Camestros Felapton

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John C Wright to Storm a Building

Here’s a thing which is in turns wrong, absurd, despicable and then absurd again.

The Daily Beast in late February carried an article on three Instagram ‘stars’ – the sisters have an apparently innocuous enough degree of celebrity from their lifestyle posts on Instagram. What the Daily Beast went on to reveal was that these young women are the daughters or far-right anti-Muslim figure Pamela Geller.

I’m not going to link to the post. I think it is simply shitty journalism. There’s no obvious news there. There’s no indication that any of the women are somehow sneaking in their mother’s views into lifestyle posts. The connection is simply that they are the children of somebody appalling. It’s at best gossip and at worst a way of harassing somebody’s family because of their views. I’ve zero sympathies for Geller but that doesn’t mean such tactics are smart of acceptable because aside from anything else it makes everybody’s lives shittier.

Enter well-known internet-troll Milo Yianopoulos – he is claiming this a plot by The Daily Beast to send ISIS against Geller’s daughters. Which is hyperbole – The Beast’s actions were careless and unethical IMHO but not some ISIS plot. Bloviating science-fiction author John C Wright has got all agitated as a consequence:

“Milo asks, and with considerable justice, why there is not a million man march on the offices of the Daily Beast, in strength and numbers and determination needed strike the fear of God into their hearts.” http://www.scifiwright.com/2018/03/sell-your-cloak-buy-a-sword-2/

And later in the comments:

“That is why we need a mob to storm the offices of the Daily Beast, and, without technically breaking the law, paralyze their daily operation.”

Gosh. No sign as yet that JCW has attempted to storm the offices of The Daily Beast. As far as I can tell from his tone, he wants other people to go and do it form him. For a legal scholar, he doesn’t seem to have thought through either how he could ‘storm’ an office and ‘paralyze their daily operation’ without legal consequence. It just sounds good to him and in reality, we know JCW isn’t going to do anything. But some far-right extremist might and JCW here is showing the kind of behaviour he is condemning above – pointing out targets to an audience whose fringes contains people willing to use deadly violence.

Far-right extremist in the US have killed more people in the US than ISIS. A fact that people like JCW won’t engage with.

Meanwhile, perhaps JCW needs to talk to some of his fellow puppies – they explained to us all a few weeks ago how connecting online identities with real people isn’t actually doxxing and supposedly quite reasonable behaviour and not at all irresponsible even if those people have upset extermists with openly violent views. Hmmmm.

camestrosfelapton

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46 responses to “John C Wright to Storm a Building”

  1. “Storming the offices of the Daily Beast” in and of itself would be trespassing, and consequently, breaking the law.

    There appears to be a good reason why JCW doesn’t practice law any more.

    Liked by 4 people

  2. Wasn’t he quite keen on a mob storming and murdering the Marvel editorial team for something trivial like a Muslim Ms Marvel?

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  3. Wait a minute. If the Daily Beast is actually trying to egg ISIS into attacking Pam Geller and her kids (for whom I have the utmost sympathy), isn’t the Beast trying to strike the fear of ISIS’s God into the Geller hearts? And isn’t Geller all about trying to strike the fear of her God into Muslim hearts? How many fear of God strikes can we have at any one time? Isn’t there a natural limit?

    I’m just really confused now and developing a headache. Which is typical I guess whenever I contemplate Wright, much less his prose, for more than 15 seconds.

    Liked by 4 people

  5. That is fairly typical of the Red Pill/Alt Right. They like putting their fanatical followers up to doing illegal acts, while they hide behind disclaimers. Their minions end up taking all the legal consequences while the leaders do paid interviews and laugh up their sleeves.

    Liked by 3 people

    • It’s a pattern that does get noticed. When one spends enough time reading far-right hangouts, one notices a certain position come up repeatedly, for which there probably is a certain amount of justification. This position is: anybody who tells right-wing activists to engage in lawbreaking behavior is either a Walter Mitty or a police informant. The more often somebody advocates said behavior after having the law-enforcement consequences pointed out – and especially if they do not participate themselves – the more likely it is they are police informants.

      In some cases this line of thought has led to investigations, denunciations, occasional cases of confirmed police contact, and always lots of drama. In other cases, hotheads acted on trust, got in trouble, and made headlines. There was a case in Michigan or thereabouts some years back that followed this pattern down to every detail – where the police informant was the one pushing them to take action, and of course was the only one to walk free afterward.

      In this case I don’t expect JCW to be an informant, mainly because I find it perfectly believable he’s Walter Mittyish enough to talk big about what other people should do without it occurring to him that he should back up words with actions. It’s fairly typical of right-wing Christians, from what I’ve seen.

      Liked by 3 people

  6. Thomas Aquinas and ISIS walk into a bar.

    Aquinas shouts “Death to the obdurate heretics! Baptize Jews, heretics and non-believers against their will! Theology is the surest of all sciences and fount of all knowledge! Being a monk is greater than being married or consorting with women! Females are intellectually inferior and subordinate to men!” ISIS chimes in, “Yeah, yeah!!! All that stuff.”

