So this past week an OSR Blogger named Gus L threw picked up his toys and declared he was leaving forever, closing down his blog. The reason, he claimed, was that there was a pernicious Alt-Right influence in the OSR these days and that it had 'ruined' the OSR for ordinary gamers like him.





He also added some bullshit about the evils of capitalism and how now the OSR was all about making filthy dollars and so it was bad now or something like that, but that's less relevant to what I want to address today.

This has led G+, still the main social media home of the OSR into a tizzy of self-recrimination and witch hunts and declarations of how we need to be inclusive and everyone declaring how bad the Alt-Right Nazis of the OSR are (as opposed to Twitter, the main home of D&D cool kids, where nary a post on the subject was found).  This frantic moral questioning has of course included people loudly declaring "There can't be any evil Gatekeepers in the OSR!" while at the same time saying "So to prevent that we need to let some of us censor and throw out Evil Harassers from the OSR"!  See what they do there?

And of course, some assholes talking a lot about the OSR "Community"; using that now-standard tactic of redefining a design school/hobby as a "Community" because "Community" is a vague term that doesn't require standards to be in it but allows for people claiming to speak for everyone to protect 'community values' and to throw out people who may be players of the game or designers within the school but who they feel break 'community guidelines'. This is how they take control.

I'm still waiting to hear of what 'minorities' have been harassed for OSR games they wrote. I can't think of any myself. No one on G+ that I have seen, including the ones making wild claims, have seem to have been able to bring up even one example.

I CAN think of a few OSR designers who are not (as far as I know) minorities (unless you count me being Latino as a "minority"), who have been harassed or faced censorship by the people who seem the most concerned about declaring this a "community" so that they can take control of said invented "community" and decide who's allowed or not allowed to write or play in it.


So here's what I have to say about this:


Number 1:
I don't know of ANY authors in the OSR who are actually "alt-right".

The people who have written OSR stuff that have gotten the most attacks that I can recall are:

 -Grim Jim (UK Lefist Atheist)
-Venger Satanis (voted for Hillary and still claims she was a good candidate)
-James Raggi (fucked if I know what his politics are, but I'm pretty sure he's not on Richard Spencer's mailing list, and suspect he doesn't even like Trump)
-Zak Smith (douchebag who constantly tries to court the SJW crowd but they want nothing to do with him because he made porn)
-Alexander Macris (Cultural Libertarian)

and myself, a pro-choice pro-LGBT non-Christian Cultural Libertarian with a quaint fondness for Classical Liberal Enlightenment values.


 Note that these people have almost nothing in common. They don't politically agree. So why do they all get attacked, why are they all people who the Totalitarian Left of the hobby has tried to censor or blacklist? Why are some people calling them all "omg alt-right nazis"? Why is Gus L so terrified of us all that he's leaving?

 The one thing they have in common is that everyone on that list (other than Zak) have been absolute in their Defense of Free Speech.  

 THAT is what the SJW Totalitarian Left object to here. That's why they want to pretend that there's nazis in the OSR. And it's also the reason why Gus L is leaving.


 Number 2:
Gus L was one of the main actors in trying to push Ideology into the OSR, on the "SJW" (totalitarian left identity-politics) side of things. He was active in supporting the blacklisting or shunning or censorship of the people on my list above. He was active in social media with trying to define the OSR as a hobby, so that HE (and his fellow 'better people'/ ideological fellow-travelers) could control that 'community' and throw out all his ideological enemies.

His is not the story of a nice guy who just wanted to write about dungeons feeling as though he's been driven out of the hobby by "omg alt-right nazis".
It is the story of a little prick who wanted to control the hobby throwing a tantrum and running away because we wouldn't let him.


 RPGPundit

 Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Volcano + Blue Boar

OSR is all about capitalism. That's why they write supplements for games out of print for 20 years. It's where the hot money is!

Or was Gus upset about publishers like Troll Lords and Frog God who publish the same book for 5e and OSR?

Or that Goodman knows how to run a business...like a business?

