Tag: media

Conservatives begin to notice #GamerGate

Robert Stacy McCain salutes the downfall of #GamerGate enemy Max Read. It’s good to see that conservatives, who are also hated by SJWs, are finally beginning to grasp that #GamerGate is an important development in the cultural war. There is a lot they could learn from it, to be sure, and they would be wise to adopt its 4GW tactics. However, the neocons and GOP conservatives, and in particular, the self-serving famewhores among them, should be warned that any attempts to coopt #GamerGate like they did the Tea Party will fail in a brutally spectacular manner.

“Never underestimate your enemy,” is a maxim of military strategy. Before you decide to go to war on the Internet, first consider the fate of Max Read, who was riding high as editor of Gawker until he decided that insulting #GamerGate was a smart move. He chose poorly.

When a friend, Beth Haper, first alerted me to the cultural significance of #GamerGate, I was skeptical. Really? A bunch of gamers were going to expose the bias and corruption of the media? This seemed improbable, but the fact that #GamerGate was arrayed against feminists drew my interest because, of course, I was working on a book about radical feminism’s War on Human Nature. Let us stipulate that #GamerGate is not “political” in the usual Left/Right Democrat/Republican way that Americans typically think about politics. Nevertheless, as fate would have it, the exposure of the Zoe Quinn/Nathan Grayson connection made gamers aware how unscrupulous women could exploit feminist politics and how unprincipled journalists were willing to assist this tawdry little racket. (See “The #GamerGate vs. Gawker War.”)

In war, your allies are whoever is fighting your enemies, and the motives of your allies matter far less than their skill in battle. Say what you will about #GamerGate, they are skilled and determined fighters.

Operation Disrespectful Nod is making believers of anyone who ever made the mistake of underestimating them. Just ask Max Read.

Conservatives should absolutely learn from #GamerGate. Given their own troubles with the SJW-dominated mainstream media, they should study and adopt its tactics, even though many of those tactics, such as the rejection of Narrative and central leadership, and the devotion to truth rather than spin, will be anathema to some of them. What they should do is form their own groups and conduct their own operations; the brilliant exposure of Planned Parenthood is an example of the sort of thing they can do.

#GamerGate is a model, not a vehicle to be captured and steered in a new direction.

But these conservatives with a newfound respect for #GamerGate would do very well to stay out of GG proper, and the conservative media whores should absolutely refrain from following their usual practice of leaping in at the front of the parade and claiming to be leading it. I, for one, haven’t forgotten when shills like Dick Armey, Dana Loesch, Sarah Palin, and Michelle Bachmann began proclaiming themselves to be leaders of the Tea Party, or when Joseph Farah wrote The Tea Party Manifesto 18 months after the movement was in full effect. Even at the time, I remember thinking, “do you seriously think you’re going to get away with it?” Then CNN hired Loesch as its “senior Tea Party correspondent”…. The fast and furious entrance of shills was one of the reasons I refrained from ever doing anything more than expressing general sympathy for the Tea Party’s original goals; you may recall I predicted early on that it would end up amounting to nothing.

I’m skeptical that anything of note will come of it. But it’s nice to see the scope of American discontent even so. And anything that the mainstream media doesn’t want to cover can’t be all bad….I’d quite like to see a few Republican politicians punched in the face at these events. The damned whores did NOTHING when they were in power, so to see them attempt to coopt a popular movement in order to retrieve what they threw away is particularly disgusting.
– April 15, 2009

I don’t hear any powerful Republicans showing much concern of the Tea Party turning on them, and more to the point, I see a lot of signs that the Tea Party has already been co-opted. When establishment Republicans are talking about gradual change and bipartisan consolidation while neocons like Sarah Palin and Dana Loesch are hailed as Tea Party “leaders”, it doesn’t take a genius to see that what has happened time and time again to rebellious conservative grass roots organizations is already happening to the Tea Party.
– November 2, 2010

American media conservatives would be wise to understand that #GamerGate is transnational, apolitical, doesn’t support political parties, and won’t hesitate to do what we did to Gawker and turn a Disrespectful Nod in the direction of their advertisers if they try to coopt us or pull that lame sort of self-promoting shill shit.

The Tea Party naively welcomed the conservative shills who coopted their movement and steered it right into the shoals of the Republican Party. #GamerGate hates shills with a passion second only to their hatred of SJWs and has been proactive about how to deal with them from the start. So don’t even think about it unless you want all your hashtags to belong to us and your Twitter feed full of porn courtesy of Mercedes.

To quote an influential #GamerGate document: “No leaders. – This is a 100% shill idea.”

I am the Leader of #GamerGate and so can you.

GG acquires two more SJW scalps

Chicago rules. They disemployed one of ours, we disemployed two of theirs:

Tommy Craggs, the executive editor of Gawker Media, and Max Read, the editor-in-chief of Gawker.com, are resigning from the company. In letters sent today, Craggs and Read informed staff members that the managing partnership’s vote to remove a controversial post about the CFO of Condé Nast—a unprecedented act endorsed by zero editorial employees—represented an indefensible breach of the notoriously strong firewall between Gawker’s business interests and the independence of its editorial staff. Under those conditions, Craggs and Read wrote, they could not possibly guarantee Gawker’s editorial integrity.

Yeah, I’m sure that’s the reason they resigned. The inability to “guarantee Gawker’s editorial integrity.”

See: The First Law of SJW. SJWs always lie.

Gawker: a house divided

Pretty soon, there isn’t going to be any editorial department. In addition to GamerGate and the Hulk Hogan lawsuit, Mike Cernovich has put out a 5k bounty on criminal activity by Gawker employees.

Outing and doxxing are cool now

Apparently, if Gawker is any guide. The difficult thing about dealing with SJWs is one can never keep track of when one is supposed to consider the same action a) outrageous or b) meritorious:

Condé Nast’s CFO Tried To Pay $2,500 for a Night With a Gay Porn Star

David Geithner, brother of ex-Obama Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, is
currently the chief financial officer of Condé Nast. This past weekend,
he’d planned to go to Chicago—where he planned to meet a gay porn star
and escort for “2-3 hours” at a cost of $2,500.

Actually, the chief lesson I learned from reading this article is to never rely upon gay porn star escorts, not that I anticipate any difficulties considering what has hitherto been my historical record of spotless success in this regard. Yes, the whole thing is very shady and I have no doubt Mr. Geithner has some difficult conversations with his wife and employer looming, and yes, Gawker merits every bit of the flak that it is going to take from #GamerGate and others, but Geithner is hardly the first corporate executive to have a seamy side and Gawker’s hypocrisy is very much par for the course.

What was truly shocking was the bizarre behavior of the escort. I mean, how flaky does one have to be to try to get the brother of a former administration official to help resolve one’s dispute with the Department of Housing and Urban Development on behalf of a prostitute whose illicit favors one has not even yet sampled?

In any event, it’s vastly amusing to see how Gawker has demonstrated its ability to make everyone across the political spectrum hate it. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. If you’re interested in joining #GamerGate’s anti-Gawker action, Operation Disrespectful Nod, which has already cost Gawker more than $1 million in advertising dollars, go here.

Emails lead the charge
Cleanse the world of #gawker filth
Our ethics shall reign
– @GG_HaikuBot9000

The First Law and the NYT

Instapundit calls it correctly:

THAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LIE AND GET CAUGHT: NY Times Taking a Beating In Its Battle With Ted Cruz.

We wrote here about Ted Cruz’s feud with the New York Times. Cruz’s new book, A Time for Truth, is a hot seller, apparently #3 among hard cover nonfiction books. But the Times refused to list it on its best seller list, claiming that its “sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases.” Both Cruz and his publisher, HarperCollins, have denied the charge, and Cruz has challenged the Times either to provide evidence to back up its claim, or else apologize.

Now Amazon has entered the fray, stating publicly that there is “is no evidence of unusual bulk purchase activity in our sales data.” As of last report, A Time for Truth is #13 at Amazon among all books, not just hard cover nonfiction. Other sources that track book sales evidently agree that there is nothing fishy about Cruz’s book’s sales.

The Times is run by Social Justice Warrior types, and Social Justice Warrior types always lie.

Because SJWs focus on taking the public high ground specifically so they can act as gatekeepers and narrative-controllers, they always have a difficult time when there is an objective measure that is not subject to their control. That’s why they hate Amazon so much; Amazon destroys their ability to sell the story that their authors and books are vastly popular while no one reads the authors and books of which they disapprove.

