About Gate Keeping (the mentality and how the far-left SJW activists take over hobby and pop culture communities)
[Transcrip:] We’ve been seeing this happen a lot with far left comic pros had Twitter rants accusing the community of gatekeeping. They claim that the community is trying to keep out minorities, gays and women. Nevermind that those people have always been a part of the community and make up a large portion of the people complaining about the far-left politics appearing in comics.
The irony of course is at Guerrera, Fowler and Thompson and those like them are the ones who are gatekeeping. They’re the ones controlling the content. They’re the ones telling people what they can draw, what types of characters they can create and how they can depict those characters. They’re the ones saying who should be allowed within the community itself, right now - who should even be allowed to buy books.
For the Far-left is isn’t about any real sense of community, it is about their politics, their ideology.
What usually happens is that the far-left goes after their own. They don’t just virtue signal to show that they’re one of the good ones, they sometimes do it to distance themselves from anyone or anything that would bring down the ire of the party and I think it’s fair to think of the situation in terms of ‘1984’ because it fits the Orwellian model. The people who face the greatest scrutiny and punishment are those who belong to the party, and it’s the outer party members who get it the worst. It’s not just because they’re controlled by this hardcore doctrine, it’s also because they live under constant fear of suspicion. They’re essentially ratting on each other and they’re terrified of anyone finding out anything that can be used against them.
This is perfectly explained in the book the “True Believer” by Eric Hopper. I’ve mentioned the book before and it bears mentioning again because it’s so on point. Hopper says in this section about suspicion within mass movements; quote “the awareness of their individual blemishes and shortcomings inclines too frustrated to detect ill-will and meanness in their fellow men.“
We see this all the time.
The moment someone questions a change to a character the addition of partisan politics or the hiring of people based on their identity, the immediate response is to attack the person. It’s not enough to disagree with them, they’ve got to be named called labeled, dehumanized, unpersoned. From these people’s perspective there’s never any valid reason to have a problem with the party, so whoever does complaint must be a ‘bad person’ and anyone who remotely associates with that bad person is also ‘bad ’. When I say remotely I mean something as disconnected as people liking and buying someone’s books. What they’re doing is nothing more than projection.
These folks don’t want this level of control placed on them but they also don’t want to deal with the fallout, so when they see someone showing the tiniest inkling of free thought - they pounce. We see this in the way at the far left eat their own.
They devour anyone who reminds them of their own flaws. There’s a weird flipside to this Hopper says quote; “self-contempt however vague sharpens our eyes for the imperfection of others we usually strive to reveal in others the blemishes we hide in ourselves.“
This is why you find so many of the people who complain about racism are usually the most racist people.
The same with sexism, the most sexist people you’ll ever meet are feminists.
The people who rally against discrimination around sexual identity will say the most hateful things about anyone who isn’t part of their group.
We see this in the comics community with how the far-left creators immediately label someone a “bigot” and “bully” as they engage in that very bigoted and bullying behaviors themselves. But there’s another element to this and this is the one I think is most relevant to what’s been happening lately in the comics community.
Hopper says; quote “That’s when it frustrated congregate in the mass movement the air is heavy laden with suspicion there is prying and spying, tense watching and tense awareness of being watched the surprising thing is that this pathological mistrust within the ranks leads not to dissension but to strict conformity. Knowing themselves continually watched the faith will strive to escape suspicion by hearing zealously to proscribed behavior and opinion. Strict orthodoxy is as much the result of mutual suspicion as of ardent faith.”
The people who feel lucky to be part of big brothers party but they’re still out-of-party members and like in ‘1984’ everything they do is monitored and control as Hopper says; quote “Mass movements make extensive use of suspicion in their machinery of domination: fear one’s neighbors, one’s friends and even ones a relative seems to be the rule within all mass movements. Now and then innocent people are deliberately accused and sacrifice in order to keep suspicion alive.”
Every movement needs an adversary. It doesn’t matter who or what it is so long as it’s either a single individual that can personify all the evil the movement hates *coughs*Trump*coughs* or a broad nebulous group that’s both easy and impossible to identify; all right Nazis.
Hopper says; quote “Suspicion is given a sharp edge by associating all opposition within the ranks with the enemy threatening the movement from without this enemy the indispensable devil of every movement is omnipresent.
This villain is everywhere both outside and inside the sacred group and must be fished out because as Hopper says quote; “If anything goes wrong within the movement, it is his doing it is a sacred duty of the true believer to be suspicious he must be constantly on the lookout for saboteurs, spies and traitors.”
That’s exactly what we’ve been seeing lately a closing of the ranks to make sure that no one thinks for themselves. The idea of gatekeeping, this happened within the atheist community tech community, the gaming community, in various music communities and now in the comic book and even anime communities.
