The Real problem with cancel culture

[viper37]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/10/real-problem-with-cancel-culture/
I think the left is going too far and it will be no better than under Trump's boot.

The online "cancel culture" of Twitter mobs, public shamings and the occasional public firing has become pretty unpleasant of late. And unsurprisingly, people whose job it is to say things resent being hushed. Hence "The Letter," published this week by Harper's Magazine, in which 153 writers and public intellectuals warned that widespread cancellation is chilling the free exchange of ideas.

Indeed it is. I've been hearing from people, center-left as well as center-right, who have moved from astonishment to concern to terror as senior editors were fired for running op-eds written by conservative senators or approving inept headlines; as professors were investigated for offenses such as "reading aloud the words of Martin Luther King"; as a major arts foundation imploded because its statement of support for Black Lives Matter was judged insufficiently enthusiastic.

These people were becoming afraid of their own colleagues, who might, if they feel they're not being listened to, leak internal communications to friendly websites, or organize a public protest on Twitter.

Twitter's reaction to The Letter seemed to illustrate these concerns; unsurprisingly, the letter triggered some of the very tactics it implicitly condemns. To the panicked defenders of the old liberal order, it was a self-rebuttal of progressive claims that they weren't trying to stifle free expression, even of anodyne sentiments like: "The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away."

Coincidentally, this controversy erupted just after Osita Nwanevu of the New Republic had published one of the best defenses of cancel culture, justifying it as an exercise of vital First Amendment rights, not just to express displeasure with the words of others, but to freely associate with like-minded people. Which implies the right not to associate, either.

For backers of The Letter, Nwanevu offers a useful clarification: "Free speech" has turned into a fight about institutional norms and associational privileges, not just civil rights. The arguments may overlap with the civil rights debate, but the points of difference matter.

Queer Harry Potter fans respond to J.K. Rowling's comments on transgender women
Queer Harry Potter fans are grappling with their identities and attachment to the franchise in the wake of J.K. Rowling's stance on transgender women. (Monica Rodman/The Washington Post)
To be clear, I'm not neutral in that institutional fight. The cancelers aren't merely trying to expand the range of acceptable ideas so that it includes more marginalized voices. They are pressuring mainstream institutions, which serve as society's idea curators, to adopt a much narrower definition of "reasonable" opinion. The new rules would exclude the viewpoints of many Americans.

Intellectual monocultures are inherently unhealthy, and the tactics by which the new orthodoxy is being imposed are destructive. But I'm enough of an old-school liberal to think that I have to persuade my opponents, and I doubt they'll be moved by one more anthem to the glories of open inquiry.

They might, however, consider a few pragmatic problems with imposing their code by Twitter force. Twitter, with its 280-character limit, is not a medium for making lengthy, nuanced arguments. It's most effective at signaling the things you can't say. Consider the ultimate Twitter put-down: Delete your account.

That's especially a problem for institutions that are in the business of making arguments. Effectively handing over the reins of power to the Twittersphere, as seems to be happening, means offering control to those who are especially adept at not making arguments.

More broadly, this approach is at odds with what makes any institution function as more than a collection of self-supervising individuals. When much of your workforce is worried about summary firing, they put more and more effort into protecting themselves, and less and less effort into advancing the work of the institution. Doubly so when it is fellow employees who are pressing public attacks, as happened with the Twitter insurrection against a New York Times op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). Cotton had called for deploying the military to control riots; outraged staffers responded through coordinated tweets, which read, "Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger."

Though it was framed in the language of workplace safety, this was the kind of critical pressure campaign that is normally run by outsiders, not insiders — customers, not workers. In this, they are demonstrating a growing tendency that conservative policy maven Yuval Levin recently identified among American elites: people treating their institutions as platforms for personal performance, rather than a group effort with its own larger work. That's a tendency Twitter encourages, and not just among journalists, or academics: The foremost example is President Trump.

In fairness, the insiders of cancel culture might say that they have no choice: Twitter was their only way to accelerate urgent value shifts that might otherwise have taken decades. They're right that Twitter speeds everything up, and they're right that causes like racial equality are urgent — and also that white, straight, cisgender liberals always seem to be asking marginalized people to wait until they get around to fixing things.

And yet, even the critics clearly recognize that there is great value in these institutions. They might also recognize that there are reasons that institutions favor incremental, internal change. If you hold those sorts of fights on a public and inherently limited platform, then some part of your audience will inevitably wonder whether the ensuing consensus, such as it is, reflects what people actually think, rather than who they are afraid of.

