(no subject)

[fpb]

Everyone, by now, has read and digested charlottelennox' tremendous account of debased fandom politics and arrivisme. To me, the tale has had an ugly and personal echo. I feel vindicated, but dirty - the kind of vindication one would be happier without, because of the demeaning nature of the whole. These are people with whom I have been at war for years. When I remarked that "FA mods are still lying daughters-of-bitches", that remark went around the fandom, with the suggestion that this was a classic example of my bad behaviour or near mental illness. Well, those mods were the same, beginning with heidi8 who distinguished themselves in Charitygate, universally regarded as the lowest point in the history of fandom. The role of msscribe in this particular episode was not central: the leading spirit, from first to last, was Heidi, and all the worst trolls were people who either belonged to her clique or aimed to.

In front of this sort of evidence, it might at least be admitted that, whatever one might want to think of my manners, I had made the right enemies. But that is not what happened. Instead, the moderator in charge of the discussion banned me from the community, while allowing all sort of scum to make insulting remarks about me. The excuse for this, if you please, was that the thread was not about me. Not about me, you see, but certainly about insulting and defaming me.

A couple of words about this moderator. The first thing I found out about her is that she is a member of Asatru. And Asatru is a neo-pagan community that spends half its time denying persistent rumours that they are neo-Nazi or at least racists. Well, perhaps they are not. All I can say is that I would rather have a Nazi for an enemy than for a friend; and that I would rather have a neo-pagan for an enemy than for a friend. They may not be Nazis. But I am familiar with Fascist and Nazi circles, and, by some inconceivable fatality, they do seem to be simply full of neo-pagan types.

And that is not the only thing about this person that I find politically repulsive. At the same time as she cultivates this entirely non-Nazi cult, she has also taken her name from one of Berthold Brecht's vilest pieces of Communist propaganda: Pirate Jenny, an odious fantasy of revenge and massacre on the evil hated Bourgeois. So we take it that she is not a Nazi, and we take it that she is not a Communist either. We reassure ourselves that she does not cultivate, even in jest, the memory of the two worst murder cults in recent history.

People like her, her arbitrary behaviour, her fondness for insult and persecution, her all too evident vindictiveness, are evidence that some sections of the fandom have learned precisely nothing from the whole appalling series of revelations. To the likes of Pirate Jenny, what charlottelennox' revelations have provided is nothing more than another target for persecution. No doubt, msscribe will now see her name become mud in everyone's eyes; and I cannot say that she does not deserve it. But as for looking at one's own attitudes; as for trying to spread some peace in the fandom instead of indulging in the endless game of selecting targets for slander and hatred; Pirate Jenny and her accomplices do not even come close to conceiving of any such thing. After all, fandom is about persecuting people.

Comments

[neigedens.livejournal.com]

A couple of words about this moderator. The first thing I found out about her is that she is a member of Asatru. And Asatru is a neo-pagan community that spends half its time denying persistent rumours that they are neo-Nazi or at least racists. Well, perhaps they are not. All I can say is that I would rather have a Nazi for an enemy than for a friend; and that I would rather have a neo-pagan for an enemy than for a friend. They may not be Nazis. But I am familiar with Fascist and Nazi circles, and, by some inconceivable fatality, they do seem to be simply full of neo-pagan types.

Forgive me if I phrase this wrongly, Fabio, but something seems kind of fishy here with this quote and your whole post in general. You acknowledge that your argumentative and often hostile personality has lost you more than a few friends, and recently has gotten you banned from the bad_penny comm on JF. You then proceed to...accuse the mod there that the reason you were banned was because she's a pagan and possibly a Nazi.

...I didn't pay attention a lot in 9th grade logical crap class, but isn't that what's known as an ad hominem argument? I've seen you do something like this more than a few times, too. You take someone's background and us it as an argument. Perhaps you don't mean it to, but it comes off as somewhat patronizing and kind of silly.

[chocolatepot.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, Wikipedia (and I know Wiki isn't a very good source, but this isn't a research paper) tells me that the reason Ásatrú is sometimes conflated with Neo-Nazis and white power organizations is that they both use Odinist symbols, not because of any similarities in beliefs. It's like saying that Hinduism and Jainism are suspiciously like Nazism because they all have swastikas.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If I found the local Combat18 and such-like chapters were full of Hindus and Jainas, that their bookstores simply groaned with copies of the Vedas, the great epics and the Puranas, and that their activists kept spraying Hindu and Jaina symbols on city walls at night, I would think different. When I say that I am familiar with Fascist and Nazi groups, I mean exactly what I say; and knowing what I know, to me Odinism is suspect from the word go.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Well, no, that is not what I said at all. And this surprises me, Briana, because as a rule you are a very intelligent person, but here you missed the point completely. Find anywhere where I said anything like and recently [my bad temper] has [got me] banned from the bad_penny comm on JF. That is simply not what happened. I made a comment more in sorrow than in anger, pointing out that I was very familiar with the kind of procedure that the Inner Circle enacted against enemies such as Gryffindor Tower; and for this, this person who is not a neo-Nazi or a Communist banned me. She did not, however, prevent the thread from turning into an I-hate-fpb fest. As for what she is, what does this kind of lynching behaviour make you think of?

