In the wake of reaction to Jason Sanford’s February 15 article “Baen Books Forum Being Used to Advocate for Political Violence”, a public post on Patreon, Baen publisher Toni Weisskopf announced a hiatus for the Baen’s Bar forum.
Toni Weisskopf today replaced Baen’s Bar — for the time being — with “A Note from Toni Weisskopf” (Baen.com) [Archive.is link]
To Whom It May Concern:
What is it we do at Baen Books? We publish books at the heart of science fiction and fantasy.
Science fiction has traditionally been a unique kind of intellectual pleasure, a process of glorious intercommunication and inspiration, with ideas flowing from scientist and engineer to writer and artist, to reader and viewer, back and forth, in a delightful mélange of shared thoughts, wild speculation, cautionary tales, reality checks, and the sheer fun of playing with boundaries and ideas. It is not for everyone. But those who enjoy it, take great pleasure in the dialogue.
When the modern form of SF began, with Hugo Gernsback and the other pulp magazines of the early 20th century, the publishers fostered that interaction through letter columns in the magazines and by encouraging science fiction readers to organize in clubs and meet in conventions. Baen Books continued that tradition with Baen’s Bar, a kind of virtual convention and on-line conversation that has been around in some form for over 20 years.
The moderators are volunteers. The readers, editors, and writers post and interact on the Bar at their own desire. Some conversations have been gone over so many times, they’ve been retired as simply too boring to contemplate again. Sometimes the rhetoric can get heated. We do not endorse the publication of unlawful speech. We have received no complaints about the content of the Bar from its users.
That said, it has come to our attention that allegations about the Bar have been made elsewhere. We take these allegations seriously, and consequently have put the Bar on hiatus while we investigate. But we will not commit censorship of lawful speech.
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.
Most sincerely,
Toni Weisskopf
Publisher
Jason Sanford tweeted an update thread responding to Weisskopf’s statement and contesting some of her claims. Thread starts here.
He concludes:
DisCon III, the 2021 Worldcon at which Toni Weisskopf will be a guest of honor, answered calls for a statement with this tweet:
Larry Correia defended his publisher in “Publishing House Baen Books Attacked by Cancel Culture” at Monster Hunter Nation [Internet Archive link].
He threw shade on Sanford’s reporting:
… It was lots of pearl clutching over regular people not toeing their arbitrary political lines, misquotes, errors, quotes taken out of context, and some flat out lies.
However, he declined to challenge any specific quotes cited by Sanford:
…I’m not going to talk about the moronic loser or go through all the nonsense in his ridiculous hit piece. Other people are going through it now and carefully cataloging his bullshit. In typical leftist fashion he’s already pretending to be the victim and claiming he’s getting death threats. Maybe he can get in touch with Anita Sarkesian and Arthur Chu for tips.
Correia urged readers to believe what is happening is a “coordinated attack,” that Sanford’s article is being used as the basis for complaints made to Baen’s internet service providers, and Baen’s Bar was temporarily taken down to “protect the rest of the company from being deplatformed.”
…However, this was clearly part of a coordinated attack in order to materially harm our business, because immediately after the hit piece was released complaints were filed with the various internet companies Baen uses for services to pressure them into kicking us off the internet. This hit piece was presented as “evidence”. Without going into details the companies then contacted Baen about these “serious allegations” so last night Baen temporarily took down the Bar forum to protect the rest of the company from being deplatformed.
…However, lying hit pieces from lefty activists aren’t anything new. We’re used to those. The real issue here is the complaints to the internet companies so they’ll deplatform anyone who doesn’t fall in line. The woke left saw what Big Tech did to Parler and they learned from it. This is a new weapon in their arsenal to beat America over the head with. The nail that sticks up must be hammered down.
Correia then assured readers that Baen’s Bar did not deserve this attention.
…The Bar isn’t a hotbed of extremism. It’s not a hotbed of anything. It’s an old forum that was mostly kept around because of tradition. It was created at the dawn of internet forums. I haven’t used it in years (I had already built up my online presence elsewhere when I started writing for them). But that isn’t the point. Anything that can be a target, will eventually be a target. They’re coming for your business next.
