Forums

[sebastian_dangerfield]

"[M]ost of the people who use the term [cancel culture] are complaining about the left and ignoring the right, and you yourself keep drifting into your complaints about "wokeism" and the left when you talk about it. You don't drift the other way. You obviously can use the term "cancel culture" however you want, but you can't change the fact that a great many people are using it not out of an even-handed commitment to free speech, but in a bad faith way to score points against the left.

I do drift the other way. I've championed almost every person who's been mobbed. I recall most recently defending Ilhan Omar against charges of antisemitism. I've stated Wilkinson is a victim of cancel culture, whether he believes it or not.

When I take shots at the woke it's because they're a religion. Religions seek to shut down that which critiques their narrative. I see almost no daylight between Focus on the Family's cancellation via boycotting and the woke practice of mobbing people on social media and seeking to get them fired.

Religions are pretty consistent.

There was no golden age when everyone revered Enlightenment values. You are confusing what you learned about the scholarly consensus about the First Amendment in law school with the rest of human history. There have always been many people who heard speech they didn't like and did not respond by explaining why they thought it was flawed.

There has been among respectable people. The low and venal masses do things like amassing mobs, or boycotting people, for espousing views they don't like.* Among people deserving of respect, people you'd allow into your home, Enlightenment views have always been the rule.

*ETA: Within reason, of course. Boycotting an openly bigoted business (cake maker who wouldn't serve gays) or a business causing harm (a company known for polluting recklessly) is acceptable. Boycotting a children's book publisher for putting gay families in a school book, or some media outlet for not firing a pundit who said something insensitive, is not.

What is different now is social media. In the Enlightenment, printing presses were expensive. Most people couldn't dream of getting published. Now everyone can have a Twitter account. I have two.

Agreed.

When debate is a structured, elite contest, you can expect Enlightenment debate. When anyone can argue, not so much. What you are lamenting, I think, is mostly the coarsening of dialogue that happens when technology gets cheaper and everyone can participate.

Agreed. You've caused me to reassess the source of my disdain. I hadn't considered this angle, but that's due to my incredible lack of self awareness. This driver of my thinking is hiding in plain sight.

The word "destroy" is hyperbole, hyperbole you have resorted to because you can't figure out what you want to say. Let's go back to Matt Yglesias, who was the first example you gave of a moderate who was "taken out". No one is trying to "destroy" Matt Yglesias. No one even asked him to leave Vox. He decided he'd rather be a solo shop, a decision he made before when he left The American Prospect to blog on his own domain.

Perhaps that is hyperbole in some circumstances. But in others, it is not. Take this person on the Mandalorian. She says something dumb - that to be a Republican in Hollywood is akin to being a Jew in the Holocaust. Incredibly stupid comment, but is it something warranting her firing and blackballing in Hollywood? Steve Schwarzmann said the same thing about removal of the carried interest loophole. But since he's uncancellable, the mob did not even bother coming for him.

This actress, OTOH, who needs a paycheck, was targeted and taken out by a mob of both right, middle, and left zealots.

Part of the problem is that your description of "cancel culture" isn't about the people actually doing the "canceling." Let's pretend that there are people out there who are so upset about what Matt Yglesias wrote at Vox that they thought he should be "destroyed." Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one. The only people who can "destroy" his career there are the people who run Vox. Let's pretend they told him to leave because of a bunch of angry tweets. Depending on what you pretend, that's either reasonable or it's not. If it's not, the fault is not with the people who expressed stupid views on Twitter. They don't have agency. The fault is with the brass at Vox.

I agree that the real problem is with those in power. The corporate toadying to these dim masses of zealots is truly loathsome. But this toadying happens for a reason. These mobs scare institutions into making a very cynical and cowardly but quite rational risk assessment:

It is better to get on the bandwagon than wind up in the dock.

So how do they do that? In the case of right wing cancellation, call the cancelers bigots, intolerant, or white supremacists. You can do that to the right these days. This delegitimizes the critics. In the case of left wing cancelers, sacrifice an Andrew Sullivan or two. And start a "racial equity" or "#metoo avoidance" initiative where employees have to sleep through some classes on "privilege" and "power inequities." Then hire some PR flacks to put out an ad campaign touting your commitments to "equity" and "justice."

Yes, this cynical stuff is the worst. But this toadying wouldn't happen if the mobs weren't so incessant.

If you want to try to persuade me that a lot of companies are too sensitive to public criticism and act too quickly to let people go because of a public fuss, maybe a Justine Sacco or Will Wilkinson, I'm with you. But that's not a "culture" problem. That's a management problem. There are very specific people making very specific decisions. It's the same kind of weak leadership that gives you "zero tolerance" policies. But "cancel culture" as a concept absolves those people of their responsibility by diffusing ownership to the whole culture. Yes, Will Wilkinson was the victim of a right-wing hit. That wasn't the culture -- that was a few bad people trying to get him fired, and lousy leadership at the Niskanen Center making bad decisions.

One day, and soon, this mob behavior will be broken. One of these mobs will fuck with a Bezos, or a Musk, who'll stand up to them, refuse their demands, and demonstrate that they can be ignored. But until then, we've got a shitshow on our hands where idiot masses are controlling scared corporate hierarchies.

Rereading this passage, what's clear is how your rhetoric appeals to elite values ("talent to dismantle," "those of us who are smarter," "the advantages that would gift one the ability to express himself with a tight, logical counter") in protest against the idea that ordinary people ("degenerate," "Appalachia," "knuckle draggers") get to participate in public debate. You leave things "unsaid," but they are "emotional." And so on.

Discourse on complex issues should be within rules established by elites. The masses should be allowed to bleat as they like, but corporations and institutions should ignore them when they insist on silly policies or demand firings. They should be compelled to either develop higher powers of critical thinking or not be paid attention to in the public square.

You critique me for not taking on the right more often. Well, a big part of the reason for that is I cannot engage people who live in fantasy. How does one even attempt to consider the ravings of a QAnon follower? How does one engage a person who insists an election was stolen where the math renders that impossible?

The left, OTOH, has a cabal of useful idiots in academia and govt, along with its corporate toadies, to shine a patina of gravitas on its bullshit. This allows its frivolous arguments, many of which are encapsulated in wokeness, to breach into the mainstream. This compels sane people to say, "Wait. That's bullshit. Stop it," where one can just ignore most right wing loons.

You're right about the right's basic hostility to Enlightenment values. It's a real thing. You see it in all the bad faith arguments. It's a different problem than "cancel culture." So what's the answer?

YMMV, but I just ignore the bad faith arguments. I just walk away from a person telling me the election was stolen. As to QAnon sorts, thankfully, they aren't found among the level of people in my circle, so I don't have to even think about running into them.