He didn't assert anything about peoples associations. He asserted that that there is an association between proprietary software and malicious treatment of the user. Now knowing a little about what RMS regards as malicious that is undoubtedly true in terms of the lack of freedoms.

Even on a narrower definition of malicious if it includes user tracking/monitoring then large amounts of proprietary software can be regarded as malicious. I would narrow my definition of malicious a little more personally but there are large amounts of fairly malicious software out there, very little of it Free software.

You might need to pick another line to take apart.