The great poets steal

I remember how disappointed I was when I learned that Harry Turtledove wasn’t a wonderfully imaginative writer, but was simply rewriting Byzantine history. I’m a little more relaxed about the fact that Frank Herbert found a fair amount of inspiration from a historical novel about an Islamic jihad in Russia:

Even a casual political observer will recognize the parallels between the universe of Dune and the Middle East of the late 20th century. Islamic theology, mysticism, and the history of the Arab world clearly influenced Dune, but part of Herbert’s genius lay in his willingness to reach for more idiosyncratic sources of inspiration. The Sabres of Paradise (1960) served as one of those sources, a half-forgotten masterpiece of narrative history recounting a mid-19th century Islamic holy war against Russian imperialism in the Caucasus.

Lesley Blanch, the book’s author, has a memorable biography. A British travel writer of some renown, she is perhaps best known for On the Wilder Shores of Love (1954), an account of the romantic adventures of four British women in the Middle East. She was also a seasoned traveler, a keen observer of Middle Eastern politics and culture, and a passionate Russophile. She called The Sabres of Paradise “the book I was meant to do in my life,” and the novel offers the magnificent, overstuffed account of Imam Shamyl, “The Lion of Dagestan,” and his decades-long struggle against Russian encroachment.

Anyone who has obsessed over the mythology of Dune will immediately recognize the language Herbert borrowed from Blanch’s work. Chakobsa, a Caucasian hunting language, becomes the language of a galactic diaspora in Herbert’s universe. Kanly, from a word for blood feud among the Islamic tribes of the Caucasus, signifies a vendetta between Dune’s great spacefaring dynasties. Kindjal, the personal weapon of the region’s Islamic warriors, becomes a knife favored by Herbert’s techno-aristocrats. As Blanch writes, “No Caucasian man was properly dressed without his kindjal.”
Herbert is ecumenical with his borrowing, lifting terminology and rituals from both sides of this obscure Central Asian conflict. When Paul Atreides, Dune’s youthful protagonist, is adopted by a desert tribe whose rituals and feuds bear a marked resemblance to the warrior culture of the Islamic Caucasus, he lives at the exotically named Sietch Tabr. Sietch and tabr are both words for camp borrowed from the Cossacks, the Czarist warrior caste who would become the great Christian antagonists of Shamyl’s Islamic holy warriors.

Herbert also lifted two of Dune’s most memorable lines directly from Blanch. While describing the Caucasians’ fondness for swordplay, Blanch writes, “To kill with the point lacked artistry.” In Dune, this becomes “[k]illing with the tip lacks artistry,” advice given to a young Paul Atreides by a loquacious weapons instructor. A Caucasian proverb recorded by Blanch transforms into a common desert aphorism. “Polish comes from the city, wisdom from the hills,” an apt saying for a mountain people, becomes “Polish comes from the cities, wisdom from the desert” in Dune.

Dune’s narrative, however, owes more to The Sabres of Paradise than just terminology and customs. The story of a fiercely independent, religiously inspired people resisting an outside power is certainly not unique to the Caucasus, but Blanch’s influence can be found here, too. The name of Herbert’s major villain, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, is redolent of Russian imperialism. Meanwhile, Imam Shamyl, the charismatic leader of Islamic resistance in the Caucasus, describes the Russian Czar as “Padishah” and his provincial governor as “Siridar,” titles that Herbert would later borrow for Dune’s galactic emperor and his military underlings.

This sort of thing is why I saw absolutely no point in playing superficial “hide the obvious” games and calling elves “snerks” and orcs “grablings” as so many mediocre fantasy writers do. I mean, they’re not fooling anyone, are they? Sure, we’d all like to be as wonderfully and comprehensively inventive as JRR Tolkien, but few of us have the depth of knowledge or the patience required to painstakingly construct an entire world from scratch.

A taste of the bass

While we’re in the process of acquiring the required equipment, the Voxiversity team has been experimenting with some of the different concepts we are planning to apply to the videos we will be producing. Here is a brief sample of one such experiment, entitled Know Thyself, which utilizes the audio from my debate with Greg Johnson.

We will obviously be utilizing higher quality audio than the mic of my gaming headset, and I think we will also bring in some new fonts, preferably some of those regularly used by Castalia House on its covers for some cross-media unity of style. But this should give you some idea of the sort of thing we’ll be doing to bring the concepts to life and make them memorable beyond my simple articulation of them.

