DisCon III, the 2021 Worldcon, announced today in an “Update on Editor Guest of Honor” that Baen Books publisher Toni Weisskopf has been removed as one of the convention’s GoHs.
They published the following statement in explanation:
DisCon III condemns the violent and hostile content found within Baen Books’ forums. We also cannot condone the fact such content was enabled and allowed to ferment for so long. We want to make it clear abusive behavior is not, and will not be, tolerated at DisCon III. Such behavior goes entirely against our already established policies concerning inclusivity and creating a welcoming environment for our members, which can be found here: https://discon3.org/about/inclusion/.
We knew simply saying those words with no actions to back them up would be unacceptable. Too often, we have seen individuals and organizations say they are on the right side of issues yet do nothing to act on those words. We knew we had to take a hard look at our own position and take action based on our established policies.
As a result, after discussion with her, we have notified Toni Weisskopf we are removing her as a Guest of Honor for DisCon III.
We know this decision was not as quick as some of you would have wanted, and we understand your frustration. Our committee’s leadership was always in full agreement that there was a fundamental difference between the values Worldcon strives to uphold and the values allowed to be espoused on the forums-in-question.
In the entire eighty-plus year history of our community, no Worldcon has ever removed someone as a Guest of Honor. To remove a Guest of Honor was an unprecedented decision that needed discussion, consideration, and consensus. Those mechanisms sometimes do not move as fast as some would want, and we thank the community for its patience.
We also want to let everyone know that we are not planning on adding additional individuals to our Guest of Honor list.
We wish to thank you all for taking the time and energy to send us your feedback. Many of you have strong opinions on this issue, and we want everyone to know all your voices were heard and considered when rendering our decision. We will always welcome your feedback, questions, suggestions, and concerns, and we will continue to listen, reflect and act to ensure our members feel welcome at DisCon III.
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An sf/f fan I know who worked at the US DoD for many years posted on Facebook, “I warned Toni a couple of months ago that the Bar was coming under increased scrutiny from law enforcement because of Politics and Blazes. Plus some of the things Tom Kratman was posting.” Adding that among law enforcement, the Bar is known as “Parler without the pedophilia.”
Jason Sanford didn’t create Baen’s current problem, nor was he even the first to notice it.
@Laura Resnick: If last month’s report had been heeded, Sanford’s article wouldn’t’ve been needed. It should’ve been heeded.
@jayn
/fistbump
I definitely failed my patience roll but… really.
Anyway, if the only permissible censorship at Baen’s Bar is when something is boring, I’m perfectly happy to assure anyone relevant that at this point the USA right’s violent murder fantasies are very boring. Morally abhorrent, too, but definitely boring.
@Laura Resnick
Not a reputation I’d personally want to cultivate.
(I continue to hope for a future where your Esther Diamond books get an ebook release in the UK!)
Mike V. –
I can only apologize again. And facepalm at myself. I swear I’m usually better about details like these!
No worries. I’ve been called much worse. Today.
I’d like to chime in with several others and say, “Well said, Meredith!”
I struggle with clearly articulating things so I’m all over admiration at how succint and clear you were on some of your comments today.
Hoo, boy. The Bob has some opinions, y’all.
First, let’s kibosh that claptrap about how sudden DisCon’s decision was. Eric Flint has testified that the Politics tavern has been a shitshow for over two decades, which is why he hasn’t even looked in there in 23 years. Jim Minz claims that the Bar is small, “little more than fan service” (I wonder what Walt Boyes, who claims that the 1632 zone is a thriving generator of published content that thus actively earns money for Baen, would say to that), and has been so for “years and years.”
Let’s assume Minz is correct. If so, Weisskopf has been negligent for “years and years” by allowing one part of a small community to become so toxic that none of its prominent defenders will admit to having visited it in recent memory. They all say, in essence, “Ew, no, Politics is a dumpster fire. Everybody knows to stay out of there.”