As Rev. Bob observed in a comment here:
And naturally it took the MHI commentariat all of an hour to test the theory that Baen’s capitulated, reject that in favor of it being a coordinated attack by The Left (complete with the problematic content really being false-flag posts by Seekrit Leftist Infiltrators), assert that this is really about smashing Baen into nonexistence by denying them distribution, denounce such coordinated attacks as despicable lefty tactics, and finally call for a coordinated attack on Sanford’s Patreon account.
David Weber, widely regarded as Baen’s flagship author, came to their defense on Facebook. He offered these reassurances:
… But there is no way in hell that the Barflies, as they are affectionately known, are advocating for political violence. Opinions are expressed, especially in the politics forum, and tempers are running high on both sides of our current political divide, so there’s a certain degree of venting. And there are a surprising number of historians, who can be relied upon to summon up historical examples to back their points. And there are heaps of independent thinkers, who aren’t going to hew to any particular party’s line and can be trusted to step upon any sore political toes in the vicinity. And there are quite a lot of veterans, who know what violence is REALLY like — unlike the vast majority of people who are currently hyperventilating about it in this country — which means the LAST THING they would want would be to instigate violence that is anything except defensive.
… Baen Books is frequently characterized as a “right wing publisher.” That’s as stupid as the notion that the Barflies are plotting a violent coup….
To refresh readers’ memories, immediately after the January 6 insurrection Baen author Tom Kratman made an extended comment on the next move in his Baen’s Bar author forum which began:
So where do Trump and the nation go from here?
He needs to do three things; start his own news channel, start his own party, and start his own well-armed militia as part of the party.
The militia – again, a _well_armed_ militia – is necessary to present a threat in being to the powers that be such that, should they use extra-, pseudo-, and quasi-legal means to try to suppress the party, the price presented will be far too high. The militia will be heavily infiltrated; this is a given. No matter; it will not be there for any purpose but to present a serious threat of major combat, and the shame of defeat, and the reality of death, to the tactical elements, police and military, that may be used against the party.
It ought to be made clear that, “I can start the civil war with a stamp of my foot. I’ve refrained, so far, but you cannot count on that restraint under all circumstances. And if I am infiltrated, you are even more so.”…
Today Kratman also left a comment on Correia’s post which begins —
Jon Del Arroz, who has a Patton moment every time he sees there’s some attention he’s not getting (“An entire world at war, and I’m left out of it? God will not permit this to happen!”), also rushed to comment on Correia’s post. His efforts to horn in were recognized for what they were and Correia verbally flattened him. These excerpts are just one part.
Finally, here are other examples of the harassment being directed at Jason Sanford on Twitter. He has received more in direct messages there and on Facebook.
And with respect to the “helicopter ride” political murder meme:
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
Wow.
They think they’re making themselves look good.
The death threats and glib fascist taunts put paid to the idea that Baen’s Bar denizens are just bunch of rowdy (but well-meaning) folks.
They have spent a lot of time driving diverse voices out of their spaces and squashing any kind of dissenting opinions. They haven’t had to try to convince anyone of anything because they inhabit a monoculture of their own creation. I think that if they ever had the skills of listening to people and composing cogent and compelling arguments aimed at someone who does not already agree with them, they have atrophied.
Boggled. Just boggled. Sigh.
Wait a minute. Who am I kidding? This is what they always do.
When you’re really deep in shit that you help created, trying very weakly to worm your way out of it doesn’t at all help. Toni allowed an absolutely reprehensible situation to persist for decades without doing a damn thing without it.
Unless she’s going to create a moderator based system that’s empowered to ban users that get seriously out of line like Larry and the like, nothing changes there. Will she do that? Really, really doubt that she will.
I really feel for Jason and this crap he is being subjected to, especially for reasons that most of you are well aware of.
What a horrible group of people.
