Knigget, I think a lot of your post descends into a peculiar territory of false absolutes favored by people like you and me, people concerned with ideals like justice and truth and compassion. The false absolute that you have fallen into here is this: individuals are always right and mobs are always wrong. Unfortunately, it's just not so. Sometimes the apparent underdog doesn't deserve to win. Sometimes the mob is right. Especially in situation where the mob's weapons are words and their outcry is in proportion to the individual's offense.
Let's be forthright here. Let's not beat around the bush. Let's have Sanders's letter, right out where we can see it:
No, I’m sorry but I can’t use this.
There’s much to like. I’m impressed by your knowledge of the Q’uran and Islamic traditions. (Having spent a couple of years in the Middle East, I know something about these things.) You did a good job of exploring the worm-brained mentality of those people – at the end we still don’t really understand it, but then no one from the civilized world ever can – and I was pleased to see that you didn’t engage in the typical error of trying to make this evil bastard sympathetic, or give him human qualities.
However, as I say, I can’t use it. Because Helix is a speculative fiction magazine, and this isn’t speculative fiction.
Oh, you’ve tacked on some near-future elements at the end, but the future stuff isn’t in any way necessary to the story; it isn’t even connected with it in any causal way. True, the narrator seems to be saying that it was this incident which caused him to take up the jihad, but he’s being mendacious (like all his kind, he’s incapable of honesty); he was headed in that direction from the start, and if it hadn’t been the encounter with the stripper it would have been something else.
Now if it could be shown that something in this incident showed him HOW the West could be overthrown, then perhaps the story would qualify as SF. That might have been interesting. As it is, though, no connection is shown and in fact we are never told just how this conquest – a highly improbable event, to say the least – came about.
There are some other problems with the story, but there’s no point in going into them, because they don’t really matter from my viewpoint. It’s not speculative fiction and I can’t use it in my magazine.
And I don’t think you’re going to sell it to any other genre magazine, for that reason – though you’d have a hard time anyway; most of the SF magazines are very leery of publishing anything that might offend the sheet heads. I think you might have a better chance with some non-genre publication. But I could be wrong.
Sorry.
William Sanders
Senior Editor
Helix
If Sanders had been torn to pieces by this mob, I'd have some sympathy for your waxing poetic about the power of the mob and the pitiful demise of the poor, misguided individual. He wasn't physically harmed. He was publicly humiliated for his foolish and hateful words, for his snide and underhanded use of a rejection letter to silence someone writing from a point of view he didn't appreciate. Sanders didn't need to write this rejection letter. He could have sent a form rejection letter. He didn't need to pepper his letter with things like:
"worm-brained mentality of those people"
"we still don’t really understand it, but then no one from the civilized world ever can"
"like all his kind, he’s incapable of honesty"
"sheet heads"
Over and over again in this letter, William Sanders identifies individuals of the Middle Eastern and Muslim communities with
his idea of the hateful mob, "the terrorists." He sums them up as "these people" and a "kind," attributing to them a "worm-brained mentality" and saying they are "incapable of honesty." Later, defending his actions, Sanders claims to be talking about terrorists specifically, not Muslims in general, but there are several holes in this argument. For example: how many science fiction magazines are concerned about offending terrorists? When was the last time a science fiction magazine appeared on Al Queda's radar? For another example: Sanders refers to his knowledge of the Middle East and Middle Easterners - if he meant terrorists, is he claiming to have spent extended time with actual terrorists?
Worst of all, in my mind, is the last paragraph: "And I don’t think you’re going to sell it to any other genre magazine, for that reason – though you’d have a hard time anyway; most of the SF magazines are very leery of publishing anything that might offend the sheet heads. I think you might have a better chance with some non-genre publication. But I could be wrong." In this paragraph, Sanders uses his position as the editor of a speculative fiction magazine to attempt to discourage the author from attempting to get this story published anywhere else. In almost five years of sending out stories, I've never had an editor attempt to dissuade me from trying. I've gotten politely worded form rejections, interested and friendly rejections urging me to make some edits or try the story elsewhere (this letter does the latter, but I don't believe you can call it interested and friendly, and I've gotten impolite but inoffensive silence. No one has ever said, as this letter says "I'm an editor; sit down, shut up, and don't try to sell this story in
my genre."
Now, to give Sanders the benefit of the doubt: maybe he really did mean terrorists and not Muslims. Maybe he has an inflated idea of the importance of science fiction to Islamist terrorists and thinks that the offices of speculative fiction magazines are next on Al Queada's shit list. Maybe for a life-long writer he has a remarkably poor ability to communicate via the written word. If that was the case, he could have appeased the "mob" with a very simple apology.
As far as I can tell, Sanders never apologized. He defended his actions, wrote other letters that contained other racist remarks, and finally, when forced to withdraw stories by authors who no longer wished to contribute their stories to a magazine run by such an individual, responded with childish indignation.
Furthermore, to speak to Sanders's hatred of the terrorist mob, I would say that this hatred is equally unproductive. Even terrorists have what are subjectively good reasons for their actions. They are not some subhuman breed of hateful monster, out to destroy "the West" out of sheer spite. They are individuals who have made a choice to strike out against what they see as their enemy, their oppressor. In their personal stories, this enemy might have harmed them personally. Where does hating them help you to understand them, to help them see the error of their ways? It doesn't. It helps you hate them, it helps you kill them, it helps you kill their brothers and sisters and parents and children and friends and lovers so that they, in turn, hate you more.
Except for the fact that this story contains one man who managed to offend many with his hateful and ignorant comments, where do you see the injustice of the mob?
What I see is the justice of the public sphere. One man does something hateful, ignorant, and stupid, and the rest of the world turns on him, shaming him, and humiliating him. If he can't be bothered to seek education about a matter he knows too little about, perhaps in the future he will simply be content to keep his mouth shut and his pen schooled. Perhaps he will not write about matters he knows nothing about. Shame is a useful emotion. It teaches us when we are wrong. It reminds us to think before we speak and act.
Sanders deserved shame, and shame was what people tried to give him.
Unfortunately, it looks like he never got the memo.
I see no way to defend Sanders's actions, eloquent condemnation of the mob entirely aside. He did something stupid and got called on it. End of story.
(My source, by the way, is this website:
http://transcriptase.org/what-happened/.