Remember kids, the only allowable bigotry is the non-stop hatred of the White race. For equality!

Quick, everyone who's non-White, remember you're allowed to have PRIDE in your history and your people. Fuck those honkies!

Of course, as the anti-White movement continues to ramp up in Western civilization, Jews are going to find out they're waaaaaay too pale skinned to dodge the hate of the next generation of SJWs who haven't been properly indoctrinated to shit themselves silly when they hear the words "anti-Semitic" or "Holocaust".

And just like that, the contributions of the Jewish people will be tossed aside by the SJWs in the name of equity! Or diversity! Or inclusion!

Heck, based on the amount of black-on-Asian crime, apparently Asians (especially their women) have already been made honorary honkies!

Whatever.

Clown world is gonna clown.

As for MAR Barker, Tekumel truly deserves a resurgence, but that would require a new IP owner and a top author to champion the IP.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 18, 2022, 11:26:47 PM
Jeez, people, smarten up here!  Tenbones is right.  This is straight out of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals:  "Make the enemy live up to his own book of rules."

What is the most vexing thing (to the left) that this site has done in a long time?  The red list of companies.  It ended up on websites all over the net, social media, etc.  So what does Tubesoock do?  Present a situation to try and discredit the list via distortion and doubt.  He even mentioned the list while presenting the accusations!  He doesn't care about anti-semitism.  I guarantee he follows all sorts of people (on the left, of course) who are just as anti-semitic as Barker.  He's just trying to sow division.

This is what you gullible dupes need to learn.  This isn't a battles of principles.  The left has no fucking principles.  Just tactics.  Stop accepting their framing of the issues and stop believing that they are arguing in good faith.  Do you think this same guy is as opposed to present BDS movements as he is some dead guy's book nobody has read?  He can't and won't demonstrate the same dedication to"principles" as he demands of you.  So stop letting him lead you by the nose.  I thought some of you were smarter than that.

As for Tubesock, how about you provide a little context for your "disagreement" with Barker.  He was a convert to Islam, which has anti-semitism written directly in its holy books.  Do you object to the role Islam played in his anti-semitism?  In fact, is Islam right about Jews, the role of women, gays?  Why are you focusing on the symptom (Barker) rather than the disease (Islamic teachings)?  Should we hold all Islamic writers of RPGs to the same standard as you are Barker?

Folks, watch the dodging start.  This whole thread isn't about anti-semitism, its roots, or Barker.  It's about attacking the premise of the red games list.  And you dolts fell for it...

I'll agree with about half of this.  (And for the math-challenged that means I disagree with the other half)

TA is obviously here as a troll.  To be fair he's made some actual contributions to nonpolitical RPG topics, but for the most part he's just stirring up trouble.  And that's not all bad.  It helps keep the righteous energized in opposition to his positions.  So he posted his bit of info expecting that many here would reflexively disagree (which is normally safe, as 90%+ of what he posts is drek) in the hopes of sowing confusion and making folks look bad.  And the kicker of course, is that what he posted this time appears to be actually, unexpectedly true so he can deliver some smug gotchas.  And yes, he's targeting the credibility of this community.

And Eirikrauth is very correct in that arguing with the left in their framework and on their terms is foolish.  Even a military novice knows not to let the enemy choose the battlefield.  If you want to argue a point, it's wise to reframe it in accordance to your own worldview before doing so, so that the ecology of ideas supporting your thesis reinforces your point rather than detracting from it.

The part I disagree with is that Eirikrauth seems to be arguing that we need to abandon our own principles to combat the SJWs because they ignore their own professed values if they think it will help them win and that gives them an edge.  Sincerely believing and following one's own principles is one of the things that makes communities like this one objectively better than the SJW communities.  And it attracts quality people.  Even if my ideology was congruent to today's SJWs their hypocrisy would repulse me.

So for my own view on the matter, I will not purchase products if that results in supporting the cause of SJW's or their right-wing equivalents, which includes neo-nazis and various other bad actors.  Such a purchase can support the cause in two ways, either the media may propound their views, or the funds may go towards supporting the cause.  I'm not familiar with Tekumel, but those who are said that it doesn't support nazi themes.  And no one has suggested, much less given proof, that the current owners of the IP are supporting such causes.  As such I would have no particular qualm with buying their products if such was my inclination, and I don't think they particularly belong on the red list.  The association may be uncomfortable for some, but no harm is actually being done.

I actually didn't expect anyone here to disagree that Holocaust denial is bad lmao. Did you?

I also didn't expect the Tekumel Foundation to try to downlplay their knowledge of all of this, but they definitely are.

Hell, Jeff Dee is all but claiming that the former archivist is lying...

