Continued from yesterday: https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/06/02/fisking-the-guardians-village-idiot-part-1/

As I was writing up that last fisk, some sane people were commenting on the Guardian article. Because Damien’s responses were so idiotic, this Fisk turned into a two parter, with this section being more of an explanation of my personal philosophies for dealing with morons and bullies. In the comments it was pointed out that pretty much everything Damien said related to me was a lie and Damien smells funny (okay, I added that last part). Here is what Damien had to say in his defense:

I think Correia did two things. The first was appeal for votes on the basis of a perceived liberal bias in the genre.

So he can read… Duh.

That was the basis of his campaign, a protest vote against liberal influence. That was divisive and did a lot to spark the backlash he’s still feeling.

Demonstrating that bias exists in a biased system: DIVISIVE.

Attacking, libeling, and sabotaging authors of diverse opinions to intimidate them into never speaking up against a rigid, homogenous groupthink… NOT DIVISIVE.

Got it!

Man, it must have really sucked for him the way their insane reaction validated everything I said. It would have been much nicer for everybody if I would have just kept my mouth shut like right wingers are supposed to, then they could continue slandering people in peace. How very divisive of me.

Secondly, and this is going to be much more damaging for him longterm, he allowed himself to become very closely associated to Vox Day in the process. Ultimately people do judge others by their associations, and both Larry Correia and John C Wright have made very public declarations of support for Day, that I fear both will deeply regret in the long run.

One of the tactics I’ve seen them take is conflating my views with those of Vox Day. It doesn’t matter that I’ve disagreed with the man, and I’ve debated with him several times, but they sure love linking me to Vox. See, unlike me, they can actually find a couple of comments from him that they can manage to spin up some outrage over, and everybody knows righteous indignation gives libprogs super powers.

You have an issue with something Vox said, take it up with him. I did, and I found the guy to be a capable debater, and many of the insinuations about him floating around the internet were grossly exaggerated. (says the man who the Guardian has insinuated hates women and wants to keep fiction the exclusive domain of a group he doesn’t technically belong to, so I simply can’t imagine the internet exaggerating somebody’s beliefs.)

The woman Vox insulted with the infamous half-savage comment also has a long history of inflammatory racial statements, and had been throwing insults at Vox for years, but somehow she always gets a pass in these discussions about “divisiveness” (remember what I said earlier about the Ctrl H search and replace to put Jew instead of White Man in their tweets? She’s totally the best). I don’t think she likes me much either, because she gave a speech a little while ago and condemned Mr. Free Speech At All Costs… I think that’s supposed to be me, but personally I took that as a compliment, because you know, that part where I actually believe in free speech and stuff.

So I recommend a short story by somebody who made a statement they found racist? DIVISIVE! And Damien will condemn me in his newspaper. Meanwhile, an approved author writes tons of negative things about an ethnic group that it is cool to hate? Totally not divisive, and Damien will plug her in his newspaper. Now me personally, I think the concept of race is increasingly irrelevant bullshit, and I judge all humans as individuals, but I’m the International Lord of Hate.

Public declaration of support? By that Damien means I failed to join his lynch mob? Sadly I couldn’t find my jack boots in time.

I enjoyed Vox’s story and I put it on my slate, that doesn’t make me his spokesman. The guy is capable of defending his own beliefs. My only public declarations of support have been in favor of free speech. That honest to God belief in free speech is one of the reasons my slate could include the author Damien’s SJW contingent hates more than any other. As a happy bonus, getting their Public Enemy Number One on the ballot caused so much SJW wailing and gnashing of teeth that it helped me accomplish my goal of exposing their bias. Anything that makes statists that rage-sputtery is fun for me.

Here’s the thing, I’m a whole lot more worried about censorship minded, career sabotaging, bullies becoming the final arbiters of acceptable than I am the writings of a contrarian who likes to get into arguments. Free speech especially includes the speech of people you disagree with. The answer to speech you don’t like is more speech, debate and argument and convincing the undecided, not purges, blacklisting, and smear campaigns designed to keep everyone in line. If somebody says something stupid, demonstrate why it is stupid.

For example, I’d never wish for Damien to quit writing for the Guardian, because his blathering is comedy gold.

Today it is acceptable to destroy somebody who said something you don’t like, or you can fire somebody from a job for giving money to a political campaign you don’t like, or you can run off an award show host because of what he might say in the future, or you can disinvite a fan guest of honor because of an anonymous accusation, or you can slander an editor putting together an anthology about diversity because his politics are “troubling” (even if it turns out he’d lived in the 3^rd world much of his life). So what is going to be acceptable tomorrow?

