Culture War and the Cost of Silence

Jon Del Arroz is an online friend, a science fiction author, and as of very recently, a conservative culture warrior. His story is interesting in part because it's so very common. Many conservatives spends years, even decades, trying to fit in, form relationships and build professional reputation in a Leftist-dominated environment by keeping a low profile about their beliefs. Sometimes, they do it out of politeness, and sometimes out of fear of confrontation and retribution; often it's a combination of the two. There are, after all, valid reasons not to antagonize friends and co-workers, not to jeopardize valuable contacts and relationships over something as seemingly ephemeral as political philosophy. For most interactions, from dating to interviewing for a job to attending social events, we are advised to keep our politics private, especially if we suspect our views are in the minority.

And so we stay silent. Oh sure, we vent in private to our very close friends or significant others (unless of course we followed the advice above so well, that even those closest to us are not aware of what we really think). Sometimes we even make up anonymous accounts on social media or join secret chat rooms where we can be ourselves. But as far as the rest of the world is concerned, we are "the good guys": mainstream, respectable, open-minded. It's all good.

Except silence comes at a cost. As I mentioned in my old Censorship blog post, there's always the nagging doubt of "what if." How would things be different if we hadn't stayed silent? What new friends could we gain? What battles, presumed lost before the fight had even began, could we win? How many people out there are just like us, living in silence, thinking they're all alone? Unless we speak up, all we will ever do is guess and wonder, and watch little pieces of who we are flit away as we pretend that conformity is our only choice.

Fortunately, there are some in our midst no longer willing to bear the subtle but very real cost of being muzzled. And every time one of them comes out into the light, countless others are encouraged to do the same. This is the only way we can prevail, but prevail we will.

And now, without further delay, here's Jon's story. It's not fiction, but a good read nevertheless: disturbing yet inspiring, and worth sharing with a friend.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy writing and convention scene is one of the worst SJW converged subcultures. While Hollywood promotes extreme perversion and hedonism, they don’t push nearly as hard as SF/F literary groups when it comes to the intellectual aspects of identity politics. My name is Jon Del Arroz, I write Science Fiction, and this is my story.

Read the rest of the post at Vox Popoli.

To support Jon, you can purchase his book here.