Quote from: jhkim on February 03, 2024, 11:54:43 AM
For some people, it's important that creators be decent people, and they see Ocule's list as helping mark that. For example, in the "Worst People You Have Never Met" thread, Thorn Drumheller expressed it as:

Quote from: Thorn Drumheller on January 31, 2024, 05:51:08 PM
if anything, this whole twatgate rpgdrama had reminded me of Ocule's list. I really will only support creators who I know are decent.

Personally, I don't see much relevance, but then, I also don't see relevance between Steve Jackson supporting abortion rights and the quality of GURPS as a system.

Oh man, I got a citation....I'm hittin the big time

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2024, 12:36:22 PM

For some people, it's important that creators be decent people, and they see Ocule's list as helping mark that. For example, in the "Worst People You Have Never Met" thread, Thorn Drumheller expressed it as:

Quote from: Thorn Drumheller on January 31, 2024, 05:51:08 PM
if anything, this whole twatgate rpgdrama had reminded me of Ocule's list. I really will only support creators who I know are decent.

Personally, I don't see much relevance, but then, I also don't see relevance between Steve Jackson supporting abortion rights and the quality of GURPS as a system.

Why do you ALWAYS have to equivocate and make false equivalences?

If you buy Tekumel, does any of that money go to support neo-nazis? Answer: NO.

If you buy anything from SJG, does any of that money go to support murdering babies? Answer: YES.

So, to anyone not trying to make a "who cares, muh both sides" false equivalence there's an obvious difference here.

Do you seriously think if buying Tekumel funded neo-nazis I would be arguing for it?
[/quote]

Yeah, I agree with Geeky here jhkim. You're being pretty disingenuous. There's a difference in who I want my money to go and support, especially with living, present day creators.

But like I said, you do you. Buy what you want.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2024, 12:36:22 PM
Why do you ALWAYS have to equivocate and make false equivalences?

If you buy Tekumel, does any of that money go to support neo-nazis? Answer: NO.

If you buy anything from SJG, does any of that money go to support murdering babies? Answer: YES.

So, to anyone not trying to make a "who cares, muh both sides" false equivalence there's an obvious difference here.

Do you seriously think if buying Tekumel funded neo-nazis I would be arguing for it?

Well. The Tekumel Foundation new the truth for years and sat on it. I do have some reservations about supporting their endeavors. Tekumel isn't a big money maker, but there's some clout there, for some people, in some circles. And someone thought clout was more important than an honest disclosure. So. Do with that what you will.

Quote from: RPGPundit on February 03, 2024, 01:45:21 PM
Some posters were claiming that it was probably a lie that Barker was a neo-nazi, others were saying he might have been racist but was not a full on nazi-supporter; and pawsplay provided the truth, which is that Barker was a member of a  neo-nazi organization for decades and wrote a novel about heroic SS resistance fighters. It was made relevant by other posters trying to claim Barker was not actually what he has been proven to be.

Barker never got a chance to explain what his beliefs actually were in life. If no one had found evidence whilst going through his belongings, no one would have known.  It's pretty obvious that for at least awhile he held some set of antisemitic beliefs, because you don't accidentally write a book where Nazis are heroes and then sit on a Holocaust investigation board or whatever, but a lot of the conclusions of his detractors are best-guesses, and who knows what he would say if he had a chance to defend himself. 

Personally, I think he was a Nazi of some sort for probably his entire life.  But he clearly wasn't trying to push that belief under his real name, or anything he published under his real name.  Seems like a green listed product set to me- maybe he spent his life pushing hateful beliefs under a fake name, but that's not what his published product says, and he literally took the secret to the grave, to be unearthed by someone going through his estate, right?

Maybe I have a detail wrong here, but that's what I recall from when this all broke a bit ago.

Quote from: Venka on February 03, 2024, 02:57:48 PM
But he clearly wasn't trying to push that belief under his real name, or anything he published under his real name.

He was an editorial advisor of the Journal of Historical Review for twelve years under his legal name. He retired from teaching in the 1990s, before his involvement with the Journal. It's doubtful he would have had a mainstream academic career with such an association earlier.

As for his real name, I lived my pretty much my whole life without knowing what "M.A.R." stood for. After this stuff came out, I did more reading on him, and when I learned what M.A.R. stands for, my jaw dropped, for reasons I stated toward the beginning of this discussion.