But because SJWs always lie, you know, you absolutely know, that the lie is in there somewhere. You have only got to look for it, and soon enough, you’ll find it.

The built-in bias of Wikipedia

I’ve commented before on how the editors at Wikipedia doggedly turn every article about a left-leaning public figure into a defense case, while every one about a right-wing figure is prosecutorial in nature:

Neil Tyson, a prominent popularizer of science (he even has his own television show) was recently found to have repeatedly fabricated multiple quotes over several years. The fabrications were not a one-off thing. They were deliberate and calculated, crafted with one goal in mind: to elevate Tyson, and by extension his audience, at the expense of know-nothing, knuckle-dragging nutjobs who hate science. Tyson targeted journalists, members of Congress, even former President George W. Bush. And what was their crime? They were guilty of rejecting science, according to Tyson.

There’s only one problem. None of the straw man quotes that Tyson uses to tear them down are real….

After I published my piece about Neil Tyson’s fabrication of the George W. Bush quote, several users edited Neil Tyson’s wiki page
to include details of the quote fabrication controversy. The
fact-loving, evidence-weighing, ever-objective editors of the online
encyclopedia did not appreciate the inclusion of the evidence of Tyson’s
fabrication. Not at all.

According to a review of the edit history of Tyson’s page,
one long-time Wikipedia editor deleted an entire pending section
summarizing the issue of Tyson’s fabricated quotes. Another editor
attempted to insert a brief mention of Tyson’s fabrication of the George
W. Bush quote. That mention was also deleted. When it was reinserted,
it was deleted yet again by an editor who describes himself as a childless progressive and an apostle of Daily Kos (h/t @kerpen).

Literally every single mention of Tyson’s history of fabricating quotes has been removed from Tyson’s Wikipedia page.

Meanwhile, the Wikipedia page about me contains more about NK Jemisin and John Scalzi than it does about a professional career that has been covered everywhere from the New York Times to Computer Gaming World, casts doubt on my heritage, and reduces my entire personal life to two of the four languages I speak. I mean, at the very least, you’d think they’d mention that I speak English, that my blog is the most highly trafficked one in science fiction and fantasy, or my son is the youngest male author ever published.

But, of course, anything that might reflect well on me, or poorly on Tyson, is something that the Wikipedia editors are determined to excise. And that’s why you should never take anything you read on Wikipedia as anything but a starting point.

The Eurofascists lost

Live updates here:

BREAKING: Greek interior ministry projection says ‘no’ camp will get more than 61 percent of vote.

17 25 31 40 50 percent reported, 61 percent NO, 39 percent YES. Now, the bankers will double-down, threaten, and promise economic apocalypse if they aren’t bailed-out. Or bailed-in. They always do. But the people are finally beginning to realize that the bankers are serving only themselves.

But how is that possible? After all, we were told that the Greeks are desperate to stay in the EU and in the Euro. June 28: In a poll conducted by Alco for the Greek newspaper ‘Proto Thema’, 57%
of the participants said they would vote yes in the upcoming referendum,
favoring a deal.

What an amazing 18-point turnaround in only one week! Or, you know, perhaps the media is not to be trusted.

UPDATE: Heh. Glenn Reynolds is the master of pith:

TIME.com @TIME
‘No’ campaign likely to win tight referendum vote in Greece

Instapundit.com ‏@instapundit
Not that tight.

No return

It’s no wonder conservatives are reliably losing when you consider how long they have enthusiastically accepted their enemies as their “opinion leaders”:

A Conservative commentator has tearfully urged the Republican Party to accept gay marriage to prevent the party becoming a “relic”. Speaking in an interview with CNN shortly after the historic Supreme Court decision to legalise same-sex marriage was handed down on Friday, S.E. Cupp was moved to tears as she explained gay people just wanted “the human dignity the rest of us have”.

If you want to win, stop paying any attention whatsoever to ideological enemies simply because they put on your jersey and claim to be one of you while arguing the opposite of your opinions and rejecting your beliefs. 

If people want “human dignity”, then they need to earn it by behaving in a dignified manner, not by throwing “pride” parades and behaving like pagans.