If you’d like to assist these efforts and support Voxiversity, you can do so at Freestartr.

And I would be remiss if I failed to note that, somewhat to my surprise, the backers have overwhelmingly selected Immigration & War as the first Voxiversity video.

Various and sundries

First, if you are an investor in Gab but would like to retroactively de-invest for whatever reason, there is a good chance you can still do so. StartEngine has not charged most credit cards, but the cancel button will not work if it has been more than 48 hours. However, if you contact StartEngine support, it is still possible to manually cancel the investment.

Second, the Production Editor of Castalia House is looking for up to four volunteers to help him produce print and ebook editions more rapidly. His list of requirements are as follows:

Basic requirements:

  • Command line experience in Linux or Mac OS X or a BSD, etc.
  • Experience with DVCS. We use Git.
  • Attention to detail. Much of the work involves correcting curly quotes facing the wrong direction, or italics that accidentally include punctuation, etc.
  • Concern for the way text looks, whether in print or in ebook.

For ebooks:

  • Markdown
  • Basic HTML and CSS

For print:

  • LaTeX (for marking up manuscripts, not writing new commands or environments).
  • Familiarity with basic typesetting concepts is preferred.

To help with tool development:

  • Experience writing LaTeX macros and environments
  • Python
  • Advanced Pandoc tricks (filters, custom writers)
  • Lua
  • Docker
  • Adobe Acrobat Pro (we’d like to customize some preflight profiles)

Please only volunteer if you really like doing this stuff and have at least a few hours every week to devote to it. We have a lot to do, we move fast, and our smooth operation relies heavily upon everyone doing what they do without requiring a great deal of communication or cheerleading.

Third, a member of the Dread Ilk is looking to fill some job openings in Alabama. If you want to send your resume to them, email it to me with JOB-AL in the subject and I will forward it to the correct party.

  • Engineer, Analyst, and Programming Positions in Huntsville, AL (JOB-AL)

Catalonia: the litmus test

Is the globalist’s neo-liberal world order actually rooted in democracy or not? What happens in Catalonia over the next three months has the potential to completely unmask the neo-liberals’ dubious claims to democratic legitimacy:

One of those crises that no one saw coming is about to rear its head in a very unlikely locale: Catalonia, Spain’s richest province, where the local government has scheduled an independence referendum on October 1.  Of course, some observers – e,g, Julian Assange – did see it coming, but the current trend to find “fascists” under every bed in America may have obscured our ability to detect them where they really live – in Madrid, where the federal authorities are threatening to arrest Catalonian politicians who advocate independence.

Madrid has mobilized 4,000 police to stop the referendum. They are seizing election materials, shutting down web sites, and invading the offices of newspapers: they have threatened 700 pro-independence mayors with arrest and prosecution.

The Spanish position – upheld by the country’s Constitutional Court – is that only the federal authorities can call a referendum, and that in any case all Spanish voters, not just those resident in Catalonia, must be allowed to vote on the question of Catalonian independence. So much for the right of self-determination…. Catalonia’s bid for self-determination is an ideological litmus test, one that tells us everything we need to know about the main forces contending for power in the world. The reason is because the crisis is taking place on the terrain of Europe, in the very midst of the “free” West. Since forever and a day we have been told that the “democratic” West doesn’t commit acts of mass repression against their own people: that the right of “self-determination” is universal, and that that liberal democracy is not about to mimic the methods of, say, Slobodan Milosevic, and put down a popular uprising by force. These methods – they claim — are the exclusive province of “illiberal” regimes, like those in Russia, Belarus, and now Hungary, which has been moved into the “illiberal” camp by its refusal to allow an invasion by Middle Eastern migrants.

Except that the threats and repressive measures of “democratic” Spain have exposed this conceit as nonsense. As October 1 approaches, and Madrid prepares to crush the Catalonian revolution with brute force, the myth of the “democratic” West is being shaken to its foundations – with the growing prospect that violent repression will bring the whole dilapidated edifice down on the heads of the people, both Spaniards and Catalonians alike.

There are no shortage of good reasons to question the sensibilities and the wisdom of the Catalonian secessionists. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical that Catalonians will be better off under self-rule than Spanish rule. But all of that is irrelevant with regards to the question of whether the neo-liberal world order stands, as it claims, on a foundation of democratic legitimacy, or if that is merely a false mask for the Divine Right of Moneylenders.

