Keep the arms trade out of fandom

Back to Raytheon and the Hugo Awards briefly.

There’s a long connection between the arms trade, space technology and fandom. I’m going to detail some of that next month in a coda to Debarkle looking at some of those connections that I touched on in the main text (such as why Newt Gingrich kept making guest spots). However, I didn’t want January to pass without returning to the strange, upsetting and alarming sponsorship role of Raytheon in the 2021 Hugo Award ceremony.

Mary Robinette Kowal’s apology was creditable in many ways but it left lots of lingering questions. I suspect at this point we aren’t going to get any answers to those any time soon. That lack of further detail has meant that the initial discussion fizzled away, aided by the proximity of the scandal with the holiday period in many countries between Christmas Day and New Year.

Even without those further details, I think there’s a clear ethical line that we can draw: science fiction conventions and fandom and professional authors shouldn’t be taking money from the arms trade. Further, we shouldn’t be helping arms companies launder their reputations — that includes letting them have booths or if you are a notable author, taking speaking engagements with arms companies or closely related events.

Why?

• Simply, every major arms companies is involved with conflicts that even by quite moderate, centrist, liberal values are deeply unethical. With Raytheon the obvious example was the civil war in Yemen — that is not a “good” or “just” war by any standards except the most reactionary.
• More broadly the arms trade is instrumental in aiding anti-democratic authoritarian regimes around the world.
• Most perniciously, the lobbying of arms companies such as Raytheon on national governments has been shown to be pressurising decisions favourable to both those outcomes.

In short, the arms trade profits from and encourages authoritarian regimes to go to war and embroils democratic governments in that process. I could document each of those points and I did illustrate several of them on social media during the height of the Raytheon arguments in late December. I won’t do that here to keep this post fairly short.

Put simply: even if you aren’t very left-wing, even if you are at the centre leaning-right, it should be clear that arms companies currently have a negative impact that goes far beyond the needs of national defence.

Let me anticipate some counter-arguments:

• “Such a boycott is demonising people in the [US] military“. No, that’s not the point. People join the military for lots of reasons, including a lack of other decent options. Many do so with a genuine belief that they are defending their country. Programs such as sending books to military personnel stationed overseas is not somehow the same as taking sponsorship from a missile manufacturer.
• “Many people work for divisions of these companies that are involved in other kinds of work, in particular space technology“. True and I know there’s an overlap there with fandom. I’m not telling people to quit their jobs — there’s ethical questions there obviously but those ethical questions aren’t the same or as simple as the ethical question I’m raising above.
• “This is an attack on MilSF!” No, nor is it a call to cut out hi-tech weapons from science-fiction books. I’m not calling for a aesthetic puritanism that culls out all the explosions and cunning missiles from science-ficition. Aside from anything else, that isn’t going to happen.
• “You can’t boycott everything that’s morally compromised, what about Amazon (et al.)!” True we can’t boycott everything and there’s no point engaging with ineffectual boycotts. However, WE CAN DO THIS (boycott the arms trade). We really can cut these kinds of ties with the arms trade.
• “It is just superficial posturing“. Maybe, but clearly a company like Raytheon wanted SOMETHING from fandom. No, this won’t usher in world peace but within what power we do have, we can achieve a small but significant thing.
• [eta] “You are saying that somebody can’t have a stall selling knives or swords!” No, I think from the context it is obvious that I’m not talking about a small metal working business selling sharp things to collectors. Not sure what the best way to say “arms trade” to make that clear but I’m not coming for your knife collection.

The issue is that science-fiction as a genre and fandom more generally should not be helping these companies launder their reputations. We shouldn’t help the arms trade do that and that is an achievable objective.