Really?

[james_davis_nicoll]

"leftist SF critic James Nicoll"? Leftist?

Comments

[0jack]

...I have no words. LEFTIST? WHAT.

[james_davis_nicoll]

I've also got "climate change denier" tossed at me.

[bibliofile]

It's all relative, remember. To Attila the Hun, quite possibly everyone was a leftist....

[eagle]

Of course you're leftist. You're Canadian.

You are at least not European, thus making you not a communist.

[ironjeff]

Does this mean you only critique Leftist SF?

Having seen you post regarding politics, I'd say you were left-of-centercentre. I also see nothing wrong with this.

[bcholmes]

You sound insulted by the label. Is that a correct assessment of your reaction?

[0jack]

I'd be more insulted by the misuse of the label.

[james_davis_nicoll]

Surprised, not offended.

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

Sans context, I am going to speculate wildly that the author of said epithet is from my country.

Are you a Galtian superman? No? Then you're leftist.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

James is Canadian and therefore a lefty, is how it may also go.

[dsrtao]

You might recall the Witchfinder who held all Southerners in contempt, and by deduction was standing at the North Pole?

By USAn standards you is a dirty commie.

Thinks are Good

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Nahh... at least by my local Californian USAn standards he's no worse than a foolishly idealistic Socialist. You know, the kind who thinks that the Canadian Socialized Medicine is better than our American Free Enterprise medical system even though Canadians may have to wait six months (or whatever) to get a knee-replacement if they need it, whereas any USAns who want one can get it within a week or so. If they can afford it. (If they can't afford it, they'll limp around, in great pain, until they die ... which, on statistical average, will be somewhat sooner than Canadians do, because of some inexplicable quirk of fate.)

(Mind you, I don't necessarily ascribe to my local USAn standards for anything, and would probably be a card-carrying member of the IWWW if all my contacts with that Socialist Union hadn't died of old age.)

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

You would prefer "rabid leftist"? "Card-carrying communist"? Tell us the proper form, and we'll use it . . .

[nelc.livejournal.com]

How would you describe yourself politically, in your terms and in terms a stereotypical USian might understand?

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Surely "foreign" says all that needs saying there?

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Was it that weirdo whose nym reflects an apparent desire to turn the US back to the days of Jim Crow, illegal contraception, and the Federal hounding of homosexuals to suicide (all in the name of small government, of course)?

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

http://ricketyclick.com/blog/index.php/2012/04/23/a-bucket-of-air/

And hmm, refugee50s LJ profile does in fact link there. So you're right!

*peruses*. Conspiratorial paranoia, democracy-hating (I like "Obama may suspend elections" followed by "Democracy looks like mob rule"), destroying pigs as casus belli for a Second Civil War...

But perhaps he misses other elements of the 1950s, like rapid economic growth with 70% top income tax rate and massive government investment in infrastructure?

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

You believe that in certain cases the municipalization of garbage collection is a good thing, and thus also the Gulag and stacking the skulls of your enemies into pyramids as part of your worship of the Almighty state. Duh.

[tandw.livejournal.com]

The two fit together so logically--those pyramids of skulls don't clean themselves up, after all. Just don't unearth any quotes from James wherein he notes a preference for trains that run on time, or he'll be "fascist leftist SF critic James Nicoll."

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Please. Even in Canada, you're left of centre. Lord knows how far red-shifted USAmericans think you are.

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't that be blue-shifted?

[sahdwholurks.livejournal.com]

Second all the 'foreign = leftist' comments. Heck, just claiming that going to the doctor in Canada doesn't require you to pass a Utility to the State Test marks you as a Communist to plenty of (willfully clueless) Americans.

[refugee50s.livejournal.com]

I said it up thread, but it was kinda buried, so I'll say it again:

In fact, it took me quite awhile to get it in my head that James was not an American.

There are too many leftists/socialists/communists/etc here in the USA, and too many rightist/small-r-republican/libertarians/etc elsewhere, for that generalization to be useful.

[refugee50s.livejournal.com]

How, sir, would you describe yourself?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

A pragmatist.

[refugee50s.livejournal.com]

I'll note that your commenters are pretty free with labels like "Republican", "right of right wingers", and so forth.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

It's a real shame how badly those brands are damaged; and how quickly their replacement brand names are damaged. It makes you wonder if there's something very wrong with the underlying item.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Is that a bad thing?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I see considerable space to either side of me. I'll admit to being an outlier in may ways but not along that axis (I don't think the gun registry was an effective investment of public funds; there are more effective ways to spend the same money to improve QoL in Canada. At same time I will grant most gun nuts would happily sell the country down the river as long they are promised their bang-sticks).

