Rocky Mountain Fur Con Goes Full Heisenberg Device

[AshleyAshes]

So I'm going to try and recap this without going too far.  A group of Neo-Nazi or Neo-Nazi-ish trolling shit disturbers who called themselves the 'Furry Raiders' of Colorado rocketed to broader furry fame in Spring 2016 after they somehow booked 25% of RMFCs hotel block before the block was even available to the public.  Effectively cock-blocking many attendees from ever having a chance to book a hotel room.  This causes much drama because trying to dominate the hotel block of a con is ten different times of uncool.  You can read much more in detail on a Vivisector thread here:

https://forums.vivisector.org/index.php?topic=880.0

But in short, the Furry Raiders tried to jack a huge portion of the rooms, stirred up a lot of drama, and bizarrely after being initially denounced by RMFC, RMFC later issued an apology for their reaction to the Furry Raiders.  So imagine you're throwing a party and some asshole turns up, flips over the snack table, cries out 'FAGGOTS!' and later the host is apologizing for yelling about the carpet getting ruined. From here RMFC takes a strong stance that it 'welcome everyone regardless of personal taste' and sticks with this to the very end.  Because if someone turns up at your party and flips over the snack table, you should defend their right to have an alternative view of snack table orientation and suggest that they are still welcome at your party.  This won't back fire at all.

For roughly the next year there is an on-going series of exchanges between furries on this whole 'Furry Raider' thing because, well, of course there is.  There's Furry Nazi's running amuck, how could it NOT lead to conflict?  More over, Colorado's largest furry con seems to have the Nazi's back, no matter how much they stomp chips and dip into the carpet.

The Deo, jumping on the 'Punch Nazis' meme that came to us with the end of the 2016 US election gets into the wrong twitter fight with the wrong furry Nazi.  Like all good hearted, blue blooded Americans, who worship the iconography of America's greatest enemy, someone decided that gun threats were a good way to respond to Nazi Punching memes.

https://twitter.com/DeoTasDevil/status/825345312940257286

Because shooting threats are exactly what your local furry convention needs.  It's the United States, in 2017, who's going to take threats involving guns seriously?  This is an era of chill gun related times.  So then Deo contacted the police because Deo must be some kind of undercover Canadian or something.  And RMFC ignores this until they decide that it's time to take drastic action on this Nazi's Shooting Deo situation; They banned Deo.  In fact, they didn't just ban Deo, they banned Deo with a bizarre Cease & Desist letter that reads more like a magical incantation if you replaced the writer's copy of Harry Potter with a legal dictionary.  It's basically legal word salad, but we'll get more on that later.  It will be a lot funnier later in this post, I assure you.

 

So this whole Furry Raider's thing simmers on as what most would dismiss as 'Furry Drama' for a while.  The Furry Raiders operate with impunity and for some reason RMFC has their back.

Only last week DogPatch Press writes a detailed article on the situation up until just before the bomb went off.  It's better written than this forum post and it's a good read and it casts a harsh light on this 'Furry Nazi's and RMFC' situation.  ...Because somehow some people see it in a positive light.  Naturally this article gets it's typical rotation around the furry drama/snark communities while RMFC responds with a twitter post of "We will be issuing a statement very shortly."  Also, I had no idea that there was a furry news site other than Flayrah.

http://dogpatch.press/2017/04/10/rocky-mountain-fur-con-threat/

And suddenly the con is canceled.  In less than a day, the con is cancelled.  You can read the official statement on their site here:

http://rockymountainfurcon.com/

To sum it up, the convention has been attacked by 'Evil SJWs' and the hotel mandated increased security measures that would take up one third of the entire operating budget.  The 'Evil SJWs' and it had nothing to do with guns or Nazis for sure.  THe con had to close for financial reasons and they hope that the Evil SJWs are happy because and let us all ask who the REAL Nazis are.  This is a sudden end to the story, right?  It's not over.  Less than a day after that, Flayrah provides it's own coverage, including going over public financial records and revealing that RMFC had not been paying it's taxes and had even been fraudulently posing as a non-profit despite losing that tax status.

http://www.flayrah.com/6903/rocky-mountain-fur-con-canceled-following-neo-nazi-associations-tax-irregularities

And from here the RMFC story goes downhill hard.  Artists, dealers, and attendees have no idea if they will see refunds on their money, the tax issues that RMFC didn't mention don't help.  You see Kahuki Liaru/Kendal Emery was a member of a movement called 'Sovereign Citizens' who believes that taxes are illegal, the federal governments hold no power, yet also worship their own made up law, which explains the previous legal gobbleygoop in the cease and desist letter.

