Shock and Betrayal

By now, I assume most anyone reading this will have heard the revelations about M.A.R. Barker. If you have not, I reproduce here a statement of the Tékumel Foundation on the matter:

The Tékumel Foundation Board of Directors wants to acknowledge that our research shows Professor M.A.R. Barker wrote Serpent’s Walk, an anti-Semitic novel that was published under a pseudonym in 1991. We have done our due diligence to ascertain the facts regarding Serpent’s Walk and Professor Barker’s affiliation with The Journal of Historical Review and we believe this needs to be recognized as part of Professor Barker’s past. While nobody today is responsible for the odious views Professor Barker presented in Serpent’s Walk, we are responsible for recognizing this book as part of his legacy.

That this acknowledgment was not done earlier was and is a mistake, and we apologize for that. We have been reaching out to several Jewish organizations to express our outrage over our findings and make our priority to work with them through this issue.

What Professor Barker did was wrong and forever tarnished his creative and academic legacy. As stewards of the world of Tékumel, we reject and repudiate Serpent’s Walk and everything it stands for and all other anti-Semitic activity Professor Barker was involved with.

The Tékumel Foundation has never been involved with or profited from the publication, distribution, or sale of Serpent’s Walk in any way, shape, or form. All of the proceeds from sales of Tékumel-related material have gone and will continue to go to the Foundation and its work, and not to any racist or anti-Semitic organizations or causes, in any way, shape, or form.

Before the public acknowledgment of this by the Tékumel Foundation, there'd been rumors that Barker had pseudonymously written a pro-Nazi novel. When I first heard them, I had no direct evidence of their truth and, honestly, I had no interest in looking into the matter, as it would have required my engaging with websites and ideas I find abhorrent. So I let all thought of it go, assuming that, if it were provably true, the truth would eventually come out – and so it has, along with much worse. Indeed, I now dread the possibility that even more might yet be revealed in the future.

These revelations are all the more crushing for me because, back in the 1990s, I was an email correspondent of Barker. Though we didn't exchange many messages, we kept in touch intermittently and he was always very kind and generous with his time. He patiently answered all my questions about Tékumel and encouraged me in my greater appreciation of the setting. In fact, he gave me some of the best advice I've ever received about how to understand a RPG setting, advice to which I still adhere to this day: "Why don't you go and take a look?" Squaring that man with the one responsible not just for a pro-Nazi novel but who also sat on the editorial board of a publication that advanced Holocaust denialism is difficult to say the least.That it is also indisputably true does not make it any easier to live with and yet live with it I must.

To say that I feel betrayed by these revelations is an understatement. Tékumel has been an important part of my gaming for many years now. My House of Worms campaign, based on Tékumel, has, for the last seven years, been the vehicle for some of the best roleplaying of my life. Through it, I have met many great people whom I am honored to call my friends. Now, a cloud hangs over it all, including The Excellent Travelling Volume, which has been the primary outlet for my creativity since 2014, when its first issue appeared. TETV has been well received by my fellow fans of Tékumel and has, I have been told, been instrumental in making the setting more accessible to newcomers who'd previously been put off by Tékumel's depth and complexity.

I do not regret the time I have devoted to Tékumel, a work of the imagination with few peers. Unlike some, I am not at all convinced that Tékumel itself is a crypto-Nazi work or indeed that it contains anything that advances such a vile cause. Nevertheless, I cannot help but feel betrayed and more than a little conflicted. I have been struggling over the last week to decide just what to say about these revelations. In part, this is because I wasn't – and still am not – wholly sure of my own feelings. Even now, I vacillate between shock, anger, sadness, and despondency. My struggle is heightened, too, by the expectation that, no matter what I say, someone will deem my muddled feelings insufficient to the gravity of the matter at hand. 

I wish it were otherwise. I wish it were easier to disentangle my love for Tékumel from my revulsion at Barker's repugnant other interests. Consequently, I am in no position to judge anyone else's response to these revelations; each of us will have to grapple with it in our own way and on our own schedule. I know of long-time Tékumel fans who have simply decided to walk away from the setting entirely, just as I know others who do not feel that would be the right response, given how much genuine pleasure and joy the setting has brought them, despite the secret villainy of its creator. This latter group takes inspiration from Ted Johnstone, an early contributor to Alarums & Excursions, who famously wrote that "D&D is too important to leave to Gary Gygax." 

Perhaps the same could be true of Tékumel and M.A.R. Barker.

(I appreciate everyone who's taken the time to comment on this post. I am, however, closing comments, since it appears to me that the same points are being made again and again and not much new ground is being covered. Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts.)