If not now, when does it become okay to finally stand up to the perpetually outraged crowd and tell them no? To spineless weasels like Damien, the answer is never, because he’s a quisling.

Quests for purity always inevitably lead to purges, and we’ve already seen the beginnings of that with them turning against people on their ideological side who’ve grown weary of the constant outrage, so those people get a bunch of outrage until they are shamed, forced to apologize, and fall back in line. The nail that sticks up must be hammered down. If no nails are currently sticking up, they’ll pick one at random for sins real or imagined and start hammering that one instead.

My side jokingly call this the SJW Outrage of the Week, but sadly that isn’t really an exaggeration anymore. About once a week they fly off the handle and begin screeching about somebody, because they’re all about diversity, as long as everybody totally agrees with them.

I drew my line a long time ago. I honestly believe in free speech. Whether it is Vox or Jemsin, Matt Damon or Gary Sinise, Phil Robertson or Rupaul, their work and ideas should stand or fall on their own merits, and not some ideological narrative. Don’t like it? Too damned bad, because luckily in this country we still have the ability to say so.

I can’t speak for John Wright, and wouldn’t dare to anyway because he’s far more eloquent than I could ever be, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that he feels the same way I do about the dangers of writers being silenced. Let’s check: http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/06/the-evil-league-of-evil-is-given-pious-advice/

BOOM! Damn, Damien, how does it feel to get pimp slapped? John C. Wright just made you his bitch!

You know who else doesn’t like thought police? Several really famous big name writers who’ve contacted me to thank me for what I’ve done (one huge author in particular blew my mind). They’re even moderate or fairly liberal, however they’re sick of the self-righteous bullies and their endless outrage too. Only they can’t say anything in public, because they know if they do the SJWs would come for them next.

If they disagree they might get accused of homophobia in the Guardian or something…

EDIT! More of Damien’s hypocrisy was pointed out to me today. For a dude attacking me for being “closely associated” with somebody who said something controversial, he certainly has no problem in the very same article quoting an author who has publically supported NAMBLA. For those of you who don’t know, that’s the North American Man Boy Love Association, which is an organization for freaking PEDOPHILES… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nambla Look under the Associated Individuals section for Samuel Delany’s quotes about this organization. Now, if we’re looking for something offensive to “closely associate” with, I’m having a hard time thinking of anything lower than child molesters.

I’m quite serious about my suggestion by the way. I think if Correia wrote publicly to support the new diversity in the genre, and apologised for any perception he was campaigning against it, that might help him a lot.

Apologize for the perception? Apologize for being seen as an enemy of progress? That sounds suspiciously like the apologies Stalin used to have people sign right before he shipped them off to the gulag, so in response, Beria, er, I mean Damien, here are a few of my thoughts about what it really means when a libprog demands an apology.

Rule number one. Never apologize for something that shouldn’t be apologized for. Check out all the various firings, purges, boycotts, and cancellations. Apologizing for causing their outrage is you taking responsibility for their ignorance and inability to control their own emotions. Apologizing to the perpetually outraged means they own you. You have declared yourself guilty and vulnerable to their threats. It is like negotiating with terrorists. Give into their demands and you’re just encouraging them to blow something else up.

If I was the type of mushy headed fool that would issue an apology, it wouldn’t matter anyway, because as we’ve already seen my actual words and actions mean nothing compared to the agreed upon narrative, and that narrative is that I’m guilty of pretty much every vile thing they can think of. Luckily for me, I’m successful enough that these people aren’t particularly threatening, so I scrape them off my shoe and continue writing books.

Normal people only apologize for things that should be apologized for, like for example: “I’m sorry the Social Justice Warrior contingent of sci-fi is made up of a bunch of perpetually outraged adult children.” Suckers feel the need to apologize for their entire sex, their ancestors, and the melanin content of their skin.

This seems bug nuts to regular people, but just remember that when you’re dealing with a group of SJWs who see everything through a prism of shame, jealously, and guilt, they expect incomprehensible stuff like this.

I named my wireless router Privilege Whale.

So after some consideration of whether I should sign the witch hunters’ confession or not, I’m going to have to go with my final answer of, fuck off, Damien. Or bugger off, scamper? Hell, whatever it is the sane people of Britain would tell Damien to do.

Remember, we won’t know who missed out on shortlist places until after the awards. At that point Correia et al could find the response to them gets much, much worse even than when the story broke”

Wait… It is going to get even worse? So are more of you guys going to make up crazy outlandish shit about me on the internet? Because you know, that never gets old.