If everybody knew that, why didn’t Weisskopf? Why didn’t someone bring this to her attention a decade or more ago, and why hasn’t she already taken the appropriate action? This isn’t a “two days’ notice” problem, but a “two DECADES’ notice” problem.
Further, context matters. DisCon is scheduled for August and takes place in Washington, D.C. You know, that place which is still recovering from the RIOT AND ATTEMPTED COUP which took place there on January 6th? And no sooner do they find out that one of their GOHs is responsible for a forum where hard-right posters are actively discussing the best ways to massacre liberals by disabling cities than said GOH takes the forum down (thus preventing outsiders from investigating it) while issuing a statement that she refuses to “censor” content?
If I were on that concom, that’d literally be everything I needed to know to reach a decision. A problem has been alleged in an area the GOH has been responsible for* for years, she’s flushed the direct evidence, and her “defenders” are corroborating the existence of the alleged problem, both by baldly saying the discussions were happening and in their behavior toward the guy who blew the whistle.
There are some hard decisions in the world of fandom, but “decline to honor someone who defends talk of insurrection at an event located in a city which is still recovering from a coup attempt” is not one of them. DisCon absolutely made the right decision in removing her from their event.
*The buck stops on Weisskopf’s desk. It was her responsibility, whether she knew about the discussions or not. Her company, her forums, her responsibility. Claiming ignorance does not erase the error in judgment; it compounds it.
@Lorien Gray
And now no-one’s going to hear anything sensible from me for ages while I giggle gleefully and draw little sparkly hearts around some of my comments being described as succinct! 🙂 It’s a trait I admire in others but rarely feel I achieve. I’m going to be basking in the warm glow of that for weeks.
(I always appreciate your comments and insights, though, you’re very hard on yourself!)
Meredith:
Mike V, you are now the new number six.
Jim Minz:
You are making good arguments for us to not invite the owners of Patreon as Guests of Honours.
How about these statements as a start?
1) An expression that calls for violence are not acceptable on the forums wether lawful or not.
2) The intent to remove all such statements.
3) An overview of the role of the moderators to see if they live up to the standards set by Baen.
That would have been a much better start than what was said, i.e more or less the opposite.
The politics forum of Baen’s Bar is quite obviously an example of this not working as we now have had Flint, Bayes and more saying that they left the place because it had become a cesspit.
@RedWombat
I wanted to say, I appreciate your posts and I’m grateful you’re here. You’re very good at clarity, at presenting clear, sharp-eyed analyses that illuminate the important bits in an amiable way.
Shouldn’t that be Mike VI, then?
@Jim Minz
She could have said it was unacceptable. She could have given some indication she was in the least bit bothered. She didn’t. She brushed it off.
But the world has moved on to the point where it’s pretty noteworthy when someone is running Parler for nerds a month after an attempted coup; and all of your special pleading doesn’t change that.
Again, given Baen’s market, it’s understandable that she’d play to that market. Boogaloos read sci-if too, I know. But there’s consequences to publishing books for the backlash in 2020 that weren’t there in 2000, or 1995, and your ridiculous special pleading and attempt to net it newer authors who use Patreon just doesn’t hold water.
@Shao Ping:
“Who is Number One? You are Mike V.”
I am writing in support of DisCon III actions as making ethical decisions are often difficult, especially when done for the first time in a convention’s history. The last time I wrote anything involving a World Con it resulted in my being banned for the remainder of the convention due to pointing out problems that were occurring behind the scenes at ConZealand. The way things at DisCon are being run is drastically different.
The first I’d ever heard of Baen Books or their form Baen’s Bar was in the announcement stating that Ms. Weisskopf would not be a GoH. This has led me down a rabbit hole of what the heck was such a big deal about this forum. What I’m coming up with does not leave me with the impression that Baen books had any intention of moderating any speech in its forums. They have in fact, rather than let the record stand for itself and allow access to the forums for display, taken them down entirely. Not just the politics section that this is coming from, but the entire forum. Being unwilling to even let people look at the posts in question does not leave one with feeling of transparency in the company.