EXCERPT: Tithe to Tartarus

This is an excerpt from Moth & Cobweb Book 6, Tithe to Tartarus, now the #1 New Release in Children’s Supernatural Books. The entire Moth & Cobweb series, beginning with Swan Knight’s Son, is now available via Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

Yumiko was unwilling to step onto the catwalk because she could not see why a winged man would use one to reach a door four stories in the air. Instead, she swung gracefully in and used her glider wings to break her speed just enough that she could drive two knives, one in each hand, into the plywood boards covering the windows. Weighing less than a pound, she could hang from one hand or flip herself up and balance on her boot toes on the knife hilts. The dizzying drop to the empty factory floor was below her. The railing was next to her, as was the odd, archaic door.

She had seen such a door in the magic shop where Winged Vengeance left his tuxedo. It was similar in shape, but it was not the same wood, the same size, or clasped with the same ornate hinges. The knob was sapphire, not ruby. But it was clearly a brother to that other door.

She looked down. The brown mat had letters on it. They spelled out GO AWAY.

Yumiko put on boot on the catwalk handrail and reached out with her hand.

The glass doorknob turned. The door was unlocked.

A thrill of suspicion trickled up her spine to her neck. What sort of vigilante left the secret door to his hidden sanctum unlocked?

Warily, Yumiko drove another knife into the plywood further away and perched on it. With her back to the plywood, she expanded her bowstaff, extended to twice its normal length, and used the far tip to prod the door open.

She waited warily for an explosion or an attack by poisonous asps. Neither came.

Closer she crept again, clinging weightlessly to the plywood, and peered around the doorjamb.
At that moment, the flare was exhausted. The light fluttered and failed.

Darkness closed in. Yumiko drew her flashlight. In its beam she saw the eight-sided chamber beyond the strange door, paneled in dark wood, dark beneath a high, octagonal dome.

Weightlessly, she swooped into the chamber, landing in a crouch with no more noise than a falling cherry blossom petal. Here on a table in the middle of the carpet was the same phone on the same table she had seen before.

She waited, wondering whether it would ring.


The phone remained silent. She sent the flashlight beam left and right to inspect the eight walls.

Last time, the arched door had opened, not onto a catwalk inside a deserted factory uptown, but onto a brick wall. Last time, the arched door had been opposite three windows in three walls looking out on the churchyard of a deserted church downtown. The three walls were there, but now two of them were pierced by narrow doors. The wall between them was a niche holding a photographic portrait draped in black. To either side of the photograph were flowers in vases and twigs of incense in holders.

Yumiko shined her beam on the picture. Her sob caught in the throat, heavy with emotion, before her brain consciously recognized the clear features, green eyes, raven-black hair. It was her mother. Stepping nearer, she saw that these smaller doors both sported brass handles, but neither knob nor lock. Behind each was a blank brick wall.

Next, she looked at one of the cabinets. It was also unlocked, but, as before, it also opened up on a blank wall. She pushed back the top of the rolltop desk. Empty.

She walked a circle, slowly inspecting the eight walls. Then, she turned her flashlight up. A wooden dome made of eight curving panels was above. As when last she stood here, the chamber was like a stage setting, not a real room. What was she overlooking?

She directed her beam downward, seeing how obvious were the trail of triangular prints her boot toes made in the thick dust and the tiny, sharp imprints of her heel. Her brow creased. Did Winged Vengeance never sweep the carpet? Perhaps that had been her job. But where were his boot prints?

Kneeling, Yumiko ran a finger along the fibers. She inspected the dust on her fingertip. It was a white powder. The alert light in the corner of her vision flashed. Toxic environment.

Yumiko shivered, remembered that her supersuit had clamped shut, airtight, the last time she had entered this chamber. At that time, she had not known how to turn on the warning messages from the suit’s hidden instruments. Despite this, the suit, or whatever thoughtful paranoiac had designed it, had saved her life.

But she also remembered taking off her mask during her last visit. Why had the toxin coating the carpet not acted on her then? She tried to remember the exact order of events. Yumiko stood, stepped over to the pole lamp, and switched it on.

