It's really sad that in the age of unrestricted access to information public discourse is self-restricting to avoid wrong-think and dissenting opinions.
If you look at the history of intellectual progress, much of it was exactly due to unpopular opinions.
Now by having one you're risking your entire career and sometimes more. This is truly the dark age of the information era.
There is no era of Western history where unpopular opinions were more acceptable than today. In the past, dissenting opinions voiced loudly were often punished by blacklisting or excommunication or prison or death. Now, you get yelled at on Twitter and some companies won't work with you.
Just this past weekend a disabled animator was blacklisted from the industry because an ex-friend objected to their NSFW drawings on a twitter handle (completely separate from their professional handle). The number of death threats were also an immense psychological toll, and a bit more than just "being yelled at" (I am open to the fact there is a fuzzy continuum between the two).
Regardless - "some companies won't work with you" is effectively a blacklist for those who don't have traditional backgrounds. Another point is that the online social circles acts as a support network for some disenfranchised folks (queers like myself), and when that gets turned against them, it gets ugly.
I don't think I'm exaggerating that we're in a satanic panic against certain kind of art and works.
(Not providing public links out of real concern for safety, but happy to if individuals DM me here.)
Are you suggesting that blacklists are a new phenomenon?
"cancel culture" has always existed. The only thing that is changing is that who is "cancelled" is no longer chosen by TV producers and news editors (ie, white men), but democratically by self-directed popular discourse.
In 2003 the Dixie Chicks said at a show in london, "We don't want this war, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas". Immediately their recording contracts were cancelled, venues would no longer book their shows, radio stations would no longer play them, MTV stopped showing their music videos, they lost all of their sponsorships, and their colleagues in the genre ostracized them and started including segments in their shows about how the Dixie Chicks are terrorists.
If that's not cancel culture, what is? Why is it okay and normal for white male venue owners, disc jockeys, and record label CEOs to destroy somebody's career for a single sentence of political speech, but "political correctness run amok" when marginalized people on twitter decide that they aren't going to buy tickets to a show with a comedian who's known for assaulting female stagehands?
I don't think anyone claimed that what happened to the Dixie Chicks was OK. Also, it sounds as if you think that cancellation is better if it's democratic. If so, you need to address the 150-year old argument made by Mill, that democratic popular opinion can be particularly oppressive and dangerous to minority viewpoints:
"Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself."
You should maybe continue reading Mill, because nowhere in his writings, or those of anybody else who used the phrase "tyranny of the majority" prior to the modern age, believed that the solution was disempowerment of the majority and tyranny of the minority.
Surely if you think that majoritarian tyranny is bad, you must also believe that minoritarian tyranny is far worse, right? Such as when a select few individuals of a particular racial, gender, and social class, have complete control over popular media, with the sole power to decide who is successful and what damaging information about powerful people can becomes public knowledge and which is kept secret?
Also, quoting Mill while claiming that an individual consumer freely choosing to not buy a product is "tyranny" is laughable to the highest degree.
I don't understand how your first paragraph is relevant. Nobody here is claiming that we need to end democracy! Similarly, nobody is arguing for a system where a few control the entire popular media. (And the current media landscape looks nothing like that: there have never been more different news sources available at the click of a button, and anybody who wants can start one up.) Lastly, again your third paragraph is a straw man.
> And the current media landscape looks nothing like that
Yes, congratulations, you found the point.
The current media landscape is nothing like that, because the current media landscape is only about 10 years old. For all of modern history until the introduction of social media sites like youtube, twitter, and facebook, the only way to spread information or opinion was to get the editors of for-profit media companies to agree to publish you.
It is beside the point but also worth pointing out that also until very recently, like the last decade, the editors of those institutions have been of a very particular gender and racial demographic.
The new media, with all of it's "discourse" is democratic editorialism. Welcome to the freest market of ideas the world has ever seen. You can't call up your buddies Ailes, Rosenthal, Jordan, Sorenson, and Klose to tell the public what to think about you anymore.
> Lastly, again your third paragraph is a straw man.
We're talking about "cancel culture" here, aren't we? The phenomenon where members of the public decide based on new information to stop buying products because of the beliefs and actions of their creators? What is that if not the democratic free-market action that Mill so often advocated as the optimal way to organize society?
> disempowerment of the majority and tyranny of the minority
These are two different things, though. You can disempower the majority without empowering the minority. Power is not a zero-sum game - you can disclaim it without handing it over to someone else.
So what, take the right of speech away from everybody? If the majority can't decide how the public feels about a person or company, and the minority can't decide how the public feels about a person or company, than who does?
The obvious response is to not take the right of speech from anybody, regardless of how democratically the decision to do so is arrived at.
More broadly, just because some power can be exercised by somebody, doesn't mean that it has to be exercised by anybody. To the extent that it may be necessary for a functioning society, it's generally best to decentralize power to the extent possible - think council democracy and similar arrangements, where decisions are made at the lowest applicable levels, and delegation of power flows upwards, not downwards. Some real-world approximations of these can be seen with the Zapatistas, and more recently in Rojava. In both cases, there are local governments that can democratically ban certain things as you've described - but, being local, their power is inherently limited in scope. Thus, it's tyranny of the local majority, and dissenters are free to move away and organize their own communities that do not implement such bans (but still federate with others that do).
To the first line: not at all, we'd both most likely point to Hollywood's blacklisting in the McCarthy era as one of many examples.
To the second point: I would disagree in the sense that (a) it is dangerous to conflate 'people in a position of power actively using their established power to censor others' and 'mere disagreement'. Censorship becomes censorship when there is active harassment. (b) The latter example of marginalized people on twitter disagreeing isn't such - until the threats are stated. And there is a lot of horizontal violence that exists on that platform.
The way I'd personally reframe this issue of (self)-censorship is that we're in a moral panic wave - certain platforms have made it incredibly easy for creators to be mobbed if they step out of acceptable discourse, regardless of their politics.
It's one thing to get cancelled for writing a song making fun of the president and pissing off a ton of the neoliberal and neocon establishment when you're entertainment superstars who are supposed to know a thing or two about not pissing off the establishment.
It's another thing for some nobody to lose a job as a stock broker because they made a joke about the 3/5ths compromise that was funny enough to go viral on TikTok where it then pissed off some other nobodies and then all the blue checks piled on.
The Dixie chicks were playing with fire and they knew it. Some rando isn't.
No, because the number of people who participate in an action influence its justness.
When 1 person decides to make a new law, that's autocracy, and it's a bad thing. When a supermajority of voters decide to make a new law, that's democracy, and it's a good thing.
When a couple dozen editors, CEOs, and DJs decided to end the Dixie Chicks' careers by banning them from access to all channels of outreach to the public, that was a bad thing and also censorship.
When tens of millions of people decided they don't want to go to Louis CK's shows anymore and he's finding it hard to find an audience as a result, there's nothing wrong with that. Lots of people independently deciding that they don't like you is not censorship.
> When a supermajority of voters decide to make a new law, that's democracy, and it's a good thing.
Is it, really? Even if the new law is extremely oppressive to the minority?
I mean, our drug laws are a mess that caused extreme grief (prison etc) to millions of people by now. But they were supported by wide majorities of the electorate. Were they a good thing? How about the Prohibition? Sodomy laws?
"Majority rules" is not inherently just or unjust, morality is totally separate from democracy. The world isn't black or white like your comment suggests
Yeah, the old "white" men who run Hollywood, record labels and the news media.
Oh wait, is that anti-Semitic to say? Then was it anti-white of you to say?
Also being cancelled for opposing a war that was engineered by globalist neocons is not proof that the interests of white males used to be the basis for cancelling people lol.
And there's nothing "democratic" about this lol, the cancelling is still done to suit the interests of those "white" people who run these organisations. No one cares if some people don't want to buy some tickets to a show, they care when Mastercard and Visa have secret blacklists of anyone to the right of Mitt Romney that they don't allow to transact on their monopoly global financial network.
If people don't like you, whether justly or unjustly, then they don't like you. Try persuading people who have a choice to work with people they dislike.
The only way to stop this is enforcement with teeth.
On a practical basis, I would agree as somebody that fits a number of protected categories, and have had to work around this.
Ethically, this is why we have organizations like the ACLU, ADA, and many, many others to be the enforcement with teeth. It's an uphill battle. I would disagree in the sense that pushing back against censorship - particularly of minorities - has many battlegrounds, not just enforcement with teeth. Greater social awareness/acceptance, education (history of blacklisting of sexual minorities for example), grassroots activism of simply supporting authors at risk of being deplatformed ... no sense in ignoring a tool that's available.
Half a century ago, in Japan, someone wrote a fictional story critical of the Emperor, and someone broke into the publishers house and murdered their housekeeper and severely injured their wife. [0]
In response to the murder, the writer was pretty much universally condemned and the a bill was introduced in the legislature to ban writings of that sort.
The fact that so many have convinced themselves that somehow we're in some new illiberal age is comical.
For right-leaning, racist, sexist White male elites? Most of it.
Which is why that's where most of the whining that this is a new and dangerous phenomenon is coming from.
Heck, the government hyperfocus on rooting out Communism began almost immediately after the suggestion of turning the same apparatus against the KKK was rebuffed because of that organizations loyalty and patriotism.
I think the point is this had been around for a while, and what people are calling "cancel culture" is the same old-same old, but with (hopefully) less prison/death.
There's nothing new about receiving negative feedback for having and expressing unpopular opinions. That's really common in pretty much every single social group I've been in, including on HN.
There's also a difference between saying something stupid and having some people telling you to knock it off. And posting it or having it posted to Twitter with a possible consequence like a bunch of people emailing your employer demanding you be fired. Which they probably will because it's easier that way if you really did say something you shouldn't have.
>you honestly think that this is a new thing that never used to happen?
No, but I do think it's a lot easier for someone to tweet out an inappropriate joke or get caught on video doing something obnoxious today--that have at least the potential to blow up to a greater degree than a few decades ago.
I didn't really hear much about outrage mobs and repeated celebrity firings over unpopular political opinions 10 years ago. Hear about them all the time now.
> I didn't really hear much about outrage mobs and repeated celebrity firings over unpopular political opinions 10 years ago.
That's probably because you weren't listening, possibly because it was 30 years into the right whining about that under the label “political correctness” and everyone had learned to tune it out.
Now they've got a new label and marketing effort behind selling it as the boogeyman, and everything old is new again.
this is common whataboutism. What about the dark ages ? What about burning witches ? If we claim to be a compassionate society we should be anti-censorship and let ideas succeed or fail through the strength of their argument.
People are upset now that the current is shifting and you get shunned for being racist, rather than being shunned for not speaking properly or whatever the heck.
Nobody gives a shit when Uber classifies their drivers as independent contractors to stiff them on benefits, but everybody cares about the propriety of master/slave replication terminology. We're dealing with police violence by capitalizing Black in our style guides. Etc etc etc.
> Nobody gives a shit when Uber classifies their drivers as independent contractors to stiff them on benefits,
I think quite a few people gave a shit? I think you're attacking a straw man, it is perfectly possible to have opinions on small stylistic issues (like master vs main) while also thinking that there are fundamental economic things that need to change.
I'm sure that people 'care', and I suppose I'm straw-manning those people.. I'm not straw-manning the system. Time and again, challenges to monetary order aren't permitted but puritanical word-propriety is encouraged. It's an energy outlet.
> Time and again, challenges to monetary order aren't permitted but puritanical word-propriety is encouraged. It's an energy outlet.
I agree very much with this statement, but somehow have reached the opposite conclusion about whether "cancel culture" is a big problem that we need to spend a lot of time addressing. To me, that seems to be playing into the same issue you identified.
I was more being descriptive than prescriptive, I'm just posting here.. but it's a problem that all of the energy and outrage go into stylistic and cultural bullshit. In a perfect world we could channel that energy into community organizing, electoralism, or other forms of people getting out there and interacting with the groups they claim to speak for.
No one is complaining about going after actual racists. The problem is that things which aren't racist are now defined as racist and vice versa. e.g. saying that universities shouldn't admit students by race and only use grades and test scores is now "racist"
Me personally no, but I'm not so sure that I would risk saying it. On the other hand, I know I would be in no danger whatsoever stating that I favored racial admissions policies. I am sure that I would be in danger if I criticized my employer's hiring policies on that point. You set a high bar, though. The idea of getting called racist for advocating directly against racism should be no more than a bad joke.
People are upset that the definition of racist has been repurposed to apply to racially neutral positions and even anti-racism positions. If one advocates in favor of enforcing existing immigration laws, that's a quick way to get labeled a racist Nazi even though it's actually a very moderate stance. If one supports treating everyone equally regardless of race, then that explicitly anti-racism position is characterized as racist and attacked with baseless accusations of "bad faith".
I agree with your sentiment, but it wasn't that long ago that people were being brought to court in the US just for accusations of being socialist or communist. Any there wasn't even anything against the law with have different economic ideals.
Where in this thread do I justify or emulate? Please quote something from any of my posts that would give you the impression that I approve of "cancel culture".
However, if people are genuinely concerned about chilling speech, then why are they spending so much effort to call out SJW in a tiny handful of big cities instead of raising hell about the overt and often legal discrimination that happens in tens of thousands of rural communities?
It's hard for me to take the concern about cancel culture seriously when the concern is exclusively focused on one side of the political/cultural divide even though the phenomenon happens far more on the other side of that divide. I have zero confidence that such concerns are genuine.
AFAICT every example in the article. I always assume that the contents of the article are upthread because I always assume people read the article before commenting :)
Aside from the article, my impression is that "cancel culture" has a more specific meaning than you seem to prescribe. One on hand, we never called it "cancel culture" when a teacher is fired for being gay. And on the other, CPAC's theme this year is "America Uncanceled". My understanding is that, at this point, the term does have political content.
I think "cancel culture" definitely has some left-wing connotations, but I think that's because it came into existence at a time when the left was doing the majority of the canceling. In the aughts, "canceling" was mostly a conservative thing (usually criticizing the war effort) and it was much less egregious (if only because social media barely existed at the time). One prominent, egregious example of conservative cancellation from the time was the Dixie Chicks.
So yeah, "cancellation" has some left-wing connotations, but it's not something that only the left can do. Further, there absolutely are hypocrites who criticize "cancel culture", but who happily try to cancel people they don't like. Hypocrites are bad, but there are still lots and lots of principled critics of cancel culture (indeed, I'm pretty sure most of the Harper's letter signatories are left-of-center). That there are hypocrites doesn't validate cancel culture.
Also, if you're upset about the left-wing connotations, the proper response is not to try to legitimize cancel culture, but rather to persuade your political associates to behave better for sake of the brand.
TL;DR: Canceling is bad no matter who does it; recently it's mostly been the woke left who have been doing it so it does have some political connotations; sometimes people are disingenuous in criticizing "cancel culture".
Thanks for expanding your original reply, I can see how the term itself might come across as politically charged. It’d be better if it wasn’t used mostly in conjunction with the left.
Agreed. And to be clear, in the early aughts society pushed back on conservatives when they tried to cancel people for criticizing the wars at the time. So critics of cancel culture aren't being inconsistent or picking on left-wing cancellation.
It's not 1960 lol, there are not vast swathes of the country where that happens, since the liberal left has almost total control via the Federal bureaucracy for enforcing their values everywhere, not just in blue states
In the general case, you're not allowed to teach at Liberty unless you're a very specific type of conservative christian. A statement of faith is a required component of the faculty application packet. The student code of conduct prohibits homosexual behavior.
Passing off Liberty as a bastion of free expression because they invited Sanders to give a speech is beyond disingenuous, and a perfect example of the enormous double standard in discussions of "cancel culture" right now.
First of all I never said or implied that it was a "bastion of free speech"
> In the general case, you're not allowed to teach at Liberty unless you're a very specific type of conservative christian.
Let's not pretend that you are allowed to teach at Harvard, at least in certain departments, without a very specific political leaning. And certain other political leanings are not allowed in any department.
> A statement of faith is a required component of the faculty application packet.
UC requires a mandatory "diversity statement" for faculty job applications:
> Let's not pretend that you are allowed to teach at Harvard, at least in certain departments, without a very specific political leaning. And certain other political leanings are not allowed in any department.
I can't speak to all of Harvard's departments, but I know it's completely possible to have a wide variety of political viewpoints in SEAS. The faculty itself is probably to the right of the immediately surrounding community (that that this means much in Boston Metro, but I think it's probably true in the case of SEAS).
> UC requires a mandatory "diversity statement" for faculty job applications:
Diversity statements typically focus on a certain type of service and teaching activity.
The "how it effects my teaching and advising" part of the statement could talk about making special efforts in your teaching to help first generation college students, or supporting students who aren't neurotypical, or being really good at working with the specific circumstances of students who come from non-traditional backgrounds (eg adult learners).
The outreach/service portion of the statement could discuss bringing resources to underserved rural communities. Or providing learning opportunities for prisoners. Or a million other things.