[neigedens.livejournal.com]

this person who is not a neo-Nazi or a Communist banned me.

If she's not a neo-Nazi or a Communist then why did you bring all of it up in your post?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Because I admire a certain journalist who kept talking about the heterosexual Tom Cruise.

[becomethesea.livejournal.com]

This has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand, I just wanted to say that your MST3K icons are freaking awesome. :)

[neigedens.livejournal.com]

They STINK! :)

[becomethesea.livejournal.com]

POD PEOPLE OMGZ YES YES YES. Your icon looks like a potato.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

Just a random comment that has nothing to do with the actual subject of the post...

All I can say is that I would rather have a Nazi for an enemy than for a friend;

Really? Personally I'd rather have one as a friend. I guess, I'm the kind of person who could turn a blind eye to how other people were treated as long as they were a good friend to me. Which really doesn't say much for me, but there you go.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You never met them. I did. I assure you that there is not the slightest danger of your seriously admitting a serious Nazi to your circle of friends. They have this unmistakeable smell of thug about them, that repels normal people.

Re: Excuse me, but

[fpb.livejournal.com]

But for every person who has read John Gay, one hundred have heard Brecht and Weill. And there is nothing about John Gay that connects with being "Loyal to the Aesir", Asatru, in the way that an unfriendly mind will connect the two great death cults of our time.

In the period of happy German-Russian collaboration in Poland, one Russian general remarked to a German counterpart that their two flags were very much alike. "They both," he said laughing, "are full of red." Of course, there is no reason to connect Pirate Jenny to either. She is only a persecuting, vindictive, nasty little power tripper after all.

[becomethesea.livejournal.com]

All this b. s. with FA is what prompted my leaving altogether.

I used to lurk. But now I don't even do that. What a sad thing FA has become. :(

[agatha-s.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but I don't think your case is similar to the events described by Charlotte Lennox at all. You may have had some of the same people as enemies, but as far as I know, people have never turned against you because of words and actions falsely attributed to you. People have been turning against you because of your own words and actions.

I don't think a journal post in which you break Godwin's law in a new and original way, accusing someone of being a Nazi and a Communist at the same time, can make anyone see things your way. If you feel you have been treated unfairly, it would be so much better to just calmly state the facts like Charlotte Lennox has done than to drown the facts in insults and exaggerations.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

These are the facts: namely, that the person whom I have NOT called a Communist and a Nazi has in fact banned me from a thread while allowing dozens of people who know nothing of me to insult me. As for the rest, you quite literally don't know anything about it. I only said two things about it: the people charlottelennox showed up had been my enemies virtually from the moment I entered the fandom; and, not wanting to go into details - this thing was about Pirate Jenny, not about Heidi and co. - their tactics were the same. If you think this irrelevant, I find that either naive or perverse. Please stop acting as though there were no difference between slander and fact.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

as far as I know, people have never turned against you because of words and actions falsely attributed to you

Two words: Gay Bar.
Look, honey, you cannot tell a man who is still hanging from the tree that he has not been lynched. You are either making a fetish of being even-handed or notifying me that you regard me pretty much as I regard Pirate Jenny, so that you think that anything that is done to me is deserved. Either way, do a little thinking about it.

[lizrocks.livejournal.com]

Jumping in here... you're lumping all neo-pagans in with Nazis? That's a leap I've never seen before. Just because the two sometimes use the prefix 'neo' does not mean we affiliate with each other.

Let me spell it out for you:
Atatru =/= Neo-pagan
Neo-pagan =/= Nazi
Atatru =/= Nazi

You just come off sounding like an idiot when you make assumptions you know nothing about.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As a matter of fact, I thought I had made it clear that I do not do any such thing. A certain amount of suspicion is the most I will allow myself.

Nobody has yet asked me what I think of neo-pagans AS neo-pagans, though.

And I find it amusing that you do not seem to know how to spell Asatru (="true to the Aesir").

[lizrocks.livejournal.com]

When you say things like: All I can say is that I would rather have a Nazi for an enemy than for a friend; and I would rather have a neo-pagan for an enemy than for a friend. They may not be Nazis. But I am familiar with Fascist and Nazi circles, and, by some inconceivable fatality, they do seem to be simply full of neo-pagan types.


