i do think it's worth talking about how the hugo awards fucked up in this specific instance, but not in isolation from how generally corrupt and regressive they've been for quite some time now. this blog post from Simon McNeil addresses the current scandal in context with some of the broader issues that have been plaguing the hugos for a long time (excerpt below):
A lot of people have been saying that now the Hugo awards have lost their credibility. But the Hugo awards lost credibility when their red carpet was sponsored by a bomb maker. They lost credibility when a bitter conservative author brigaded the nominations using a slate because he thought it was his turn for the participation trophy. They lost credibility when they said Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was the best SFF novel of 2001 rather than A Storm of Swords or Midnight Robber. They lost credibility when they included the second volume of L Ron Hubbard’s manifesto in the form of a 10-volume posthumous SF series on the short-list. As of the time of writing the Hugo Award for best novel has been awarded to only two non-white authors: N. K. Jemisin and Liu Cixin (as translated by Ken Liu) in a brief run from 2015-2018 – this is not the actions of a credible award. The Hugo awards have never been credible.
