A series of Baen authors and editors have mounted a coordinated response to Jason Sanford’s February 15 article “Baen Books Forum Being Used to Advocate for Political Violence”, a public post on Patreon.
Eric Flint’s 4,800-word “The Controversy About Baen’s Bar” recites a great deal of his personal history as a socialist political activist in the service of deflecting criticism from Baen’s Bar. He even confidently gives assurances about activity in one of its conferences that he says he hasn’t read in two decades. Nothing to see here.
…It is in the nature of jackasses to be jackasses. This is supposed to be shocking news because it’s posted on a virtual bulletin board?
Perhaps my favorite of Sanford’s Oh, my God! moments is this one by a never-heard-of-him who uses the monicker of Theoryman: “As I’ve already pointed out, rendering ANY large city is uninhabitable is quite easy… And the Left lives in cities.”
I have to make a confession here. Although he doesn’t specify in most cases where he found these comments, I’m pretty sure that Sanford found them in one of the many conferences in Baen’s Bar—the one that goes by the title “Politics.”
I stopped visiting “Politics” about… oh, I dunno. Twenty-three ago? The reason I did is because, as Darth Vader would say, “The stupid is strong with these ones.” I don’t mind arguing with people who disagree with me. But I refuse to waste my time getting into debates with people so dumb I don’t know how they tie their own shoes in the morning. And that’s pretty much the nature of the wrangles in “Politics.” As far as I’m concerned, the conference might as well have a sign over the entrance reading Here Be Dimwits and People Who Imagine Themselves to be Dragons.
Take a look at what Sanford considers an “incitement to violence.” Can it be called that? Well… I suppose—if you’re willing to grant that Theoryman is such an imbecile that he actually believes that “rendering ANY large city is uninhabitable is quite easy.” [sic]
Well, not much to see here –
…This is the “great menace of Baen’s Bar” that Sanford yaps about. A handful of people—okay, two handfuls, tops—most of whom you have never heard of, who spout absolute twaddle. Yes, a fair amount of it is violent-sounding twaddle, but the violence is of a masturbatory nature.
If only there was a way to tell the spouters who don’t mean it from the ones who show up on January 6 to riot at the Capitol, assault cops, take selfies while they vandalize the building, and try to stop Constitutional duties from being carried out.
Flint contends that even the ones caught doing explicit advocacy, like Tom Kratman, somehow don’t count either:
…If Sanford thinks that a few authors like Kratman are the ones who define Baen as a publishing house, he has the obligation to make a case for it. But he makes no effort to do so. Instead, he ignores most of Baen’s authors altogether and simply asserts that what he says is true because he says it’s true….
Jason Córdova also takes cover behind Eric Flint in “Don’t Mess With An Author’s Source of Income”.
…Point 3 — It’s “popular” for people to attack others without fear of recourse or repercussions. Now, for those of us not with our heads firmly up our backsides, we know Baen Books is a publisher with a lot of resources who publishes a lot of varied individuals, from die-hard communists like Eric Flint to Tom Kratman, who might be described as being right of Atilla the Hun on the political spectrum. Jim Baen never cared what your politics were, as long as you could tell a good story. The writer of said article (“investigative journalism” my left buttock) created an account, went onto the Bar, and decided to find the best statements he could in order to use it to bolster his claim that the Bar is a hotbed for far-right extremism. Never mind the fact that the Bar hosts like five groups dedicated to Eric Flint or his collected universes (it might be six now, I don’t know). Our intrepid (so brave, much brave) journalist needed meat for his article (he probably went into Kratman’s forum… even I think those guys are nuts).
Eric Flint’s socialism doesn’t preclude there being Baen’s Bar participants approving violence and coaching insurrection in Baen’s Bar. Or even have anything to do with it. Again, it’s presented here as an attempt to deflect attention.
Sarah A. Hoyt calls Sanford’s post an attempt at “canceling baen books” in her Mad Genius Club column.
…If it were just the puppy kickers fighting for relevance, it would be one thing. But it’s not. This is a coordinated attack.
Which, btw, makes it mathematically inevitable that yes, they’ll come for me and you too. Because the left — idiot children that they are — think that cutting off a man’s tongue shows his opinions to be invalid.
So, as irritated as I am and have been at Baen for four years, I’m turning that irritation on the left for making me defend them.