Is that supposed to be a threat, Damien? Because you are very bad at it. A proper threat is something like, “Keep talking shit about me, and maybe I’ll decide to do a Sad Puppies 3, only this time I’ll actually put in some effort.”

Here is another awesome Damien comment, after somebody asked him if he actually bothered to read the books of the authors he criticized:

Which writers do you mean? My piece doesn’t really criticise anyone? So who do you mean?”

Nobody could possibly be that obtuse. But to be fair, I wouldn’t say criticize, so much as much as insinuate racism and misogyny in a completely chicken shit fashion, but hey, whatever. His column must have been about the OTHER conservative author who came up with and promoted a successful internet campaign that got a whole bunch of Hugo nominations, that caused allegations of ballot stuffing and outraged all the Social Justice Warriors… Holy shit. Does that mean there’s MORE OF US?!

Seriously, Guardian, I really hope you’re not actually paying this loser because you’re wasting your pounds or euros or WTF ever it is you use for money now. Honestly, you could hire a random hobo and get better columns written (from my extensive watching of Top Gear I believe you blokes call them tramps).

Thus far Damien has been an amusing annoyance, but then a fan had to go and send this to me. This comment was posted on Twitter, long after he’d posted his article, and he was catching flack for just making shit up. This was the first time Damien actually made me angry.

1. Damien Walter‏@damiengwalterMay 30

Can anyone help identify times Larry Correia has “responded poorly” to diversity in genre? http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/may/30/science-fiction-real-life-war-worlds#comment-36357742 … Seriously.

So of all Damien’s stupid shit thus far, why did that actually get an emotional response out of me? Basically, it is because I can’t believe anybody SUCKS THAT MUCH AT THEIR JOB.

I mean really, Damien, you’ve written about me repeatedly now, making up all sorts of crap while the actual evidence pointed to the contrary, and after being called on it you have to CROWD SOURCE YOUR WITCH HUNT? Holy shit, Damien, you are shockingly unsuited for this. Aren’t journalists supposed to do research first? I know that journalism is the clown college of writing, but damn that is pathetic… On second thought, I retract that comment, because clowns provide a useful service, and I can’t imagine anybody ever inviting Damien Walter to a birthday party.

So—not being racist/misogynist/homophobic—I was curious to see what damning evidence his legion of fan would come up with to condemn me. They’ve got thousands of political posts to choose from… Somebody didn’t like that I’d been a CCW instructor, and how I’d said that I’d taught hundreds of women to shoot rapists, yet these women hadn’t all LITERALLY shot hundreds of rapists, ergo I was a failure and a liar…

Holy shit.

My response to that, have you ever gone fishing? Did you catch all the fish?

They then went on to explain how my teaching self-defense to women proved I thought women were weak, and that my efforts did nothing to stop date rape, or rape within marriage, and thus showed I didn’t understand the issue. Wow. You know, I’ve got fire extinguishers around the house, but they are pretty useless against thousand acre forest fires, so I’m obviously pro-arson, and should throw all my fire extinguishers away.

Then there was a related spin off thread where various white suburbanite progs explained how I’m really a WHITE Hispanic, and as an added bonus, libertarian Sarah Hoyt is a fascist. You really can’t make this stuff up.

So because Damien’s readers sucked at finding any actual evidence of hatemongery from my thousands of political posts, I put out a call for my readership to help him find something damning for his next inevitable column about me. As usual, the Monster Hunter Nation was super helpful:

1. Larry Correia grows an awesome murder hobo beard. Beards are scary.
2. Larry Correia accused Damien of having a witch hunt, which is insensitive to witches.
3. Larry Correia is a pretty good miniature painter. Hitler was also a painter.

Judging by the journalistic integrity of Damien’s previous columns, I’m sure he’ll be able to put together another article or two with that.

One funny note about my super helpful fans over the last few days, Damien or his readers dismissed some of my defenders on Twitter because they were “Straight White Males”… Turns out on some of these guys they were wrong on race or orientation, but Damien’s is the inclusive side, because obviously all minorities’ beliefs are color coded for liberal convenience.

Here is another Damien gem from the comments:

I have no clear idea what you mean by shunning or writing people out of the genre.

Let’s see, that’s got to be a lie, because he can’t be that stupid, especially as he’s participated in the shunning.

I assume you’re bringing in baggage from other discussions.

He says as he brings in every unrelated bigoted thing that has ever happened in the history of fiction and lays it at my feet.