In the bright light, the dust stain on her fingertip looked dull gray. The warning light in her lenses winked out. The air registered as safe to breathe. She turned the pole lamp off again. The dust turned from gray to white. The warning flashed. Toxic environment.

What kind of material could change its properties when struck by light and turn from lethal to harmless instantly? Whether it was elfin alchemy or human super-science, it was astounding.

And astoundingly stupid to use. How did Winged Vengeance make sure, when he left the room and stepped into a dark place, a closet, unlit corridor, or out into a moonless night, he had no small gray stain overlooked on his elbow, or boot sole, or clinging to the hem of his cape which would instantly suddenly turn white and lethal again? In fact, how had she left this room of death safely?

She could not remember. But surely she had twisted the ring to render herself weightless before exiting since there was no other exit but the window. Could the mist of the elfs disperse the dusty poison?

Yumiko twisted the ring twice widdershins.

The mist thickened about her, rendering her unseen to human eyes. Immediately, her hands began to tremble. Her fingers were cold. She bit on the switch inside her mask to increase the oxygen flow, but she still seemed unable to breathe. Yumiko turned the flashlight left and right, wildly, looked for the source of the threat. No one was here.

Then, she switched the flashlight off. There was a man hanging by his neck from a rope descending from the shadows of the eight-sided dome. An arrow pinned a note, written in blood, to his chest, and protruded from his back. His eyes were terrible pits of emptiness opening into a universe larger and darker than the universe of stars the Earth’s tiny globe spun through. A second man, eyeless, bound, and hanged, was next to the first, also impaled by an arrow. A third man, hanging by the neck, arrow-stabbed, had his wrists tied behind him by his bootlaces. A fourth hung head downward.

She looked over her shoulder. There were more behind her and more to either side, like grisly fruit hanging from a rich tree. One looked as if he had been run over by a truck before being hanged and impaled. Another, as if he had been burned. Yet another had huge bites torn out of his bound arms and legs, as if he had been lowered into a pit of savage animals before dying.

With a creak of ropes, the corpses now all rotated so that their bloated, blackened, torn, and desiccated faces all faced her.

Yumiko screamed in shock and terror. She had let go of the flashlight and covered her mask with her gloves. Gritting her teeth, she forced her cold fingers to move. She grabbed and twisted the ring. Once, twice, thrice, and once more again.

Her longbow and short sword snapped out to their full length, and her cape unfolded into glider wings, knocking the phone off the table. Bolo and boomerang and dozens of knives, barbed and throwing stars jumped out of their belt pouches and fell to the carpet.

The metallic clamor of the dropped weapons rang in her ears. The echo hung in her ears a moment, and silence came.

Fear vanished.

The ghosts of the slain were gone.

A light as clear and subtle as starlight was streaming from the ring in all directions, glinting like Procyon on a clear winter night.

Yumiko stared at the ring in awe, but this time, it was the awe of wonder, not of terror. The woman’s face in the intaglio of the ring had changed again, and now her features were those of a stern and bright-eyed angel crowned with rays.

In defense of Gab

Now the self-appointed Defenders of Gab are appealing to Google in order to get back at me for Gab’s failure to moderate content to the satisfaction of its registrar. I’m less than entirely confident that Google is going to be particularly inclined to leap to the assistance of the self-appointed Defenders of Gab, since Gab is, as you may recall, currently suing Google.

Larry L Sharp PRO · @LarryLSharp
@VoxDay’s blog is on blogspot in case anyone’s asking. I don’t advocate anything. I just provide PSA. How to register a complaint with Google about inappropriate content on blogs using blogspot.com.

Jason American · @jamerica
Vox admitting he played a part in Gab losing their domain registrar. @a @e @u

Larry L Sharp PRO · @LarryLSharp
This is so easy to do! Just pick a topic & paste in the blogger’s URL and submit. The satisfaction of knowing you just did something good in helping to preserve freedom of speech is incredible. I don’t advocate anything of course. Just a PSA.

Larry L Sharp PRO · @LarryLSharp
@VoxDay’s blog is on blogspot in case anyone’s asking. I don’t advocate anything. I just provide PSA. How to register a complaint with Google about inappropriate content on blogs using blogspot.com.

Larry L Sharp PRO · @LarryLSharp
Interesting. He seems to use his blog as his primary means of communicating with his followers. How would they communicate without it? Can high IQ folks do telepathy?

