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Fantasy author Theodore “Vox Day” Beale has been called many terrible things. A “racist shithead.” A “racist dickhead.” A “human garbage pile.” A “sentient colostomy bag.” “A racist numpty poopgoblin.”
And those are just from me. He’s never complained.
But one thing he doesn’t like being called is a Nazi. He doesn’t like it so hard that when fantasy author Foz Meadows referred to him as a “neo-Nazi” in an essay on politics and fiction posted on the website of fantasy magazine Black Gate last week, Beale threw a fit, demanding that the site “remove this false, malicious, and materially damaging libel.”
Beale has been happy enough to associate himself with the alt-right, but insists he’s no Nazi, nuh-uh, no way:
I am neither a neo-Nazi nor a National Socialist, I have never been a neo-Nazi or a National Socialist, I do not belong to, or subscribe to the tenets of, the German National Socialist Workers Party or any subsequent facsimile, and I do not appreciate the libelous attempts of Ms Meadows, to publicly and falsely assert that I am “an actual neo-Nazi”.
Black Gate subsequently removed all but the first two paragraphs of Meadows’ essay; Amazing Stories picked it up, and it can now be found in its entirety on that site. (See here for more details on all this.)
Meadows has refused to retract her characterization of him. And so the lovely Mr. Beale called upon his fans to dig up personal information on her:
Beale has since deleted his request for “a complete report” on Meadows from his blog post, but you can still see it in this archived version of the post.
Meadows has reiterated her point:
– & further, that this definition isn't contingent for its validity on his agreement with me. It's not an insult, but a rational judgement.
— Foz Meadows (@fozmeadows) December 12, 2016
She also highlighted some of the terrible things Beale’s fans have said about her:
And in response, here's a rundown of some of what his commenters have said about me, with his sanction, in his space: pic.twitter.com/FTUv03rhHU
— Foz Meadows (@fozmeadows) December 12, 2016
As it turns out, the “someone else” she refers to — the person she linked to in her Black Gate essay — is me. The post in question is one in which, among other things, I try (and fail) to make sense of Beale’s puzzling declaration, in one of his blog posts from several months back, that “National Socialism” is a “semiotically useful form of German nationalism” yet also “suicidally stupid.”
Meadows sees this as evidence that Beale is indeed a neo-Nazi; Beale, for his part, declares that my post, “actually proves the precise opposite.”
Er, I don’t actually think that it does. What I think it “proves,” insofar as it proves anything, is that Beale likes to skate really close to the Nazi label without ever embracing it, always careful to put a bit of daylight between him and the “semiotically useful” but “suicidally stupid” National Socialists.
Does that make him definitively not a neo-Nazi?
I suppose that depends on one’s definition of the term. Some dictionaries define neo-Nazi pretty narrowly. According to Merriam-Webster.com, for example, the term means “a member of a group espousing the programs and policies of Hitler’s Nazis.” By that standard, I don’t think Beale could be classified as a neo-Nazi; there are, after all, some distinctions between the racist nationalism Beale espouses and the “programs and policies of Hitler’s Nazis.”
Dictionary.com has a somewhat broader definition, declaring a neo-Nazi to be “a person who belongs to a political organization whose beliefs are inspired by or reminiscent of Nazism.” Oxforddictionaries.com offers two definitions, one a fairly narrow one, the other quite a bit more expansive: “a person of extreme racist or nationalist views.”
By these definitions, Beale arguably could be classified as a neo-Nazi. He has embraced the alt-right, a group (if not a literal political organization) that is very definitely “inspired by or reminiscent of Nazism.” Richard Spencer, who came up with the term alt-right, was very clearly “inspired by” Nazism when he ended his now infamous speech of a couple of weeks ago with “hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory.”
And certainly Beale has “extreme racist or nationalist views.” Beale describes himself as a nationalist, and his racism is well-known. In one recent blog post, for example, Beale declared
that a black population in excess of an as-yet-undetermined percentage of the overall population renders the continuation of Western civilization impossible.
He’s also been known to rail against the alleged evils of miscegenation (also known by racists like Beale as “mudsharking” or “coal-burning”). In one blog post several months back, he mocked a white woman allegedly murdered by her black boyfriend, declaring “burn de coal, pay de toll.”
So, yeah, I’d call that extreme racism.
Nonetheless, despite his racism and other bigotries, despite his embrace of the Nazi-inspired alt-right, I’ve always stopped short of calling Beale a Nazi. Personally, I prefer to limit that term to those who have literal shrines to Hitler set up in their living room. I’m going to stick with calling him a “sentient colostomy bag.”