We have a genre growing ever more diverse, and a small clique of reactionaries behaving very poorly in response to that.

He makes my campaign about something else, and then assigns his opponents absurd opinions they don’t actually hold.

And doing immense damage to their own careers in the process.

Says the doofus who supposedly has a government grant to write a novel, to the guy with more paying work than he knows what to do with.

Sad for everyone involved.

Not really. I’m rather enjoying this. The more the Damiens of the world lie and fret, the more it proves my point.

But that’s it for his idiocy today. Now I want to delve into his accusations that my exposing left wing bias was really some sort of white male war against diversity all along. Anybody who has actually read any of my books knows that is a really stupid hypothesis.

While I was getting slandered by Damien for things I never said about how writers shouldn’t write diverse characters, I had a bestselling novel out where the big heroic pivotal sacrifice moment of the story was performed by a bisexual. However, I gave that character that particular trait because it made the character more interesting, and not for the correct reason of checking off mandatory SJW boxes, which is apparently bad.

This is the same book where I got into racial segregation in the 1930s, and had a black character become a folk hero a couple scenes after he wasn’t allowed to eat in the same room as the white characters. Oh, yeah, that’s one of the two books where I got into democrat icon FDR’s propensity for throwing diverse people into concentration camps. Shoot. I forgot. Your side declared that I’m a white guy who only writes white men with busty blonde women throwing themselves on white penises.

By the way, that’s from the 2^nd book of the trilogy, with the 3^rd book being the controversial nomination. This is kind of funny since the hero of the series is a teenage girl, and I’ve got characters who are Chinese, Japanese, Indian, African, Pacific Islander, Filipino, British, French, Russian, the world’s surliest German, and Americans ranging from rich white Ivy Leaguer to poor Irish roughneck to southern black, all in a story where I delve into the racism, segregation, and eugenics of the 1930s. The most powerful man in the world is Japanese, and the smartest was Indian. J. Edgar Hoover was one of the antagonists. I hit everything from Wounded Knee to the Bonus Army.

Hell, if you guys didn’t know I was one of those ultra-evil libertarians who want the government to leave everybody alone equally, somebody might accidently like this book. But I wouldn’t know, since even with all the controversy most of the SJW “reviews” I’ve seen have consisted of skimming the back cover blurb before launching into accusations about how I want to drag homosexuals to death behind my pickup truck.

But that’s just me personally, looking at Damien’s primary argument from the big picture view, Sad Puppies being some sort of anti-diversity campaign is even stupider. It requires the belief that true diversity is only skin deep. It means true diversity is always agreeing with the every absurd complaint of the perpetually outraged. It requires the belief that to truly represent the diversity of the entire planet, you’ve got to be in lockstep with a bunch of left wing pseudo-intellectual crybabies from the first world.

Anybody with a few functioning brain cells to rub together knows that’s crap. Those morons aren’t even the majority in the west, let alone Bangladesh or Budapest.

While he was condemning the history of genre fiction, I want you to think about the absurd hubris in this statement of Damien’s:

We live in a world of seven billion human beings, whose culture has not been reflected or rewarded in ‘the mainstream’. Science fiction – from cult novels that reach a few thousand readers, to blockbuster movies and video games that dominate contemporary culture – has the potential to talk across every remaining boundary in our modern world. That makes it, in my opinion, potentially the most important cultural form of the 21st century. To claim that potential, it cannot afford to give way to the petulant protests of boys who do not like to share their toys

At least I have toys to share.

Who the fuck do you think you are, Damien, deciding what is suitable for the whole world? You’re a pathetic little worm of no accomplishment who makes his living critiquing people who actually create things. Where do you get off determining what are acceptable thoughts to represent all of humanity?

Check your privilege, motherfucker.

You got it backwards. A novelist’s job is to tell a story, not reflect or reward or whatever pretentious nonsense you’re spewing. Get off your high horse. We answer to them. We create work, and then the readers are going to decide what reflects them, not some unctuous little shit stain like you, and the reward is when those individuals decide they like the author enough to pay them. They’re seven billion individuals, you tool, not color coded stereotypes for you to speak for. Of them, a couple billion would stone you to death on principle, and most of the rest would wonder why you are such a worthless sack of crap.

The novelist’s job is to tell a story. Your job is to be a useless leech. Now get back to work. All those lies aren’t going to manufacture themselves.

