Mastodawn

Scott's Game Room Oct 9, 2024

If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies

Content Warning: This post includes examples of bigotry and harassment including white supremacist imagery, calls for violence against LGBTQ individuals, and false allegations of child abuse.

Battletech Texas

For the past few years, Robin Briseño has put a lot of work into building the BattleTech fan community in Texas. She setup the BattleTexas Discord server and a Linktree to guide fans to various groups throughout the state. She traveled to game stores in different cities to put business cards and advertisements for the groups in hobby stores and gave away miniatures out-of-pocket for prospective new players of the game. Because the Battletech Texas Facebook group owner wasn’t very active at the time, he gave her control over the group as an admin. You might also recognize Robin as an author published in Shrapnel magazine, a talented miniature painter, or as Valk on social media. Across all of those, she has put in a ton of effort to contribute to BattleTech.

Unfortunately, while working to build a community she also encountered pushback. In the BattleTech fandom, there is a group of vocal bigots who target anything they perceive as a sign of acceptance of LGBTQ people or other minorities, and Robin, a trans woman, ended up as one of their targets due to pushing back against some of their violent rhetoric. She made a private Facebook post showing a post from Filthy Frankenmech Posting where he talked about how he thought the Nazis were right to target trans people and remarked that was why she felt safer carrying a gun. The post from Filthy Frankenmech was also accompanied by an image blaming Jews for destroying men through porn and transgender clinics.

Robin’s friends-only Facebook post sharing a screenshot of a post calling for a campaign against transgender people similar to what was done in Nazi Germany and citing it as a reason she feels the need to carry a gun for self defenseIn a Discord server, the person behind the Filthy Frankemmech Posting page makes it clear that they are serious about wanting to see transgender clinics get burnt down

This sort of post is not unusual from that meme page. It uses a modified version of a Nazi German flag replacing the swastika with a Clan Ghost Bear logo as its header image and regularly mixes Nazi imagery into its memes which mostly target LGBTQ people. The Filthy Frankenmech page is also not alone with others like Boomertech and Kill 6 Billion Clanners also mixing Nazi and white supremacist imagery into BattleTech memes encouraging the targeting of minorities. Then there are pages like Dr Banzai’s Meme Emporium and Mage Leader’s Battletech Memes for Periphery Teens that echo the bigotry even if they are less comfortable with the overt Nazi and Confederate imagery. The people behind these pages then congregate in groups on Discord, Facebook, and Twitter/X where they discuss their harassment campaigns against LGBTQ fans of BattleTech and their allies.

Someone in Robin’s local community who had played BattleTech with her and was friends with her on Facebook, saw that post, took a screenshot, and then shared it in far-right fan communities. From there, members of those groups twisted her private post into her making a threat to violently attack a convention, something they themselves have posted about doing, and began to share that more widely including contacting Catalyst Game Labs in order to try to get her removed as a Catalyst Demo Team agent and banned from writing BattleTech fiction. When doing so, they often stripped away or ignored the context of the anti-trans and antisemitic post that Robin was replying to.

Robin has not been the only target of these bigots. Many of these same people have targeted Rem Alternis, Bryan Young, Jason Hansa, Phil Lee, Bishop Steiner, George Ledoux, and Catalyst Game Labs as a whole. They see these folks speaking up for minorities, including a diverse range of characters in stories, and standing up against harassment, and they go on the attack against them. Because Bryan Young has trans kids, they allege that he is a child abuser. Because Bishop Steiner lives in Mexico, they made up rumors that he was on the run from pedophilia charges. Because Phil Lee posted a pro-trans image a few years ago, they talk about feeding him into a woodchipper. Without any evidence, they allege that Rem is a trans woman. They accuse CGL of going woke and betraying fans, so they reach out to Topps to try to get the license pulled and push BattleTech back to obscurity because they would rather the game died than have to recognize that the world is a diverse place.

As a good steward of the BattleTech fan community in Texas, Robin banned the accounts she was able to identify as participating in those far-right communities and their harassment campaigns. Excluding bigots and harassers made the communities she ran safer and more enjoyable for everyone else.

After nearly two years of minimal activity, Andrew, the Facebook group’s owner, decided to return to being a more active group admin a couple of weeks ago. As part of this, he took away Robin’s admin role and updated the group’s rules to add a few new ones, including these two:

6. Banning of members: Banning will occur due to content posted within the group that is deemed inappropriate of their account is deemed as fake. While this group allows some grace, immediate banning will occur if the content is found to be excessively harmful/does not pass the sniff-test of decency. The admin solely will ban members of the group, though input from moderators will occur/be sought out beforehand for every banning. Banning can be appealed through discussion with the admin, though his say is final.

8. Outside (Facebook) Groups: Any outside groups (ie Discord, Reddit) from Facebook associated or created from Battletech:Texas will be monitored by their own discretion and not through the admin/moderators of this group, save the case if these parties are the same. We encourage such groups to be formed (as Facebook is only one avenue). We welcome meetups for games, additional dialogue, and groups that encourage and enable players to participate rightly in Battletech on the tabletop, PC/console, or simple debate.

Along with now being the group’s sole admin, the new rule 6 concentrates power in Andrew’s hands by preventing the group’s other moderators from banning anyone without his permission. Then the awkwardly worded rule 8 signifies a desire on his part not to consider anyone’s actions in other groups from influencing his moderation decisions for Battletech Texas.

The group admin then unbanned many of the people that Robin had removed over the past couple of years. Many of these bans had been for overt bigotry and harassment and included some of the people who had been targeting Robin herself. The justification for unbanning them was not that there was any evidence that they had not engaged in the activities that earned them bans, but because those activities hadn’t been done within the confines of the Facebook group.

Robin pushed back against these changes, but despite presenting abundant evidence of the actions these people had taken against her and other minorities, her pleas were ignored, and the bigots and harassers were welcomed back into the group. One of the other moderators, who happens to be a member of the Battletech for Conservatives and Battletech into the Future groups, even quickly promoted an event being run by one of the now unbanned bigots who had targeted Robin. When she continued to push back, Robin was removed from the moderation team and then decided to leave the Facebook group entirely.

After Adolfo was unbanned from Battletech Texas, one of the moderators personally shared an event that Adolfo is running. If you missed it above, Adolfo is someone who calls trans people pedophiles, runs far-right groups, and has joked about feeding author Phil Lee through a woodchipper.

Why Does This Matter?

In mid-2020, Michael Tager shared the following story on Twitter that ended up getting a lot of attention because it encapsulated how a community can be affected by bigots:

I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, “no. get out.”

And the dude next to me says, “hey i’m not doing anything, i’m a paying customer.” and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, “out. now.” and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed

Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, “you didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them.”

And i was like, ohok and he continues.

“you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.

And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.

And i was like, “oh damn.” and he said “yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people.”

And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven’t forgotten that at all.

As that story describes, allowing people who are known bigots into a community without pushback will shift the community towards being a community of bigots. Once it is clear that a group allows members like that, a few things will happen. People who don’t want to spend their social time around bigots will become less active or leave. People who are not careful in the group can have the things they post shared out of the group and used against them. That happening will push those targeted folks and others who fear being targeted to disengage from the group even faster. And then members who are impressionable or who themselves lean towards bigotry can be recruited by the bigots into more overtly bigoted spaces, such as the Battletech for Conservatives or Battletech into the Future groups.

For a deeper dive on how this radicalization works, I recommend watching How to Radicalize a Normie by Innuendo Studios. His entire Alt-Right Playbook series is worth watching, but I think that video is the most relevant for why good moderation in online groups matters. And in this case, good moderation means taking a clear stance against bigotry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55t6eryY3g

Not a Lone Star

While a big fan group like Battletech Texas intentionally welcoming known bigots and harassers is bad for that community, it is just one fan group, so you might be wondering why I care about it since I’m not in Texas, or why you should care if you’re not in Texas either.

