Social-Justice Warriors Aren’t So Tough When Even ‘Sad Puppies’ Can Beat Them

[Valin]

National Review/The Corner:

David French

April 8, 2015

 

As I’ve said before – in the religious liberty context – when one takes their eyes off the “head for the hills” Republicans and focuses on the vast conservative grassroots, the social-justice and identity-politics Left is taking beating after beating. And now that losing streak is extending into a new cultural arena — the arts.

 

Conservatives who love gaming and science fiction (*cough* me *cough*) have long been distressed at the leftist assault on both genres — favorite lefty targets because gaming and sci-fi have long been seen as the habitat of the dreaded species whiteus maleus. As Robert Tracinski writes in The Federalist, the pattern is distressingly familiar:

(Snip)

The response to the social-justice Left in the gaming world was “Gamergate,” an online movement that (and this is an understatement) “punched back twice as hard” against the left-dominated gaming media. The resulting online battles were extraordinarily vicious, with claims and counterclaims of online bullying, “doxing” (exposure of personally identifying information on the web), and general internet hand-to-hand combat.

In science fiction, the response was “Sad Puppies,” a movement led by conservative author Larry Correia. Why Sad Puppies? Because “boring message fiction is the leading cause of Puppy Related Sadness.” Correia and his Sad Puppies targeted the Hugo Awards, prestigious writing awards voted on by members of “Worldcon,” the World Science Fiction Convention. Correia had known that the social-justice Left had campaigned against him previously, so he countered with his own campaign — assisted by leading conservative and libertarian authors. In 2014, they succeeded in getting a number of nominations. The tolerant Left’s response was predictable. Here’s Correia:

(Snip)