Nazis, Alt-Right Tax Dogers, and Furries.  Naturally the mainstream media picked this story up.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/amid-allegations-of-unpaid-taxes-neo-nazism-and-sex-offender-denver-furry-convention-canceled

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/04/11/rocky-mountain-fur-con-canceled/

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/even-furries-are-fighting-fascists

https://twitter.com/jjmacnab/status/851666150991708160

That last twitter link is a Forbes Magazine writer tweeting the Flayrah story.  FORBES.

Next comes the best part.  A blogging lawyer going by the name of Boozy Barrister was musing with other lawyers what kind of legal issues face differnet sub-cultures, he decides to look into furry legal issues and hits Google while this was going down.  He found this whole event was in the middle of going down and wrote a damning review of RMFC's cease and desist letter.  This man is basically hilarious and in one night he becomes the Legal Mascot of the furry fandom.  His twitter explodes and he takes it all in good fun.  People start drawing fanart for him and inviting him to conventions.  He tweets this experience with good humor that only further endears him to the fandom.

http://lawyersandliquor.com/2017/04/free-furry-of-the-land-when-sovcits-and-furries-collide/

His awesome twitter: https://twitter.com/BoozyBarrister

So in short, RMFC made friends with Nazis, Nazis were all 'WE CAN DO WHAT EVER WE WANT NOW YOU FAGGOTS', a hotel was like 'We got some issues with these shooting threats and Nazis', the con closed, and most of the fandom and even mainstream media dogpiled onto RMFC and the Furry Raiders.... And our fandom has a new pet lawyer.

RMFC remains silent and the Furry Raider's have gone to ground while deleting much of their twitter posts made in 2017.

______________________________________________

The last thread on this subject got locked due to user infighting.
This is your second chance on it.
Keep on-topic and keep it civil. Anyone who derails the thread with their personal spats is getting infracced. ~ Mod Vae

[Falaffel]

https://phoenix.corvidae.org/topic/5465-the-death-of-rmfc-a-tale-of-tax-evasion-and-neo-nazis/

 

[AshleyAshes]

2 minutes ago, Falaffel said:

I only see a spinning circle in your post.  I -think- you're trying to post a twitter link?  I think the website has a bug with parsing and displaying twitterlinks.  For my post I had to remove formatting or they only showed as big empty rectangles.

 

[AshleyAshes]

29 minutes ago, Falaffel said:

https://phoenix.corvidae.org/topic/5465-the-death-of-rmfc-a-tale-of-tax-evasion-and-neo-nazis/

 

Ohhh... We have a conventioneer section... I... Was REALLY wondering why this didn't turn up in The Den.  Like I was SUPRISED it had not been posted yet and went 'Welp, I guess I have to write it myself!'.  Looks like I'm just an idiot.

[Revates]

Just now, AshleyAshes said:

Ohhh... We have a conventioneer section... I... Was REALLY wondering why this didn't turn up in The Den.  Like I was SUPRISED it had not been posted yet and went 'Welp, I guess I have to write it myself!'.  Looks like I'm just an idiot.

The other one was closed due to the fighting and such so we're letting this thread go through and Vae added a disclaimer to the end of your post! So it's all good to have this one open under that disclaimer.

[AshleyAshes]

14 minutes ago, Revates said:

The other one was closed due to the fighting and such so we're letting this thread go through and Vae added a disclaimer to the end of your post! So it's all good to have this one open under that disclaimer.

Okay, having caught up and read that thread...

1) Seriously concerned that this thread is going to get wrecked.  Please mods, keep the childish infighting out.

2) HOW DOES THAT THREAD NOT MENTION BOOZY BARRISTER AT ALL!?  THAT'S LIKE THE BEST PART OF THE STORY!  WE ADOPTED, POSSIBLY KIDNAPPED, A RANDOM BLOGGING LAWYER AND HE'S A BADGER NOW! D:

[Deskai]

42 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Okay, having caught up and read that thread...

1) Seriously concerned that this thread is going to get wrecked.  Please mods, keep the childish infighting out.

2) HOW DOES THAT THREAD NOT MENTION BOOZY BARRISTER AT ALL!?  THAT'S LIKE THE BEST PART OF THE STORY!  WE ADOPTED, POSSIBLY KIDNAPPED, A RANDOM BLOGGING LAWYER AND HE'S A BADGER NOW! D:

we stole him by saying we have alcohol...

we had another furry that is a lawyer brought them into the fold

[Vae]

<mod post>
Let's not talk about the closed thread, because that doesn't need to be dragged up again. That's not what the thread topic's about.
</mod post>


Scorch (one of the heads of the event) made one of the whiniest fucking statements I've seen in a long time:


[source]

Because being banned from some furry event is "worst than death." Okay.


There's also some unconfirmed material floating around that [the pedophile CEO intentionally invited the Raiders to the con] because they wanted to kick him off the con staff.
At this point, considering all this other batshit insanity, I wouldn't be surprised.

[AshleyAshes]

13 minutes ago, Deskai said:

we stole him by saying we have alcohol...

I feel like the Boozy Barrister thing is kinda amazing.  If some lawyers had only a week sooner mused 'Furry Legal Problems' they'd have just come up with some dry things about furries being bad at contract law and having a fuzzy comprehension of copyright and trademark law and probably passed on the topic for a blog post as a whole.  Instead, right when the iron is hot, he's come across the RMFC thing and becomes an internet folk hero to furries in the process.  AH-MAY-ZING.

11 minutes ago, Vae said:

Scorch (one of the heads of the event) made one of the whiniest fucking statements I've seen in a long time:


[source]

Because being banned from some furry event is "worst than death." Okay.


There's also some unconfirmed material floating around that [the pedophile CEO intentionally invited the Raiders to the con] because they wanted to kick him off the con staff.
At this point, considering all this other batshit insanity, I wouldn't be surprised.

Scorch's posts are hard to read and take information from honestly.  Like, it borderlines on word salad and rings hard of mental illness.  I find it hard to read his stuff and figure out what is truth, what is lies and what is insane stuff he believes but never happened.  I'm not saying 'I don't believe it' just 'I'd appreciate a more reliable source'

[ZorroValdez]

[Zeke]

The Daily beast posted an article about it.

And another one.

it's also a shitshow everywhere and Scorch and the Furry Raiders are trying to make it as if Deo was the true architect behind the demise of the con, rather than their shitty behavior, incompetence, and unprofessionalism that caused it to cave in. And lying. And Backpedalling There are also some furries who are taking Scorch and Co.'s side because "lol furries".

[AshleyAshes]

10 minutes ago, Zeke said:

The Daily beast posted an article about it.

And another one.

I'm sure that the Furry Raiders are just waiting on conservative news outlets to come out in defense of them and 'reclaim control of the narrative'.  "Any minute guys.  Breitbart is going to come and we'll get un-fucked!  Just hold on you guys!"

[Fossa]

 

12 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

I'm sure that the Furry Raiders are just waiting on conservative news outlets to come out in defense of them and 'reclaim control of the narrative'.  "Any minute guys.  Breitbart is going to come and we'll get un-fucked!  Just hold on you guys!"

I hear Steve Bannon is on shaky ground in The White House. Maybe he'll be available to defend them.

[QT Melon]

2 hours ago, Zeke said:

The Daily beast posted an article about it.

And another one.

it's also a shitshow everywhere and Scorch and the Furry Raiders are trying to make it as if Deo was the true architect behind the demise of the con, rather than their shitty behavior, incompetence, and unprofessionalism that caused it to cave in. And lying. And Backpedalling There are also some furries who are taking Scorch and Co.'s side because "lol furries".

Apparently pedophilia/convicted child molestation, takes a backseat.

People scare me sometimes.

 

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, QT Melon said:

Apparently pedophilia/convicted child molestation, takes a backseat.

People scare me sometimes.

 

Well, while the guy is skeezy as hell, it is true that it's 20+ years past and individual has served whatever punishments were issued to him by a court and has seemingly been charged with no criminal offenses since.  So when you put that against a current issue with Nazis and tax evasion and magical law letters, yeah, it kinda does take a back seat.

[QT Melon]

1 minute ago, AshleyAshes said:

Well, while the guy is skeezy as hell, it is true that it's 20+ years past and individual has served whatever punishments were issued to him by a court and has seemingly been charged with no criminal offenses since.  So when you put that against a current issue with Nazis and tax evasion and magical law letters, yeah, it kinda does take a back seat.

My commentary, is more to do with them making out Deo to be some criminal mustache twirling mastermind..

20 years or not, a person convicted with sexual mishaps to a minor was running a con, is still just scary.

 

 

[AshleyAshes]

14 minutes ago, QT Melon said:

My commentary, is more to do with them making out Deo to be some criminal mustache twirling mastermind..

Well, that I'll agree with.  More over, no single person could have ever accomplished this mess.  This is systemic.  This is a result of letting Furries ninja'ing 25% of the hotel block before it was even open to the public and preventing other con attendees to access the hotel block.  This is letting a war simmer on Twitter for a year while trying to think it wasn't their problem.  This was trying using a weird amount of authority some real, some made up legal magical words, against a single person which only fanned the flames of that twitter war.  This was failing to take what is unquestionably, a group of trolls trying to upset other would-be con attendees as the threat to the convention's image.  No one person did that, RMFC's entire leadership collectively made this happen through both incorrect actions at times and total inaction at other times.

This is why it doesn't matter who said or did what first really.  What matters is that RMFC allowed it keep going while dismissing it as 'Furry Drama' or 'Drama Lamas' or whatever your preferred language is.  It continued to escalate until it was well out of hand.  You can only have people fighting online for so long before the threats escalate and your hotel starts getting concerned about security.  It only took one asshole to carry out the chlorine gas attack at the Midwest Furfest and it'd only take one different asshole to pull something at RMFC.  Hotels generally regard their facilities being surrounded by firetrucks, ambulances, or HAZMAT/CBRNE units to be 'bad for business'.

[fennecbyte]

16 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

Scorch's posts are hard to read and take information from honestly.  Like, it borderlines on word salad and rings hard of mental illness.  I find it hard to read his stuff and figure out what is truth, what is lies and what is insane stuff he believes but never happened.  I'm not saying 'I don't believe it' just 'I'd appreciate a more reliable source'

I mean, this is a person who believes in perpetual motion machines and has half their FA gallery filled with pictures of them.

[AshleyAshes]

1 minute ago, george99g said:

I mean, this is a person who believes in perpetual motion machines and has half their FA gallery filled with pictures of them.

Well, I mean, if tax law means nothing to you what matter are the laws of physics? :V

[fennecbyte]

7 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Well, I mean, if tax law means nothing to you what matter are the laws of physics? :V

Wait, wait, wait, he's the one who wrote the C&D letter?

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, george99g said:

Wait, wait, wait, he's the one who wrote the C&D letter?

Actually you know what?  I think I'm wrong, it's not him.  Yeah, scratch that last comment.

[fennecbyte]

Just now, AshleyAshes said:

Actually you know what?  I think I'm wrong, it's not him.  Yeah, scratch that last comment.

Reading his journal on RMFC, his way of writing is oddly similar to the letter. Randomly bolded and uppercase words, et cetera.

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, george99g said:

Reading his journal on RMFC, his way of writing is oddly similar to the letter. Randomly bolded and uppercase words, et cetera.

You can see why I got confused.  But yeah, Scorch is someone else, that said, Scorch is for sure a SovCit as well.  But Kahuki's signature is what's on the C&D and he's the one financially responsible for the con.

[Zeke]

Kahuki's the Sovcit I believe.

[Toshabi]

I love how quickly BLFC was to shoot them down when they included them in the C&D. I mean,... WHY did they include them in it again?

[AshleyAshes]

10 minutes ago, Toshabi said:

I love how quickly BLFC was to shoot them down when they included them in the C&D. I mean,... WHY did they include them in it again?

No joke; I suspect that they forgot the name of their own convention.

[Toshabi]

Probably "LETS INCLUDE EVERY MAJOR CON AND MAYBE IT WILL MAKE IT SOUND MORE SEROIUS". 

[kazooie]

2 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

Well, that I'll agree with.  More over, no single person could have ever accomplished this mess.  This is systemic.  This is a result of letting Furries ninja'ing 25% of the hotel block before it was even open to the public and preventing other con attendees to access the hotel block.  This is letting a war simmer on Twitter for a year while trying to think it wasn't their problem.  This was trying using a weird amount of authority some real, some made up legal magical words, against a single person which only fanned the flames of that twitter war.  This was failing to take what is unquestionably, a group of trolls trying to upset other would-be con attendees as the threat to the convention's image.  No one person did that, RMFC's entire leadership collectively made this happen through both incorrect actions at times and total inaction at other times.

This is why it doesn't matter who said or did what first really.  What matters is that RMFC allowed it keep going while dismissing it as 'Furry Drama' or 'Drama Lamas' or whatever your preferred language is.  It continued to escalate until it was well out of hand.  You can only have people fighting online for so long before the threats escalate and your hotel starts getting concerned about security.  It only took one asshole to carry out the chlorine gas attack at the Midwest Furfest and it'd only take one different asshole to pull something at RMFC.  Hotels generally regard their facilities being surrounded by firetrucks, ambulances, or HAZMAT/CBRNE units to be 'bad for business'.

Yeah, what really astounded me about the whole debacle, were the lengths that some people had gone to resent Deo, specifically. Her twitter was flooded with people claiming to be "altfurries", and such. Also gave rise to gems like these:

"How dare you call us nazis! Also, keep your paws off my nazi uniforms! (plural)"

[AshleyAshes]

7 minutes ago, kazooie said:

Yeah, what really astounded me about the whole debacle, were the lengths that some people have gone to resent Deo, specifically. Her twitter was flooded with people claiming to be "altfurries", and such. Also gave rise to gems like these:

"How dare you call us nazis! Also, keep your paws off my nazi uniforms! (plural)"

Really, I can't blame Deo for basking in the current attention and posting the way they are.  For over a year the Furry Raider's operated, getting away with nearly everything, going 'Neener Neener!' the whole time while clearly having the objective of causing trouble int eh fandom.  Now the whole thing collapsed in less than two days and the Raiders have gone from being seemingly untouchable to just trying to keep their heads down.  Deo's gloating pisses off the Raider's and supporters off and I'd argue she's entitled to it.  Quite frankly, it's kinda fun to see the Raiders and their supporters being on the receiving side of complete humiliation.

However this is fleeting, it's 15mins of Fame for Deo.  It should die down and the important task must begin: Building the new Colorado convention to be something that is there for the fandom, it's artist, it's dealers, it's presenters, and it's fans.

[kazooie]

6 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Really, I can't blame Deo for basking in the current attention and posting the way they are.  For over a year the Furry Raider's operated, getting away with nearly everything, going 'Neener Neener!' the whole time while clearly having the objective of causing trouble int eh fandom.  Now the whole thing collapsed in less than two days and the Raiders have gone from being seemingly untouchable to just trying to keep their heads down.  Deo's gloating pisses off the Raider's and supporters off and I'd argue she's entitled to it.  Quite frankly, it's kinda fun to see the Raiders and their supporters being on the receiving side of complete humiliation.

Well, I mean, it wasn't just empty gloating - she went through her fair share of shit in this debacle, too. I think you've earned a bit o' cathartic shittalk after putting up with harassment, fake legal letters, and bullshit drama over participating in the outing of goddamn neo nazis. That had somehow infiltrated support into the actual board of directors of a fur con. You can't make this shit up.

[Zeke]

Furry drama like this comes every few years. It's like watching a Nazi museum go up in flames.

[kazooie]

Also, one thing incorrect in the OP was that Deo didn't contact the police over the gun threat, apparently. 

 

According to one staffer, the gun threat wasn't even the reason for the police's involvement (I posted this in the other thread, but, uh...):

"It wasn't Deo OR foxler or even the 'watch you get shot' guy who were the threats that were concerning."

[AshleyAshes]

5 minutes ago, kazooie said:

Also, one thing incorrect in the OP was that Deo wasn't the one who contacted the police over the gun threat, apparently. 

 

According to one staffer, the gun threat wasn't even the reason for the police's involvement (I posted this in the other thread, but, uh...):

Oh we all know that someone will eventually write a tell all blog post between now and six months from now.

[Troj]

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right.

Boozy Barrister's Twitter feed and blog have been the one bright spot in all of this, though, and I appreciated being able to learn even more about SovCits, who take stupidity and insanity to a whole new level.

I'm sick of everything always being about "Nazis" these days, and I'm sick of media coverage and furry gossip continuing to namedrop, quote, and obsess over the same furries whose only claim to fame is serving as a constant source of drama.

I'm annoyed with the Raiders who think it's cute to troll the Interwebs and coyly court speculation about them being Nazis, and I'm annoyed with the Raiders who've seemingly stuck their heads in the sand because they can't bring themselves to criticize their friends or acknowledge problems with their club. I'm also annoyed with the anti-Raiders who are so gung-ho to polish a Courageous Nazi Puncher Badge that they're willing to compromise their relationships with people, escalate existing fights, and create drama during periods of relative calm. I'm also aggravated with furries who are willing to bitch about people and behaviors they dislike, but who never take meaningful steps to either confront and shut down the behaviors they dislike, or encourage and model the behaviors they'd prefer to see--and, I'm probably guilty of this to an extent myself, too.

No one person is to blame here.