    JCW, looks up from his olde tyme sarsaparilla soda, accidentally knocks over his bumbershoot, and says “Wait. What?”

    True story.

    Liked by 7 people

    • IIRC, Wright believes in the Chick Tract theory according to which the God Muslims believe in is actually some moon idol. So even if ISIS does things that Wright generally digs, they’re doing it for the wrong reasons.

      Liked by 2 people

  8. This is clearly incitement to riot. Or it would be if it wasn’t that no one GAF about him except Pups.

    JCW’s real big on proclaiming violence against others for trivial reasons and then not following through, isn’t he? He’s an ideas man! And a coward, for obviously having no intention of carrying any of them out.

    What a terrible lawyer he must have been. Hope it wasn’t in criminal law — though at this point I wouldn’t trust him to draw up a will using Nolo Press templates, frankly.

    Liked by 4 people

    • “Yes my client murdered that man, but he didn’t technically break the law… *whispers* … oh, umm… well, I hadn’t realised that committing illegal acts was in fact breaking the law. Your honour, my client is guilty.”

      Liked by 3 people

    • This whole rightwing online world is really eager to incite riots and violence against their opponents and then washing their hands of the whole thing, when one of their less stable followers actually does attack someone. And people have been hurt and even killed by the radicalised followers of online rightwingers, yet no one even tries to stop them.

      Liked by 2 people

  9. If someone becomes a celebrity (in this case running a lucrative promotional business on Instagram,) and is the child of a high profile celebrity (in this case of conservative media,) and gets profiled as a celebrity in media, then the fact of having also a famous parent is always automatically going to be part of the profiled celebrity’s bio. Colin Hanks doesn’t particularly enjoy getting asked numerous questions about his dad Tom Hanks when he does an interview after many years of his own famous career, but it’s a fact of record that he’s his son and all media mentioning him will mention that fact. That these women’s mom is a celebrity means she already exposed them to possible extremists who don’t like her, that her family is known — and has financially benefited including being able to launch their Instagram business from that celebrity. It’s not outing them; it’s part of their press packet.

    Even if Daily Beast didn’t mention it, other media would in talking about the women and also the Daily Beast’s profile of the women, so there’s really nothing the publication could do to keep ISIL from going after those women — if ISIL actually had a terror cell attacking conservative families in the U.S., which they don’t — since the information has been freely available to such groups since Geller became a conservative media celebrity. It’s not at all like what the Pups did by sicking Gamergaters on non and low-celebrity SFF authors and their families, whom the Gaters had no awareness of at all until the Pups told them the SFF authors were supposedly evil and committing fraud.

    Milo Y, on the other hand, since he’s running out of money and open backers, can get a boost by stirring attention towards these young women and trying to get someone to hurt them, or simply claiming that will happen as a fundraiser for himself. Which is why he did it, as we know. And JCW is jumping on the bandwagon, much like Robert Spencer jumped on Milo’s alt right band wagon and took it over. But yeah, unless Wright gets an op-ed on it in the NYTimes or goes out there to the offices and gives interviews to the media — including the Daily Beast which would certainly cover a protest at its own offices — then he’s not on the band wagon.

    Liked by 2 people

    • One minor correction here – I’m not aware of any Robert Spencer as a major figure in the alt-right, but Richard Spencer has been fairly vocal online for a decade or so now, advocating essentially the same ideology the whole time. Alternativeright.com was first set up (by Spencer) in the late Bush / early Obama period, I believe. Milo is the bandwagon-jumper.

      VD too for that matter. This whole thing strikes me as an echo of VD’s tactics: raising money via outrage. But outrage burns out, you can’t build anything long-term with it.

      Liked by 1 person

      • I meant Richard Spencer, sorry, it was an error I couldn’t edit. Richard Spenser was involved early on with financial backers in setting up that movement, but in terms of spokespeople speaking up for the alt right/far right who got major media attention, Milo had the slot through Gamergate and Breibart, lost it, and Spencer has become the major speaker for the alt right.

        Spencer got a big boost from being punched. I said it would happen and others claimed it would send him into obscurity out of fear. Instead, he helped launch the Charlottesville march, etc. and gets more and more media coverage. So really if he actually wanted to get somewhere, Wright would need to put himself on the front lines, or at least try to do media calling for front lines. But I don’t think anyone is much interested in him.

        Liked by 2 people

      • Beale, like Spencer, has actually been at this for awhile now–he wrote for WND and engaged in a lot creationism boosting and one-sided feuds with PZ Myers and the like throughout most of the Double-Aughts. In Beale’s case, it’s hard to tell what’s pretense and bandwagon-jumping, and what’s a crank getting ever more crankish.

        Liked by 2 people

      • Of course, VD is also the son of even more cranky tax protester Robert Beale, who is a shareholder in WorldNetDaily. VD looks calm and collected compared to his father; if nothing else, he seems more aware that a lot of what he is peddling is an outrage game to get other people going. (Not that ‘more aware’ is saying much in this case.)