Quote from: RPGPundit;1041060This has led G+, still the main social media home of the OSR into a tizzy of self-recrimination and witch hunts and declarations of how we need to be inclusive and everyone declaring how bad the Alt-Right Nazis of the OSR are (as opposed to Twitter, the main home of D&D cool kids, where nary a post on the subject was found).  This frantic moral questioning has of course included people loudly declaring "There can't be any evil Gatekeepers in the OSR!" while at the same time saying "So to prevent that we need to let some of us censor and throw out Evil Harassers from the OSR"!  See what they do there?

Links!!

Let's see what the the clowns are vomiting this week!

The OSR peeps are diverse politically, but support for free expression and DIY are pretty universal.

It would actually be useful if Gus explained WTF he meant by his screed. Maybe he was just talking about you!!

I think the sjws count most libertarian types as alt right, so that includes Pundit and Macris. I would be surprised if they counted avowed lefties as alt right but you never know with these creatures.

I can think of one case actually - the murderous racialist Varg Vikernes creator of Myfarog rpg is connected to the actual alt right.

Oh no! Someone made a few bucks off their hobby. Our journey to the Fourth Reich is complete... again.

The problem is that alt-right doesn't really have any meaning anymore. Originally it was for Breitbart.com Roger Stone and Milo sort of conservatism, but then got latched onto by Richard Spencer and neo-Nazi types, at which it spread to include to anyone who didn't vehemently denounce Trump with every waking breath, as it's a way to imply that person is racist/a Nazi.

It's like "neo-conservative". Originally it had a very specific meaning, but grew to mean anyone that was either Jewish or hawkish (or both) and was considered a way to attack someone without seeming to be an Anti-Semite.

I noticed that the vast majority of the games mentioned on the thread I started about keeping the hobby cheap were OSR games.

I may not be an author of games but I am a player of OSR games and I would like to say that I am an anarcho-syndicalist Catholic Corbyn supporter who wants Assange freed and thinks that Putin is a better leader than Theresa May.

If there were any Alt-Right gatekeepers of the  OSR as suggested, that would surely be enough to get me banned.

*waits for the red ink*

Dude.  You have a forum on your gaming site which you use to push your right wing political views.

It's absolute hypocrisy for you to claim other people are bringing politics into gaming when you're posting political screeds under the name "the RPGpundit.  Whatever their faults may be, you share them.

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1041071I noticed that the vast majority of the games mentioned on the thread I started about keeping the hobby cheap were OSR games.

I may not be an author of games but I am a player of OSR games and I would like to say that I am an anarcho-syndicalist Catholic Corbyn supporter who wants Assange freed and thinks that Putin is a better leader than Theresa May.

If there were any Alt-Right gatekeepers of the  OSR as suggested, that would surely be enough to get me banned.

*waits for the red ink*

No, in the eyes of the control Left what you just said makes you Alt Right! As for the Alt Right, even the ones who support the Nazis fighting Russian separatists in Ukraine would agree that Putin is better than May.

Quote from: S'mon;1041075No, in the eyes of the control Left what you just said makes you Alt Right! As for the Alt Right, even the ones who support the Nazis fighting Russian separatists in Ukraine would agree that Putin is better than May.

LOL Hilarious!

After the recent Mordy Elves discussions, I am sure I am open to the accusation of homophobe, and supporting Assange would make me a misogynist and Corbyn an Anti-Semite. As for Putin, that would make me a Trumpite.

So I guess that would make me a Nazi.

And I never knew...:eek:

Quote from: S'mon;1041067I think the sjws count most libertarian types as alt right,

Everyone without a "Still With Her" bumper sticker is Alt-Right!!

"Everyone who disagrees with me is a nazi", has been the battle cry of the SJW for awhile now.

I am probably a reactionary, but I don't discriminate when it comes to hobby-gaming... lol.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1041068Oh no! Someone made a few bucks off their hobby. Our journey to the Fourth Reich is complete... again.

It's been like that for years. One is supposed to be run a profitable business without making a buck. When that contradiction is pointed out to the person spouting such nonsense they would turn around in a huff and angrily walk away. Now one is a Nazi our a right-wing nutjob according to some.

The Ctrl-Left has been a failed experiment for decades.

So is it bad form if I bring up the fact that Nazis were socialists?