The Elephant in the Room Points Out the Elephant in the Room

I covered the revisionism of Sarah Hoyt’s account of the Sad Puppy debarkle yesterday. Lots of people noticed a very weird issue with her account – no Rabid Puppies were mentioned. Now true the two campaigns were different (we are a polypuppyist school here unlike those monopuppyists)  but it is weird to discuss the actions and motivations of everyone else involved without mentioning the Rabid Puppy campaign. By omitting the ‘alt-right’ from the account, Hoyt herself blurred the distinction between the campaigns.

What is obvious to the critics of the Sad Pups is also obvious to the hydrophobic hounds also. Here is Vox Day’s commentary on the Hoyt piece (direct link and archive link if you don’t want to give clicks).

“I find this rather fascinating for what it omits. The Baen cum Sad Puppies crowd is in an uncomfortable position not terribly different from that of Never Trump and the cuckservatives. They are accustomed to being the sole opposition to the SJWs in science fiction, and viewing themselves as the proper and respectable opposition, so they really don’t know what to do about the Rabid Puppies…”

And the lyssavirus  labradors continue:

“So, they push a narrative to the public in which we don’t exist, even though without us, Sad Puppies would have remained what it was prior to our involvement, a minor bump in the road that didn’t even require any suppression outside of the usual routine. This is not to say that what they did was not admirable, and indeed, their construction of the Dragon Awards will likely prove to be more significant in the long run than our demolition of the Hugo Awards. I merely observe that their efforts would have been insufficient in our absence.”

Vox is also prone to self-delusion but not to the same extent as Hoyt perhaps because he’s already accepted that his positions are appalling and inimical to freedom. Of course, he’s still deluded that somehow the Hugos were destroyed when they continue at least as actively as prior to the Sad Pups. However, parts of his analysis there are correct – the Sad Pups want credit for the scale of their actions but want to pretend the Rabids had nothing to do with – to the extent of airbrushing them out of the photo.