 

Damian Walter is that dude over at the Guardian who made shit up about me before. That time he put words in my mouth, said that I warned writers not to write about gay characters if they want to remain commercial, and he even put it in quotes as if it was my actual words. That isn’t even close to what I said, or what I’ve actually done, and doesn’t match up with my real life actions, writing, or even the philosophies of other authors I’ve promoted, but hey, whatever.

Here is the last one: https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/04/15/larry-f-correia-international-lord-of-hate/

Note, this is going to be two part Fisk, with today being the article, and tomorrow I’m going to go through Damien’s comments where he threatened me with some nebulous harm if I don’t apologize for and confess some sins, and then he went on Twitter to ask his followers to find bad things I’ve done (normally journalists do research before writing about something).

So here is Part1. As usual Damian gets damn near everything wrong, so let’s go through and take a look at what passes for journalism at the Guardian. This is going to be long, but Damien has a real gift for shoving two or three lies, half-truths, or distortions into nearly every line. Hmm… I heard Jay Carney’s job is open.

As usual, the moron is in italics and my comments are in bold.

Here is the current article: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/may/30/science-fiction-real-life-war-worlds but it is all reprinted below for your enjoyment. Note that Damian’s article is absolutely filled with links, let’s see… a dozen of them in fact, but not a single one of those links are to the actual words of the people he is maligning… Curious.

Science fiction’s real-life war of the worlds

For many years, a very particular and very narrow set of authors has dominated SF. But battle for a broader fictional universe is under way.

When is a giant lizard not a giant lizard? When it’s a metaphor for the might of the military-industrial complex. Audiences turning up for the latest cinematic incarnation of Godzilla have expressed some disappointment that much of the battling kaiju action was kept off screen.

Keep in mind, his last article about what evil homophobic hatemongers conservative writers are started out by explaining the reason male gamers played female characters in video games was so they could explore gender roles… as opposed to it being nicer to stare a girl’s butt for 200 hours of Skyrim. But nope, exploring gender boundaries.

Because when I think of socially conscious, non-binary enlightenment, I think of the LOL WUT tits or GTFO denizens of Xbox Live. So keep in mind, Damien isn’t very smart and does a lot of grasping at straws.

In its place director Gareth Edwards makes the smart decision to tinker with the kaleidoscopic political meanings that surround the giant lizard. What Edwards chooses to place front and centre are the twin legacies the second world war foisted on modern society – nuclear weapons and the United States military in all its glory. By the end of the movie we’re left in no doubt that, whatever risks they pose, we need the monstrous forces mankind can control to defend us from the monstrous forces – be they real or imagined – we cannot. Audiences want sci-fi to entertain us, but even blockbuster movies come loaded with political messages.

Okay, heavy handed straw grasping intro out of the way, I wonder how many people bought tickets to see Godzilla for the political messages versus how many went to watch giant monsters smash stuff? But hey, let’s roll with it. I think Damian’s point is that political messages in sci-fi exist… Yep. As much as they try to rewrite my old posts to be that message fic shouldn’t exist at all, on the contrary, I said it did, but that if you wanted to be successful, you needed to put the story first, and once you’ve provided your readers with enjoyment, then you can slip in your message… Message first can turn off readers. And as much as they try to change the narrative, my words (which they never actually link to) are right there.

Or in this case, the giant lizard came first, message second. Damn, Damien, even your intros get the slander wrong. I really hope you’re just an unpaid intern or something and the Guardian isn’t actually giving you money for this shit.

In recent months the community of science fiction readers and writers has been embroiled in an escalating war of words over the genre’s political soul, catalysed by the nominations for this year’s Hugo awards.

By escalating, he means some people on my side actually got involved for once and quit letting his side set the narrative unopposed. It was so much nicer when my side just immediately shut up out of fear of backlash, career sabotage, and threats of character assassination.

Allegations of bloc-voting arose

Yes, allegations of block voting, which means I asked my fans to vote. A quick search found about thirty other authors, fanzines, bloggers, and even publishing houses that did the same thing I did. Only I had the audacity of having the wrong kind of fans (and more of them!). Damien knows this, but he’s simply obfuscating the issue to get in some more snide insinuations.

He’s leaving out the allegations against me of fraud, misogyny, racism, homophobia, wife beating, and threatening puppy murder… No. I’m not making any of those up, but when dealing with Social Justice Warriors you will quickly discover that they will say anything to sabotage their ideological opponents. Proving that was sort of the whole point of my nefarious campaign. They certainly rose to the occasion.

as a slate of little-known writers appeared among the nominees,

That’s right. Little known writers. Since I’m the unnamed guy who put together this evil voting plot and is up for best novel, let’s take a look at how little known I am.

My 11^th novel comes out this summer (Don’t worry, I’ve got 13 more under contract). I’m a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and bunch of other lists bestseller, and the most accurate bestseller list of all is Nielsen Bookscan where I’ve been as high as #5 and stayed on for 20 straight weeks. On any given day I’m usually in the top 50 fantasy authors on Amazon and that’s without anything new out (highest I’ve been is #3 after Martin and Gaiman). I’m published in 7 languages. I do even better in audiobook, where I’m one of the bestselling and best reviewed authors on all of Audible, and I’ve been nominated for 3 Audies and won 2 of them. (those are pro juried, so sadly no allegations of ballot stuffing there).

According to the Guardian’s own stats about how much authors actually get paid, I’m way above the cutoff for the top 1%. But to be fair to Damien’s inability to actually know stuff, I’ve only been professionally published since 2009. The fact that I’ve only been doing this for 5 years kind of sucks for my detractors, since so many of them have been doing this far longer yet are much less successful. That has to gnaw at them.

But little-known. Got it!

after a concerted campaign by a small group of writers to get the books on the ballot.

By concentrated campaign, he means a couple of blog posts, a poorly drawn cartoon, and a video of sad puppies. No, I kid you not. My spokesman was Wendell the Manatee. Unlike Damian, I’ll actually post links to the topic, here is where I go into it in detail: https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/04/24/an-explanation-about-the-hugo-awards-controversy/ The whole thing and the reasons for it were out there in the open the entire time I was doing it.

A startling conspiracy theory was at the heart of the campaign. It alleged that a powerful clique of liberal writers and editors had taken control of science fiction, and worse, were politicising a genre that should exist purely for entertainment. They were filling the genre with heavy-handed “message fiction” and excluding conservatively minded writers. So conservatively-minded fans should vote for those writers to redress the imbalance.

That’s sort of related to what I said, as rewritten by somebody with a paint huffing addiction… I do like how Damien stated it all super nefarious like that though. But strangely he didn’t link to the posts where I talked about the demonstrated bias against non-leftists, or the posts about how the heavy handed message fic was driving away readers and causing the market to shrink? I’m sensing a trend. I wonder why Damien never seems to link to what his opponents actually say, when it is so much easier to make up really dumb straw man versions instead?

I wouldn’t call any of this startling though. I pointed out that the awards were biased, and if any openly conservative author got on the awards ballot they would be attacked and sabotaged. I was called a liar. So I got some conservative authors on the ballot and they did exactly what I said they would. (they were even shriller than expected, and major professionals jumped into the witch hunt, so for that, I sincerely thank them for being so predictable).

Point proven. Hilarity ensued.

Of course there is a certain irony in forming a political clique and launching an overt pol1itical campaign to de-politicise sci-fi– although registering the irony requires more self-awareness than these authors can seem to muster.

I like how he restates my publicly proclaimed goals to be something they weren’t so he can say I’m dumb for not achieving them.

The goal was exposing people like you, Damien, and you can try to say I failed, but poor, depressed little British man, my campaign consisting of manatees, big eyed puppies, and cartoon moose rocked your little world so badly that you’ve repeatedly talked about it in your national newspaper column now. So, I’m very aware of the irony, and it is so very delicious.

This dastardly clique was my fans. If your crowd hadn’t been such obnoxious, pretentious, bossy assholes on Facebook, Twitter, and blog comments, constantly bitching at us, explaining how conservatives and libertarians can’t ever be *real* writers, and calling anybody who disagreed with you racist/misogynist/homophobic without any actual evidence continually for the last five years, then getting a bunch of fans to pony up $40 to vote wouldn’t have been so darned easy.

And that irony is only made stronger when 2014 has proved to be a pivotal year in liberating science fiction from its own innate political biases.

Yes. The publishing industry—which is mostly based in Manhattan—is politically biased. For once we agree!

For decades, science fiction’s major awards were given, year after year, to white male authors.

That’s fantastic… Except when Damien says decades, he’s not talking about any of the recent ones. There have been blog posts (written by reasonable moderate types who really don’t like me or my campaign either) pointing out that women have won about a third to half of the awards over the last forty years, so once again, Damien is just a liar.

Women writers have asserted a growing presence in the genre, leading this year lead to a strong presence in all of the genre’s major awards.

