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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31958 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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There was also the small matter of the Vox Day affair. As you may recall, Ken White was one of VD's bête noires, while Clark was a friend of both of them. The way I remember it, some of Ken's followers started calling Clark out on his association with VD, and Clark defended VD as an honorable and unfairly villified man, while also insisting that he and Ken were bffs and if VD ever dared to go low (such as mocking Ken's mental illness) in his spats with Ken, Clark would "rain hellfire" on VD.

VD promptly went low and wrote a series of vitriolic, mocking posts poking at every one of White's exposed weaknesses. (Ken had, probably unwisely when in the middle of a public fight with one of the most proudly cruel, no-holds-barred partisans on the Internet, written openly about his depression and mental illness.) VD even took shots at Ken's adopted Korean-born child.

Response from Clark: crickets.

That's about the time when you stopped seeing him around. To all appearances, when called upon to back up his claims of loyalty, he quietly picked up his hat and slipped out of the room.

That's about the time when you stopped seeing him around. To all appearances, when called upon to back up his claims of loyalty, he quietly picked up his hat and slipped out of the room.

I don't get it.

I respect Vox Day, he's intelligent, a solid writer and a good editor.

He can also be charitably described as an egomaniacal crank who's overly credulous and always sure of himself.

I also prefer not having him around, certainly online. (he's probably one of those guys who's raving lunatic online and a mostly normal bloke offline)

Denouncing him should be a rather easy moral choice.

Denouncing him should be a rather easy moral choice.

Bluntly, I think Clark was a coward who was hoping his buddy Vox wouldn't call his bluff. That he thought Vox wouldn't indicates he also wasn't very smart.

Certainly, if he had "rained hellfire" on Vox for attacking Ken White, Vox would have turned his saber wit on Clark as well (as he's done on many other former allies), and Clark didn't fancy being at the receiving end of Vox's vitriol and his followers' scorn himself.

An interpretation that's likely to be true.

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