And as a general rule, don’t listen to anyone who substitutes tears for rational argument. That’s the lowest and least intelligent form of rhetoric. Accepting the gay agenda has already made relics of the Anglican and Episcopalian Churches. Following suit will do the same for the Republican Party. And it will do the same for the United States of America.

The USA has observably made its choice. It has abandoned faith in God for trust in the god of this world and prince of this age. And once faith has departed from a nation, it seldom returns, as Juan Donoso Cortés observed in his speech to the Spanish Parliament on January 4, 1849.

There are only two possible forms of repression: one internal and the other external; religious repression and political repression. They are of such a nature that when the religious thermometer is high, the thermometer of political repression is low; and, when the religious thermometer low, the political thermometer—political repression—tyranny is high. That is a law of humanity, a law of history. If you want proof, Gentlemen, look at the state of the world, look at the state of society in the ages before the Cross; tell me what happened when there was no internal repression, when there was no religious repression. That was a society of tyrants and slaves. Give me the name of a single people at this period which possessed no slaves and knew no tyrant. It is an incontrovertible and evident fact, which has never been questioned. Liberty, real liberty, the liberty of all and for all, only came into the world with the Savior of the world; that again is an incontrovertible fact, recognized even by the Socialists.

Gentlemen, I beg you to pay attention; I am going to present you with the most marvelous parallel which history can offer us. You have seen that in antiquity, when religious repression couldn’t go any lower because there was none, political repression rose until it couldn’t go any higher, because it went all the way up to tyranny. Very well then, with Jesus Christ, where religious repression is born, political repression completely disappears. This is so true, that when Jesus Christ founded a society with His disciples, that society was the only one which has ever existed without a government. Between Jesus Christ and His disciples there was no other government than the love of the Master for His disciples and the love of the disciples for their Master. That is, that when the internal repression was complete, liberty was absolute.

Let us pursue the parallel. Now come the apostolic times, which I shall stretch from the time of the Apostles, properly speaking, to the period when Christianity mounted the Capitol in the reign of Constantine the Great. At this time, Gentlemen, the Christian religion, that is, the internal, religious repression, was at its zenith; but in spite of that, as always happens in human societies, a germ began to develop, a mere germ of license and religious liberty. So, Gentlemen, observe the parallel: with this beginning of a fall in the religious thermometer there corresponds the beginning of a rise in the political thermometer. There is still no government yet, for government is not yet necessary; but it is already necessary to have the germ of government. In point of fact, in the Christian society of the time, there were no real magistrates, but there were adjudicators and arbitrators who form the germ of government. There was really nothing more than that; the Christians of apostolic times engaged in no lawsuits and never appealed to the Courts: their disputes were settled by the arbitrators. Notice, Gentlemen, how the scope of government is enlarged with the growth of corruption.

Then came feudal times. Religion was still at its zenith during this period, but was vitiated up to a point by human passions. What happened in the political sphere? A real and effective government was already essential; but the weakest kind was good enough. As a result, feudal monarchy was established, the weakest of all kinds of monarchy.

Still pursuing our parallel, we come to the sixteenth century. Then, with the great Lutheran Reformation, with this great scandal which was at the same time political, social and religious, with this act of the intellectual and moral emancipation of the peoples, we see simultaneously the growth of the following institutions. In the first place, and immediately, the feudal monarchies became absolute. Gentlemen, you believe that a monarchy cannot go beyond absolutism: what can a government be beyond absolute? However, the thermometer of political repression had to rise even higher, because the religious thermometer continued to fall: and the political thermometer did in fact rise higher. What did they create then? Standing armies. Do you know what standing armies are? To answer that question, it is enough to know what a soldier is: a soldier is a slave in uniform. So you see once again, when religious repression falls, political repression rises, it rises as high as absolutism and even higher. It was not enough for governments to be absolute; they asked for and obtained the privilege of having a million arms.

In spite of this, Gentlemen, the political thermometer had to continue to rise because the religious thermometer kept falling; it rose still higher. What new institution was created then? The governments said: We have a million arms and it is not enough; we need something more, we need a million eyes: and they created the police, and with the police a million eyes. In spite of this, Gentlemen, the political thermometer and political repression had to rise to a higher pitch still, because in spite of everything, the religious thermometer kept falling; so they rose higher.

It was not enough for the governments to have a million arms and a million eyes; they wanted to have a million ears: and so they got them through administrative centralization, by means of which all claims and complaints finally reached the government.

Well, Gentlemen, that was not enough; the religious thermometer continued to fall and so the political thermometer had to rise higher. And it rose. Governments said: A million arms, a million eyes and a million ears are not sufficient to repress the people, we need something more; we must have the privilege of being simultaneously present everywhere. This privilege also they obtained: the telegraph was invented.

Such, Gentlemen, was the state of Europe and the world when the first rumblings of the most recent revolution told us all that there is still not enough despotism on the earth, since the religious thermometer remains below zero. And now the choice between two things lies before us.

I have promised to speak today with complete frankness and I shall keep my word.

Well then, it’s either one of these two: either a religious reaction will come, or it will not. If there is a religious reaction, you will soon see that as the religious thermometer rises, the political thermometer will begin to fall, naturally, spontaneously, without the slightest effort on the part of peoples, governments, or men, until the tranquil day comes when the peoples of the world are free. But if, on the contrary, and this is a serious matter (it is not customary to call the attention of Consultative Assemblies to questions of this nature; but the gravity of events today is my excuse and I think that your benevolence will also excuse me); I say again, Gentlemen, that if the religious thermometer continues to fall, I know not whither we are going. I do not know, Gentlemen, and I shiver when I think of it. Consider the analogies I have put before your eyes; if no government at all was necessary when religious repression was at its zenith; when religious repression is no more, no type of government will be enough—all despotisms will be insufficient.

This is putting one’s finger into the wound, Gentlemen—this is the problem which faces Spain, Europe, humanity, and the world.

Notice one thing, Gentlemen. In the ancient world, tyranny was fierce and devastating; and yet this tyranny was physically limited, since all States were small and international relations between them all were completely impossible; consequently tyranny on the grand scale was impossible in antiquity, with one exception: Rome. But today, how greatly are things changed! The way is prepared for a gigantic, colossal, universal, and immense tyrant; everything is ready for it. Gentlemen, observe that there are no physical or moral resistances anymore—there are no physical resistances anymore because with steamboats and railroads there are no borders any longer; there are no physical resistances anymore because with the electric telegraph there are no distances anymore; and there are no moral resistances because all wills are divided and all patriotisms are dead. Tell me, therefore, if I am right or wrong to be worried about the near future of the world; tell me whether, in dealing with this question, I am not touching upon the real problem.

There is only one thing that can avert the catastrophe—one and only one: we shall not avert it by granting more liberty, more guarantees and new constitutions; we shall avert it if all of us, according to our strength, do our utmost to stimulate a healthy reaction—a religious reaction. Now is this possible, Gentlemen? Yes, it is. But is it likely? I answer in deepest sorrow: I do not think it is likely. I have seen and known many men who returned to their faith after having separated themselves from it; unfortunately, I have never known any nation which returned to the Faith after having lost it.

The First Law in action

The SJWs trying to save Irene Gallo and Patrick Nielsen Hayden from the Macmillan axe must be getting desperate. In addition to launching a “Buy Tor books” campaign in response to the boycott they mocked, they’re doing what SJWs always do.

Which is what? All together now…. In this case, the SJWs in science fiction are pretending to buy books that they’re not actually buying. ED noticed a recurring pattern on Twitter today:

Kerian Larsen ‏@KerianLarsen  1h1 hour ago
Since the Puppy boycott of Tor Books is on I just bought three ebooks from Tor and preordered two more.

Phyllis Chandler ‏@phyllis_chandle  1h1 hour ago
Since the Puppy boycott of Tor Books is on I just bought three ebooks from Tor and preordered two more.

Maisy ‏@Maisy_Chandler  2h2 hours ago
Since the Puppy boycott of Tor Books is on I just bought three ebooks from Tor and preordered two more.

Kalia ‏@kalia_weaver  2h2 hours ago
Since the Puppy boycott of Tor Books is on I just bought three ebooks from Tor and preordered two more.

Desiree ‏@Desiree_Waller  2h2 hours ago
Since the Puppy boycott of Tor Books is on I just bought three ebooks from Tor and preordered two more.

