Mendicant Bias
A quiet man of many talents who likes few things better than a morning spent blasting through HALO campaign levels. Better known as Didact, he writes about game, politics, philosophy, heavy metal, and other things at Didact's Reach and can be reached at [email protected]
You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, “There is a price we will not pay.” “There is a point beyond which they must not advance.”
—Ronald Reagan, “A Time for Choosing”, 1964
In the past few weeks, an online petition led by anti-#Gamergaters to block actor and staunch conservative Adam Baldwin from attending the Supanova 2015 convention in Sydney, Australia, had been circulating and gathering thousands of signatures. Mr. Baldwin is well known to both fans of sci-fi and gamers everywhere. As one of the stars of the much-beloved and very sadly cancelled far-future sci-fi show Firefly, and its movie sequel Serenity, Mr. Baldwin played the character of the none-too-bright, greedy, and yet oddly honourable Jayne Cobb—his gruff portrayal, comic timing, and unintentionally hilarious turns of phrase were among the many elements that made the show great.
Mr. Baldwin’s long and distinguished CV encompasses a large number of roles in various science-fiction franchises, comic book adaptations (including the highly-acclaimed Justice League TV series and Superman: Doomsday animated film). Most recently, Mr. Baldwin played the role of a US Navy commander in The Last Ship, a role that he personally regarded as a great honour and a chance to show America as a force for good in the world.
Mr. Baldwin is also known among supporters of #Gamergate as the man who coined the Twitter hashtag that the movement has adopted as its own. And he is known in Hollywood as one of its few open conservatives. Mr. Baldwin is vociferous about his conservative beliefs and has not hesitated in the past to take liberals and SJWs to task for their follies and their lack of moral rectitude.
It is precisely because his beliefs that the social justice set wants to exclude him from Supanova this year—in spite of the fact that his planned appearance at the convention had absolutely nothing to do with #Gamergate. Mr. Baldwin’ appearance at the convention was part of the celebrations surrounding the 10th anniversary of the film Serenity and nothing more.
Ideology Uber Alles!!!
Once again, though, the SJWs refused to let facts get in the way of ideology. The creator of the petition seeking to bar Mr. Baldwin from the convention, one Albert Santos, had this to say about the actor in his petition:
Over the past six months, Adam Baldwin has been involved in numerous instances of harassment and abuse towards women. Most notably, he has promoted the cause of the “GamerGate” movement; a movement that claims to be acting for “journalistic integrity” but targets women, people of colour and the LGBTI+ community inside the gaming industry.
In one specific instance, Baldwin directly linked to videos that disclosed the personal details (commonly known as “doxxing”) of game developers Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu to his several thousand twitter followers. This further inflamed the hostile situations that Quinn and Wu had been (and continues to be) suffering.
Unfortunately for Mr. Santos, who got his panties badly in a twist over a complete non-issue, the actual facts of the matter are quite different.
As has been extensively documented here at Reaxxion and elsewhere, SJWs like Anita Sarkeesian and Brianna Wu have been found to be outright lying about their claims of intimidation and harassment. In the case of Mr. Wu in particular, he scored a truly spectacular own goal when he got caught essentially harassing himself. (Being the deviant and mentally disturbed individual that he is, this action of Mr. Wu’s is as hilarious as it is unsurprising.)
As for the notion that #Gamergate “targets women, people of colour, and the LGBTI+ community”—all anyone has to do to refute this particular bit of intellectually constipated idiocy is to actually, y’know, meet a few of the supporters of #Gamergate.
For instance, I am Asian; the founder of Reaxxion is of Persian and Armenian extraction; Breitbart.com’s Milo Yanniopoulos is openly gay; hundreds if not thousands of female gamers outright support #Gamergate; and Vox Day, one of #Gamergate’s foremost intellects and an acclaimed game designer in his own right, qualifies as a Native American.
Then again, inconvenient things like “facts” and “integrity” have never concerned the SJWs overmuch.
Conform or Be Excluded!
Moreover, the convention itself is a celebration of pop-culture. It is not a forum for pro- or anti-#Gamergate arguments, and in its statements on the question of Mr. Baldwin’s attendance, the organisation has made it perfectly clear that it has nothing to say about #Gamergate either way:
On Friday, event director Daniel Zachariou responded to what he termed as an “avalanche” of opinions.
“To exclude someone from Supanova for their views, even if we don’t share them, goes completely against the spirit of the expo that we’ve presented all these years as all our stars appear to discuss their work in pop culture, not their personal political or ideological viewpoints,” he wrote, via the Supanova Facebook page.
“Further, the concerns are far-reaching and complex, and contain an immense amount of discord. We feel, as Supanova, that we’re not positioned to adjudicate either way.”
