Cancel Culture and Harper's Letter

Cancel Culture and Harper's Letter(jezebel.com)

16 points by throwaway29102 5 years ago | 15 comments

wilsocr88 5 years ago |

I have to admit, I did not expect to see a Jezebel headline and think, "Well, that is an extremely reasonable thing to say."

A good section:

>"And like many religions, the cancel culture congregation is teeming with members eager to point out the sins of others to deflect from their own. Mass free expression is chaotic, clearly, which at the very least means we should be wary of pat explanations that attempt to squeeze the nature of the problem down to 500 words and place certain manners of expression in tidy boxes on either side of an ideological divide."

Jezebel has always (perhaps fallaciously) been considered something of a thought leader in some communities. Maybe this gutsy article, which some their audience may not like, signals a return to some kind of capacity for normal discourse among human beings.

gotoeleven 5 years ago | |

I hope so. The world is going to be a much nastier place if this new anti-free-speech in the name of manners and harm prevention stuff takes hold.

Free speech is the greatest equalizing force between the powerful and the non-powerful that has ever existed. The only people who are against free speech are the ones that plan on being among the powerful.

0x8BADF00D 5 years ago |

In my view, the issue is not so much cancel culture. It’s that journalists can publish inaccurate information and libel people without any sort of punishment or way for the targeted party to respond.

Also, this article is extremely racist. They are supporting the decades old trope of the “uppity” black male that just won’t shut up and behave like an Uncle Tom. At least these journalists are no longer hiding what they really think about minorities.

nickthegreek 5 years ago | |

There is a way to respond when a corporation says libel thing about you... you can sue. The target can also respond, thru social media at the very least.

Where in this article were they 'supporting the decades old trope of the “uppity” black male that just won’t shut up'? I felt like I read it pretty closely and I cant even begin to understand where that took place.

0x8BADF00D 5 years ago | | |

> Kanye West has made increasingly oppressive, malformed declarations over the past several years, and yet commands earth-stopping attention every time he opens his mouth/Twitter app. Forbes ran a massive feature just this week about the ridiculous notion of West running for president in this year’s election.

It is very subtle. Oppressive? Malformed? This is basically calling him an uppity ni---r.

awb 5 years ago |

> Last year in The New Republic, Osita Nwanevu characterized social media backlash that is often seen as the root of cancel culture as not a threat to speech itself, but perhaps just noise. “It seems at least possible that tweets are just tweets—that as difficult as criticism in the social media age may be to contend with at times, it bears no meaningful resemblance to genocides, excommunications, executions, assassinations, political imprisonments, and official bans past,” wrote Nwanevu. “Perhaps we should choose instead to understand cancel culture as something much more mundane: ordinary public disfavor voiced by ordinary people across new platforms.”

Anti-Cancel Culture seems just as anti-Free Speech as Cancel Culture. Everyone has a right to express their opinion. And everyone has a right to react and respond to your opinion. People are allowed to boycott, demand, shun whoever they want. And "cancel cancel culture" folks are doing exactly that: expressing outrage, demanding change, shaming others, etc. It's totally fine, just ironic to see people shaming people for shaming others.

Have people in power made bad decisions based on a few loud voices? Sure. But it's the people in power who bare the responsibility, not the people who expressed outrage.

gotoeleven 5 years ago | |

Being actually supportive of free speech requires some level of tolerance for things that you disagree with. It can't possibly work if people with unpopular opinions are are cancelled (i.e. blacklisted, fired, castigated, sanctioned). If the government did these things to people with unpopular opinions that would clearly be anti-free-speech, right? Why is it different when it's done by a mob instead?

awb 5 years ago | | |

> Why is it different when it's done by a mob instead?

Because the "mob" isn't firing people, people in positions of power are doing that. Ordinary folks are powerless outside of their voice. So, they're complaining, sending messages, signing petitions, taking a stance, etc. and social media now lets their voices be heard.

You don't have to agree with it, but to describe folks you don't agree with as a "mob", or claim that they're using "groupthink", etc. seems like you might be quickly dismissing them.

Political parties engage in groupthink and flood the news and social media with their viewpoints. Are they "mobs"? They try to get their opponents fired and blacklisted.

I totally understand being against someone being fired. But being against a group of people who are outraged and speaking their minds seems anti-Free speech to me. It's the "cancel bosses" that we should be focused on, who are actually affecting people's lives, not ordinary people that are exercising their rights to free speech.

eesmith 5 years ago | | |

No? I mean, John Stuart Mills argues that the only tolerance needed is for those things which "tend to his improvement", so long as it isn't just for the sake of punishment. I'll quote his "On Liberty":

"We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavourable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We are not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it (though not to parade the avoidance), for we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us. We have a right, and it may be our duty, to caution others against him, if we think his example or conversation likely to have a pernicious effect on those with whom he associates. We may give others a preference over him in optional good offices, except those which tend to his improvement. In these various modes a person may suffer very severe penalties at the hands of others, for faults which directly concern only himself; but he suffers these penalties only in so far as they are the natural, and, as it were, the spontaneous consequences of the faults themselves, not because they are purposely inflicted on him for the sake of punishment."

It therefore seems like the calls against so-called 'cancel culture' are mostly calls to prevent people from exercising their liberty.

Blacklisting, being fired, castigation, and sanction as a result of unpopular opinions has been a deeply embedded part of American culture since its founding. It seems unreasonable to characterize them as a distinct "cancel culture".

The government has the monopoly on the use of force. Its citizens do not. People have liberty. Government does not. People have the right of free association. Government does not. So there's a few big differences there.

And, what's this about a "mob"?

If I decide to castigate someone whose opinions I find unfavourable, is that not fine? If not, why not?

If many people decide to castigate someone for those same unfavourable opinions, is that also not fine? And if not, why not?

Are those actions somehow a "mob" because there are many?

If so, that's a marvelous escape clause for the powerful. The handful of mine owners, working together to blacklist union organizers, are too small to be a mob, so therefore their blacklist isn't part of cancel culture, yes?

mcphage 5 years ago | | |

> It can't possibly work if people with unpopular opinions are are cancelled (i.e. blacklisted, fired, castigated, sanctioned)

What would it mean for JK Rowling to be cancelled? Legitimately an honest question: she's a billionaire backed by a media empire. What do you think would have to happen before she could be considered "cancelled"?

bryanlarsen 5 years ago | | |

The government does these sorts of things to people all the time without falling foul of the first amendment. They can't take away your right to say something but they absolutely do limit where you can say them. Trump has fired tons of people for saying stuff he doesn't like. Democratic adminstrations have too.