As long as you rely on billionaires for funding, you are participating in a criminal enterprise » « Terror!

Some news of progress!

OK, happy news to start the day.

  • After Jeannette Ng called them out, the sponsors of the John W. Campbell Award didn’t dig in their heels — instead, they took a look at the archive of old Campbell editorials, said “Hey, those are pretty shitty and they don’t reflect our values at all,” and they just renamed it to the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. No muss, no fuss, no drama, no screeching right-wingers howling that they can’t do that (well, there are some voices echoing out of the bottom of a trash can — Theodore Beale has declared that this decision means “Science Fiction is Dead” — but no one with real influence has protested).
  • Oh, look. Someone at YouTube noticed that their generosity towards Nazis might be hurting their bottom line. YouTube killed several big-name Nazi accounts, finally. Lost to us now are the racist words of James Allsup, VDARE, the American Identity movement, and The Right Stuff, channels that pumped out the most vile anti-Semitic and racist garbage. I’m most gratified to see VDARE get stomped, because that organization has been poisoning mainstream politics and media for decades. They’re whining about the death of political thought now.
  • Andy Ngo has been quietly let go from Quillette — they say it’s so he can pursue other projects, but we all know it’s really because of this article, where an undercover investigator discovered that he was actively collaborating with Patriot Prayer to bias his reporting.

    Ngo tags along with Patriot Prayer during demonstrations, hoping to catch footage of an altercation. Ben says Ngo doesn’t film Patriot Prayer protesters discussing strategies or motives. He only turns his camera on when members of antifa enter the scene.
    “There’s an understanding,” he says, “that Patriot Prayer protects him and he protects them.”

    Bye, Andy. We knew you weren’t a journalist all along, and you have to be pretty blatant when even Quillette finds you toxic.

When the universe is getting cleaned up one asshole at a time, you have to appreciate these little victories. Especially when they kill all of science fiction and all political thought, an impressive achievement.

As long as you rely on billionaires for funding, you are participating in a criminal enterprise » « Terror!

Comments

  1. Sean Boyd says

    Wait wait wait, now. We’re starting the morning with GOOD news? That hasn’t happened since, oh, about November 8, 2016. I think I’m going to need another cup of coffee.

  2. Joé McKen says

    Seems YouTube reversed course on VDARE – channel’s back up, just checked. Rest are still dead last I heard.

    I wonder if any of the many, many milquetoasts who waxed indignant at Ngo’s milkshaking will even mention that he’s been exposed as the lying shit-stirring fraud we knew he was all along.

    Also, amusing to see Teddy Beale still thinks he has some relevance.

  3. says

    After Jeannette Ng called them out, the sponsors of the John W. Campbell Award didn’t dig in their heels — instead, they took a look at the archive of old Campbell editorials, said “Hey, those are pretty shitty and they don’t reflect our values at all,” and they just renamed it to the Astounding Award for Best New Writer.

    Wonders never cease.

  5. PaulBC says

    Campbell’s thalidomide editorial “In praise of involuntary human testing” (not the actual title but might as well have been) was enough to persuade me. (Someone posted a link in the other thread and I’m too lazy to find it right not.)

    What a fucking nut.

  6. ardipithecus says

    In Praise OF John W. Campbell:

    I started reading Analog in 1965, shortly after going to middle school and discovering all that SF in the school library.

    Even at that age, I could see through the bullshit in his editorials, and I was inspired to refute them, even if only for my own satisfaction. That meant teaching myself to dig out facts, and to think critically. My learning of those skills was from other sources, but the motivation was my anger at JWC.

    When I first saw that XKCD cartoon “someone is wrong on the internet”, I immediately thought of Campbell’s editorials.

  7. Stuart Smith says

    Damn, but they clearly didn’t go hard enough on the last one, since they failed to kill all journalism.

  8. gijoel says

    I find it weird that Asians like Andy Ngo and Michelle Malkin throw their lot in with violent racists. Do they even remember their history lessons (yellow peril, war time internment camps, etc.)? Or do they think that they’re magically protected from that because of their support to white supremacists?

  9. chrislawson says

    Renaming the Campbell Award — WIN!
    Dumping VDARE — WIN! but apparently only temporary
    Dumping Ngo — not even close to a win while Quillette continues

  10. Owlmirror says

    Theodore Beale has declared that this decision means “Science Fiction is Dead

    Rabid Puppy: Yips, Growls, Whines — News at 11. In other shocking news, water continues to be wet.

    NB: Do not approach rabid puppy!

  11. blf says

    New Trump/Pence Logo Nearly Identical to That of White Supremacist Group VDARE:

    […]
    The red, white and blue logo, which features a lion’s head ringed by stars, was not an original creation. The logo appears to have been lifted from a now deleted tweet from the White Supremacist organization known as VDARE.

    […]

    VDARE is named for Virginia Dare who is thought to be the first European white child born on the American continent. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists them as a hate group, writing: “Founded in 1999 by anti-immigrant activist and author Peter Brimelow, the Center for American Unity has served to promote the work of white supremacists, anti-Semites and others on the radical right.”

    This is not the first time the Trump campaign has been connected to the group. While he accepted the Republican nomination in 2016, a tweet from VDARE was featured on the Twitter ticker at the party’s national convention.

    […]