I'd have posted this is cubesock didn't beat me to it. I am no SJW. The inability of many to not address the issue because of hate for cubesteak shows me some people need to step back and breathe. Y'all are way into killing the messenger while discarding the message. Barker's true colors have come out with the same applying to the Tekumel society who tried covering it up - instead of standing up and telling everyone the professor was fucked in the head and they seek to distance themselves from him, they milked his name for whatever money they could get.

Tekumel is not a Nazi tract. But it's not hard to find white supremacy embedded in the setting.

The inimical enemies are the original natives of the planet, displaced by humans. It's the humans job to stamp them out and complete the colonization process. The enemies aren't evil, per se, they are simply so different that no harmony is possible, so one side must win and the other must perish. I.e. lebensraum.

Orientalism. You don't have to do much digging to find Nazis, colonizers, and others who loved spending time in India, Egypt, Turkey, and so forth. Heck, a bunch of racist Dutch guys colonized South Africa they loved it so much. Loving ethnic color is not the same thing as treating people with respect. In a similar fashion, in the USA, western settlers loved to trade with natives and adopted many of their cultural arts, which didn't stop them from coming back a generation later and wiping them out to the last man, woman, and child if they refused to assimilate.

There are no truly humanlike species on the planet besides humans. All the other alien races are depicted as vastly different, which makes sense from a certain science-fiction viewpoint. By the same token, it reinforces the theme that humans are humans, and no true friendship is really possible between the races. Members of some more acceptable species are able to become *cough* honorary members of human clans. If you know anything about the phrase "honorary Aryan" then I don't have to say any more about that.

So yeah, this is a setting, created by a linguist and wargamer, that borrows heavily from Mesoamerican, Indian, Egyptian, and other histories. It's not Neo-Nazi fic in the sense that Serpent's Walk is. But it is the product of the man. And while previously I would interpreted some of these themes generously, perhaps toward an eye of moral ambiguity, it is now clear to me that the setting to some extent reflects the actual politics of MAR Barker.

Quote from: Jason Coplen on March 20, 2022, 10:35:10 PM
I'd have posted this is cubesock didn't beat me to it. I am no SJW. The inability of many to not address the issue because of hate for cubesteak shows me some people need to step back and breathe. Y'all are way into killing the messenger while discarding the message. Barker's true colors have come out with the same applying to the Tekumel society who tried covering it up - instead of standing up and telling everyone the professor was fucked in the head and they seek to distance themselves from him, they milked his name for whatever money they could get.

If Call of Cthulhu has taught us anything it is that you can make a lot of money off of a dead racist.

Joining this tea pot tempest a bit late, but honestly, I don't give a shit. I'll continue to do the same thing to Tekumel that I've always done, pilfer it for ideas from time to time, without feeling any guilt. The man is 10 years in the ground. I see no evidence that anyone with current publishing rights is funneling money to the klan or the like.

Personally I find it a bit ironic that people are going to raise hell over this but will still gobble up content from various champagne socialists and honest to god communists.

Anyone who is a careful reader and researches Islam is aware of Islam's anti-Semitism (really Islam's anti-Judaism as Arabs are Semites too). As Professor Barker was highly educated and certainly a careful reader (you don't create a world as detailed and deep as Tekumel if you aren't, and you probably don't get a doctorate either), the only plausible conclusion is that he was at least aware of Islam's hostility towards Jews and that at a minimum he was OK with it.

And that is giving him the benefit of the doubt. Not because he converted to Islam he had an extreme hatred of Jews - maybe he didn't. But an extreme hatred of Jews certainly didn't bother him enough for him to not convert to Islam.

So is this claim that he wrote something like Turner Diaries, but targeting Jews, is not inconsistent at all. When I read the headline I wasn't surprised in the least. Is the evidence conclusive? No.

But if anti-Semitism is something that bothers you, and you don't like people passively accepting anti-Semitism either - does it make sense to boycott Tekumel? I would say yes. This is purely entertainment, and nobody has any right to your money. The threshold of evidence to boycott based on your personal beliefs doesn't have to be very high.

Should Tekumel be on the red list? It doesn't matter if it's red or yellow, but it's definitely noteworthy, and people should be aware of it and then be able to decide for themselves.

Quote from: tenbones on March 20, 2022, 04:11:28 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on March 20, 2022, 12:44:14 AM

Quote from: tenbones on March 18, 2022, 05:07:36 PM
IF you agree that Tekumel has nothing to do with Neo-Nazism (however you want to define that)... then why the fuck does it matter if the Tekumel Foundation knew or didn't know about Barker's Bad Ideas in written form elsewhere?