Larry L Sharp PRO · @LarryLSharp
It would make for an interesting experience if the ppl on Gab, who are trying to destroy Gab by reporting it to the Domain Registrar, were to be outed on other social media sites for inappropriate content and then reported to Twitter’s Domain Registrar or other registrars

Larry L Sharp PRO · @LarryLSharp
Could that information be tethered to Twitter asking why he would say such inappropriate things?

Larry L Sharp PRO · @LarryLSharp
Could posts from his blog be tethered to Twitter asking why he would have such inappropriate content?

Larry L Sharp PRO · @LarryLSharp
Is there anyone searching through @VoxDay and @SpaceBunny Twitter accounts for inappropriate posts that should be reported to the FBI and Twitter’s Domain Registrar? Asking for a nosy neighbor.

Larry L Sharp PRO · @LarryLSharp
Is there anyone reporting this to Twitter’s Domain Registrar and to the FBI? How many ppl on Gab who are still on Twitter too can be reporting it? What type of effect would that have on Twitter?

Larry L Sharp PRO · @LarryLSharp
If anyone has a Spacebunny Day face png with a clear background (ready to use) plz post. Thank you in advance ?

Larry L Sharp PRO · @LarryLSharp
It is laughable that some ppl think they can fight the Deep State or whoever to keep Gab up & running when they don’t even have the balls to stand up to some has-been space cadets who are trying to destroy Gab.

Larry L Sharp PRO · @LarryLSharp
The rats are already deserting Gab and going back to the Twitter Ghetto. You never were with us. So, good riddance.

Larry L Sharp PRO · @LarryLSharp
Calling all 4chan /pol/ autists You know what to do.

Larry L Sharp PRO · @LarryLSharp
Interesting that this all occurred – after – @VoxDay said he deleted all of the posts that @MicroChip found offensive.

Larry L Sharp PRO · @LarryLSharp
There’s no time for negativity my friend. It’s time to go for the jugular. This time, there will be no peace brokered by one gabber.

Larry L Sharp PRO · @LarryLSharp
All you Dear @VoxDay and @SpaceBunny supporters get off my TL. Now!

Larry L Sharp PRO · @LarryLSharp
@VoxDay’s blog is on blogspot in case anyone’s asking. I don’t advocate anything. I just provide PSA. How to register a complaint with Google about inappropriate content on blogs using blogspot.com.

I also tend to suspect this gentleman doesn’t understand how Google – or really, Blogger – handles complaints. First, they review the post. Second, they put it into draft mode. Third, they tell you to modify it to remove something specific or they tell you to delete the post. If Blogger tells me to delete something, I will do so. It is, after all, their house. And this would not be the first time that has happened, although it would be the first time in a long while, because, unlike Gab, I abide by their specified standards, and have done so for 14 years.

The amusing thing is that these are the very people who are attempting to lecture everyone on the importance of not punching right. But it is clear that they don’t respect their own professed principle, so why do they expect anyone else to do so?

Tweet of the Day

Martin Vanderhof‏ @wethinkwerefree
I found all of the people Vox has helped by his insistence on adhering to his truths.

(nods) I approve this tweet. Now, VFM, go collect the skulls and start heating up the silver.

TITHE TO TARTARUS

Inflicted with amnesia, Yumiko Ume Moth has managed to discover the identity of the lost love she cannot remember. She has also learned the bitter truth of her mother’s murder. And the party responsible for the absence of the one and the death of the other is the same: the Supreme Council of Anarchists.

Now Yumiko hopes to rescue the brilliant young man who may or may not be her fiance while seeking vengeance for the Grail Queen, her mother. But her only allies are a scatter-brained fairy and the Last Crusade, which despite its grand name consists of a young knight and his dog. Nevertheless, the Foxmaiden will not turn from her path, though all the dark forces of Tartarus stand in her way.

TITHE TO TARTARUS: The Dark Avenger’s Sidekick book three is the 6th volume of Moth & Cobweb.

John C. Wright is one of the living grandmasters of science fiction and the author of THE GOLDEN AGE, AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND, and IRON CHAMBER OF MEMORY, to name just three of his exceptional books. He has been nominated for both the Nebula and Hugo Awards, and his novel SOMEWHITHER won the 2016 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel at Dragoncon. The first book in the Moth & Cobweb series, SWAN KNIGHT’S SON, was a finalist for the 2017 Dragon Award for Best Young Adult Novel.