What else could you be implying? You're lumping them both into the same group. You're treating neo-pagans the same way you'd treat a Nazi, aren't you? How else is that to be viewed?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

It is as possible to be a Nazi and not be an Odinist, as to be an Odinist and not a Nazi. There is a great deal of overlap, however, and if you deny that, you simply attest that you know nothing whatever about neo-Nazism. At any rate, in case I had not made it clear yet, I despise neo-Paganism for a self-referential, self-involved, irrational nonsense. Clear?

[lizrocks.livejournal.com]

you know nothing whatever about neo-Nazism

That one I'll give you. It's not something I go looking to read up on.

I despise neo-Paganism for a self-referential, self-involved, irrational nonsense. Clear?

Wow. With an open mind like that, you're sure to go far in life. Point made perfectly clear on many levels.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

An open mind on matters which oppose the proper use of mind is a highly overrated commodity.

[lizrocks.livejournal.com]

Right. Not going to debate it.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Look, I did not ask for your approval or even for your opinion. Since you are on this LJ, one thing I do want is for you to go here: http://fpb.livejournal.com/183131.html - and do what I ask in that post. Otherwise, goodbye and good luck.

Hang on a moment

[tree_and_leaf]

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the original thread, I do think that it's a bit disingenuous to keep harping on the fact that you think P.J. is not-a-Nazi and not-a-Communist, and then try to correct people when they say you are slandering her. You hint that she has Nazi tendencies, because of her religious practices, and Communist tendencies because she has a Brechtian user name, and at the very least you are tainting her by association.

I also don't think Brecht is as vile an ideologue as you're suggesting (and he certainly loathed the Nazis). Brecht =/= Piraten Jenny, though I imagine he wd have said that he admired her for remaining defiant in a nasty situation. Like many others, I think he genuinely believed that the DDR could be made into a a fairer, peaceful Germany. Of course, it didn't come that way, and you can certainly argue that it was naive to think so, but I don't think it was a massive moral failure. Lots of people backed the DDR with honourable intentions in the early days. And while Brecht never spoke out openly against the nastier actions of the regime (as, I agree, he should have), his poem following the 1953 rebellion, with the ironic suggestion that the govt should 'elect a new people' shows that while he may not have been a Havel, he wasn't blindly toeing the party line either. It's much more complicated than that. ( speak as someone who has lived in the former East Germany and who has lots of friends who had a difficult time because of church or democratic allegiences, and who 'Ostalgie' annoys, even when i can see where it springs from)

Anyway, I think the assumption that liking a writer or one of his poems also means identification with his or her political programme is fundamentally flawed. I like both Chesterton and Brecht - but I wouldn't vote for either. And I also find the Eddas very moving, more so than that rather tiresome crowd on Mt Olympus, though I am not about to start sacrificing to the Hanged God.

Re: Hang on a moment

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'm not the one who keeps harping. Every single post I got insisted on the matter. Anyway, since I find her a power-abusing, self-regarding, perswecution-minded harpy, why should I not point out certain possible connections?

As for Berthold Brecht (whom Thomas Mann, who I really admire and respect, used to call "the monster"), I suggest you read Paul Johnson's account of him. Then read any biography of Chesterton. Then compare the two. And if you do not agree with me that any comparison between them is an enormity, then I'm afraid we will have to conclude that we have nothing to say to each other. We have spent too long being polite about people who deserved, in their lifetimes, nothing so much as to cross the road if you saw them coming, only because they were on the Politically Correct side. If everyone admits, with no diminution to his art, that Wagner was a monster, why should we not admit it of Brecht, who, quite frankly, is not nearly as important?

Anyway, I barely mentioned Brecht by name. And if you want to argue that taking the nickname Pirate Jenny does not imply identification with and admiration for the character in question, I will be interested to see your arguments.

Re: Hang on a moment

[tree_and_leaf]

Oh, I'm sure I would have disliked Brecht quite severely if I'd known him. But I was only talking about his art when I said I liked him. And he may not be as important as Wagner, but he's still one of themajor figures of 20th C German literature (and very important for the history of drama elsewhere), whether one like it or not.

I also admire Mann's writings. Not so sure about the chap himself (I would have hated to be one of his children). But then it's very rare for an author to be more admirable than their works, unless, of course, they are very poor writers.

Re: Hang on a moment

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, who on Earth even mentioned the Greek gods? It so happens that I not only appreciate ancient mythologies, but professionally study them. That is exactly why I regard any attempt to resurrect them in this day and age as irrational, sentimental, self-centered and dangerous nonsense.

