If you don’t read current mainstream fiction, you’re probably unaware that the culture war is waging on the printed page just as furiously as it is on television, radio and the internet. Conservative authors (or any author not sufficiently progressive enough to suit the left) are under attack on an almost daily basis and this has been going on for quite a few years.
Unfortunately for conservative fiction writers, the war they’ve been embroiled in doesn’t garner nearly as much attention as the controversies surrounding Roseanne Barr or Samantha Bee.
The media has been content to let that sleeping dog lie, because the left has held a stranglehold on the publishing industry for years. This is a war that’s worth paying attention to, though, because right-of-center fiction writers are frontline troops every bit as important to America as more high-profile figures like Tim Allen and Tucker Carlson are.
Two examples are Larry Correia and John Ringo. Both are right-of-center fiction authors with New York Times bestselling books to their credit. Mr. Ringo is a military veteran and Mr. Correia was once a gun store owner. Both write rip-roaring yarns involving heroic characters in extraordinary circumstances who sacrifice life and limb to protect and serve others.
Their books are bestsellers not only the New York Times list, but also on American military bases overseas. The troops love these guys and the respect is mutual.
Ringo and Correia also come under fire – frequently – from the same hysterical forces of leftism that constantly try to insult, harm, de-platform, marginalize or destroy everyone from Roseanne Barr to Donald Trump to Bill O’Reilly. If you’ve ever wondered why most mainstream fiction sucks these days, it’s because the giant liberal publishing houses in New York freeze out anyone who doesn’t check off the correct diversity and social justice boxes in their fiction writing.
Books that feature “toxic masculinity” and traditional fun, heroic stories are out; boring, introspective 9,000-page missives on the inner hurts of transgendered endangered species are in.
A recent de-platforming of Larry Correia will sound familiar to anyone who’s followed the left’s antics to try to shut up Ann Coulter and other conservative figures. Mr. Correia was invited to speak as the Guest of Honor at the 2018 Origins Game Fair in Columbus, OH. When the social justice snowflakes of the left found out about it, Twitter erupted with false accusations.
The same tired old insults were hurled at the convention organizers: Larry Correia is a white supremacist, sexist, racist, transphobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, everything-else-phobic and people of color will feel “unsafe” if that big old meanie brings his conservative cooties to this convention.
Correia was even called a “rape apologist” in some of the more bizarre accusations. All of this is, of course, as fake as the Russians who colluded with the 2016 Trump campaign. (Correia is a Mormon libertarian of Portuguese descent.)
The Origins organizers immediately caved and moved Correia from the Guest of Honor column to the persona non grata column and disinvited him. The real victims of this scandalous de-platforming are the hundreds of fans who ponied up $60 to $70 to attend the Origins conference for the chance to hear their favorite author speak for a few minutes, shake his hand and have him sign one of their books.
John Ringo went through the exact same thing this year with the ConCarolinas convention in early June — invited as a bestselling author with millions of fans and then disinvited when SJW sissies complained about his not-liberal ickiness.
In the wake of this particular blowup, ConCarolinas finally announced (long after the dust had settled) that it would not bow to political pressure in years to come. (We’ll believe it when we see it.)
Both Correia and Ringo have large enough fanbases to be impervious to antics like this. Yet for every John Ringo and Larry Correia out there who have met with success in writing fiction, hundreds or perhaps thousands of other right-of-center authors have had their careers derailed or destroyed (or never got off the ground in the first place), all because of the liberals’ ideological monopoly on book publishing outlets. Finding success as a conservative author has about the same odds as finding success as a conservative reporter, which is to say, slim to almost none.
This is why we continue repeating the fact that conservatives must set up alternative platforms and support creators and customers on our side of the fence. The left is playing for keeps. They actively want to destroy the careers of authors (or patriots in any other field) like Larry Correia and John Ringo, so that authors who hope to break into the field one day will keep their heads down and spout leftist propaganda – or else!
These authors deserve our support not only because they are under assault from the left, but also because they are bright, shining lights in the otherwise colorless, dull field of modern fiction.
~ American Liberty Report
