RPG Creator was a neo-Nazi

[Cygnia]

Don't know how many people played/were familiar with "Empire of the Petal Throne"...

 

The Fall of Tékumel

 

Quote

Last week, the following facts came out about Barker. They've all been corroborated either by The Tékumel Foundation or (in a few cases) by another close member of Barker's circle.

 

• Barker's father was a member of the pro-Nazi German-American Bund in the '30s, which was most likely the then-young Barker's first exposure to the racist, fascist, and murderous philosophies of the Nazis.
• Half a century later, M.A.R. Barker wrote a neo-Nazi novel called Serpent's Walk (1991) under a pseudonym.
• The novel glorifies the rise of a new Reich in the science-fiction future, while simultaneously raising criticism of Nazism and then knocking it down as a straw man.
• The novel was published by National Vanguard books, also the publisher of the infamous Turner Diaries (1978); like it, Serpent's Walk has been used as an indoctrination tool by neo-Nazis.
• The Tékumel Foundation, who has controlled the Tékmuel IP rights since Barker's death in 2012, has known about the novel since July 2012, after an archivist turned up "the manuscript, the original cover art, the publishing contract, the photocopy of the payment check, and the proof copies of the book" amidst Barker's papers; the archivist says that two of the Foundation members knew about it previously.
• The first public hints of the novel appeared in 2018 when independent researcher Amina Inloes wrote an academic paper for The Islamic College of London, later published in The Muslim World (1911-Present) titled "Muhammad Abd al-Rahman (Phillip) Barker: Bridging Cultural Divides through Fantasy/Science-Fiction Role-Playing Games and Fictional Religion". In that article, the author referenced a "pseudonymous novel" written by Barker, refused to name it, and instead offered the following footnote: "Discussing this novel posed an ethical dilemma. The work is clearly Barker's — not only does his share his writing style and interests, but it is published in the name of one of his ancestors. ... However, the novel explores potentially inflammatory political viewpoints, and it was impressed upon me that it was best to preserve the facade of anonymity. I thus will leave it to the interested reader to dig it up ...". Discussion of this article seems to be what eventually revealed it to the wider public this year.
• Barker also acted as an advisor to or sat on the editorial board for The Journal of Historical Review from 1989-2002. As noted by The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Institute that runs the Journal is an anti-semitic organization "whose real purpose is to promote Holocaust denial and defend Nazism".

 

[Scott Ruggels]

I heard about this yesterday on YouTube from a devastated correspondent of Prof. Barker’s. It still was TSR’s second printed fantasy. The history of it is still there.  With the revelation of the authorship of Serpent ‘s Walk, this all becomes a variant of the “Goat****er” joke. The value of the world building is called into question. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Shrug.  Its usually best not to look into the personal past or ideals and lifestyle of creators you admire, no matter what their work.  Enjoy their work and use it as you see fit regardless of the failings or stupidity of the creators.  If you start to judge someone's work by their creator you have to end up throwing out most of what you enjoy.

[Duke Bushido]

Wierd.

 

I have heaed of the novel and the allegations that he wrote it for several years (I can never understand how ethnic non-whites get caught up in white supremacy, _particularly_ when said people are educated.)

 

But this is how I leanred that Barker is dead.

 

 

Wierd day.

 

 

[assault]

I heard about this today. It's mostly why I'm online at 1 AM, my time.

At one level, it's just another case of "artistic creator is/was horrible person". There are so, so many cases of this. To discard their work on that basis leaves you with a very barren cultural landscape. Even people who aren't horrible have often been heavily influenced by people who are.

So that's a shrug.

Still, in this case, it suggests that Tekumel's worldbuilding needs to be looked at carefully, to see where it might have been influenced by Barker's politics. It doesn't mean that it's all tainted, although it would be hard to read it without being reminded of this stuff.

 

There's a real sadness to this - Barker, along with Greg Stafford, was one of the few really creative world builders in RPGs. (But Stafford wasn't a fascist!)

 

And, ironically, at the same time I learned about this, I learned about Barker's four sentence set of RPG rules. And now they're stuck in my head...

[Duke Bushido]

3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Shrug.  Its usually best not to l

 

Sorry- accidentally,cropped too much.  You put me in mind of the saying that you will always regret meeting your heroes.

 

I tend to agree.

 

Except Mr. T.  If I ever get that lucky, I am sure it will be great. 

 

 

3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Enjoy their work and use it as you see fit regardless of the failings or stupidity of the creators.  If you start to judge someone's work by their creator you have to end up throwing out most of what you enjoy.

 

And if you have a genuine moral objection to financially supporting them, do what I do, and comb the used market.  Some stuff- Like Emoire of the Petal Throne, you will likely pay more, but not one cent of it is going to support a person or company you find objectionable.

 

Plus: you still have acces to their stuff!  And it is legal!  And it is moral (with some exceptions, like buying from scalpers, who go right back to the source and spend your money to replenish their supply).

 

Anyway, it is a favored option.  Granted, with Tekumel, it is the only option (so far as I know).

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

3 hours ago, assault said:

.

Still, in this case, it suggests that Tekumel's worldbuilding needs to be looked at carefully, to see where it might have been influenced by Barker's politics.

 

 

 

I dont know how far it evolved, but most of what I saw evoked fairy tales and nonsensical fun, with vieled danger beneath.

 

Which makes sense, since the enite world of Tekumel was something he had concieved of as a child and built on throughout his life.   Nobody is born a racist; they have to be trained that way. 

 

[mhd]

On 3/22/2022 at 4:34 PM, assault said:

Still, in this case, it suggests that Tekumel's worldbuilding needs to be looked at carefully, to see where it might have been influenced by Barker's politics. It doesn't mean that it's all tainted, although it would be hard to read it without being reminded of this stuff.

 

Yeah, that's the way I see it, too. Which kinda-sorta ruins it for me nonetheless, as I'm not that into Tekumel to warrant the effort to do so.

 

I'm a bit perplexed by the people saying that this is just a Galaxy Brain troll effort.

[Christopher R Taylor]

It is worth remembering that there is a sizable chunk of the world which was entirely unaffected by Fascism, who often didn't care for the British, and do not see Nazis as the evil of all time. It can be a bit jarring to encounter, but its real and not necessarily supportive of fascism, just not as opposed to it as you or I would be.

[Duke Bushido]

Not sure why, but this entire thread reminds me of an old comic- I wish I could remember where I saw it, but I truly can't.  I was a kid then, and didnt get it.

 

A WW2 soldier pulls down a Nazi flag from some place he and his soldiers have won a victory.  He folds up the flag, more as a "never forget" thing- it wasn't a drawn out respectful folding, but a gathering in / rolling up of a large bunch of fabric.  He comes home and sticks it in a trunk with other wartime items and outs it in the attic (barn?  I dont remember).

 

Time passes.  His now-grown son is clesning out the house, finds the flag, hangs it up outside, and starts saluting it- the high-hand salute we associate with Nazis.

 

There are No word balloons, so we are left to figure out what happened.

 

Did son learn it from Dad?  Dad seemed relieved to have defeated the Nazis, and took the flag as a trophy and a reminder- more like a "never forget" sort of thing.

 

Is son saluting because he found it in dad's stuff, and thinks it is something dad would be proud of?  Has the world changed so much that nazis are again in the open and he went looking specifically for the flag?

 

We will never know, as the comic never explained itself.

 

M.A.R. Barker is dead.  Like the comic, we will get no words to explain this.  We won't even get actions after the discovery.

 

Was this extremely intelligent and educated non-Aryan man a Nazi?  Was he a white supremacist?

 

All we know is that he did this under a psedludonym, and was so proud of it that he spent his entire life not talking about it, so far as I can find.

 

I won't pretend there is some "other" beyond "yep.  Brown Nazi.  Happens more than you think."  But i won't pretend that there can be no reason other than he was a Nazi, either, simply because unlike Bledsaw 2 and 3, the Magats, and other alive and thriving, openly-nazi filth that oozes around today, there is no way to ask, to find a "why."

 

I know good and well that while reading this some super-clever individual- a troll?  An SJW?  Maybe just a knee-jerk reactionist who knows he has a safe bet to demonstrate his moral superiority won't make it this far before posting "oh yeah?  What other kind if reason could there be, smart guy?"

 

Let me cut that off right now by saying 'i have no idea.  I can't think of a single one.'

