SXSW’s Astounding Ideals of Cowardice

South by Southwest’s stunning decision to cancel a panel dealing with online harassment is as embarrassing as it is unjustifiable and pathetic.

By Chris Kluwe

Dear SXSW individuals involved with the cancellation of “Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games”,

(For what it’s worth, I’m getting quite tired of writing these letters to idiots, but someone needs to do it.)

This week, you announced a decision so mind-numbingly shameful, it’s a wonder that the collective spleens of everyone involved didn’t spontaneously combust from the overload of self-loathing. I speak, of course, of your Neville Chamberlain-esque choice to cancel a panel on harassment in online spaces, featuring Katherine Cross, Caroline Sinders, and Randi Harper, due to (and I can’t believe I have to type this) overwhelming harassment from those opposed to said panel — i.e., Gamergate (a group you conveniently allowed to have their own panel without following any of the listed application rules, in a fascinating display of fear-profiteering that would make Dick Cheney blush).

Then, you inexplicably tried to justify the unjustifiable, with one of the most mealy-mouthed, corporate nothing speak emails I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading; all in the hopes that this would somehow explain your craven actions.

I have just one question, though: How can you literally be this stupid?

In your email — no doubt drafted by your fear-riddled fingers, trembling over the realization that you might actually have to take a stand against abusive behavior in a stunningly out of place display of moral culpability — typed the following:

“On the one hand, we are an event that prides itself on being a big tent and a marketplace of diverse people and diverse ideas. On the other hand, preserving the sanctity of that big tent at SXSW Interactive necessitates that we keep the dialogue civil and respectful — so that people can agree, disagree and embrace new ways of thinking in a safe and secure place. We have already received numerous threats of violence regarding this panel, so a civil and respectful environment seems unlikely in March in Austin. For this reason, we have also canceled other sessions at the 2016 event that focused on the GamerGate controversy. We are strong believers in community at SXSW — and a healthy community sometimes requires strong management. Preserving the sanctity of the big tent is more important than preserving any particular session.”

I read this, slammed my head against the wall for an hour, snorted half a bottle of bleach, force-fed myself eighteen pounds of lead-based paints, and still couldn’t approach the depths of sheer bloody-minded imbecility it must have taken to put those words together in that particular order.

First off, the panel was not on Gamergate, did not mention Gamergate, and the only tangential relation it had with Gamergate was that the odorous denizens of that particular hashtag have made it their mission to try and ruin the lives of the women involved in the panel (among others). The fact you felt the need to connect it to Gamergate shows quite clearly where the pressure to silence these voices came from.

Second, and perhaps more pertinently, you run a festival that features A-list celebrities and tech magnates worth collective billions, superstar athletes, and some of the biggest music acts in the world, and you’re telling me you can’t provide security for a panel of three women? That it’s beyond your resources to hire any sort of police presence when you shut down entire sections of Austin at a time? That the unceasing vitriol these brave individuals face on a daily basis is just too much for your tender feelings to deal with, when you’ve experienced the merest fraction of that torrent of filth they’re forced to endure?

You disgust me. Your selfish weakness sickens me. Your puling bleats of golden mean fallacies fills my stomach with such nauseous rage that an entire continent of antacid tablets would be insufficient to quell the depths of my contempt for you.

What you did, what you’re doing, is providing the blueprint for harassers and hatemongers as to how they win. From this point forward, any fringe group of spiteful lunatics can point to this moment and say, “We will silence the voices of anyone we dislike at SXSW, any view we disagree with, because we know the mewling slugs in charge have not the backbone to stop us. All we need to do is confront them with our vileness, and they will fold.”

And the worst part?

YOU are solely the ones responsible for this.

YOU decided that it was appropriate to give a group of harassers a platform to continue their wretched campaign of ignorance. No one forced you to bypass the application process, to slide this selection of charlatans and liars along back alley channels into the conference. (And by the way, it is beyond ironic that a group ostensibly about ‘ethics in journalism’ required such an unethical route.)

YOU chose to ignore the warnings of the women targeted, to dismiss their voices as unworthy of respect or consideration, and then had the gall to act shocked that a ‘movement’ known for its corrosive toxicity slimed its oh-so-predictable foulness in your direction after you invited them in.

YOU are the only ones to blame for this monumental cock-up, and I would be lying if I didn’t say I hope this brings your precious ‘big tent’ crashing down on top of every money-grubbing scumbag furiously selling their morals beneath it. I’ll happily withdraw from my panel so as not to be associated with the likes of callous sleaze such as yourselves, and to hell with if you ever invite me back.

Really, let me see if I have this straight …

You make millions of dollars off the backs of unpaid labor, and somehow you lack the finances to secure a room for an hour so a discussion can be held on the horrible reality women face online? You can’t muster the intestinal fortitude to admit that harassment is something that happens on a regular basis, is a problem that needs to be addressed in a society intertwined so tightly with the Internet, and that harassers are likely going to try and stop any attempts to do so?

That’s seriously the argument you’re going with? That you’re so afraid of neolithic barbarians and their mindless rage, you’d rather bury your heads in the sand and pretend they don’t exist so they turn their anger back towards their usual targets?

Again, your cowardice is almost inconceivable to me. The idea that a human being could willingly make a decision like that, could write an email conflating the idea that those being harassed and those doing the harassing somehow deserve an equal venue in which to present their views, is staggering in its evil banality. The idea that someone would deny women under attack a means by which to discuss their struggles with others because that someone is too scared to stand up to a swaggering bully, drunk off his infantile lust for power, should drive any sane person to despair.

You say you “pride yourself on being a marketplace of diverse people and diverse ideas,” and I say that is obviously nothing more than a shallow lie cultivated in the hopes of eking out another dirty dollar for your own pocketbook.

You pride yourself on nothing. Your ‘diversity’ is revealed as the blind self-absorption of the privileged, eager to benefit off the structures already in place to ensure their continued pleasure, regardless of the harm it causes others. Your ‘marketplace’ is illuminated as the tawdry business of selling convenience, not courage. Your ‘strong management’ is the tattered white flag of surrender, raised by witless, gutless shells of men who scrabble around like roaches in the muck of their own feculence, mistaking turgid trash for treasure.

Your conference is the corrupt, decaying edifice of the status quo, no matter how much you pretend otherwise, because you lack the common decency to take a stand against those who would hurt others merely because they’ve always been able to do so. The women who presented this panel knew there would be risks. Threats of violence, of bitter hate, of crude and salacious intimidation tactics — these women, and many others, deal with those risks every day, simply because they dare exist. They wanted to have a conversation about those risks, discuss ways of mitigating, or perhaps even solving them, but thanks to your impotent leadership, they now will not have that opportunity.

So I say to you, SXSW, and every one of your toadies who failed to stand up for what was right, even though it might have been what was difficult, that your conference is garbage. You, collectively, are garbage, a sad accumulation of fears squirming inside the skins of what could have been human beings, and I hope that one day, all of you will take stock of your lives and determine whether or not you are the people you wish to be. Until that day, you have proven yourselves unfit to steward nothing more than the ferrying of waste through your own body.

Sincerely,

SXSW Panelist For ‘The Art of The Own: Internet Etiquette and Sports,’ And You Better Be Damn Certain This Is Going To Be In The Panel —

Chris Kluwe