What’s Going On at Sci-Fi Conventions?

Over the last year, conventions and geek-fandom have become an increasingly dangerous place for anyone who identifies as even moderately on the right. The troubles began with New York Comic Con, when YouTube reviewer Richard C. Meyer, with the channel Diversity & Comics, was targeted for harassment by comic book professionals who conspired in a secret Facebook group to harass him and “goad him into throwing a punch,” one said. The goal would be to get him banned from conventions for his violence, intentionally inciting an incident.

The problems have only become worse in 2018. East Coast Comic Con announced they would not allow Kevin Sorbo at their event because of his ties to Sean Hannity. Worldcon banned me under dubious circumstances because of my political writings. And ConCarolinas was set to have John Ringo, one of the biggest authors in the industry, at their convention.

Who Is John Ringo And Why Does He Matter?

John Ringo is no stranger to fighting SJWs. As a wildly successful author with more than two decades in the business, he recalls the year 2000 as being a particularly difficult time at his first convention, shortly after the 2000 election where George Bush narrowly defeated Al Gore in the Electoral College.

“What struck me from the beginning was how the conservatives (many) at the con had to hide in the shadows, furtively whispering the secret passwords and passing microdot notes like they were in East Germany,” Ringo told DANGEROUS. “By the same token, the leftists were free to vent any old idiocy, any lie, any distortion or falsehood without anyone speaking up and telling them they were full of ****. As soon as I broke the hymen and revealed myself as a conservative it was game on and no holds barred. At that con I very nearly got into a fistfight with a magazine publisher at a room party. It has been one **** storm after another ever since.”

According to Ringo, the convention then pushed its conservative members out of its planning committee, attendance dropped over years, and it’s now defunct. “Get woke, go broke,” he says of any organization who bows to SJW pressure.

ConCarolinas initially didn’t respond to the nasty trolling and threats of boycotts, but after deliberating over the weekend, they sent Ringo an email disinviting him from the convention because, as the convention chair said on Twitter, “the con could not guarantee Ringo wouldn’t be walking into a hostile environment. John wanted to have fun. A reasonable request. The con could not guarantee that he wouldn’t be subject to people being ugly to him.”

Ringo recalls the interchange with the convention to be a bit more serious, stating he was asked not to attend because, “we were going to have to hire full time security guards and maybe off-duty police during peak hours.”

If the crowd is prone to be as violent as he suggests, and it has gotten increasingly worse over these last few years, why won’t the conventions do something to protect their conservative guests?

What Can We Do To Fix The Problem?

Ringo doesn’t believe there’s an answer to the problem of the SJW outrage brigade in the near future. “What is not definitely conservative is eventually taken over by the left, gutted, skinned and used as a cloak while they dance around demanding respect,” Ringo said.

“Who wants to sit through a lecture on intersectionality and wokeness when they came to learn how to write? Some masochists, maybe, but most thinking people want to learn the craft, not Socialist Doctrine. So more and more will fold. People will say it’s because ‘people just aren’t reading anymore’ or whatever. But the reality is, socialism kills everything it touches.”

It seems to have been the case in the publishing industry, as fewer and fewer publishing houses appear to be able to compete each year. Independent books are subsequently taking more of the market share. Writers like Ringo, contrarily, are doing well because he doesn’t water down his books with political correctness, giving a very authentic voice to his series Black Tide Rising and others. His third book in the Monster Hunteruniverse, co-authored with right-leaning Larry Correia, is titled Monster Hunter Memoirs: Saints, is available for pre-order on July 3rd.

As the conventions continue to push themselves into irrelevancy by bowing to the SJW pressure, Ringo urges readers to fight back.

“Keep up with what any con you’re planning on attending is doing. If they cave to the SJW mobs, don’t go,” Ringo said.

“Tell them you’re not going and why. Cancel your membership if you bought one and ask for your money back. Money talks. Show the publishers that it’s a bad idea to ‘get woke’ financially. People say ‘I don’t read/watch TV on the basis of politics. Your enemies, my enemies too, do so. And they attack, attack, attack every single damned day. Wonder why there’s never anything good on TV or in the bookstores? Because we let the Left take over all of that (nearly all) and it went to ****. And it’s only going to get worse. We have to fight back. And unfortunately, we have to fight back every damned day. Because it’s like being a cop or a security guard or a sentry. The bad guys can choose their time. We have to be eternally vigilant,” Ringo said.

We have to fight back, and the best way we can do so is to support authors like John Ringo, and as he says, not give money to people who hate us. It’s the only way the culture is going to change. It’s reaching a tipping point where anyone who speaks out on the right is blacklisted, berated, defamed, or worse. It’s on us to make the change so that artists don’t have to face this kind of abuse in the future.

Starbucks to close all company-owned stores on the afternoon of May 29 for racial-bias education day

Sure, San Francisco has great facets worthy of postcards and travel books, but it also has a worsening underbelly that D’Alessandro says he can no longer gloss over.

People injecting themselves with drugs in broad daylight, their dirty needles and other garbage strewn on the sidewalks. Tent camps. Human feces. The threatening behavior of some people who appear either mentally ill or high. Petty theft.

“The streets are filthy. There’s trash everywhere. It’s disgusting,” D’Alessandro said, adding he’s traveled the world, and San Francisco stands out for the wrong reasons. “I’ve never seen any other city like this — the homelessness, dirty streets, drug use on the streets, smash-and-grabs.

“How can it be?” he continued. “How can it have gotten to this point?”

Remember, this is the man whose job is to glorify San Francisco, which tells you something about how far the city has sunk.

“We can’t be quiet anymore,” D’Alessandro said. “We’ve got such a glorious history, such a beautiful setting, and the fact is, we’re letting it all slip away into this quality of life now that is not good for anybody. We’ve become complacent, and I think we’ve taken this as a kind of new normal, and it’s not. It’s wrong, and we have to do something about it.”

He said so many visitors are sending complaints to him about their experiences in San Francisco, he’s got to speak up. He joins a growing chorus of people whose jobs make them dubious about telling a columnist their real opinions of San Francisco, but who say they have to because working behind the scenes isn’t moving the needle. Well, so to speak.

In January, I told you about hotel managers and owners speaking out. Kevin Carroll, executive director of the Hotel Council, which represents 110 hotels, said at the time, “People say, ‘I love your city, I love your restaurants, but I’ll never come back.’”

In February, I told you that the Union Square Business Improvement District, which assesses extra property taxes to pay for services in the shopping mecca, was having to train retail workers on what to do when a severely mentally ill or drug-addicted person wreaks havoc in their store.