Chortle

So, the stats for last year’s Hugos in China were recently released. A number of veterans of the Puppy Wars are passing around the popcorn and inventing clever ways to say, “I told you so”. Personally, I’m rather partial to saying they were “Hoist by their own petard” (And I’d like to remind people that the verb in that expression is NOT the same one as in “Hoist the black flag.” NEVER say “Hoisted by one’s own petard.” A petard is a door breaching grenade, there are no ropes involved to be hoisted by, with, or on.)

Ahem. The Grauniad, of all places, has a semi decent article summarizing all of the changes between what was nominated, and what made it on to the ballot. And of course, nobody involved is explaining why works that were easily qualified for the short list somehow came out as “Ineligible” but anyone who can do political science without deluding themselves can easily figure it out. They all didn’t sufficiently kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party at some point in the past.

The irony tickles me silly, considering how the CHORF side of the previous conflict was all about wanting the ability to pick and choose nominees through the filter of a political purity test. At least one proposal I read when they were formulating new system specifically gave the committee the power to reject and substitute nominees. It may not have made it into the bylaws (Frankly, I haven’t followed the issue very closely after SP4, even though SOME people keep trying to breathe new life into the puppy’s corpse) but it’s looking like that is exactly what happened in China.

The irony that a Chinese woman got her place on the ballot filled by a White man is also amusing, given the emphasis on Diversity the WorldCon crowd places on the awards (Remember when the inclusion of a single Asian writer among the very pale parade of winners one year was toasted for being incredibly diverse?). To the best of my knowledge, said author of pallor did not object to his addition to the ballot at the woman’s expense.

Non-Chinese members of the Hugo committee are being rather tight-lipped about what transpired. And people are noticing how opaque the process was. Of course, the opacity of the new nominating system was one of its features. But this distortion of the long-standing final vote system was a new wrinkle.

There’s a bit of advice that those of us on the More Freedom side of the Authoritarian/Libertarian axis like to give to our counterparts, which of course is ignored. “Never give the government a power which you don’t want your political rivals to eventually wield.” Those who are greedy for government influence never take the long view, and are often bitten by it (Judicial appointment filibuster rules in the Senate, anyone?), and even though they seem unwilling to admit it, that appears to have happened here.

Now, on the other hand, one of my predictions appears to be wrong, and I’m actually happy for it. While it would have been entirely possible for Chinese Fandom (or its proxies) to insure that Chinese cities won every future WorldCon bid, I’m given to understand that a well known WorldCon SMOF – in the non-derogatory connotation of the word – persuaded them that it would be a really bad look. Kudos to him.

Update: Validation

So, it’s worse than I thought. According to this article at Fandom Pulse, (Oh jeez, I’m linking to the Rice Man), okay, also according to this posting on SlashDot, which links to the proof, and even Vile 770 (Not gonna give them the link), emails have been released showing that not only did the Hugo/Worldcon committee disqualify nominees and ballots at the behest of the Chinese Government, they did so willingly, and did the investigations themselves of the top ten in each category, looking for criticism of the Chinese Government, travel history, their whole body of work, inclusion in the LGBT community (nope, they wouldn’t even fall on their swords for that! Way to be principled, WorldCon!)

Of course, Rice makes a mistake comparing this effort to the Puppies, an error I’d expect from the opposite quarter, when saying that the votes have been rigged before. Unless he’s referring to the spontaneous appearance of thousands of voters who were oh so concerned about the integrity of the Hugos that they showed up to vote No Award even when they couldn’t be bothered to nominate that year, nor exercise their option to nominate the next year – so deep were their convictions…. Unlike the Chinese Government, the Puppies didn’t have the entire committee working on their behalf to help insure they got the results they wanted.

Addendum: Others are pointing out that it wasn’t under the explicit orders of the ChiComs, but more like the Hugo committee members took it upon themselves to censor the nominees in the way that they presumed the Chinese government would want them to. This is a lot like how the self-censorship works among the Chinese people, where it’s far better the anticipate what the dictators want than to be told explicitly and be in their crosshairs. This does not make the Hugo Committee look any better.

Update: Chuck Tingle gets it: