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


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Dire Bare

Legend
1. Is it possible he was making fun of his dad? Writing a whole book as a joke might seem unlikely, but this was a guy who as we know was a huge fan of the 'false documents' technique (it's all through Tekumel). Doesn't seem out of character.

2. This was in 1991. Is there any reason to assume he maintained Neo-Nazi beliefs for the next 20 years? (He died in 2012.) Did he ever advocate for them in any fashion over the next 30 years? Are we going to judge a person by every dumb thing they've ever done? He made one of the first RPGs to use non-European inspirations, which is somewhat odd for a white supremacist to do, particularly in the late 20th century. While I am aware of the Nazi occultist current and attempts at synthesizing Islamic and Nazi philosophy (not to mention Hindu-Nazi authors like Savitri Devi), the one thing I seem to get from reading his life is that he was an extreme xenophile (and maybe this was a rebellion against Dad).

3. Again, this was in 1991. White nationalism was much weaker then than it is now, and he might not have felt as bad (assuming in fact he was not a Nazi) about writing a fake white nationalist book if it wasn't going to convert anyone. A vaccine conspiracy plot is different in 2000 (remember the X-files smallpox vaccination subplot?) than in 2020.

4. Yet again...1991. There was much more of an acceptance of 'edgy' humor back then, and it might have been something along the lines of 'let me write this totally crazy thing to make fun of my dad'. (I think my attitudes are probably closer to 1991 than 2022 TBH).

I am half Jewish by ancestry (and lost a few extended family members to the Nazis), but am not inclined to 'cancel' Barker over an obscure book he wrote in 1991. Indeed, I think I will go and donate a little to the Tekumel Foundation. We used to make stuff like The Producers, now we're digging up 30-year-old dirt on game designers who have been dead for a decade.

Now if you want to talk about Louis-Ferdinand Celine...
Who's advocating we "cancel" MAR Barker? Of course, no such thing really as "canceling", the better term is "consequences". Barker has passed, so however folks react to this won't impact him all that much. But if folks learn this, and decide to not engage with Barker's work . . . more power to them. It's a fair reaction.

The tone I'm getting is disappointment rather than torches-and-pitchforks. Which again, is a fair reaction.

To try and dismiss the concerns over Barker's engagement with racism and anti-Semitism is poor form. It doesn't matter that it was 1991, Barker's actions were racist by the standards of the time and by the standards of today. Hopefully he did outgrow these beliefs and behaviors before he passed, but . . . . doesn't erase the harm.

Personally, I feel no urge to "judge" Barker. This news cements my impression of Barker that he was a weird, complicated, and problematic dude . . . but I've never been interested in his work, and I'm even less likely to give his novels or Tekumel RPGs a look now. He's passed, his influence on the RPG scene was already over-rated, so I'll just . . . continue to not read or play his works.
 



Blue Orange

Gone to Texas
All right, it's for real, and he kept doing it. It's a little weird given the rest of his biography, but people are often weird.

No chance there were two Dr. Phil Barkers in Minneapolis at this time? Minneapolis had a population of just under 400K at this time, but about 1% of the population has a Ph.D. (probably higher in a college town and big city), so out of 4000+ doctorates in Minneapolis I guess two could have been named Phil Barker. (I could definitely see him dropping the M.A.R. for the Nazis...)
 

A couple of posts down is this:
...
2) Phil was a devoted prankster and hoaxer. He loved to demonstrate that he was smarter and more clever then any of the people around him, and then laugh at them when they didn;t get his jokes. An example of this is "Ebon Bindings", which he wrote after being told that he knew nothing about the esoteric and occult by three of his early gamers - these were all active in the then-infant occult scene in the Twin Cities, back in the middle 1970s. See also the history of Llewellen Publishing and the Bonewitz brothers, Ike and Doc. EB is the result of Phil going into his collection of medieval South Asian manuscripts, filing off the serial numbers, and publishing the thing. He was delighted when I told him that a congregation in Illinois had burned a copy of the book, thinking it was a real grimoire, as it meant that he'd hoodwinked the gullible.

3) Phil had a nasty habit of liking to push people's buttons and rattle their chains. Once he found what he thought was a weakness in somebody's personality, he'd play on that to influence and control that person. It is, Dave Arneson told me, one of the reasons why Dave lost interest in being Phil's publisher; Dave nominated Phil for Mike Stackpole's GAMA "Hall of Shame", and Phil got the award for "Most Difficult Author In the Game Industry" at an Origins in Detroit; I still have the 'Ralphie', the statuette that Phil got, as I had to get up and give the acceptance speech.

Oh good. The most charitable interpretation of all this is that Phil was one a 'that guy' -- as in, that nerd that thought he was the smartest guy to whatever room into which they walked. Ugh. I think we all got tired of that guy in high school when they came into math league/debate club and thought they were going to own the place (kinda like the guy that would take pride in a "Most Difficult _____ In the _____ Industry" award). Regardless, 'Ironically' or 'prankishly' writing Nazi work isn't actually smart, it's incredibly foolish. Even this (increasingly unlikely) interpretation take Phil down several rungs in my esteem.
 

All right, it's for real, and he kept doing it. It's a little weird given the rest of his biography, but people are often weird.

No chance there were two Dr. Phil Barkers in Minneapolis at this time? Minneapolis had a population of just under 400K at this time, but about 1% of the population has a Ph.D. (probably higher in a college town and big city), so out of 4000+ doctorates in Minneapolis I guess two could have been named Phil Barker. (I could definitely see him dropping the M.A.R. for the Nazis...)
Phil went by Phil with most people, or at least that's what Chirine told me (I've met and gamed with him. He's nice. I hope he continues to frame this as 'here's the evidence, make what there is of it').

The actual Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area would have been closer to 1 million at the time (It's one of those cities that cuts off to a suburb after about 60 blocks from the city center, and people from the suburbs might not say "I'm from Bloomington, MN" in a national publication or whatever). The percentage of advanced degrees is also quite high. That said, two Phil Barkers... that's a long stretch.
 



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