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Fucking Baen's Bar
Feb. 16th, 2021 08:21 pmWhen I was a teenager, in the 90s, my favorite publisher was Baen's Books. They published the Vorkosigan series, and the Honor Harrington series. When I was in the mood for Space Opera, I knew exactly where to find it: look for the books with the Baen logo on the spine. Baen's Bar, the message board they run, was one of my first online homes--not only could you talk to other fans of the books there, you could TALK TO THE AUTHORS DIRECTLY! And sometimes they'd answer! It was amazing. I had a lot of fun hanging out there, and met a lot of really great people.
Both the publisher as a whole and the average Barfly always did lean to the right, in general, because the majority of their stories were (and still are) the sort of traditional, old-school SF/F that skews heavily White Straight Neurotypical Able-bodied Male. I mean, they were still a mainstream publisher, and they also published stuff by left-wing authors (including, notably, Eric Flint, who is a card-carrying Socialist), and you got the full gamut of US (and occasionally international) political opinions. But over the years--especially since Jim Baen died and his right-hand woman Toni Weisskopf took over, they have gone further and further to the right. For example, many of the Sad and Rabid Puppies were/are published by Baen. This is not surprising to me; Toni was Jim's right-hand-woman in more ways than one, let's just say.
The thing about Baen's Bar is that different forums on the bar are radically different. Author forums are modded (or at least used to be) largely to the author's taste. The general forums, however, have always had a very light touch mod-wise. If someone is being an asshole and someone else objects, well, that's their problem. You can guess from this what the "Politics" forum on the Bar was like, given the clientele and little/no modding.
So I was saddened but not surprised to hear that people on the Politics forum of the Bar have been directly advocating for political violence, especially around the attempted coup of January 6th.
I am also not surprised to hear that while Weisskopf has taken the whole Bar down temporarily, she has doubled down on "any objection to advocating violence is censorship," and while lots of people have jumped into the fray to defend the Bar and tear down the whistleblower, none of them have addressed the meat of the issue. Which is of course that multiple people on the Bar were advocating murder and insurrection. Free speech means that everyone is entitled to their political opinion. It doesn't mean that anyone can advocate for the death of other people. And, in any case, Baen is a private company.
Both the publisher as a whole and the average Barfly always did lean to the right, in general, because the majority of their stories were (and still are) the sort of traditional, old-school SF/F that skews heavily White Straight Neurotypical Able-bodied Male. I mean, they were still a mainstream publisher, and they also published stuff by left-wing authors (including, notably, Eric Flint, who is a card-carrying Socialist), and you got the full gamut of US (and occasionally international) political opinions. But over the years--especially since Jim Baen died and his right-hand woman Toni Weisskopf took over, they have gone further and further to the right. For example, many of the Sad and Rabid Puppies were/are published by Baen. This is not surprising to me; Toni was Jim's right-hand-woman in more ways than one, let's just say.
The thing about Baen's Bar is that different forums on the bar are radically different. Author forums are modded (or at least used to be) largely to the author's taste. The general forums, however, have always had a very light touch mod-wise. If someone is being an asshole and someone else objects, well, that's their problem. You can guess from this what the "Politics" forum on the Bar was like, given the clientele and little/no modding.
So I was saddened but not surprised to hear that people on the Politics forum of the Bar have been directly advocating for political violence, especially around the attempted coup of January 6th.
I am also not surprised to hear that while Weisskopf has taken the whole Bar down temporarily, she has doubled down on "any objection to advocating violence is censorship," and while lots of people have jumped into the fray to defend the Bar and tear down the whistleblower, none of them have addressed the meat of the issue. Which is of course that multiple people on the Bar were advocating murder and insurrection. Free speech means that everyone is entitled to their political opinion. It doesn't mean that anyone can advocate for the death of other people. And, in any case, Baen is a private company.
