aka Summa Rabid Puppies: A Casuistry of the Hugo Controversy
In today’s roundup are Pat Cadigan, Max Florschutz, Craig R., Kevin J. Maroney, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Vox Day, Peter Grant, Camestros Felapton, Russell Blackford, Nicholas Whyte, Lis Carey, and Spacefaring Kitten. (Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editors of the day Dex and sveinung.)
"I think it matters that some people decided to conspire and steal a ballot" @Cadigan at @BSFA on #SadPuppies @TheHugoAwards
— SCI FI LONDON Film Festival (@scifilondon) June 6, 2015
Max Florschutz on Unusual Things
“The Coming of the Ent March” – June 6
And that’s what the insulars are truly afraid of, and why this year isn’t really the big year for an asterisk. Next year will be that year. Right now, the insulars are shouting as loud as they can, trying to drown out the barking puppies. And you know what? To most Sci-Fi/Fantasy fans, it’s just noise.
But it’s noise that’s waking them up. Making them look around and say “What’s going on here?” It’s noise that’s drawing attention to the Hugos, alerting the silent readers who before, like the reader of my other blog, never even knew that they were allowed to participate. And regardless of who they agree with … a lot of them are going to say “Oh, cool,” and get in line for the chance to support their favorite works.
That‘s what the insulars are afraid of. The Hugos have been a large award for a long time, but they’ve also been voted on by a phenomenally small group of people for an award that’s suppose to represent Sci-Fi/Fantasy as a whole.
Craig R. on The Boston Progressive
“Where Are My Nutty Nuggets? I Want My Nuggy Nuggets!” – June 6
“They told me there would be Nutty Nuggets!”
Sad Puppy Central seem to have given up on their first justification, that there was some Super Double-Sekret Social Justice Progressive Cabal that was blocking the Manly Man Rocket Adventure Stories that they Like So Well from making either the nomination lists or the winning slots. Except for Freer, who, I guess, didn’t get the memo.
This is because they actually swamped the nomination choices. Now, this has got to be embarrassing, if you’re all fired up to crow about having Proof, I tell you! Proof! That it’s all a fraud and that we couldn’t get on the ballot ’cause there is no way that we could succeed in gaming the system. There’s no way that simple a cheat can get us on the ballot….
Uhh, why does the ballot look like this?
The latest reason put forth for poor prior puppy performance in the ballot is that there has been this long-running con, where each year the convention committee for the WorldCon is purposely making it hard for people to find out how to nominate and vote!
Yeah, that’s it! Well, lets look at the websites for the past 4 world cons:….
Kevin J. Maroney in a comment on “The Puppies of Terror” at New York Review of Science Fiction – May 30
The only substantial regret I have about my editorial is that it moved too seamlessly from discussion of the *Puppy movement to discussion of Panzergroup Asshole, making it seem as if I thought they were the same people. I don’t.
Let me elaborate on Panzergroup Asshole and online harassment. PGA is a real thing–probably 400-500 people who participate in systematic online harassment*, a weapon waiting for a target. There’s a larger body of casual trolls among whom PGA hide–sometimes PGA follow the other trolls and sometimes PGA’s activities attract the other trolls.
*This can run the gamut from purely online attacks like verbal abuse, tweet flooding, sealioning, comment spam, account takeover, and DDOS attack to offline dangers such as publishing personal information, leaking nude pictures, elaborate death threats, bomb threats, credit card fraud, and SWATting. I’ve had multiple friends say to me that they won’t mention certain names online for fear of attracting the attention of GG and the abuse it brings. Using the fear to silence one’s opponents has a name: “terrorism”.
I do not believe the *Puppies–the leaders and most of their supporters–are themselves members of Panzergroup Asshole. However, the Puppy leaders (Correia, Torgersen, and Day) deliberately and repeatedly invited an alliance with GamerGate, a movement inseparable from Panzergroup Asshole.
Asking people to block-vote for the Hugos (as the Puppies did) was a dick move, taking advantage of the good will assumptions inherent in the Hugo process. This is not significantly different in kind from the outright ballot-box stuffing that got Black Genesis and The Guardsman onto the nominee lists in 1987 and 1989. It’s shameful and nasty, and if they had stopped there, the second half of the editorial wouldn’t have been present. But by deliberately positioning themselves as part of GamerGate-writ-large was a step beyond.
And if it’s “assholery” to point out that someone is allying themselves with terrorists–I think I can live with that charge.
https://twitter.com/pnh/status/607380791224619010
https://twitter.com/pnh/status/607380796987555841
https://twitter.com/pnh/status/607380803950112768
https://twitter.com/pnh/status/607380808756797440
Vox Day on Vox Popoli
“Turbo-charging the award pimpage” – June 6
As it happens, I’d been contemplating following the International Lord of Hate’s lead and recusing myself from the ballot in the future, since I didn’t want to end up with more Hugo nominations than the likes of Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov. That would be ridiculous. However, now that I know the SJWs are preemptively planning to No Award me, I think I would be remiss if I did not consider award pimpage for every single Hugo Award for which I am even remotely eligible for in 2016. Let’s see. In addition to the professional categories, there is Best Fan Writer, Best Related Work, and perhaps I can throw a few doodles together for Best Fan Artist while I’m at it.
https://twitter.com/voxday/status/607225621475958784
https://twitter.com/voxday/status/607247420699865089
Peter Grant on Bayou Renaissance Man
“Is it time to call for a boycott of a mainstream SF publisher?” – June 6
I’ve remained silent about many previous slanders and libels about this situation, but this is just about the last straw. I would very much like to know whether Tor shares and/or espouses the false, slanderous and libelous views expressed by Ms. Gallo. If that company doesn’t take a stand against such lies, or even chooses to remain silent about them (despite their being propagated by one of their editors), then I will have to assume that the time has come to openly call for a boycott of Tor by all objective, non-partisan, independent fans of science fiction and fantasy. I’ll be discussing this option with other SF/F authors (and individuals involved in this controversy) during the coming days, to see whether we can co-ordinate a suitable response.
Camestros Felapton
“A short post about Aristotle and syllogisms” – June 6
So Chris Hensley is right. It isn’t that the system of syllogistic reasoning that Aristotle proposed was wrong but it genuinely has been superseded. The fact that we are using computers to discuss this is partly as a consequence of that. In the 19th and 20th century logic went through a revolution that took it far beyond the simple syllogism. Liebniz, Boole, Frege, Whitehead, Russell, Tarski, Godel made giant leaps and these leaps were not just freaky abstract navel gazing.
Consider this chain: Russel and Whitehead’s Principia inspired Kurt Godel’s incompleteness theorem. Alonzo Church and Alan Turing developed a related theorem that examined incompleteness from the position of an abstract mechanical device. John Von Neumann at around the same time was also looking at logical foundations of mathematics. The jump from freaky-abstract-navel gazing to birth-of-the-modern-electronic computer is almost a direct one.
So what is wrong with syllogisms? Well nothing as far as they go. They adequately describe one form of logical reasoning but it is essentially self limiting. Later Stoic philosophers made significant headway in developing Proportional Logic. Propositional Logic itself has limitations but it allows for more complex arguments to be modeled and to deal with the notion of implication. The basic difference between the syllogistic logic and propositional was the kinds of units that were being used. In syllogisms terms are important. For example take this Syllogism:
- All SJW’s lie
- Camestros is a SJW
- Camestros lies….
Russell Blackford on Metamagician and The Hellfire Club
“Concluding comments on “Best Short Story” – Hugo Awards voting 2015” – June 6
The problem will keep recurring this year: how much stronger might this list (each list) of nominees have been without blatantly political block voting delivered care of the “Puppies” campaigns? We’ll never know. Meanwhile … none of the stories really blew me away, but one came closer than the others. In this company, the standout, for me, was “Totaled”, by Kary English : for its skill and innovation, it will receive my vote. I doubt that any of the others merit such an important international award.
Nicholas Whyte on From the Heart of Europe
“My vote for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), Best Fan Writer, John W. Campbell Award” – June 6
I usually enjoy tracking down the various entries in this category (I rarely have time to watch the movies nominated for the Long Form equivalent). But unfortunately three of the finalists in this category were helped to get onto the ballot by a campaign led by a misogynist racist whose declared intention was to destroy the Hugos. I am not going to vote for them, and am not going to any great lengths to watch The Flash: Pilot or Grimm: Once We Were Gods…..
1: Doctor Who: Listen. In a Doctor Who season with one very low point (Kill The Moon) this was very much a high point, Moffat with some of his best lines – Clara in particular getting some good ones (“People don’t need to be scared by a big gray-haired stick insect but here you are” balanced by “If you’re very wise and very strong fear doesn’t have to make you cruel or cowardly – fear can make you kind”) in a story that actually makes sense and taps into some deep human fears. Gets my vote without any hesitation or special pleading, and I suspect it will win.
