From SJWs Always Lie:
Strategic Principle #7: Keep the moderates in check.
Moderates are the people who are nominally on your side but don’t have the courage to take on the enemy directly and never hesitate to offer advice and criticism to those who do. They generally mean well, but they have a tendency to believe that goodwill, hand-holding, and being open-minded will inspire even the most lunatic, hate-filled SJW to see sweet reason. Even worse, this belief often causes them to attack their putative allies in order to prevent their allies from attacking the enemy since attacking the enemy would get in the way of the rapprochement that the moderate is certain will happen with the very next concession.
Moderates are usually nice people who want to think well of everyone, and they make for very good ambassadors and diplomats. Unfortunately, they usually prefer appeasement to offense, and they are far more inclined to shoot at their own side than they are at the enemy. One of the readers at Vox Popoli, Civis Silas, described their unreliable tendencies in an amusing little dialogue describing a fictional duel of honor being refereed by a moderate.
Moderate: Okay, gentlemen, or rather, gentle cisgendered humans, you will take five paces, then turn and shoot. SJW has won the coin toss and he will shoot first. Understood?
SJW: Xir.
Moderate: What?
SJW: Xir is my pronoun of choice. Also, I identify as Otherkin. Specifically, a llama.
Moderate: Right. I do apologize, I certainly didn’t mean to offend you. Xir will shoot first.
Anti-SJW: Wait, how did he win the coin toss? He called heads AND tails!
Moderate: Xir!
SJW: smirks
Anti-SJW: Fine, whatever. It’s not like he could hit the broad side of a football stadium.
Moderate: Xir!
Anti-SJW: Seriously?
Moderate: It’s only polite. Very well. Are you both ready?
Anti-SJW: Sure.
SJW: Time to meet social justice, hatelord!
Moderate: One…
SJW: immediately turns and aims pistol at Anti-SJW’s back.
Moderate: looks at SJW disapprovingly. Two…
SJW: CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE! Fires and completely misses.
Anti-SJW: What the hell? turns around. You bastard!
SJW: How dare you turn around! That’s against the rules! Hey, he’s turning around!
Moderate: Anti! You must take three more paces before you may turn around and return fire!
Anti-SJW: incredulous. He shot at me after two!
SJW: Xir!
Moderate: Do not lower yourself to xir’s level! Winning the wrong way is worse than losing!
Anti-SJW: Are you out of your freaking mind? aims at SJW
SJW: cowers in fear and wets himself. Sorry, xirself.
Moderate: How dare you! draws pistol and aims it at Anti-SJW. If you do not turn around this very instant, I shall shoot you myself, you dishonorable cur!
This seemed appropos in light of this email from a reader chronicling the hypocrisy of Ethan Van Sciver, whose behavior has been almost textbook moderate since he first sensed the opportunity to virtue signal to the Comic-SJWs to whom he is nominally opposed.
I know you’ve been talking to Ethen Van Sciver recently, and that he’s made some youtube videos about it. I wanted to draw your attention to his hypocrisy, and how it essentially mirrors the behaviours you described in ‘SJWs always Lie’ where moderates hit the right much harder than they do to the left…
On a video Van Sciver made titled ‘The Comic Book Culture War is REAL and DELIBERATE!‘
Van Sciver was talking to a writer from Bleeding Cool, and his attitude to this writer who very explicitly states that comics are a cultural battleground in the culture war is so soft and conciliatory, especially when compared to how he talks about you and Alt*Hero.
At one point he tells us that the Bleeding Cool writer even said “This is a culture war battleground. This is a comic book culture war battleground, and if we give them this then it’s all over. They will have won.” – at no point does Van Sciver talk about these avowed hardline leftists in the same tone he uses about you in this video: ‘ETHAN VAN SCIVER vs VOX DAY, CYBERFROG RESERVOIR FROG #1 commentary, more goofy twitter SJWs’
- at 19:40 Van Sciver agrees that he is a moderate.
- at 20:02 he refers to this as “your culture war between SJSs and the extreme right.” he assigns ownership of it to you personally, as if you’re starting this conflict, when he has previously described to his audience in the other video how SJWs view comics as a battleground in the culture war.
- at 19:50 he then paradoxically says that your comments about him and Diversity and Comics are making an assumption about some kind of culture war: “All of this presumes that there’s some kind of culture war going on that we all need to pick up sides in.” but he himself has already described how the left specifically told him theres an ongoing culture war.
- At 21:10 he says of you that “being the other side of the coin” to SJWs as “not helpful, its hypocritical, and all it does is kind of cause conflict and drives readers away.”
I found it interesting that he never voiced this belief when describing someone from the left specifically telling him how comics have become part of the culture war.
Van Sciver goes on to describe his friend Diversity and Comics as being about “kicking out culture warriors from the industry, and the hobby that he loves, and that would include you.”
This seems at odds with Diversity and Comics actual attitude. He constantly talks about himself as being ‘very forgiving’ (whatever that means) and constantly giving far left wing writers more opportunities by continuing to buy their products. Take the title of this recent video from Diversity and Comics as an example: ‘Please Look Past Mark Waid’s Weird Online Antics And BUY This Excellent CAPTAIN AMERICA Comic‘
I can’t get worked up about this sort of behavior myself, because it is just what moderates do. They all do it and they all do it all the time. To get upset about it would be like being angry at fish for insisting on swimming. Note that SJWAL was published in 2015, long before I’d even thought about deconverging the comics industry or heard of either Van Sciver or Diversity and Comics.