I really didn’t think the Drama(!) of this year’s Hugos could get any thicker. I thought they’d have their awards, and some Puppies would win, and some Puppies would lose, and everyone would claim victory, and I’d go right back to not caring about the Hugos.

Dear Sweet Lord, was I wrong. The Hugos have gone full lightning-rod.

An amid the fallout of everything, some maleducated nitwit decided to have a go at Sarah Hoyt for the use of the word “ChiCom”. Which is a Cold War abbreviation of Chinese Communists, one that has fallen into unuse since Nixon went to China and the Cold War ended.

It is of course great fun to point out the massive idiocy that assumes “ChiCom” must be racist because it refers to Chinese people. There’s enough layers of historical and linguistic ignorance to make a tiramisu. But far better than that is the useful reminder of how irretrievably wicked the Maoist regime was (is?). Which you will find if you click the link. Orwell’s worst fantasy’s had their expression during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and Hitler’s Holocaust was exceeded nearly by an order of magnitude. But we ignore all of this for the same reason we ignored Stalin during the Second World War – it was useful to do so.

So I’m planning on throwing “ChiCom” around a lot. For the lulz, as it were.