Also, just to record a couple of items here which are not worth separate posts: I’m voting No Award for Best Fan Writer, and giving Laura J. Mixon my second preference. I take very seriously Matt Foster’s argument that a ballot with only one non-slate finalist does not offer enough choice to make the award meaningful….
Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library
“Dungeon Crawlers Radio” – June 6
http://www.dungeoncrawlersradio.com/
Another Best Fancast Hugo nominee.
This is also an interview podcast, in this case focused on gaming and related subjects. As such, it doesn’t really speak much to me, as this is not an area of interest for me. However, it is fairly cleanly and professionally produced, even managing an effective interview presentation in the midst of the chaos of Salt Lake Comic Con. I would expect this to be at least very interesting for viewers more into gaming. The knowledge of the interviewers I can’t seriously assess, but they at least seemed knowledgeable and reasonable to me.
If gaming is your thing, you should at least give this a try, if you haven’t seen it yet.
Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library
“Ancillary Sword (Imperial Radch #2), by Ann Leckie (author), Adjoa Andoh (narrator)” – June 6
There’s a lot going on here, in character development, revealing more about the history and culture of the Radch, and action as the conflict between the Mianaais and even older tensions in the Radch empire play out.
I’m looking forward to the third volume, Ancillary Mercy.
Recommended.
Most of the #HugoAwards novelette stuff is of 1 of 2 types: great start to a novel w/ abrupt ending or something best left unpublished.
— Milton Friedman Stan Account (@AndIllWhisperNo) June 7, 2015
Spacefaring Kitten on Spacefaring, Extradimensional Happy Kittens
“’The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale’ by Rajnar Vajra” – June 6
Slates: Rabid Puppies & Sad Puppies
“The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” is a lightweight adventure story that — according to its subtitle — tries to take us back to the Golden Age of science fiction. There are space cadets who get into trouble because of a fight and have to make it up for it by going on an expedition to an alien world, the inhabitants of which the Earth scientists have a hard time understanding.
Will McLean on A Commonplace Book
“Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword” – June 6
It requires the usual suspension of disbelief required for interstellar empires, FTL, artificial gravity and decanting extensions of machine intellects into human bodies; in short, what is normally required for space operas.
Camestros Felapton
“A warning from the future” – June 6
[A satire that lists future Hugo slates.]
“Dear traveler from the future” I cried “You are in need of medical care! I would take you inside but I’m afraid that Timothy has a thing abut people he doesn’t know arriving unannounced. Let me fetch you a pillow and a glass of water.”
“No…” she gasped “it is too late for me…I have come to bring you a warning”.
She was briefly consumed by a coughing fit, after which she spat out a green mess of mucus and fundamental void particles.
“They didn’t realize…they tried to tinker with the Hugo rules…but instead…” she paused again
“Yes? The rules? Is this the WorldCon 15 rules you mean?” I inquired as gently as I could despite my ankle pain and a croquet hoop digging into my thigh unpleasantly.
“The horror of Spokane they called it. The rule changes…they went wrong…a memetic virus was introduced…it spread through blog posts…the world became consumed by puppy-slates”
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@Camestros Felapton
I’m never sure why they think left-wing heads are so explosive. Its not as if I don’t have lots of practice with the world not working the way I’d like. They act like a minor thing such as a wrong pronoun is the same as a grenade, as if misgendering wasn’t a daily occurrence.
John —
I know it’s been suggested, but I don’t remember if it’s been used.
And what the Puppies are trying to sell is the idea that the awards should be won by the elite of the crop of working writers as chosen openly and democratically by fandom, rather than the process being subverted by a social elite of tastemakers.
I say “sell” rather than “say,” because I can never manage to get around the fact that the awards apparently were being chosen openly and democratically by eligible voters, and the Puppies have been trying as hard as they can to subvert the process by doing exactly what they accuse others of, but even more so and to their own tastes. All while saying that it’s unethical to subvert the process or accuse people of things that might harm their reputations.
Sorry, got carried away again.
It’s like the difference between the Texas Board of Education and textbook writers. They’re saying the elite here is the BOE, forcing textbooks to be stupid and inaccurate for political reasons, while really people should be going for the best-written textbooks. And the way they’re going to accomplish that is by pretending there’s an über liberal BOE so they can make themselves into a new BOE and force textbooks to be what they want, instead of letting anyone else have a say in what’s best-written. The voting public can choose from among the Puppy BOE’s selections, not from a wider field.