 

[AshleyAshes]

1 hour ago, Troj said:

the Raiders who think it's cute to troll the Interwebs and coyly court speculation

I feel that 'Coyly Courting Speculation' is seriously downplaying it.  The Furry Raider's FA page at one point set it's age to match Hitler's age if he were alive today.  There's the obvious armbands.  The constantly insisting that they are 'Furzi's'.  Or this signature of his...

I'm willing to argue that this is more like that famous Monty Python 'Parrot' sketch where the pet store owner insists that the parrot isn't dead despite the fact that the parrot is very obviously dead.  The Furry Raiders are not 'Coyly Courting Speculation', they are directly engineering and purposefully fueling the idea in every way possible with the singular exception of not actually using the word 'Nazi' so as they can then say 'We never said we were Nazis'.

Some context for those who do not have an on hand knowledge of British comedy.

 

[kazooie]

9 hours ago, Troj said:

I'm sick of everything always being about "Nazis" these days

No one person is to blame here.

Actually, the neo-nazis were to blame.

Saying "maybe everyone's a little to blame here" is easy, but when there's a group run by a guy who insists on preforming nazi-salutes during photos, wears a nazi armband, and jokes about gassing jews and killing muslims, maybe the "taking the middle ground" isn't a good approach.

[Troj]

The Raiders absolutely need to be condemned for their Nazi bullshit, online trolling and stupidity, and buying up rooms at last year's RMFC.

But, we've also had problems with antifas and anti-Raiders basically wanting to ban people from gatherings and cons for Raider thoughtcrime. There are people who will dogpile non-Raiders for failing to be sufficiently anti-Raider according to their own personal rubric, to the point where some people have actually become even more sympathetic to the Raiders as a result.

People in general need to cool it with the whole "Oh boy I'm going to punch Nazis" routine.

The con CEO and core staff also royally fucked up, too--so, truly, the blame doesn't rest with any one person.

When it comes to the Raiders being Nazis, the messy thing is, the group is headed by a biracial guy who is currently dating another biracial guy, and I know of one Raider who is, in fact, Jewish. Their vague, never-fleshed-out rhetoric about wanting to "improve the fandom" by promoting things like "equality" and "freedom" reeks of BS of some kind, at least. They consistently deny being Neo-Nazis; however, the leader's denials in particular have always come across as evasive, vague, and mealy-mouthed, while other members strike me as being sincere in their disavowals of Nazism and racism.

So, my read of the whole thing is that the group itself is deeply divided and generally unclear on what it actually stands for, and that the "Nazi Raiders" are probably better thought of has sheltered young edgelords who are flirting with the alt-right and who get a kick out of stirring the pot---which still needs to be condemned and confronted, but which warrants a different response from if, say, they were singling out and harassing Jewish members of the fandom, physically attacking people at gatherings, actively trying to exclude "untermenschen" from meets, or disseminating racist literature.

I think calling the group Neo-Nazis over and over and over actually puts people in the wrong mindset to actually deal with them appropriately, and carries the unintended side effect of desensitizing people to real white supremacy and anti-Semitism.
 

[AshleyAshes]

2 hours ago, Troj said:

When it comes to the Raiders being Nazis, the messy thing is, the group is headed by a biracial guy who is currently dating another biracial guy, and I know of one Raider who is, in fact, Jewish. Their vague, never-fleshed-out rhetoric about wanting to "improve the fandom" by promoting things like "equality" and "freedom" reeks of BS of some kind, at least. They consistently deny being Neo-Nazis; however, the leader's denials in particular have always come across as evasive, vague, and mealy-mouthed, while other members strike me as being sincere in their disavowals of Nazism and racism.

In all honesty, I don't think that them not being 'Real Nazis' is at all relevant to the situation at all.  I certainly agree that they were trolling and knowingly using Nazi iconography to bolster that trolling.  But weather or not they are Nazis is irrelevent.  They choose to fly the Nazi flag and they're stuck with it.  They knew that what they were doing would upset people, they did it to upset people.  The Raiders wanted reactions and conflict and they got it, it grew, they ramped it up, they got more attention, they used that attention to further spread their 'Being Nazis Who Say They Aren't Nazis' message.  They wanted conflict and they got conflict and that conflict continued to escalate and more people were drawn in with each day.  What they failed to appreciate was that this wasn't just 'furry drama' or 'people fighting on twitter' or any of that.  The escalating conflict, which they were very happy to have, started to have increasing real world reproductions, up until the conflict became so a administered run convention had to die for it.

Now the con is dead, artists and dealers lost a venue to sell their wares to the fandom, attendees are out their money and the Furry Raiders are draped in Nazi flags with paw-prints going 'It was just a joke, why did everyone get so mad and take it so serious?' like a bunch of children who can't understand why starting fires burnt the forest down.  So with where the fandom stands now, does it really matter at all if they were really Nazis or not?

