So there’s been another political blowup in science fiction world, this time about inflammatory commentary on the political and other forums at Baen’s Bar, a set of forums operated by Baen Books. As a publisher, while Baen’s catalog is not exclusively conservative screeds, it leans very heavily in that direction (and yes, that is an oversimplification).
Jason Sanford started the discussion earlier this week with a report that focused on the following elements (and here I will quote Sanford because his own words are important in this case:
“Since the November 3rd elections, Baen’s Bar has seen a surge of new registrants.[Note 6] While most of these new members have not yet posted anything, some of these users appeared to join the forum because other platforms they used, such as Parler and now-banned Reddits, had been shut down.
For example, a user named Turk joined on January 11, 2021, writing “I heard about this site on a few other forums. Conservative but not rabidly or idiotically.”
So what did Turk believe qualified as “not” being rabidly or idiotically conservative? When someone on the forum praised the police officer who led the rioters away from the Senate floor during the Capitol siege, Turk said, “He should have let them invade the senate floor. Time those POS’s faced a little reality.” The rest of that thread then discussed how the riot wasn’t that bad because not many cops were really hurt (fact check: over 100 were injured, a number of them seriously) and “only” 5 people were killed, which to forum users meant the siege wasn’t that serious.
This view was shared by others on the Bar, with user Arun.tblp describing the Capitol siege as a “peaceful protest.”
However, what’s most worrying about Baen’s Bar is that since the 2020 Presidential election, the forum has seen a large number of posts urging violence against political opponents.”
Please note that the concern is NOT about the books that Baen publishes. Rather it is the behavior of posters on a forum and the rise of unaffiliated users seeking a site where they can freely engage in inflammatory speech.
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A digression here. I’m not a beginner when it comes to observing and participating in assorted Internet forums. I started participating on Usenet in the early ‘90s, and saw it devolve over the years from reasonable discussion forums (even, shock, shock, in expressly political places) to a cesspool of spam and inflammatory speech in unmoderated spaces. The few unmoderated spaces that survived until Usenet careened into Google Groups had a core of participants who either ignored, mocked, or drove out spammers and destructive participants.
My experiences in Usenet taught me the need for moderation in all forums…which was further reinforced by the behavior I’ve seen in comment sections of assorted news sites. But moderation can and does have issues of its own, whether it’s a heavy-handed automated keyword-based moderation now common to major social media sites, or behavior that biases toward certain in-groups within a forum, so that in-groupers are protected while out-groupers are punished.
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Putting on my political hat now. I laugh bitterly at assorted assertions about how various groups both Left and Right are censored and misrepresented in all media. As someone who was politically active during the 1980s-1990s, was involved in a teacher strike in 2005, and was a union activist for a while during my teaching career, this situation is nothing new. All media, including social media, carries a bias. I’ve seen censorship and bias happening repeatedly, and experienced it on a personal level. I go into any contact with media assuming that unless I write the words being conveyed, those words will be twisted in some way that will make me flinch. That’s just the difference between the story that the writer, the editor, and the publisher wish to deliver and the message that I’m trying to send.
And I’ve been on both sides, as the writer covering an issue, and as the advocate.
The reality is that all political speech undergoes a degree of censorship and misrepresentation, no matter what ideology it represents. At some point, even the most open of governance must make a choice between regulating speech or allowing bad actors to dominate the stage.
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Ultimately, what we are dealing with here goes beyond genre, to the issue of unregulated, unmoderated speech.
Most of us have been raised to be reasonably civil and empathic to others. The degree to which we extend that civility and empathy to those who aren’t like us, who don’t think like us, varies by individuals. The same holds true of societies.
But societies differ from individuals. Societies require cooperation amongst individuals in order to be successful, and the higher and more varied the number of cooperative individuals that participate in a society, the more successful it will be. That doesn’t mean groupthink. It means that part of the cooperative process involves negotiation and understanding of the other side. That means giving ground on certain points. That means agreement.
Not “my way or the highway.”
Threats, intimidation, and bullying don’t advance a society. They tear it down. And when speech encourages and/or advocates harm to others who are different, then that is destructive speech.
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Destructive speech, especially destructive speech that leads to violent action, has consequences. The New Left learned this lesson in the 1970s. The assorted facets of the New Right are learning this lesson now. Or should be.
Violent speech of any ilk is intended to silence and intimidate opponents. There is no place for it in a society that purports to be open and small-d democratic. If you want to advocate for violent civil war, for killing those who don’t think like you, and so on, then…there are consequences. And there should be consequences.
And sometimes those consequences lead to the closing of forums.
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Have I censored and moderated myself in writing this little screed? You bet. There’s been a number of sentences written and then cut. Statements considered and reconsidered. I could write more about this subject but have just limited myself to a few points. I have considered the likelihood of being the subject of that violent speech I’ve brought up.
But I’ve also just spent the past two months writing 85,000 words about a man dealing with the consequences of testifying against his family doing bad things, over the course of thirty years. Years ago, I dated a man who spoke out against New Left violence…and was paying the price for it twelve years later (I do not have the permission to say more about this. Don’t ask). I am certain that I have lost jobs and sales because of past political advocacy.
The reality is that a line has to be drawn. That I have to decide for myself about where that line falls for me. I consider the likelihood of how I would have reacted had there been overwhelming evidence that the election was stolen from my candidate in 2020—and then remind myself that I’ve already been there, in 2000.
I still don’t think that violent speech and advocacy of violent acts is the correct answer. And that is where I stand—so any equivocating on the subject, or support of violent speech, is not a place or person that I can support.
Your mileage may vary.
Whether you choose to act upon it is your choice.