Ahem.
Anyway. Elite tastemakers bad, elite writers good. Except when they decide to make themselves tastemakers, and force crap onto the ballot in the name of freedom and excelle —
There I go again. I’ll stop now. My cognitives have been dissonanced enough for one post.
Sounds like time for a tea break.
@Peace:
In nice, sturdy dishes that won’t shatter and clog the air filtration systems, no doubt?
Meredith: I’m never sure why they think left-wing heads are so explosive.
I’m reminded of Richard Ayoade’s line here
@Rev. Bob
Wouldn’t want to be unrealistic. 🙂
Kurt
There’s also the fact that the SP ringleaders are profoundly ill at ease with anything outside the U.S.; I think they assumed that obviously it’s all about US, and then they found themselves in London, which really isn’t like anything they’ve ever come across before.
It was entirely predictable that a story about the perils of atheism wasn’t going to fly at Loncon; Brad was always going to be down the list. It really isn’t difficult to understand that the rest of the world doesn’t give a toss about US culture wars, unless, of course, you assume that there is nothing outside the U.S. They talk about SJWs and assume that obviously everybody realises how dreadful they are, apparently oblivious to the fact that we don’t even know what the initials stand for, much less have a view as to whether they exist.
And now fans around the world are not at all happy with the Sads and the Rabids, which is completely unsurprising, but it appears to have surprised the Sads who still don’t understand that we want their tanks off our lawn.
Sooner or later that will sink in; most, if not all of us, would be perfectly content with UScon where they could rant on and award themselves whatever they feel like. What they can’t have is Worldcon…
Now I am imagining Talk Like a Radchai day.
Ha. And napkins bleached snow-white.
I’ve just now bought those two books and am very looking forward to reading them.
One thing I am extraordinarily grateful for is these comment threads spreading so much love and recommendations for genuinely good fiction.
Now I am imagining Talk Like a Radchai day.
Would we have to wear gloves?
@Camestros Felapton:
Well of course you wouldn’t have to. Hm?
@Stevie
If you’re very unlucky somePuppy will pop out of the woodwork to talk about how its only called Worldcon because the first one happened at the same time as the New York World’s Fair, and it doesn’t really mean the whole world even though Worldcon’s have happened outside the USA.
And then I will finally get around to paying for Site Selection voting rights and very deliberately vote for Helsinki.
@Stevie What they can’t have is Worldcon…
Which is not to say that the Worldcon can’t be in the US at least some of the time. It’s part of the world.
Jim Henley: “Now I am imagining Talk Like a Radchai day.”
That’s awesome. Let’s pick a day soon, and promote it on both our blogs!
To me,
You, She, You, She,
It’s “Talk Like A Radchaai” Day!
Where ettiquette’s alien, the empire’s regalian
And teacups are sipped every day,
When it’s ev’ry one’s duty to grab her proud beauty
And let out a hearty She Her!
Anaander’s implantin’ ancillaries chantin’
And gender roles never are sure.
Not to be too pedantic about it: is it not “Radchaai” (two ‘a’s)?
Peace Is My Middle Name: Wow! That day may be a lot closer than I predicted!
Oh parsnips, I rhymed “day” with itself.
Mike. one wishes for an “appropriate” day but aside from the release date of Ancillary Mercy no obvious one pops up. Unless Leckie has a summer birthday?
@Peace: “And teacups are served from a tray”?
Jim Henley: Until someone comes up with a better idea, we could try making it the 19th day of a month — referencing One Esk Nineteen.
As far as I can tell neither the Sads nor the Rabids want Worldcon to exist at all; there’s too much scope for people who not only do not believe in the things they hold most dear but find them laughable instead.
That is unlikely to change; our revulsion from VD and his cesspit isn’t going to change either. They have chosen their path, and they are stuck with it for better or worse. And as we saw earlier, there’s plenty of worse to come…
Thank you. Let’s go with that.
We are, however, relieved that Dach’osmer Miket Glyerar has no plans to schedule a “Talk In Ethuverazhin Day”.
@Mike: Perfect.
@Peace: I am honored to have kicked the extra point on your touchdown of a work.
Sweet mother of mercy. I can’t do it.
@Mike Glyer: “Until someone comes up with a better idea, we could try making it the 19th day of a month — referencing One Esk Nineteen.”
