(Note: I am a little late to this partly because I have a deliberative style but mostly because I have had to redraft as new information has emerged.)
In the last several days it has become widely known that M.A.R. Barker, creator of Tékumel, authored an anti-Semitic novel. The Tékumel Foundation has confirmed that Barker wrote Serpent’s Walk, which was published in 1991 by the neo-Nazi publisher National Vanguard Books under the nom-de-plume Randolph Calverhall. It has also come out that Barker served on the Editorial Advisor Committee of a notorious holocaust-denying organization from 1989-2002.
Let’s get one thing out of the way: this is no “Man in the High Castle” (as I have seen some suggest). This is a vile book of unalloyed hate that includes Holocaust denial, glorified violence against Jews, and white supremacism. It ends with this passage: “At last Lessing could let go. The Thousand Year Reich had gone off the track, derailed for a space of a hundred and forty-four years, but now it was back on and chugging along strong. It looked as though this Reich would last awhile. Hopefully forever.“ There is no excuse, rationalization or “contextualization” that justifies Barker’s anti-Semitism.
How did Barker become monstrous? He does not seem to have been a racist as a young man. The March 1951 issue of the science fiction pulp magazine Startling Stories, included a letter from the 22-year-old Barker that rebutted racist claims in a previous letter by Edwin Sigler published in the November 1950 issue. Sigler had said inter alia, that “our culture was built by the white man and the aliens over here are already beginning to tear it down. I like the freedom we have had and such things as trial by jury but no other culture ever had them. The darker races don’t even appreciate them.” Barker’s response to this hateful nonsense was blistering. Laying out anthropological arguments (Barker was a fourth-year anthropology student at the University of Washington), Barker wrote that differences between races are not inherent, that difficulties experienced by American blacks owe to prejudice, and that anyone of any race can achieve the same accomplishments.
Did Barker’s father nfluence him? One source has said that Barker’s father was a pro-Nazi member of the German Bund before World War II. I have not been able to very this claim, but in any case several former associates of Barker have told me that he hated his father (and adored his mother). [Edit: I am now told he also hated his mother.] It’s said that we often become what we most hate …
Without engaging in too much pop psychology, it’s also worth noting that Barker was a lonely child and often a bitter adult who found it hard to keep friends. He wrote in a Blue Room post once that he had never kept a friend from his previous residence the many times he had moved. Could this alienation have contributed to the hate growing within him?
All these factors (and others we don’t know about) swirled within him but exactly when he transformed to a hateful racist is unclear. He certainly hid it well. His entire career involved foreign cultures and languages. He married a South Asian woman. Aside from one remark in an interview about Jews still holding grudges against the Roman Empire, he (as far as I know) refrained from public racist comments. But you know what? The point when Barker the eager 4th-year graduate student became Barker the foul anti-Semite doesn’t reallyy matter. There’s no context that would justify writing such a novel or advocating Holocaust denial.
Having devoted a good portion of my life to Tékumel fandom, learning about the novel was a hard punch to the gut that has led me to question whether I still wish to be associated with the hobby. One question I am grappling with is the distinction between the author and their work. The Tékumel mythos does not contain racial prejudice or anti-Semitism. On the contrary, Tékumel is a world entirely of non-white people, drawing inspiration from non-European traditions, though these traditions are also tinged with tropes from pulp fiction and Orientalism. The non-human races cannot be mapped to racial caricatures as, for example, the Orcs can be in D&D (Note: the Pygmy Folk may be an exception — see the comments). Tékumel was also the first RPG to present homosexuality without caricature or insult.
The depiction of women in Tékumel is complex enough to be worth a separate post. Regrettably, much of the original Empire of the Petal Throne conceived of women in limited, terms. However, the concept of the Aridáni was a fully elaborated social role for women completely equal to men. In game terms, the Aridani provided players with a game role that affirmed women’s equality and was not weirdly sexual (like the male fantasy barbarian babes who have graced many a D&D product cover). Long-time Barker player Giovanni Fregni, who illustrated the cover of the recent reissue of Man of Gold, said in a 1998 Blue Room post it would be “hard to be a female player character without being Aridani.”