Because cancelling is not only wrong. It’s unmaking civilization. And only the idiot sheep of the left wouldn’t see that….
Cedar Sandersons’s defense, “Baen Books” begins with extensive quotes from Hoyt, followed by her own nostalgic reminiscences about Baen’s Bar.
Anyone who has read my blog or who knows me, knows of my deep and abiding affection for Baen’s Bar, which led me to Baen Books. This week, a ham-handed and libelous attack was made on the forum….
Two other responses were reported by File 770 yesterday —
- The statement from Baen Books’ publisher, “A Note from Toni Weisskopf” (Baen.com) [Archive.is link], and
- Larry Correia’s defense, “Publishing House Baen Books Attacked by Cancel Culture” at Monster Hunter Nation [Internet Archive link].
But a comment was added to Correia’s post today by someone who says he is harassing Sanford by calling Sanford’s boss at his workplace.
Larry Correia also tweeted that he spoke to Vox Day today.
OTHER RESPONSES.
For public consumption, Vox Day’s reaction is largely schadenfreude: “Baen under SJW assault” [Internet Archive link].
…It is mildly amusing to see the moderates, a few of whom didn’t hesitate to join the SJWs in pointing-and-shrieking at us, now coming under the same sort of attacks that we’ve been weathering for years. I hasten to point out that Larry Correia is most certainly not one of them, as he has always been a stand-up champion of everyone on the Right and he has disdained every invitation to denounce and disavow both the Rabid Puppies and me. He may not embrace the conflict as we do, but he fights. I have nothing but respect and regard for the man, because the Mountain is not my personal army. The VFM are….
John C. Wright, who with his family personally attended the Trump rally in DC on January 6, follows his intro to “Larry Correia on the Thought Police Ambush against Baen’s Bar” with extensive quotes from Correia’s blog.
An article to steel the resolve and cure the blindness of anyone unwary enough to underestimate the remorseless malice of the enemy, now comes a column at Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International Website.
Please note the attack was coordinated, using the “Chinese Whisper” techniques beloved by bitter and wrinkle-faced gossipy hags and bloodthirsty communist agitators alike….
Jon Del Arroz, in a kind of unintentional comic relief, spent the day successfully using sock puppets to bait Larry Correia into giving him a great deal more attention, both at Monster Hunter Nation and on Twitter, which is all JDA ever wants anyway.
WILL WEISSKOPF REMAIN A WORLDCON GOH? The DisCon III committee will meet this weekend to discuss “the situation with Baen Books’ forums.”
The range of reactions is as wide as the cultural divide. Here are two articulate examples:
JASON SANFORD. Sanford, meanwhile, is weathering a growing storm of harassment.He sent this status:
I took my Twitter and Facebook pages private for a while because I’m dealing with a serious escalation of harassment over the Baen article. I can’t go into details right now but the harassment is serious.
I’ll probably be offline for a bit to deal with this stuff. However, I just saw Eric Flint’s essay attacking me and I wanted to say I disagree with what he wrote, which was a misrepresentation of my report. Everything I wrote about was based on facts and actual comments in the forum. I even shared screenshots of the comments on social media.
This also wasn’t a coordinated attack on Baen. Hell, aside from a couple of people who gave feedback on my report no one else knew it was even about to publish.
Facts and evidence matter, as does reporting what goes on in our genre. I presented what was being said on Baen’s forum in my report. Baen has previously moderated their forum and could easily do so again.
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
@steve davidson:
I don’t think that’s a distraction: I think that’s cutting to what’s actually at stake. I’d call January 6 a self-coup–give the devil his due–more than an insurrection, but it can be both. That distinguishes it uniquely from all instances of riotous behavior I can think of: Never before has it been part of an attempted self-coup by a sitting president.
We can go on swapping out definitions and distinctions, but that’s the salient point.
@jayn: Thank you. That’s a detailed criticism and I agree with some of it. I’ll leave the rest alone.
Hey, I was born in 19 dickety floo! It was a violent time for me. I was evicted from my home and forced to breathe a stanky, oxidizing miasma. I cried. A lot.
Re: Flint, he wouldn’t be the first dude to flog his old lefty credentials as a way to tell the younger generation to get off his lawn. To some old leftists, old righties become more congenial company than young leftists.