If there’s a way to make themselves look worse, they’ve found it.
Weisskopf says, “What is it we do at Baen Books? We publish books at the heart of science fiction and fantasy.”
Nah, science fiction and fantasy had a heart transplant some time ago. That old heart was replaced with a nice healthy young heart.
A brief skimming from the darker corners of the internet. Reminding us all of the horrors that lurk… in the Baen Zone.
It looks to me as if some Baen’s Bar residents are acting more like Masadans rather than residents of Grayson or Manticore. I’m not surprised their actions have been defended, but it is still disappointing that it has come to this.
Kit Harding says A brief skimming from the darker corners of the internet. Reminding us all of the horrors that lurk… in the Baen Zone.
Unfortunately not unusual among RWNJ circles. What I damn Toni for is pretending that she didn’t know what was going on there. Of course she did. Baen Books and Toni are complicit in this situation.
Like Larry Correia, David Weber doesn’t do his readers the respect of telling them the truth. Jason Sanford’s report provides proof that some Baen’s Bar commenters are advocating political violence, including a forum moderator.
Despite admitting that he hasn’t frequented the forum “regularly in quite some time,” Weber nonetheless claims that it contains no calls for violence and any suggestion otherwise is “laughable” and politically motivated.
Who do they think they’re fooling? Aren’t these the same people who like to say “facts don’t care about your feelings”?
And there are quite a lot of veterans, who know what violence is REALLY like — unlike the vast majority of people who are currently hyperventilating about it in this country — which means the LAST THING they would want would be to instigate violence that is anything except defensive.
Tell that to the Oath Keepers.
So a lone writer who follows discussions on Baen’s Bar for a while, then writes a footnoted article in which he quotes many BB participants directly, and posts the article on his own Patreon page…
That writer is…. ACTUALLY part of a massive =coordinated attack= to destroy Baen Books, all its contracted writers, and ultimately the entire right-wing blogosphere? Am I understanding the, um, argument correctly?
Reminds me of a joke a friend of mine used to make when things went awry: “Why wait for the rush? I’ll panic NOW.”
That is to say, Mr. Correia seems a tad hysterical. (Which, I clearly recall from the whole Puppy mess, as well as various post-Puppy incidents, is the default posture of people in that crowd.)
But the slappy-fight exchange between him and JDA is pretty funny. Thank you for posting it, Mike.
Toni Weisskopf wrote “But we will not commit censorship of lawful speech.”
That is a straw man argument. Baen’s Bar is being justifiably criticized for failing to moderate objectionable speech. Moderation is not censorship. Objectionable is not necessarily unlawful. Posting stupid, hateful and ugly things is protected under the First Amendment. It is a sacred right. But they sure need to look in the mirror and see the problem.
This is a really good way to get dropped by your publisher.
I’m pretty sure the 1st Amendment only binds government. Businesses don’t have to allow people to say/do anything they want on the business’s premises (which include their website pages).
When Correia boots JdA for breaking the rules in his fan group, he’s exercising his freedom to remove objectionable content from his space.
When Amazon boots Parler for violating their Terms of Service, they’re part of a Leftist conspiracy to deplatform and censor the Right.
When the Puppies boycott Tor, they’re making a principled stand for freedom.
When Worldcon voters decline to give awards to books they don’t like, they’re leftist thought policemen.
Same as it ever was, I suppose. Even here in 6666.
What @Tom said. Site forums are parties thrown by the person paying for the hosting. If your party is full of Nazis and fascists, that’s a choice. You can set up strong community moderation, with bans. You can decide that moderation is a nightmare and shut the forums down.
Or you can watch the Nazis and fascists make threats of violence and murmur “But free speech”.
I defer to dear Mr. XKCD.
Correia: “I haven’t used it in years”
Weber: “I haven’t been on the Bar regularly in quite some time,”
Yet they are certain that Sanford’s article is “a pile of horse shit” (Weber”) and is full of “misquotes, errors, quotes taken out of context, and some flat out lies” (Correia.)
Impressive reporting there.
