Social Justice Warriors are once again demonstrating their political intolerance and hostility to free creative expression. It’s happening in an arena we’ve covered before – the world of sci-fi and fantasy publishing.
File 770, the blog of three-time Hugo Award winner Mike Glyer, reports that bookstore owners in Toronto are being approached with negative information about authors who participated in the Sad Puppies Hugo Awards campaign.
The Sad Puppies campaign, as explained in the hyperlink above, was an attempt to expose political favouritism and intolerance in the sci-fi and fantasy community. If this latest incident is anything to go by, it continues to be a dispiriting success.
According to a commenter at File 770:
I’ve talked to a couple of book store owners in Toronto and someone is sending out Jim Hines roundup of the SP/RP affair. As a result, they are stopping making orders for [Larry] Correia, [John C.] Wright, [Brad] Torgersen, [Mike] Williamson and others of the worst broadcasters who have supported homophobic statements. I would assume the originator is part of Toronto’s gay community (which was oddly intertwined for years when Baka Books and the GLAAD bookstore were next door). It’s only the independents that I’ve heard so far, but if it hits Book City or Indigo, that could be a big repercussion
The commenter is, of course, incorrect to suggest that the authors have made homophobic statements. Williamson is a self-proclaimed libertarian, and there are no records of Correia or Torgersen making controversial statements about homosexuality.
The only one who could plausibly face such an accusation is Wright, who has described homosexuality as an “aberration.” Clearly, to the SJWs of sci-fi, anyone outside the liberal-progressive ingroup share the same bigoted opinions.
Politically unorthodox authors are also facing persecution on Goodreads, the foremost social network for book readers. The controversial author Vox Day was recently banned from the site after creating a “Rabid Puppies” group on the site (Rabid Puppies refers to Day’s personal Hugo Awards campaign, which was presented as more overtly political and right-wing than the Sad Puppies).
Goodreads did not provide Day with a reason for his ban. According to Day, all they said was:
Hi there
Your account was recently brought to our attention. Upon review, we have decided to remove it from the site. A CSV of the books you shelved is attached for your personal records. You are banned from using Goodreads in any capacity going forward.
Sincerely,
The Goodreads Team
Day says the point of his joining Goodreads, and his establishment of the Rabid Puppies group, was to encourage wider participation in the annual Goodreads Choice Awards. Eight other members of the group have also been banned from the site.
There is no doubt that some sci-fi authors hold views that are alien to much of mainstream, liberal opinion. However, the SJWs who are trying to drive them out continue to fail to grasp that no political opinion is justification for exclusion from awards participation, bookstores, or the sci-fi community at large. The point of sci-fi is good sci-fi, and the point of awards is to recognise good sci-fi, not politically conformist opinions.
SJWs continue to demonstrate their inability – or unwillingness – to separate good art from questionable artists. In a manner eerily similar to the anti-historical campaigns to scrub images of unfashionable – yet historically significant – individuals like Woodrow Wilson and Cecil Rhodes from university campuses and public spaces. At the behest of SJWs, the face of H.P Lovecraft, one of the genre’s pioneers, was recently removed from the iconic trophies of the World Fantasy Awards.
There’s something ISIS-like to it: the purging of historical icons and works of art because they represent something that falls outside a rigid, intolerant ideology.
Political intolerance in sci-fi appears to be growing, not diminishing. The Sad Puppies of 2016 will have their work cut out for them.
Follow Allum Bokhari @LibertarianBlue on Twitter, and download Milo Alert! for Android to be kept up to date on his latest articles.
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