ACE 2018, The 15th International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology, becomes the first academic computer science conference in history to be shut down by anti-free speech protests.
In a tragic moment in the history of human civilization, and the trampling of academic free speech, an academic conference, ACE 2018, The 15th International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology, which was to have been held at the University of Montana, USA has been forced to shut down by anti-free speech groups comprising of mainly academic researchers, who have been acting in a fascistic manner.
The anti-free speech “fascist style mob” have been led by Yoram Chisik (Universidade da Madeira), Leif Oppermann (Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT) and Joseph A Brown (Innopolis University). Their vicious anti-free vendetta started off with a hate filled anti-Zionist attack against Dr. David Levy, ACE Steering Committee member. Next, they attacked the ACE 2018 Keynote Speaker Mr. Stephen K. Bannon. Joining in this anti-free speech mob were people (mainly academics) such as Stuart Reeves, Martin Flintham, Rui Prada, Katharine Neil, Petri Lankoski, Florian Richoux, T.L. Taylor, Maximilian Schmitt, Anna Jordanous, Kate Devlin, Christian Geiger, Noirin Curran, Mike Cook, Kazutaka Kurihara, Hendrik Schreiber, Takayuki Itoh, Casey Fiesler, Kohei Matsumura, Sebastian Deterding, Brendan Keogh, Anna L Cox, Jim Whitehead, Gillian Smith. This anti-free speech mob’s brutal attack that ACE received from these anti-free speech campaigners (and has filed as evidence for possible future legal action), included black email campaigns and social media campaigns. The words that were used in their email and social postings about ACE Committee members and the ACE 2018 Keynote Speaker include “sicko”, “child-abuser”, “TOOL”, “Peadophiles”, “child-rapist”, “fraudster”, “scammers”, “criminals”, “horseshit”, “monkey”, “prick”, “Nigerian 419 scammer”, “druf trafficker”, “pig”, “twat”, “scumbag”, “6mm nano penis”, “conman”, “fraudster”, “monster”, “creepy”, “hag”, “criminal”, etc. There were also significant racist attacks on our esteemed committee member Prince Akinwale Ojomo (a highly qualified World Economic Forum Global Leader and awardee of the highly prestigious US President’s Volunteer Service Gold Award), simply because he is African and Nigerian. These anti-free speech people were supported in public statements by the academic societies British DiGRA and DiGRA Australia and the FDG (Foundations of Digital Games) Conference.
This anti-free speech group is hostile to the idea of free speech at academic conferences. They are hostile to the entire foundations of Western Civilization. Ancient Greeks were pioneers of free speech in Western culture. Their literature and educational institutions explored freedom of expression, and questioning of authority. As stated by Professor Erwin Chemerinsky “free speech has been essential for the advancement of rights and equality. There would not have been a 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, without the women’s suffrage movement and its widespread demonstrations. The civil rights protests of the 1960s — lunch counter sit-ins, the march on Selma, demonstrations on campuses — were essential to bringing about the end of segregation.” He implores that we must “upholding the principle that all ideas and views can be expressed at colleges and universities.”
What has happened to the ACE conference in 2018 by the angry free-speech mob is very similar to what happened in Germany in 1933. In 1933, the Nazi university student association created blacklists of works by literary and political figures such as Bertolt Brecht, Erich Maria Remarque, and Ernest Hemingway that were to be thrown into the flames. In the aftermath of the book burnings, the Nazi regime raided book stores, libraries, and publishers’ warehouses to confiscate materials it deemed dangerous or “un-German.” The Nazi book burnings provoked international criticism from intellectuals and the press. They saw it as a barbaric act that was out of keeping with a modern, civilized society.
However the ACE Committee will not back down to the angry anti-free speech mobsters. Although almost all papers were withdrawn because the mobsters mentally violently bullied the authors with threats and black-emails and social media posts, we will still carry on with our Keynote Speech by Mr. Stephen K. Bannon. We will carry on in an academic free-speech forum and debate with our Keynote Speaker Mr. Bannon in the true sense of the Athenian Forum. We will never let ourselves become “burned” like the Nazi anti-free speech book burning. Our commitment to free speech is mighty and unbreakable, in the spirit of famous free-speech heroes, such as Socrates, Erasmus, John Milton, Voltaire, John Stuart Mill, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Professor Timothy Garton etc. We subscribe to the freedom manifesto of the “Free Speech NOW!” organization: “Freedom of speech must never be restricted. No state bans, no hate-speech legislation, no libel laws, no restrictions on the press, no mob pressure on people to conform to modern orthodoxies. For attacks on freedom of speech do not only commit the bad-enough offence of preventing someone from saying what he believes – they also reduce the rest of us to the level of children through blocking our eyes and ears, degrading our moral autonomy, stifling truth-seeking, and elevating stupidity over enlightenment.”
We will never bend, we will never break, we will never bow to the angry anti-free speech academic mobsters. We fight for the cause of free speech and for one of the cornerstones of Western Civilization. We look forward to see you at the academic debate with our esteemed Keynote Speaker Mr. Stephen Kevin Bannon on December 11th at the University of Montana.