That has left only the option of validating reports through screen shots taken before hand and counter writers who have skin in the game through some involvement with the publisher. Those do not look flattering at all. Several of the screen shots leave clear correlations with ideologies taken from The Turner Diaries. Calls for insurrection and how to overturn government not things to be overlooked, especially given the actions of January 6, 2021. It is her responsibility to make sure that her boards are being monitored. It is Ms. Weisskopfs responsibility to set rules on what is allowed and set the tone for the forums. From what I can find she failed in this, but again I can’t even look at the boards to verify because they were taken down. If Ms. Weisskopf wants to allow the forums to remain open using the excuse of freedom of speech, that is perfectly within her right. It is also others right to walk away from any involvement with her company.
As a result, I have chosen to buy a membership to DisCon III. I may not be able to go depending on when it is run, and I have run past the deadline for any voting rights. However, I firmly believe that an organization that can stand up for its morals and ethics should be supported.
Dammit, Peace, you’re gonna make me blush.
Would that make you @BlushingWombat? 🙂
(And I’ve just pre-ordered Paladin’s Strength: Saint of Steel Book 2 (The Saint of Steel)!)
RedderWombat, surely.
Hannah R Nelson:
Not so! You can’t nominate for the 2021 Hugo Awards, but you will be able to vote on the final ballot when it comes out later this year, you will be able to vote on the site of the 2023 Worldcon (to be selected at DisCon III), and you will be able to nominate for the 2022 Hugo Awards (administered by Chicon 8). So you still have plenty of your membership rights available.
I know I appreciate you coming forward to share your support of the choice DisCon III made, and unlike those people “boycotting” an event that they probably didn’t intent to attend anyway, you put your money where your mouth is.
Something that the people slagging DisCon III’s decision probably don’t care about is that no matter what the convention did, they were going to lose something. It’s likely that they would have lost staff and members (and probably other guests of honor) had they taken a different decision. With the decision they’ve made, they will lose staff and members (and have obviously lost a guest of honor, by their own choice). This was a situation without a “win,” only one where you pick what you decide to lose and decide what your decision says about your organization.
@ Mike V:
THX, but I’m not able to get what you said at the beginning or the screenshots.
@ Mike V
Thank you for both of these!
and
But there is absolutely no indication that they did, in fact kicked her out the day after she shut down the bar to review it. What has me so angry isn’t that they did this to Toni, it’s that a Worldcon did this. Which, of course, has been lost or buried in this discussion. Toni Weiskopf is far more important than any Worldcon.
@Elspeth: where do you get the idea that they disinvited her the day after she shut down the forum for review? My understanding of the time-line is that she shut down the forum, a day later comes over all freeze peach and says that Baen won’t censor legal speech (in spite of precedent to the contrary), and several days after that she is disinvited.
@Elspeth
No, I disagree. As Kevin noted above, this was a situation with only bad and worse choices, but the fact of the matter is, by neglect intentional or not, the GoH has overseen a toxic and violent forum and whose public responses to the revelation of same have been “free speech, what are you gonna do?” and has said not a WORD to the harassment and doxxing inflicted on the person who pointed out that toxicity. I’ve seen NOTHING from her about what Jason has gone through.
Let’s do a counterfactual. Let’s suppose Discon III took the other bad of the other two choices and decided to stand by their GOH, she, who as you say “is more important than any Worldcon”.
Great. Forums probably reopen, toxic crap keeps piling up, poor Jason’s life continues to be a living hell, and for thousands of fans the message is clear– Weisskopf and the Baen Bar and their regulars are more important than any concerns about your safety and well being.
It violates their own Code of Conduct, for one thing, and I could see a mass exodus of people not going to the con in any physical or virtual forum. Why would you, when people who have already expressed their dark desires are going to be there. Who wants the potential for harassment hanging over their heads with every panel or other gathering space?
Great! The person more important than any Worldcon gets to be GOH
Not so Great: People leave the con because of fears of their mental and physical well being.
@ Aaron (Trying to keep the italics sorted)
I said
You
But what you post next, what Toni said, completely contradicts what you’re trying to affirm.
The Bar is on hiatus. They’re going to investigate.They won’t censor lawful speech but a bit of research shows that a fair amount of speech isn’t lawful.
@Paul Weimar: I think Elspeth is committing Geek Social Fallacy # 1.
@stewart
Sandford’s report was Feb. 15
Weisskopf closed Baen’s Bar Feb 16
Discon announced that Weisskopf was disinvited on Feb 19.
@Paul Weimer
I don’t see how keeping Weisskopf as GoH violates the CoC. She has not been accused of saying or doing anything that violates it, only to turning a blind eye to what has gone on.
But there is absolutely no indication that they did, in fact kicked her out the day after she shut down the bar to review it.
That would carry some weight if the statements she issued when she shut down the Bar made it clear that she wasn’t going to actually do anything about the issues that had been raised. Seriously, go back and actually read her accompanying statement. I know people really, really want her to be saying she will take action, but she is explicitly saying the exact opposite of that.
And while I don’t have direct knowledge on what she said to Discon in private, every indication that I have seen is that she told them that she has done everything she intends to do about it, which is plausible because it comports completely with the public statements she has made.
The idea that Weisskopf should be given more time to take action when she has made clear in her public statements that she manifestly intends not to is simply ludicrous.
Toni Weiskopf is far more important than any Worldcon.
This is a ludicrous statement. Weisskopf is a prominent editor and publisher, but in the world of genre fiction she’s a sideshow at best. This isn’t belittling her: Almost every individual is a triviality in the whole picture. If Weisskopf were to somehow disappear from science fiction tomorrow, the genre as a whole will chug along quite undisturbed without her. This happens all the time. Prominent people die, or fade from view, or otherwise move on, and it barely causes a ripple.
The notion that any one person is somehow supremely “important” is simply at odds with reality.
But what you post next, what Toni said, completely contradicts what you’re trying to affirm.
No, Elspeth, it does not. You conveniently ignored the final paragraph in the statement which says:
“It is not Baen Books’ policy to police the opinions of its readers, its authors, its artists, its editors, or indeed anyone else. This applies to posts at the Bar, or on social media, on their own websites, or indeed anywhere else. On the Bar, the publisher does not select what is allowed to be posted, and does not hijack an individual’s messages for their own purposes. Similarly, the posts do not represent the publisher’s opinion, except in a deep belief that free speech is worthy in and of itself.”
That’s saying that she intends not to do anything at all. That is a complete evasion of responsibility and completely negates what you selectively quoted from the piece.
I get it. You really want Weisskopf to be seen as having behaved responsibly here, but she hasn’t. She made her stance clear – and her stance is that she’s not going to do anything about the problems that have been identified.
Your dogged, dishonestly parsed defense of her and criticism of Worldcon’s actions tells us far more about you than you realize, and it isn’t good.
Citation needed.
Along with an exact explanation of why this should mean that any Worldcon should put Weisskopf’s interests above their own.
I’m terribly confused. Why exactly was Weisskopf disinvited? Was it for closing down Baen’s Bar? Was it for not closing down Baen’s Bar fast enough? Was it for insufficient vehemence in her statements when closing down Baen’s Bar?
Or was it for having allowed Baen’s Bar to run toxic forums for years without doing anything about it? But if Weisskopf is culpable for that, then why isn’t Discon culpable for having invited in the first place somebody who was already doing that? It’s not as if the content of Baen’s Bar was a secret, or was it?
@bill
“Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behavior” is the part of the CoC I had in mind.
@Paul Weimer
Yes, this. At least two staff members that I know of have already resigned and several people, including potential Hugo finalists, announced that they would not attend if Toni Weisskopf were to remain Guest of Honour. The Hugo ceremony hosts publicly expressed their displeasure and there were calls for boycott.
