Racist, woman-hating fantasy author Theodore Beale (aka Vox Day) is upset that people are calling him racist. I mean, it’s not like he called all black people “savages,” he objects; he merely called one black woman — speculative fiction author NK Jemisin — a “half-savage” in a portion of a blog post that, he complains, has been taken out of context. Indeed, he sniffs,
the fact that the same ungrammatical excerpt chopped out of the middle of a sentence keeps being trotted out again and again should alert the dialectical mind to the probability that there simply isn’t very much, if any, there there.
Ah, context! A lot of shitheads who say terrible things complain, when others point out these terrible things, that their words have been taken out of context. So I thought I’d do Vox a little favor here and provide the context to his infamous quote so we can all see how much there is there.
You may notice that the context here does not actually make Vox look any less racist.
I’ve taken the liberty of bolding the especially egregious bits, though to be honest there isn’t much here that isn’t egregious:
Jemisin has it wrong; it is not that I, and others, do not view her as human, (although genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens), it is that we simply do not view her as being fully civilized for the obvious historical reason that she is not.
She is lying about the laws in Texas and Florida too. The laws are not there to let whites ” just shoot people like me, without consequence, as long as they feel threatened by my presence”, those self-defense laws have been put in place to let whites defend their lives and their property from people, like her, who are half-savages engaged in attacking them.
Jemisin’s disregard for the truth is no different than the average Chicago gangbanger’s disregard for the traditional Western code of civilized conduct. She could, if she wished, claim that privileged white males are responsible for the decline of Detroit, for the declining sales of science fiction, even for the economic and cultural decline of the United States, but that would not make it true. It would not even make it credible. Anyone who is paying sufficient attention will understand who is genuinely responsible for these problems.
Unlike the white males she excoriates, there is no evidence to be found anywhere on the planet that a society of NK Jemisins is capable of building an advanced civilization, or even successfully maintaining one without significant external support from those white males. If one considers that it took my English and German ancestors more than one thousand years to become fully civilized after their first contact with advanced Greco-Roman civilization, it should be patently obvious that it is illogical to imagine, let alone insist, that Africans have somehow managed to do the same in less than half the time at a greater geographic distance. These things take time.
Being an educated, but ignorant half-savage, with little more understanding of what it took to build a new literature by “a bunch of beardy old middle-class middle-American guys” than an illiterate Igbotu tribesman has of how to build a jet engine, Jemisin clearly does not understand that her dishonest call for “reconciliation” and even more diversity within SF/F is tantamount to a call for its decline into irrelevance.
In case you want a bit more context, elsewhere in the same post he 1) mocked a man for taking his wife’s name, 2) suggested that one of his female critics was totally not as hot as his wife, the mysterious “Spacebunny,” and 3) reminded anyone who had forgotten that he had “three Billboard-charting club hits,” a fact that evidently makes him irresistible to women.
You see, Vox was briefly a member of a largely forgotten techno group called Psykosonik more than two decades ago. Well, “largely forgotten” by everyone but Vox, that is.
CONTEXT!
Vox Day makes a great case for #WhiteGenocide
@Nequam
I approve this message. Further, I shall be stealing the word “shitgolem” for future use.
Re the mysterious “Spacebunny”–
Are there no private investigators (or wealthy people who can afford to hire PIs) among the ranks of Mammotheers? Because I would love to learn whether or not such a person exists outside of Beale’s imagination. If, as many of us suspect, she doesn’t, it would be pretty hilarious to publicize that fact.
It would also be fun to predict his rationalizations for inventing her. (“I was simply making a point about…[whargarbl]”
Some of the more recent developments regarding this have occurred on George RR Martin’s Livejournal, named Not A Blog. He put up around six or seven posts on this subject, including throwing down a gauntlet to Brad Torgersen and Larry Correia, to tell them that they should be doing what they can to call out and denounce Vox Day. Vox Day put up a couple of panicky and hysterical posts in response and put out a call on twitter for goobergaters to harass GRRM. Believe it or not, a few of them did.
Vox Day has also said that if the Sad and Rabid Puppies (dear goddess, but those names are so stupid) slates finish below No Award, as many voters are already saying that they are going to do, en masse, with all of the Puppy nominees, then he is going to call out his army of goobergaters and “Dread Ilk” to permanently nuke the Hugo Awards in 2016. Somebody named Tom Kratman is on record at Torgersen’s blog as stating that he will join Vox Day in doing this.
Umm…I thought we didn’t advocate violence here.
