The Mantle of the Good Guy

The mantle of the good guy; the enemies of The Imperium seem to bask in it. Various leaders seem to be trying to milk the good guy teat through propaganda. From local chat to Slack and all over /r/Eve, it’s currently fashionable for line members and leaders alike to proclaim their just cause of defeating The Mittani, Sion, and the dirty evil Imperium. The end of an era they call it, VFK by whatever arbitrary date they happen to set.

Are the Allies really all that different from the Imperium when it comes to space ethics though? Recruiting of defectors from The Imperium shows us something about the allegedly superior morality of the passive-aggressive Karma Kollecting Krowd, or the ‘me too’ hangers-on from various EVE communities and chat clients?

“While Mittens may set the tone for The Imperium, the directors are the ones carrying out the daily operations and specifics.”

The Mittani always has the power to order any action himself, but it’s common knowledge that like Solodrakban, he is literally Hitler, except that The Mittani loves to delegate. So as much as some would love to place the most evil acts of The Imperium squarely on The Mittani alone, it doesn’t hold a lot of weight. While Mittens may set the tone for The Imperium, the directors are the ones carrying out the daily operations and specifics. There are Illum Wannsee conferences daily on how best to liquidate the low sec ghettos and gas pubbies on the Jita undock.

When Endie and Bat County departed they were hailed on r/Eve and other venues as heroes for leaving the evil Imperium. When they joined Pandemic Legion they were seen as allies who’d been allegedly victimized by the evil nasty Goon leadership according a lot of the actively vocal public. This is strange considering that most of the complaints about The Imperium’s worst behaviors were either directed or supervised by Bat Country.  

Who ran GIA? Who systematically undermined corps, alliances and entire blocs for five years? Who was the umbrella corp of MINILUV, one of the most hated SIGs in all of The Imperium? Who leaked confidential information about players and corps? Who, as the Director of the GIA, had the pull to stop Digi’s alleged doxxing? The internet spaceship likenesses of Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich; Endie and Midge.

“Our own Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel in a fursuit, Blawrf was the strategic instrument of destruction for The Imperium.”

Now we come to the former Skymarshall, Blawrf McTaggart – also a former GIA member. You may remember him from such famous stories as phoning Preencleeve’s home and speaking to his grandmother? He’s more space famous for the fact that he commanded the entire force of The Imperium for years. Our own Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel in a fursuit, Blawrf was the strategic instrument of destruction for The Imperium for years. He proudly razed constellation after constellation and devised strategies to break the will of, and generally frustrate, the player base of EVE Online. He was the epitome of the “I’m not here to ruin the game, but to ruin your game” mentality personified. He was cordial, professional, and ultimately genocidal in EVE.

By the summer of 2015, Blawrf was no longer really doing the his space job, citing “burnout”.  He spoke to The Mittani about how he was exhausted and for all intents and purposes resigned as Skymarshall.  A month later, there was a policy shift and Blawrf was removed from Skymarshall related leadership channels, and Illum. According to his r/eve AMA he was offended over being removed from a chat channel that was created for the most senior management of The Imperium after resigning from the roles that granted him that level of access; just let that sink in for a moment.

Most of us are aware that Blarf had surgery. I, and I’m sure many others, are happy he’s lost weight. However, his mentioning of it upon departure is little more than an attempt to illicit an emotional response from the general public, or pubbies. The fact that he had plastic surgery was 100% irrelevant to the channels he was granted or denied access to considering Blawrf expressed a desire to resign from the roles multiple times prior to said surgery.

It made sense to remove his ability to access said channels. Security access control has two elements; position within an organization and need to know. Blarwf no longer had the position, or the need to know. I know a bit about this because I was removed from certain channels due to inactivity for internal security purposes while undergoing rotator cuff repair and physical therapy. I wasn’t actively doing my space jobs and I didn’t have need to know sensitive information at the time either.

“If Goons are Nazis, than the Allies have frequently commissioned senior leaders of infamous organizations such as the Allegemeine SS, Einsatzgruppen and the Sicherheitsdienst to help win them the war.”

Goons, get compared to Nazis a lot. Sometimes we even claim to be Nazis, though we have an unbiased ‘murder everyone’ state policy. So here is some real talk on that subject for people to digest. If Goons are Nazis, than the Allies have frequently commissioned senior leaders of infamous organizations such as the Allegemeine SS, Einsatzgruppen and the Sicherheitsdienst to help win them the war.

  This argument has been countered with the assertion that the real Allies of WW2 fame hired Nazis after the war, and that my analysis is incorrect because of that somehow. While it is true that the US hired former Nazis, they were not extermination camp guards, death squads, political enforcers and secret police. They came from the science and technology branches. They also were not on the General Staff with direct oversight of the ethnic cleansing campaigns.

The Allies are enjoying wearing their shiny new “Good Guy” badges while the high sec masses cheer them on, but it’s absurd for anyone to believe MBC will usher in an era of prosperity and content for anyone save themselves. They’ve mostly been perfectly willing to look the other way when it comes to the supposedly vile acts of former Imperium leaders defecting, while calling Sion and others a space war criminal. Most of the Allies Coalition, or MBC, or whatever they call themselves; they don’t care about ethics in EVE Online, let alone that precious hauler some rando lost in Jita. That’s normal in EVE, and expected. However there are those who seriously seek some sort of moral high ground, or cheerlead for it. Keep fastening those knots of hypocrisy on ropes of blind moral superiority to hang yourselves with; take a red pill too while you’re at it, just to be sure.