A good sign of how intellectually bankrupt the pro-"cancel" argument is that almost every single defense I've read grossly misunderstands the complaints.
> Have you met the internet? Chilled speech isn’t new. Members of marginalized groups online have from the start dealt with threats, insults, and harassment campaigns for the crime of articulating their ideas in public. But free speech defenders didn’t sound the alarm about the marketplace of ideas then. I’m not sure what’s changed.
Free speech defenders don't complain about "non-marginalized" groups being hassled by a bunch of random accounts either. And nothing about "cancel culture" complaints preclude tamping down on abuse and harassment; they're barely even related. In fact, a common criticism of those complaining about cancel culture is that they _overemphasize_ politeness and civility, while allowing bad (and "bad") ideas to be expressed (the "pro cancel culture" habit, OTOH, seems to be about sticking to the a narrow range of approved views while acting as vile as possible).
What free speech defenders _absolutely_ did do is defend the rights marginalized groups to say their piece; the rights revolutions of the last half century+ have all grown out of the foundation of a society where people fight for the right of unpopular speech to be heard.
The complaint is about extending the consequences of political speech to every possible unrelated sphere of life, to letting those with the most cultural power codify their biases as the only acceptable speech, and in some cases to cutting off access to the modern public squares: "go build your own social network" does carry some weight as an argument, but by the time you get to "go build your own payment processor", you're making a mockery of the concept of a society tolerant of pluralism. The fact that right now the views protected by liberal values are rightwing is incidental: the purpose of these rights is to defend the cultural underdog, and diminishing them just hurts the marginalized in the longterm. This is something the left once knew: the ACLU's historical defense of the KKK/WBC et al has been rooted in a defense of these _rights_, not a defense of the groups.
There is probably a well-reasoned argument out there for cancel culture, and I don't consider myself to be informed on a topic until I've heard a compelling argument from both sides. But this article, like most of what I've heard in defense of cancel culture so far, is pretty garbage.
> Free speech defenders don't complain about "non-marginalized" groups being hassled by a bunch of random accounts either. And nothing about "cancel culture" complaints preclude tamping down on abuse and harassment; they're barely even related. In fact, a common criticism of those complaining about cancel culture is that they _overemphasize_ politeness and civility, while allowing bad (and "bad") ideas to be expressed (the "pro cancel culture" habit, OTOH, seems to be about sticking to the a narrow range of approved views while acting as vile as possible).
While I tend towards the side of free speech myself, I think TFA is treating Reddit shutting down certain subreddits as equivalent to marginalized groups being threatened in terms of its chilling effect on speech.
This has been a common argument of the "new left" (is there a better term?); an environment of ostensibly free speech is not actually free if some groups are made too afraid to speak by the speech of others.
Through that lens, I think the rough thrust of the article is "Free speech on the internet has failed; your choice now is whether allowable speech should be dictated by the moderators or the trolls?"
Context, therefore, matters. If someone was lynched by KKK members last week, then a peaceful KKK march can be threatening by context without any harrasing or threatening language.
I'm not totally convinced by these arguments, but I think that's the general thrust.
As an aside, the fact that the "public squares" of the internet are privately owned certainly complicate matters; the ACLU certainly wasn't going to force private businesses to hang up KKK banners.
What I notice about the "cancel-culture" debate is that it predominantly seems to define culture as being the sphere of the people who can be cancelled to begin with.
When I look at American discourse from the outside, it seems like liberalism, democracy, and so on are synonymous with the ability of a few high-profile pundits or 'public intellectuals' to express themselves.
I think the root of the problem isn't cancel culture but the limitation of the political to a bunch of celebrities.
I noticed this when in the US the debate about college culture wars started. They exist here as well, but they're a curiousity. Nobody equates tenured academics or a bunch of woke college kids going for each others throat with democracy or liberalism.
In tech people often argue that decentralisation is a good tool against tyranny. This simply is what democratic discourse is supposed to be. If political discourse takes place in every home at the dinner table, in the pub, in political parties and part of ordinary every day life between ordinary people and not boosted on twitter then there cannot be cancel culture because nobody individually is relevant or public enough to be cancelled.
If however political discourse is the job of the professional commentariat and the rest of society is some sort of passive mob waiting to be activated, sure then you get cancel culture. If however politics consists of people staring at TV debates for months or years and you treat politics like a season of survivor with the citizen being reduced to the role of some consumer, then why is anyone surprised by the result.