Source: actually did this. Got job offers.
The fact that you think writing a "diversity statement" means you have to fit a certain political mold says a lot more about what you think diversity means than about diversity statement requirements. The diversity statement is about proving that you can at the very least create an inclusive learning environment for people from non-traditional backgrounds. Why in god's name should this be political, or in fact not a requirement for a teacher?
Comparing diversity statements to statements of religious faith is absurd. If you can't write a page about eg helping autism spectrum students succeed in CS 1, and someone else can, then you might not be the best candidate for a CS 1 lecturer. Opinions on the Westminster Catechism, on the other hand, are not relevant to teaching students about linked lists.
Really? Seems like a typical parenthetical elite, with all the connections and intrigue that go with it. His history is a standard playbook of actions benefiting himself and his people over everyone else.
This thread started as a discussion about Liberty discriminating against boring rank and file faculty/gay students, and ended with “the world is ending because being president of an elite university is a GASP political job!” (Newsflash: uni prez is a deeply political job in every sense of the word and has been since the birth of the university many hundreds of years ago)
The idiocy of that conversational arc is basically the point I’m trying to make.
Liberty Uni is heavily biased. Let’s get that out of the way.
Now I’m responding to the assertion to that one doesn’t need to be of a certain stripe to make it in liberal institutions.
You downplay and say that a Harvard pres. position is highly political; which is fair, but the reaction also shows that a pervasive and intolerant groupthink is present.
It may tolerate the odd dissenting professor, especially if they’re protected by tenure, but the buck stops there.
No such protections for students first making their way into the world.
Not exactly a bastion of free thought and discourse.
> but I know it's completely possible to have a wide variety of political viewpoints in SEAS
What _you_ and Harvard in general think of as a wide variety of political viewpoints, and what _actually_ constitutes a wide variety, are likely very different things.
I grew up in bright red land, the sort of community where one is obligated to go to church when visiting home and folks notice if you don’t. Shooting clay follows the Easter egg hunt. Gay marriage is sinful and we all learned in Sunday school that Rome fell because of the bathhouses.
I know well what a wide variety of political viewpoints looks like, because I’ve lived in at least three extremes. Have you?
Harvard’s faculty is left of center in aggregate (did I ever say otherwise?) but they aren’t uniformly radical and there are a lot of moderates and conservatives in the ranks.
> Let's not pretend that you are allowed to teach at Harvard, at least in certain departments, without a very specific political leaning. And certain other political leanings are not allowed in any department.
That's complete nonsense. Harvard's law department is run by Mary Ann Glendon, notorious catholic dominionist and staple of anti-abortion activism in the US.
The "liberal college professor" meme is a right-wing canard, which only holds true as far as people who believe in evidence driven investigation and deep thought, such as those who serve in science departments, are unlikely to form a religious conservative reactionary worldview.
I grew up in the Midwest and outside of the city. When I visit home, I pretend to believe in God, lie-by-omission about my bisexuality, stay silent about politics, pretend to say grace at dinner, and go to Church on Sunday mornings. If I didn't, then in many ways I'd not longer be welcome in that social group. Finding a iving-wage job in the local community would certainly be impossible. There are only a few tech firms and all the owners are members of the same bible study.
Want to see real cancel culture? Live in any of America's many culturally homogeneous rural communities for a month. Put up a Biden sign in panhandle.
None of this is a defense of cancel culture, but it's worth keeping in perspective that way more "cancelling" goes on in deeply conservative communities than in extremely liberal communities. We just call it "keeping American a Christian nation" instead of "cancel culture".
I used to feel to belong to "The Left" (whatever that is) precisely because it did not do these things. Now it does, and sees it even as a moral imperative to do so.
I'm on the autism spectrum, as are many others around here. Social rules are hard in the best of times. Now they are impossible to follow, and breaking them is outright dangerous.
I also find this trend on the left morally unfortunate, historically out-of-character, and strategically flawed.
My point here is not to defend cancel culture, but rather to point out that something like it has always existed and still exists on the right. IMO the only solution is everyone realizing this fact and explicitly agreeing to some form of detente.
I'm not holding my breath, but step zero is both sides realizing that the their side also does the thing they're complaining about.
If you need to appeal to the goodness of people's hearts, you know you've lost.
The age of Enlightement and the idea of liberalism have been so powerful because they programmatically went against any kind of censorship. Their ideas helped to see how humans are truly all equal, that we all share what it means to be human.
Identity politics set out to destroy these ideas. It is the enemy of liberalism, of a free flow of ideas, of a will to see us all as equals. It divides us into groups, based on biological features like the color of our skin, our age and our genitals.
I completely agree that there are problems on both sides, but I don't see how your reasoning encourages "everyone realizing this fact and explicitly agreeing to some form of detente". On the contrary, progressives seem to see "the right has oppressed people" as a mandate to do everything they can to make war on the right and even moderate positions (because moderate positions are characterized as dog whistles that conservatives hide behind, and the "fascist" "Nazi" right must not be given any potential cover no matter the cost). I really thought your posts were intentionally stoking this attitude, and I would never have guessed that you wanted detente if you hadn't explicitly said so.
So... your strategy to achieve detente is to inflame and justify hatred of people in rural areas? You're extrapolating a personal anecdote in order to stereotype millions of people. It's hard to see how that is anything but destructive.
I'm sorry that you've had to go through those experiences, but not everyone rural or Christian is like that, and it's very harmful to characterize them that way. It's not accurate to stereotype Christians as hateful any more than it's accurate to stereotype Muslims as supporting terrorism. They are extremely diverse groups with some truly bad subgroups, but also some good ones, and most subgroups are in-between. The extremes aren't representative of the group as a whole.
We really need a right left coalition of Anti-Cancelling advocates, calling out both close minded rural conservative communities, and close minded liberal communities living on Twitter. Ideally, with those on the right calling out the conservatives and those on the left calling out the liberals.
The opposite has been true for many decades now. There are many Christians who are extremely capable scientists, ready to perform experiments, document cause and effect and all manners of empirical scientific study but can't find work (or tenure) because they're not willing to bet all their beliefs on the theory that everything came from literally nothing, which is by itself non-scientific anyway.
> but can't find work (or tenure) because they're not willing to bet all their beliefs on the theory that everything came from literally nothing, which is by itself non-scientific anyway.
Can you point to a single example of a hiring or T&P policy that overtly discriminates on the basis of religion?
I certainly can. Wheaton College, Cedarville University, and Liberty University come to mind. None of those places will hire non-Christians, and a Statement of Faith is a required component of every faculty application.
Name one prominent scientist who is on record (and has tenure) who holds the position that the origin of the big bang as taught today is un-scientific. Of course there are Christian scientists, but Academia only promotes and gives tenure to atheists for a growing number of fields.
Name any scientist that has a position other than the big bang theory, that has any evidence backing it?
The standard isn't "can't include God", but "must fit the facts". God is unprovable and untestable; making a theory depend on a God makes the theory unprovable and untestable. Most scientists who also have religious beliefs don't see the two conflicting; their religion gives the why, their profession the how.
Or more succinctly, no one is blackballing scientists for saying "I believe God caused the Big Bang". But claims of, for instance, "I believe the world was created 6000 years ago over a period of 7 literal days" requires some evidence beyond "My understanding of the Bible tells me so", and doesn't jibe with your initial statement of empirical scientific study.
Isn't it kind of arrogant to think that one knows the mechanisms of God so surely as to settle the question on the origins of the universe?
The bible, esp. genesis, is taken metaphorically, or else a lot of problematic interpretations will arise.
Also, even scholars of the Abrahamic faiths do not readily disclose their intimate religious faith, lest their work be discredited — such as a professor who studies Christianity, but holds Islamic faith.
> There is no era of Western history where unpopular opinions were more acceptable than today. In the past, dissenting opinions voiced loudly were often punished by blacklisting or excommunication or prison or death.
Granted, but what's the logic here? We ought to content ourselves with regression so long as no one is being imprisoned or killed? We want to progress, not regress. We don't want a conformist society, we want a tolerant society[^1]. We want free speech[^2], not compelled/coerced speech. We want ideas to compete freely so the best rise to the top; we don't want a prescribed set of beliefs to be forced on everyone.
[^1]: (yes, I know all about the Paradox of Tolerance and how some use it to give themselves moral license to persecute anyone they deep intolerant).
[^2]: No, I'm not talking about the strict 1st Amendment legal definition, but the broader principle.
It seemed like “we have progressed, therefore it’s okay to backslide and no one should criticize cancellation”. After all, no one here is arguing that the 1500s, 1600s, etc were the golden ages of speech.
