Brian Niemeier points out the fundamental flaw in the conservative strategy of permanent retreat:
We also agree that the opposition’s numbers are small relative to greater fandom and the general population. Yet despite being vastly outnumbered, look what they’ve achieved.
They halved the Big Five’s SFF sales, took over SFWA, and dominated Worldcon–all in 20 years.
You correctly argue that these institutions are irrelevant. But they weren’t prior to that 20-year march. I’m all for discussing which hills we’re ready to die on, but before we can have that discussion, everyone needs to understand how the enemy operates.
They’re experts at infiltrating and subverting organizations–especially when they’re at a numeric disadvantage. San Diego, SLCCC, and Gen Con have lots of thankless scut jobs that Morlocks will gladly take to get their feet in the door and multiply.
How many of those cons have codes of conduct? All it takes is one infiltrator on a committee and the other members’ complacency to weaponize the rules against normal fans.
Larry posted a while back about a guy who complained that Gen Con isn’t safe for minorities. That’s how it starts.
I’m all for starting new awards and moving on to greener convention pastures. But unless the unequivocal message is sent that entryism will not be tolerated, anything we build will look just like Worldcon and trad publishing inside of 2 decades.
Conservative strategy is guaranteed failure. Conservatism is the prevent defense of politics. It doesn’t always fail, but it fails often enough that anyone who advocates it as a strategy should be assumed to be inept and incompetent.
I am working on developing a proper Code of Conduct designed to not only keep out entryists, but eject them as soon as they reveal themselves. If you want peace, prepare for war. If you want freedom of thought and speech, prepare to police the would be policemen.