Also, DisCon III asked for community reactions to the situation and they got a lot of e-mails and messages in response. The one I wrote was polite, I guess not everybody’s was. They were under intense pressure to react.
DisCon III was in a shitty situation here, because they either had to make the unprecendented decision (for a Worldcon – there have been at least three cases at other cons) to disinvite a GoH or risk losing a large part of their staff, members and programme participants and possibly some of the other GoHs. And unlike the noisier Baen authors and their fans, those other folks are people who actually attend WorldCon in significant numbers.
Also, Toni Weisskopf could have prevented this and remained GoH, if she had said just a single word of condemnation for the incitement to terrorism and mass murder that happened on a forum she is responsible for. However, Toni Weisskopf chose not to condemn the disgusting things said in her forum and thus gave the impression that she condones this sort of thing. And that’s what made her untenable as a GoH.
Note: Toni Weiskopff being at the con is not what would violate the code of conduct and Paul isn’t saying (unless I misunderstood him) that Toni W has or is likely to violate code of conduct [nor are you saying that he said that etc. just want to be clear].
The CoC states:
“DisCon III is dedicated to providing a harassment-free convention experience for all attendees, regardless of ethnicity, gender identity and expression, sexual identity or sexual orientation, neurodiversity, disability, physical ability or appearance, race, age, religion, or fiction/fandom preferences (this list is not exhaustive).”
The question at hand is could DisCon claim to be doing this AND retain Toni Weiskopff as GoH. I believe that would be difficult to the point of being impossible. The behaviour of a subset of Baen authors with a history of bullying and of reacting to any perceived threat or sleight to Baen books or to Toni Weiskopff makes that impossible. No Worldcon member could feel safe to be critical of a speech of GoH or express a negative opinion of the GoH or of her publishing company without fear of being targetted by one of these subset of Baen authors. The attacks of Jason Sanford were the most pertinent example but there’s no shortage of prior examples.
The only safe decision DisCon could make was to bring an end to the high profile connection and disinvite the Guest of Honour. I don’t know if that was the reasoning they used but it is the reality of the situation.
The past few days have demonstrated that you can’t safely point out that Baen’s Bar had some violent posts without being targetted and having your workplace and job targetted. Never mind what actions the company might make about their forums, there’s a real situation here where a publishing house has online partisans who will act to silence critics of the publisher!
Yes, just so. If Toni was willing to budge even slightly, this issue wouldn’t have come to a head so quickly.
Bearing in mind that I’m as prone to the fallacy of assuming my perspective is objective as anyone else (“I don’t know anyone that voted for Richard Nixon!”), if I were a betting man I would say that the membership of Discon is probably 20-25% pro-keeping-Weisskopf camp, roughly evenly split between “It’s tradition!” and “own the libturds!” and 75-80% in the dump-Weisskopf camp, split among three or four primary reasons. With that kind of pressure to act, pressed up against a wholly intransigent Toni, and hemorrhaging guests and panelists and bad press, Discon’s response was foregone. I am a bit surprised it came before the weekend, but not displeased. I always lean towards ripping the bandaid off quick, not slow.
I’ll add a coda to that last comment.
I’ve followed Puppy blogs for years and a couple of odd things struck me. A while ago Dave Freer had a problem with a publisher. He didn’t name the publisher. Sometime later Sarah Hoyt had an issue with a publisher, again she was, to say the least, cagey about which publisher it was. Contextually, it was obviously Baen (just from their respective publishing histories). Neither Freer nor Hoyt are normally shy about people who have wronged them.
[just missed the edit window in the other post to fix “Tone W” – meant to be Toni]
You could probably add a few GSF1ers and free speech absolutists to the pro-keeping-Weisskopf camp.
Cora — is it fair to summarize what you said as “If we keep Toni as GoH, other people might do bad things.”
