They weren't. The things he actually said played a minor role in that kerfuffle - it all started with a lot of smears thrown at RMS by a person with some grudge. Additional quotes came later, as people started fishing for them.

> rms seems to forget that people will read not the words you write, but what they interpret you to be driving at based on the words you write. They took this to mean he was defending pedophilia (when in fact he wrote no such thing, being both neurodivergent and precise).

Why exactly are you defending people being irrational or engaging in power plays? You note yourself what the facts were, so why justify mistaking them?

> This is rms' fault for being bad at PR whilst being a public figure and leader.

RMS was doing fine until someone decided to destroy him for personal gain. Do you expect every person doing something interesting in a niche community should behave like a Hollywood celebrity or a politician, having their communications managed by teams of spindoctors, on the off chance someone wants to destroy them and picks mass media as their weapon of choice?

He was not destroyed, literally or figuratively. If that is the basis of your claim, then everything else based upon that has no supporting evidence.

Who do you assert yielded personal gain, and how? I saw nothing of the sort.

He's bad at communicating. It may be because he's autistic, but ultimately that part is not relevant.

The way humans in bulk receive public communications is a fact of nature; it would be like someone swimming in the ocean and drowning and saying that it was bad that the ocean couldn't accept their style of swimming.

He's a public figure and certain actions undertaken by public figures when communicating with millions of people are bad. He undertook those actions and suffered the negative consequences. It's ultimately not related to his neurodivergence; there are autistic people who don't make huge PR blunders.