The worst thing is how many people approve of what he says – see the comments under the text…
OK, Voxy. Here’s a little inconvenient facts for you. African people are more homo sapiens sapiens than people in Europe or Asia. When early humans migrated from Africa and into Eurasia they bred with Neanderthals (and probably other hominids). The people who stayed in Africa didn’t.
Tell me about it. Greece has a HEAVY debt to Egypt regarding religion, science, and mathematics to say the least. Other ancient civilizations such as Egypt, Babylon, and Persia, were much more civilized and advanced than the Greeks were, and gave women greater equity than Greece did on top of that.
It’s a trademark among regressive asshole creeps the Web over. Shit still smells, however, no matter how you decorate it.
Oh, it’s worse than just ignoring Egypt. These shitheads will go through countless contortions to prove that the ruling class in Egypt were ‘whiter’ than the serfs and slaves of the Nile. Never mind that they were also inbred as all get-out, this is considered irrelevant in comparison to their relative pallor.
A couple things: Mr Day was very impressed with Nicholas Wade’s book on human genetics when it came out last year. Most physical anthropologists think it is racist nonsense. So that might be part of the not as H. sapiens as thou thing. Also Mr Day claims that he cannot be racist because he is a Native American, and a POC his very own self. In actuality, he is 1/8 or 1/16 Native American- either a great grandmother, or a great-great grandmother. He isn’t saying which tribe, which I find interesting. He also claims to have the same degree of Hispanic ancestry, so double not-racist, according to him.
Lady Mondegreen, re the RSHD’s mysterious Spacebunny: I’m sure that the RSHD’s share of the millions his Dad squirreled away from the IRS in Europe has sufficed in the trophy wife department, and that there has, at least at some point, been a Spacebunny residing with the RSHD. That she’s too sensible to allow him to put photos of her and their kids on his blog only confirms that she’s way out of his natural league and without Daddy’s money she’d have never come near him, so they’re probably both getting exactly what they deserve from the relationship.
Seconding the appreciation for referring to Mr. Beale as RSHD. I actually preferred a suggestion in the original thread on that name where someone suggested it should be Narcissistic Racist Sexist Homophobic Dipshit, because that could be sung to Supercalafragilisticexpialadotious. Was a bit sad that never caught on.
Also amused by his apparent mistaken impression that the Romans didn’t have any contact with Africa. Rome wasn’t a European country, it was a Mediterranean one, and Africa happens to be a lot of the terra it was medi.
RSHD is almost certainly referring to the ‘race realism’ movement, of which, yes, Wade’s book is a part. It’s all part of the same retroactive reasoning that generated the Bell Curve and Evo-Psych.
He says that it was his great-grandmother who was a full-blooded Native and married a Mexican revolutionary. Apparently he is aware of the tribe, and to my knowledge he has not posted that information. What I find particularly funny (in a galling sort of way) is that he literally found out this info last August (prior to that, he thought he was part Asian) and since then has been very prolific in the use of solidarity language to defend his racist views (“my tribe,” “our struggle” et cetera).
That’s not even the kicker, though. Check this out (with bolding for emphasis):
That post is archived for posterity here: https://archive.today/VyRST
Ah yes, the old “1/16th Native American of indeterminate tribe” story. My family has one of those legends. My dad is into genealogy and tried to track down this supposed Native connection but of course it didn’t exist.
That’s the beauty of it. #WhiteGenocide is literally just diversity, to which white nationalists who use the #WhiteGenocide hashtag and Theodore Beale are so ardently opposed.
Bonelady,
All white people in the US have a native great grandmother. Just ask them. 😉
I didn’t know that until recently. Once I was informed, it made sense. There were just too many mysterious Indian grandmas. My family had one and my husband’s too. It’s like some sort of weird cultural tradition in white families. Unless you’ve met that grandma or seen a picture, assume she’s mythical. She almost always is.
From what I’ve been told, the mythical Indian seems to rarely be male. I think that comes from the idea that a white man with a non-white bride keeps the power in the hands of the white man. A white woman with a non-white spouse does not put anyone under the control of a white man. *gasp and dismay*
What’s funny is that it is far more likely that (especially south of the Mason Dixon) that we all have a black great grandma. You’ll hardly ever hear them cop to that though. When they do, it is to explain away their racism. At least, that’s been my experience. A blonde dude once explained to me that he could say the “N” word because he was 1/7 black. He had named his little black dog that word so he could yell it when he called his dog. He did not think of himself as racist. Most racists don’t.
