Though I suppose being naive about the dynamics of internet mobbery allows Flint to imagine he's doing anything with his rebuttal post than pointing a reactionary hate-mob at Jason Sanford.
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This is not even getting into what's wrong with the substance of the post, which... well, I guess the common thread is naiveté about internet mob dynamics and reactionary politics.
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Like, his sneering dismissal of the concerns Sanford documented with a handwave that amounts to "Oh, well, that all happened on the politics forum, which I and every sensible person ignores."... yeah, treating politics boards as containment zones is how the chans turned fascist.
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He dismisses some of the threats of violence as being fanciful because he deems their ultimate aims (rendering cities uninhabitable) as being unrealistic, based on his own knowledge of military history. I see two problems here.
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One is that, as January 6th shows us, the aims of violence do not have to be plausible or possible for that violence to be both real and deadly.
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The other is that the card-carrying big bad of right-wing science fiction has for years pushed a vogue for LARPing as masters of "4th Generation Warfare", stoking a taste for asymmetrical warfare, domestic terrorism, guerrilla tactics, etc.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_warfare …
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I have my own opinion of the profile of a typical Baen Books author and how Eric Flint fits in. I think a big part of it is the belief in history as an orderly progression of cause and effect, predictable and therefore, ultimately, controllable.
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Eric Flint is a logical man and he would probably not start writing an alternate history book where an outside element is introduced with the idea of reaching a particular outcome and then... history fails to diverge. Such a shaggy dog story would strike him as pointless.
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And so he can't quite imagine anyone engaging in a campaign of violence and terror that strikes him as quixotic. If the desired outcome doesn't make sense, isn't an orderly and predictable effect of the cause, he assumes the cause wouldn't happen, either.
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I just. He tells the story of how when he met Jim Baen, and Baen made a big deal out of how he can get along with a socialist like Flint, and he thinks that shows that Baen doesn't have a pronounced right-wing streak?
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I think ultimately, what motivates him is a fit of pique. He's offended as Baen's biggest author that his personal politics aren't considered as important as the publisher's institutional politics, or more important than those of a mere Baen-hosted internet forum.
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Taking every non-suppositional word of Flint's post as true, the message I get is: yes, Baen Books's internet forum is a right-wing hive, but how dare that matter to anyone when Baen's best author is a socialist?
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I didn't really intend to go past the first tweet or two of this thread, but I am just gobsmacked by the arrogant naiveté of a man dismissing masturbatory right-wing posts about violence as mere "twaddle" because they're masturbatory, after January 6th.pic.twitter.com/aIPMfyvv0a
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Yeah. I mean, the bit near the beginning where Flint says that Sanford is playing a shell game is a lot of projection. Flint is doing the exact sleight-of-hand when he says he's not alleging a conspiracy, but the response was definitely planned.https://twitter.com/indeed_distract/status/1362417951606009860 …
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