My suggestion is not to accept the framing of your ideological adversaries and play their games.

"Those who play with the devil's toys will be brought by degrees to wield his sword."

Neo-Nazis ARE my "ideological adversaries".

The CRT-Right are no better than the CRT-Left. Barker, the Judges Guild Guy and Varg Vikernes are just as evil as the Swordsfall guy or the Coyote & Crow people.  They're all Race-Based Collectivist Totalitarians.

And so what? By degrees and by inches you're going to engage in whatever they corner you into becoming *because* the ideology of "Neo-Nazis" can be mechanized for *any* belief. Replace (((Tribes))) with whatever fits your fancy - you will be playing the exact same game.

The POINT is you're playing the GAME. And you're doing it right now. If Tekumel is the product of someone that has "Neo-Nazi" thoughts in his dead head, and wrote a work of fiction about it, that happened to be published by like-minded people, you tell me exactly how far in evil is that from Lovecraft's views on blacks, jews or whomever he felt antipathy towards?

If the judgement is based upon degrees of "badness" - then that is arbitrary. That's why this thread exists. It's not to get you discussing with me what those degrees actually are, or even why they matter. ITS TO GET YOU TO PLAY THEIR GAME.

Because now they can simply point at the inconsistency of the application of your beliefs as being arbitrary and therefore no more of value than what they believe: which is NOTHING. The goal is to undermine your position without admitting to any position of their own.

And you do that immediately by defending a principle that exists simultaneously different only by slight degrees THAT NO ONE REALLY GIVES A SHIT ABOUT. That is how they operate.

Meanwhile - you're in the shit-pit slinging it out with bad actors who only want to see you covered with shit. They do not believe or care about what you believe, they do not care about what they say they believe. And you're playing their game.

It in no way "undermines my position" to condemn real Nazis. It does undermine theirs. And apparently yours, for some reason...

Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 20, 2022, 06:36:58 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on March 20, 2022, 01:55:01 PM

Quote from: Omega on March 20, 2022, 01:23:22 PM
Which is unfortunately all the more reason to not bring this up. Or be locked in indecision. We do not know how much they knew of all this. Or for how long. Especially if Barker was as good at concealing this as it seems.

As said before. Damned if they do, damned if they dont.

This would be a different matter if the foundation was also as bad as Barker. But far as we know. They arent.

Damning them for not dragging out the skeleton in their closet is exactly what the Woke do. Beat on them if they do something wrong. Not for being afraid of the mob. Or just being indecisive about what to do.

THEY DID DO SOMETHING WRONG. They distorted history while protecting a Nazi so that they could keep on making money!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip#:~:text=Operation%20Paperclip%20was%20a%20secret,Europe%2C%20between%201945%20and%201959.

So, we going to ban Tekumel and it's publishers from being mentioned on this site because MAR Barker reportedly wrote a piece of pro-Nazi fiction? I wouldn't want to get banned for mentioning a forbidden topic.

Barker wasn't working on the space program; he was writing weird RPG books while actively concealing that he was also writing nazi novels and acting as an "editor" for their magazine of revisionist holocaust-denying history.

And the Tekumel Foundation, who claim not to be Nazis, hid that fact so they could keep profiting off his works.

The problem is...

We know he wrote The Serpent Walks, but we don't know WHY.

I've seen people who have seen excerpts without reading the whole say it didn't seem satirical to them.  Well to be brutally frank, I've studied enough literature to know that frequently, grasping satire requires a certain level of intelligence and education.  If you're going to go "intent of the author" hunting, you also have to take into account his relationship with his father, which Chirine says was not amicable at all, and his father held some Nazi-ish views.

We know he sat on the Editorial Advisory Committee of that Journal, but we don't know how active he was.

I know several professors who sit on various boards and committees and don't do a thing, ever.  It looks good for the Journal to have more letters attached to the people on "Advisory" Committees and also looks good for the professor's CV when they write a book.

Unfortunately, "Anti-Semitic" has no actual value as a descriptor, these days, it's meaningless.

Concern over the actions of Israel is Anti-Semitic.
Saying that the Nazi's also wanted to clear Poland of all the Poles, and get rid of other groups besides Jews is Anti-Semitic.

He's a Muslim, married to a Pakistani, specializing in Southeast Asian cultures and languages.  Unless the whole thing was about trying to find the original Aryans (of which I've seen zero evidence), such studies don't scream "Nazi" to me.

Was he so fed up by his father's bullshit that he wrote a better book than anyone else out of that arena to prove himself superior?  From the shenanigans Chirine said he used to get up to, this seems extremely probable.