First, even though I’m not in Texas, I want BattleTech fans there to have a great fan community. The change in moderation is bad for any fan there who doesn’t want to spend their social time in the same group as vocal bigots whether because they’re likely to be their target or just having a reasonable discomfort with being around people who spend their time targeting minorities.

Then, even though I was encouraged to write this post because of what happened to Robin, it is not a problem isolated to Battletech Texas. It is not uncommon for moderators of fan communities and content creators to turn a blind eye towards bigotry and welcome the people espousing it into their communities. Often, they will only object if the bigots get too vocal in their own communities, but some large groups also have moderators who openly embrace bigotry.

An anti-trans meme that was shared by Mage Leader to a BattleTech fan group

As an example, when Razörfist and his fans were calling for gatekeeping of BattleTech a few years ago, a Facebook group that I was in started getting posts supporting their campaign, in particular from Mage Leader. Because I had briefly been one of the people targeted by them, I reached out to a moderator about it:

Scott: Hi Mike, I saw your post in Classic BattleTech about reporting memes, and I’ve been reporting some of them, so I want to provide some context. It is not just because they are memes. A far-right youtuber who goes by Razorfist launched a gatekeeping harassment campaign against “SJW/NPC” fake fans and Nate who runs the Mage Leader YouTube page and the Periphery Teens meme page has been supporting that campaign. Targeting fans seems to go against this group’s rules about being kind and courteous, hate speech, and harassment, and so I’ve been reporting when Nate shares links to his pages. I had sent context to Patrick about this and he said he would take a look, but that was a couple of weeks ago and I never heard anything back.

Mike (Moderator): It’s fine. I love Razorfist and I agree with him for the most part. I have zero time or fuck to give to the whole SJW movement. I’m Canadian so you can’t even call me a dirty Republican.

Needless to say, that was a disappointing response from a moderator. This was a group that had listed rules against hate speech and harassment, but despite that the moderator was a fan of the very people advocating those things. I left the group that day.

I’ve also seen popular BattleTech content creators complain about fans privately reaching out to them about people with known bad reputations and call the people speaking out against bigotry the real bullies. Even well-meaning ones are often reluctant to take action against outspoken bigots either because they fear doing so would be wading into controversial politics or they have a misguided belief that freedom of speech ties their hands even in the private groups they are responsible for.

What Can Be Done?

If you are a moderator of a group or a content creator with an audience, don’t be afraid of taking a stance against bigotry and harassment. If someone is a known problem outside of the bounds of your community, you are making your community a worse place by allowing them to be present as a member in it even if they haven’t yet broken the rules in your group. Use your power and influence to make your community and the fandom a better place. That’s my goal with both my audience as a content creator and my work as a moderator for a fan discord.

Unfortunately for folks who are just a member in fan groups, when a group admin or a content creator decides to knowingly welcome bigots into their community, there is not much that you can directly do. Short of a dormant group owner returning to unseat them like what happened to the r/battletech subreddit or a tech company deplatforming them, they have pretty complete control over their digital spaces.

If you’re in a fan group and see other members encouraging bigotry or harassment, report it to the group’s moderators so that they know their members don’t want to see it in the group. If you notice a content creator that you follow is promoting someone with a history of encouraging bigotry and harassment, politely raise it as an issue with them. If the moderators or content creator refuse to take action, or take action against you for reaching out, leave the group or unsubscribe. As fans, the only control we really have is whether or not we continue to support the groups and content creators that demonstrate they are okay with bigotry. You are not obligated to keep patronizing a Nazi bar even if it was once a nice place. There are better fan communities out there.

For those of you who are in Texas, I recommend avoiding the Battletech Texas group on Facebook and instead joining the BattleTexas server on Discord.

https://scottsgameroom.com/2024/10/09/battletech-texas-and-moderation/

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