So, can we save Tékumel from Barker? This is a deeply personal question that everyone will answer for themselves. No doubt some will never be able to look at Tékumel again without a creepy shiver. Others may feel there is enough to work with that they can enjoy the mythos and still despise the actions of its author. I still have not decided myself.
Comments are welcome below. (Note: I make comments go through approval because of all the spam I receive, but I will approve critical comments that don’t veer into abuse or defamation.)
As you say, it seems Prof. Barker grew bitter with age. The results causing the current ructions were perhaps his extended middle finger to a world that disappointed him. I don’t see this as a reason to abandon his earlier, better inspired work.
David — This is a good point and one I should have made clearer in the original post. As we have seen in other posts, Barker’s Tekumel was largely elaborated before 1951, when Barker wrote his anti-racist letter. Thus, one might expect that the fundamentals of Tékumel would not be infected with the hate Barker developed later in life.
Personally, I’m deeply saddened to learn this. I read a lot of Tekumel material in the last twenty-five years, I have run games set on Tekumel. I have spent a lot of money to purchase Tekumel material. I have been playing Empire of the Petal Throne with some friends for over three months now. I have joined Jeff Berry’s forum to learn more about the topic.
…and now I will walk away from it all.
Partially my decision was influenced by the fact that I am a Jew. However, I must say that if I’m honest, so many people were destroyed by the Nazi movement (LGBTQ, Poles, Russians, etc.) that really any interest I had in fan material is buried under an emotional revulsion.
I will now be leaving Jeff Berry’s site and talking to my game group about my continued participation. I fortunately have no physical material to deal with. Just PDFs to scrub.
Undertstandable.
I feel that you are conflating anti-Semitism (though, more specifically, anti-Jewish sentiment) with more general racism, when the distinction is likely very important in this case. Barker was a convert to Islam, and while not universal, many Muslims (especially Arabs, another Semitic-language people as I understand them) are hostile to the Jewish people for historical and ongoing political reasons. While I am not saying this is definitely a factor, it seems plausible to me that it could be.
In either case, the man is dead. Lovecraft was a notorious racist (though in his case, he seemed to have been moving away from that gradually in the years leading up to his death), but his works are still celebrated. Not only that, but they have even been recontextualized (reclaimed, even?) by authors of non-white races and different spiritual beliefs and sexualities. I see no reason to not treat Barker’s luminously beautiful work in the same manner as we treat Lovecraft’s.
You make a good point. However, I think the 22-year-old Barker who wrote that there are no inherent differences between races, could not have had the neo-Nazi beliefs he later espoused. Nazi belief is founded on the idea that the races are different.
I shouldn’t reply early in the morning. Let me clarify my reply above. You make a good point that I conflated racism and anti-Semitism. I don’t agree with your attributing Barker’s anti-Semitism to his becoming a Muslim. This is a prejudiced view, in my opinion. There’s nothing inherently anti-Semitic about Islam. The Quran includes verses that obligate Islamic rulers to protect Jewish believers. Often not practiced in today’s world, of course, but that is a deviation from Islam, not a tenet of Islam.
Gross. It sounds like you are trying to rationalize and make excuses for dedicating a chunk of your life to propagating the works of a fascist Anti-Semite. Do you really want this associated with you?
There is no neatly compartmentalizing this. More will come out in the coming weeks. Distance yourself. He isn’t worth this sad display.
Obviously I don’t agree.
No caricatures and stereotypes? See Pygmy Folk in game.
Thanks for raising this. I saw there was a (unfruitful) discussion about this on Facebook as well. To boil down a great deal of detail, Barker says the Pygmy folk are “rodentlike” and “greedy and avaricious.” Anti-Semitic propaganda says similar (untrue and defamatory) things about Jewish people. Given what we now know about Barker, this does ring alarm bells. I am going to modify my original post.
You raise an excellent point there. That definitely looks like a red flag.
Actually, the Quran’s early acceptance of Judaism, as well as Christianity disappears in portions of it that were written later in Mohamed’s life. His rejection by both Christians and Jews seems to have changed his views of them. HIs antisemitic views, if they even exist outside of the book, could very well be related to Islam. But as you said, the virulent hatred of Jews by Muslims is not universal among the Faith. I’ve read the Quran through twice.
As far as Barker’s writing of “Serpent’s Walk,” I probably take a different view. A lot of bad fiction is out there, and this seems to be one of those. I don’t know if this book reflects Barker’s views on Judaism and the Holocaust reflected his views or were simply a literary device in his writing of the story. People who were a lot closer to him were shocked by the book, which says to me this might be making a mountain out of a molehill. The book might just be a work of fiction, while I admit probably reflecting poor judgement on his part. And if one wants a reason for the book, then I’d suggest his joining the editorial committee of a racist/antisemitic group might have served as inspiration for the book.
But it seems that the attempt to find racist material in EPT seems an attempt to heap flaming coals on Barker’s head. I don’t think his descriptions of the Pygmy Folk indicates racist views, it simply describes a imaginary race in a fictional setting.
And if his actions writing the book so horrify the folks running the Tekumel Foundation, why aren’t they simply shutting it down and stopping any further work involved in it. And I don’t understand their need to reach out to Jewish groups over a book which they probably didn’t know about. Hell, those closet to Barker seemed unaware of the book and any racist views he held.
What I find more believable is that those who were closest to Barker seem to be unaware of his racist views. Could it be that he wasn’t and the “Serpent’s Walk” is simply as case of bad judgement. I’d have to know what role he played on the editorial board of the group he was linked to.
I met Barker once at a convention. Didn’t actually speak with him, but listened to a talk he gave and he seemed a decent enough person. And I’ve read a boatload of his Tekumel writings. I find nothing in them that disturbed me (well, maybe some of the stuff in “The Book of Ebon Bindinigs,” but that is due more to my Christian Faith and demonology is somewhat disturbing. And by the way, I have two copies of that).
So what am I going to do with Tekumel. Well, I’m actively looking for a copy of “The Best of the Journal” so I can read some article on “The Underworld” which will help my design underworld settings more true to Tekumel instead of a poor imitation of a D&D dungeon, so I’d say I’m not giving up on Tekumel. Not a big fan of the current tendency of our “cancel culture” to destroy people over issues like this. Barker probably showed bad judgment in writing the book. At this point, it’s far to late the look into Barker’s head as know what he thought and believed. But the fact he might have showed bad judgment in one instance to me doesn’t condemn everything he did.
I will simply take Barker’s advice to “make Tekumel my own.” It would be patently stupid to enjoy EPT which I’ve enjoyed since TSR published it. And I’ll continue to do so.
I know Dave Morris, and trust him in his assessment of Serpents Walk as a work of fiction. If not fiction what else is it? It is not a work of politics.
“claims that Barker often spouted anti-Semitism and that the Tékumel mythos is riddled with anti-Semitic content are also not true”
<- So why do it? Why make such claims? Is it just habit? As wokes, they got so used to increasing their cultural capital by smearing everyone else as 'racist'. Woke literally applies 'racism' to most every historical Western person. Figure out whether someone's black or white. Accuse them of racism if they're white. Paint them as victim if they're black. That's their formula. Pull all the statues (of whites) down. Aspects of Woke remind me of Fundamental Christianity, or Islam.
"Those who used an association with Barker as a reputational asset no longer will be able to do so"
<- Who? Name some actual person who "used an association with Barker as a reputational asset". I can't think of any.
The Turner Diaries are a work of fiction too. Fiction can be ugly anti-Semitic hate.
I can’t make out your point about wokes.
How many times have I heard, “In Prof. Barker’s campaign …” as if that were a badge of honor. That is what I mean.
Barker isn’t the first person I’ve had to deal with regarding revealed ugliness. I came to the decision that I can separate the work from the creator (after being horrified over and over and over).
Many deeply creative people seem to be, also, deeply flawed.
Gary Gygax believed in biological determinism and thought women could never be gamers.
Marion Zimmer Bradley, author of Mists of Avalon, was an incestuous child molester and pedophile enabler.
Varg Vikernes, co-founder of Norwegian black metal, was a murderer.
Isaac Bonewits, founder of Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship, was revealed to be a child rapist after his death.
I’m not justifying the actions of any of these people. But the joy I had in their work is not connected to their moral failings, which I was completely unaware of when I first encountered their work. I’m not going to let their mental problems (and hidden evil) taint the enjoyment I had.