As a Muslim, was he so concerned with the narrative of Israel/Judaism as hero/victim that he sat on the committee of a historical review journal so he could fact check what was being put out?  Again, this seems extremely probable.

If he was an anti-semite in the Bob Bledsaw mold (which is what people will want to cast him in), then that will have to come out somewhere academically or in correspondence.  I'm sure we'll be seeing micro-slices of Barker's life now(if enough people care), so we'll know for sure eventually.

 I do not see how it can not just boil down to it goes on the red list.  I also understand the list is a guide, not a code of laws or ethics.  I have not looked over the list in a while, but I am certain I have a few things from the red on the bookshelf, and likely a few after I knew they were in the red.  Yes, I do not love giving money to people who profess to "hate" me.  I also know not a single one of the queefs on the red list would ever lift a finger to do me harm in person, or to anyone else they "hate".    So I am OK with some coloring outside the lines for some things I buy, the vast majority will be buys made where I have little or no idea as to the author's political hates or loves, and honestly, if it is a product I have great interest in, there small chance I am going to check those things before I buy the product. 

   I would have to say the list doesn't mean much for me (I am older, and like most of the posters on this forum, fall into the GM/collector side of the player base of RPGs) and the only time I make a conscious decision to cut a publisher/artist off from me every buying things is when they go nuts and put out insanity so often I can not help but know their thoughts (that should IMO stay private) and they piss me off.  I have no interest digging around for proof on their standing, or knowing about the one time they said that one thing.  It is when the stuff turns into literal activist movements...we are done.

Quote from: Tubesock Army on March 20, 2022, 10:07:07 PM


Hell, Jeff Dee is all but claiming that the former archivist is lying...

Hey you lay off Jeff, he's in shock dude!

QuoteAnd the Tekumel Foundation, who claim not to be Nazis, hid that fact so they could keep profiting off his works.

You think the TF is a profit making company? Lol.

Quote from: crkrueger on March 21, 2022, 09:39:17 AM
The problem is...

We know he wrote The Serpent Walks, but we don't know WHY.

I've seen people who have seen excerpts without reading the whole say it didn't seem satirical to them.  Well to be brutally frank, I've studied enough literature to know that frequently, grasping satire requires a certain level of intelligence and education.  If you're going to go "intent of the author" hunting, you also have to take into account his relationship with his father, which Chirine says was not amicable at all, and his father held some Nazi-ish views.

We know he sat on the Editorial Advisory Committee of that Journal, but we don't know how active he was.

I know several professors who sit on various boards and committees and don't do a thing, ever.  It looks good for the Journal to have more letters attached to the people on "Advisory" Committees and also looks good for the professor's CV when they write a book.

Unfortunately, "Anti-Semitic" has no actual value as a descriptor, these days, it's meaningless.

Concern over the actions of Israel is Anti-Semitic.
Saying that the Nazi's also wanted to clear Poland of all the Poles, and get rid of other groups besides Jews is Anti-Semitic.

He's a Muslim, married to a Pakistani, specializing in Southeast Asian cultures and languages.  Unless the whole thing was about trying to find the original Aryans (of which I've seen zero evidence), such studies don't scream "Nazi" to me.

Was he so fed up by his father's bullshit that he wrote a better book than anyone else out of that arena to prove himself superior?  From the shenanigans Chirine said he used to get up to, this seems extremely probable.

As a Muslim, was he so concerned with the narrative of Israel/Judaism as hero/victim that he sat on the committee of a historical review journal so he could fact check what was being put out?  Again, this seems extremely probable.

If he was an anti-semite in the Bob Bledsaw mold (which is what people will want to cast him in), then that will have to come out somewhere academically or in correspondence.  I'm sure we'll be seeing micro-slices of Barker's life now(if enough people care), so we'll know for sure eventually.

Imagine being so desperate to excuse anti-Semitism that you look for a reason - any reason - why someone would sit on the board of a Holocaust-denying publication. Other than, y'know, being a Holocaust denier.

I haven't seen cope of this magnitude since Trump lost the election.

Quote from: Shasarak on March 21, 2022, 03:10:07 AM

Quote from: Jason Coplen on March 20, 2022, 10:35:10 PM
I'd have posted this is cubesock didn't beat me to it. I am no SJW. The inability of many to not address the issue because of hate for cubesteak shows me some people need to step back and breathe. Y'all are way into killing the messenger while discarding the message. Barker's true colors have come out with the same applying to the Tekumel society who tried covering it up - instead of standing up and telling everyone the professor was fucked in the head and they seek to distance themselves from him, they milked his name for whatever money they could get.

If Call of Cthulhu has taught us anything it is that you can make a lot of money off of a dead racist.

Touche