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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.
@dlouwe
In case you haven’t heard, I heard your take on my thing! It’s good! Care to talk more about it?
I think the election result is fairly simple — the US is now almost completely polarized, and Republicans, being good little tools, held their noses and voted for the guy with the R after his name, while a lot of Democrats turned up their noses at Hillary for Reasons — flaws, no penis, whatever — and it was enough to swing a few key states his way. Republicans voted as if the future of their party depended on winning — which it did — and Democrats seemed to think they had the luxury of being picky — which they didn’t, and many (non-rich) people are going to pay a hellacious price for that.
Marvel had a Vote Loki series this year. He pretty much torpedoed himself in it by being honest (and admitting that he has no clue what he was doing).
… after violence directed at and perpetrated by his followers became too much. Because Marvel’s Loki has standards damn it! (the edit window time outed on me.)
@GrumpyOldSocialJusticeMangina
Also, you know, because a lot of reliable Democratic voters were actively prevented from voting. I think that may also have had something to do with it, maybe.
@Dalillama Yes, but we knew in advance that that was going to happen, and our side didn’t seem to realize how critical it was going to be for the leftish people to vote as if the future depended on it — and more so because of the expected hanky-panky. Trump’s total unsuitability seemed so obvious to our side that many of us assumed there was no chance any reasonable people would vote for him. That assumed that the other side has some reasonable people (or at least people with consciences).
Well, looks like my hypothesis has been disproved. Rick Perry has been nominated to the department he couldn’t even remember.
New working hypothesis is that Perry was sufficiently apologetic and ass-kissy enough to appease the Orange Howler Monkey’s hurt fee-fees. That, and he probably couldn’t find anyone else he owed a favor to who was more connected to the Russian government…
@GrumpyOld SocialJusticeMangina, blaming the left because they didn’t try hard enough, despite voter suppression efforts that have been ongoing for over a decade now, isn’t really cool. It’s blaming-the-victim on a societal level. I know that wasn’t your intention, but that’s sort of how I’m reading it.
It’s not the case that the left would have won if only more left-leaning people went out and voted. Gerrymandering and restrictive voter registration is designed to prevent exactly that.
There were and are lots of forces at work regarding this, it can’t be boiled down to “you didn’t scream loud enough” I’m afraid. Blame the plutocrats and their cronies, the racists and sexists who are happy to give away the keys to the kingdom so long as the new king promises to string up the people they don’t like. Don’t blame the people whose voices are being silenced.
@Hambeast, I read that earlier today, too. Rick Perry, Department of Energy. Fantastic, so he’ll be the guy with the nukes and the oil and the coal, then. Great.
My theory about Trump’s cabinet picks is that they’re being done in such a way as to publicly humiliate the Republican Party leadership. By putting in a bunch of idiots, Tea Partiers and Russian stooges, he forces what’s left of the old GOP machine to perform obeisance. The fact that it leaves people in office who are utterly incompetent to perform the duties of those offices is probably not relevant to him.
Trump’s the sort of man who would rather have servants than allies, and I think we’re going to see more of this sort of power-politics going forward.
And if they can do that when they don’t control every branch of government, imagine what they can do now that they do.
No one in this blog community will ever be permitted to vote again.
My theory is that they plan to break the federal government beyond repair so they can install a white supremacist theocracy. Pence is a Dominionist, after all.
I don’t think there’s a plan. The Republican party is a mishmash of 1.) Plutocrats who care only about enriching their own regardless of the cost to others, 2.) Dominionists who seek the freedom for their religion to oppress all others, 3.) White nationalists who wish to deport or kill all non-whites from the US, and 4.) High-minded Idiots who think the solution to all the world’s ills is to do things which have not worked ever, except try even harder this time. There’s considerable overlap between the groups. (Trump himself is definitely #1 and may be #3 or #4 depending on which things you think he’s been lying about.)
This results in a strange, barely-coherent, and sometimes contradictory agenda which doesn’t do much to accomplish the aims of any of those groups except sometimes #1. Trump’s picks simply offer more of the same, except on steroids. Which is likely to severely damage or even break the system, but only incidentally.
I don’t know. It seems so perfectly calculated to install the worst possible person in charge of each department.
I’m experiencing a dread combination of a cold, PMS, and seasonal affective disorder with a bonus wind chill advisory and a rough couple of days at work today. I almost started crying at my desk today because after a few days of reading about what’s going in Aleppo and with Trump being all buddy buddy with Putin (and by extension Assad) and being bros with Rodrigo Duterte I started pondering whether Americans would accept a genocide if Trump decided to carry one out. I unfortunately came to the conclusion that a lot of people would.
