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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I offered a couple of quick cites in response to your request for examples of cancel culture. You found one of the hundreds of instances cited and asserted that it was not accurate. I'll accept your representation that you know more about Rappoport and that he was fired for more than the tweet. Okay. What of all the others who have been subjected to abuse by lunatics for merely stating things that are not sufficiently orthodox for the left wing woke mafia?

Here's how the cancel culture debate works:

1. There are idiots out there who comprise "cancel culture" - legions of morons who freak out at anything that even slightly trips their insanely low bar for being offended. And there are organizers who will aggregate them and channel their unlettered views into a rage campaign which will get picked up by the media if the target is famous enough.

2. Everyone privately acknowledges these practices are taking place, as they are increasingly common and done in public. We all see this craziness. It's a typical moral panic where emotional people get wildly emotional about everything and act out and opportunists package their anger and use it for gain.

3. We all know it's an immature mix of trolling and virtue signalling.

4. BUT... Some of us agree with the aims of cancel culture. We think its practitioners are useful idiots. I think some of us think that we have to shut down the other side of the debate to achieve the social change some of us think is desperately needed. Ends justify the means.

5. Unfortunately, one cannot openly argue the ends justify the means (though some cancel culture defenders come quite close), or defend cancel culture in the abstract, as the concept of trying to squelch or shame opposing debate, rather than tackle it on the merits, offends a basic premise of liberal thinking: the open exchange of ideas.

6. Some of us accept 5 and wind up supporting things like the very sensible Harper's Letter.

7. Some of us don't, and find ourselves in a lousy position. We're forced to come up with a defense for immature cancel culture proponents and that unspoken "ends justify the means" mentality underpinning cancel culture.

8. These people resort to specious arguments:

a. "No one is being cancelled. They can still speak." This is of course bullshit. Many targets lose jobs or platforms, and if not, they are browbeaten by colleagues who agree with cancel culture or wish to telecast adequate progressive bona fides to protect themselves. These targets become pariahs.

b. "'Counter-speech' calling for firing or deplatforming is free speech." This is actually true. But this is authoritarian. On the exact same continuum as Trump calling for protestors to be beaten.

c. "Power dynamics requires us to use cancel culture. We're underdogs. We need a bigger platform for our orthodox woke voices, and that can only be achieved by toppling some of the establishment voices and shutting down competing smaller voices that do not agree with us." Again, this is authoritarian.

d. "We're victims, and when you challenge us, you hurt us." (The 'words are violence' argument.) This one is too frivolous to entertain. Thankfully, it's largely relegated to the fantasyland of academia.

e. "Cancel culture is made up." Empirically, a waterfall of data and instances can be offered to dismiss this rubbish.

f. "Cancelled people have actually been fired because they suck, not because of pressure from cancel culture proponents." This is the "Megyn Kelly Defense." NBC was indeed looking to can her for bad ratings. And Rappoport, according to your inside knowledge, is another instance of it. But these are exceptions to the rule. The usual rule is that the institution in which the target works is exposed to pressure from cancel culture nitwits and feels the need to either: (i) put the target on leave until the issue fades; or, (ii) fire or press for the individual's resignation. Corporations are the most vile manipulators and enablers of cancel culture. For more on that, look up the endless articles decrying the cynicism and opportunism of "woke capitalism."*

Cancel culture is real, and indefensible, and a practice for low minds. I remain an advocate for addressing it as follows: Roll One's Eyes and Stop Reading. Do not feed the trolls.
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* https://www.theatlantic.com/internat...talism/614086/

Some of the responses to the Harper's Letter said, basically, sure everyone is favor of free speech in the abstract, but also everyone agrees that there are some things that are just out of bounds. You agreed. Another response to the letter said, hey, the problem with the letter is that it refers to a bunch of difficult situations in a sort of abstract way, glossing over real problems in a way that makes one side (e.g., J.K. Rowling's) look better than it really looks when you drill down a little into what actually happened. In other words, the idea of "cancel culture" is being exploited by people who did things that are not particularly defensible, and who are making a lot of noise about the "culture" more generally because they don't want to talk about what actually happened in certain instances specifically.

This is exactly what Williamson (and you, by extension) did with Rapoport. You don't have dig very hard to see that he was fired because of a history of discriminating against people who worked for him, not because he posted the wrong picture on Instagram.

There is, in fact, another pattern here, one you don't want to see. Bennett, pretty clearly, was not fired because people were offended by Cotton's views, but because he managed the op-ed and the fall-out so poorly -- in particularly, telling other people they needed to be exposed to Cotton's views and then admitting he hadn't read the op-ed. Bennett wasn't fired after the op-ed ran, but only after the story kept getting worse as he put gasoline on the fire. J.K. Rowling, who signed the Harper's letter, now is in the news for using libel lawyers to extract money from a news site for children that did not like her views about trans people. She is actually suppressing speech, not the "morons" who are "easily offended" who don't like her views about trans people. "Cancel culture" becomes a way to delegitimize and dismiss the people criticizing her without paying attention to what she and they are actually saying and doing. (For the record, I don't agree with all of the criticisms of her.) Even if the phenomenon you're trying to describe is true and problematic in some cases, it is being used as a smokescreen in other cases so that people can avoid what's really going on.

This is why I keep inviting you to talk about the specifics of actual cases, to respond to actual people instead of referring nebulously to "idiots" and "morons" and "organizers." Just as you say may agree with the aims of culture culture, others may agree with what you would say about specific cases. But we'll never know if you keep tilting at windmills.

You've put a lot of words in quotes in your post. Trying quoting someone.