dhh always been "controversial", initially it was mostly about strongly held opinions about software, engineering and such, presented in a very vocal way that got a lot of attention at the time. Then at one point Basecamp had some drama about employees calling customers names, which spiraled into a debate about racism and company culture, and ultimately leading to Basecamp banning "discussions about society and politics" or similar. More recently he started sharing opinions about London having too many foreigners, immigrant communities having gangs of groomers or something, and a bunch of Ruby community members have written publicly about what they think about him.
The air around dhh always been dramatic for various reasons, not sure that particular theme is new. But I think is new is that currently people are re-evaluating if they want a prominent community leader to have views that could be seen as "against" members of the community they're supposedly leaders over.
