Book Publishing: Shrill Leftist Intimidation and Censorship Evident

Is the purge and intolerance of even mildly nationalist thought — or any kind of thought that does not slavishly toe the Jewish/multiracialist line — as bad in other genres as it is in the fantasy genre?

by David Sims

HERE IS MY original post on Best Fantasy Books Forum (BFBF):

I found this on Breitbart [back in 2016] — “SJWs Are Purging Politically Incorrect Sci-Fi Authors From Bookstores.” Allegedly Politically Incorrect, that is. These loonies usually haven’t read what they’re trying to have banned.

The targeted authors, this time, are: John C. Wright; Larry Correia; Brad Torgersen; and Michael Z. Williamson.

A response followed from someone calling himself “Sneaky Burrito” on BFBF:

Breitbart is not a reputable news source. Anyone who uses “SJWs” in a derogatory manner (or really, in any manner) in a headline has an agenda to push. To provide context, [here are] some other Breitbart headlines:

‘There’s no hiring bias against women in tech, they just suck at interviews’
‘Science proves it: Fat-shaming works’
‘Gay rights have made us dumber, it’s time to get back in the closet’
‘Would you rather your child had feminism or cancer?’
‘Suck it up buttercups: Dangerous Faggot Tour returns to colleges in September’
‘Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy’

I will not hesitate to close the thread to further replies if the discussion becomes incindiary [sic]. Please note that quoting or referencing Breitbart may be considered incindiary [sic] to women, LGBT folks, people of color, and others. Please do remember that we (Ben and the moderators) have decided to avoid overtly political discussions on this website. Censorship can be discussed, if it is done so in a way that people with different opinions remain civil to one another, but the opening headline here starts from a particular position and automatically makes assumptions here that leave me doubtful that civility is possible in this thread.

That is all I’m going to say on this topic.

My response: Breitbart is probably as good as any. Who would you put above them in reputability? CNN, the news organization who lied the United States into a war with Iraq with fake news about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction (which turned out not to exist)? Or perhaps you mean NBC, the news organization that lied the Black population of the United States into a murderous fury with fake news about George Zimmerman being a “White racist” and going so far as to deceptively edit Zimmerman’s 911 audio with the police dispatcher so as to make him appear to have made “racist” comments that, in fact, he never made? Which mainstream media source is it that you would put above Breitbart in reputability? Deserved reputability, that is.

Breitbart wears its political animosities openly. The mainstream media have them too, they’re just sneakier and more hypocritical than Breitbart usually is. If you think that you know of a mainstream media vendor that deserves to have a better reputation than Breitbart, please let me know which one it is. I’ll check them out and tell you whether I agree or not, and why.

I’ve located what might have been the impetus for the Toronto leftist assault on the books of four science-fiction authors. Here it is:

“On the Unwritten Code” by John C. Wright (posted May 13, 2015)
http://www.scifiwright.com/2015/05/on-the-unwritten-code/

A meme currently circulating among the Social Justice Warriors in their relentless attempts to made poor, poor big-eyed puppies sad with their heaping awards upon talent-free uberleftist message fiction is that Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen and Vox Day, merely by asking fans to read and nominate worthy works, have violated the strict and scrupulously observed unwritten code of gentlemen forbidding the crassness of asking for votes in public.

Asking for votes in private, or if you are a Politically Correct leftist in good standing, of course, provokes no furor, as it is evidently not a violation.

I call it a meme because it is a thoughtless and absurd white noise of words, a self replicating sentence phrase that means nothing and says nothing. It is an accusation leveled because the accusers have run out of other, more credible, accusations, and they are not well behaved enough to shut their mouths with dignity after their case has been argued and lost.

Need I answer this hairball of absurdity they have coughed up?

No, but I shall:

I do not consider myself to be bound by an unwritten code that binds only me and leaves rivals and illwishers free to work their will as they see fit. The unwritten code did not protect me when I and mine were grossly libeled in the Guardian, Slate, Salon, io9, and Entertainment Weekly with the most outrageous and perfidious defamation imaginable.

My crime is that I have a sufficient number of fans who admire my work to put me on the ballot. It was all aboveboard, scrupulously honest, legal, cricket, and according to Hoyle.

In return, I am accused of being a White Supremacist motivated by race-hatred, being a sexist motivated by misogyny, being a homophone (or whatever their make-believe word is) motivated by a psychopathological paranoia, and being a flying purple people eater motivated by aerial aubergine anthropophagy.

That seems to be relevant to the alleged reaction by the left, which Breitbart allegedly noticed and reported upon, on 21 January 2016. John C. Wright wrote a blog post that could be interpreted as disrespectful to leftists and even, perhaps, irreverent toward Political Correctness. (It’s there; use the link to find and read it.) So in all likelihood, Breitbart reported on a real event, and probably without any significant amount of distortion.

It appears that Breitbart was echoed, in part, by Lela E. Buis on 4 February 2016.