Ninjad by deniseeliza. 🙂
Wasabi Tribe, no doubt.
I’d forgotten about that one. Excuse me for a bit, I’m just going to be over here in the corner sniggering like a six year old for a few minutes.
That works too, but The Shitgolem Vox Day has the advantage of possibly evoking the Santorum effect, ie whenever The Shitgolem Vox Day Googles his name he gets the result he so richly deserves.
One-seventh? Methinks someone’s understanding of math and genetics is as shaky as his understanding of racism.
I was wondering that too; but I think it can work out wuth various combinations of mixed race grandparents.
Hey, just thought I’d raise a couple points. It’s my understanding that a lot of the people on the Sad Puppies slate (Jim Butcher, etc) are there only because they said they did not want Vox Day associated with it. Vox day in response created Rabid Puppies, (because he wants to be put down??) and has been running around saying he’s involved with Sad puppies when in fact he’s actually not this year. Unfortunately he was involved in their slate last year, which was a total cluster fuck.
Good news, Sad puppies is trying to get rid of the Vox problem, by nominating more people like Butcher, Lego movie, guardians of the galaxy etc.
Bad news…they still have some vestiges of people who last year defended Vox.
But at least Vox is /technically/ not supposed to be involved with them, having started his own stupid slate. (Apparently he felt Sad Puppies was “not conservative enough”.
@zarathrustratheserpent
You are of course right about the heavy debt Ancient Greece owed to Egypt. The earliest book which mentions this is ‘The Histories’ by Herodotus (other wise known as the Father of Lies/Father of History. Now as this was written before the fall of Greece and the rise of Rome it may be more credible than any of the ‘sources’ Vox’ is quoting.
Also, who can forget Alexander the Great, who conquered Egypt and all of the known world? Should we also forget the earlier civilisations of Babylon, Mesopotamia etc which contributed to the growth of civilisation as we know it today?
Sorry, but the ignorance displayed by Vox infuriates me.
It’s funny, because my family has no stories of Native American ancestors. We didn’t know we had any until we got DNA tested. I would never call myself a POC though. I hate it when white people try to do that. Usually so they can get a free pass for saying racist shit.
“If one considers that it took my English and German ancestors more than one thousand years to become fully civilized after their first contact with advanced Greco-Roman civilization, it should be patently obvious that it is illogical to imagine, let alone insist, that Africans have somehow managed to do the same in less than half the time at a greater geographic distance.”
If, as I expect, what he means by this is: “it took about a thousand years for the English and the Germans to start creating what I would designate as art after they were contacted (read: colonized and enslaved) by Greco-Roman civilization, so that on that basis I would say that it took them about a thousand years to become what I would designate as ‘civilized'” — then, yeah, so far as his argument goes, I have no major problem with it. I don’t agree with it (it hinges on a very narrow/eccentric opinion as to what’s ‘civilized’ and what’s not) but I’m willing to let that go.
It’s what he follows it up with that doesn’t pass muster. “…it should be patently obvious that it is illogical to imagine, let alone insist, that Africans have somehow managed to do the same in less than half the time at a greater geographic distance.” Whut? — now that’s just sloppy. Nothing is “patently obvious” other that what one observes and what is or is not “logical’ has to be worked-around to fit that framework: it’s not fair and not useful to adapt one’s observations to one’s “logic” or framework and then pat oneself on the back afterwards — though everybody does it to one degree or another, it’s still a hazard to be avoided.
So. You don’t have to “imagine” or “insist” that Africans (later African-Americans) could be culturally creative or even culturally regnant after a forced contact with another civilization when you can see with your own eyes that they’ve done it. It doesn’t matter what the timeline or the timescale was for the English or the Germans or the French — the English and Germans really don’t come into it. It’s not so much true that “these things take time” as that things take the amount of time they take and that they’re not going to take the same amount of time in all cases. You’d have to be blind and deaf not to notice that African people and their forced immigration and their particular experience laid the groundwork for all American music worth talking about, and did so in a very direct way. It also deeply impacted American literature, even non-black American literature, because the black-American literary “slant” was/is deeply transcendental (focused on uplift) and that proclivity reinforced the transcendental(ist) leanings which were already a part of white American writing. Most of the forms of dancing which have “caught on” in American culture have African roots (and they have other roots as well, of course). American demotic speech is, essentially, black. If you are an American and if you’re white, you can’t be disrespectful of black people except at a distinct price, and the price is that you will be, to a very considerable extent, spitting on your own heritage (never mind where your ancestors came from) — and it’s never smart to do that.