Horror Writers of America President Lisa Morton announced on HWA’s Facebook page that David A. Riley is now off the award jury he’d been appointed to.
In regards to the situation involving David Riley, who announced on his blog that he would be serving on the Anthology jury: We’ve reached out to Mr. Riley, and both Mr. Riley and the HWA have agreed that it’s in the best interest of all for him to step down. Mr. Riley will be replaced on the jury immediately by Nicole Cushing. The HWA thanks Nicole for stepping up, and we would also like to thank everyone who has shared their opinion on this matter.
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Riley wasn’t rejected for being Tory rather than Labour, or vice versa. He was rejected because he was an active participant, including a candidate for office, of a party whose raison d’etre was racism. And yes, this was relevant to his duties as a juror for HWA, because he’d have been judging the work of writers of all backgrounds, and it’s not a blind process.
RAH: Other than allegations that Mr Riley is a racist, I have seen no evidence that this is true.
Then you haven’t bothered to read the numerous links provided by people, here and in the other File770 thread, to racist statements that Riley made.
RAH: Relevancy. Does Mr Riley supposed racism relevant to the job he was assigned to do; to judge horror stories.? Apparently. Mr Riley is a writer of some years. writing horror stories. Based on that story writing it seems relevant. Not his past history being member of a political party.
Riley would have been judging stories written by people of varying ethnic backgrounds. In terms of relative objectivity, of course it is relevant whether he is able to judge stories without including a judgment on the authors’ backgrounds. Certainly the additional information which came to light provided reasonable doubt that he would be able to do so.
RAH: 5) Why did the organization not know about Mr Riley’s disqualification before extending the invitation to be a juror?
Why do entries sometimes get announced on the Hugo final ballot and then disqualified by the Hugo admins? Because the people doing due diligence for eligibility have limited time and can only do so much. Frequently, it takes a public announcement for additional factors to be raised by other knowledgeable people who are not part of the vetting process.
Really, all of this stuff is common sense, and/or readily available. Why do you need to be told these things? Why don’t you just look them up for yourself?
Well that helps me to decide never to pay any attention to this group. If they are going to start purging counter-revolutionaries. I will read works recommended by someone else
Daniel Kauffman: Well that helps me to decide never to pay any attention to this group. If they are going to start purging counter-revolutionaries. I will read works recommended by someone else
I am sure that the Horror Writers of America will be devastated to hear that you do not support them. In fact, they’ll probably just give up and dissolve their organization, because without your support, their work is meaningless. 🙄
@Daniel Kauffman: Good for you. Standing shoulder to shoulder with fascists doesn’t make you look terrible at all.
So I see you get to purge people even if they no longer espouse the cause you object to. How tolerant and inclusive of you. I read the different bits of information and it seemed that he was once a member of a Party in the UK that a lot of people were in because they had some concerns. BUT after the head of it showed up on a BBC Q&A show and people got a good look at the real leader support went away, as this guy seems to have done,
But YOU want him crucified for a past transgression, How noble of you.
This group is not going to change because of what I think or write but you could not pay me to be a member and I have seen NO evidence that this particular individual is now a Fascist but I do see bigotry in view Over I am out of here if you want the last word you can have it.
Daniel Kauffman: So I see you get to purge people even if they no longer espouse the cause you object to. How tolerant and inclusive of you…This group is not going to change because of what I think or write but you could not pay me to be a member
Gosh, Daniel, you struggle a bit with reading comprehension, don’t you?
This is an Internet forum and the “group” to whom you’re addressing your remarks are just a bunch of commenters who haven’t “purged” anyone from anything.
The Horror Writers of America is the organization which decided that they did not want an outspoken racist on their award jury. If you’re really concerned about that, then you should write to the HWA instead of commenting here. There probably aren’t any HWA members who read this forum.
I’m British, of the Conservative voting variety, and this reading of his decades-long active membership of first the National Front and then the British National Party – both of which had fascist and racist platforms – is quite frankly bizarre.
I will never be tolerant and inclusive to people who applaud fascist parties directly after they have performed assaults on mosques.
I leave that part to assholes.
Daniel: He RAN FOR OFFICE for the party. The party whose platform was EXPLICITLY RACIST. He ran for office MORE THAN ONCE, even. He wasn’t some low-information bloke who didn’t know anything about what the party stood for; he was one of the actual standard-bearers. It’s like saying that David Duke shouldn’t be called a racist, even though he was a muckety-muck in the Klan, because there were a lot of guys who were Klan members for a while because they had some vague and unstated “concerns”. Sorry to break it to you, but claiming a high-level party member who was a standard bearer for that party didn’t actually support the aims of that party will only get you laughed at.
So I see you get to purge people even if they no longer espouse the cause you object to. How tolerant and inclusive of you.
Well, if you actually had paid attention, you would have noted he was espousing fascist sentiments quite recently. Then again, reading comprehension doesn’t appear to be your strong suit, so maybe you missed that.
I’m putting in another request for better quality trolls. May future trolls please have basic reading comprehension skills. Pretty please?