        Liked by 2 people

      • Oh, yes–that adds another wrinkle, as it’s hard to tell how much of Beale’s awfulness is deeply-rooted belief and how much is him trying to get pats on the head from daddy. To be honest, I’m not sure even he really knows where he stands in the end.

        Liked by 1 person

      • @Space Oddity: too true. Teddy’s really striving to get daddy’s approval. But I’d say he really believes just about all he says at base, even if he turns it up to 11 for the rubes.

        Daddy, of course, is coo-coo bananas; Teddy’s got some emotional problems, but he’s sane.

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    • This is another thing: If ISIS had active terror cells in the US (which they apparently don’t), I’m pretty sure they would have more high profile targets to go after than the lifestyle Instagrammer daughters of a rightwing pundit.

      Liked by 1 person

      • ISIL LOVES Geller, their mom. She’s been an invaluable tool in their recruitment drives and she in turn has profited handsomely off their doings. They’d have no interest in going after her daughters, which would have little impact — they like big impact stunts and so do the few Muslim extremists who have done things in the U.S. to impress them. And they don’t need to, as she helps them out without any threats directly to her. Of course, right now they’re highly fractured and trying to regroup in Afghanistan but there’s like 300 different groups in those regions of the Middle East, not just ISIL or the Taliban. They all splinter and switch around, but they aren’t in the U.S.

        Liked by 2 people

      • @Kat:
        No kidding.

        There was a column I once saw on the CBC website years ago, by Martin O’Malley (who, back when he was a columnist for the Globe and Mail, was the person who actually originally said “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation”, a line which was later used by Pierre Trudeau to justify decriminalizing homosexual activity between consenting adults in Canada). This was prior to the 2004 election in the U.S., in the wake of one of Osama bin Laden’s videos, with the Bush campaign claiming that the video was trying to scare people into voting for Kerry.

        O’Malley pointed out that actually bin Laden almost certainly wanted Bush in charge, because that sort of sabre-rattling was a great recruitment tool, and a more diplomatic person in charge would erode bin Laden’s power base of people with nowhere else to turn. And Americans were dancing right to his tune, as they had for the previous few years.

        (A talk I heard once years ago actually used this sort of thing to say that there actually was a difference between ‘freedom fighters’ and ‘terrorists’ aside from whose side are they on: one is primarily attempting to achieve a goal of overthrowing a regime; the other is primarily using the public goal to cover their real goal of amassing a power base, which means that they aren’t interested in actually succeeding in their public goal. Of course, this means the same group can be both, and the group as a whole can wobble over the line depending on who’s mostly in charge at a given time.)

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      • Actually, adding on to the above…

        One could see Daesh/ISIL/ISIS as being something like the ‘Freedom Caucus’ in the U.S… a group of highly apocalyptic true believers grown out of an environment where previous leaders had been using those beliefs to whip people into a frenzy and build their power base. Except now the people who knew it was all a con aren’t in control anymore.

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  10. Like mother, like daughters — grifters gonna grift, whether it’s being on TV fulminating against them evul Mooslims, or Instagramming for fun and profit.

    Liked by 1 person

  11. JCW, Storminess and today’s date shall be bound up together forever on the internet. Heh.

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  12. Oh man, I haven’t had to dust off this phrase for JCW in a long time…lemme just get it out of mothballs and…

    Christ, what an asshole

    Liked by 3 people

  13. Wasn’t the good JCW advovating storming the office of a comicpublisher (I think DC but could have been Marvel also) a few years back?
    So a blast from the past.

    Liked by 3 people

      • Whatever else you can say about the man, Wright appears to have the good sense to wear a full beard. Any goatee he has is purely metaphorical (except in older pictures).

        Why yes, I have a full beard. Why do you ask?

        Liked by 3 people

    • Yes. Back in 2011 or so, when Superman renounced his citizenship in Action Comics 900, the huffy Mr. Wright claimed that DC was portraying Superman as being embarrassed by America’s actions, and not wanting to be associated with them (of course, in actuality, the character renounced his citizenship so that his actions wouldn’t be misconstrued as being official acts of America – in other words, the exact opposite of what Wright wronged). Too lazy to look up the screed… Sorry.

      Liked by 2 people

  14. Space Oddity: It’s worth pointing out that by this time last year, Beale had announced his slate.

    I don’t think that there was much question of him attempting to influence the Hugos this year; the slate’s showing last year was utterly dismal thanks to EPH and poor choices like that third-rate novel, and the fact that only 80 people had been willing to pay to nominate (and I suspect that many of those were left over from people who’d bought memberships in 2016). I’m quite sure he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to get enough of them to pony up the money again this year to even make a dent in the ballot, and if he tried to run a slate, he’d just end up massively embarrassing himself.

    The word was that he thought he had a Best Series nomination in the bag last year, and was absolutely furious when it didn’t happen.

    Liked by 1 person

  15. The drop in his support between nominations and voting last year, I think, makes it fairly clear that a lot of his nominators were indeed left over from 2016.

    In any case, he claims he is boycotting this year’s Worldcon over its treatment of Del Arroz, and that can be read as including the Hugos as well.

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