Maybe September, being the month after the Hugo awards are announced. 😉
@mike Confuse everyone and have Talk Like The Sygn day. It’s got to be someone’s job3…
“Wait, you called me “she” and now you’re calling me “he”? Oh….”
The Rabids, and by extension quite a few people claiming Sad allegiance, have claimed a desire to burn down the Hugos, decimate the SMOFs and salt the earth so that nothing will ever grow there again. Even the more moderate supporters have expressed a desire to control the Hugos, and they can’t accomplish that by any means but the torch. I fail to see how they can accomplish those goals without burning down Worldcon in the process.
Kyra: “We are, however, relieved that Dach’osmer Miket Glyerar has no plans to schedule a ‘Talk In Ethuverazhin Day’.”
Good Lord. It really could be done, couldn’t it? I just skimmed the appendices last week…
@Simon Bisson
[Captain America Voice]: I got that reference!
Speaking of burning down the Hugos, no one’s commented about Beale’s declaration:
Is it just that no one’s surprised that it’s taken him so long to say it?
Speaking of burning down the Hugos, no one’s commented about Beale’s declaration:
Well, one problem with his declaration is that people preemptively No awarding him would be more beneficial to his reputation than having them read the works he “edited” and realizing how completely terrible he is at it.
Stefan Mitev – I thought The Triple Sun was a terrible story. One of the most blatant cases of Idiot Plot I’ve ever seen. The main characters shined because everyone else behaved like an absolute moron throughout the story to make them look good.
Exactly. Even worse is that everyone else was supposed to be the best at what they do.
Jamoche – Someone’s review of Triple Sun called the asset-tagged critters “cows”, and that reminded me of where I’d seen that plot before: Sesame Street’s Yip-Yips – aliens who have no clue what they’re looking at. Is it a cow? Could be!
They’re referred to as hexicows in the story itself. But that’s a dead on description that had I read it before the story I would’ve been hearing yip-yip-yip-yip and laughing throughout.
Glenn:
>>Is it just that no one’s surprised that it’s taken him so long to say it?>>
It just doesn’t seem all that different from what he did this year, piling a bunch of stuff he published into the SP slate. Now he may think he doesn’t need the Sads at all, he can do an all-Beale slate and swamp the nominations again.
What I don’t follow is how he thinks he can manage to keep it up. Will his minions march in lockstep at $40 a throw for something that so obviously stands no chance of winning? Sure, they pay for videogames and this is another way to buy some fun, but they can actually win at the games. Will they want to pay to play and lose every year?
All this beside the question of how rule changes would affect anything. The most I see happening if he has any success at getting himself on the ballot even more next year is that fandom gets fed up with _all_ Puppies, because they won’t see a lot of difference between them. It’ll be hard to sell Puppies of any stripe as freedom fighters if they’re so obviously vandals.
Peace:Kyra on June 7, 2015 at 2:53 pm said:
We are, however, relieved that Dach’osmer Miket Glyerar has no plans to schedule a “Talk In Ethuverazhin Day”.
Sweet mother of mercy. I can’t do it.
Internet’s equivalent of Nightmare difficulty.
I’m glad I woke up too late to get into it with the murderer apologist. If calling children innocent is intellectually dishonest to her, she literally has nothing of worth to add to any conversation.
Yeah, Speak Radchai is much easier!
Email Received:
******This Is A Chain Letter******
****Note that STRINGENT OBLIGATIONS Come With The PRIVILEDGE Of Receiving THIS PARTICULAR Chain Letter****
Dear CHORF-AMOUNG-THE-WATERS,
Little Hugo is 62(ish) this year and is unfortunately suffering from an acute, malignant, foul, wretched, horrifying, terminal and Very Common Case of American Social Justice Warriorism (SJW). This condition causes severe DISNEY MALEFICENT brain tumors provoking the delusion that literary competence matters, is relentlessly megalomaniacal (read: democratically inclined internationally) as ALL MUST SUFFER EQUALLY, and induces a INTOLERABLE RELUCTANCE to acknowledge the obvious truth that VOX DAY is supreme in all matters involving SF&F when speaking Ex Cathedra. The Doctors have given him until August 22, 2015.
As part of his dying wish, Little Hugo wanted to start a CHAIN LETTER to INFORM fans of John C. Wright’s love for them, Tom Kratman’s desire for tolerance, and the Obvious Truth that VOX DAY always speaks Ex Cathedra.