This may be my cynicism talking, but I have met very, very, very, extremely few free speech absolutists, as in nobody should ever be criticized or stopped from speaking any speech at all. What I have met is people who get upset when opinions they like are criticized or minimized, and use freeze peach as a club to bludgeon their ideological enemies.
In this debate, I have met nobody using the absolute free speech argument with any kind of intellectual honesty, and only those using it as shorthand for “Help, help, I’m being oppressed!”
I actually have a grudging respect for those whackadoodles that truly believe in unrestricted free speech. It’s an ethical position not wholly without merit, even if it’s as impractical as geodesic domes. What we’re seeing? This ain’t that.
@Elspeth
Nowhere in her message did TW say that the screenshotted plans of mass murder and civil war in Sanford’s were UNACCEPTABLE at Baen’s Bar, regardless of whether they were legal or not. She made no denial that these things were actually said by a moderator of Baen as well as other users – and a refusal to condemn naked advocacy of violence, coupled with, “Yeah, I’ll get back to you guys on whether what they said was legal or not. Free speech!” does not inspire confidence that the fans who would follow TW to Worldcon in her wake aren’t going to be the same ones she’s carefully avoiding offending by condemning them.
@bill
It is far more accurate to say that the standard of behavior TW steadfastly refuses to condemn on her own forum would lead the marginalized people gleefully targeted by the Baen’s Bar Boys to feel that the fans Toni is cultivating by her forbearance are likely to pose a serious safety risk to them if they follow her to Worldcon.
No, that’s not what I said. Staffers refusing to work for and members refusing to attend a convention whose GoH could at the very least be viewed as condoning violence and mass murder is not people doing bad things, it’s people doing what they feel they need to do to keep themselves safe. And yes, Toni Weisskopf herself is no physical danger to anybody, but some of Baen’s more disturbed fans might be. DisCon III had the choice between retaining their GoH and losing a significant number of staffers, program participants, members and possibly other GoHs or cutting loose one GoH and losing some of this person’s fans as well as some traditionalists. And while there are Baen authors and fans at Worldcon (e.g. the three somewhat forlorn looking members of the Royal Manticorean Legion at Dublin), Baen have not been a strong presence there in a long time, if ever.
If hypothetically speaking, Liberty Con had made N.K. Jemisin GoH and N.K. Jemisin subsequently says something that annoys a large part of Liberty Con’s membership, I wouldn’t be surprised if they cut her loose rather than lose staffers and members over it.
@bill
Wow. No. That looks as unfair a summation, as unsympathetic and unjust as it is possible to make.
I would say a FAIR summary would be “If we keep Toni as GoH, we will lose a significant percentage of our community, staff and friends who care about targeted and vulnerable communities.”
“is it fair to summarize what you said as “If we keep Toni as GoH, other people might do bad things.””
Only if you are being completely dishonest.
@ Elspeth: I’m really boggled by your claim that
It’s not so much that I disagree in the sense that WC is more important than TW, but that I cannot imagine trying to set up this sort of comparison in terms of value.. For one thing, one definition of “Worldcon” is as a legal entity or organization. Of course in the US, orporations apparently have human rights, more than many human beings. But “Worldcon” as an event is also a gathering of many human beings. I’m not sure which “Worldcon” (or if there’s another definition you’re using) you see as less important than TW.
Could you explain your reasons for your belief, or at least your definition of “Worldcon” here?
“I actually have a grudging respect for those whackadoodles that truly believe in unrestricted free speech. It’s an ethical position not wholly without merit, even if it’s as impractical as geodesic domes. What we’re seeing? This ain’t that.”
They aren’t free speech absolutists. Here’s how you can tell. I’ve seen someone describe Baen;s Bar’s politics forum as “Parler without the porn” in a context that may become apparent in a later Pixel Scroll.
Let’s do a thought experiment. Suppose someone were to post a bunch of porn or a bunch of porn links in the Politics forum. That’s lawful speech. Porn is legal. Talking about porn is legal. Displaying porn is legal. Toni claims Baen will never censor lawful speech.