Re: The risks of “safety” language, and proposing Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric flows from him just wanting people to be safe from the immigrants, and not the racism he’s shown countless times.
I’m really not sure how an intelligent person could say that in any kind of good faith. I’m continually amazed by how many conservatives are happy to espouse the racism, but don’t have the sand to admit it.
Yeah, you’re reading The Sixth Column for the story. Sure. The rest of us don’t have to contort our own view of the world to accommodate another’s cognitive dissonance.
It’s an old refrain, but I truly never get tired of people who claim to be SO dedicated to free speech getting so worked up when somebody else quotes their free speech. Why aren’t they proud of what they said? Why aren’t these commenters going “Damn right I said we should blow up cities full of liberals!”? Why is other people describing their free speech and commenting on it an attack and a “hatchet job?” If they really stand for that, why aren’t they trumpeting it from the hills and saying “Yeah, I’d say it again! And more power to Baen for letting me! Look at how awesome we are!”
But instead they scurry around freaking out because other people free speechify about their free speech. It’s almost like they don’t have the courage of their convictions or something.
Heh.
As far as Flint goes, y’know, it’s great he did stuff… once… but at a certain point “but what have you done lately“ kicks in. And that point, for me, is when I’ve spent several years in this bit of fandom and not once have I ever seen him do anything but defend his right wing buddies when they insult, attack, and violently threaten people they disagree with. His opinion on the goings-on in fandom, as far as I’m concerned, holds roughly as much weight as the smallest lego brick.
@John A. Arkansawyer–
That wasn’t a “self-coup.” That was an attempted coup by the loser in the November 2020 election, trying to prevent the winner of that election from being certified and then inaugurated, in an attempt to make himself president for life.
Before you object to that last bit, better have an answer ready as to under what circumstances Trump would have left office. He started quite early in his term talking about serving at least three terms.
Fortunately, the attempted coup failed. That’s good.
We can be grateful it was thwarted without pretending we didn’t notice that those stupid clowns were violent, dangerous, stupid clowns who came within a hairsbreadth of reaching the VP and the Speaker of the House, both of whom they said they wanted to kill, and the VP’s backup nuclear football. If they’d gotten that, the couldn’t have launched a nuclear missile (it was the backup, and not activated), but they would then have had an uncomfortable amount of highly classified information to leak.
These people were every bit as stupid and clownish as the Barflies–and they were genuinely dangerous, and nearly successful.
And free speech doesn’t mean, speech without consequences. Freedom of association is also part of the 1st Amendment, and it cuts both ways. Assuming nothing they do in Baen’s Bar crosses the line into actual criminal conspiracy, they can say what they like.
Baen can decide whether or not can continue to provide their virtual meeting space.
And if Baen and Toni Wesskopf decide they do want to remain associated with the Barflies, DisCon III, and fandom generally, have the same right of free association to decide whether or not honor Toni Wesskopf.
People misunderstand “safety” language.
Every community, every single one ever created, is a “safe space” for someone.
The Baen’s Bar Politics forum, for instance, is a safe space for people who want me, and everyone like me, dead.
That means it isn’t a safe space for me.
As a non-white science fiction fan I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been either the only, or one of the only, people who look like me in a fandom space.
I wonder how many of the other people in that space have thought about how they wished people like me were dead?
Doesn’t matter, I guess. You can’t punish someone for their thoughts.
But say I was at a convention, and I heard some people in the corner talking loudly about how much they wanted people like me to be dead. And coming up with elaborate scenarios where we were all dead.
Do you think I would feel like I was welcome guest at that convention?
And what if I mentioned this to someone who worked for the convention, and their response was “don’t worry, the Guest of Honor at this con is a socialist.”
Would I feel more welcome because the GoH was a socialist? Or would I feel less welcome because the convention staff apparently didn’t give a shit about the disturbance going on at their con?
Science fiction fandom is a community I’ve been a part of for over 20 years. But for that entire time, I’ve been very aware that it wasn’t a space that was created for me.
It was created for, you know. The list of labels gets longer all the time, but it’s usually something like “straight white cishet” or whatever. (I’m none of those things, now that I think about it.)
It was created for people like Eric Flint.
And it was created for the people who overwhelmingly (though probably not exclusively) populate the Politics forum at Baen’s Bar.