So achieving victory this way risks damaging the ultimate prize, which is the power those institutions have as institutions, not just algorithmic amplifiers. That power is rooted in the perception that they are the patient accumulators, and, yes, the occasional revisionists, of something broad enough to be called "mainstream discourse."

It's that power, not the names on the doors, that lets those institutions establish the boundaries the cancelers are really hoping to control: not just of what people are willing to say in public, but what they are willing to believe.

[The Minsky Moment]

Cancel culture has been around for long time.

Like in colonial times when activists pushed for boycotts of British goods and publicly shamed those who broke line.

[crazy canuck]

Cancel culture has been around for long time.

Like in colonial times when activists pushed for boycotts of British goods and publicly shamed those who broke line.

Were you agreeing with Viper?

[Razgovory]

"under Trump's boot". The problem with Trump is not that he's tyrannical. 

[Josquius]

The far right doesn't like what they're saying they murder you.
The far left doesn't like what you're saying they are mean to you on twitter and boycott what you're selling.

[jimmy olsen]

 
https://twitter.com/HeerJeet/status/1280130364804001797

This is a big reason why I can't take the people who talk about cancel culture seriously. Their unwillingness to propose actual solutions to unjust firings betrays the fact that goal is simply to shore up the status quo with browbeating.

If "cancel culture" is wrongly costing people their jobs, we can:
➡️ Strengthen unions
➡️ Prohibit termination without cause
➡️ Extend Loudermill & Pickering rights to private employment

Strange how "cancel culture" critics never propose giving employees more power or rights

[Tamas]

https://twitter.com/HeerJeet/status/1280130364804001797

This is a big reason why I can't take the people who talk about cancel culture seriously. Their unwillingness to propose actual solutions to unjust firings betrays the fact that goal is simply to shore up the status quo with browbeating.

If "cancel culture" is wrongly costing people their jobs, we can:
➡️ Strengthen unions
➡️ Prohibit termination without cause
➡️ Extend Loudermill & Pickering rights to private employment

Strange how "cancel culture" critics never propose giving employees more power or rights

Is he advocating unions fighting the firing of people when it happens on grounds of racism or similar? The police unions are already doing that. As a solution to the overall problem of racism and overreactions to it, it seems sub-optimal.

[Sheilbh]

Is he advocating unions fighting the firing of people when it happens on grounds of racism or similar? The police unions are already doing that. As a solution to the overall problem of racism and overreactions to it, it seems sub-optimal.

I think he's advocating for some base level employment rights - not like in many US states where you can be fired for no reason whatsoever (ie it's not linked to your contract) without notice, which probably does encourage PR firings in the middle of a media storm. For example the Latino telecoms engineer who made an Ok sign, that a (white) person interpreted as the white power symbol (I've long wondered when that very online interpretation by users and critics would collide with the 95% of people who know nothing about it) who complained, kicked up a fuss. The guy got fired and the white guy who complained later admitted he might have misinterpreted the situation. With decent employment protections it's really unlikely that person gets fired because there'll be an investigation, legal will get brought in etc.

In the UK there probably is a clause in your contract about not bringing the company into disrepute or something similar, but posting something online is probably not serious enough to be dismissed immediately (although I could see that happening if it was really bad or targeted at individuals) so you'd probably have your 1+ month of notice and there's definitely a risk that for the employer that they'll end up in a tribunal.

For what it's worth with cancel culture I think the fundamentals of it aren't new. I think the bits that are new and potentially problematic is exactly that example - it is being shaped in the context of online discourse both by the far right and people fighting the far right. That's creating a set of symbols and codes and language that are, at this stage, mainly online and I think the real risk is when that online culture war clashes with ordinary people in the general public who are not very online because I think there is a very real risk as in that example. But that's not specific about cancel culture, I think it affects other bits of our politics and culture more generally about how internet culture interacts with the real world. Kill All Normies is really good, if not specificallly on this point.

[DGuller]

That's actually a good point.  The reason a cancel culture victim is fucked is because it's so much easier to just get rid of the problem.  The people doing the firing are just a chain of employees themselves who don't won't to get cancelled themselves for supporting the most horrible person on earth.  Remove the option to quickly fire someone to make the issue go away, and Twitter will focus on some other shiny thing before the process can run its course.