While I'm sure that US politics is covered a lot more in other countries than other countries' politics are covered in the US, the outsider view is always going to bias towards celebrities and large events.
From the media coverage of the UK in the US, for example, 2019's political process was composed primarily of citizens throwing milkshakes at UKIP members while Parliament argued about Brexit.
Similarly in the US, college culture wars are largely a curiosity except when someone old wants to point out how hopeless the next generation is, or someone young wants to point out how out-of-touch the previous generation is.
>When I look at American discourse from the outside, it seems like liberalism, democracy, and so on are synonymous with the ability of a few high-profile pundits or 'public intellectuals' to express themselves.
I think you have the right idea. Democracy has always been a tool of the majority, perhaps a wrench to be used against the minority's head. Through cancel culture, one political force in the U.S. has decided to cut out the other side of the equation from even having a say in the matter. If the other side of the argument doesn't exist, you can go on and do whatever you want. At least they think so anyway. I don't think it's sustainable for a country to be led by a group of people who has decidedly rejected the existence of half of the people in the entire country. But ignoring them doesn't make them go away. You will have to address them eventually, and at that point, the time for talking may be over, and now you've got a civil war. That's why I don't like Trump right now. That man will never be able to unify the country. Only being able to do things for your political allies and the people who you support...that is no way to lead a country. At some point, you have to address the other side. They exist and they aren't going to go away.
The more pundits change, the more they stay the same. For all the benefits of the internet, and perhaps a rise of alt-voices in the twittersphere, the talking heads on the tv all seem to be the same old people.
It should be clear from history these people aren’t there for their accuracy but because they’re part of an established narrative and they’re “safe” for their markets.
Even basic contrarians really aren’t heard from within a market anymore. An example for me would be Chomsky. In the 80’s or 90’s, you could rarely see him on the “liberal” networks, but he got cancelled long ago by them. We are “free” to see him on foreign media or RT though, but no American would bother.
It is interesting to see foreign networks like the BBC or NHK covering US news - the talking heads they use aren’t really high-profile in the US so I wonder how they’re chosen.
> What I notice about the "cancel-culture" debate is that it predominantly seems to define culture as being the sphere of the people who can be cancelled to begin with.
Yeah, and to a certain extent those people have also been "canceling" people for their views a long time, but the people they canceled didn't have a platform to complain and be heard.
> I think the root of the problem isn't cancel culture but the limitation of the political to a bunch of celebrities....
> If however political discourse is the job of the professional commentariat and the rest of society is some sort of passive mob waiting to be activated, sure then you get cancel culture.
I think you're probably right about the root cause, but that's going to be a really tough problem to solve. A corollary of your observation is the ability of "rest of society" to participate in productively in "political discourse" seems to have atrophied. It's going to be a difficult problem to fix, and a lot of things we take for granted (like national media that gets all the attention) will probably have to change to fix it.
8 comments
[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 28.7 ms ] thread> Have you met the internet? Chilled speech isn’t new. Members of marginalized groups online have from the start dealt with threats, insults, and harassment campaigns for the crime of articulating their ideas in public. But free speech defenders didn’t sound the alarm about the marketplace of ideas then. I’m not sure what’s changed.
Free speech defenders don't complain about "non-marginalized" groups being hassled by a bunch of random accounts either. And nothing about "cancel culture" complaints preclude tamping down on abuse and harassment; they're barely even related. In fact, a common criticism of those complaining about cancel culture is that they _overemphasize_ politeness and civility, while allowing bad (and "bad") ideas to be expressed (the "pro cancel culture" habit, OTOH, seems to be about sticking to the a narrow range of approved views while acting as vile as possible).
What free speech defenders _absolutely_ did do is defend the rights marginalized groups to say their piece; the rights revolutions of the last half century+ have all grown out of the foundation of a society where people fight for the right of unpopular speech to be heard.
The complaint is about extending the consequences of political speech to every possible unrelated sphere of life, to letting those with the most cultural power codify their biases as the only acceptable speech, and in some cases to cutting off access to the modern public squares: "go build your own social network" does carry some weight as an argument, but by the time you get to "go build your own payment processor", you're making a mockery of the concept of a society tolerant of pluralism. The fact that right now the views protected by liberal values are rightwing is incidental: the purpose of these rights is to defend the cultural underdog, and diminishing them just hurts the marginalized in the longterm. This is something the left once knew: the ACLU's historical defense of the KKK/WBC et al has been rooted in a defense of these _rights_, not a defense of the groups.