But if Beale thinks that someone calling him a “neo-Nazi” is guilty of “false, malicious, and materially damaging libel,” I think he’s going to have to take that up with the Oxford English Dictionary.
@Sinkable John
….Yeesh. That was a shitstorm if I’ve ever heard of one. Now I’m kinda afraid to start playing Don’t Starve Together properly….though maybe it’ll be good practice if things go to shit.
So did Rebecca Watson back when Elevatorgate happened even earlier (2011). And there are still dudebros angry about her, too.
re: bloo hare
That made me smile! Sadly, it has been years, nay, decades since I’ve had enough hair to dye…. I unironically wear an “Irish-pattern bald”. hairdo which I can’t really place with a particular political persuasion. Though the MRA-PUA mindset seems to say this makes me BETA AS HELL!!
… to which I reply 🙂 🙂 🙂
@Troubelle
Sometimes I wish online gaming worked like Facebook, building itself into an echo chamber.
Wondering if I should get my hands on Don’t Starve Together. Played a bit of DS around the time it came out, and I remember my ex and meself being pretty excited when Together was announced – but then life happened, and it came out late enough that we never got to play it “Together”. Since then I’ve kinda lost interest I guess, like with pretty much all the other games we played or wanted to play. Hype is weird.
Although as long as you avoid any form of matchmaking like the plague, and make sure you only play with people who don’t raise any red flags, you should be fine I think ? That’s what I usually do, last night being the sad exception. But then again that rule kinda turned me into the lonely gamer I didn’t wanna be. Still, better alone than surrounded by assholes.
@ohlmann
@kupo
Those who voted for Trump included rich, “middle class”, and poor people.
“Working class” is a slippery concept in this country that is not totally about income but also educational background and education. For example, someone who just got a high school diploma and then went to work in the factory in the “golden age of manufacturing jobs” may be not so badly off economically but is still said to be “working class”, while a college student with much less income is not.
When people talk about the “white working class ” supporting Trump, that is what they mean, and they use whites with or without college education as a benchmark, and it is true that according to exit polls whites without a college diploma went for Trump by about two to one.
As far as income goes, Trump’s voters had higher incomes on average, although there is no breakdown of this by race that I know of. Wealthier people tend to vote Republican more as a general rule, and most of Trump’s voters were regular Republicans.
So it wasn’t “the rich”, or “the poor” or even the “white working class” that elected Trump. Many different people (mostly white and predominantly male) voted for him.
I meant to say “background and education”
If you compare Trump’s exit polls in 2016 with Romney’s exit polls in 2012, the difference is pretty interesting. The vaunted “white rural working class” voted for Romney; Trump didn’t have to win them over to being Republicans. The people he did win over were suburban homeowners earning the sort of incomes that permanent employees do.
Trump, like Modi and other nationalists before him, is an inescapably middle-class phenomenon.
You know, this just hit me – the Nazis didn’t call themselves that, they were called “nazis” by the people opposing them… So of course Vox Day wouldn’t want people calling him that…
Tongue somewhat in cheek – I actually think he’s just trying to appear more appealing to the mainstream.
@EJ
Thanks. I’m getting a little tired of the “white working class” narrative.
@Ohlmann
I’m not sure where you’re getting your 35% statistic from. Only 18% of the people voted for Trump. And the groups which voted in larger numbers for Trump were those making 50k+, rural people, and white people. To say that we should blame the working class is wrong because they voted majority for Clinton. Sure, some of them voted for Trump. And so did some people of color. I know a Latina immigrant who is a very vocal supporter. But the lie that keeps getting spread is that it was the working class who voted him in, and the numbers don’t support that. You got the “white” part right, though.
Good for Foz Meadows.
I’ve just bought “Fantasy of Stars” on principle.
(PS – David, I posted this previously with a misspelled name – it’s in moderation – please delete)
Moar OT : seems that a study has been published, that demonstrates that abortion does not, in fact, cause mental illness. The actual factors are the stigma, and stress caused by lack of access and/or legal complications.
Got conflicting thoughts in mah brains right now :
1) Cool, that’s one less battle-pony for anti-choicers to ride.
2) Wait, you mean that’s only been proved just now ? Wasn’t it, like, common fucking knowledge ?
3) This is gonna make me fucking depressed for personal reasons. No, it’s not common knowledge, and if it were I know someone who’d be in a really different place right now.