Those of you who have Amazon Prime may be interested to know that all six books of the Moth & Cobweb series are now available on Kindle Unlimited.

Leadership

This is how you do it. The first step is to understand that your success is not all about you and it never will be.

Lynch did everything right all day, starting with bringing his much less famous backup backs Jalen Richard and DeAndre Washington out on his flanks when he got the loudest ovation in years during pregame introductions. That decision was pure Lynch. When he told Richard and Washington he wanted them to take the field on either side of him, Richard said: “I was like, ‘They cool with this?’ Lynch said, ‘It doesn’t matter what they say. You boys are coming out with me.’ That just got me pumped from the get-go.”

Gab kicked off registrar

Gab‏Verified@getongab
BREAKING: Gab’s domain registrar has given us 5 days to transfer our domain or they will seize it. The free and open web is in danger.

The free and open web is not in danger. Literally NOTHING has changed except that Gab has received a legal wakeup call from reality. It’s more than a little remarkable that they didn’t anticipate this. Remember, I warned Andrew Torba that they ABSOLUTELY HAD to moderate their content, and I did so back in November, long before anyone had “said mean words” or “hurt my feelings” there. I did so again on September 7th, both when I emailed Utsav after our conversation and in my conversation with him.

What I believe inevitably doomed Gab with Asia Registry was not merely the complaints that were being made to the registry in lieu of Gab providing its users with any other option besides the recommended court order, but Gab’s public stance on its refusal to moderate defamation as laid out in its Google filing. There are three sections that are relevant in this regard:

81. Even if it were possible for a social media platform to censor “defamatory and mean-spirited content” generated by 250,000 users, a level of content censorship that extended to “defamatory” and “mean-spirited” content would place at risk that service’s status as a protected Internet Service Provider, as opposed to a publisher or speaker, under 47 U.S. Code 230, also known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“CDA”)

82. Unlike an Internet Service Provider, a publisher or speaker is not granted the “safe harbor” benefits of Section 230, and may be held liable for defamation or other torts or other liability arising from content published on a platform it owns or manages.

251. Compliance with Google’s demand that moderate content posted by its users on a viewpoint-discrimination basis would place at risk Gab’s critical “safe harbor” protection against claims arising from such content under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act by turning Gab into an unprotected editor or publisher, whereas it is presently protected as an Internet Service Provider.

This is bad lawyering for four reasons.

  1. Some forms of defamation are criminal in Australia. Gab openly stated, in a public filing, that it cannot, and will not, remain in compliance with Australian law. 
  2. Gab is not an Internet Service Provider. An Internet Service Provider, or ISP, is the company you pay a fee to access to the internet, not an internet site that lets you comment on it.
  3. Section 230 of the CDA doesn’t only protect ISPs, but also protects both the users and the providers of interactive computer service and says neither “shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
  4. As a Texas entity – which Gab still is despite its establishment of a second office to be able to file its lawsuit against Google in Philadelphia County – Gab was additionally protected by the Defamation Mitigation Act, or Retraction Statute of 2013, which protects the publisher by giving him the option of correcting the mistake by publishing a retraction or deleting the defamatory content.
In other words, on the basis of an entirely groundless fear of being sued for what they like to describe as “mean words”, Gab elected to state on the public record that they would not moderate for “defamatory” content, in open violation of the laws of the country in which they selected their registrar.

Not ready for prime time doesn’t even begin to describe the level of strategic and legal incompetence demonstrated here.

This really isn’t that difficult. As I have repeatedly said, as I have repeatedly told Andrew Torba, moderation is a must. It is implicitely required by law, and for those who want access to the Play Store and the App Store, it is explicitly required by Google and Apple. More importantly, if you refuse to offer your users a reasonable form of redress they can easily afford when they are targeted for harassment, don’t pretend to be surprised or upset when they pursue alternate means to achieve their objectives just because those means happen to be more damaging to you.

I am the only one who pursued the course of action recommended by Gab. Considering the expense and the additional harassment that entailed, is it really surprising that everyone else opted for the free and anonymous course of action? In any event, Gab will find another registrar. I hope they will also find the common sense required to install some reasonable moderation policies, or they’re just going to find themselves right back in the same position in a matter of weeks.