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I don't think boardgames are really very different from RPGs or video games or comic books other nerd spaces. Basically, was a (primarily white and male) nerdy niche interest that slowly attracted attention from a more diverse audience (not bad in itself), but this more diverse audience perceived "white and male" as a problem that needed to be fixed. And because white male nerds tended to be liberal and more often than not were actually happy to see more girls, minorities, etc., in their hobby, they did not see the shape of things to come, in which they would be demonized and ideological conformity would be enforced.
In the 80s and 90s, gamers were mostly liberal, but everyone knew the guy who was an Alex Keaton Reaganite (granted that Alex Keaton was a liberal's cuddly and palatable version of a Republican) or a libertarian who liked to complain about age of consent laws (o..O) or the weird reT^rn Catholic or occasionally, someone with more hardcore rightist views. And they were tolerated, for better or for worse, because nerds always considered themselves inclusive, before that was a buzzword. This had some obvious failure modes (e.g., Walter Breen), but mostly people could accept the guy with "out there" views as long as he wasn't ranting every game night.
I personally remember the time one of our buddies brought a cousin from Georgia who straightforwardly told us she "didn't believe people should marry someone of another color." All of us liberals kind of looked at her with aghast expressions, but afterwards just shrugged to ourselves and agreed "Well, that's how she was raised."
To think that someone could say that in a gaming space today and not immediately be ejected (and probably dragged online) is to laugh.
Tangentially, I have seen the same phenomenon in the Unitarian Universalist Church (in which I was briefly interested). It's primary a nerdy white liberal social group that (when I was around) was constantly engaged in hand-wringing about how white it was. Blocked and Reported did an episode covering the results.
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