I think it's presumptuous to assume "it's okay to backslide" was part of that comment. What/when are we backsliding from? There was never some 'golden age' where comments anathema to the culture at large wouldn't have consequences. Even the popular victims of cancel culture now have it better than the ones in the 1950s, say (i.e., Gina Carano may have been fired from one company, but that was because she persisted in espousing views they disagreed with; compare that to 1950s era blackballing from all of Hollywood for being -suspected- of supporting communism/socialism).
I think for it to imply "it's okay to backslide" we have to have actually broached a time we've backslid -from-. Pursuant to the article, I don't really consider it backsliding if authors are now having second thoughts about writing from cultural perspectives other than their own. They have to be selective, of course, but we don't need, for instance, a white author writing about noble savages. That's not to say a white author can't write a western; it does mean they need to be very careful with the tone of it, or, yes, risk offending people. And recognize that some people will be offended no matter what, so they also need to recognize that some people aren't worth listening to.
It's called sensitivity, not censorship. Yes, sensitivity might lead to self-censorship, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. And you may miss the mark, and there will be consequences, and you might hit the mark but still have angry people, but angry people have yelled about every piece of literature we have. It's a balancing act, and it always has been; and I would contend consequences now are the weakest they have ever been.
> I think it's presumptuous to assume "it's okay to backslide" was part of that comment.
I wasn't assuming or presuming, I was asking.
> What/when are we backsliding from? There was never some 'golden age' where comments anathema to the culture at large wouldn't have consequences.
We're not just talking about comments that are "anathema to the culture at large", we're often talking about comments that offend only about 10% of the population. Things like "citing a celebrated academic's work on the efficacy of nonviolent protest" or "quoting a black man who wished more attention was paid to other issues in his community [besides police violence]" or "accidentally making the 'ok' gesture". With that out of the way, to answer your question more broadly, it has been rare in my life for people to be terminated even for quite controversial speech, and certainly not due to explicit pressure from large, often coordinated groups of strangers. If you were the public face of a company you were expected to steer clear of controversy, but ordinary people didn't need to fear a loss of income or access to healthcare.
The worst of it was during the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars when it was controversial to be seen as unpatriotic, but even then I think ordinary people were mostly insulated from the effects (i.e., it was "punching up"), the effects weren't especially chilling, and society quickly rallied around shared free-speech values and righted itself. For what it's worth, I don't think conservatives 15 years ago were morally better than today's woke progressives; rather, I think the difference is social media (notably, conservatives canceled Colin Kaepernick almost immediately after social media cancelation came into existence).
> It's called sensitivity, not censorship.
I didn't call it censorship?
> Pursuant to the article, I don't really consider it backsliding if authors are now having second thoughts about writing from cultural perspectives other than their own.
I've never found "ends justify the means" arguments to be very compelling, personally.
> And you may miss the mark, and there will be consequences
One problem with cancel culture is that there are consequences even if your speech is perfectly correct and moral, e.g., advocating for nonviolent protest. It turns out people with few scruples about canceling also tend to lack scruples about whom they target. And to be clear, "consequences" aren't "you've offended someone and now they won't speak with you"; rather, they're "you've offended someone and now they've rounded up a hundred people to harass your employer into firing you with the express purposes of making an example out of you for other would-be non-conformists".
> I would contend consequences now are the weakest they have ever been.
I strongly disagree. Worse by far than any time in my memory.
>> I would contend consequences now are the weakest they have ever been.
> I strongly disagree. Worse by far than any time in my memory.
And yet we have literal nazis posting on social media for the world to see, with the occasional one losing their job, and that's it. Hardly a chilling effect.
> For what it's worth, I don't think conservatives 15 years ago were morally better than today's woke progressives; rather, I think the difference is social media (notably, conservatives canceled Colin Kaepernick almost immediately after social media cancelation came into existence).
Is it just social media, or is it media? When somebody does a thing visibly enough to rile up a crowd... the crowd gets riled. What's new here? The words "cancel culture".
The idea that "ideas compete and the best rise to the top" is completely utopian. Such a "free marketplace of ideas" has never existed and cannot exist, because attention is a limited resource, bias exists, and not all ideas are equally valid.
The argument exists as a cover for constant relitigating of ideas that by all rational measures have lost in the "marketplace of ideas" time and time again.
If every single astronomy journal ever released contained a segment arguing about the merits of geocentrism because a few wackos continue to demand their right to "free speech and open debate" (which in reality means: unlimited speaking time on somebody else's platform), there would be no room for new science amid all the repetitive debunking.
Some debates are settled. Geocentrism is wrong. Racism is wrong. The holocaust happened. Authoritarianism is bad. Facts exist.
I think you fundamentally misunderstand free speech and the "marketplace of ideas" metaphor. It's precisely because of free speech that we can collectively condemn geocentrism, racism, holocaust-denial, authoritarianism, etc. Indeed, authoritarianism in general and Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, etc in particular always starts with speech restrictions. The idea that free speech and authoritarianism are bed fellows doesn't make sense; these are mutually exclusive.
Moreover, "marketplace of ideas" is a metaphor for what happens in a society that has a high degree of free speech: the best most valid ideas rise to the top. You argue that the marketplace metaphor doesn't work because bias exists and because ideas vary in validity, but that doesn't make sense--these facts are the very mechanism by which the marketplace metaphor works: in speech-tolerant societies, a diversity of ideas compete and the best, most valid ideas rise to the top irrespective of bias.
> Indeed, authoritarianism in general and Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, etc in particular always starts with speech restrictions. The idea that free speech and authoritarianism are bed fellows doesn't make sense; these are mutually exclusive.
This is a myth perpetuated by selective cultural memory. The Nazis were all about "free speech" before they were in power. They frequently complained about "Free speech" when papers published editorials criticizing them, or when their public appearances were protested, or when opinion pages didn't present "both sides".
One widely used Nazi propaganda poster from 1928 even showed Hitler with a big "CENSORED" block over his mouth, captioned "Only One of the 2000 million people in the world is not allowed to speak in Germany"[1]
> in speech-tolerant societies, a diversity of ideas compete and the best, most valid ideas rise to the top irrespective of bias.
I'm not sure that you understand what "bias" means. Bias is that which leads people to believe in ideas that are false for various sometimes difficult to quantify reasons. The fact that evidence opposing flat-eartherism is available has not prevented that idea from gaining popularity, in fact it is more popular today in 2021 than it ever has been.
The "marketplace" metaphor itself exposes that the argument comes from a utopian perspective, the argument only works if you pre-suppose that a free and unregulated economic market produces best results, but we know from experience that it produces monopolies, child labor, and bread doped with sawdust.
Public discourse is like a market in some ways, namely that people with more money are able to advance their ideas further by buying media outlets and marketing broadly and engaging in deceptive communication that exploits cognitive bias to acquire more believers, in just the same way as people with more money are able to buy out and undercut competition and exploit addictions and consumer psychology to get more sales than their products deserve.
(not parent throwaway)
Just because nazis used their free speech right to do their propaganda, that doesn't mean free speech caused nazism. In order to do any propaganda (whether that's for a morally good or bad cause), you need to be able to talk to people.
The first thing nazis did was to revoke free speech rights. That's an example of authoritarianism and free speech being opposites.
The parent commenter was claiming that free speech prevents nazism, which any honest look at the history of authoritarianism shows to be categorically untrue.
You say "we" want x&y almost as if they are firm, broadly held opinions. If there were a flash Brexit-style vote across the USA today, and democracy were on the ballot against some type of Trump-led monarchy, and the majority of the country voted for a system that dismantles all the things you value, are you now going to accept the fair and democratic result or fight back? Would you resort to blaming the masses for being uneducated and not knowing what's good for them? The Paradox of Tolerance may seem like some abstract concept but it could very well be central to an actual decision you'll have to make.
I find attitudes like this mystifying. No one is saying that today's cancel culture is comparable to getting tortured, imprisoned, or killed for one's beliefs. We're talking about perfectly good and unobjectionable books being hounded out of publication because of thought crimes.
Artists receiving critical attacks from their patrons certainly isn't new. What is new is this idea that these objections are unacceptable. What do you think anarchists and queers and sex freaks endured for the last hundred years of art and media? If you have a viewpoint you think is worth defending, then defend it and work to advance it. Don't just pout when it's not automatically accepted.
It's a pretty big deal when that company is your employer. We need better protections around speech in this country. Firing someone for something they said cannot be a one-sided decision. At the minimum, the worker deserves the chance to go to court/arbitration
This is one of the categories of protections unions historically offered.
