If you are white, and you write science fiction or fantasy, it is only a matter of time before you are cancelled.
This is the logical end of intersectional identity politics, which is really just the resurrected, zombified corpse of Marxism. White people are the oppressors. People of color are the oppressed. All white people are racist, and the only way to fight racism is with more racism. Black lives matter. White lives don’t.
The United States of America is currently engaged in a violent struggle that will determine whether this hyper-racist intersectional ideology will defeat the populist uprising that has its champion in Trump, or whether the country will reject this new form of Marxism and come back from the brink of insanity. But in science fiction and fantasy, the war is already over, and the intersectionalists have won. It is now only a matter of time before they purge the field of everything—and everyone—that is white.
The last chance for the SF&F community to come back from the brink was probably in 2015. The intersectionalists were ascendant, but they hadn’t yet taken over the field. (That happened in 2016, when N.K. Jemisin, an avowed social justice warrior and outspoken champion for anti-white identity politics, won the Hugo Award for best new novel for the next three consecutive years.) A populist uprising within fandom known as the Puppies attempted to push back, and were smeared as racists, sexists, misogynists, homophobes, and Nazis. Whatever your opinion of the Puppies (and there were some bad eggs among them, to be sure), they did not deserve to be silenced, ridiculed, shouted down, and threatened with all manner of violence and death threats for their grievances. After the Puppies were purged, the intersectionalists took over and began to reshape the field in their image.
The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer wasn’t renamed the Astounding Award because Campbell was a racist (even though he was). His name was stripped from the award because the people who renamed it are racists—not in the bullshit way the intersectionalists have redefined it, but in the true sense of the word: discrimination based based on race.
Before I get smeared as a white supremacist for writing this post, I want to make it absolutely clear that I welcome racial diversity in science fiction and fantasy. I’ve been very pleased to read some excellent stories from people of color in Lightspeed Magazine recently, including “Miss Beulah’s Braiding and Life Change Salon,” and there have been several excellent stories from Chinese authors in Clarkesworld recently as well. I just don’t think it’s necessary to tear down white authors in order to make space for non-white ones. That’s the racism of intersectionality, and I reject it.
It is much easier for these intersectional racists to cancel you after you’re dead, but they’ll come after you while you’re still alive if they can. That’s what’s happening to George R.R. Martin right now. Frankly, I would have a lot more sympathy for him if he hadn’t made his bed with these people back during the Puppygate debacle. Behold your “true fans,” Mr. Martin. The fact that you’re the biggest name in epic fantasy right now isn’t going to save you.
But if the intersectionalists are all anti-white racists, why are so many of them white? Because for decades, crunchy liberal white folks have been taught that everything bad in the world is their fault, and the world would be better off without them. Climate change. Racism. Colonialism. It’s the white man’s burden 2.0. I know, because I was raised in this milieu. I was forced to read Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States in high school, and I know just how false and dangerous it really is. Besides, the revolution always eats its own. If you think you’re going to get a pass because you’ve read How to Be an Anti-Racist, you’ve posted a black square to your social media, and you’ve donated money to any of these social justice causes, you’re deluding yourself.
If you’re white, they’re coming for you. It’s not just your “whiteness” that they want to purge—that’s just a motte-and-bailey tactic to make their racism less overt and more palatable. The only thing they need to know about you is the color of your skin. If they know that, they think they know everything else about you, because they are the true racists—and in the world they’re trying to create, everything white must be purged.
The good news is that the cultural tides are turning, and the racist ideology that drives these folks is at or near its zenith. Marxism always fails, and cancel culture cancels itself in the end. If you play your cards right, getting cancelled can actually boost your career, rather than destroy it.
But the next ten years are going to be very tricky to navigate. Even if the intersectionalists lose on the national level, as I hope and pray that they do, they have already taken over the SF&F field so thoroughly and completely that the only way forward is to abandon all the old institutions and rebuild them from scratch. The indie publishing revolution has made this much more possible, but Amazon still dominates the indie publishing world, and they’ve already donated tens of millions of dollars to these Marxist causes. How much longer do we have before the intersectional ideologues within Amazon rewrite the algorithms according to their ideology? It’s only a matter of time.
Fortunately, if you are resilient enough, time is on your side.
Good article, Joe! I just have two corrections…
The first line should read: “If you are white, it is only a matter of time before you are cancelled.” That’s their end goal.
Also, the campaign was called Sad Puppies. A joke by Larry Correia had related the leading cause of puppy sadness to “boring message-fic winning awards”.
Thanks Scifibookguy. I do believe that is their ultimate goal—to disenfranchise and destroy all white people in every field—but I see a backlash brewing in the culture generally, and I think the insanity of the last few months is going to bite them in the ass hard. But in SF&F specifically, it’s different because they’ve already infiltrated all of the major institutions. The backlash, when it comes, will push them to double down in the areas that they already control, which means that we can expect them to reshape the science fiction and fantasy field in their own image first, whether or not they manage to succeed with the culture generally.
It is significant that the Sad and Rabid Puppy campaigns happened before Trump and Brexit, not after. Science fiction and fantasy has been dominated by leftists for decades, which is why it was one of the first fronts for the intersectionalists in the culture war. At this point, it is still enemy occupied territory, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
For anyone on the right side of center, there are two choices: Baen or indie publishing. Fortunately, indie publishing has some great authors and visionaries, who have pulled together other authors. Michael Anderle, Chris Kennedy & Mark Wandrey, Discoverscifi.com, and many others. And of course Baen has some of the greatest authors ever, and does not discriminate by politics. Larry Correia, David Drake, Tom Kratman, John Ringo, David Weber, Ryk E. Spoor, Charles Gannon, Eric Flint, Mercedes Lackey, Lois McMaster Bujold and others.
For those interested, an unbiased look at the Sad Puppies campaigns can be found here: infogalactic.com/info/Sad_Puppies
So China Mike Glyer picked up this blog post in his daily File770 post, and I find it interesting because it has driven negligible traffic here, even though there’s a fair amount of people bashing this post over there. At the height of the Sad Puppies campaign in 2015, whenever he linked to one of my posts, it would drive hundreds of views and dozens of comments. It makes me wonder: how many of the people on File770 are sock puppets or Soros-funded trolls? The sheer amount of gaslighting certainly fits the profile. Or maybe the only people who read File770 anymore prefer to live in China Mike’s carefully curated echo chamber? Either way, I find it amusing.