I don't know what his game was, I don't. But he was definitely involved in neo-Nazi activities, fairly openly, under his real name. Some of his actions may have been subtle, others less so. His neo-Nazi preoccupations were obscure, not secret.
He probably published his novel under a pseudonym because, first, he might have wanted to remain somewhat obscure, and second, because it sounds like exactly the sort of drek that gets published by specialty presses with an ideological bent.

I came to Tekumel shortly before all this broke with a great deal of admiration and curiosity for his work. It's hard to accept, but sometimes smart people with geeky obsessions with language and culture and science-fiction turn out to be neo-Nazi shitbirds, through and through. The first time I read through Tekumel, I thought, "This discussion of the inimicals seems like it brings up some really morally ambiguous matters about replacing indigenous peoples, I guess this fits in with the somewhat fatalistic idea that empires go through cycles of rise and fall, in which all of us are destined to be first conqueror and eventually victim, which I treat with skepticism but is congruent with the idea of romantic savagery and 'civilization.'" And then I read it a second time, after everything, and I thought, "Oh, shit, this guy is saying, 'Well, it's so sad we have to exterminate native peoples to make way for civilization, but what can you do? Peace is fundamentally impossible between two peoples who are alien to each other.'" That's just my specific take. But knowing does change the reading. Words themselves never tell the whole story; words are made by people. Everything that is written is written with intent.

So, yeah, you can sometimes view a work separately from the author in many respects. But you can't wholly ignore their word, their context. In this particular case, I think it's very, very difficult to argue that Tekumel doesn't reflect Barker's views as a neo-Nazi, pro-Aryan proponent of antiquated, classic views of "Western civilization."

Quote from: pawsplay on February 03, 2024, 02:49:13 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2024, 12:36:22 PM
Why do you ALWAYS have to equivocate and make false equivalences?

If you buy Tekumel, does any of that money go to support neo-nazis? Answer: NO.

If you buy anything from SJG, does any of that money go to support murdering babies? Answer: YES.

So, to anyone not trying to make a "who cares, muh both sides" false equivalence there's an obvious difference here.

Do you seriously think if buying Tekumel funded neo-nazis I would be arguing for it?

Well. The Tekumel Foundation new the truth for years and sat on it. I do have some reservations about supporting their endeavors. Tekumel isn't a big money maker, but there's some clout there, for some people, in some circles. And someone thought clout was more important than an honest disclosure. So. Do with that what you will.

Are you claiming the Tekumel foundation is a Neo-Nazi org? If that's your claim I want evidence (because we've established you're a leftist).

If that's not your claim then... So Fucking What?

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2024, 03:40:24 PM
Are you claiming the Tekumel foundation is a Neo-Nazi org? If that's your claim I want evidence (because we've established you're a leftist).

If that's not your claim then... So Fucking What?

So fucking what, then. If you don't care, you don't care, and I can't care for you.

Quote from: pawsplay on February 03, 2024, 03:31:51 PM
So, yeah, you can sometimes view a work separately from the author in many respects. But you can't wholly ignore their word, their context. In this particular case, I think it's very, very difficult to argue that Tekumel doesn't reflect Barker's views as a neo-Nazi, pro-Aryan proponent of antiquated, classic views of "Western civilization."

And there it is...I thought it might take a couple years, looks like it just took one page of replies.

Quote from: pawsplay on February 03, 2024, 04:03:46 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2024, 03:40:24 PM
Are you claiming the Tekumel foundation is a Neo-Nazi org? If that's your claim I want evidence (because we've established you're a leftist).

If that's not your claim then... So Fucking What?

So fucking what, then. If you don't care, you don't care, and I can't care for you.

No, I don't fucking care that an organization that's not pushing shit contrary to my values (meaning in this case isn't Neo-Nazi) might benefit from my money.

Likewise dude I don't care about your deranged ass either.

Quote from: Brad on February 03, 2024, 04:07:14 PM

Quote from: pawsplay on February 03, 2024, 03:31:51 PM
So, yeah, you can sometimes view a work separately from the author in many respects. But you can't wholly ignore their word, their context. In this particular case, I think it's very, very difficult to argue that Tekumel doesn't reflect Barker's views as a neo-Nazi, pro-Aryan proponent of antiquated, classic views of "Western civilization."

