No outlet was harder on former SJW Ian Miles Cheong than TheRalphRetort.com. Don’t believe me? Take a look at Google sometime. I’m also the one that coined his Little Hitler nickname. But when someone asks for forgiveness and truly makes an effort to change for the better, you can’t ignore that. At least, I can’t ignore it. Over the last few months, Cheong has shown an unbelievable change in character. Is he doing it for the right reasons? I believe so, but as you know, it’s impossible to look inside another man’s heart. So you have to continue to examine deeds and not just words.

The interview with SuperNerdLand was another step in the right direction the artist formerly known as Little Hitler. I’ve put out feelers to have him interviewed here as well, but I can understand why that hasn’t happened. My role is attack dog, and I relish it. But I will note that I was one of the first ones to co-sign his original apology:

He went even further in the interview:

Very much so. I wrote some very stupid, very thoughtless, very offensive things when I was younger and participating on the RPG Codex forum. When confronted, I blamed “toxic gamer culture” on my behavior instead of owning up to it as I should have. No one made me make those posts or say those things, though I definitely never espoused the views I expressed in those posts. I’m sorry for hurting anyone with the comments I made.

He also talked about how restrictive the social justice movement is, which is something we’ve been talking about for a long while. You can see the difference between us and them very easily. We constantly have knockdown, drag-out fights. Our coalition is broad and includes people of all political persuasions. There was a vigorous dedate just last night here on the article about Milo comments. That’s been a strength of GamerGate and it’s allies from the start. Cheong explains how it’s different when you’re an SJW:

There were a lot of things I wished to say while I was a part of the social justice movement that I couldn’t, because of “solidarity” and all sorts of other reasons. Dissent isn’t tolerated in the movement and stepping out of line will earn you whispers behind your back to ostracize you both socially and professionally. There’s always a sense that your position in the movement is precarious and that unless you stand in front of the charge, you’re going to be shut out and treated like a fairweather ally in spite of everything you’ve ever done to support the movement. It’s for this reason that you see people falling over each other to see who can vilify their targets the most.

At some point, the targets that get picked are guilty of nothing more than making a joke, or saying something that could potentially be interpreted as problematic, but isn’t actually problematic.

I did not experience a sudden epiphany that changed my views overnight. It was gradual, and my stance slowly changed as I opened up to friends who weren’t bought into the prevailing narrative, who saw how deep I was and reached out to pull my head out of the water.

It probably felt like drowning. I would hate to half to regulate every word that came out of my mouth and keyboard. I made a choice early on to say whatever the fuck I wanted and let the chips fall where they may as a result of that decision.  It’s cost me in some ways, but it has also gained me some loyalty. People always know that I will be speaking my mind, whether they agree with it, or not.

Like I said in the past, I don’t feel bad about going hard at Ian in the past. He was going hard at me and at gamers. But when someone comes forward and makes a real effort to change from an enemy into a neutral or an ally, then I accept it. I realize there are still some who think he’s full of shit, and perhaps he might be. All the right things are being said, though. The deeds are there as well, as we saw with the new Gameranx ethics policy. He’s calling out the SJW mindset and their poisonous culture. What more can you honestly ask for? All I can say is, good work Mr. Cheong, and please continue down this path.