 

What I can think of, though, is a long list of awful things I have done in the past as I grew to become,my own person-- Hell, I admitted right here on this board not too terribly long ago that I was raised _by_ and _to be_ a racist.  I am not now (thank you, Mr. T and my dear Siobhan.  Thank you both- one for opening my eyes and the other for knowing who I became instead of who I was).

 

I can also think of a prerty lengthy list of truly awful things I have done to get by.  Did I ever tell you guys that in '79 I helped a small,motorcycle gang knock off a shipment of weed from a private air field in Liberty County?  That we made a crap ton of cash selling it to another "distributor?'  That this was how I met Pop?  He was an undercover narc- went by the name "Booger."  

 

He rolled up right as we were closing the deal, accused me of setting up a double-cross and I got my a$$ beat bloody heading out the door.  Pop chased me outside with a pool cue.  When we got out, he grabbed me up, handed me a set of keys and said "they won't f%*!  with you on my bike, now get the f%×& out of here!"

 

I stood there like a particulalry stupid post and he slapped me, shoved me toward his bike, and screamed some,obscenities.  I jumoed on and left while he fired a pistol behind me.

 

I passed over a dozen State patrol cars as I roared away.

 

Pop did a lot to change who I was, too.  See, he knew I was taking care of two of my younger siblings, my job had pushed me to part time, my brother J and sister S were staying with me to go to high school and college--  he knew I was in it because I needed money, bad.  We were going to lose our home, and they both had tuition coming up.

 

So I helped devise a plan to knock off a drug shipment.  I helped find contacts to turn it to cash.

 

I had no idea that we had gotten in the middle of a three year investigation that -  well, it doesn't matter.  I did it, and it is not even the worst thing I have ever done.

 

I do _not_ tell you this because I am proud of it.  I am incredibly ashamed of a lot of things I have done to get by.

 

I am not that person anymore.  If it wasn't for Pop deciding to spare me that one arrest, I couldn't have kept it hidden, and I could not have become the person I am today.

 

Am I saying that Barker wasn't a raging Nazi at heart?  No.  What I _am_ saying is that the biggest differenve between me,and him right now is that I am still alive to give you the _whole_ story.  If I died yesterday and some,enterprising person got really lucky and found out about all this tomorrow, would the big reveal be "affable RPG grognard and all-purpose moron actually a drug runner!"?

 

If it wasn't one in the moring and I wasnt positively _goofy_ with sleep deprivation, I probably wouldnt have bothered posting this at all.

 

Good night.

 

 

[pinecone]

On 3/22/2022 at 5:43 AM, Cygnia said:

Don't know how many people played/were familiar with "Empire of the Petal Throne"...

 

The Fall of Tékumel

 

 

This hits me hard. Empire of the petal throne was the second (after the three booklets of D&D) I ever purchased, and I really enjoyed it. I guess I will need to take some time to seperate the artist from the art this time.

[pinecone]

10 minutes ago, pinecone said:

This hits me hard. Empire of the petal throne was the second RPG (after the three booklets of D&D) I ever purchased, and I really enjoyed it. I guess I will need to take some time to seperate the artist from the art this time.

 

[HeroGM]

Dr Seuss was a racist when he started.

[Duke Bushido]

I shared something a year or two back- about javing been raised racist, etc.

 

I did it to demonstrate a point; that point was completely ignored in favor of a (at that time) newer forumite siezing the opporotunity to make some politically correct SJW points: you are all on the internet; you all know how that works.

 

Thus far, I have seen no acknowledgement from that same person of any of the rest of what I said.  (Though, to be fair, I may have missed it.  To this day, this remains the only person I have ever put on "ignore" and left there.  Still, that took a week; I didn't ignore them,until I noticed a pattern).

 

At any rate, I pose the same,rhetorical question here and now that I posed then, here and in the real world when old mistakes are dredged to the hear-and-now.l:

 

For all those who both believe that it is not possible to grow, to change, and to feel geniune remorse and even abject shame for what you were, even if only briefly, at some earlier point in life 

 

_and_ simultaneously believe in punishments of less than life imprisonment for an antisocial act-

 

How do you reconcile those two things?