Probably also worth noting that one does have the right to go to court if one believes one was wrongfully terminated. When Google fired James Damore, he sued. But the National Labor Relations Board ruled the firing was justified because he had made not-legally-protected statements that risked creating a hostile work environment.
Conservatives have fought tooth and nail for at-will employment for a hundred years. If they would like to moderate those views I am sure we could find a way to expand protections for workers in a variety of ways, including speech.
It’s an outgrowth of a larger problem: The problem today is that nobody will work with you nor can you get employed, unless you have the right connections.
There is no starting over, because there is no anonymity or way to become obscure/forgotten.
You could post just about anything online and mostly get away with it for a brief period of time ending around 2004 unless you were wholesale drug trafficking out in the open. Those websites were taken down but not very quickly.
Sometimes I miss the lulz of the sheep being taken to slaughter by tubgirl and goatse.
What is keeping you from opening up your own shocksites right now? I think it is more cultural zeitgeist - the generation involved with it largely grew out of it and the younger ones don't have the same sort of "culture" to reoccur in the same way.
It isn't something you would want to boast about running and would have people thinking ill of you but it doesn't really trigger outrage.
Younger generations don't use the web browser as their main source of entertainment. Their attention and energy has been siloed to the largest media platforms. They enjoy being serfs on the FAANG plantation.
So in otherwords the issue is they don't want your puppet show when there is TV. That isn't cancel culture any more than nobody showing up to my TEDx talk where I count to ten thousand.
It has also been hundreds of years of Western history since the intellectual class was driving this "punishment", and that was when religion and education were tightly linked.
The problem isn't that ideologues are new, it is that ideology has seeped into the highest levels of education and culture. You have people across the spectrum of disciplines and stances afraid to contradict the received knowledge of the masses (or one of usually two sects).
Blacklisting and excommunication are exactly what is happening today, but the difference is that it's much worse in a global world.
In 200 BC, if you were excommunicated from a tribe, it would be horrible, but you could walk 20 miles and join another tribe that hasn't heard or bought into the ostracization.
In 2021 AD, if you are excommunicated from an industry on the internet, there's nowhere else you can physically go. The entire intellectual globe is connected online. Excommunication is now worse than it used to be -- it's global.
> In 2021 AD, if you are excommunicated from an industry on the internet, there's nowhere else you can physically go. The entire intellectual globe is connected online. Excommunication is now worse than it used to be -- it's global.
When has this ever happened? There's lots of claims that people have been cancelled and can never work in their field again, but actual examples never seem to materialize.
Try being falsely accused of sexual assault (or similar), forced into a plea bargain due to trumped up charges (or hell, beat the charge and still be considered guilty because "believe women"), and having your name plastered all over the Internet - and then getting a job in anything remotely public-facing. I know two people personally who had their lives ruined as a result of the amplification effect of the Internet.
The companies don't have to believe you did anything wrong. They just have to fear that the mob might believe it and hurt their bottom line.
Maybe there is a higher awareness of the costs imposed by censors and as the censorship encoded in government recedes that of private realms is brought more into light.
> There is no era of Western history where unpopular opinions were more acceptable than today.
I suppose it depends how fine grain you can be when considering eras, but there were periods even within my own lifetime that were much more tolerant. In the 90s, there was a period where the influence of religious prigs had waned, and the secular prigs had yet to be taken seriously. The internet in particular was pretty wide open to ideas of all sorts, and no one would seek to ruin your life over disagreements.
If you coursen the grain to wider epochs, then yes I think you're correct.
"Some companies" not working with you can be the end of your career in some cases, especially with an online record of it that will come up forever in the future.
the post specifically talks about young people self-censoring themselves.
I can't recall another era were young authors were afraid of being marginalized by other young people for being young and having radical (and sometimes plain stupid) ideas.
I remember old, conservative people doing it to youngsters, but not to themselves, despite being the ones with bad - sometimes very bad - thoughts.
It depends entirely on what you mean by "unpopular opinions". You would face backlash in the 80's if you advocated overthrowing the government. Today, you can lose your job for not having your gender pronouns in your bio. I don't think its fair to equate both of those things as "unpopular opinions".
It was supposedly one of the reasons Disney fired Gina Carano. However, she had apparently been annoying the powers that be with her generally Trumpian social media postings for a while.
I just looked it up. She added boop/bop/beep to her name on Twitter and doubled down when people asked her to remove it. [1] And like you said it wasn't her first PR problem.
Everything rises and falls. Even in the west we've had the inquisition, the Stasi in the DDR, McCarthyism in the US. Hopefully the modern trend towards censorship and rightthink will encourage the future generations to appreciate freedom of speech and ideas
The worrying thing, to me, is that it’s the young who are pushing this. Previously it was old conservatives, who were on the way out anyway. It’s different now.
I recall the scares about D&D and Satanism back in the day. The shoe is on the other foot now, weirdly backed by the corporations. Do you think it's organic or inculcated?
I haven't seen a dearth of people sharing their unpopular opinions, so I'm not sure I really agree with the sentiment that people are _actually_ self censoring in any more meaningful way than they normally do.
There's ample evidence that the current is the greatest opportunity for dissenting thought and opinion to have massive reach without much consequence or effort.
The idea that we're in a dark age of thought is purely rhetorical and only serves to frame a narrative that further amplifies ideas that would never had a chance to propagate before the information era.
Furthermore, we are living in a time of such absurdity that there are politicians giving internationally televised press conferences about how their speech is being suppressed and they have no power.
The only self-restriction is by people that don't have the conviction to stand by their ideas, or actually have not thought through their perspective to adequate level of introspection and evidence that can survive free and open discourse. Instead it's much easier to exclaim victimhood and censorship and not bother examining ideas beyond a gut feeling.
That second link is telling - they list 9 people; one lost a book deal, one had a book withdrawn, one had to switch to smaller publisher, and one lost an honorary charity position. How is this being cancelled?
I'm not sure that is an excessive description anymore.
Jerry Seinfeld, a mainstream comedian, stopped playing at college campuses years ago already because he was getting picked apart and no longer welcome. at precisely the place that is supposed to be the most transgressive and open to ideas! a place to expand minds, remember? now it fully embraces orthodoxy and censorship.
or take the case of Bret Weinstein. a liberal, progressive professor who was exiled from campus for not bending to the mob. now he's being called a eugenicist, white supremacist and more with little resistance. here's a transcript from Clubhouse just a few days ago:
Brett W: "Let me just say, I am an evolutionary biologist. I'm very interested in how language actually changes..."
Brooklyn: "A eugenicist."
Brett: "Say again?"
Brooklyn: "A eugenicist. That's what you mean as evolution..."
Brett: "No, no, no..."
Brooklyn: "Those are the same thing."
Brett: "No, it's not the same thing."
Brooklyn: "They are the same. They are the same. I've seen the research. They are the same. You will not argue that here, you're not about to wiggle out of that."
this isn't just a one off thing, it's increasingly prevalent. if we're not already in an intellectual dark age, we're on the fast track to it. the trend line is clear.
I think what people need to understand is that there are dumb people on all sides of every movement every time in history.
Someone calling you a eugenicist is not a "cancellation." Moreover, Weinstein was not fired, and has an arguably more distinguished career now than before.
Perhaps he wasn't "canceled", but he was repeatedly slandered and bullied by these "dumb people" who have outsized power due to the current state of identity politics that grants them a certain amount of power in modern society.
They slandered him unfairly, then prevented him from responding unless he met their demands of sending cash via Venmo for some supposed slight against black creators.
They did this in a semi-public forum without any concern for him or his reputation. They did it with zero fear of repercussions because they are emboldened by the fact that our current society makes certain people completely beyond reproach due to the color of their skin (or other identity characteristics).
It was wrong, and the fact that people won't call it out when they certainly would if the variables were changed, is exactly why these "dumb people" will continue to do it. Stop giving them a free pass.
> Jerry Seinfeld, a mainstream comedian, stopped playing at college campuses years ago already because he was getting picked apart and no longer welcome. at precisely the place that is supposed to be the most transgressive and open to ideas! a place to expand minds, remember? now it fully embraces orthodoxy and censorship.
Was Jerry Seinfeld banned from any campuses? Or did he elect to stop performing at campuses? From everything I've read, it was a choice he personally made.
So, why did he make that choice? Well, because people didn't find his jokes funny. And moreover, they had reasons that they didn't find them funny. He couldn't stand the heat, and left the kitchen.