There is probably a well-reasoned argument out there for cancel culture, and I don't consider myself to be informed on a topic until I've heard a compelling argument from both sides. But this article, like most of what I've heard in defense of cancel culture so far, is pretty garbage.
While I tend towards the side of free speech myself, I think TFA is treating Reddit shutting down certain subreddits as equivalent to marginalized groups being threatened in terms of its chilling effect on speech.
This has been a common argument of the "new left" (is there a better term?); an environment of ostensibly free speech is not actually free if some groups are made too afraid to speak by the speech of others.
Through that lens, I think the rough thrust of the article is "Free speech on the internet has failed; your choice now is whether allowable speech should be dictated by the moderators or the trolls?"
Context, therefore, matters. If someone was lynched by KKK members last week, then a peaceful KKK march can be threatening by context without any harrasing or threatening language.
I'm not totally convinced by these arguments, but I think that's the general thrust.
As an aside, the fact that the "public squares" of the internet are privately owned certainly complicate matters; the ACLU certainly wasn't going to force private businesses to hang up KKK banners.
When I look at American discourse from the outside, it seems like liberalism, democracy, and so on are synonymous with the ability of a few high-profile pundits or 'public intellectuals' to express themselves.
I think the root of the problem isn't cancel culture but the limitation of the political to a bunch of celebrities.
I noticed this when in the US the debate about college culture wars started. They exist here as well, but they're a curiousity. Nobody equates tenured academics or a bunch of woke college kids going for each others throat with democracy or liberalism.
In tech people often argue that decentralisation is a good tool against tyranny. This simply is what democratic discourse is supposed to be. If political discourse takes place in every home at the dinner table, in the pub, in political parties and part of ordinary every day life between ordinary people and not boosted on twitter then there cannot be cancel culture because nobody individually is relevant or public enough to be cancelled.
If however political discourse is the job of the professional commentariat and the rest of society is some sort of passive mob waiting to be activated, sure then you get cancel culture. If however politics consists of people staring at TV debates for months or years and you treat politics like a season of survivor with the citizen being reduced to the role of some consumer, then why is anyone surprised by the result.
From the media coverage of the UK in the US, for example, 2019's political process was composed primarily of citizens throwing milkshakes at UKIP members while Parliament argued about Brexit.
Similarly in the US, college culture wars are largely a curiosity except when someone old wants to point out how hopeless the next generation is, or someone young wants to point out how out-of-touch the previous generation is.
I think you have the right idea. Democracy has always been a tool of the majority, perhaps a wrench to be used against the minority's head. Through cancel culture, one political force in the U.S. has decided to cut out the other side of the equation from even having a say in the matter. If the other side of the argument doesn't exist, you can go on and do whatever you want. At least they think so anyway. I don't think it's sustainable for a country to be led by a group of people who has decidedly rejected the existence of half of the people in the entire country. But ignoring them doesn't make them go away. You will have to address them eventually, and at that point, the time for talking may be over, and now you've got a civil war. That's why I don't like Trump right now. That man will never be able to unify the country. Only being able to do things for your political allies and the people who you support...that is no way to lead a country. At some point, you have to address the other side. They exist and they aren't going to go away.
It should be clear from history these people aren’t there for their accuracy but because they’re part of an established narrative and they’re “safe” for their markets.
Even basic contrarians really aren’t heard from within a market anymore. An example for me would be Chomsky. In the 80’s or 90’s, you could rarely see him on the “liberal” networks, but he got cancelled long ago by them. We are “free” to see him on foreign media or RT though, but no American would bother.
It is interesting to see foreign networks like the BBC or NHK covering US news - the talking heads they use aren’t really high-profile in the US so I wonder how they’re chosen.
Yeah, and to a certain extent those people have also been "canceling" people for their views a long time, but the people they canceled didn't have a platform to complain and be heard.
> I think the root of the problem isn't cancel culture but the limitation of the political to a bunch of celebrities....
> If however political discourse is the job of the professional commentariat and the rest of society is some sort of passive mob waiting to be activated, sure then you get cancel culture.
I think you're probably right about the root cause, but that's going to be a really tough problem to solve. A corollary of your observation is the ability of "rest of society" to participate in productively in "political discourse" seems to have atrophied. It's going to be a difficult problem to fix, and a lot of things we take for granted (like national media that gets all the attention) will probably have to change to fix it.