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My February birthday fund-raising campaign for this website, Behind the Black, is now over. Despite a relatively weak initial three weeks, the last week was spectacular, making this campaign the second best ever.

 

Thanks to every person who donated or subscribed. It continues to astonish me that people who can read my work for free like it enough to donate money voluntarily. Words cannot express my appreciation for that support, especially in these uncertain times.

 

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You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

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Today’s blacklisted American: Game publisher fires employee for expressing conservative opinions

Limited Run Games: opposed to free speech

They’re coming for you next: The game publisher Limited Run Games recently fired its community manager Kara Lynne (also known by her married name, Kara Gooch) because one anonymous person complained to the company that she had expressed some conservative opinions on her personal account on Twitter.

Twitter user Purple Tinker (who has since deleted their account) described Lynne as “a transphobe” with several known right-wing and transphobic accounts on the list of accounts she follows on Twitter, including Ben Shapiro, Libs of TikTok, and others.

Purple Tinker pointed to several tweets made by Lynne in the past, including one in which she says “if you think the # of trans crying about using a bathroom is higher than the perves [sic] using the excuse, you are what is wrong with this world”. Lynne has since made her Twitter account private, so it’s not possible to see any of the tweets she made.

Apparently, Lynne had expressed enthusiasm in an earlier tweet about the game Hogwarts Legacy, based on J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, and since Rowling is now being blacklisted by the left and its allies in the queer movement because she thinks rationally that you can’t become a woman merely because you say so, Purple Tinker decided Lynne had to also be investigated and destroyed for defying that blacklist.

You can read Lynne’s detailed full response to her firing here. Her account of her firing tells us a lot about the weak character of the management of her former employer.

Now I suppose it’s time to get to the events leading up to my termination from Limited Run Games on January 6th, 2023. My day started by waking up to a message from a co-worker with a link to the post that has now circulated the internet and demanded my termination from the company.

I can honestly say that it came out of left field. That single message was the only one I received up until I was requested to join a call at 4:30pm (the call in which I was informed that I was being released from the company). I had reached out to a couple of my bosses to inform them that I had seen what was going on and wasn’t sure what to do. I was a wreck. I didn’t receive a response until the request for the call.

In that call, I will say that there were a lot of emotions. I could tell they didn’t want to do what they were doing and even said they didn’t want to. They were being pressured from elsewhere. [emphasis mine]

“Pressured from elsewhere.” What crap. That the company, Limited Run Games, immediately kow-towed to the complains of this one anonymous accuser says some very bad things about its management. They are cowards, willing and eager to enforce blacklists on the flimsiest evidence, if told to do so by anyone, even if the accuser is also too cowardly to identify themselves.

Why any freedom-loving person would want to buy their games I can’t imagine.

But then, this is where the culture of America stands. There aren’t many freedom-loving people left. Limited Run will be celebrated and supported.

And if you are conservative, or even hint that you have some conservative ideas (as Lynne did), you cannot speak publicly about anything without risking your life being destroyed. Freedom of speech is no longer honored.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

13 comments

  • BtB’s Original Mark

    I listened for a second time to Mr. Z’s appearance on Robert Pratt’s Podcast from last week discussing ‘the deeply ingrained blacklist culture’. Mr. Z. posted then that “Most Americans refuse to recognize it, so it only grows stronger and more vicious day by day”.

    https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/january-17-2023-zimmerman-pratt-on-texas-podcast/

    I found it odd that there were no Comments because surely many of us on BtB do not “refuse to recognize it”.
    I thought about the quandary of seeing daily evidence that your Civilization is crumbling in front of your eyes while one feels adrift in formulating an effective response.
    I agree with the Mr. Z’s insistence that in the face of Woke Cancel Culture we must shout back: ‘I will not shut up; I will not sit down; and neither should you.’
    However IMO if you don’t fully. understand American History, it will be difficult to go much beyond screaming yourself hoarse in the face of a Hurricane. Those who advocate for a Restoration of the Constitution & American Freedoms seem to have battle plans that are wholly inadequate.
    There is a misunderstanding of the depth of the History of this conflict in our Society.
    For example over a century ago the Authoritarian Woodrow Wilson conducted a massive intellectual, cultural & political attack on the First Amendment and key structures of the limited Federal Constitutional Republic. And the near dictator (& Great War Leader) FDR institutionalized a new political landscape that forever warped much of the spirit of the American Constitution. This combined with the Marxist Long March through our Institutions has hollowed out the foundations of the ‘American’ ideals that Mr. Z. and many of us hold so dear. The final nail in the coffin may be the fact that the leading edge of the Cultural Marxism has Zombified into a Maoist Cultural Revolution – “join us, children, as we dismantle the evil systems (systemic racism! the patriarchy! the gender binary!) that your parents have wrought”.
    But even with that high level of pessimism I still applaud Mr. Z.’s efforts and will use the ammunition he provides in discussions with my Family & Friends, & I will communicate more insistently with my political representatives.
    P.S – the subject of today’s Blacklist post by Mr. Z. could easily have been my future son-in-law who works in that industry.

  • Original Mark: I only have one comment: See the opening anecdote I relate in this 2020 essay:

    Genocide is coming to America

    As I conclude,

    Time after time for the past four decades my liberal friends and relatives have refused to believe anything I say to them — always based on actual events — about politics and the growing corruption and bigotry within the Democratic Party. Like those decent Germans in the 1930s, these decent Americans find reasons to quickly dismiss what I say, without making any effort to find out if there is any merit to it.

  • pzatchok

    As an educated woman she should have known to never post anything in public that anyone on the left could possibly find offensive. Ever.
    Unless your old like me and have nothing but time to lose.

    The left is bringing a new Kristallnacht to the world. They think its the good thing to do, its their new religion that has brought it on.

    They have not been taught the history that reminds people of why and how wars are started and fought. And what they are fought over.

  • George C

    Sophisticated people have a hard time seeing the signs because of one major fact: the glamour of evil.

    Now I’d rather be writing an essay on the need for dogs as companions on Mars and what breeds would be best

  • James Street

    This is a funny 2 minute video of a Jordan Peterson impersonator:

    Jordan Peterson reacts to Crowder/Daily Wire FIGHT!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSjuQlnT6qc

    This is based on a recent controversy caused by conservative YouTuber Steven Crowder when he made a video warning young conservatives about signing contracts with “con$ervative” media giants. Their contracts force you to censor what you say to avoid losing advertisers or being deplatformed on social media and losing revenue.

    This is why other conservative voices like Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin sound like eunuched RINOs and Michelle Malkin got out of the game entirely.

    Also important to point out that this is why Behind the Black is one of the few places you hear unfiltered discussion of COVID, the vax, and masks because Robert has wisely chosen to self-finance on his own platform and not be beholden to advertisers.

  • James Street: Yes, I self-finance by asking for donations or subscriptions. It leaves me free to say what I want.

    It also leaves me relatively poor. I am always amazed by those who support me when they don’t have to, and deeply grateful for that support, but in our age someone with my views is considered by the general population as an extremist and outlier. Thus, those donations and subscriptions are far less than you think. I can therefore understand why others (such as Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder) make deals.

  • Humility

    I will not have anything to do with that company.

  • wayne

    James Street–
    Thanks for that link. I saw a portion of it on Viva Frei but had yet to search for it.
    I wonder what Jordan Petersons contract with DW looks like.

    Mr. Z.,
    Take a look at the “No Agenda” podcast (ex MTV-VJ Adam Curry and computer wizard John C. Dvorak), they’ve been chugging along for 15 years using what Curry calls the ‘Value 4 Value Model,’ wherein folks can contribute Time, Treasure, or Talent to the show.
    I appreciate that you don’t ask for money very often, but you could probably step up your begging a notch without alienating anyone or changing the dynamics too much. It’s the whole “call to action” thing.

    (Which reminds me– I owe you a donation, and I’ll remedy that to your PO box.)

    The whole Crowder thing just illustrates how much money is in play with monetization, ad-reads, and the like.
    (I’m still amazed that Rumble relies on Google Ads to run itself.)

  • Wayne: 1. Thank you in advance for your donation.

    2. I actually have been thinking of shortening the length of some of my fund-raising campaigns, because I hate subjecting my readers to them. Probably a financial mistake, but such is life.

    3. There might be a lot of money in play on the web from ads, but Google is corrupt and keeps most of it for itself. I tried using Google ads for about a year a decade ago, and whenever it seemed I was getting lots of hits that Google itself said translated to payments to me, at the end of the month Google conveniently always recalculated those numbers to cancel those payments. The company is dishonest and unethical.

  • Cotour

    Q: If one chooses to monetize their valued content and they say whatever they want to say no matter who is funneling money to them because of their content, where is the conflict of interest?

    Do you know why Dave Chappell and Rickey Gervais say whatever they want whenever they want?

    MONEY!
    (And money is not everything it is but a tool, a mode of being able to do more in their pursuit of the truth)

    If one is used to being poor and saying whatever they please and happy to be so, then being rich and saying whatever they want can only be better.

    But, ONLY if they stay rabidly committed to their freedom of speech and opinion and the freedom of speech of those who dare oppose them and are NEVER cowed into doing otherwise.

    A true leader’s virtue will always shine through.

  • Botany Bay

    I ordered Hogwarts Legacy SPECIFICALLY because these snowflakes made such a fuss about JK Rowling.

    Whatever happened to live and let live?!? IRDAFF who or what you “sleep” with, what he, she, they or it looks like or what any of them want to call themselves.

    It’s sad that liberalism has descended into Marxism and tribalism…

  • Cotour

    Google may be a demigod in the internet space but there are other avenues of opportunity: https://youtu.be/zBW23mCZabc

  • Ernest

    Capitalist free market working as intended.
    I don’t know why you people hate capitalism so much.

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