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Mola Ram said:
That's what should happen, but doesn't. First you got the literary graverobbers who want to use Lovecraft shit in their stuff (most frequently RPGs, but you see occasional examples from actual writers) but know they have to disavow his racism, and usually do so in the most self-righteous, self-congratulatory ways imaginable ... because, you know, it's so difficult and laudatory to have more enlightened views on race than a guy who described a black boxer literally as a quadrupedal ape.
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People who moan about Lovecraft's racism are barely more cringy than people who try to excuse it. Because let's face it, Lovecraft was literally an ardent racist. You can't know him at all and pretend this isn't the case. His actual views are a lot more complex than the cherry picked shitposts he made from time to time, though.

There are a lot of things that are just objectively true, though.

He was an ardent supporter of Hitler before Hitler took office, and part of this was he literally just really liked Hitler's ideas about the Jews.

Yet at the same time, somehow he married a Jew (Sonia Greene). How did this make the remotest amount of sense? It didn't. His actual opinions and his actual behavior were often divergent.

Apparently, his personal interactions with everyone of every race he encountered were incredibly polite. He may have said incredibly offensive things in private but then he'd be entirely pleasant in person. He did not actually discriminate against people.

And if you've read his letters (which you should as they are some of the best things he ever wrote), he had vastly softened his racist views by the time he died and was actually ashamed of his earlier support of Hitler as well as other opinions he'd had. He died pretty young. Could he have come around to something like egalitarianism if he hadn't died so young? Who knows?

In any event the man should be judged by his actions, not just entirely by his words, and whatever he said, he was a pretty cool guy.
 
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AnOminous said:
People who moan about Lovecraft's racism are barely more cringy than people who try to excuse it. Because let's face it, Lovecraft was literally an ardent racist. You can't know him at all and pretend this isn't the case. His actual views are a lot more complex than the cherry picked shitposts he made from time to time, though.

There are a lot of things that are just objectively true, though.

He was an ardent supporter of Hitler before Hitler took office, and part of this was he literally just really liked Hitler's ideas about the Jews.

Yet at the same time, somehow he married a Jew (Sonia Greene). How did this make the remotest amount of sense? It didn't. His actual opinions and his actual behavior were often divergent.

Apparently, his personal interactions with everyone of every race he encountered were incredibly polite. He may have said incredibly offensive things in private but then he'd be entirely pleasant in person. He did not actually discriminate against people.

And if you've read his letters (which you should as they are some of the best things he ever wrote), he had vastly softened his racist views by the time he died and was actually ashamed of his earlier support of Hitler as well as other opinions he'd had. He died pretty young. Could he have come around to something like egalitarianism if he hadn't died so young? Who knows?

In any event the man should be judged by his actions, not just entirely by his words, and whatever he said, he was a pretty cool guy.
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Shades of gray don't can't exist in the IdPol mindset.
 
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Yeah, there was a Cthulhu RPG kickstarted like a year ago where they took a pile of cash to make a Lovecraft RPG, then dedicated the first page to shitting on the guy, then went to Twitter to pat themselves on the back about how principled they were. Somehow they didn't get really the response they were hoping for when the obvious question of, "If you hate the guy so much, how come you decided to make a bunch of money off of his work?" immediately arose.

Lovecraft was literally insane, guy had a whole catalog of mental issues aside from generally being racist, but the racism came from his being a weird shut-in who was terrified of other people. The same thing that fueled the horror of his stories, fear of the unknown and the different. I mean, the guy was afraid of penguins, describing them as 'abominable' in the Mountains of Madness. Like AnOminous mentioned, he married a jewish woman and wasn't going around burning crosses or anything like that, he just wrote some cringey shit. I primarily just feel bad for him, he lived destitute most of his adult life, had basically no commercial success while alive, and died horribly of cancer fairly young after a life of being terrified of the people around him.
 
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robobobo said:
Lovecraft was literally insane, guy had a whole catalog of mental issues aside from generally being racist, but the racism came from his being a weird shut-in who was terrified of other people. The same thing that fueled the horror of his stories, fear of the unknown and the different. I mean, the guy was afraid of penguins, describing them as 'abominable' in the Mountains of Madness. Like AnOminous mentioned, he married a jewish woman and wasn't going around burning crosses or anything like that, he just wrote some cringey shit. I primarily just feel bad for him, he lived destitute most of his adult life, had basically no commercial success while alive, and died horribly of cancer fairly young after a life of being terrified of the people around him.
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Let's just also admit that the only thing more universal to humanity that sex in history - was racism. Everybody bought into stereotypes - even minorities or the stereotyped targets.

If it never led him to mistreat or harm another person...
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robobobo said:
I'm pretty positive that Lovecraft never had the means to harm others, even if he'd wanted to. He was a poor shut-in who lived in a tiny ass apartment and sent manuscripts to publishers. Wasn't exactly an icon of aryan masculinity looking to begin the next race war. But doesn't matter, all historical people must be judged and purged, etc.
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He was also actually in an incredibly kind and generous person who mentored younger writers (including Jews who he supposedly hated). Why would he simultaneously express virulent hatred for groups and then be actually decent to members of the groups he supposedly hated? Who knows?

You really can't just isolate some trait of a person and then act like that was their whole personality or discount them as a human based on it.

You can take any person and separate out some isolated trait they have and say, wow, this guy is a racist or whatever, and therefore we should discount every other aspect of them.

And if you do this you are a terrible person yourself.
 
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AnOminous said:
You can take any person and separate out some isolated trait they have and say, wow, this guy is a racist or whatever, and therefore we should discount every other aspect of them.

And if you do this you are a terrible person yourself.
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RPGNet is full of terrible people, by that metric. There's plenty of long threads full of handwringing about buying products from those they wish cancelled.

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Bonus: The Rapist Matt McFarlane's retirement wasn't all that permanent. He's still involved via his brother.

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Never forget that McFarland was deep in the mod's inner circle until he got caught, as was his wife for another year plus.
 
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Wallace said:
RPGNet is full of terrible people, by that metric. There's plenty of long threads full of handwringing about buying products from those they wish cancelled.

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Bonus: The Rapist Matt McFarlane's retirement wasn't all that permanent. He's still involved via his brother.

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Never forget that McFarland was deep in the mod's inner circle until he got caught, as was his wife for another year plus.
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No wonder they don't play any games - they don't have any time after running all of their background checks.
 
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Admittedly, I haven't been on these forums in at least a decade (probably more), but I remember Cessna as being pretty far to the right. What the hell happened over there?
 
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Cessna was more of a light conservative, but drifted far to the left over the years. Peer pressure and the desire to fit in seemed to have been key. There is a personal aspect here as well: about ten years ago, he lived together with some other RPGNet mods in a shared apartment, and they seemed to have worked him over. Around the same time, Darren McLellan also went from "neutral asshole" to "lefty asshole".

One time, RPGNet had a few outspoken right-wingers (like Texan cop Darth Tang, who had a bunch of really funny stories from his job). The woke crowd already hated them, but it was not until being right wing became bannable that they were finally gotten rid of.
 
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Loose Goose said:
Cessna was more of a light conservative, but drifted far to the left over the years. Peer pressure and the desire to fit in seemed to have been key. There is a personal aspect here as well: about ten years ago, he lived together with some other RPGNet mods in a shared apartment, and they seemed to have worked him over. Around the same time, Darren McLellan also went from "neutral asshole" to "lefty asshole".

One time, RPGNet had a few outspoken right-wingers (like Texan cop Darth Tang, who had a bunch of really funny stories from his job). The woke crowd already hated them, but it was not until being right wing became bannable that they were finally gotten rid of.
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I recall there being enough righties that White Wolf writer and perpetual asshole Malcolm Sheppard once went on a tear complaining about "the right wing cabal" that was conspiring to go after him. I guess he won in the end, although I'm pretty sure at some point he got banned himself.
 
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Mola Ram said:
I recall there being enough righties that White Wolf writer and perpetual asshole Malcolm Sheppard once went on a tear complaining about "the right wing cabal" that was conspiring to go after him. I guess he won in the end, although I'm pretty sure at some point he got banned himself.
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The liberal cries out as he strikes you.
 
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Mola Ram said:
I guess he won in the end, although I'm pretty sure at some point he got banned himself.
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"Viva la revolucion!!"

*Firing Squad Fires*

These woke dummies don't realize the inherent nature of these things. When attaining any power at all they purge the 1.0's to make way for the 2.0's. Hitler got rid of the SA, Stalin got rid of the Trotskyites. Who needs revolutionaries when the revolution is over?
 
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Starscreams Cape said:
"Viva la revolucion!!"

*Firing Squad Fires*

These woke dummies don't realize the inherent nature of these things. When attaining any power at all they purge the 1.0's to make way for the 2.0's. Hitler got rid of the SA, Stalin got rid of the Trotskyites. Who needs revolutionaries when the revolution is over?
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If Sheppard got banned (he posted under variant names of "eyebeams" if you want to go looking for him), it wasn't because he broke ranks with accepted groupthink. It would have been longer ago than that, and it would have been because he was a massive, antagonistic cunt.
 
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Hugbox Kommissar said:
RIP, I remember him. I actually saved his playhouse raid story because its so beautifully creepy.

Now all they have left is 'er Majesty's Constable A2A.
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Banned around 5 years ago. I'd love to know what set it off.
 
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