Reaction to White Supremacist rhetoric at PNW gaming convention

MaxIrons

Knight
Marshal
Ben Thayer’s personal manifesto of hate and LARP as it pertains to Alliance.

A friend of mine went to a gaming convention recently, and a panelist there was espousing white supremacist ideology. When given the opportunity to walk it back, they doubled down. I want to say this publicly, and loudly. I say this from my position as a game runner, and if the game owner decides to fire me for this, so be it.

White supremacist ideology has no place in games I run. I actively work to promote communal solutions and stories in those that I tell, including stories where you have to work with those you have a wide range of differences on. I have always emphasized that our LARP community is just that, a community. If someone starts with a basic premise that some members of our community should not have the same rights, privileges, and dignity as others in our community, I don’t want them here. Any given individuals beliefs are theirs alone, but I will not hesitate to condemn, censure, ostracize, and if necessary physically intercede in cases where someone is using those beliefs to harm other members of this community.

These beliefs continue into my story telling. I do not tell slavery stories, because I do not have the faintest what it means to have systemic entrenched disempowerment as a history of my family. I can trace my family back hundreds of years. I can trace my lineage back to specific areas of the world. I have not had my culture suffer from attempts to remove it from memory. If any of you have, and those are stories that you wish to tell, as Head of Plot I’m more than willing to work with you to give you a platform to tell those stories. Until then, I’ll stick to those stories of community that I can tell with authenticity.

I care about all of us geeks and weirdos who run around in the woods pretending to be elves, dwarves, necroban… humans, and all the various species of Alliance. If you go after any one of us, you’re going after all of us. I care about this game, and my gaming family here. Please don’t disabuse me of the notion that I should care about any of you individually.

Now, with that said, shall we go have a pretendy-fun stabby-time together, ALL of us, together?
 
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