Maybe you know something I don't know, but what evidence is there to assume that he couldn't put his viewpoint aside and be a positive force for the social context?