M.A.R. Barker, author of Tekumel, also author of Neo-Nazi book?

[QuentinGeorge]

I can:

• Basic Human Decency
• Basic presumption of innocence
• The book is under a nom de plume; it's not a certainty that it's Barker.
  • Style can be faked. the examples I'd choose to illustrate this would violate the restrictions on RSP.
• The claim is by a former subordinate; it's as plausible that it's sour grapes as it is that it's true.
  • The default assumption is that the claimant is in unintentional error
• The claim is not consistent with the various descriptions of him by many others.

He's dead. Let him be, he can't defend himself.

This isn't a criminal trial, he's not going to be prosecuted for a crime, it's just people sleuthing so I'm not sure why the "presumption of innocence" is relevant.

 

[Fifth Element]

I can:

• Basic Human Decency
• Basic presumption of innocence
• The book is under a nom de plume; it's not a certainty that it's Barker.
  • Style can be faked. the examples I'd choose to illustrate this would violate the restrictions on RSP.
• The claim is by a former subordinate; it's as plausible that it's sour grapes as it is that it's true.
  • The default assumption is that the claimant is in unintentional error
• The claim is not consistent with the various descriptions of him by many others.

He's dead. Let him be, he can't defend himself.

You ignored the fact that he was on the editorial board of a Holocaust-denial journal for 13 years.

This isn't a courtroom. No one's going to prison.

And the idea that you shouldn't discuss a person's flaws just because they're dead is ridiculous.

 

[Fifth Element]

He wrote an RPG world.
He wrote a fictional tale, which nobody had read or been offended by.

Is the takeaway here that fiction can no longer be controversial, or have an unsavoury theme?

Struggling?

The takeaway is that it's fine to say that someone who writes pro-Nazi fiction is probably not a good person.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Good news for Lovecraft though - he soured on the Nazis pre-Holocaust, Barker was still thinking they were cool in 1991.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Good news for Lovecraft though - he soured on the Nazis pre-Holocaust, Barker was still thinking they were cool in 1991.

He’s got his own, well-documented issues, of course.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

He wrote an RPG world.
He wrote a fictional tale, which nobody had read or been offended by.

Is the takeaway here that fiction can no longer be controversial, or have an unsavoury theme?

Struggling?

Not struggling.

As noted, you missed the part about his documented 13 years of Holocaust denialism.

That aside, if you put something- ANYTHING- into the world, it will be analyzed, criticized and judged. So will you, the creator.

If you want to create things that are controversial or unsavory, you don’t get to hide from people responding to it. You have no valid clam of freedom from critique of your creations.

And neither death nor the mere passage of time grant you immunity from that either.

 

[Jd Smith1]

He’s got his own, well-documented issues, of course.

Yep. He was hardcore a hardcore bigot, even for his times.

People have opinions. It doesn't change the quality of their artistic efforts. The Petal Empire is a foundation stone of our hobby. I buy the products of a virulent racist because I like the game system. And he's careful not to let his opinions show in his commercial work.

Barker's hardly the only VIP of the RPG hobby, past or present, to have views that are legal but shocking to the more delicate sort.

As a person of color, I find that political correctness just builds a more subtle bigot. Myself, I miss the days when you knew up front where people stood.

 

[Jd Smith1]

And neither death nor the mere passage of time grant you immunity from that either.

Death pretty much does. Barker certainly doesn't care what anyone thinks now. Odds are very good he didn't care back when he was alive.

 

[Hussar]

He wrote an RPG world.
He wrote a fictional tale, which nobody had read or been offended by.

Is the takeaway here that fiction can no longer be controversial, or have an unsavoury theme?

Struggling?

If that's your takeaway, then I would say that you have badly missed the point.

It's absolutely astonishing to me that people, still now, insist on so badly missing the point.

Or, put it another way, why is knowing the truth, as in the complete truth and not just the comfortable, selected truths, seen as a bad thing? Why is it when we learn about how this formerly lauded individual (regardless of who it is) actually was a real human being with flaws and views, it's suddenly a bad thing?

Look, it's pretty simple. If you don't want history to remember you as a dick, don't be a dick. We live in this vast sea of information now. Which means that all that stuff that was "conveniently forgotten" like, say, being a slave trader (as an example) is now readily available. And yes, new information results in people changing their views on the past. And it should. We should never look back on the history of someone or something, interpret it one way, and then, regardless of any new information that is later learned, insist that that single interpretation must be the only one we ever use for all time.

I know it's a big shift for a lot of people to learn that the "facts" they grew up with are no longer the only facts. It's hard to learn that people we thought of as heroes were in fact, really not. Good grief, I'm old enough to remember when Columbus was a hero. Now, we realize that he was much more of a murderous bastard who spend a significant time in Spanish prison for being TOO violent to the natives. How bad do you have to be for the 15th century Spanish to chuck you in jail for what are essentially human rights violations?

It is NEVER about "fiction can never be controversial".

 

[Casimir Liber]

Had been musing on looking into Tekumel as I was aware of it as a kid at some point. This makes me significantly less inclined to do so. Given the esoteric nature of EPT/Tekumel, all this will do is influence numbers of in-depth gamers like us to either ignore the news or (for probably more of us) lose interest in investigating it. It's sad really overall.