[Deskai]

2 hours ago, Troj said:

The Raiders absolutely need to be condemned for their Nazi bullshit, online trolling and stupidity, and buying up rooms at last year's RMFC.

But, we've also had problems with antifas and anti-Raiders basically wanting to ban people from gatherings and cons for Raider thoughtcrime. There are people who will dogpile non-Raiders for failing to be sufficiently anti-Raider according to their own personal rubric, to the point where some people have actually become even more sympathetic to the Raiders as a result.

People in general need to cool it with the whole "Oh boy I'm going to punch Nazis" routine.

The con CEO and core staff also royally fucked up, too--so, truly, the blame doesn't rest with any one person.

When it comes to the Raiders being Nazis, the messy thing is, the group is headed by a biracial guy who is currently dating another biracial guy, and I know of one Raider who is, in fact, Jewish. Their vague, never-fleshed-out rhetoric about wanting to "improve the fandom" by promoting things like "equality" and "freedom" reeks of BS of some kind, at least. They consistently deny being Neo-Nazis; however, the leader's denials in particular have always come across as evasive, vague, and mealy-mouthed, while other members strike me as being sincere in their disavowals of Nazism and racism.

So, my read of the whole thing is that the group itself is deeply divided and generally unclear on what it actually stands for, and that the "Nazi Raiders" are probably better thought of has sheltered young edgelords who are flirting with the alt-right and who get a kick out of stirring the pot---which still needs to be condemned and confronted, but which warrants a different response from if, say, they were singling out and harassing Jewish members of the fandom, physically attacking people at gatherings, actively trying to exclude "untermenschen" from meets, or disseminating racist literature.

I think calling the group Neo-Nazis over and over and over actually puts people in the wrong mindset to actually deal with them appropriately, and carries the unintended side effect of desensitizing people to real white supremacy and anti-Semitism.
 

The problem is: We already are Desensitized of it

We spent years upon years since actual Nazi regime was taken down making fun of nazis, using them as bad guys in video games, and any group that have the same mentality are not actually as bad as em. Its weird cause a lot of western countries are currently dealing with such groups getting political power...unless you are germany who is like a hawk on such thing for good reasons.
As my grandma would say: "We use Nazis like our scapegoat, we use it like some sort of title to give to these groups. You are just trying to simplifying a problem under a blanket but still not really dealing with the problem by believing being called a Nazi is a deterrent...when its not."

[kazooie]

3 hours ago, Troj said:

[clip]

So, here's the deal, I agree that the reason why the con got cancelled was likely more than just "neo nazi trolls". My question to you, is: where do you draw the line? You claim it's all likely jokes, how do you know this? Can you read their minds, can you predict their intentions? I think the "thought crime" argument doesn't apply when groups are "ironically" and openly advocating violent and hateful ideology.

Let's say someone who is jewish walks up to you, and says that they're genuinely concerned for their safety due to this group. Do you think telling them "oh, it's all jokes dude, it's all pranks" will actually make them feel better? If someone actually gets hurt, do you think telling them "well, people meme about gassing jews all the time! we never could have predicted this!" will help at all? If one of the neo-nazis gets assaulted by someone who feels threatened by them (people do feel threatened by neo-nazis, fake or real), is such an event really that surprising?

Why take these risks for the sake of making a group of shitty trolls happy? If you sit on the fence about a group that clearly celebrates neo-nazism, there's going to be conflict. The RMFC scenario is the exact reason why "taking the middle ground" and sitting on the fence, rather than making a concrete decision and taking a stance, is not the answer.

[kazooie]

Like, one can argue that free speech has no limits, but there are consequences to free speech. If you act like a neo-nazi shithead, expect to get persecuted and banned for being a neo-nazi shithead - don't go whining and crying that they didn't "get" your jokes about the furred-riech. 

[Mikazuki Marazhu]

[Troj]

7 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

So with where the fandom stands now, does it really matter at all if they were really Nazis or not?

Yes and no.

No, it doesn't really matter, because even people who aren't "really" Nazis can still do serious damage, and because at a certain point, intentions don't really matter if the behavior just needs to stop. I don't buy the common "Oh, it doesn't matter if it's just lulz" line.

Really, I think the whole "are they or aren't they" debate is distracting people from the real conversation that folks need to have about how to respond to bad behavior in the community. At a certain point, people just need to say, "I don't care why you said/did that; it was inappropriate and won't be tolerated," and then there need to be appropriate social consequences for shitty behavior.

But, yes, it does matter somewhat, because whether you see the Raiders as mostly-decent people who've been groomed and seduced by other group leaders; pathetic edgelords who thrive on negative attention and fear; or actual white supremacists--or even, some combination thereof--will shape how you react to them and treat them.

I think that casting this as an epic battle between the forces of Total Good and Absolute Evil has put everybody into entirely the wrong mindset for actually addressing the real problems here, and has ended up feeding the egos of the people who actually enjoy being at the center of a drama storm, get mileage off of feeling persecuted, and/or want to be seen as big and scary.

Honestly, if we saw Nazifurs more as basement-dwelling dorks who just need to be treated like spoiled, tantrummy 3-year-olds, and whose power fantasies about gassing bronies or carrying out pogroms in the name of Mickey Mouse are both abhorrent and totally pathetic, being a Nazifur wouldn't carry the same catchet, and I think fewer people would be eager to hop on that bandwagon.

 

[Xaende]

11 hours ago, Troj said:

Honestly, if we saw Nazifurs more as basement-dwelling dorks who just need to be treated like spoiled, tantrummy 3-year-olds, and whose power fantasies about gassing bronies or carrying out pogroms in the name of Mickey Mouse are both abhorrent and totally pathetic, being a Nazifur wouldn't carry the same catchet, and I think fewer people would be eager to hop on that bandwagon.

 

I'd say Nazi furs have about as much cachet as duck poop, but that would be insulting to the duck poop.

[RTDragon]

Um folks while i was on FA i saw this in a journal of someone i watch. Thought i post it here since it's really now gotten out of control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYS55QQM6GE

 

[Troj]

7 hours ago, Xaende said:

I'd say Nazi furs have about as much cachet as duck poop, but that would be insulting to the duck poop.

Ah, not so fast.

If you look at 98% of the articles about RMFC's death this week, they namedrop--and in many cases, quote, and in a few cases, went out of their way to interview--the leader of the Raiders. Every article I've seen has mentioned the Raiders in some capacity.

Society spent two solid weeks debating the ethics of punching Nazis (and some people are still debating it). Nazis (and their close buddies, the alt-right) have been all over the news at least since the election.

If you're somebody who's happy to get attention any old way, and/or if you're the sort to get a weird kick out of people being so scared of you or so upset by you that they're willing to just walk up and randomly assault people like you in public, then identifying as alt-right and/or a Neo-Nazi is a one-way ticket to walking on a very fucked up form of sunshine for you.

[QT Melon]

3 hours ago, RTDragon said:

Um folks while i was on FA i saw this in a journal of someone i watch. Thought i post it here since it's really now gotten out of control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYS55QQM6GE

 

I am not going to lie, I'm entertained by the shitshow-ception. So that's 2, he just jumped into the pool at the end as well. "That's not what furry is about" is pretty hyperbolic as it gets. There isn't a consensus about the community and peace. There isn't one in other genres either. People don't "put aside to go to a con" it's always there, it's more of a begrudging truce where people may or may not break depending on circumstances. This #fursforpeace is horseshit, as he says. It's more like #can'twejusthaveacon (can't we just have a con).

It doesn't need you to be a "Furry community" to have this achieved. You just ask for people to be reasonable. That's it.

 

[AshleyAshes]

1 hour ago, QT Melon said:

"That's not what furry is about" is pretty hyperbolic as it gets. There isn't a consensus about the community and peace.

Yeah.  Certainly there's the imaginary ideal that 'furry' is a 'beautiful fandom of diversity and acceptance, where everyone just wants to have fun' but you can basically ascribe that to any fandom.  'Star Trek Fandom should be about celebrating Roddenberry's optimistic vision of the future'.  'Anime fandom should be about consuming Japanese media and talking about it'.  ...All works well until you put actual people into the mix.  Suddenly, people are arguing about what really is the best, how things should be done and then someone is like 'LET'S GO RAID THE STAR WARS FORUM THOSE PANSY ASS FORCE FUCKERS!'.  Arguing 'That's not what furry is about' accomplishes nothing but allowing yourself to feel ethically superior in an imaginary universe for five minutes.

[Troj]

I'd prefer to just focus on what makes for a healthy community of people, really, especially since the True Spirit of Furry is in the eye of the beholder.

[Vallium]

Is this not hilarious to anyone?

There was a pseudo-legal document made out to a "Deo Tas devil".

Furry drama, lmao