 

 

[assault]

On 3/24/2022 at 2:56 PM, Duke Bushido said:

Was this extremely intelligent and educated non-Aryan man

His birth name was Phillip. He converted to Islam as a young man.

His ancestry in the USA apparently goes back to 1626, and one site suggests that his father may have been in the German American Bund prior to WW2.

I can't find anything to say he was "non-Aryan".

[Clonus]

6 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

At any rate, I pose the same,rhetorical question here and now that I posed then, here and in the real world when old mistakes are dredged to the hear-and-now.l:

 

For all those who both believe that it is not possible to grow, to change, and to feel geniune remorse and even abject shame for what you were, even if only briefly, at some earlier point in life 

 

_and_ simultaneously believe in punishments of less than life imprisonment for an antisocial act-

 

How do you reconcile those two things?

 

 

 

I certainly do believe that it's possible to grow, to change and learn better and that we should let people outlive old mistakes.  I don't think that applies to Barker who started doing this stuff quite late in life and seems to have been an active holocaust denier until declining health took him out of action.  I don't think it taints Empire of the Petal Throne.  He did that stuff between the 50s and the 70s while he got into this holocaust denial stuff in the 90s.  

 

Then again, I don't much care because I didn't like his work anyway.  

[Duke Bushido]

14 hours ago, assault said:

I can't find anything to say he was "non-Aryan".

 

I have never looked into his history. Moreover, I have only seen two photos of him.  Both were black and white, and both were in magazines from "way back then" when Empire and Tekumel were being publicized for circulation.   It could,be the shots themselves (they appeared to be from the same,gathering, and were likely liscensed from the same photographer).  In those photos, he appears to be much darker-completed than the young lady and middle-aged man sittting with him.  Granted, it is equally possible that he was standing with "indoor people" while he was,not indoor people.  In the photos, he is heavy enough to make any assesment of his features suspect.  That, combined with the text identifying him by his full islamic name, made it fairly easy to assume he had middle-eastern ancestry.  Never having seen anything to contradict that, and my focus being more on the work than the person, it never mattered enough to make me curious.

 

11 hours ago, Clonus said:

 

I certainly do believe that it's possible to grow, to change and learn better and that we should let people outlive old mistakes.  I don't think that applies to Barker who started doing this stuff quite late in life and seems to have been an active holocaust denier until declining health took him out of actiion

 

Yep.  I am,watching this happen to my father, and have been for years.  This was once tje most intelligent, gregarious person I ever knew-  I dont mean that from a little kid or even a parent-child point of view.  He was strikingly intelligent, patient, curious, and would accept nothing less that complete analysis of _any_ problem or situation that he had to address.

 

And today he is one anti-semetic comment away from,being,a full-on Nazi.

 

I know that this is a popular thing to do, but I have reasons.  His entire life, the only televsion he ever watched (I have mentioned before that we had no television when I was growing up.  We didnt have electricity until I was thirteen) was the news.

 

He was excited about the "New" 24-hour news channels,back,when they were coming, and would scan back and forth for a couple ofbhours every evening.

A few weeks after the launch od Fox News, the only time the channek ever changes is for old western, then right back to Fox.

 

It has been a slow decline, and has taken a few years, but today?  Today he sounds like any garbage-spewing Trump nut, and has adopted the,fox news tactic of walking away.  That is, the guy who used to patiently every single,thing before making a,decision will now announce the president wakes up every morning, showers, gets a cup of coffee, and sits down and decides,how much to raise gas prices today before habing breakfast.

 

If anyone even _attempts_ to question it, he will turn on his heel and walk,away, screaming and shouting about traitorous liberal,Nazis.....

If you listen really carefully, you will hear him turn,on a television in whatever room he has retraeted to, and fox,news starts blaring there, too.

 

Unfortunately, that is the only example of his behavior lithe last few years that I can post without risking a perma-ban for hate speech.

 

So yes:  while I accept that people do grow and change, I am painfully aware that they can grow to become,_worse_ as well.

 

 

11 hours ago, Clonus said:

I don't think it taints Empire of the Petal Throne.

 

 

 

I am glad to hear someone,say that, given rhatvthe current trend seems to be "this person did an awful thing and must be purged from history,"

 

Like you, I don't care for Tekumel (I find it kind of juvenile, but that is probably  just me)  but I hold it as an example routinely, as it is a great proof that it is isbpossoble to write an intricate and highly detailed world with a rich, deep history and _not_ be Tolkien himself or a Tolkien knock-off.

 

 

[Hugh Neilson]

Every time I see places re-named to remove reference to some historical figure when it is publicized that **gasp** they were not perfect, and/or were a product of their times, the phrase that reverberates in my ears is "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

 

If we whitewash our history, then teach this lily-white version to future generations, we will lose the lessons history should teach us.

 

Just imagine what people a hundred years from now will think of us, pursuing consumerism, heating our homes and transporting goods and people with fossil fuels and eating animals.

 

Or will they laugh at our folly eliminating meat from our diets (and denying a generation crucial nutrients as they grew up) and inability to refine fossil fuels that burned cleaner?

 

It's well under a hundred years ago that we believed progress would mean flying cars that ran on fossil fuels we would fill up with at floating gas stations, and nutrition ingested entirely in a pill.

[Lawnmower Boy]

With respect to both Barker's ethnicity and his likely imposter syndrome, I will note that he was born in Spokane relatively early in the settlement history of the Pacific Northwest to a family that "claimed to have come over on the Mayflower," always a red flag about family origins, Boston Brahmins apart, and that he did a PhD in linguistics studying a Northwest First Nations language.

 

Which is probably enough insinuation for one post. 

 

Of more importance was his lifetime role as a professor of South Asian Studies. Area studies in North American universities have always been pretty dodgy, in part because they draw students from a linguistics background, a field which does not always carry the highest of academic credibility, but much more importantly because they have extra-academic links that raise questions about funding. Your Russian and East European Studies Centre is rolling in CIA money, that kind of thing. South Asian Studies became a cause celebre in the 1990s when it was revealed that departments like that of my own alma mater and Barker's Minnesota were skating very close to the edge of being diploma mills. That's how they came to lose departmental status.

 

Barker, I suggest, was lashing out at a world that, as he saw it, had pulled the rug out from under him when he went all in as a Holocaust denier. No doubt Jewish academics were involved in the decision to close his department. I don't know if that makes for a particularly sympathetic defence, but it does serve to draw a line between the Empire of the Petal Throne and his later Neo-Nazi outbursts. 

 

Also, jeez but Tekumel was pretentious. Give me Gamma World any day. 

[Duke Bushido]

Thanks, LB!

 

I don't want to say that there is no such thing as a sympathetic reason to hate based on ethnicity, I still find it to be a very $;=÷y thing to do.

 

 

[rravenwood]

On 3/27/2022 at 9:05 AM, Duke Bushido said:

Yep.  I am,watching this happen to my father, and have been for years. 

 <snip>

So yes:  while I accept that people do grow and change, I am painfully aware that they can grow to become,_worse_ as well.

 

Sorry to hear this, but also sympathetic as something similar has been happening in my family

[Duke Bushido]

8 hours ago, rravenwood said:

 

Sorry to hear this, but also sympathetic as something similar has been happening in my family

 

 

My empathise and condolensces, Amigo.

 

It sucks.

[Trencher]

Aryan is an ancient Indi tribe. The nazis stole the term along with other Indian cultural symbols when they cooked up their political system. 

There are no "Aryan" white people. If you use the nazi language you are empowering their view of the world just by association. 

 

My guess is that this guy flew under the radar for so long is that he is actually "striped"- A nazi sympathizer but not actually practicing. 

A cursory glance at his life gives me the impression of a man searching something. Perhaps a reason to indulge in authoritarian thinking. 

Never got into Tekumel. The world was based on a intergalactic tourist spot that fell into dark times? Did not like that background.

The setting was definitely not medieval Europe but based on a lot of other cultures. 

Which makes me think he might not have been a white supremacist nazi but rather a person who thinks along those lines like the "Dear Doctor" episode in Star Trek for instance. 

The basic nazi doctrine of that "someone has to die for others to live" thing.

[Strand]

One of my favorite books is Flamesong Tekumel: The Empire of the Petal Throne. Knowing Barker's past and having read that book (and I will read it again) there isn't a THING in it that would make you think something bad of him. I love his books no matter what.