Free speech is not freedom from critical response. This isn't some failure of free speech on campus, it's a failure of one comedian to keep his material fresh.
comedians know how to take heat better than almost anyone. they stand on stage, alone. Seinfeld has done this literally thousands of times. think he's afraid of critical response? not remotely.
and it's not just Seinfeld, many comedians have said the same thing. as Dave Chappelle recently pointed out, the audience is the problem:
Only, he quit the circuit explicitly because he didn't like the critical response, so your hypothetical invincible ur-comedian doesn't match with reality. So Dave Chappelle is also blaming the audience because they don't think his jokes are funny. So what? No, entertainer, make funny jokes or get off the damned stage. The moment where you start trying to correct the audience and explain that your jokes are actually funny, you objectively aren't funny any more. Why not find a new audience, and make jokes about cancel culture? Sounds like there's a market for it.
Side note: was Seinfeld ever funny or were we just laughing at him the whole time?
There have been people getting cancelled in very large number for thousands of years.
Crucially, nowadays, you can still communicate when cancelled. Perhaps to a smaller audience, but this is a necessity because of how human social interactions work.
> There have been people getting cancelled in very large number for thousands of years.
Yeah, and while the right loves to use “lynching” as a metaphor for the public criticisms they get that they also label as “cancel culture”, it's worth noting that when the cancel culture shoe was on the other foot regarding race issues, the lynchings (including of Whites) for expressing the wrong views were, frequently, not at all metaphorical.
> This is just an awful argument. It's basically "things used to be worse, so you shouldn't say it's still bad".
No, the argument is “things used to be more extreme in this precise area, so the argument that the present situation is a new and unique historical threat is false”.
People choosing to no longer read content from or associate with a person who expressed a controversial opinion isn't new and it isn't even bad. That's the other side of the coin of free thought: people don't have to agree with you or listen to you and they're allowed to speak out against you if they want to.
Public and professional consequences have always existed and they always should. The idea that people should be able to do anything and never suffer repercussions for their actions would lead to an unhealthy world.
If you can write a book, you can self-publish on Amazon or on Amazon competitor's and reach a commercial audience billions large.
If a self-publishing marketplace for some reason won't take you, you can host a pdf on a $5/month server that can reach every internet connected individual with a format that can be read by that internet connected device.
This is very well-put! But how do you reconcile this with people losing or being suspended from their jobs, for instance, for what they say? [1] [2]
It's hard to say that these people don't have the conviction to stand by their ideas. They are losing the right to speak in front of others because they are standing by their ideas.
>The university’s Office for Equity, Equal Opportunity and Title IX (EEO-TIX) looked into this matter and concluded that the concerns expressed by students were sincere, but that Professor Patton’s actions did not violate the university’s policy. They have also communicated this to the professor and he allowed me to share their conclusion with you.
>To be clear, Professor Patton was never suspended nor did his status at Marshall change. He is currently teaching in Marshall’s EMBA program and he will continue his regular teaching schedule next semester.
Seems to me there has been some misinformation in this matter. The professor ended up getting paid holiday if anything.
> Shor is still consulting in Democratic politics, but he is no longer working for a firm that restricts his freedom to publicly opine.
This is why claims of "cancel culture" aren't taken seriously. If he was "cancelled", but is still gainfully employed in the field of his choice and expertise what does "cancelled" really mean?
It's always amazing to me that so many proponents of "at will employment" suddenly run into issues with it when they are the ones suffering consequences for their own actions. It's fine when trans folk are fired for simply being trans, but when a someone is fired for a racist tweet then all of our liberties are somehow at stake. People get fired all the time for terrible reasons. People fired for their social media activities aren't special in any way.
2020:
"As of September 2020, Miller is under a behavioral review by New York University ...".
An 'educational moment' for NYU students and faculty ..
>> There's ample evidence that the current is the greatest opportunity for dissenting thought and opinion to have massive reach without much consequence or effort.
It's an idea that hasn't gained traction. Fox News isn't cancelled, and the freedom of the press has not been infriged, even if some folks want that to happen. Fox is so popular as to be undeniably mainstream, but still pushes a persecution narrative that they're on the brink of cancellation. It hasn't happened. There's no bill, no law, no executive order. Perhaps onesuch could violate the freedom of the press, if enforced, but nonesuch exists.
> The only self-restriction is by people that don't have the conviction to stand by their ideas, or actually have not thought through their perspective to adequate level of introspection and evidence that can survive free and open discourse. Instead it's much easier to exclaim victimhood and censorship and not bother examining ideas beyond a gut feeling.
The whole point of intellectual exchange and growth is from the idea of freely sharing ideas regardless of how "thought through" they are. How do you ever go about sharpening a knife if you aren't encouraged to bring a dull one to the grinder?
Have YOU "thought through" your theory/argument/belief/ideology here?
Yes, one of the worst and most dangerous places to be is just outside the orthodoxy. This is not a comment about 2021; it is a historical pattern. Whether or not it's worse than being directly opposed to the orthodoxy is something I'd say changes between times and places, but there have definitely been times where its more dangerous to be just outside then full-on opposed. Those who are neither directly opposed, nor just outside, in the vast space remaining outside of those two particular points, quite often do just fine.
This is also a fractal observation, relative to the perspective of "orthodoxy" you are taking at the moment; within the directly opposed group, there is another dangerous place of just outside the opposed group's orthodoxy.
I'd contrast this with the common intuitive belief that by indicating your agreement with the orthodoxy in most other ways, you've somehow built up "credit" with which you can "afford" a deviation. I would observe that model does not match reality very often. There's a few relatively idealistic communities where that may work, but in general that is not how people work.
This is so old it's in the bible, or at least 1 Timothy 5:8 has been taken out of context to say it. "He has denied the faith, and is worse than the unbeliever."
>>Freud spoke of the narcissism of small differences, saying that “it is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and ridiculing each other”.<<
Leftists get canceled all the time (by liberals). Look at the censoring/smearing of Bernie Sanders and his supporters during the primary. Twitter bans leftist accounts all the time as well. Take a look at every VC in our industry and they espouse staunchly establishment neo-liberal policies. Calling Biden into question (which anyone on the left would do) is risking your career.
The focus is often on censoring those on the right (which does happen too), but those on the left may be the most censored.
I agree with you. But there is a lot of leftist infighting, especially between MLs, Anarchists, LibSocs, DemSocs, AnComs, etc...
And there is also of neoliberals that pretend to be leftist, yes, so called "Radlibs".
Then there are leftists that accuse other leftists that aren't of their same brand of being liberals, for example MLs calling anarchists liberals because they admit markets, or anarchists calling MLs capitalists/liberals because of state capitalism and the DotP, and then MLs calling DemSocs liberals because they want to operate at least partiallty within "bourgeois democracy", etc...
I don't totally disagree with you, but the leftist infighting is of a very different nature than left vs. the establishment. For one, those on the left don't actually have the power to cancel each other. The platforms are owned by the neo-liberals, which direct the canceling through who they allow to speak their mind and who they don't.
> And there is also of neoliberals that pretend to be leftist, yes, so called "Radlibs".
These are the people doing the canceling (both to the left and the right of them). It's worth nothing the distinction as it's this group with the power.
No one (on the Left, obviously the Right does this), including people who critique Leninists (who I assume you are referring to as MLs) for supporting “state capitalism”, calls Leninists “liberals”.
Or, at least, approximately nobody; you can find examples of anything, but it's not like a significant thing.
It's important to understand that while the Right in America uses “liberal” to encompass everything to their left, the American Left (in line with much of the world outside the US, which did so longer) tends to use it specifically for a center-to-center-right pro-capitalist position roughly coextensive with neoliberalism; the (decreasingly, but still) dominant centrist wing of the Democratic Party is “liberal”, but not, in that view, most of the rest of the Party.
Indeed. Liberalism is the ideology according to which negative rights prime over everything, the rights to property are the most important, and freedom of association is paramount.
Leftism emerged as sociology critiqued the idealist liberal notions for their ignorance of real-word effects due to material reality on the actual freedom and oppressive social structures that strict classical liberalism creates.
> Calling Biden into question (which anyone on the left would do) is risking your career.
Who has ever been fired for supporting Sanders over Biden?
> Twitter bans leftist accounts all the time as well.
Probably not because they were leftist, but rather because they violated some rule (and at that, probably only a small fraction of Tweets which violate their rules). Twitter is pretty happy to fill my timeline with the craziest left-wing stuff including a lot of things that violate their own rules.
> Take a look at every VC in our industry and they espouse staunchly establishment neo-liberal policies.
What? You're surprised that VC support capitalist policies? You know what "VC" stands for, right? Anyway, "supporting capitalist policies" is not the same thing as "canceling leftists".
