Cleaning House
9 October 2020 12:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dime_novel_heroAs this blog page is mainly about steampunk, you wouldn’t think I would need to talk about Nazis, but here we are.
Eduardo Miguel Questell created a Facebook page called Steampunk Sentinels, dedicated “to help keep Steampunk free from racism, fascism, and bigotry.” To that end, he shared an illustration of a steampunk POC Wonder Woman punching out Hitler with the title “Fascism is NOT Steampunk.”
You might think that wouldn’t be controversial, but here we are. Immediately, the fascist apologists swarmed out from underneath their rocks to challenge the statement. Not on every page on which the image was shared, but Steampunk Revolution seemed to be particularly infested.
Whataboutism was the fallacy they seemed to always lead with.
"Fascism is far left, always was"
"the "anti-fascists" are the actual fascists."
"ANTIFA/BLM are the FASCISTS"
"If you talk about race: you are racist. "
And the one I found most telling of the apologist mindset:
“If your humanity is so important to you , then you don’t belong .”
Literally, this person believes that your HUMANITY is not important.
And, what I feel compounded the problem and made it so very clear why the problem exists at all was that the admins just let it go on for days. Someone who said explicitly that your humanity is not important was allowed to continue spewing his hate. Steampunk Revolution refused to clean house and so become complicit in the abuse and harassment of their minority members.
It is why Steampunk has a Nazi problem. Well, not just Steampunk, but every fandom. It’s something I’ve seen (and posted about) in the Cowboy Action community. I’ve seen it in the SCA. It’s something that infests the entire country.
There have been a few places that I have seen it challenged directly. A number of Steampunk convention organizers have taken not only a vocal stand but are making sure that these people don’t attend their cons. A few Facebook pages have made similar statements and will remove aggressive trolls, though most responded toi the threat by simply deleting the “Punch Nazis” posting. Steampunk celebrity Professor Elemental weighed in on the topic, mostly positively but I disagree with him when he says “Politics have no place in steampunk.” If you have read any steampunk fiction, you will see it is chock full of politics. If you have read science fiction at all, you will see it is full of politics. And always has been. Star Trek was politics every other episode. Steampunk fiction and fandom will invariably be the same way.
And it is as it should be.
If we are willing to ignore racism, sexism, ableism, equality, justice, and all those things that are required for a functioning society because we just want to play in a politics-free steampunk, we will exclude those people for whom race, sex, gender, and all those other issues are already things that exclude them from “mainstream” society (ie, a society dominated by white supremacist, misogynistic, rich guys). Steampunk will become a place that only the privlidged will be able to escape into.
I am an admin on several pages and I take my responsibility as a gatekeeper in those communities seriously. When someone wants to join, I first check their profile to see if they are a person rather than a bot. If all they share are two profile pictures and joined Facebook last week, yea, that’s a bot. After that, I will look more at their profile and if I see posts denigrating BLM, jingoistic flag waving, fear mongering about immigrants, anti-anti-fascism, I will deny them entry.
They may whine and cry about their freedoms being abrogated but, you know what? Fuck ‘em. They are not coming in with honest intentions, they don’t care about the freedoms of others. There is no rule that says I have to allow people who already hate people in this community to bring that hatred into the community itself. I will not allow the fox, clearly presenting himself as a fox, into the hen house.
Punch every Nazi. And, if they cannot be literally punched, then metaphorical punching will do.
Eduardo Miguel Questell created a Facebook page called Steampunk Sentinels, dedicated “to help keep Steampunk free from racism, fascism, and bigotry.” To that end, he shared an illustration of a steampunk POC Wonder Woman punching out Hitler with the title “Fascism is NOT Steampunk.”You might think that wouldn’t be controversial, but here we are. Immediately, the fascist apologists swarmed out from underneath their rocks to challenge the statement. Not on every page on which the image was shared, but Steampunk Revolution seemed to be particularly infested.
Whataboutism was the fallacy they seemed to always lead with.
"Fascism is far left, always was"
"the "anti-fascists" are the actual fascists."
"ANTIFA/BLM are the FASCISTS"
"If you talk about race: you are racist. "
And the one I found most telling of the apologist mindset:
“If your humanity is so important to you , then you don’t belong .”
Literally, this person believes that your HUMANITY is not important.
And, what I feel compounded the problem and made it so very clear why the problem exists at all was that the admins just let it go on for days. Someone who said explicitly that your humanity is not important was allowed to continue spewing his hate. Steampunk Revolution refused to clean house and so become complicit in the abuse and harassment of their minority members.
It is why Steampunk has a Nazi problem. Well, not just Steampunk, but every fandom. It’s something I’ve seen (and posted about) in the Cowboy Action community. I’ve seen it in the SCA. It’s something that infests the entire country.
There have been a few places that I have seen it challenged directly. A number of Steampunk convention organizers have taken not only a vocal stand but are making sure that these people don’t attend their cons. A few Facebook pages have made similar statements and will remove aggressive trolls, though most responded toi the threat by simply deleting the “Punch Nazis” posting. Steampunk celebrity Professor Elemental weighed in on the topic, mostly positively but I disagree with him when he says “Politics have no place in steampunk.” If you have read any steampunk fiction, you will see it is chock full of politics. If you have read science fiction at all, you will see it is full of politics. And always has been. Star Trek was politics every other episode. Steampunk fiction and fandom will invariably be the same way.
And it is as it should be.
If we are willing to ignore racism, sexism, ableism, equality, justice, and all those things that are required for a functioning society because we just want to play in a politics-free steampunk, we will exclude those people for whom race, sex, gender, and all those other issues are already things that exclude them from “mainstream” society (ie, a society dominated by white supremacist, misogynistic, rich guys). Steampunk will become a place that only the privlidged will be able to escape into.
I am an admin on several pages and I take my responsibility as a gatekeeper in those communities seriously. When someone wants to join, I first check their profile to see if they are a person rather than a bot. If all they share are two profile pictures and joined Facebook last week, yea, that’s a bot. After that, I will look more at their profile and if I see posts denigrating BLM, jingoistic flag waving, fear mongering about immigrants, anti-anti-fascism, I will deny them entry.
They may whine and cry about their freedoms being abrogated but, you know what? Fuck ‘em. They are not coming in with honest intentions, they don’t care about the freedoms of others. There is no rule that says I have to allow people who already hate people in this community to bring that hatred into the community itself. I will not allow the fox, clearly presenting himself as a fox, into the hen house.
Punch every Nazi. And, if they cannot be literally punched, then metaphorical punching will do.
