SJWs Always Lie

by Vox Day

  “To be frank, it means that traditional sci-fi/fantasy fandom does not have any legitimacy right now. Period. A community that can be this effectively controlled by someone who thinks black people are subhuman and who has called for acid attacks on feminists is not one whose awards have any sort of cultural validity. That sort of thing doesn’t happen to functional communities. And the fact that it has just happened to the oldest and most venerable award in the sci-fi/fantasy community makes it unambiguously clear that traditional sci-fi/fantasy fandom is not fit for purpose.”

  Sandifer's libelous assertions had virtually nothing to do with reality, but he was right in one regard. The Puppies had shown the world that science fiction was no longer fit for the purpose of cramming SJW ideology down the throats of unsuspecting readers.

  One fascinating thing about the SJW-driven coverage of the upheaval in the Hugo Awards, which drew more media attention than the awards had received in the last ten years combined, was the fact that even though Rabid Puppies was widely recognized to have been the driving force behind the incredible success of the Puppies, no one except Michael Rapoport of The Wall Street Journal ever talked to any of us about it. They interviewed George R. R. Martin, they interviewed John Scalzi, they interviewed literary irrelevancies like Philip Sandifer, and a few of them even talked to Brad Torgersen, but they did not talk to me or any of the other Rabid Puppies.

  Of course, by now you probably understand why they didn't. It's a lot harder to sell a false narrative about someone when they are able to speak directly for themselves. It was more useful for the SJW Narrative to quote someone I'd never met who was willing to lie about what I think—I don't think black people are subhuman—and willing to lie about what I have done—I have never called for acid attacks, on feminists or on anyone else—than permit me to accurately represent my views, however controversial they may be. Because, as you will recall from Chapter Two, the primary objective of the SJW is always to destroy, discredit, and disqualify any individual who threatens the Narrative.

  The problem for the media, and for the science fiction SJWs who were hoping to wield it as a weapon, is that the Internet prevents them from being able to control and dictate the Narrative the way they could in the pre-Internet era. It permits those being assailed by SJWs to take the social pressure being brought to bear against them, and, as with jujitsu, use that very pressure against them. For example, when the Creative Director of Tor Books and Associate Publisher of Tor.com, Irene Gallo, made the mistake of repeating the same false Narrative the media had been pushing on her personal Facebook page, we were able to use it against her by extensively quoting it, comparing her words to the corporate Code of Conduct which they violated, and demanding her resignation.

  There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are unrepentantly racist, sexist and homophobic. A noisy few but they’ve been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year’s Hugo ballot.

  Now, one might have thought Tor Books would immediately fire an employee who not only attacked the publisher's customers, but also its own authors and books—several of those “bad-to-reprehensible works” were written by longtime Tor authors Kevin J. Anderson and John C. Wright, and one of the novels nominated by the Puppies had even been published by Tor—but what would have gotten a minimum-wage employee fired at McDonald's or Walmart only resulted in a non-apology and a mild public reprimand from the SJW-dominated publisher.

  This shows why simply turning the SJW attack sequence around on SJWs tends to be less effective for normal people than it is for SJWs using it against them; the key to Stage Six is that the Authority to whom one is Appealing be Amenable. While SJWs are always loyal to other SJWs first, normal people have an instinctive tendency to defend fellow employees or members of the group regardless of whether they are SJWs or not, and may even resent what they see as an outside attempt to interfere with their business. Unlike the cases of Sir Tim Hunt and John Derbyshire, the management at Macmillan, the corporate owner of Tor Books, was not eager to jettison the targeted employee because doing so would not please SJWs in the media.

  However, as #GamerGate has shown, that doesn't mean they won't oust her, it just means more, it just means more pressure is required. To date, over two thousand emails have been sent to Macmillan demanding Gallo's resignation and more than 500 former customers are participating in a boycott of Tor Books that will not end until Irene Gallo has been held responsible for her unprofessional, code of conduct-violating comments by the termination of her employment. But regardless of how that particular matter turns out, an important battle has already been won, as the publishing gatekeepers at Tor Books have had their public bully pulpit, from which they preached SJW sermons and denounced violators of their science fiction Narrative for more than 20 years, forcibly removed from them once and for all by their unhappy corporate masters.

  The importance of Sad Puppies is that it shows how even in a field that has dominated by SJWs for more than two decades, they are weaker and less numerous than most people believe. Not only are they far from invulnerable, even in the fields they observably control, but it may be that only two or three men willing to resist them are required in order to explode their Narrative.

  This is not to say that even in a field as small as science fiction, the cultural war can be won overnight. On August 22nd, the 2015 Hugo Awards were presented. Desperate to deny the Sad Puppies a victory, the SJWs resorted to scorched earth tactics to deny awards to the best-selling Jim Butcher, longtime Baen Books editor Toni Weisskopf, science fiction grandmaster John C. Wright, and even 5-time winner and 38-time nominee Mike Resnick, voting all of them below No Award. For the first time in 72 years, no awards were given out in five categories, including Best Novella, Best Short Story, Best Related Work, Best Editor (Long Form), and Best Editor (Short Form). While this was a disappointment to the Sad Puppies, it was no surprise to the Rabids, as my plan from the start had been based on the correct premise that the SJWs would rather destroy the awards than lose control of them.