Dee Foreman ‏@Dee_Foreman  2h2 hours ago
Since the Puppy boycott of Tor Books is on I just bought three ebooks from Tor and preordered two more.

Cherie ‏@Cherie_Blanchar  2h2 hours ago
Since the Puppy boycott of Tor Books is on I just bought three ebooks from Tor and preordered two more

Fernanda ‏@fernanda_wise  2h2 hours ago
Since the Puppy boycott of Tor Books is on I just bought three ebooks from Tor and preordered two more

Greta ‏@greta_welch  2h2 hours ago
Since the Puppy boycott of Tor Books is on I just bought three ebooks from Tor and preordered two more

Jayla Bauer ‏@JaylaBauer  3h3 hours ago
Since the Puppy boycott of Tor Books is on I just bought three ebooks from Tor and preordered two more.

Bria ‏@brialangley  3h3 hours ago
Since the Puppy boycott of Tor Books is on I just bought three ebooks from Tor and preordered two more

Kurt Busiek ‏@KurtBusiek  3h3 hours ago
Since the Puppy boycott of Tor Books is on, I just bought three e-books from Tor and pre-ordered two more.

On the plus side, I think we now have an answer to how John Scalzi has so many Twitter followers when no one is reading his blog anymore.

Downfall of a Nobel Laureate

Sir Tim Hunt and his wife describe how the SJW witch patrol suckered and burned him:

As jokes go, Sir Tim Hunt’s brief standup routine about women in science last week must rank as one of the worst acts of academic self-harm in history. As he reveals to the Observer, reaction to his remarks about the alleged lachrymose tendencies of female researchers has virtually finished off the 72-year-old Nobel laureate’s career as a senior scientific adviser.

What he said was wrong, he acknowledges, but the price he and his wife have had to pay for his mistakes has been extreme and unfair. “I have been hung out to dry,” says Hunt.

His wife, Professor Mary Collins, one of Britain’s most senior immunologists, is similarly indignant. She believes that University College London – where both scientists had posts – has acted in “an utterly unacceptable” way in pressuring both researchers and in failing to support their causes. Certainly the speed of the dispatch of Hunt – who won the 2001 Nobel
prize in physiology for his work on cell division – from his various
academic posts is startling….

“I was told by a senior that Tim had to resign immediately or be sacked – though I was told it would be treated as a low-key affair. Tim duly emailed his resignation when he got home. The university promptly announced his resignation on its website and started tweeting that they had got rid of him. Essentially, they had hung both of us out to dry. They certainly did not treat it as a low-key affair. I got no warning about the announcement and no offer of help, even though I have worked there for nearly 20 years. It has done me lasting damage. What they did was unacceptable.”

The story appeared in newspapers round the world under headlines that said that Hunt had been sacked by UCL for sexism. Worse was to follow. The European Research Council (ERC) – Hunt served on its science committee – decided to force him to stand down in view of his resignation from UCL….

Hunt is under no illusions about the consequences. “I am finished,” he
says. “I had hoped to do a lot more to help promote science in this
country and in Europe, but I cannot see how that can happen. I have
become toxic. I have been hung to dry by academic institutes who have
not even bothered to ask me for my side of affairs.”

Hunt’s crime? He said this: “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab. You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them, they cry.”

I wonder what would have happened if he said the women who worked in his lab were racist neo-Nazis who produced bad-to-reprehensible work?

Of course, Hunt made two grievous errors. His first error: he apologized when he hadn’t actually done anything wrong. Unlike Irene Gallo, there was nothing wrong with what he said. It was a joke. And it was a joke based on the reality of his long experience. Sure, it was probably a foolish one to make in today’s hyperpoliticized environment, but Dr. Hunt presumably thought that his Nobel Prize and his standing in the field of science would be sufficient to protect him. He was wrong. His second error: he resigned. The university couldn’t possibly have fired him for what he said, but the SJWs lied to his wife and convinced her to convince him to make it easy for them.

Now contrast this incident with the Gallo affair. Irene Gallo neither apologized for her indefensible statements nor recanted them. She has not resigned. And, unlike the unfortunate Dr. Hunt, she has given her employer more than sufficient reason to fire her for cause.