Great. Despite the narrative about me to the contrary, I like female authors. I support female authors. I support authors from any group you can think of as long as they tell a good story and they’re not complete douchebags, so I guess you could say that I just support authors in general. I’m all in favor of anybody from any group being able to write what they want, more power to them.

So if we want true equality among writers how about we give awards based on quality rather than what box the author checks on an EEOC form?

Oh, but wait. I forgot. I like to judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. That’s racist now. I also like to judge a book based upon whether I like it or not, rather than ranking the nominees based upon the acceptability of their political outlooks or which ones best assuage my warm-beige guilt.

(speaking of irony, when the announcements were made and I immediately started getting character assassinated for being a hater of women, homosexuals, sunshine, and goodness with zero evidence, the book of the week I was promoting on this blog was written by a non-white immigrant woman and had a gay hero, but hey, narrative).

Women and non-white writers swept the board at the Nebula awards, winning every major category.

Normally, if there is a bunch of gloating and back slapping about how one particular group was totally shut out of something, we’d consider that bigotry. However I tend to forget that to a libprog diversity is literally only skin deep, while diversity of thought is evil and must be crushed. The same people crowing about this year’s diversity were happy to attack nominees last year for their religious beliefs, because that’s the wrong kind of diversity. They routinely attack non-whites and women if they aren’t of the correct political persuasion.

Speaking of gloating, Twitter after the Nebulas was interesting. If you take the tweets of the Social Justice Warrior crowd, Ctrl H, find and replace White Male with Jew, they totally sound like snippets of Heinrich Himmler speeches. It is hilarious until the nausea sets in.

High profile crowd-funded publishing projects such as Women Destroy Science Fiction are proving the commercial potential of a more diverse genre.

Not to bash this particular anthology, because I know nothing about it, but this super example of commercial potential raised $53,136. Good for them. But to illustrate just how profoundly disconnected Damien is from reality, keeping in mind that I’m a “little-known” author, my Kickstarter for a role playing game based upon one of my series raised $80,681, and my Kickstarter for merchandise related to my novels raised $101,396.

So I wouldn’t recommend taking business advice about commercial viability from a lying euro-weenie-socialist who has probably never held a real job. Now fetch my latte, Damien!

It is fair to say that SF is coming to terms with its historic gender and racial biases.

From a genre that really came to be in the 1930s to the 1950s there may have been bigotry? This is my shocked face. Well, good thing you guys are ready to attack people now for the sins of those that came before, because they share similar plumbing, DNA, or sexual orientation.

But not without some resistance from reactionaries within the genre.

They really need a boogieman, don’t they? Isn’t it interesting about how my campaign to demonstrate that there was bias and sabotage in the awards system, is immediately changed by the biased to be all pro-racism in order to sabotage it?

As Samuel Delany noted, at a time when he numbered among the very few black writers in the field, prejudice within science fiction would “likely remain a slight force – until, say, black writers start to number 13, 15, 20% of the total.” Author NK Jemisin employed Delany’s quote in her own Guest of Honour speech at WisCon. Her incendiary argument to fight against bigotry comes at a the time when she and other writers of colour including Aliette de Bodard, Sofia Samatar and Nalo Hopkinson command a higher profile in the genre than ever before. And the resistance Delany predicted has come true.

Does that mean that since I’m the only non-white author up for best novel, I have your vote, Damien?

It is no coincidence that, just as it outgrows its limiting cultural biases, science fiction should also face protests from some members of the predominantly white male audience who believed it to be their rightful domain.

That doesn’t even make sense. So, I’m not a white guy, but I hatched this elaborate plot to keep sci-fi white… even though us right wingers are capitalists who want to sell books to everybody. Sure, I’m super excited for my Chinese translations to come out this year, but that must be because of the billion white men who live there.

Since Damien brought up irony, here’s some for you. My audience is diverse. That’s what happens when you are popular and actually sell books. Look at the picture of the Diversity panel at the Nebulas. It is a bunch of old white people fretting about their white guilt. It is so white and old it looks like a Klan rally compared to my average book signing. My fans are the rainbow fucking coalition compared to that picture.

You know an organization that is actually diverse? The US military, #1 book in Baghdad and Baghram, baby.

But as we’ve already repeatedly seen demonstrated, it doesn’t matter that my fans are all over the board, young and old, straight and gay, all sorts of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and even some liberals (though by that I mean they’re actual well intentioned liberals, as opposed to the wannabe fascist control freaks who’ve taken over the term), but my fans don’t count, because they’re the wrong kind of fan. They are united in that they’d rather enjoy books than get snidely insulted by people like Damien for racist attitudes of their grandparents might have held.

What the conservative authors protesting the Hugo awards perceive as a liberal clique is simply science fiction outgrowing them, and their narrow conception of the genre’s worth.

That makes pretty much no sense whatsoever since over recent years sci-fi readership has been shrinking. It hasn’t been outgrowing anything other than Damien’s dignity.

Why has our market been shrinking? Well, it can’t be because people don’t like sci-fi and fantasy, because they love throwing lots of money at it in movies, TV, and games.

The opinion that I’ve long held, and which helped inspire my dastardly campaign of evil to begin with, was that sci-fi readers were leaving our genre because they were getting tired of being preached at with liberal cause of the day message fiction. They were bored with dying polar bears, murderous bigoted Christians, lectures about the dangers of capitalism, and thinly veiled Dick Cheneys as bad guys. You can really only slap half of the country upside the head and tell them their beliefs are stupid and backwards so many times before they quit buying your stuff. (but keep in mind, the left are supposed to be the inclusive ones).

How did I come to this belief? Because the people who’d been quitting told me so. I kept getting messages from readers with some variation of “I’d quit reading SFF because I was bored/tired/annoyed etc. but your stuff is fun!” over and over and over and then they’d provide me with large royalty checks. This got me to thinking that there might be something to this crazy idea of putting reader enjoyment ahead of placating the perpetually outraged Damiens of the world, where everything including Godzilla and Tomb Raider had to be boiled down to cisgender patriarchal neocolonial military-industrial privilege.

Of course, if those authors really wanted to de-politicise science fiction, they could easily help to do so – by admitting the genre’s historic bias and applauding its growth.

I don’t think anybody has ever said that bias hasn’t happened somewhere at some point, so thanks for that piece of straw. As for applauding its growth that’s the point, you moron. It isn’t growing. You guys are shrinking it. You might think you’re all about diversity and inclusiveness, but you’re not. You’re the opposite. You’ve drawn battle lines and then done everything possible to damage the careers of anybody who believes differently than you.

De-politicize? I was never in this to sway people like you, Damien. That’s impossible. We can’t de-politicize genre fiction any more than we can get leftists to stop banning university commencement speakers, boycotting businesses, or getting people fired for having differing opinions. Censorship and intimidation are simply in the nature of all statist bullies.

My mission was to convince the undecided. My side aren’t the ones trying to silence anyone, and all of the observers have watched your side try to stomp me (and fail miserably). Of course, your side will immediately cite somebody disagreeing (or failing to cheerlead sufficiently) with one of their ludicrous ideas as silencing, which will require them to retreat to their convention mandated racially segregated safe zones with a case of the vapors.

But in reality it isn’t the right trying to shut anybody up. Quite the contrary, Damien, we want you guys to keep talking so the world can see what censorship happy little fascists you are.

My successful campaign was met with a concentrated effort that would have made most normal authors apologize, run away, and hide (that’s what usually happens, but the fact that there isn’t anything you people can actually do to intimidate some of us must drive you nuts).

And by doing everything within their power to welcome new authors from diverse backgrounds, instead of agitating for protest votes to push them out.

And by diverse backgrounds, you mean as long as they are in complete political lockstep with your side?

The real prize for science fiction is not diversity for diversity’s sake

(although I happen to believe that would be prize enough).

A nugget of truth? Now we’re getting somewhere.

Since you’ve never actually created a single piece of fiction anybody has ever wanted to purchase, you are perfectly happy for sci-fi/fantasy to crash and burn, because then you can self-righteously brag about how at least it was mostly straight white males who died in the fire.

We live in a world of seven billion human beings, whose culture has not been reflected or rewarded in ‘the mainstream’. Science fiction

Wait… You mean the ENGLISH LANGUAGE award and books haven’t fully reflected genre fiction from the entire rest of the world? How dastardly.

– from cult novels that reach a few thousand readers,

I wouldn’t know what that is like.

to blockbuster movies and video games that dominate contemporary culture – has the potential to talk across every remaining boundary in our modern world. That makes it, in my opinion, potentially the most important cultural form of the 21st century. To claim that potential, it cannot afford to give way to the petulant protests of boys who do not like to share their toys

What a bunch of pretentious dribble from a sad little man who has never created anything of worth in his life.

So tune in tomorrow as I go through Damien’s pathetic threats, his complete lack of research skills, how my teaching women to carry guns is actually misogyny, and his pathetic attempt to channel Stalin.

Continued at: https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/06/03/fisking-the-guardians-village-idiot-part-2/