As many differences as I’m sure Flint has with the Politics Forum crowd, they have that in common: they’re part of the population we might call The People That Fandom Was For.
To be clear–and a lot of y’all are going to just pretend I didn’t write this paragraph and trot out your list of exceptions, but I’ll write it out anyway–There have ALWAYS been, and ALWAYS will be, people existing in fandom BESIDES The People That Fandom Was For. We’ve been here the whole time and we are part of the community.
But our ability to exist in this community will always be conditional on our ability to be OK with other people in this community wanting us dead, and talking about how much they want us dead, and dreaming up elaborate scenarios where we and everyone like us are dead.
Because they’re part of the tribe I’m calling The People That Fandom Was For, and we’re not.
And this is a basic problem.
Many of The People That Fandom Was For want it to be a welcoming place for the rest of us, and that’s to their credit. Many of them are legitimately awesome people.
But not all of them are ready to deal with the fact that the community in which we all exist was created to accommodate the people who want us dead, and was not created to accommodate us.
I don’t see that changing this week. I think it might change someday.
Until it does, we’re going to keep having these conversations.
For the record, I don’t want Toni Weiskopf disinvited as a GoH from WorldCon. I don’t want Baen Books cancelled, or Eric Flint cancelled, or anybody cancelled. I’ve read and loved many Baen Books over the years.
What I want is for Baen’s Bar to adopt a rule that many, many internet forums have: No Advocating Violence. Just like a basic internet rule that is incredibly common.
That’s literally it. It’s a rule that moderators all over the internet uphold every damn day. And it’s one of the very most basic courtesies you can extend to another human being–to promise them that they can participate in a forum without worrying about other people demanding their death.
It’s weird that this simple courtesy seems like an unreasonable demand to so many people right now.
And I think that’s probably because it would put a crack in that fundamental structure I mentioned earlier: who fandom was built for.
The past few years have seen some early attempts to tear down that structure and rebuild it, and that’s massively uncomfortable for some people who have found that structure to be a solid foundation for their lives.
This is the next step in that.
Maybe we’re not ready to take that next step.
I hope someday we are.
@lis, I actually stumbled on this a couple of weeks ago. A “self-coup” is a genuine term of art: it’s when an existing legally-created government throws a coup* itself to avoid being replaced. Contrast with a coup against an existing government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup
(*) Business casual requested.
@Madame Hardy–
Huh.
Okay, that makes a certain amount of sense. Thanks.
So, these clowns couldn’t even manage to meet the dress code? 😉
@Madame Hardy: “Self-coup” was a new term to me, too, and I’m sorry to make its acquaintance under these circumstances.
@TYP: “To some old leftists, old righties become more congenial company than young leftists.”
What I noticed happening to me, in my late thirties and early forties, I stopped being interested in people who were even less effectual than myself. I started making friends with people of all sorts who had actually done things. I loved getting to know an old Marine colonel and hearing about Vietnam from his point of view. Loved him, too.
Leaving my bubble was one of the best things I ever did.
He’s not getting how news spreads in SF/F these days or how people take their own actions in response to it, which is ironic since he, Correia, Weber, Hoyt and Sanderson didn’t need to coordinate to all defend Baen and slam Sanford’s report.
Apparently, Eric Flint has never interacted with Twitter on any level whatsoever.
@ Mme Hardy
Glad to know the English; the term I’ve seen is “autogolpe”. I hate the necessity to know such terms.
@Lis: What, you don’t go horned and bare-chested to your desk job?
@Msb: Yup, it’s a direct translation from the Spanish.
When Flint, Weber, Correia, et al. proclaim that they haven’t been to the section of the Bar they’re defending in years while defending the Bar overall, they’re not describing a noble free speech zone.
They’re describing a missing stair that they’ve all learned to avoid.
Pingback: Opinion: On Baen Books, Moderating Discussion Boards, & Political Expression | The World Remains Mysterious
Others have already commented on Flint’s attempt to invent a conspiracy against Baen out of Sanford’s post. I’ll just add that the fact that coordination of this sort of thing is so obviously unnecessary that it highlights how he’s using it to both dismiss Sanford actual points and go after the (general and imaginary) attack on Baen.
