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That second link is telling - they list 9 people; one lost a book deal, one had a book withdrawn, one had to switch to smaller publisher, and one lost an honorary charity position.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.
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.