And Weber have a nice line about how things were better in the past:
Sure, that sounds like a good time. When people didn’t, you know, speculate on the best way to commit mass murder on political opponents.
“I remember when we USED to be able to incite governmental overthrow and threaten physical violence against people who disagreed with us, without having to worry about them feeling safe enough to call us out on it.”
If you go after people in the places where they feel safe expressing their opinions don’t be surprised if they come after you in yours. There’s no halfway house when it comes to freedom of speech. If the freedom of one group to debate, discuss and explain ideas is curtailed that’s the thin end of the wedge that will be used to silence all of us.
Sarah Hoyt also has opinions:
https://madgeniusclub.com/2021/02/16/canceling-baen-books/
Apparently we feel that Baen would be best off shutting down their forums and having this be someone else’s problem, as a precursor to killing her.
I just burst out laughing. (As I noted in my previous comment, hysteria seems to be the default posture of everyone in that crowd.)
And @ Rev. Bob, you have summed up years of their chest-beating, whining, and shrieky hysteria quite succinctly and accurately in your comment.
NickPheas: Sarah Hoyt also has opinions
So… the publisher having to shut down their cesspit user forum is exactly the same as Baen Books no longer being allowed to publish any books?
Not the sharpest tool in the shed, is Hoyt. 🙄
Bean is still sending mixed mesages.
It’s easier to make your point if you decide if you didn’t know their was a problem or if you think advocating massmorder is not so bad.
Let’s see, which the legal department wants in the end.
Defending someone if you don’t know the facts, because you haven’t paying attention is not a good idea, I am looking at certain writters.
Of course you could be okay with the worst thinks thinks posted by barflys, for one of you I won’t make that statement.
There was and there is a place for political discusions on the internet, but that needs rules, so that we don’t get a crocodile trying to give peoples sculls to VD. (To name on very memorable time Mike stopped a “discusion”)
This year is from one year in the past, hope is not to outdated.
“Lawful speech”.
Interesting phrase.
Isn’t that word the same shelter that was used by the puppies? Paraphrasing: what we didn’t wasn’t against the rules.
The right, and particularly the radical side, has used this splitting of hairs for at least a decade now, the fact that not every aspect of socially acceptable behavior is written down in red-letter law.
The tactics of the “shyster” lawyer, the barracks lawyer, the six year old parsing mom and dad’s rules so they can sneak an extra cookie from the jar.
Weiskopf and company have now doubled down. They are going to defend a line that states that they will follow the written law to the letter (as interpreted by them), but that all else is apparently fair game.
They have just told us that while they intend to be “legal”, there is no such guarantee of moral or ethical behavior coming from that site.
Jason Sanford is being somewhat disingenuous in his reponse to Toni Weisskopf’s statement that “the posts do not represent the publisher’s opinion, except in a deep belief that free speech is worthy in and of itself”, claiming “if the posts I covered in my report are found to be okay by Baen Books, that will mean Baen indeed found them “worthy”. It is clearly the concept of free speech Weisskopf is calling “worthy” in this sentence, not the posts themselves. Sanford has the right to critique and criticise, but not to deliberately misinterpret.
Hmm. Lawful speech.
Maybe someone ought to find out their ISP and point them at the article and follow on?
@NickPheas:
Wouldn’t it be nice if Hoyt could pick a spelling of “canceling” and stick to it for the space of an entire article?
For those who don’t wish to visit the site: The post has a big red “cancelled” rubber stamp graphic above a “Canceling” headline, and she equates “cancelling” to “unmaking civilization” (!!) a few paragraphs later.
Shouldn’t a “genius” be able to get something that simple right, mad or otherwise?
c4c
Science fiction community has always had pride on how science fiction, as scientifically inaccurate it much of the time is, creates interest in science and often guides young people into studying, and to careers, in science. Some have even got to space, driven by a spark lit by science fiction.
But science fiction can also be used to spark interest in much darker things, and guide people not into starlight, but to the darkness of fascism, racism, and violence.
Baen has been allowing the latter to happen in their forum, and some of their authors are clearly upset that this particular gate to the dark path would be closed.
Hoyt’s also rather ignorant of copyright law as she’s apparently planning on duplicating the forums which she downloaded and restoring them elsewhere. Not the sharpest brain there ever was.
Btw she’s very childish. One of her taunts is that progressives don’t bathe. Really Hoyt, grow up.
@Cat:
I read it as her saying that she had secure backups of Mad Genius Club, which could very well be within the T&Cs of that site, rather than her independently scraping the content of Baen’s Bar.
ERB was condemned for Tarz and Jane living in “sin” because someone missed the marriage at the end of the book. 1984, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, THE WIZARD OF OZ, and other classics are being pulled from libraries in 2021. A “new wave” is coming and expect a new group calling themselves The 451 to appear soon. (I may need to copyright that.)
Even the Supreme court has ruled that lying is protected as free speech. We have the right to ignore or dismiss things we don’t agree with – that’s our right. I was once told that “your rights end with my space, and I will defend my rights”.
As a military veteran, I acknowledge that my commitment has no expiration date; that’s the same date as my writer/reader/reviewer persona expires.
Kudos to Toni and everyone at Baen for all they have done, continue to do, and will do in the future. My advice is you have to actively go to the Baen website, if you are unhappy with what is BEING POSTED THERE, DON’T GO THERE.
To be fair (and please imagine I am gritting my teeth while saying that), Sarah Hoyt is Portuguese, living in the US. As with many words (such as traveler/traveller, jewelry/jewellery, leveling/levelling) one “L” is the standard US English spelling and two “LL”s is the standard British English spelling. It’s not uncommon for people with both European and US connections to switch from one spelling to the other inconsistently.
Please don’t get me wrong. Sarah Hoyt is a European expat aristocrat who has publicly (not publically) pined for the good old days of fascist rule when people like her told the peons their place. She has aligned herself with terrible people.
But criticizing her spelling is the mildest of arguments that can be brought against her, and may weaken better arguments that can be made. I have a great deal of respect for your understanding and analyses, but I fear this one is unnecessary and gratuitous.
NickPheas says I read it as her saying that she had secure backups of Mad Genius Club, which could very well be within the T&Cs of that site, rather than her independently scraping the content of Baen’s Bar.
If so, I stand corrected.
And yet, American game company GDW went with two ls for their now venerable roleplaying game Traveller.
Toni’s statement is tone def. I mean, I get where she’s coming from. We share some common cultural background and values. But, what this statement shows is a lack of nuance and self reflection. Which is what got us in to the mess in the first place. Baen Books not some serial villain, rubbing their hands together in glee because the Space Nazis are winning. But, they keep excusing, covering for and empowering awful behavior in the name of persona loyalty, tradition, liberty, take your pick – they’re all in the non-apology. Look at the last paragraph
They control what is, and is not, allowed to be posted in the Bar. That’s not a moral judgement, that’s a material fact. Toni, in her role as publisher, is directly responsible for this. The buck stops with her. That is a moral judgement. And it’s not some appeal to Marx or Rawls. It’s a conservative value judgement. Individual posts don’t represents the publisher’s opinion, but when the person responsible for the forum not just permits but defends a flood of comments calling for violence and supporting hate they are responsible for it, and shrugging that responsibility is endorsement. The same goes for the pattern of works they publish.
@Barry Hunter:
If I don’t like someone’s opinions about Octavia Butler’s work, or am bored with discussions of a comics franchise, “don’t go there” is a reasonable response.
It’s not a reasonable response when what people are “unhappy with” is armed insurrection, or when the barflies’ response to someone saying “look, over here, they’re supporting fascism and talking about murdering their political opponents” is “Freeze Peach! We have the right to say anything we like” combined with threats to murder Jason Sanford for writing about them and their posts.