[viper37]

The far right doesn't like what they're saying they murder you.

Rarely so, because they are usually watched carefully by authorities.

The far left doesn't like what you're saying they are mean to you on twitter and boycott what you're selling.

And in the process, you lose your reputation, your friends, your carreer, your sources of income.
I'd prefer to be dead.

[crazy canuck]

Problematic if the far right are the authorities

[Eddie Teach]

Problematic if the far right are the authorities

Frex: the Philippines

[viper37]

Problematic if the far right are the authorities

not better when the far left is the authority.

[Razgovory]

And in the process, you lose your reputation, your friends, your carreer, your sources of income.
I'd prefer to be dead.

Then don't complain about left-wing activists using violence.

[FunkMonk]

Bari Weiss, moderate conservative columnist at the NYT, resigns. More fuel in the debate over cancel culture.

Dear A.G.,

It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from The New York Times.

I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home. The reason for this effort was clear: The paper's failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn't have a firm grasp of the country it covers. Dean Baquet and others have admitted as much on various occasions. The priority in Opinion was to help redress that critical shortcoming.

I was honored to be part of that effort, led by James Bennet. I am proud of my work as a writer and as an editor. Among those I helped bring to our pages: the Venezuelan dissident Wuilly Arteaga; the Iranian chess champion Dorsa Derakhshani; and the Hong Kong Christian democrat Derek Lam. Also: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Masih Alinejad, Zaina Arafat, Elna Baker, Rachael Denhollander, Matti Friedman, Nick Gillespie, Heather Heying, Randall Kennedy, Julius Krein, Monica Lewinsky, Glenn Loury, Jesse Singal, Ali Soufan, Chloe Valdary, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Wesley Yang, and many others.

But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn't a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I'm "writing about the Jews again." Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly "inclusive" one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I'm no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.

I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper's entire staff and the public. And I certainly can't square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage. Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.

Part of me wishes I could say that my experience was unique. But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm.

What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity. If a person's ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.

Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired. If a piece is perceived as likely to inspire backlash internally or on social media, the editor or writer avoids pitching it. If she feels strongly enough to suggest it, she is quickly steered to safer ground. And if, every now and then, she succeeds in getting a piece published that does not explicitly promote progressive causes, it happens only after every line is carefully massaged, negotiated and caveated.

It took the paper two days and two jobs to say that the Tom Cotton op-ed "fell short of our standards." We attached an editor's note on a travel story about Jaffa shortly after it was published because it "failed to touch on important aspects of Jaffa's makeup and its history." But there is still none appended to Cheryl Strayed's fawning interview with the writer Alice Walker, a proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati.

The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people. This is a galaxy in which, to choose just a few recent examples, the Soviet space program is lauded for its "diversity"; the doxxing of teenagers in the name of justice is condoned; and the worst caste systems in human history includes the United States alongside Nazi Germany.

Even now, I am confident that most people at The Times do not hold these views. Yet they are cowed by those who do. Why? Perhaps because they believe the ultimate goal is righteous. Perhaps because they believe that they will be granted protection if they nod along as the coin of our realm—language—is degraded in service to an ever-shifting laundry list of right causes. Perhaps because there are millions of unemployed people in this country and they feel lucky to have a job in a contracting industry.

Or perhaps it is because they know that, nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back. Too wise to post on Slack, they write to me privately about the "new McCarthyism" that has taken root at the paper of record.

All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they'll have to do to advance in their careers. Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you'll be hung out to dry.

For these young writers and editors, there is one consolation. As places like The Times and other once-great journalistic institutions betray their standards and lose sight of their principles, Americans still hunger for news that is accurate, opinions that are vital, and debate that is sincere. I hear from these people every day. "An independent press is not a liberal ideal or a progressive ideal or a democratic ideal. It's an American ideal," you said a few years ago. I couldn't agree more. America is a great country that deserves a great newspaper.

None of this means that some of the most talented journalists in the world don't still labor for this newspaper. They do, which is what makes the illiberal environment especially heartbreaking. I will be, as ever, a dedicated reader of their work. But I can no longer do the work that you brought me here to do—the work that Adolph Ochs described in that famous 1896 statement: "to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion."

Ochs's idea is one of the best I've encountered. And I've always comforted myself with the notion that the best ideas win out. But ideas cannot win on their own. They need a voice. They need a hearing. Above all, they must be backed by people willing to live by them.

Sincerely,

Bari