And there it is...I thought it might take a couple years, looks like it just took one page of replies.

"Western Cicilization" as if it doesn't exist... Classic leftard twatwaffle.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2024, 04:15:05 PM

Quote from: Brad on February 03, 2024, 04:07:14 PM

Quote from: pawsplay on February 03, 2024, 03:31:51 PM
So, yeah, you can sometimes view a work separately from the author in many respects. But you can't wholly ignore their word, their context. In this particular case, I think it's very, very difficult to argue that Tekumel doesn't reflect Barker's views as a neo-Nazi, pro-Aryan proponent of antiquated, classic views of "Western civilization."

And there it is...I thought it might take a couple years, looks like it just took one page of replies.

"Western Cicilization" as if it doesn't exist... Classic leftard twatwaffle.

I'm pretty sure there is no western civilization in Tekumel for the record; it nuked itself out of existence during WWIII many, many thousands of years ago. People don't even know what it is.

Quote from: Brad on February 02, 2024, 07:04:22 AM
RE: Nazi crap, I saw that mentioned on this messageboard a while back and literally DGAF. Barker was so involved and invested in Hindu culture I wouldn't doubt he had a couple old school swastikas and some retard took it the wrong way. Dredging up this sort of garbage is a waste of everyone's time.

Playing Devils not-advocate after playing devils advocate here.

Actually he apparently DID write and submit a sci-fi book to a neo Nazi publisher. Why? No one knows. But I read the book and its about as non-nazi as it can get while still having supposed nazis in it. I commented on it when this whole blowup happened. Barker is dead and we are never going to find out exactly what went down.

Quote from: S'mon on February 02, 2024, 08:18:26 AM
I run FR without Time of Troubles, and usually without Harpers either. And generally distant non meddling gods. Seems to work.

Barker wrote for an actual neo-Nazi journal. This isn't a misunderstanding. OTOH no one ever saw anything Nazi in Tekumel before they were aware of this.

He did not, far as I know, write for a journal.

He submitted a sci-fi book to a supremacist publisher. And he knew what they were. We just dont know the why of it and the book itself is weirdly not what you'd expect.

Quote from: pawsplay on February 02, 2024, 02:15:05 PM
Given some the posts above, I feel it's important to point out that Serpent's Walk, by MAR Barker, is a novel about heroic SS soldiers.

Quote from: The back cover
"Serpent's Walk ... assumes that Hitler's warrior elite - the SS - didn't give up their struggle for a White world when they lost the Second World War. Instead their survivors went underground and adopted some of the tactics of their enemies: they began building their economic muscle and buying into the opinion-forming media. A century after the war they are ready to challenge the democrats and Jews for the hearts and minds of White Americans, who have begun to have their fill of government-enforced multi-culturalism and "equality."

So actual Nazi stuff. Barker was literally a neo-Nazi.

Except thats not what the book really depicts. It is indeed a bunch of Nazis. But they essentially become a mercenary group and work for about anyone. They slowly do build up an economic and political platform. But from there it skews further and further from any Nazi thinking and the main characters are mostly weirdly accepting for supremacists.

I dissected the thing when this mess all started.

We do not know the why of him deliberately submitting the book or why he was on that academic board. He's dead. All I know is that he knew who the publisher was. Was his submission sincere? Was he fucking with them? We'll never know.

Quote from: Omega on February 03, 2024, 10:05:15 PM

Quote from: S'mon on February 02, 2024, 08:18:26 AM
I run FR without Time of Troubles, and usually without Harpers either. And generally distant non meddling gods. Seems to work.

Barker wrote for an actual neo-Nazi journal. This isn't a misunderstanding. OTOH no one ever saw anything Nazi in Tekumel before they were aware of this.

He did not, far as I know, write for a journal.

He submitted a sci-fi book to a supremacist publisher. And he knew what they were. We just dont know the why of it and the book itself is weirdly not what you'd expect.

He is listed as being part of the Editorial Advisory Committee for The Journal of Historical Review, which is explicitly about Holocaust denial. You can see the archive of their credit listing him (as "Phillip Barker PhD of Minneapolis, Minnesota") here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210518162602/http://vho.org:80/GB/Journals/JHR/index.html

I do not see him listed as an author offhand among the journal articles, but I also don't see the complete archives.