Larry Correia Disinvited from Gaming Convention

Joe Long discusses the latest major outbreak of SJW tyranny in Nerdland.

The classic Marxists of the 20th century wanted to bring the entire world under Communist domination. The new Millennium’s heirs to that movement on the progressive Left are more ambitious: They strive to dominate all the worlds—even the ones that exist only in your imagination. Perhaps especially those.

Using strategies reminiscent of campus crybullies, Leftist activists increasingly are trying to empower literary and hobby Thought Police, and to force every sector of our culture to ostracize non-radicals and wrong-thinkers. This week’s successful fascist psy-op was launched against Larry Correia, a best-selling science-fiction and fantasy author. Correia, an avid wargamer as well as a genre celebrity, was disinvited from a tabletop gaming convention at which he’d been listed as a featured guest.

Yes, you read that correctly. Ohio’s venerable “Origins Game Fair”—where “grognards” and other varieties of tabletop gaming fan congregate, to roll oddly shaped dice and move miniature tanks or tiny, carefully-painted orcs across the hexagonally-delineated maps of imaginary battlefields—the gaming convention has withdrawn the invitation to its prominent, popular guest of honor, because of a campaign of Social Justice Warrior complaints.

The fair’s executive director, John Ward, condescendingly Leftsplained that counterrevolutionary thought must be suppressed, and that proponents of such thoughts must obviously be exiled from society.

OK, that’s my paraphrase. It’s close enough, though. Unironically employing language reminiscent of compliant totalitarian functionaries across time and, perhaps, dimensions, Ward explained, “…when [Correia] was recommended I was unaware of some personal views that are specifically unaligned with the philosophy of our show and our organization. I want to thank those of you that brought this error to our attention. Origins is an inclusive and family friendly event . . . ” …

Not only did Ward create a standard that “personal views” (or alleged personal views) of presenters must share an alignment (presumably “lawful evil”) with the show and organization, he actually thanked the informants who detected Correia’s badthink before it could infect his event.

What were the “personal views?” They were never specified. We’re left to derive them from Correia’s work, as the helpful informants did. (Correia offered his own gracious rejoinder on his website: “For me personally, meh. I go to enough events. I’ll just do something else fun that weekend.”)

Correia’s most popular series of novels, Monster Hunter International, is a gunslinging, tongue-in-cheek fantasy action-adventure, set in a modern world secretly menaced by legions of B-movie monsters. The heroes are private contractors, in the entrepreneurial mode of the original “Ghostbusters” (the ones who were male, and funny) but with a far better arsenal. This ragtag band combats the monster menace while navigating an obstructive Federal bureaucracy to collect generous bounties. Correia’s cast features members of several races, a few species (some of them imaginary), and every existing sex (both of them real). However, his female, African-American and other assorted protagonists all love guns—and they all respect, whether or not they share, traditional religious beliefs.

Baptists, conservative Jews, the anti-monster detachment of the Pope’s Swiss Guards, and Correia’s Mormon co-religionists all make positive appearances in Correia’s novels. And folks tolerant—or celebratory—of guns and religion, show up, too. These facts about these fictional people apparently forfeit all intersectionality points!

Correia’s Monster Control Bureau, which is featured in that series, deserves special mention. The fictional MCB is a secretive, ruthless government organization which manipulates the media; enforces irrational and counterproductive regulations; has sincere, patriotic agents at street-level but suffers from high-level corruption, and (spoiler alert!) just might have elements colluding with the monsters. (All this long before the Muller probe!)

No perusal of Correia’s works reveals misogyny, racism, or any legitimate reason for resentment by his non-readers, who can easily find works tailored to their “social justice” tastes. However, if nonprogressivism is a crime, Correia’s surely guilty. After all, other works by the author, include fantastical alternate history series in which FDR is an antagonist of the heroes, and his farcical The Adventures of Tom Stranger: Interdimensional Insurance Agent audiobooks are unapologetic right-wing political humor. His strongly-expressed views on politics in the science-fiction publishing world have also frequently sparked reactions and melodramatic overreactions; the disinvitation from Origins is only the most recent Correian War within the world of fandom.

This only intensifies the loyalty of his many fans, however, who have responded to the latest high-handed progressive buffoonery with fury.

RTWT

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Larry Correia’s response to being disinvited:

For the record, I’m not any of the things they accuse me of. Despite writing a whole bunch of books, and a ton of political articles, and all of my many personal interactions with fans (I’ve done up to 15 cons and events in one year), none of these people can ever find any actual examples of me being sexist, racist, or homophobic (and the Guardian looked hard and still came up with nothing).

That’s because in reality, I’m a libertarian who does not give a shit who you are, or what you do, and it is none of my business, as long as you stay off my lawn.

This time they kept calling me a “rape apologist”. They dug up that classic that John Scalzi created about me several years ago. It’s total nonsense. I spent many years teaching self defense to women, and I’m all in favor of every rape attempt ending with the rapist receiving a couple hollow points to the chest. But that just goes to show the power of lies, rumor, and narrative.

So years later, complete strangers come out of the woodwork to talk about how evil I am. Yeah… That does get tiresome. It is wearying.

I’m really sorry for any fans who were planning on seeing me at Origins. Hopefully I’ll get to meet you at some other event.

RTWT

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John Ringo had some good suggestions for other potentially-targeted SF-authors on FB:

So Larry Correia’s invite as GOH to Origins got rescinded because he’s ‘racist’, ‘homophobe’, ‘has sex with manatees’ etc.

This is a strong suggestion to any decent author, especially all Baen authors.

If invited to a con, especially as a ‘special guest’, require the following in your contract:

Pre-paid travel. (Non-refundable, reserved for your use and one guest.)
Pre-paid room. (Non-refundable, reserved for your use and one guest.)
A cash guarantee of non-cancellation on their part.

Show them links to what happened to myself and Larry.

If they cave to the SJW mobs, make it cost them.

If they refuse, they’re probably setting you up. (This, very much, looked like a set-up to boost visibility. ConCarolinas is slightly different.) Tell them that based upon recent history you have to assume they’re setting you up if they have issues with such basic items and ask them not to contact you again.

Any convention that for any reason plays this game of ‘we have to rescind your invitation’ (Origins, ConCarolinas, ArchCon) refuse to attend and ask other authors to refuse to attend. Not for any reason. Not because it’s ‘local’, not because it’s ‘convenient’. Not because ‘I’ve always gone to X con!’

Start choking them off of the revenue stream created by our attendance.

Just. Say. No.

As authors, we really don’t need conventions anymore. You get more sales through posts online and engaging in social media (for as long as Twitter and Facebook will allows us to do so) than going to all the conventions in the world. The cons are mostly for your fans and if the cons want to play this game, the fans need to make it clear they’re not going.

The exceptions to this are LibertyCon and Dragon Con. They’re both professionally run cons run by professional people who don’t play the SJW game. They’re TRULY apolitical. ( FenCon Convention seems to still be playing it down the middle as well.)

With every other convention, assume you’re being set-up at this point and don’t be played for a sucker.

Oh, yeah, and as fans and lovers of liberty, never, ever attend Origins again if you ever have. Or ConCarolinas. (Sorry, Jada.) Or ArchCon. Or WorldCon.

We need a list. They never will be missed. No they never will be missed.

This has to stop and it won’t until we take a stand. For those of you reading this who are ‘liberals’, please look at the history of how this is going and wonder how long it will take for YOU to end up against the wall. Think they’re going to stop with me and Larry? Think again.

Boycott, divest, sanction.

It’s time to strike back. We don’t need cons. Cons need us. Time for them to figure that out.