“Men being bullied”
https://lelaebuis.wordpress.com/category/john-e-wright/

I wonder whether leftist groups are calling for the removing, censorship, and banning of books by Marion Zimmer Bradley, on account of acts of child molestation, carried on across nine years, upon her own daughter, as alleged by that self-same daughter and as confirmed by that daughter’s brother. Although married to a man (who went to prison himself for pedophile sexual abuse), MZB was a lesbian, the L in LGBT+whatever.

I’ve heard certain fantasy/SF authors (e.g. Jim Hines, John Scalzi, and others) say that they believe the allegations of MZB’s offspring and condemn MZB. Some of them say that her works should be shunned, therefore. Some of them say we should separate good art from the character of the artist. But none of the condemnation of MZB is coming, as far as I can tell, from the leftist groups who advocate LGBT+whatever causes.

My post and the items I quoted on BFBF were then followed by a response from someone calling himself “Darth Tater”:

Well, this train is heading south in a hurry…

And another response from Ryan W. Mueller:

If this is happening, they’re perfectly within their rights to do it, as long as it is not the government telling bookstores not to stock these books. Any bookstores that agree not to stock these books are independent businesses, and they can make their own decisions.

People are also well within their rights to protest these decisions (both vocally and with their pocketbooks). Similarly, people on the Right can tell bookstores not to stock authors with far-Left views. There’s no law against private citizens and private businesses advocating for or against authors based on their political views.

It’s only censorship if the government steps in and forbids stores from stocking certain authors’ books.

And yet another response from “Alucard”:

What exactly are you complaining about David Sims? That the businesses have the right to choose what they will sell? Or who they will not sell? Isn’t that what every business in capitalism does?

We all discriminate and make choices every day. I discriminate again romance novels — you can even say I blacklisted them. I won’t read any of that. Should some news outlet come after me? Should Breitbart come after McDonalds for not selling healthy food?

This whole thread is ridiculous.

People don’t come to BFB to discuss politics. In fact political threads and comments are not allowed. Such content will be deleted and the user will be warned or banned. You can say we are purging the incorrect type of post i.e — political, religious, insulting.

Someone using the name “Sparrow” chimed in:

I’m totally okay with the aforementioned writers being banned from bookstores, except perhaps Torgersen as I’ve not read him. I did however google his name, and I don’t like the look of the man, looks like a shifty character to me.

Someone calling himself “ABatch” said: “I’m gonna go with the ‘Breitbart is not a credible news source’ folks.”

I responded: Why not focus, instead, on whether the report is true? If you don’t like Breitbart for reasons of political taste, then look around for a source of information that you like better. When I quoted from Breitbart, I didn’t do so because I think that Breitbart is a right-leaning news organization, but because the story was relevant to the interests of fantasy/sci-fi writers and readers. If the story might not be true, then try to find evidence that weighs against the idea that a group of left-leaning ideologues were running around Toronto in 2015, “persuading” book store owners not to carry books by Torgersen, Wright, Corriea, and Williamson.

I’m not in Canada and cannot easily go there, but someone who is in Toronto, or could go there, might interview some of the book store owners and find out what did or didn’t happen in 2015, and if there was pressure put on them to remove books by those four authors, what the nature of that pressure was. How far did it go? How far might it have gone? Did the book store owners comply with the leftist agitators’ “requests”?

“ABatch” said: “In fact, its entire objective is to topple our government and replace it with a fascist/racist model.”

I answered: That sounds like a political statement to me. I thought they weren’t allowed.

Is it a fact that political threads and comments aren’t allowed, or is it only Politically Incorrect political threads and comments that aren’t allowed? Are alt-right political comments more likely to be censored than leftist political comments? Is the forum’s rule against political threads/comments selectively enforced? Are categories of subject matter being used as a smoke-screen for a pro-left political bias, whereby a leftist violator will be winked at, while a rightist violator will be banned?

Comments anyone? Was I doing an unreasonable thing in my original post, when I called attention to a report that leftists were trying to “persuade” bookstore owners to remove the books of authors they didn’t like? Persuasion from leftists usually isn’t limited to exhortations to virtue. No, rather it is often carried out by vandalism, by arson, by assault and battery, and by attempts to ruin the business of any establishment, or the career of any individual, that doesn’t do as the leftists dictate.

Those who want to do the necessary research might try to discover whether all political discussions really are banned on Best Fantasy Books Forum, or only certain particular kinds of political discussion. Is there, in other words, a bias in how the rules are enforced, regarding political discussions? At present I don’t know whether that is the case.

I didn’t try to have the last word, as I got the impression that my being condemned and banned from the forum was imminent on receipt of any further “back talk” from me.

Leftists do have an alternate mode of critique, one besides “a white noise of words.” The alternative is, of course, threats. It seems to me that in responding to my original post, certain other members of Best Fantasy Books used both techniques against me. First, there was a white noise of words, in which every point they raised was trivial, to which I could have easily supplied counterpoints in argument. But, second, there was made against me the threat of censorship and banning if I were to present such counterpoints.

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