– We already did commit genocide against the indigenous peoples of this continent and Americans aren’t terribly honest with ourselves that genocide is what it was
– We already accepted slavery
– We already accepted Japanese internment camps
– Many white Americans bend over backwards to excuse it when a cop shoots an unarmed person who is black, Latino, homeless, mentally ill or some combination of those. People seem to believe that it is okay to execute someone without trial if they view that person as bad or dangerous. White Americans tend to not see BLM protesters as social justice fighters, they see them at best inconveniences to the usual order of things and at worst dangerous thugs.
– Many Americans are pro death penalty even when they know the possibly the prisoner was wrongly convicted exists and even when they know the methods of execution are painful and cruel. They also think prison rape is funny and don’t care about inhumane conditions in prison. Because again, once someone is deemed bad, who cares about what happens to them?
– Americans don’t notice or care when genocides happen in other countries.
– So far the GOP has rolled over for Trump instead of standing up to him in any more than a token way.
– Alt right assholes were trolling the Twitter accounts of victims stuck in Aleppo. I expect blissful ignorance of Americans but Trump fans are gleefully and openly cheering not for theoretical fantasy genocide or past genocides but real actual genocide.
I honestly just have no reason to believe that Americans would en masse do anything to stop a mass execution of say, undocumented immigrants, prisoners, poor people of color or drug addicts. I really think a significant number of Americans would support genocide within our borders (we’ve always been good at ignoring fucked up things our government does elsewhere) and it’s really fucking depressing.
It’s not so much that I’m surprised by any of those, but I never really put all those things together in my head before.
Karalora said
I think it’s possible that the Clueless Yellow-Crested Yahoo is being coached by some of Snowberry’s #1’s and #4’s. That, or, he’s putting his good buddies in places he figures will make them the best punishment for the Hillary voters. Or possibly both; those aren’t exactly mutually exclusive. *sigh*
OT, but much on my mind:
A friend died suddenly this morning; I learned a couple houes ago. I had only known her since I started transition. She had started hormones a few months earlier than me, and we initially bonded over that. It was totally unexpected and it’s still not known what happened. She was fine last night, and now she’s gone. I have only barely started to come to grips with it. At least work is cancelled tonight due to snow, so I don’t have to go pretend I can function for several hours.
@Dali
I’m so sorry. Hugs if you want them.
Dalliama, how awful! My heart goes out to you.
I’ll open up a open thread for personal stuff.
Oh Dalillama, that’s so awful. Around if you need to talk.
Oh my gosh, @Dalillama. That’s so awful, I’m so sorry :C I hope you can take all the time you need.
I’m so sorry to hear that, @Dalillama. Internet hugs if you want them.
Hi, one more thought on blue hair:
I didn’t know that several of their favorite targets for hate have had blue hair. But having read this site and about contemporary misogynism generally a bit, I thought their hate was related to their preference for simplistic evolutionary just-so stories.
Blue is a nice color. Blue things, including blue hair, often look nice. However, since for these men women’s attractiveness is a) objectively calculable because it is b) determined by their appeal as breeding stock, hair died unnatural colors is noise in the system, an attractive nuisance. It is nice-looking hair, but it offers no assistance in signaling what the hair of Vox Day’s children would look like, were he to choose this woman to bear his children.
So, it’s back to that thing where their vexed, dizzy, angry boners are unable to decide whether feminists are hideous or sexy. Also, it plays on their resentment of us being “unnatural” – it’s ok if Roosh V dyes his graying beard brown, because that is his natural hair color and attempting to look younger to prey on younger women makes sense to them. But blue hair doesn’t, and they fear/hate anything that doesn’t make sense to them. It’s even worse for them that the lack of bio-info provided to them by The Evil Short-Haired Ladies!
Also, I wanted to say hi! I read the comments here frequently but have only commented once or twice before. I’m going to try to do so more, because this seems like a really great community and reading this site has helped me a lot over the past few years.
Hi!
@Serebrianyi Golub
Hello and welcome in! Welcome package is on the right, or way down at the bottom on some tablets.
Hi! And my condolences. Sorry to drop an essay at that moment in the thread; I didn’t see what was going on.
@ Sebrianyi Golub: I’m pretty much the same way: much lurking, little posting. Welcome!
@ Dalillama: sorry to hear it. Hugs if you want ’em.