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I have the impression that James' political views are on the left of center. And the recent project on sex balance in publishing, for example, can be viewed as leftist social engineering (however, that project isn't SF criticism, at least as I understand the term; it's not about individual stories and how and why they do or don't work. It's political activism about the SF field, which is something different.)

However, doesn't "leftist SF critic" mean more than that? To me it implies a critical apparatus significantly constructed on political principles; which is not what I find James deploying.

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

Way back when words meant something, "leftist" meant an advocate of a socialist uprising. It meant Trotskyite.

But now - thanks to the ideologues who have stripped actual meaning from words (or, as I like to call them, pigfuckers) - it just means "not as far right as I am".

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I take it some took offense to the "everything's worse with libertarians" tag on your LJ?

-- Steve's fighting a rising tide of Bircherism here in London (ON) that threatens to halt the sapping and impurifying fluoridating of municipal water. WTF, people, really; WTF?

[maruad.livejournal.com]

They are having the same issues in Calgary. Even my sister, who has moved fairly far to the right, is appalled by the move to end fluoridation.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

Well, from what I gather one of your criticisms of the CPC is that they're not communist...

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

More, they changed their acronym from CRAP (no, I'm not joking) to CPC without checking first to see if there already was a CPC.

There already was a CPC - the Communist Party of Canada.

So now there are two CPCs, and there needs to be a way to distinguish between them. It would be unfair to insist that a disclaimer be added to the original CPC to distinguish them from the johnny-come-latelies who are trying to steal their acronym, so the new guys get the clarification: There is CPC for the Communist Party of Canada, and the CPC (non-communist) for the OTHER CPC who aren't communists but for some reason wanted to be associated with the letters CPC.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Half a dozen words got this many responses?

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I'm shocked (shocked!) to find that gambling is going on in this establishment!

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

Well, based on the previous entry on the blog of the person who referred to you that way, you could have been called a "commie shit nozzle." I'd personally prefer "leftist SF critic."

[refugee50s.livejournal.com]

I called Van Jones a "commie shit nozzle" because he thought he should be able to tell people he doesn't agree with, people like me, to "sit down and shut up."

James has never done that. I have in the past invited him to ask me to go away if he found my presence too disruptive. He's never done even that.

James actually did me a kindness, once, referring me to an online edition of Andre Norton's Moon of Three Rings I wanted to quote for a memorial post on a feline friend I had to put down (http://ricketyclick.com/blog/index.php/2009/02/18/tex-the-white-road/). Although I strongly disagree with many of his views, he is not remotely a shit nozzle of any variety.

I don't even think he's a Communist. There's a spectrum here, people; it's not binary communist/libertarian. I often disagree with many who refer to themselves as being on the right, or conservative, or whatever, yet I recognize that in the common view, I am to the right of, well, James. That puts him to my left, although these labels are not definitive for either of us.

===

So tell me, what would you think of someone of any persuasion who thought they should have the power to make you sit down and shut up?

If they leaned rightward of your position, would you be in the least tempted to refer to them as a "Nazi"? (Even though the Nazis considered themselves socialists, if not Marxists, and I consider them as being pretty much as far to the statist left as Stalinists.) Would you agree that many on the left regard those on the right as Nazis?

If this conversation has demonstrated anything, it's my repeatedly stated claim that talking in terms of right/left, Republican/Democrat (for Americans), liberal/conservative is too muddled and loaded to be useful. All too often, as seen in many comments to this thread, "right" and "left" simply mean "evil people who must be mocked, silenced or destroyed," often for views not actually held by the supposed felony thinkers.

I kinda regret calling James a "leftist" for that reason, but as I said upthread, I wanted to acknowledge that someone I disagreed with politically had steered me in the right (er, correct) direction with his link to the Lieber story.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

Totally off topic...

I wish that the timestamp showed on all replies when they were collapsed, like on this thread. That way I could more quickly see which ones were new replies. That would be neat.

[maruad.livejournal.com]

One series of blogs I read highlight unread replies and allow you to skip to the next unread reply by hitting "z". It is amazingly useful, especially when the reply count gets into triple digits.