We live in a capitalist system, so yes the capitalists have a massive amount of power over our lives. People self-censor all the time, it's not just about getting fired.
It’s not “just” about getting fired, but termination is the minimum required evidence to support the claim that criticizing Biden (for being insufficiently leftist) would put one’s career in jeopardy.
Did you not read the original article? There's a million and one ways your career can suffer without being fired. Passed up for promotion, not getting funding, not hired in the first place...
You're moving goal posts (and accusing me of not reading the article on top of that--that's an impressive feat of self-confidence!). You claimed that it would put your career at risk. Being passed up for a promotion isn't putting your career at risk. You still have a career after being passed up for a promotion. There are actually people whose careers are at risk--who get fired even--because leftists pressure their employers into firing them (I'm less interested in painting leftists in a bad light or otherwise risk a flame war; I only mention it because it's relevant).
But anyway, accepting the new position of the goal posts, can you demonstrate examples of people who were passed up for promotion. Of course it's harder to prove these things causally, but if it happens often enough to have a chilling effect it should surely be trivial to identify one-or-two cut and dry cases?
It's you who's moving the goal posts. Your claim is that firing someone is the only thing you can do to damage their career, which is highly incorrect.
Regardless, the point I'm making is that leftists must self-censor (just like the right wing people in the article) because those in power are anti-left neo-liberals.
> It's you who's moving the goal posts. Your claim is that firing someone is the only thing you can do to damage their career, which is highly incorrect.
Lol nope.
> Regardless, the point I'm making is that leftists must self-censor (just like the right wing people in the article) because those in power are anti-left neo-liberals.
Ok, I disagree with your point. I don’t like conservative beliefs, but people with even moderate points of view get fired due to Twitter mobs. There are perhaps hundreds of videos of people physically assaulting strangers for wearing MAGA hats (you know, “Social Consequences” TM). I’m not aware of any similar instances of moderate liberals attacking progressives or getting them fired or even passed up for promotion. I don’t think there’s any comparison at all.
Liberals accuse leftists of working for Putin, being secretly pro-Trump (and therefore subject to all the same canceling as a normal Trump person), they actively blacklist and smear leftists. Ban their social media accounts, dox them, harass them...
Look at what the liberals have done to Tara Reade for instance. There's a group on Twitter called KHive that's dedicated to taking down leftists.
You just don't hear about this stuff as much because again, the neo-liberals control the media and they don't want to show you how much they punch left.
And perhaps, in this era of such free and open access to information, individuals are being held to a higher standard of not speaking from a position of authority without the knowledge that can be gleaned from that free and open access and not doubling-down on their ignorance when it is brought to light for them?
And who is the judge of what is and isn't true? You seem to imply social network consensus is a safe ruler for what kind of speech should be allowed but to me it sounds absurd.
Chiming in from a country that had some classic show trials in the 50s (Czech Republic): the ultimate goal of the show trial was to get the indicted to self-confess and ask for a punishment themselves, in front of the public.
Cancel culture does not have the (physical) death penalty, only a possibly social one, but the impulse seems similar. Once you are put on the show trial, you are expected to grovel, beg, repudiate yourself etc. before being finally dispatched.
If they can get you ostracized socially (fired from a job, blacklisted in an industry), that is not a small punishment.
Plus, what interests me is the underlying mentality. It seems to be similar. It only does not have enough power right now, fortunately.
But the idea of destroying the heretic in maximal possible extent seems to be a fairly consistent common denominator. It is actually useful to know that it is still present in contemporary population; it means that if enough things go wrong and that faction gains power, you will see similar results once again.
This is exactly what the article discusses and this is also the reason why it is relevant and why it applies.
The topic becomes too controversial for a vocal minority and an author "voluntarily" self-censored. I chuckled when you said she did it herself. She did, likely after she was told what would happen otherwise.
I chuckled, because I assume you think she is free the way Sartre suggested she is free?
"| She did, likely after she was told what would happen otherwise.
Do you have any evidence of this or are you just saying it? "
If you are asking if I have inside information and maybe personal email between author and medium. I do not. It would be odd if I did. What I do have, however, is rather vivid memories of the same kind of idiocy working in practice in the old country, the only difference being that it was done under barely hidden threat from the state. All I have is instinct and here it is flashing bright red, because there are people in US right now, who are happily accepting this not only acceptable, but necessary ( not completely unlike communism era writers writing morality plays about the importance of writing things that are not upsetting to the system ).
"I was responding to this:
| This is truly the dark age of the information era.
and this:
| popular platforms are pressured to not do business with you
Both implies greater forces at play than a small, small minority of voices on twitter making authors feel bad.
Social media gave everyone a voice, what I don't understand is why anyone is surprised that there are vocal micro-minorities like this.
Years ago, they wrote a letter to the editor or the television station. Now they write it on Twitter.
That's not a dark age, and the opportunity to publish is much, much better now than it has ever been in the modern era."
If dissenting voices are silenced, it absolutely bears comparison to a dark age of information. You cannot excuse it. Nor should you.
| This is truly the dark age of the information era.
I think statements like this are hysterical and ahistorical. The amount of actual censorship and the way moral panics occurred throughout history make twitter dogpiling look absolutely quaint in comparison.
I don't disagree with Kazuo Ishiguro one bit, but I think all it means is that authors need to get thicker skin, because unlike the past, they can read their readers opinions.
"I think statements like this are hysterical and ahistorical."
I find this line of defense interesting. Can you elaborate a little further, because I would want to avoid putting words in your mouth? Are suggesting that the overall volume of censorship is lower so it can be ignored and explained away? I find your perspective somewhat fascinating.
You’re blurring away the gap between behavior and ideas. Sexual misconduct and “anti trans” views are as incommensurable as musical scales and baseball bats.
I understand there is a difference. I’m saying I think the ideas being cancelled are actually just the kind of garbage ideas that don’t have merit but do cause harm. Do you think that anti-trans beliefs are going to be a source of intellectual progress? Because i’d argue that the deconstruction of the gender binary IS the kind of transformative idea that some people in this thread are saying is being stifled. Is the group of young people refusing to buy jk rowling’s next work the ones crushing an idea to maintain social order, or are they the iconoclasts breaking down the old ways with radical ideas? I’d say the latter, but...
> Is the group of young people refusing to buy jk rowling’s next work the ones crushing an idea to maintain social order
This one.
The idea there is some sophisticated science and nuanced understanding behind the critique of JK Rowling's statements about trans people is completely laughable.
It consists of name calling and social signalling, almost exclusively.
> the deconstruction of the gender binary IS the kind of transformative idea that some people in this thread are saying is being stifled
You can't be serious.
There are countless studies showing real differences between men and women in physical and mental traits, and it is incredibly rare for the people deconstructing the gender binary to seriously engage with them. Again, it mostly devolves to name calling and insulting people who mention any evidence that might challenge their pre-established world view.
My general intuition agrees with your views on gender. But I don’t trust my general intuition blindly - nor do I think it should be the basis for social engineering.
MLK was hated by most and persecuted by the FBI as an evil communist because he spoke out against the war machine, and called for a radical revolution of values.
Semmelweis was locked in a mental prison and beaten to death for suggesting that doctors should wash their hands.
Socrates was sentenced to death for questioning the state.
Jesus was crucified for challenging the established religious order.
Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for suggesting that the stars in the night sky were just like our sun, with their own planets in orbit.
>Are any of these places where the next big leap in intellectual progress is going to come from?
Iconoclastic ideas, whether erroneous or true, are always deeply offensive to society at large, and humanity always viciously seeks to silence them with the popular approval of the status quo.
You gave five examples of state violence to maintain existing social order. “Cancel culture” is not being done by the state.
I agree, ideas can cause upheaval, and there will be resistance to those ideas. But have you considered that your resistance to the idea of holding people to account for their actions and words might be a resistance to a social change?
I’ve heard a lot about cancel culture, but most of it has been rich successful people being deprived of continuing to be successful for something they have said or done that was actually harmful. The few examples of miscarriages of justice have not amounted to much other than a few lost sales and some clapbacks on social media. It feels like we’re doing an actually pretty good job at judging when to all-out-destroy someone (harvey weinstein) and when to just be critical (almost everyone else)
>You gave five examples of state violence to maintain existing social order. “Cancel culture” is not being done by the state.
Isnt "the state", made up of people? To the person getting punished, why would they care who it is doing the punishing when the end result is the same?
>It's really sad that in the age of unrestricted access to information public discourse is self-restricting to avoid wrong-think and dissenting opinions. If you look at the history of intellectual progress, much of it was exactly due to unpopular opinions.
