It seems some Social Justice Warriors have been riled up on Twitter today. The thread got a bit jumbled up so I’m recreating it here.
Neither of these tweets seems particularly partisan. Both are good questions, but some people seem to be triggered – perhaps because one side of politics doesn’t have good answers.
My response was simple and to the point, referencing The Tin Principles. Sadly, this seemed to only fan the flames of the fans of flames even more:
Here’s the official description of the “Civic Responsibility” Principle:
Civic Responsibility
We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.
It’s hard to see how this blog violates this principle in any way. We value civil society here, not a single political party or monoculture. We’re not organizing any events and we’re certainly not breaking any local, state, Federal or international laws.
“I hope you’re ostracized [for having different views to me]” and “GTFO” do not seem to fit the idea of “Radical Inclusion”. Are heterosexual white males no longer welcome at Burning Man?
Unfortunately for Cynthia, Burning Man is still predominantly white, male, and heterosexual.
The most recent Census data from 2019 shows that Burning Man is still 76% white and 1% black; 56% male and 42% female, and 66% heterosexual:
It seems not much has changed demographically since Larry Harvey’s infamous 2015 statement that “black folks don’t like to camp”:
“Steve in Real Life”, who moved from the Bay Area to Reno in 1992, started out strong. Burning Man indeed has a proud history of assholery.
Unfortunately Steve got twiggered by a couple of retweets and decided to throw all the Principles of Burning Man out the window, insult us then block us while joining the call for this blog to be de-platformed:
Summer Burkes then chose to weigh in. She seems to have forgotten her previous work celebrating the gun-toting, Second Amendment loving cowboy history of Burning Man.
Here’s Summer in 2014, misspelling the name of the man she’s glorifying:
Fight Club is a book written in 1996 and then turned into a movie released 15 years ago this fall (we won’t provide any spoilers if we can help it). Author Chuck Pahlaniuk confirmed at several book-release events last year the “Project Mayhem” group in Fight Club’s story is indeed the Cacophony Society in real life … a wackier bunch of people, without the men-only Iron John subplot or all the property destruction and violence. (Well, serious violence, anyway.)
Source: Summer Burkes, burningman.org
Chuck Palahniuk proudly takes credit for the modern use of the term “snowflake”, and has been called a “darling of the alt-right and AntiFa”.
Chuck believes in Radical Self-Expression and Radical Inclusion, unlike Summer:
The word “heck” is clearly too controversial for Snowflake Summer to say, while calling for the silencing of different viewpoints is completely compatible with her tone of moral superiority:
I have always been quite clear to state that this blog has nothing to do with the Burning Man organization in any way.
Mere minutes before that tweet Summer had quite the potty mouth:
Her plan now is complete de-platforming of any voice she doesn’t agree with. No Radical Self-Expression, Radical Inclusion, Gifting, or Communal Effort for Summer! Will she be successful, or is there still a First Amendment in the Default World?
How does Summer reconcile her cult-like “literal worship” of Larry Harvey with his statements that Burning Man is the poster child for old-fashioned, Main Street Republicanism?
Or what about Larry’s friendship with Republican strategist Grover Norquist, who on Burn Night proudly wore his Russian military uniform (allegedly obtained from shadowy ops arming the Taliban in Afghanistan)?
I have long advocated here that politics and Burning Man don’t mix, but it seems the Org has a different view, inviting Denis Kucinich to give the Keynote address at the 2015 Global Leadership summit:
2015 was a big year for politics invading the Playa:
We’ll let the late Larry Harvey have the last word:
Can’t we all just get along? I thought that was the entire point of Burning Man.
Civic responsibility, in terms of adhering to the the newly accepted cultural norms. It is civically irresponsible to hold contrary and dangerous beliefs, To be civically irresponsible is the equivalent of violence and hate towards the body civic. There is punishment for failure to comply and conform.