The latter is what bugs me the most about Flint’s piece. Sanford neither attacked Baen the book publisher, their authors, nor the books they jointly produce. His point was specifically about the Politics discussion at Baen’s Bar and Flint’s dismissals really say nothing except that Flint doesn’t feel personally threatened. Good for him. The rest of us are going to form our own judgments.
@rochrist: Yeah, I was wondering if Eric Flint just found the internet last week or something. Lordy, how naive and/or disingenuous he can be.
@Rev. Bob: Excellent take on that!
Regardless of my whining about safety speech, Jason Sanford has every right to point out the hateful content in Baen’s Bar and publicize it to the wider world. If Teri Weiskopf remains invited to the con and attends, it is likely that she will be subject to criticism of herself and her company that will make her feel uncomfortable, and rightly so. People should be protected physically and from personal harassment, but not their ideas.
@Jack Dominey: I just finished a comment to that effect over on Facebook, along with a recommended course of action. So, this isn’t directed at you, just hung on a reply to you.
-=-=-
[Flint] doesn’t grasp that the problem isn’t Baen the publisher so much as it is Baen the forum host, and Jim Baen the man (RIP) is as wholly irrelevant to that discussion as are anybody’s sales numbers.
The Politics area of Baen’s Bar has been credibly alleged to have become a place where people gather to discuss the best ways to massacre their political opponents. That is all that matters.
If the allegations are true, Baen needs to take corrective actions – deleting those posts at an absolute minimum, and either punishing or banning the posts’ authors as a reasonable next step, including the removal of moderation privileges/duties from any mods involved. (And by “involved” I mean that they either turned a blind eye or participated in the discussion. Cue the “you had one job” meme of your choice.)
One does not neutralize the threat posed by a venomous snake by avoiding it. Someone has to go in and deal with it. In the case of Baen’s Bar, that responsibility ultimately falls to Toni Weisskopf.
@Rev Bob:
Except for one thing: if Puppygate was a useful tool for increasing sales and market for Baen in general, and I strongly suspect it was, especially given all of the “high amazon ratings”, “high sales numbers”, “large number of copies printed” claims made by Puppies in an attempt to justify turning the Hugo Awards into a popularity/sales contest, then any retraction or retreat from the various positions recently expressed are threats to the business model (outrage marketing, apparently, or, probably in a large number of cases, “outrage adjacent marketing”), we’ll not be seeing any significant change, as doing so would undercut sales/market share.
@Madame Hardy–
Yeah, kind of silly of me, huh? I mean, who wouldn’t? 😀
Fiona Hill, who you may remember from the first impeachment, had an article in Politico about the self-coup. It came out back on Jan 11, so shortly after the events. You can read it here.
I think people of a certain age, and I include myself, forget how fast things move these days thanks to social media. I just noticed a comment that mentioned something about Baen a couple of days ago and now it’s everywhere. I don’t think it was a plot against Baen, I just think sometimes an online skirmish, with familiar sides, tends to snowball and attract attention.
Nah, he was an ass off-and-on on GEnie, back before Y2K took down that platform.
Never attribute to conspiracy what can be adequately explained by Twitter.
@Steve Davidson:
Not being certain which of my comments you’re responding to…
Flint cites his (and David Drake’s, and others) sales numbers as a diversion from Sanford’s thesis. Sanford pointed out that Baen has a problem on the Bar, and Flint responded by talking about what a swell guy Jim Baen was despite their political disagreements, how swell David Weber is despite same, and look how long Flint’s been publishing dozens of books with Baen!
None of which does anything to address Sanford’s allegations. It’s just a giant distraction. It’s also not pushing the Puppy agenda (although his conviction that this is a coordinated, pre-planned deplatforming attack on Baen is right out of Correia’s MHN post), as Flint’s using those numbers to show that Baen sells a lot of books by non-conservative authors… which goes against the Puppy characterization of Baen as the Last Bastion Of Free Conservative Speech.
@steve davidson:
Why believe that when so much else of what they’ve said is unbelievable?
Hyman Rosen: Saying that con protection codes of conduct mean that a guest should be disinvited because they have fans who might make attendees feel unsafe is even worse than saying that the guest themselves makes attendees feel unsafe.
And I didn’t say that either of those things justified a guest being disinvited.
Here’s what does justify it:
DisCon III has honored Toni Weisskopf by making her a Guest of Honor. They’re saying that they are holding her up as an example of excellence in SFF publishing and SFF fandom.
And when your honored “example of excellence” is responsible for a website where hate speech toward BIPOC and LGBTQ persons, mass murder threats, and incitement of insurrection are considered perfectly acceptable — when that “example of excellence” has made it quite clear that they don’t see a problem with hosting and condoning such behavior — you as a convention are saying that this is what you also condone, endorse, and consider excellent.
Why would anyone (except people who agree with that horrendous speech) feel safe attending such a convention? If this is what that convention honors, how likely is their Code of Conduct to have any real meaning? How likely are they to take any meaningful action against people who engage in harassment or abuse at their convention? How likely are they to have people show up who think they’ve been given a winking message that anything goes, and that bad behavior will not just be tolerated, it might even be encouraged?
Weisskopf had a choice to make, and she made the choice that put DisCon III in a position of having to take a stand.
I would almost feel sorry for them, but I personally think it’s DisCon III’s own damn fault for making her a Guest of Honor in the first place given that her tolerance of the abusive actions of Puppies is well known. And given the bullshit tirade posted by the co-chair who resigned, I think it’s apparent where the reverence for Weisskopf, and the willingness to let slide the endorsement of abuse, was coming from.
I would feel perfectly safe. But that’s because I’m a white, cis-het, dude who comes from a similar cultural background and has lived their entire adult life in a conservative community. I’m self aware enough to realize how that protects me, and allows me to navigate that specific social space. A lot of people with those same benefits don’t, and don’t realize other people aren’t safe in those spaces.
There are many cogent comments here, especially (in my view) the one by Hervieu. I’ve never been particularly active in SF fandom, just a reader of SF who follows all this from afar, and was disturbed to read about the Baen Bar in the past few days. I commend Jason Sanford for speaking out.
@JJ It’s reasonable for people who don’t like TW and feel that she does not deserve to be honored not to attend the con, or to attend the con and protest, or to not attend the con and protest, or bake cookies with asterisks on them. But if they do go, they’re not going to be attacked physically, and they’re not going to be personally attacked in speech unless they decide to enter the fray.
No one going to a convention is owed “protection” from the opinions of a guest of honor. If you expect to go through life wrapped in a snuggly blanket that keeps out opinions you find abhorrent, or if you expect members of some interest group to match your opinions on other matters, you’re going to be sadly disappointed. But twisting codes of conduct into silencing speech is what everyone not doctrinaire liberal expected them to do even if they denied it; in the the words of Rod Dreher’s Law of Merited Impossibility, “This will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it.”
Hyman Rosen: …
I notice that you haven’t responded to my actual comment and have instead responded to some imaginary strawman you made up.
The other people here are pretty smart, and I’m sure they’ve noticed that, too.
I have seen absolutely nobody suggesting that Toni Weisskopf should be prevented from expressing her opinions at DisCon. The proposal is that the convention should not take active measures to indicate that they honor her, an action which would be inseparable from suggesting that they honor her opinions.
Eric Flint had the most insightful, intelligent, and reasonable take on the Puppy debacle. Not surprising that his take on this issue is similarly insightful, reasonable, and intelligent.
I see a fair bit of upset and outrage that various authors responded to Mr. Sanford’s article; some of it verging on “how DARE they!” I have to ask, what did people expect? These people write for a living; words are their stock in trade. They take words seriously. And regardless of whether Mr. Sanford’s article is accurate or not, he’s written about the company that pays their royalties. Of COURSE they’re going to dig in and respond with a flood of words. Anyone who thought they wouldn’t or that they shouldn’t have completely fails to grasp basic human nature.
Miles Carter: Eric Flint had the most insightful, intelligent, and reasonable take on the Puppy debacle.
Yeah, no. The moment he called Jason Sanford’s rational, well-documented piece a “hit piece”, Eric Flint’s response jumped the shark.
I see people who think it’s about the publishing company. It’s about one part of its site, where people have not been behaving well, that some of said authors admit they haven’t been in a long time. Which makes said authors less than reliable witnesses for the publisher’s site.
(Speaking as a middle-aged affluent cishet white male whom the Fandom Was Built For)
The part of Sanford’s article that’s inaccurate is saying this is recent. I’ve skimmed Kratman’s author forum every couple of months for many years, and it’s been a cesspit of far-right paranoia and openly expressed wishes to murder their opponents for the entire time, with active participation from the author himself. When Kratman posted his blueprint of building a violent insurrection recently, that was the last straw.
It’s true that most of the forums and most of the Barflies aren’t that bad – but it doesn’t matter to me, because Baen has done nothing to stop the really bad stuff. I’ve bought thousands of dollars of Baen product in the past, but I won’t be a future customer until and unless they get rid of the violent terrorists and insurrectionists, among both the forum members and the authors. Since that would probably destroy their business model, not expecting it.
@Dave: “The part of Sanford’s article that’s inaccurate is saying this is recent. I’ve skimmed Kratman’s author forum every couple of months for many years, and it’s been a cesspit of far-right paranoia and openly expressed wishes to murder their opponents for the entire time, with active participation from the author himself.”
I would quibble with that. I don’t recall Sanford claiming it was a recent development, but that it is/remains a current issue which needs to be taken more seriously after the January 6th insurrection.
In other words, it’s one thing for a bunch of guys to dress up in camo and stockpile guns, ammo, and canned food in “normal” times, but once a similar group crosses the line and takes violent action, they’re going to get a lot closer scrutiny… and justifiably so. If nothing else, it’s worth seeing how they react to the other group’s move. Do they get shocked that those other guys actually did something, or do they take it as a call to action? Do they pull back, or do they maintain (or escalate) their own agenda?
After January 6, I am extremely wary of any gang of redcaps that takes the latter course, for reasons which I hope are obvious. I can easily picture Sanford looking through Politics, seeing “maintain/escalate,” and deciding that he has a duty to report his findings.
If his social media accounts were not currently private, I would be very interested in reviewing his article and asking him that question. Perhaps, if he happens to be lurking here, he might see fit to decloak long enough to answer it.
@Jacky Tar
Nobody is upset about writers writing. Quite a number of people object to those writers writing whoppers.
Unless those words are on a Politics forum.
We seem to be getting a lot of drive-by comments from people I don’t recognise who have turned up with an idea about what the discussion is but don’t quote anyone and don’t seem to be responding to anything I’ve seen.
In the event that the next one reads the comments before commenting: Hi! Nice to have a new face around. Please read carefully. If you can’t quote someone saying exactly what you think you’re responding to, may I request you consider what preconceptions you might have been primed with elsewhere? And then respond ito the actual words people are putting out there instead of… something else? It’s challenging to have a productive discussion when some of the contributors seem to be arguing with invisible people.
Rev. Bob says After January 6, I am extremely wary of any gang of redcaps that takes the latter course, for reasons which I hope are obvious. I can easily picture Sanford looking through Politics, seeing “maintain/escalate,” and deciding that he has a duty to report his findings.
Minor note of correction here: red cap is actually slang for a member of the military police. There was a Red Cap series starring Tamzin Outhwaite who later showed up on Doctor Who that dealt with the British military police twenty years ago.
Does anybody just how active the Bar is? Is it but a few dozen individuals? A few hundred? I’m sure, like the ever so foaming at the mouth Rabid Puppies, that it’s just a tiny subset of mainstream fandom, but I am curious as to its size.
Baen Books is truly screwed if Simon & Schuster decides to drop distribution of them as that means they’ll be out of the Books-A-Million stores that they’re in now.
@PJ Evans I think its a useful fiction for supporters of Baen’s Bar to pretend that this is an attack on the publisher itself from the evil Libruls, instead of a criticism of the forum and its participants.
Also, a prominent SF writer and critic briefly tweeted that he considered Sanfoird’s piece “muckraking.” Thankfully, he deleted it minutes later.
@Cat Eldridge: “Minor note of correction here: red cap is actually slang for a member of the military police.”
I’ve been calling the MAGA crowd “redcaps” for a while now, but as a reference to the mythological creature.
Rev. Bob notes that I’ve been calling the MAGA crowd “redcaps” for a while now, but as a reference to the mythological creature.
Ahhh that’s where you got it from. I’m more used to the military slang.
It’s a common deflecting tactic. No matter that a criticism is precisely targeted, with screenshots and receipts, roar that everyone in the vicinity is being attacked and rile them up as your shock troops to punish the person who brought up the criticism. … and in the process drown out discussion of the criticized behavior.
(“You” being the person stung by the criticism in the example and not actually, y’know, you …)