Cancel culture coming for me yet? No? Obama and Trump have condemned it and here we are.
Here's a counterpoint: in the last 150 years we've seen the enslavement and legally mandated racial segregation of African-Americans, same-sex marriages illegal until recently, enormous and largely forgot historical support of Hitler and Franco, a mass shooting of a synagogue amid a resurgence in neonazism, and are only celebrating 100 years of womens' right to vote.
It's hard, from the outside of the bubble of this generally white and male forum, sometimes to appreciate how badly other people have it. Some people are effectively cancelled all the time and even a small taste of it has people in an uproar here. Perhaps a little empathy on all sides would be beneficial.
This is exactly why we should cherish the standard of moderation and equality that has been achieved, because it is that rare and precious and is so very easily lost. There are significant threats to this both from the left and the right, and they must be carefully guarded against. Cancel Culture hasn't destroyed it yet, but the people driving cancellations most definitely aim to suppress the voices of at least 40% of the country, and add insult to injury by falsely claiming that "only racists/fascists/etc. are canceled". As if Twitter mobs phoning in death threats were composed of good, rational people who can be trusted with the power to decide whether a person deserves to be seen as a human being or as scum.
Ok, let us look at your examples and see how "white males" fared in it, right?
"same-sex marriages illegal" - white male gays had no exception.
"Hitler and Franco" - the first one massacred helluva lot of white males (Czechs, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians etc.). The second one led a civil war against whom? White male Spanish republicans.
"mass shooting of a synagogue" - are Jewish people white or not in your book? Because they seem to be considered white whenever affirmative action applies or Israeli-Palestinian conflict is being discussed (ironically so, given that random Israelis and Palestinians are hard to tell apart by color of their skins).
Even if it were only white males suffering from cancel culture, this wouldn't be an argument that justifies the modern environment. That said, it isn't simply white, straight, upper class males being targeted:
* The dutch translator for Amanda Gorman's inaugural poem quit after backlash due to the fact that they are a white, nonbinary individual rather than a "spoken-word artist, young, female and unapologetically Black". This despite the fact that they were specifically chosen by Gorman, herself a black female. [0]
* Back in 2018, a black female student at Smith College complained of being discriminated against for "eating while black" because she was asked to leave an area that had been marked as off-limits to everyone. Subsequent investigations revealed the employees involved did nothing wrong and did not target the student. Despite this, the New York Times reported last week that they continue to receive harassment and threats. One woman, a cafeteria worker who suffers from chronic health issues, can't find employment because of it. The ACLU has continued to insist that the employees wronged the student, despite the result of the investigations. [1]
* The YA fiction scene is constantly embroiled in controversy, often due to perceived crimes against woke culture. In one notable instance, the author Amelie Wen Zhao, a Chinese-American immigrant, had her upcoming novel cancelled and her career derailed due to the story involving a society in which people could be enslaved on a basis not involving the color of their skin. [2]
* A highly praised science fiction short story published in Clarksworld magazine called "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter", written by a trans author who was repurposing the meme, was pulled (along with all of the author's future submissions) after intense public backlash towards the author by the Twitter woke mob. [3]
* Glenn Greenwald, a gay journalist, has been targeted in recent weeks as a "transphobe" for drawing attention to recent study defending a book questioning if young people are being pressured into transitioning too strongly against an ACLU lawyer who was publicly arguing the book should be censored, and for drawing attention to recent research regarding the skyrocketing rates of those who identify as LGBTQ in the youngest generations [4] [5]
Plenty of women, people of color, members of the LGBT community, and the poor are being targeted and harmed for not toeing the cultural party line. This cultish group think is dangerous for individuals, and it's dangerous for our society, regardless of who you are.
Gay men and women being transphobic is... actually fairly common, actually. Being gay does not mean you automatically feel solidarity with trans folk, even if the roots of the gay rights movement involve us. The TERF movement in the U.K. started as a lesbian movement, and the argument that “girls are being forced to be trans” is one of their talking points.
Defending the right of someone to write a book about their thinly veiled hatred is one thing; commenting that you think there’s a good point in it and other people should read it is another.
I don't really think no one is allowed to say anything controversial anymore. Plenty of national newspapers are willing to give people front-page editorials to say things that are not mainstream. That's hardly a dark age.
I have a counter example, just look at the debacle when the New York Times published an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton and the editorial page editor had to resign because of the outrage about its content:
He called for using military force against civil rights activists. Is this the kind of great intellectual leap forward the grandparent post was talking about? Because if you want to talk about cancelling things, using the military to crush and jail activism is cancelling things pretty hard.
"One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers."
Incited by "violence" (mostly property damage, some clashes with cops trying to box in and disperse non-violent protestors) - but calling for dispersal of everyone. Using the military to crush a civil rights movement
Someone peacefully protesting is not a "lawbreaker". The quote you provided only refers to criminals. In fact "the right of the people peaceably to assemble" is explicitly allowed in the Constitution.
Please show me where he said peaceful protestors should have force used upon them.
When he said send in the military to do "an overwhelming show of force".
The military isn't going to walk through the crowd picking out the few people smashing windows or throwing bottles. That would not be an OVERWHELMING SHOW OF FORCE. They would march on the crowds, and almost inevitably use lethal force on them. Even if the target is only the ones throwing bottles or smashing windows, the military cannot and would not make that distinction in the moment.
So whn you said "He called for using military force against civil rights activists" that was not actually accurate? Cotton only said against lawbreakers right?
If I spread my coin jar out on the table, to sort all the quarters out, and you walk in and say “let’s clean all these pennies up! I’ll tip the table over and they’ll all fall into this garbage bag!” You technically said that you wanted to remove the pennies from the table, but your suggested course of action would have also removed all the quarters and dimes.
Do you understand the difference between how you say something, and the ideas you are conveying? The thing he suggested was using military force on the people protesting.
Even setting aside that. Even if he did mean to magically only use military force on protestors who broke the law. There were a lot of protests happening peacefully, but after an 8pm curfew - those would have been lawbreakers... and also peaceful protestors. Should they have military force used on them because they broke a curfew? Tom Cotton appears to think so
Seems like a mainstream article. Not sure what the point of this was? I didn't look at the articles mentioned in this article so if that was your point then let me know so I can review them.
I got a paywall so I could only read part of the article. The first part of the article seems to agree with my point that viewpoint discrimination is in fact happening. I didn't get to anything about newspapers before I got the paywall so I don't know what exact this had to do with what I posted. The article seemed quite mainstream to me though.
> depending on if you consider george will "mainstream"- he is an establishment conservative which certainly is a dissenting viewpoint at the washington post
I am getting a paywall so I couldn't read the article, but it seemed mainstream. Based on what I could gather it sounds like he supports a more fiscally responsible stimulus and to have it targeted to people who actually need it rather than to everybody. Assuming that is the gist of the article then I think that is decently mainstream. I would agree that it is a dissenting viewpoint for the Washington Post though.
>not a newspaper, but a national magazine a front page article with a definitively non-mainstream message
This article was pretty long so I skimmed it (so if I missed an important detail let me know). It sounds like a mainstream message. Gun ownership and protection of oneself with guns is a mainstream message in the US. Maybe it is a bit non-mainstream since the author is a socialist, but nothing stood out as out of the norm.
the first two articles are people who are being given a platform to complain about cancel culture. If the premise of the complaints about cancel culture is that anything outside of the "mainstream" woke consensus is silenced, these are proof that that is not happening.
The last article is not mainstream at all. Gun ownership as a means of pushing a leftist agenda is extremely different from the somewhat mainstream, right-leaning ideas about gun ownership
Voicing an unpopular opinion always had a cost, today and hundreds of years ago. Either your conviction outweighs the consequences or it doesn’t.
We shouldn’t assume that all or even most unpopular opinions will advance our intellectual progress. Like always there’s plenty of noise.
I’m not keen on the automated (AI) filtering though, or how fast opinions can spread in the Information Age. Feels like we’re headed for disaster by skipping the organic and slow human vetting process.
This seems to sort of elide the extremely popular and lucrative media ecosystem of the "IDW"/"free speech movement"/anti-woke movement.
Certainly it's true that the Overton window has shifted in large sections of the legacy media, but the Overton window always existed. The idea that its illegitimate for a private organization to shift their personal Overton window seems vaguely authoritarian to me.
Anyway it's never been easier to grow, reach, and monetize your personal audience (substack, podcasts, etc.) without gatekeepers.
Now by having one you're risking your entire career and sometimes more. This is truly the dark age of the information era.