Mr Zachariou wrote that the concerns had been raised with Baldwin and that it had been agreed that “pop culture conventions [were] inappropriate venues for controversial topics”. [emphasis added]
In other words, Mr. Baldwin has agreed, as conservatives generally do, to be a good guest and to respect the rules of the organisation that is hosting him—which is rather more than can be expected of a typical SJW. Indeed, Mr. Zachariou is to be applauded for his decision to stick by the principles of his organisation and hold firm against the tide of Orks trying to batter down the door.
The convention’s code of conduct states with perfect clarity that those who attend it can, and should, expect an atmosphere free of intimidation, bullying, and harassment. Mr. Baldwin’s appearance in support of the 10th anniversary of a great movie and a pop-culture phenomenon is entirely in keeping with the organisation’s own stated aims, and based on past evidence, there is every reason to think that Mr. Baldwin will be charming, gracious, and on-point throughout his time at Supanova 2015.
Guarding The Last Redoubt
Mr. Baldwin was singled out specifically because he has never shied away from defending his beliefs, and according to the SJW mentality, that is Badthink and must be suppressed immediately, through any means necessary. Just think of what would happen if SJWs were exposed to something that ran counter to their ideology. Why, they might actually see sense for a change and switch sides!
And once again, the SJWs have given us precisely the tools we need to defeat and then destroy them.
Let us start with the original petition. Multiple media reports on the issue have pointed out that the petition to stop Mr. Baldwin from appearing had gathered “over 5,000″ signatures in the space of the few months that it had been up. Mysteriously, however, almost none of them were willing to say much about the counter-petition that fans of Mr. Baldwin launched. Why would that be?
Left: the petition to boot Mr. Baldwin out of Supanova. Right: the petition to keep him in it.
This graphic becomes even more powerful when you realise that the SJW-sponsored petition to stop Mr. Baldwin from attending Supanova has been in circulation for longer than its rival. In other words, we outnumber them—and that terrifies them, as it rightly should.
Moreover, the rabbits of the SJW set are now running face-first into a counter-movement that is fighting back because we simply have no choice anymore, and which is becoming less inclined to be merciful to its opponents every day. As Vox Day has pointed out:
#GamerGate erupted because there is nowhere else to go. The demon-rabbits have invaded the Last Redoubt; Anita Sarkeesian calls herself a “gamer” and the likes of Zoe Quinn and John Scalzi even fancy themselves “game developers” now. They simply won’t leave us alone, and so we have no choice but to fight back simply to be able to do what we have always done, which is to make the games we want to make and play the games we want to play.
The SJW meltdown over Mr. Baldwin’s appearance at a pop-culture convention is a manifestation of a similar phenomenon. Until recently, attendees of such a convention would merely have shrugged and moved on with their lives. #Gamergate changed all of that, and now that fans of great sci-fi are seeing how they are being told what and how to think, they are not in the least bit pleased about it and are rightly fighting back.
As to how we use this lesson to defeat the SJWs—we do it by forcing them to confront their own rank hypocrisy. And we do that by taking inspiration from another counter-cultural backlash within the sci-fi community: Sad Puppies.
In the same way that Sad Puppies has forced the Hugo Awards selection committee to face up to the fact that a highly prestigious award is in fact just a closeted circle-jerk involving writers that are uniformly left-wing, we can confront the SJWs in gaming with the same reality by bombarding conventions like Supanova with petitions to feature more guests like Adam Baldwin.
On the moral level, the argument cannot be won by them. By making it clear that we want to hear from those whose work we admire and respect—regardless of political beliefs, skin colour, or sexual orientation—we immediately neutralise the most powerful weapon that the SJWs have. Their best, and indeed only, argument has always been that they are standing up for “minorities”. By exposing that lie for what it is, they are left with nearly nothing.
On the mental level, we once again capture the hearts and minds of those who have not yet decided whom to support. It is crucial to understand that most people who go to conventions just go to have fun. They don’t go to be preached to or lectured at. They go to enjoy their culture and express themselves. By making clear that our aims align with theirs—which they unquestionably do—we win over those who would ordinarily merely shrug and move on.
And on the physical level, by encouraging the presence of honourable and decent individuals like Adam Baldwin, we are essentially taking the SJWs and sticking their faces right into the foul mess of their own hypocrisies. By forcing them to look their enemy in the eye, we force them to make a choice: stand and continue fighting, or flee. And we know, from past experience, that they will always choose to flee if they don’t have numbers on their side, which we know they don’t.
We have already shown that we can claim SJW scalps when they try to tangle with us—by using the exact same tactics that I outlined above. We have proven that, when confronted with both superior numbers and superior tactics, they will flee rather than engage, because their psyches cannot stand criticism of their ideology. Continue to push ahead, as Mr. Baldwin’s legions of supporters did with the Supanova controversy, and we will force them out of the cultures that we love, one step at a time.
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