Gatekeeping simply means controlling and usually limiting general access to something. It’s a pretty normal thing for people to do we create groups and we police them in order to maintain a group’s configuration, sometimes this is done out of hate and bigotry. Most of the time it’s done simply to make sure the group doesn’t change too much. It’s not hard to think of examples of this from politics or religion. Like I said, it’s what people do when it comes to hobbies though it can get tricky because these communities are by their nature fluid.
People drop in and out all the time and it’s easy for something to go from a niche group, to socially popular, to something in between and to swing through all of them like a pendulum. It tends to be the case that when something hits pop culture there’s a wave of people who join a group more because it’s the thing to do, not because they’re interested in that thing. Eventually they lose interest but the damage to the community is already done. This is why so many communities hate when something hits mainstream success. The weird part is that even with this reaction, most communities remain open to newcomers as long as people are willing to accept the community for what it is.
The comic-book community is a fairly open and free group of people. Everyone has favorite characters, titles, and publishers. Everyone has their favorite eras of comics, favorite creators, even their favorite style of storytelling. All are welcome, even if people can’t stand the books other people like. The quote “gatekeeping” that happens in the comic book community is just an attempt to keep that openness going. That’s technically not even gatekeeping. No one’s saying you can’t read, buy or make comics that are different from what others prefer. They’re only saying that you can’t come in and make everything about *you*.
Now contrast about what we see coming from the far left, here you have creators telling people what they can draw, what types of characters they can create, how they can depict those characters and who should be allowed within the community itself, right down to who can even buy the books.
For the far-left it’s not about any real sense of community but about the ideology the politics Hopper explains what’s going on; quote “Collective unity is not the result of brotherly love of the faithful for each other the loyalty of the true believer is to the whole, the church, party, nation, not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society. The act of mass movement sees in the personal ties of blood and friendship a diminution of its own corporate cohesion, thus mutual suspicion within the ranks is not only compatible with corporate strength, but one might also say a precondition of it.”
This is part of the reason why these folks turn on each other; they’re not really friends. There’s no real loyalty between them. They’re friends in the same sense that I’m your friend, there is no deep connection that binds me to you unless we know each other personally.
The far-left like most mass movements take this a step further because this happens face-to-face. These are people who actually know each other, who sit and talk with each other, hang out with each other, and at first second and third glance looked like friends but they’re not, not really. You can’t build a community like that. No one will actually feel welcomed and if they do they won’t feel it for very long. That’s because these types of communities do gatekeep. They do control and limit access to the community and to the things outside of the community, and that’s why it is not about the comics (or any medium) for them it’s really about the politics.
The whole as Hopper puts it; if you agree with their politics it doesn’t really matter what you say or do you can be the most disgusting person and they will at least publicly back you but dare you hold a contrary opinion of so much as to talk to the ‘untouchables’ and you’re out you. You don’t even have to have any direct contact with anything verboten. If the wrong person simply likes your work you’d better check them or you’re in with the enemy.
It’s silly and immature and frightening but this is what we’re witnessing.
The best reaction to this is what people have been doing - standing your ground. This stuff only works when there is no actual opposition this is something I think people need to understand about the far left encroachment into Hobby communities. They’re only as effective as you allow them to be.
When metalheads stood up to the progressive left who tried to bully their way into the community, the progressives had no recourse, what were they gonna do? Shame a group of people who’ve always been shamed by society at large? Good luck. The same thing happened with gamergate, this tactic didn’t work because gamers have dealt with people bullying them for decades, not only that but the community is built around competition and this was a challenge. Gamers accepted and won.
As usual the other element is that it’s a consumers market and you can’t bully people into buying things they don’t want the comic book community needs to have the same responses as these two communities don’t fall for the ploys or try to defend the straw man accusations.
Don’t fall for the half-assed treatment either, what I mean is that when the far-left can’t completely get their way they try this middling approach where they dial back the politics a little bit here and there to see how much you’re willing to accept - don’t accept any of it. If they write a good book admit that but if they’re still drawing women like men, adding in dollar store token characters and hiring people based on that politics or identity - call it out and don’t support the book.
That’s a stance you have to take to get the point across, you can have that if you so desire but you can’t make me want it or buy it and it’s okay to move the needle, it’s incredibly effective and as we’ve seen the far left doesn’t have any real response to it. What are they gonna say? Don’t buy books that you like? Are they going to tell creators to tell people not to buy their books? There’s no response they can have to it other than simply supporting books they like and we’ve seen they’re not interested in doing that because say it with me “They don’t buy comics.“
But people also have to defend the community and the best way to do that is by standing your ground, when people come in demanding control over the community. No you can’t have that, the community is open to everyone, not just people who agree with *your* views.
Recommended reading from video: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer
