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The “Othering” of Conservatives in Sci-Fi and Fantasy
The new tactic by some on the left is to accuse people that they disagree with politically that they make them feel “unsafe.” The goal of this is to ensure that people that they disagree with are banned from social gatherings. Recently there have been three examples of this tactic being used with success.
First, author Jon Del Arroz was banned from attending WorldCon because he had received threats of mistreatment and wanted to wear a body cam to prevent others from claiming that he had attacked or insulted them. WorldCon claimed that wearing such a recording device violated their rules because bystanders would not be giving their consent to being recorded.
Next, one of the best selling authors in SciFi, John Ringo, was disinvited as the Guest of Honor for ConCarolinas because one of his characters in a series was into BDSM and someone accused Mr. Ringo of trying to solicit underage women to come to a BDSM party in his room with his wife. This was completely false and fabricated, of course, but that didn’t matter to those spreading the lies. In fact, the story around why the Con security was with Mr. Ringo all weekend was actually insanely sweet.
This week, Origins, one of the largest board gaming conventions had invited Larry Correia, another best-selling author, to be their Guest of Honor. Within a couple of hours of making this announcement, Origins had disinvited Mr. Correia because people had felt unsafe and that inviting him was encouraging various ills. The most direct accusation was made by a person who claimed that Mr. Correia had “attacked” her boyfriend. It turns out that in 2014, Larry, fisked an article her boyfriend had written at Tor.com that claimed that the largest gaming convention (GenCon) in specific and gaming in general. Larry’s takedown was hilarious to read and dissected his arguments point by point. Evidently, this is what constitutes as an “attack” to some on the left…disagreeing with their premise that every white person is racist…all the time. You can read Larry’s response here.
When I read Guy P. Benson and Mary Katherine Ham’s book End of Discussion, it was disturbing to see how far our political discussion has degraded to where people essentially just want to shut the opposition down. When I read The Intimidation Game by Kimberley Strassel, it was even scarier to see how the organs of government were used to shut down dissent. Now we see the next stage…the libelous exclusion of people from public events because of their views. The very accusation that they are “rape apologists” or homophobic/transphobic/etc. is enough for some to buckle to pressure from a small and very vocal minority.
A word of caution, this rabbit hole can go pretty deep. When you get into the Hugo Award situation that started the Sad Puppies campaigns, it’s amazing.
Published in Entertainment
THATS RAYCISS. ELVEN PRIVILEGE.
Such reductionism. “Don’t get too good at your job or else we’ll put you on the B Ark.”
Correia’s response is worth reading. (I know it’s linked in the OP, but I’ll put it here again.)
Actor Gary Sinise organized a gathering for Hollywood conservatives and it has grown over time. It was discussed on one of the podcasts months ago. Perhaps the sci-fi/fantasy novels industry could use a similar group. Game developers, musicians, and other entertainers might also benefit.
We need the arts to guide the culture.
Single income families could help change this dynamic, I think. But there are a few barriers to this.
I don’t know yet. I’m still in young kid phase. When I get to Teenager phase, I’ll try out the volunteer thing.
“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”
– John Adams
a) Ergo, if they’re working in the arts it probably means they don’t really have to worry about money. If they don’t have to worry about money, they’re almost certainly gonna turn out progressive.
b) Today, The Arts are merely Politics and War by other means.
You know, Correia has Portuguese ancestry. That makes him a form of Hispanic; a person of color. The two women who got him disinvited are whiter than white bread.
Who knew Origins was such a racist organization?
(To quote Kurt Schlichter “They are going to hate when the new rules get applied to them . . .”)
This is opening up market opportunities in the industry for new money and new players to steal massive market share. It could end up like a Fox News regular news kind of thing where 50% of the market is shared by 11 competitors and 50% of the market has one publisher. That one guy will have some pretty decent profits, I would think.
The SJW ethos really doesn’t know how to classify Spain.
I was telling my wife that today, a truly transgressive Science Fiction story would be one in which the sexes are segregated in work and the military because they had discovered after the “experiments with changing roles in the 20th and 21st century, it just did not work.”
He’s naive if he doesn’t realize they’ve already thought of that and have tactics in place to make sure it never happens.
The first clue was when they changed the definition of racism from “arbitrary categorization based on genetic ethnography” to “anything white people do”.
It is amusing what “inclusion” means to the far left. We want to include everybody . . . unless they have some different opinions from us.
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” – Noam Chomsky
Yabbut the two people who accused Correia are white. That means you cannot trust them to be truthful.
You mean Twitter?
Technically, he hated Frenchman, Canadians, and especially French Canadians.
I’ll note the existence of Drow; elves with black skin and white hair. I’ve never heard anyone call racism on them even though they’re technically an evil race.
Good point.
Please indulge me in a quick leap onto a soapbox. It occurs to me that ‘transgressive’ is like ‘dissent’; it has lost its negative connotations, is celebrated and celebratizing (as long as that person is a leftist).
[Edit: added ‘in’ for clarity.]
Prolly because Drizzt (which is the exact sound a drop of water makes when it shorts out an electrical socket) was a protagonist. I wonder if I’m the first to notice that he is Elric in elfy-blackface….
Also consider DragonCon — every Labor Day weekend in Atlanta. How better to spend a pseudo-communist holiday weekend than to spend money at an unabashedly commercial sci-fi/fantasy/comics/gaming/maker/cosplay/geek festival? Especially one that created the Dragon Awards specifically to have a fan-driven alternative to the Hugos? (Promptly won by a very present and personable Larry Correia.)
Didn’t think they made it to the boat…
Until they became a playable race. Now the entire race consists of Chaotic Good rebels looking to throw off their ancestors’ evil reputation.
Better idea: Experiments with switching roles does “work”… for as long as Earth remains isolated in the Galaxy…
…and then first contact happens.
They are the devil, after all.
They get a bad rap. In some ways, they’re the most conservative of all Canadians.
(The former leader of the separatist Bloc Quebecois just switched affiliation to the Conservative Party of Canada.)
I endorse this idea. There are lots of races that should be playable, and the Drow are included in that group.
The problem is that a group of PCs that includes evil races cannot include good races or classes. Well, it cannot include them and also make sense.
“So, you’re a paladin … and you’re a Drow? Ok. How the bloody f**k do I DM this group?”
Rocks fall, everyone dies.
Tor books are highly suspect, but Baen books offer better odds.
So a little background. I met Larry briefly at Dragoncon. He seemed a good boisterous guy.
As to Origins I am shocked the showrunner Jim Ward, even invited Larry given how ‘controversial’ a guy Larry is. And by controversial I meant such a huge pro 2nd amendment guy.
I have a friend who has been planning a takeover of the Origins board for a number of years, so I hear all the stories of Jim Ward. Long story short hes so risk averse none of this surprises me. He banned one of our guys from the organization after the guy submitted a panel that he was going to do on Gamergate. Not bannned the subject but bounced the guy from attending the con for years to come.
Another show runner would probably have laughed off the two losers and there accusations. But Jim Ward of Origins is not that guy.
Nuts to that. I want to live in a world where violent gangs of flat-earthers confront rival gangs of Whigs, Keynesians, and people who have all got to the kill-screen in Donkey Kong amongst the ruins of burnt-out malls all while avoiding the attention of the Inquisition death-bots. Man, a guy could have so much fun in that world…
I’m constantly amazed at how these supposedly smart people who have made books and stories such a major part of their lives can’t wrap their minds around the idea that the authors are not the same as the characters they write. Larry is not Owen Z. Pitt or Milo Anderson or Earl Harbinger or Julie Shackleford or Jake Sullivan or Faye Vierra or Ashok Vidal or any of the other hundreds of characters he’s created. (OK, he’s got a lot in common with Owen, but still.) John Ringo is not a former SEAL who’s now a warlord of displaced Vikings and into serious BSDM, or a devout Christian soccer mom with magical powers from God, or a uber-libertarian multi-billionaire who builds space fortresses out of asteroids, or a former Army Ranger who goes on to save the world from alien invasion in a suit of magical combat armor. (OK, he is a former Army Ranger, but still.) The SJW authors imagine that because these guys write characters that excel at violence and mayhem that John and Larry and authors like them (and all their fans) are hyper-violent killing machines or something. It’s crazy. Or maybe it says something about them, that they really think they’re sensitive sparkly vampires or can control magical dragons with the beauty of their singing or whatever.
Seriously though, the SJW types are right to be scared of Larry and John. Not because they’re violent physically, but because they’re way better at writing and aren’t afraid to use those skills to defend themselves. I’d bet that a good chunk of their anger is really jealously. When John’s muse kicks in, he can push out a whole series of books in the time it takes some authors to write a single chapter. And they’re good books that sell really, really well. Larry’s so successful he bought a whole frickin’ mountain! I’ve been interacting with John and Larry online for years now, and they’re both nice guys. But they have strong opinions and have no tolerance for fools. If you’re going to debate with them, be prepared. They write arguments as sharp as the characters thy create.