Said it before and will say it again : “pro-life” folks are a fucking blight on humanity. Their only contribution ever was to fuck actual lives up while pretending to protect what really is fucking nothing.
ETA : @kupo
I think Ohlmann’s 35% refers to France. I don’t know if the figure is accurate, I’ve stayed away from those news for a long time. It’s certainly in line with what I know though…
@Kupo, I believe that you get 35% if you remove the people ineligible to vote: children and teenagers, etc. The 18% is compared to the entire population of the country.
I’m super tired of that narrative, too. It’s been circulated by the media and is all part of the picture of “hubris of the ivory tower” that they’re trying to paint. As usual, the Democrats are willingly hanging their heads and lamenting their own elitism – while the actual plutocrats rub their hands gleefully and tuck in their bibs. It’s all part of the show to give an excuse to destroy the social safety network of the united states, and legitimize the rich robbing the poor. Same old same old. Ergh.
As for the “working class” – Conan and Kupo, you sort of hit the nail on the head. It’s not about relative wealth anymore. As the ethnography of North America changes, “working class” just means “white men” these days. They’re referring to the “Working Class” of the 1950’s, not today’s working class.
Don’t take this the wrong way to any of you who might apply, but fffffff fuck you baby boomers. The boomer generation (latter cohort) has been a horrible stain on the world, and it seems like they intend to stick the knife in one last time before they’re done. Why couldn’t you guys have been more hippie-Woodstock and less Nixon-Cold War? It all just makes me so angry.
Hey now, the cold war’s over. The US and Russia are about to become bestest buddies ever, united against the real threat, Red China. Once this great evil has been destroyed, they’ll divide the world between themselves. Sure, some of the world won’t want to be part of either of the two great empires, but nobody cares about what those losers think, right? [/sarc]
Still on pg. 1, but have to get my tail in gear so I can take the Catbeast for his vet checkup later…
Kat said
It looks like he’s doing the same thing to Rick Perry now. Perry and Romney were very harsh critics of the Mango Menace during the campaign. I’m interested to see if this becomes a pattern. A petulant, vindictive pattern.
The “White working class” arglebargle is just an attempt to gloss over the “White” part. Not a good attempt, but it doesn’t have to be good to fool those who want to be fooled.
Remember when “Historical revisionism” meant rewriting history, not rewriting shit that happened last month?
By 2017 we’re going to be rewriting the future, at this rate.
Oh, wait, climate change denial.
Welp! Looks like Loki won, everybody.
@Scildfreja
But but but FREYJA’S EMAILS !
Hey, at least Kek didn’t win.
Oh wait…
@HamBeast: Living with Mr Perry as Governor-for-Life of Texas, I’m really hoping you’re right about Trump just pretending to consider him for the Cabinet of Hyuuuge Wonders. I still remember him calling for the shooting of the Fed Reserve Chairman.
@Sinkable: You really think the anti-life crowd will acknowledge the study? Oh, sweet child of summer.
Myths being repeated worldwide about recent US election:
Trump was the “people’s choice”, and who cares by what margin
“working class vote” went to Trump much more than expected
The election was “decided” by some specific (actually small) demographic like farmers who strongly favored Trump.
The result was a “surprise” because Clinton was predicted to likely win the popular vote (and electoral college) by very narrow margin
@Nequam, @Sinkable John:
Rule #1 of conservatives – the negative secondary consequences of harming people are to be used as a justification to continue harming people.
Rule #2 of conservatives – refuse to see the connection, because otherwise it would look like you’re harming people just for the sake of harming them, and that would be bad.
@Nequam & Snowberry
That was actually going to be one of my numbered points, and then I forgot, because brain. (It rhymes with grain, plain, and pain.)
No, there’s no way those fuckers will acknowledge it.
Look, I just want ’em gone. Don’t care how. I’ll happily trade over my soul and/or any other real or imaginary appendage to any spirit, god, demon or whatever you think might be able to help.
Another Texan who wishes Rick Perry would just go away already and stop embarrassing us. Wearing glasses doesn’t make you smart, Rick.
@kupo
It’s white people generally, really,
@Snowberry
And to think, when the USSR fell, I figured the CoDominium was consigned to the ash heap of future history…
http://image.absoluteastronomy.com/images/encyclopediaimages/s/se/sealoftheempireofman.jpg
@Scildfreja
I’d rather have Loki in charge; he mostly just wants equal rights for jötnar, which I can live with.
+1 for preferring to have Loki in charge.