I believe Baen would remove those posts so quickly that the speed of light would seem slow.
With respect to Cora Buhlert, I think the ethical calculus is a lot simpler than delving into the knock-on effects of potential CoC violations. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think that practical concerns about membership, guests, panelists, staff and bad press were as (if not more) pressing on Discon than the ethics were, but I like to think that ethics played a part as well.
So it flowcharts a little something like this:
Is Toni Weisskopf responsible for (at the very least tacitly, and possibly actively) approving the speech and actions of a band of Nazis* and the Nazi-adjacent by giving them a place to recruit and plan for their puerile Nazi fantasies?
If not, no controversy. But obviously, yes.
Is Worldcon, by reifying Toni Weisskopf with a career-defining Guest of Honor position, thereby (at the very least tacitly, but possibly actively) approving of her publicly-known behavior?
If not, no controversy. But obviously, yes.
If Worldcon approves of the approving of Nazi shenanigans, does Worldcon bear some level of responsibility, or the appearance of responsibility, for said Nazi shenanigans?
If not, no controversy. But obviously, yes.
Is Worldcon bearing responsibility for Nazi shenanigans bad?
If not, no controversy. But obviously — blindingly, clearly, incredibly f—ing obviously — hell yes that’s a huge problem.
*Nazi here being used as general shorthand for “supporters of a violent fascist (ethno)state that legitimizes atrocities by valorizing cleansing society of the declared-subhuman”, and not “people that admit to being a Nazi in public”, though the second class is essentially included in the first class.
@PIMM
If it’s simply a matter of numbers, then that is completely justifiable.
But it has been portrayed as a violation of CoC, and I’m trying to bore down into that. Obviously the convention has an interest in attendees being physically safe. But there’s no reason to suspect that Toni’s presence risks that except via 3rd parties.
@Mike V —
Then to what extent does “toleration of” imply “endorsement of”?
Should conventions disinvite fans of gangsta rap? Should Gor novels be banned from dealers’ tables? Should John Campbell’s Hugos be revoked?
“Is Worldcon bearing responsibility for Nazi shenanigans bad?”
Should Wernher von Braun’s retro-Hugo be revoked?
@bill
If she will not criticize her fans who write of their desire and glee to murder people they do not like, if she will not speak one word of disagreement with their violent genocidal power fantasies, may people not anticipate those very fans coming to a convention in the very city where barely a month ago people who fantasized online exactly as they do committed violent armed insurrection that led to five deaths?
The third parties are the point. If she will not disavow those who scheme openly to commit mass murder, who could feel safe at a convention where she is a draw for them?
@bill
Your questions are obviously bad faith straw men, but let’s pretend they aren’t for a moment:
1) No.
2) No.
3). No, but he shouldn’t get any new ones probably.
See, the problem with slippery slope arguments is that the slope often turns out to be not all that slippery.
What you asked in your first two questions was:
Should conventions disinvite an artist that depicts serious antisocial behavior in their art, or disinvite people that support or profit from that artist? You know, like someone singing a song about a woman that murders her husband, or writing a book about a manly man in a loincloth that hacks and hews other manly men in loincloths?
The relevant question that you were disingenuously trying to conflate with your straw man parallels is:
Should conventions decline to honor a person that models or promotes serious antisocial behavior in real life, and/or draws no clear distinctions between art and real life, and/or is trying to use art as a tool to promote serious antisocial behavior in real life?
So if a rap artist actually murders and robs with glee, then yes, clearly we should not be supporting that person. If a real-life human (of Gor) actually goes out and kills his neighbor and rapes his neighbor’s wife, or encourages his fans to do the same, then clearly we should not support that person. If someone is selling The Turner Diaries, which an artistic work but is obviously meant as a didactic tool with a specific, extremely antisocial message, clearly we should not support that person.
That I even had to type out this comment is deeply insulting to at least one of us.