Re: Hang on a moment

[tree_and_leaf]

Me. They were fairly irrelevant to the argument, merely noting that I think the Norse mythology had something to be said for it. But I certainly agree that resurrecting their cult is a bad idea (though, I wonder, is it really any worse than the materialistic irreligion so prevelant today? it's certainly less self-centred).

Re: Hang on a moment

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I disagree, and the disagreement goes to the heart of why I despise neo-Paganism. Religion, if it is anything at all, is a philosophy of existence. Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, give certain accounts of existence, and the practices they dictate are explained by the philosophy, not the reverse. (This is a very abbreviated argument. If you want, I will post in the future the essay I wrote a while back on this matter.) Now, modern pseudo-religions such as Wicca do nothing of the kind. At best, they give a vague, hinting series of suggestions about "energies" and correspondences, which do not allow to a solidly argued philosophy of existence which you can debate and oppose. No, they exist purely to make people feel good. The appeal of Wicca to its members is what is sometimes described as "inner healing" or the like; at any rate, the implication is that you should pick it up because it feels right, or nice, for you. The issue of truth hardly comes up. In the kingdom of relativism that the Pope has blasted, this is what passes for religion: something that improves your own ego, that leads to something called self-actualization or self-realization. But that is simply nothing to do with the issue of any religion. The monks of the Buddha, the warriors of Muhammad, the missionaries of the Church, did not spread the word because it would make people feel better; in many cases, it might make them feel a great deal worse. They went out because they believed it was true, and, being true, it deserved to be spread. That being the case, as I said to a former friend, going over from Wicca to atheism is a great step forward in dignity of thought and proper use of the intellect. Atheism engages with the real world; it is, like all true religions, a clear philosophy of existence, and deals with facts and issues of truth. This is an enormous step forward from simply looking for "inner healing" or "inner lights". Self-centred? Wicca is as self-centred a discipline as the mind of man ever conceived.

Even so, Wicca is still better than neo-Paganism, because at least it is an original intellectual effort. The basics of any kind of neo-Paganism are sinister: you should follow a certain path, not because it is rooted in universal reality, not even because it is individually good for you and leads to "inner healing", but because it is nationally or culturally suited to you. When the various Teutonic nations became converted to Christianity, they did wrong, in the eyes of Asatru and other Odinists, not because Christianity is a worse system than Asatru, nor even because it is bad for the individual self, but because it struck at the communal identity of the tribes concerned. These tribes were originally bound with their paganism; therefore their remote descendants will find their proper place in a resurrection of said paganism - and in no other system. It is, you might say, in the blood. I find this both irrational and sinister.

[alexandramuses.livejournal.com]

Um, you do realize that the current FA mods are not *all* the same as they were during Charitygate?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Yes, and it is not against the current lot that I say I was at war - nor, indeed, with the website. In fact, what I fought for from beginnning to end was to be allowed to stay there. It so happens that I have just uploaded my two last fics - which you will find later in my LJ - to FA. The thing is however that all the lies and hate that were roused against me in those unpleasant days are still there. Try mentioning my name in various places in the fandom, see what happens.

[alexandramuses.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know your reputation quite well! And I'm glad you don't hate the lot of us. Keeping it personal is good.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I'll tell you what gave me the grimmest amusement: seeing Heidi and aja, and then Heidi and ari_o, falling out and tearing into each other. Because when you have faced them leading twenty others, joined together against you like a line of Roman legionnaires, for the single purpose of destroying you morally and in reputation... there is something rather satisfying about seeing them fall on each other. Not pleasant, true, but satisfying in the sense of the proverb about sitting by the riverside and watching your enemy's corpse come floating past.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

By the way, since you were the first to write a favourable review of my It Was All on Account of the Little Russian Girl, I would think twice before I assigned you to the company of Bad Guys. Mind you, I've had people writing splendid things about fics of mine and then seeming to forget it...

[alexandramuses.livejournal.com]

I think you're an excellent writer. I completely disagree with a lot of your personal opinions, but that doesn't change your writing.

And in response to the thing with Fyre, no, I am in no way connected. I came up with my username completely independently of her story.

Oh, P.S....

[fpb.livejournal.com]

...is your monicker anything to do with the excellent Fyre chaptered fic of the same name? (If not, I recommend it anyway.)

Re-reading old entries

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

I feel sorry for you, man, but you show terrible judgment about when and how to post in some forums. You built your reputation yourself.

Re: Re-reading old entries

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I will not say you're wrong, but that does not excuse their behaviour. Anyway... water under the bridge and all that.

Re: Re-reading old entries

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

True. Forgive and forget.

*Hugs*