Freedom of speech matters because words matter. Words matter, and it’s reasonable and sometimes necessary to discuss and respond to what other people say. There is no coherent argument by which it’s legitimate for people to say horrible things about people they disagree with, including [what I’m sure they will claim are only] jokes about murdering their political opponents, but it’s forbidden for one of the people who reads those statements to say “here’s a group of people who want to kill you because you voted for the wrong candidate.”
@Vicki Rosenzweig
That is a fine sentiment. I agree.
It should be applied to every situation. Sadly it wasn’t, it isn’t, and it probably will not be in the future.
Regards,
Dann
Fate pulls you in different directions. – Clint Eastwood
They did, and that tripped me up for a long time. It was an interesting choice, but I don’t know why they made it.
I won’t discuss the contents of the message board, or the article that prompted this little confrontation. In a discussion on this topic on Reddit I said that the quoted Bar posts were childish, which no normal person could take seriously. I was told that as a non-American I didn’t understand the context of those messages, and I accept that explanation.
Instead, I’d like to point out a thing I found funny with Weisskopf’s message: while all big social media are currently working hard to appear as publishers, she, a publisher, is working hard to make it look as if the Baen Bar was only a data carrier. Chris Hensley said as much a few comments above. As a publisher, she is responsible what’s published on her property. And if true data carriers, such as Twitter and Facebook, can get into the publishing game and disallow certain content, she should be able to do so much more easily.
When you write a hit piece trying to destroy another’s employment, you don’t get to complain about harassment. How is a person harassed on the internet? Just block the person you don’t like or leave the page.
@ Chris Mallory
Hypothetically, if someone received a death threat, it makes sense to take it seriously. And do you think that harassment is ok? If it’s bad enough, it can choke up accounts and lead to doxxing or even swatting. Having a team of elite police break into your house, destroy property on the way in, and possibly shoot you is something that is very problematic.
My understanding of Section 230 is that if Baen’s Bar is a service and the users publish their own content, Baen Books can moderate user provided content. The whole point of Section 230 is to protect service providers from nit-picking lawsuits over how they moderate. On the other hand, if Baen’s Bar is a publication, then Baen Books can edit the content in any way they want. Not that Baen Books is great at editing.
On the burning issue of canceled/cancelled–I grew up reading books in both American and British English. I often attribute my (generally) excellent spelling to the amount of time I’ve spend looking at words on pages.
And I also suspect that that’s why I can, on a good day, tell you that one of those is the American spelling and the other is the British spelling, but I can’t reliably tell you which is which.
I go back and forth between them fairly randomly.
@Bruncvik:
Well, that was a lazy and useless response to you. I’m an American, and I’ve always found people like the ones quoted on Baen’s Bar – and the bloggers now having chest-beating hysterics that Baen’s Bar has been publicly criticized and is now suspended until further notice – childish, too. And too ludicrous to take seriously. I mostly burst out laughing, or sometimes just roll my eyes so hard I’m in danger of injuring myself, when I see their “arguments” and “positions.”
But the context has indeed changed, and it has become clear that my approach to them (laugh at them & dismiss them as absurdly silly) is dangerously inadequate. Rhetoric like the stuff on BB’s political forums underlies the violent assault on the US Capitol last month. BB participants might forever remain in “park,” just fantasizing about mass murder, cop killing, and civil war, without ever – at least on BB – shifting into “drive,” discussing a concrete plan they’re preparing to execute. But a lot of discussions that start like that one, where “like-minded individuals” begin by sharing that sort of rhetoric, turned into the groups that broke into the Capitol, killed a cop, injured dozens of other cops, urinated and defecated inside the building, and prowled the hallways looking for elected officials to murder.
That’s our context now. US Department of Homeland Security is shifting its focus to domestic terrorism, which is our biggest national security threat now. And online groups with chatter similar to the BB “political” forums is where radicalization often starts.
@ Chris Mallory:
Very sobering explanation in this book: https://smile.amazon.com/Crash-Override-Gamergate-Destroyed-Against-ebook/dp/B01N4JZ9I2/
Gamergate, an online group, invaded the author’s whole life through online harassment.