From your link: "suggesting that the financier's victims somehow consented to the sex trafficking scheme"
This is incorrect. He said that the victims would have appeared to Minsky to have consented, because the coercion would have been out of sight. That is an awkward statement in several ways and it deserves pushback. But it is a different statement than the assertion that the victims consented, it is in no sense a defense of Epstein, and pretending Stallman said something he did not say is not helpful.
> There were also his comments about Minsky and Epstein. He is entitled to his opinions, but as a leader of an important org with such stringent beliefs, delving into other topics was a distraction for the org. Being a leader requires focus and direction, inviting controversy with comments on unrelated current events is the opposite of focus.
You're likely aware, but I wanted to take this opportunity to surface that a lot of the coverage of his comments on Minsky and Epstein was misleading if not malicious.
Notably, articles from Vice and The Daily Beast accused him of defending Epstein and asserting that victims were willing, and both of those accusations are false, as can be reasonably discerned from careful reading of the quotes that appear in the articles themselves. Rather, Stallman defended Minsky and said that victims probably appeared to Minsky to be willing even if they were being coerced out of his sight.
In addition to any judgement we're applying over his choice of whether to talk about it in the first place, we should be sure we're judging him for what he said (which I do believe deserves criticism) and not for what some people want to pretend he said.
> I learned last night that Richard M. Stallman (RMS) has articles about him on Vice that are narrowly focused on some of his weighing in on the Epstein case.
Both the headline and the article claim that Stallman said Giuffre was "entirely willing;" a read of the provided emails shows otherwise. He said that she probably appeared to Minsky to be "entirely willing;" that Minsky would have been unaware of coercion, not that there was none.
There are absolutely things to object to in what he said, but we should be objecting to what he said, not the words some (apparently) shoddy journalists are putting in his mouth.
This is incorrect. He said that the victims would have appeared to Minsky to have consented, because the coercion would have been out of sight. That is an awkward statement in several ways and it deserves pushback. But it is a different statement than the assertion that the victims consented, it is in no sense a defense of Epstein, and pretending Stallman said something he did not say is not helpful.