Of course HELPING achieve Little Hugo’s DYING WISH should appeal to every CHORF who is not UTTERLY HEARTLESS and not possessed of a Burning Desire to BURN ENDLESSLY because of Wayward Disregard for the OBVIOUS TRUTHS. All you have to do to help Little Hugo is to surrender all distasteful choices to VOX DAY (n.b. all choice is distasteful), and as a special reward VOX DAY will include YOU PERSONALLY in his thoughts of that day!
***HELP Little Hugo!***
***Copy This EMAIL To All Your CHORF Mailing List***
***DON’T DELAY***
***Remember BAD CESS Clings To CHAIN-BREAKERS***
***AVOID PERDITION!***
***This is YOUR CHANCE to Make a DIFFERENCE ***
***Increase Your Kharma!***
***GIVE Little HUGO A CHANCE!***
***DIFFERENCE this is YOUR CHANCE to Make***
***Aristotle!***
***SJW Always Lie!***
***Drink Boys!***
Since I have yet to come across anything which VD is good at I doubt that his reputation could fall any lower than it already has.
It’s fortunate that he’s a trust fund kid because I doubt his ability to earn a living, but his tantrums are useful because they remind us of what he really is. Here we are, refusing to read what we are told we want to read, and instead looking at a wide range of authors who reflect our different moods, our different days, our different times. It must look like deliberate defiance of his totalitarian delusions when instead it’s simply being human and open to finding new things under the sun.
And Ursula Vernon winning the Nebula is really, really cool and I’m thrilled for her, as well as all the other winners…
Well, if you don’t want to participate in “Talk Like a Radchaai Day”, you can always start deconstructing the first video from the upcoming movie version of “The Martian”
I just checked, and that chain letter isn’t on Snopes.
How about Theodore Beale’s birthday (August 21, per Google) for Talk Like a Radchaai Day?
Stevie: “It’s fortunate that he’s a trust fund kid”
He’s not. He’s literally living on stolen gains, money hidden by his imprisoned tax dodging daddy.
No wonder VD sees nothing wrong with stealing awards. He’s benefited from theft all his life.
Scott Frazer: “Soooo…. If libel isn’t criminal, why would it be harder to prove under one jursidiction than another?”
Because it is a civil suit, you dolt.
@Stevie
He’s very good at phrasing despicable things in such a way that he can claim he didn’t say them, while using that despicable thing to distract people from the just plain bad things he definitely did say.
In my opinion, he means the despicable things, too, but that’s hard to prove in any single case. The aggregate doesn’t make him smell of roses, but that’s not absolute proof, just a pattern.
Meredith: “He’s very good at phrasing despicable things in such a way that he can claim he didn’t say them, while using that despicable thing to distract people from the just plain bad things he definitely did say.”
I’d like him to take that particular form of dickery before a judge and see how impressed they are with his ‘rhetoric’. I really, really would.
@Gabrial F –
Oh, I got the point.
And for BT to make the kind of inference he did is wrong.
And there is no need for add extra fuel to compound the troubles.
It;s not pretty when Antonelli does it, and not pretty when anybody else implies that one’s employer will be told “by a little bird”
It’s infantalizing when BT brings it up in regards to Gallo, and it’s infantalizing when someone brings it up in regards to BT
OK, I think I’ve got all my strands of pearls in hand, now.
Good luck making a case for defamation per se in New York stick over the terms like extreme right-wing or racist.
Pro-tip: if you’re feeling defamed, pretty much the last thing you want to do is get on the Internet and repeat the supposedly defamatory claim, as it becomes quite difficult to demonstrate special damage–that is, any damage that might have occurred from people reading Gallo’s statement versus people hearing the statement from the subject of the statement.
People who actually feel defamed quietly record the evidence (screencaps, print-outs, etc.) and contact their lawyer. The putative defamer shouldn’t even know he or she is being sued for defamation until the papers show up.
Ah, Vowel Movement is back to try to derail another thread. Whee.
Now “neo-Nazi” is a bit trickier—one would have to gather together some of the posts Beale has made calling the Golden Dawn in Greece (a real neo-Nazi party) the lesser of two evils, and perhaps his posts where he made remarks such as “In successfully attacking the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant nature of America, Jews destroyed the American exceptionalism that offered them protection.”
That of course doesn’t prove that Beale is a neo-Nazi, but the only bar Gallo has to clear is whether it is reasonable to think that Beale might be one.
Here’s another pro tip – don’t take advice on legal actions from anyone but an actual lawyer.