  And while we didn't have the numbers to force through a No Award vote on our own, we were able to get them to do it for us by nominating works by authors, editors, and publishers they hated. We also managed to tip the scale and ensure that Cixin Liu's hard science fiction novel, The Three-Body Problem, won Best Novel over Katherine Addison's tedious SJW angst-fest, The Goblin Emperor. Unsurprisingly, this didn't prevent the SJWs from declaring victory. 15-time Hugo nominee Charles Stross's take on the matter summed up the SJW position nicely: “Fans 5, Puppies 0. Club members kick gatecrashers out the door.”

  In doing so, Stross underlined a point Brad Torgersen had previously made about the Sad Puppies being seen as wrongfans engaged in badthink reading wrongbooks. The SJWs tried to insist that our post-award celebrations were merely attempts to salvage wounded pride, but the Puppies, both Sad and Rabid, knew better. Unbeknownst to most SJWs, Larry Correia had let the cat out of the bag four months before in an public exchange with George Martin on Monster Hunter Nation.

  "Vox is off doing his own thing. You tried to shun a man who is incapable of being shunned. He got kicked out of the market, so went and built his own market. The more you go after him, the stronger he gets. I don’t think you guys realize that most of me and Brad’s communication with Vox consists of us asking him to be nice and not burn it all down."

  —“George R. R. Martin Responds”, Larry Correia, April 14, 2015

  We didn't burn it all down, but nuking five out of sixteen categories wasn't a bad start. After only three years of Puppy-related insurgencies, the SJWs have already thrown in the towel and begun changing the rules. In doing so, they have abandoned all hope of retaining their previous control over the Hugo Awards in the future despite having outnumbered us two-to-one across the board in 2015. (In the Bes
t Editor category, No Award beat Toni Weisskopf 2,496 to 1,216, while in the Novella category, the vote was 3,495 for No Award versus 1,832 first-preference votes for all the various Puppy-nominated novellas combined.)

  At the business meeting the day after the awards, a group of SJWs successfully championed the adoption of no less than three new rules to govern the nominations, most notably a complicated one called E Pluribus Hugo. If ratified at MidAmeriCon next year, it will transform the Hugo Awards into a quasi-Parliamentary system designed to ensure no single faction can singlehandedly dictate the shortlist in the future. This will have the effect of preventing future Puppy sweeps, but will also limit the Tor cabal to one or two nominations per category as well. And since our goal was never to control the awards, but merely to break the SJW stranglehold on them, this will be an eminently satisfactory outcome from the canine perspective.

  But there is a broader lesson here that goes well beyond the weird little world of science fiction. The lesson of the 2015 Hugo Awards is this: SJWs care so much about the institutions they control that they will destroy them rather than relinquish control over them.

  CHAPTER SIX: THE SJW NEXT DOOR

  You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

  —John 8:44

  If you are a normal person reading this, someone who isn't an ideological extremist or a political radical, but a regular guy working IT at a mid-sized corporation or a regular woman working in a retail establishment downtown, it might strike you that SJWs are only a problem in the alien worlds of the game industry or science fiction publishing. You may well believe equality is a good thing, diversity is a strength, and while you're not necessarily enthusiastic about the sudden influx of foreign immigrants speaking alien languages in your town, you're trying to be open-minded about it. After all, your great-great-grandparents were immigrants too and America is the great melting pot.

  And if it seems a little crazy that men can legally marry men now, or you occasionally wonder why, if “Caitlyn Jenner” is really a woman, Wikipedia says she is known for winning the men's decathlon at the 1976 Summer Olympics, none of that is anything that has much to do with your day-to-day life. Sure, the directives that occasionally show up in your inbox from HR are increasingly bizarre, and neither you nor anyone else in your department knew what to make of the most recent mandatory harassment seminar, which involved four hours of listening to an individual of uncertain sex wearing a dress and alternating between shouting at everyone and bursting into tears, but it turned out to be a real team-building experience and even provided everyone with a few new office catchphrases.

  So even though you can see how SJWs may cause problems elsewhere, for other people, you can't see how it is any real concern of yours. And that complacency is the chief ingredient in the long-term success SJWs have enjoyed in gradually taking the cultural high ground.

  SJWs don't begin by storming an institution en masse, breaking down the doors and sacrificing the secretary in the lobby to Satan before defecating on the carpets and copulating madly on the table in the meeting room. SJWs enter by stealth, using mousy middle-aged women and little inoffensive men to whom no one could possibly object, outwardly good-natured individuals who keep their opinions to themselves and rapidly make themselves indispensable to the people in charge. They tend to gravitate towards positions of influence rather than authority, and towards internally-focused objectives that are hard to measure rather than externally-focused responsibilities where success or failure are obvious. In the corporate context, Human Resources is their natural habitat; they're also often found in Marketing or as much-appreciated assistants to the executives.

  They work hard, they don't complain, and most of their colleagues would find it difficult to even begin to describe what their politics might be. Their loyalties appear to lie primarily with the organization; indeed, they are often among its foremost defenders and champions. Think about the little old lady who helps out at church, the mother who always makes cookies and bars for the Boy Scout troop, the married forty-something man without kids who is the obvious choice for the homeowners association board, and the young man who is always able to find the spare time to drive a carful of teenagers to the youth camp on the weekend.

  Whenever something needs to be done, they're usually the first to volunteer. So it's hardly surprising that it seldom takes long before they are in a position of influence where their opinions are not only taken seriously, but actively sought out. And that's when they can start planting the seeds for taking over the organization.

  SJW entryists have two primary objectives. The first is to bring more SJWs into the organization. Sometimes it is blatant, such as when a large public corporation's first female board member predictably declares that the organization's priority should be hiring more women. More often it is subtle, like when there is a vacancy and the stealth SJW notes that they just happen to know someone who would be perfect for the job, even if they don't appear to have any of the relevant skills required for it. They will almost certainly have the qualifications, though. SJWs absolutely love qualifications, as they are easy to understand and provide an easy excuse for weeding out any problematic applicants who look as if they might threaten the narrative.

  The second entryist objective is to establish a code of conduct. This is an old bait-and-switch that has been used on everyone from the Go Programming Language community to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher by the advocates of the European Union. What happens is that the SJW proposes a code of conduct, explaining that due to the way in which the corporation or church or community is growing, it is now necessary to formalize and structure its rules. After making allusions to a few differences of opinion that have taken place in the past and expressing concerns about hypothetical future problems, the need for some behavioral guidelines is asserted, but guidelines that are goal-oriented suggestions rather than specific hard-and-fast rules.

  “We had to learn the hard way that by agreement to what were apparently empty generalizations or vague aspirations we were later held to have committed ourselves to political structures which were contrary to our interests.”

  – Lady Margaret Thatcher, “The Downing Street Years”

  To understand how intentionally vague aspirations are transformed into firm political structures that are used to to control institutions and entire communities, consider the example of the Go community. Go is a programming language developed at Google and launched in 2007; the Go programmers call themselves “gophers”, and they have an official mailing list called golang-nuts as well as an annual conference called Gophercon.

  As you might expect, the gophers are infested with a number of SJWs who are militantly pro-women-in-tech, who believe the heavily male demographics of the community are a serious problem in need of a solution, and have put themselves in positions of influence where they can transform their SJW priorities into the priorities of the entire community. Consider this email from an SJW gopher who unilaterally decided that the gopher community required thought-policing.

  Since Go was launched nearly six years ago, our community has grown from a small group of enthusiasts to thousands of programmers from all corners of the globe. I am proud of us; so many great projects and such a helpful and passionate group of people. Sincerely, I consider myself lucky to be involved.

  But as we grow we should reflect on how we can improve.

  Take this mailing list, for example. While the majority of discussions here are respectful and polite, occasionally they take a turn for the worse. While such incidents are rare, they are noticeable and have an effect on the tone of other discussions. We can do better.

  At times we can be overly didactic, meeting opposing ideas with inflexibility. When challenged by a differing opinion we should not be defensive, but
rather take the opportunity to discuss and debate so that we may better understand our own ideas.

  I'm also concerned by reports of abuse, harassment, and discrimination in our community, particularly toward women and other underrepresented groups. Even I have experienced harassment and abuse myself. This may be common in the tech industry but it is not OK.

  We are the Go community; we get to choose what is OK and what is not. It's not a choice but a responsibility, and it is a responsibility that we have neglected too long.

  The positive effects of diversity in communities are well-documented. If our community is to continue to grow and prosper, we must make it a more inclusive place, where all are respected and nobody is made to feel dismissed, unwelcome, or unsafe.

  To that end, I propose that we establish a Code of Conduct that would cover the behavior of community members on the various Go mailing lists and the golang subreddit, on IRC, in private Go-related correspondence, and at Go events.

  I believe that any Code of Conduct we adopt should be goal-oriented ("this is what we aspire to") rather than rules-oriented ("don't do this!"). I also believe it should empower the community to help maintain a high standard: I want everyone to feel comfortable calling out bad behavior, without the need to appeal to authority.

  I have done a survey of similar codes in various communities and the Django Code of Conduct is the one I like best. I am in favor of basing our code directly on that document.

  One didn't need to know anything about the individual to know that this was a classic, indeed, almost textbook example of an SJW attempting to make the transformation from entryism to community control. Consider the tell-tale phrases and what they really mean: