Why is this article focused on whatever is happening on some social media site when schools are banning books, barring teachers from teaching subject matters deemed obscene, and churches are hosting book burning parties? I feel like there are some wacky priorities going on.
Because the far right have always been nuts and society is somewhat inoculated against them. The far left seem to be able to penetrate far more deeply and are actually successful in suppressing free speech and scientific wrongthink.
Multiple right-wing legislators in the US are obsessed with banning "critical race theory", and when you look at their proposed bannings it seems more like banning anything that would teach the history of racism in the US. This affects millions of students, but sure, the problem is "the far left".
It's nice to see that "whataboutism" can be wielded as well by left wing ideologues as right wing ones! The simple truth is that science and civic discourse has always been under attack from the right, and always will be, because right-wing views naturally gravitates toward authoritarianism.
But the left has decided to join in recently. The left invented something new, a kind of distributed authoritarianism, with MeToo and woke/cancel culture, which gives every person of a "blessed" identity the absolute power of a tyrant over anyone within earshot who is of a corresponding "cursed" identity. I speak as someone on the receiving end of this, in family court. It's a shift in power that leaves straight white liberal men abandoned and demoralized. We are dehumanized, treated to precisely those iniquities that we've fought hard against for so long. Our expressions of pain and worry are ignored and demeaned by our erstwhile friends, and if we complain about that then we are attacked further as being manipulative and dishonest. It is a perfect little trap, that can apparently only be escaped by donning a certain red trucker hat.
As another poster said, society has developed a resistance to right-wing censorship over time. But the left-wing censorship is a new innovation, and it's much harder to combat. I truly worry about my 2-year-old son growing up endlessly hearing about his toxic masculinity, his inherently oppressive identity, and always being at the mercy of other people's feelings, while his own are ignored or demeaned. The left is, if anything, more dangerous today in terms of censorship, forcing speakers to be silent, everywhere, lest they risk hurting someone's feeling, and thereby have their entire lives destroyed.
You are not wrong either. But 2 wrongs do not make a right. Some liberals today are not much unlike the "family-values" conservatives of the past. Those people fought to censor/ban/boycott and otherwise deplatform material they found objectionable. Many people today who despised them are unfortunately becoming a lot like them. Open discourse is very important for a free society and especially research.
Banning "hate-speech" and "false information" is a very noble goal, but who is the arbiter of what is false or hate? It is not a binary decision and generally just like the justice system is designed to let some guilty people go to protect the innocent, free speech restrictions have always had the high burden of that the speech must cause immediate harm.
Not "the" problem, but definitely "a" problem in my opinion. If you're someone like me, in Australia, who always figured he was a left leaning liberal, some of the stuff coming out of CRT sounds right up there with young earth creationism. But creationism has effectively lost the battle against science. I'm therefore more concerned at present with the far left, while keeping an eye on those other crackpots on the right.
Care to elaborate? As someone coming from France where racial studies are illegal and considered racist (by the actually-racist establishment who still deports/murders/exploits/pillages communities to this day), i don't see any relation between racial study and creationism or other pseudo-sciences.
You seem to be worried about a strawman: what you call the "far left" has really little power beyond symbolism of preventing an actual fascist of organizing a meeting. The actual power, political and economic, resides in the far-right who's very well established in society and has been relentlessly campaigning and organizing. And i can tell you their campaigns are otherwise more violent than those of the so-called far left.
As i'm witnessing the new rise of fascism here in France, i can tell you the overall ambience both in the streets and on campuses was much more pleasant twenty years ago when declaring sympathies for Hitler or Le Pen would have gotten you socially excluded from the group (except in a few fascist-friendly universities in the bourgeois neighborhoods).
The fascists are rising again: when you see dozens/hundreds of neo-fascist militiamen charging alongside riot cops (who are famously pro-FN for the vast majority of them) to beat down and send to the hospital anti-racist demonstrators (such as happened during the first Zemmour speech a few months back), it's time to choose which side you wanna be on.
I will have to take your word for it. I'm in my 40s, I'm from the UK, I live in Australia, and I don't really feel what you're saying. It sounds like hyperbole. Perhaps you need to be living in France to see it. All I see is a major ramp up in censorship and attack on free inquiry coming from the left over the last 10 years. This is becoming normal. I'm not really worried about it per se, it is what it is. I'll adjust accordingly, be careful what I say in public, and my children will grow up adjusted to it. The question is whether society as a whole will be better off or not. I suspect not, but who knows.
In regards to the rise of the far right, it seems conceivable it's a reaction to the extremes of the far left. It's political polarization and I'd tend to lay blame on the dogmatists on both sides. I find them equally absurd, but I'm more disappointed in the left. That was my original point.
The history of racism has been, and will continue to be taught. That isn't what critical race theory is. Critical race theory posits that an entire race of people are to blame for the actions of people with similar colored skin. That is of course racist, so giving those racists the ability to assign collective blame based on skin color is getting pushback for obvious reasons.
Conservative legislators are explicitly using CRT as an excuse to push laws that aren't actually about CRT and are instead about literally banning anything that would make white students uncomfortable [1].
> Accordingly, instruction on the topics enumerated in this section and supporting materials must be consistent with the following principles of individual freedom: [...] An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.
>are instead about literally banning anything that would make white students uncomfortable
Why would something that supposedly doesn't assign collective blame based on skin color make all white students uncomfortable?
I wonder what Ibram X. Kendi, the most well known proponent of CRT, would have to say about the subject: "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
Yeah, CRT is racist. Anybody who supports it is racist.
> Why would something that supposedly doesn't assign collective blame based on skin color make all white students uncomfortable?
The factual history of slavery and discrimination in the US (as promulgated against minorities by non-minorities) could cause white students discomfort on the basis of their race, and would thereby be illegal under Florida's bill.
> CRT
Actual critical race theory is irrelevant in this discussion. The legislation being pushed here has nothing to do with it, beyond using it as a convenient negative label for literally anything relating to historical and modern racism.
>The factual history of slavery and discrimination in the US (as promulgated against minorities by non-minorities)
See, this is the crux of the issue with CRT. You have assigned blame to "non-minorities" collectively, and absolved minorities (again, collectively).
The reality is very different. Not only were there many black slave owners[1], but of course many of the most successful abolitionists were white (or non-minority as you say). So assigning blame not to individuals, but rather to race, is in fact racist. This is what CRT teaches, and is why it's a problem.
There is a reason that CRT uses a collectivist framework too, which as they say, is the quiet part we aren't supposed to say out loud...
As your [1] points out, the explicit white supremacist structure of ante bellum US had whites at the top (rich whites then poor whites), followed by lighter-skinned blacks then darker skin blacks. Which explains why, "93.1 % of Negro slave owners were mulattos and 90% of their slaves were dark-skinned blacks."
The mulattos in this case were often offspring of a white slave owner, and they shared power in the racist system because, quoting it again:
> Free blacks and mulattos, the privileged offspring of white masters and slaves, had an interest in preserving slavery, while poor, free blacks and most rural slaves, who knew slavery’s cruelty, were determined to gain control over their own destinies. The free black elite regarded slave ownership as a privilege and status symbol and valued their ties to the white community. Many lived in white neighborhoods, attended white-dominated churches and shunned the slave community.
This is very much in line with the CRT views of how power structures were set up to maintain white supremacy.
Oh, and of those 'many' black slave owners, "Often, free blacks purchased enslaved kinfolk to buy their freedom." Do you count them as supporting slavery?
> the most successful abolitionists
How many black slaves do you think were abolitionists, but without the power to influence anyone? Millions? Why do you think they weren't as successful those white abolitionists?
If you don't like the sociological terms "majority" and "minority", and view them as "collectivist", then how would you describe the laws that prohibited Blacks from immigrating to Oregon, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Iowa, or the ones which prevented Blacks from living in Sundown towns? Why did those white politicians decide to pass those laws? Can we assign blame to them without being called racist? Or do you want to absolve them of blame?
Who is them? White people, right? Not the individuals who did a thing, but everyone who shares a similar amount of melanin to anyone who did a thing. So Croatian-Americans who came to the country in the 1980's? Italians, Irish and Jews from the early 1900's? Arabs and Hispanics who are considered white?
So yeah, that's racist. In fact it's the exact same logic the Stormfront crowd uses to blame all black people for the elevated violent crime rates, which are perpetrated by a tiny fraction of the black community. It is racist in both cases, don't make assumptions about people based on their skin color. This should be easy.
You seem to be so fixated on your personal interpretation that you are unable to read normal English.
The antecedent to "them" is in the previous sentence: the white politicians who passed the laws that prevented black people from immigrating to those states, and the white politicians who passed laws preventing black people from living in so-called Sundown towns.
Those are specific people, with specific names, if you wanted to look up the legislative record.
This certainly is NOT "white people".
This is a question about history. In US history, Mexicans, as an example of "Hispanics", WERE NOT CONSIDERED WHITE. Had you read the Wikipedia example of Sundown towns you would have seen "No Mexicans After Night".
Since you don't seem to understand the history, don't seem to track down relevant references, and since I can't seem to make myself understood, I see no point in continuing this discussion
And let's not forget the words of the foremost expert on critical race theory, Ibram X Kendi: "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
The domain name makes this appear to be an authoritative source, but it’s a website that exists specifically to promote the agenda you’re describing, run by the conservative publication Legal Insurrection. The fact remains that critical race theory does not assign blame to everyone of a given race, no matter how blithely they lie about it.
>Ibram X Kendi: "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
The above is a direct quote from Ibram X Kendi, the face of the CRT movement. You can find it doing a Google search and source it from whatever domain makes you feel better. But he did say it and does believe. He has defended it numerous times. But it is racist and we should call it what it is. CRT is a cancer.
That quote is obviously correct, though. Let's say, for example, that it's "discrimination" to forcibly remove wealth from a specific person to give to another. It would be discrimination to take $100 from me and give it to you. But it would be pretty rich of me to complain about being discriminated against if it turned out I had stolen your $100 in the first place!
A different example. We're playing monopoly. I have a house rule that every time you make money, it goes to me. Every time you acquire property, I get it. Then the house rule changes and you can acquire money and property… but I still own everything of yours I've taken until now. Is it wrong to discriminate against me by redistributing my resources to you?
Here's some more context to that quote, by the way:
> Someone reproducing inequity through permanently assisting an overrepresented racial group into wealth and power is entirely different than someone challenging that inequity by temporarily assisting an underrepresented racial group into relative wealth and power until equity is reached.
> The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination. As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”
The analogy works — just replace “me” and “you” with “white people” and “Black people”. The Black Monopoly players had to give up their money and property to the white players. You are saying that it’s racist to redistribute the stolen wealth, but not racist to allow the white players to keep their ill-gotten gains.
Speaking of "good faith", do I need to continue? Were you legitimately unaware of this, or is this where you try to excuse it as something other than what it is - racism.
A handful of poorly thought out corporate DEI trainings does not retroactively redefine the decades of research and writing on critical race theory. But I’ll bite. Let’s take the first article.
> The document suggests that employees reflect on the diversity of their personal and professional networks. Employees should also consider how other dimensions of their identities "give (or do not give) you access and advantage." Furthermore, workers are encouraged to "work through feelings of guilt, shame, and defensiveness to understand what is beneath them and what needs to be healed."
> Part of the challenge involves completing a "white privilege checklist." The checklist asks if a person has ever experienced racist slurs, discrimination for their skin color, threats due to their gender or sexual orientation, bullying or conditions of poverty.
Nowhere in the article are the words “blame” or “responsible” or “accountable”. None of this can reasonably be construed as “blaming” people. As the article tells it, the goal of the training is to help people understand their racial privilege.
I linked a handful of companies who collectively employ hundreds of thousands of people, because I figured showing the largest companies in the world would be enough to settle your supposed curiosity. How many more do you need to see to change your mind? I suspect it doesn't matter.
Also, they all reference the CRT framework, so call them "poorly implemented" is silly. These are companies that spend millions on legal fees, their implementation is only as bad as CRT itself is.
I prefer a simpler, less racist framework. One that treats people the same regardless of skin color, and makes no assumptions about an individual based on their skin color.
To mangle a Malcolm X quote: You don't stick a knife in a man's back then pull it out and say that that treating his wounds would be discriminate against those who had never been knifed.
> As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in 1978, “In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.”
> ... The most threatening racist movement is not the alt right’s unlikely drive for a White ethnostate but the regular American’s drive for a “race-neutral” one. The construct of race neutrality actually feeds White nationalist victimhood by positing the notion that any policy protecting or advancing non-White Americans toward equity is “reverse discrimination.
> That is how racist power can call affirmative action policies that succeed in reducing racial inequities “race conscious” and standardized tests that produce racial inequities “race neutral.” That is how they can blame the behavior of entire racial groups for the inequities between different racial groups and still say their ideas are “not racist.” But there is no such thing as a not-racist idea, only racist ideas and antiracist ideas.
I take it you would have been against reparations for the Japanese and Japanese-Americans interned during the war, justified on racist reasons. I take it you are against any sort of reparations for those people still alive today whose lives were directly harmed by racist laws?
After all, both of those are remedies for past discrimination which require(d) future discrimination.
There are two huge differences in the Japanese internment issue. One, it's more recent and many of the victims are still alive. Two and most important, reparations for direct victims wouldn't be based on race, it would be based on if they were actually in an internment camp. Not all Japanese Americans were placed in these camps, so those who were not would not need reimbursement for what FDR and the Democrat Administration did to them in the 1940's.
That last part is key. CRT makes no difference between abolitionist and slaveowner, it simply judges based on skin color. That is racist.
I think you missed where I wrote "I take it you are against any sort of reparations for those people still alive today whose lives were directly harmed by racist laws?"
Jim Crow laws weren't abolished until the 1960s. People alive today suffered from those laws. Do you think they should get reparations, and if not, why not?
The Japanese-Americans were in internment camps because of mid-20th century views on race. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which legislated reparation explicitly names "race prejudice" as one of the factors. See https://www.congress.gov/bill/100th-congress/house-bill/442 .
I've read a decent amount now about CRT, from the people who have developed the concept over the last few decades. It does not do what you say it does. What I have seen is how the popular nay-sayers use it as bogeyman term used to reject or diminish any examination of systemic racism.
That said, EVEN IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE ME, do you think reparations for living people based on harms caused by historical race prejudice is itself racist?
It seems that if you do, then you think the internment reparations of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was racist. And if you do not think it's racist, then you agree with Kendi, LBP, and Justice Blackmun.
Here's a more specific example. In 1924 the city seized the beach resort own by the Bruce family. The owners were Black, and it was one of the few places in California where Black could get into the water. Quoting https://www.npr.org/2021/10/10/1043821492/black-americans-la...:
> White residents set up barricades to keep Black beachgoers from getting to the ocean, and the Ku Klux Klan, active along the California coast, reportedly planned attacks against the Bruce's resort.
> "They slashed tires, they burned mattresses under the porch of the resort, they tried to blow up a gas meter of one of the residents here," Shepard says. "They had 24/7 phone campaigns and made threats against Willa and her family."
This made the news because the California legislature passed a law to return the land to the family, long after the owners were dead.
Is this law a form of reparation? Is this law racist? Personally, I see it as a form of reparation, and not racist, but rather trying to right an historic wrong based on race prejudice. What do you think?
Kendi's comments and the CRT framework in general are COLLECTIVE, not individual. That is the issue. It assigns collective blame based on skin color, not actual individual culpability. It also assumes oppression based on race/ethnicity, not on actual experiences of an individual. We know there were black slaveowners for instance, so how does that affect the calculus?
There is no non-racist way to blame people for something they had no part in simply based on the color of their skin.
CRT is very clear to point out how historical racist structures can persist even if no one is racist. Why do you think Oregon has so few Black people?
CRT does not assign collective blame based on skin color. You have provided not one whit of evidence for this. Instead you've totally misunderstood a quote from Kendi, which I've tried to explain here.
We are all, collectively, Americans. We, collectively, still live with the effects of deliberate collective racial discrimination[1]. Some alive today were explicitly targeted by racist Jim Crow laws, with actual experiences. It is our American responsibility to right this historical wrong as best we can.
Is paying reparations to those living people racist? Is paying reparations to the living children of those people racist? Are non-monetary reparations in the name of those people also racist?
If you agree with any sort of reparations for racial injustice, including the interned Japanese-Americans, then you agree with Kendi's quote.
I repeat: You don't stick a knife in a man's back then pull it out and say that that treating his wounds would be discriminate against those who had never been knifed.
The promissory note is long overdue. Let's pay it now.
[1] As a white person, even I am affected, because of the deliberately constructed lies about American race history taught to me in school, including lies of omission.
>Is paying reparations to those living people racist? Is paying reparations to the living children of those people racist? Are non-monetary reparations in the name of those people also racist?
How does that work, in your mind. Who pays? If you say "taxpayers" then you are saying the victims need to pay reparations as well. That seems logical to you?
Also, how do you prove direct harm? In the Japanese internment example it's easy to say "I was sent to an internment camp by FDR". Ok cool, easy enough. But then there is "my dad was sent to an internment camp by FDR, and as a result my parents became risk averse and potentially never earned as much as they could, which may have indirectly impacted my opportunities". And then there is "My mom was raised by someone who's parents were sent to an internment camp" and that has somehow trickled down to impact me in some undefined way."
And then we need to discuss how this impacts the offspring of mixed parentage, are they equally victim/beneficiary? How far down the rabbit hole do we go?
As a person from France, i can assure you racism is not taught and will not be taught unless we fight for it. Yes, we're taught judging someone solely based on their skin color is wrong, but cultural racism for example is put under the carpet. As for all the atrocities committed by french republic in the colonies and on its own soil, they're not taught to us because if we as a people realize that racial hierarchies were institutionalized by "respectable" people long before Hitler came to power and continued to be official policy long after he died, we may start to ask questions and hold accountable some people who really don't want that.
Two specific examples:
- the "vel d'hiv" sweep is taught in schools, as an example of the nazi collaorators gathering in a stadium and deporting/murdering thousands of jews ; that the same stadium was reused for the same purpose in 1967 against algerian people is not taught in schools
- Jules Ferry is revered in french schools as father of the public school system; yet schools do not teach us that he was famously racist/supremacist, and that his public school system served as a tool to colonize many regions and practice cultural genocide against many ethnicities (including a dozen on the French soil)
Fortunately, we have some decent academics studying/teaching the history of racism in this country (ex: Bouamama, Ouassak, Rigouste, etc). Unfortunately, they're under relentless attacks (especially since 2015) to be shut down by the far right who accuse them of being anti-white racists and/or "islamo-leftists". If that last expression rings a bell, that's probably because "judeo-bolsheviks" was an expression used by the nazis: should it surprise us that debates about "islamo-leftism" have reached mainstream TV in a nation that's built on the blood of countless peoples?
I certainly am not. I'm saying the far right have no hope of deplatforming, say, Richard Dawkins. But that's been done successfully by the far left. They are censoring in ways the far right could only dream of. I think they might actually be jealous.
They may have no hope to "deplatform" someone from a university (except here in France where they're gaining power), but they certainly have strong success in ruining people's lives without consequences for themselves. See for example GamerGate and the many other harassment campaigns organized by the neo-fascists and masculinists, who had terrible consequences.
And you say they have no hope to "deplatform" people, but hey what happened with the crackdowns on Riseup, Indymedia, Unicorn Riot, Wikileaks and other platforms? The fascists, due to having strong ties/networks within the institutions, have a bigger impact when talking about their own hurdles and we barely talk about anti-left censorship.
I mean they are and we should be concerned about both. Saying "why are we talking about X when Y is happening?" is just whataboutism, I think we can discuss more than one problem at a time.
The difference is the magnitude of the problem. Angry groups of people making noise on Twitter is obviously not as urgent as lawmakers and school boards literally banning books on racism, civil rights, the Holocaust, in schools.
The authors are calling to fill in potholes on a bridge that’s about to collapse. It’s not whataboutism to point out that their priorities are out of whack.
They seem to be upset about Dorian Abbot not being able to give a particular lecture. This is the last paragraph of the editorial he cowrote that seems to have caused all the trouble:
> Then an ideological regime obsessed with race came to power and drove many of the best scholars out, gutting the faculties and leading to sustained decay that German universities never fully recovered from. We should view this as a warning of the consequences of viewing group membership as more important than merit, and correct our course before it is too late.
The stated goal of the programs he was opposing here is to increase diversity at universities. You can reasonably disagree that it will do that (and he does in the remainder of the article, some of the points are very good) without invoking Nazi Germany. It's incredibly disrespectful and unlikely to convince people who aren't already on your side. And if the consequence of this is that you can't give a lecture one time, well, I'm having a difficult time finding the Zylkon B cans nearby.
> The stated goal of the programs he was opposing here is to increase diversity at universities. You can reasonably disagree that it will do that (and he does in the remainder of the article, some of the points are very good) without invoking Nazi Germany.
Actually he disagrees with the goal itself (diversity, or rather what kind of diversity is desiderable to pursue).
> And if the consequence of this is that you can't give a lecture one time, well, I'm having a difficult time finding the Zylkon B cans nearby.
Yep. That's no Nazi Germany. But it's disingenuous to say that the only consequence is he won't give a lecture one time. And canceling a lecture is a very worrying thing to do, especially for such a mild "offense". The quote attributed to Voltaire is very relevant in this context.
I have the same problem with the anti-lockdown and anti-vax-mandate protesters here in Canada. You might have a valid point here and there, but as soon as you bring up how the Covid measures are "oppression" just like in Nazi Germany, you instantaneously turn yourself into an ignorant clown. What the hell is wrong with people comparing every policy or social trend they don't like to gassing millions of people to death? Get a grip and pick up a history book.
If you happen to compare what are (argued as) early weak signals, with the morality of the nazi holocaust in its last stage, then sure it's disrespectful. But this a kind of a strawman argument.
Alerting the possible bad outcome much later down the line, is not comparing the morality of these present-time signals to the bad future-time outcome that one could fear.
It's only with historical hindsight, that you're able to say that _of course_ these weak signals in Germany were early signs of a fatal spiral, and people should have known better. From the point of view of someone living at that time, it would have been much harder not to view these opinions as exaggeration.
"Racial cleansing" in German universities took part in 1935, the "Final solution" (started in 1942) was unthinkable at the time, and the immediate consequences of the "cleansing" was that "just" "some people were not being able to give lectures", but that policy alone had indeed been detrimental for science in Germany. We have payed the price for those lessons, and have the right to learn from them.
Godwin's law does not invalidate argument.
“[Godwin] rejected the idea that whoever invokes Godwin's Law has lost the argument, and argues that appropriate application of the rule "should function less as a conversation ender and more as a conversation starter"” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
Would you rather that he invoked the treatment of intellectuals in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge? After all, the "stated goal" of that was to somehow bring forth a post-scarcity utopia ("full communism") on Earth! Since when has it ever been OK to take "the stated goal" at face value, and use it to shield problematic policies from any and all criticism?
Hmm, scientists have their own private cancel culture: often based on tacit assumptions about the RIGHT way to do science.
In the 1970s cultural anthropology and genetics were both hotbeds of cancel culture. And the canceling attempts were vividly reciprocal. For a recent incident: see EO Wilson’s shameful post-modern “obituary” in Scientific American, or read Napoleon Changnon on the warfare among tribes of anthropologist.
It's not mobs that make decisions to censor but owners of companies and universities. Twitter can't get you fired because that decision falls on the bosses.
I would say in my opinion it's quite the opposite.
The mob indirectly make the decision by forcing the "owners" by threats, boycott or giving the bad public on social media, or even in some cases in real life. If you're thick-skinned then you can life with that and do nothing, but most of the people would actually choose to censor/remove something or fire somebody instead of receiving the blow themself.
For example I could just ignore opposing opinions I don't agree with, but I won't be ignoring threats, bullying etc. which are so common nowadays. I remember the times where you could have your opinions and if you did not directly attacked somebody or didn't break the law in your country you could post nearly anything you want and these were the times of the freedom of speech.
You can't have your opposing opinion now in some of the topics because if you do, then you're risking getting cancelled, (shadow) banned, muted or at least having your opinion removed. Or as it's common you would get the badge of being left or right even if you're not.
You won't find many people who could support your opinion or at least try to calm down the conflict/argue because most of the people don't care about the "wars" that are happening in the social media, they just want to have a nice and peaceful life.
So, my opinion at the end is that we shouldn't care who creator is or what he did, the only thing we should care about is or isn't his creation, whether it's valuable or invaluable for me, my relatives, society or the environment. And if somebody disagree with some opinion, then he should post his opinion/argument if it gives any value for future on-topic discussion or some unique view, but do not start a flame war or literally try to destroy somebody' life or day because of that. In the end you do you and i do me.
Also, just to clearly point that out, I'm not from the US and I'm neither so called far-left nor far-right as probably no one is.
Has anyone actually backed this with data? Threats are more common now? Really? How do you know? Just because some "free speech" media pundit says so doesn't make it true.
This article mis-represents criticisms of Angewandte Chemie publishing Tomáš Hudlický's essay (opposing efforts to increase diversity in organic synthesis) by attributing them to a "Twitter firestorm" while other publications note this event caused members of Angewandte Chemie's international advisory board to resign in protest, and other Chemists criticized the essay [1].
There may be a way to thoughtfully discuss this issue, but this article is a poor attempt at it.
Would have been nice if nazi scientists were "cancelled" after WW2. Before as well, perhaps nazi pseudoscience and eugenics would have had less prevalence.
The law should also bring back ostracizing and outlawing. Humane but more effective and just than prison. Joined ISIS? Get outlawed. Participated in mob robbery, riot or insurrection? Will pay for your ticket out of the state or country because you are now banned.
The comfort and protections of a civilized society do not belong to those who reject civilization.
Professors are getting canceled because one student reacted badly to one thing they said one time. This form of cancel culture needs to be stopped! This form gives every student total power over their teachers, based only on their own subjective feelings, and power like that inevitably corrupts. (It's kind of like how the police have a "Marshall Law bubble" around them at all times; of course they are going to abuse it!)
The other form of cancel culture that needs to be stopped is the taboo against asking uncomfortable questions. If you look around the world looking for admirable governments, do you see a pattern? If so, would you be cancelled for naming it? Is that okay? Are we so committed to egalitarinism that we want to forcefully ignore measuring differences between human populations, or even framing hypotheses that imply a difference?
It's a familiar pattern at this point: a piece complaining about 'cancel culture' that conveniently elides actually mentioning any of the content that got people 'canceled', while focusing on the impolite responses of the 'cancelers' and implicitly or explicitly arguing that literally anything should be allowed (or, rather, forced to be printed under an organization or government's auspices) as long as it's framed in a polite manner.
> Some institutions have actually institutionalised censorship. For example, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), a major publisher, has issued guidelines for editors to „consider whether or not any content … might have the potential to cause offence“.
Is Krylov seriously asking us to consider this censorship? This is called politeness.
The citation for the list of innocuous terms to "censor" is another, very similar piece by Krylov, which cites this [0] memo from the University of Michigan's IT department. It lists no consequences for failing to use the alternate terms. Quote:
> Not all words on this list may be offensive to everyone. Regardless, if a colleague considers a word or phrase offensive, their lived experience should be acknowledged, and an alternative word or phrase should be used.
This is not "All who refuse to adopt our Newspeak must be re-educated", this is "If someone says a term is offensive, just be polite and go with it, and here are some alternative terms to help with that." It doesn't even tell you to stop using it in general, just when someone objects! Calling this "censorship" is ridiculous.
Let's look at the other two examples as well.
First, consider what happened to Tomáš Hudlický after he wrote the article.
> The journal removed the paper from its website. ... A planned special issue of Synthesis in his honour was cancelled, invitations to speak at conferences and to review papers ceased, citations to his papers were deleted, and collaborators were encouraged to dissociate themselves from him.
He wasn't fired, or demoted, or disciplined. Mainly, people just stopped wanting to associate with him. Was this proportionate? Let's now consider what the wider chemistry community thought about the article:
> Sixteen editorial board members resigned in protest of the publication. The journal ... issued an abject apology, suspended two editors, and began an internal investigation. Condemnation ensued in blogs, journals, and statements issued by chemical societies.
What happened to Hudlický seems like the straightforward consequence of holding a deeply controversial view. Lots of people won't like you for it. They don't owe you the things they were planning to give you before you wrote an article everyone hates. Saying all of them simultaneously "capitulated to the mob" is an entirely baseless framing (that's all too common in this type of writing).
As for Dorian Abbot, paraphrasing the article, "A group of activists initiated a social media campaign to uninvite him. MIT cancelled the event."
Again, unpopular people are not owed speaking appearances. Disinvitation is not punishment. The point of these talks is the prestige of having a respected expert make an appearance and share their views. If the audience doesn't like you, there's no reason for the university to invite you to speak. If this is all that happened to Abbot, I'm struggling to see why I ought to care about this.
In summary, an organization asked people to consider other peoples' feelings before publishing things, and some unpopular people were not allowed to give prestigious lectures. Going back to the top of the article and reading Krylov compare this to autocratic regimes and murder highlights just how dishonest and hyperbolic the framing is on all of these "cancel culture" articles. They're all like this.
People who disagreed with the article, flagged it as "spam or off-topic". The article discussing cancel culture got canceled (flagged) -- how ironic is that?
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[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadBut the left has decided to join in recently. The left invented something new, a kind of distributed authoritarianism, with MeToo and woke/cancel culture, which gives every person of a "blessed" identity the absolute power of a tyrant over anyone within earshot who is of a corresponding "cursed" identity. I speak as someone on the receiving end of this, in family court. It's a shift in power that leaves straight white liberal men abandoned and demoralized. We are dehumanized, treated to precisely those iniquities that we've fought hard against for so long. Our expressions of pain and worry are ignored and demeaned by our erstwhile friends, and if we complain about that then we are attacked further as being manipulative and dishonest. It is a perfect little trap, that can apparently only be escaped by donning a certain red trucker hat.
As another poster said, society has developed a resistance to right-wing censorship over time. But the left-wing censorship is a new innovation, and it's much harder to combat. I truly worry about my 2-year-old son growing up endlessly hearing about his toxic masculinity, his inherently oppressive identity, and always being at the mercy of other people's feelings, while his own are ignored or demeaned. The left is, if anything, more dangerous today in terms of censorship, forcing speakers to be silent, everywhere, lest they risk hurting someone's feeling, and thereby have their entire lives destroyed.
Banning "hate-speech" and "false information" is a very noble goal, but who is the arbiter of what is false or hate? It is not a binary decision and generally just like the justice system is designed to let some guilty people go to protect the innocent, free speech restrictions have always had the high burden of that the speech must cause immediate harm.
You seem to be worried about a strawman: what you call the "far left" has really little power beyond symbolism of preventing an actual fascist of organizing a meeting. The actual power, political and economic, resides in the far-right who's very well established in society and has been relentlessly campaigning and organizing. And i can tell you their campaigns are otherwise more violent than those of the so-called far left.
As i'm witnessing the new rise of fascism here in France, i can tell you the overall ambience both in the streets and on campuses was much more pleasant twenty years ago when declaring sympathies for Hitler or Le Pen would have gotten you socially excluded from the group (except in a few fascist-friendly universities in the bourgeois neighborhoods).
The fascists are rising again: when you see dozens/hundreds of neo-fascist militiamen charging alongside riot cops (who are famously pro-FN for the vast majority of them) to beat down and send to the hospital anti-racist demonstrators (such as happened during the first Zemmour speech a few months back), it's time to choose which side you wanna be on.
In regards to the rise of the far right, it seems conceivable it's a reaction to the extremes of the far left. It's political polarization and I'd tend to lay blame on the dogmatists on both sides. I find them equally absurd, but I'm more disappointed in the left. That was my original point.
> Accordingly, instruction on the topics enumerated in this section and supporting materials must be consistent with the following principles of individual freedom: [...] An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.
[1]: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/148/?Tab=BillText
Why would something that supposedly doesn't assign collective blame based on skin color make all white students uncomfortable?
I wonder what Ibram X. Kendi, the most well known proponent of CRT, would have to say about the subject: "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
Yeah, CRT is racist. Anybody who supports it is racist.
The factual history of slavery and discrimination in the US (as promulgated against minorities by non-minorities) could cause white students discomfort on the basis of their race, and would thereby be illegal under Florida's bill.
> CRT
Actual critical race theory is irrelevant in this discussion. The legislation being pushed here has nothing to do with it, beyond using it as a convenient negative label for literally anything relating to historical and modern racism.
See, this is the crux of the issue with CRT. You have assigned blame to "non-minorities" collectively, and absolved minorities (again, collectively).
The reality is very different. Not only were there many black slave owners[1], but of course many of the most successful abolitionists were white (or non-minority as you say). So assigning blame not to individuals, but rather to race, is in fact racist. This is what CRT teaches, and is why it's a problem.
There is a reason that CRT uses a collectivist framework too, which as they say, is the quiet part we aren't supposed to say out loud...
[1] https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/12/emblack_sla...
The mulattos in this case were often offspring of a white slave owner, and they shared power in the racist system because, quoting it again:
> Free blacks and mulattos, the privileged offspring of white masters and slaves, had an interest in preserving slavery, while poor, free blacks and most rural slaves, who knew slavery’s cruelty, were determined to gain control over their own destinies. The free black elite regarded slave ownership as a privilege and status symbol and valued their ties to the white community. Many lived in white neighborhoods, attended white-dominated churches and shunned the slave community.
This is very much in line with the CRT views of how power structures were set up to maintain white supremacy.
Oh, and of those 'many' black slave owners, "Often, free blacks purchased enslaved kinfolk to buy their freedom." Do you count them as supporting slavery?
> the most successful abolitionists
How many black slaves do you think were abolitionists, but without the power to influence anyone? Millions? Why do you think they weren't as successful those white abolitionists?
If you don't like the sociological terms "majority" and "minority", and view them as "collectivist", then how would you describe the laws that prohibited Blacks from immigrating to Oregon, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Iowa, or the ones which prevented Blacks from living in Sundown towns? Why did those white politicians decide to pass those laws? Can we assign blame to them without being called racist? Or do you want to absolve them of blame?
Who is them? White people, right? Not the individuals who did a thing, but everyone who shares a similar amount of melanin to anyone who did a thing. So Croatian-Americans who came to the country in the 1980's? Italians, Irish and Jews from the early 1900's? Arabs and Hispanics who are considered white?
So yeah, that's racist. In fact it's the exact same logic the Stormfront crowd uses to blame all black people for the elevated violent crime rates, which are perpetrated by a tiny fraction of the black community. It is racist in both cases, don't make assumptions about people based on their skin color. This should be easy.
The antecedent to "them" is in the previous sentence: the white politicians who passed the laws that prevented black people from immigrating to those states, and the white politicians who passed laws preventing black people from living in so-called Sundown towns.
Those are specific people, with specific names, if you wanted to look up the legislative record.
This certainly is NOT "white people".
This is a question about history. In US history, Mexicans, as an example of "Hispanics", WERE NOT CONSIDERED WHITE. Had you read the Wikipedia example of Sundown towns you would have seen "No Mexicans After Night".
Had you read the Wikipedia page on CRT you would have seen LatCRT as a subfield of CRT, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory#Latino_cr... .
Since you don't seem to understand the history, don't seem to track down relevant references, and since I can't seem to make myself understood, I see no point in continuing this discussion
That is very much not what critical race theory is. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/07/02/why-are-sta...
And let's not forget the words of the foremost expert on critical race theory, Ibram X Kendi: "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
The above is a direct quote from Ibram X Kendi, the face of the CRT movement. You can find it doing a Google search and source it from whatever domain makes you feel better. But he did say it and does believe. He has defended it numerous times. But it is racist and we should call it what it is. CRT is a cancer.
A different example. We're playing monopoly. I have a house rule that every time you make money, it goes to me. Every time you acquire property, I get it. Then the house rule changes and you can acquire money and property… but I still own everything of yours I've taken until now. Is it wrong to discriminate against me by redistributing my resources to you?
Here's some more context to that quote, by the way:
> Someone reproducing inequity through permanently assisting an overrepresented racial group into wealth and power is entirely different than someone challenging that inequity by temporarily assisting an underrepresented racial group into relative wealth and power until equity is reached.
> The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination. As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”
https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2020/june/ibram-x-kendi-d...
You can not get away from the reality that CRT by definition assigns blame collectively based on race, regardless of actual culpability.
That is racist.
It's never not racist to blame people for the actions of others who have a similar amount of melanin.
Walmart - https://trendingpolitics.com/walmart-training-white-people-h...
AT&T - https://www.nationalreview.com/news/att-employee-training-pr...
Coca-Cola - https://www.newsweek.com/coca-cola-facing-backlash-says-less...
Under Armour - https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/report-under-armour-forc...
Dow Chemical, Lockheed Martin - https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/dow_chemical_an...
etc etc
Speaking of "good faith", do I need to continue? Were you legitimately unaware of this, or is this where you try to excuse it as something other than what it is - racism.
> The document suggests that employees reflect on the diversity of their personal and professional networks. Employees should also consider how other dimensions of their identities "give (or do not give) you access and advantage." Furthermore, workers are encouraged to "work through feelings of guilt, shame, and defensiveness to understand what is beneath them and what needs to be healed."
> Part of the challenge involves completing a "white privilege checklist." The checklist asks if a person has ever experienced racist slurs, discrimination for their skin color, threats due to their gender or sexual orientation, bullying or conditions of poverty.
Nowhere in the article are the words “blame” or “responsible” or “accountable”. None of this can reasonably be construed as “blaming” people. As the article tells it, the goal of the training is to help people understand their racial privilege.
Also, they all reference the CRT framework, so call them "poorly implemented" is silly. These are companies that spend millions on legal fees, their implementation is only as bad as CRT itself is.
I prefer a simpler, less racist framework. One that treats people the same regardless of skin color, and makes no assumptions about an individual based on their skin color.
Here's more of what Kendi says in the context of what you quoted, at https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2020/june/ibram-x-kendi-d... :
> As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in 1978, “In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.”
> ... The most threatening racist movement is not the alt right’s unlikely drive for a White ethnostate but the regular American’s drive for a “race-neutral” one. The construct of race neutrality actually feeds White nationalist victimhood by positing the notion that any policy protecting or advancing non-White Americans toward equity is “reverse discrimination.
> That is how racist power can call affirmative action policies that succeed in reducing racial inequities “race conscious” and standardized tests that produce racial inequities “race neutral.” That is how they can blame the behavior of entire racial groups for the inequities between different racial groups and still say their ideas are “not racist.” But there is no such thing as a not-racist idea, only racist ideas and antiracist ideas.
I take it you would have been against reparations for the Japanese and Japanese-Americans interned during the war, justified on racist reasons. I take it you are against any sort of reparations for those people still alive today whose lives were directly harmed by racist laws?
After all, both of those are remedies for past discrimination which require(d) future discrimination.
That last part is key. CRT makes no difference between abolitionist and slaveowner, it simply judges based on skin color. That is racist.
Jim Crow laws weren't abolished until the 1960s. People alive today suffered from those laws. Do you think they should get reparations, and if not, why not?
The Japanese-Americans were in internment camps because of mid-20th century views on race. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which legislated reparation explicitly names "race prejudice" as one of the factors. See https://www.congress.gov/bill/100th-congress/house-bill/442 .
I've read a decent amount now about CRT, from the people who have developed the concept over the last few decades. It does not do what you say it does. What I have seen is how the popular nay-sayers use it as bogeyman term used to reject or diminish any examination of systemic racism.
That said, EVEN IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE ME, do you think reparations for living people based on harms caused by historical race prejudice is itself racist?
It seems that if you do, then you think the internment reparations of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was racist. And if you do not think it's racist, then you agree with Kendi, LBP, and Justice Blackmun.
Here's a more specific example. In 1924 the city seized the beach resort own by the Bruce family. The owners were Black, and it was one of the few places in California where Black could get into the water. Quoting https://www.npr.org/2021/10/10/1043821492/black-americans-la...:
> White residents set up barricades to keep Black beachgoers from getting to the ocean, and the Ku Klux Klan, active along the California coast, reportedly planned attacks against the Bruce's resort.
> "They slashed tires, they burned mattresses under the porch of the resort, they tried to blow up a gas meter of one of the residents here," Shepard says. "They had 24/7 phone campaigns and made threats against Willa and her family."
This made the news because the California legislature passed a law to return the land to the family, long after the owners were dead.
Is this law a form of reparation? Is this law racist? Personally, I see it as a form of reparation, and not racist, but rather trying to right an historic wrong based on race prejudice. What do you think?
There is no non-racist way to blame people for something they had no part in simply based on the color of their skin.
CRT is very clear to point out how historical racist structures can persist even if no one is racist. Why do you think Oregon has so few Black people?
CRT does not assign collective blame based on skin color. You have provided not one whit of evidence for this. Instead you've totally misunderstood a quote from Kendi, which I've tried to explain here.
We are all, collectively, Americans. We, collectively, still live with the effects of deliberate collective racial discrimination[1]. Some alive today were explicitly targeted by racist Jim Crow laws, with actual experiences. It is our American responsibility to right this historical wrong as best we can.
Is paying reparations to those living people racist? Is paying reparations to the living children of those people racist? Are non-monetary reparations in the name of those people also racist?
If you agree with any sort of reparations for racial injustice, including the interned Japanese-Americans, then you agree with Kendi's quote.
I repeat: You don't stick a knife in a man's back then pull it out and say that that treating his wounds would be discriminate against those who had never been knifed.
The promissory note is long overdue. Let's pay it now.
[1] As a white person, even I am affected, because of the deliberately constructed lies about American race history taught to me in school, including lies of omission.
How does that work, in your mind. Who pays? If you say "taxpayers" then you are saying the victims need to pay reparations as well. That seems logical to you?
Also, how do you prove direct harm? In the Japanese internment example it's easy to say "I was sent to an internment camp by FDR". Ok cool, easy enough. But then there is "my dad was sent to an internment camp by FDR, and as a result my parents became risk averse and potentially never earned as much as they could, which may have indirectly impacted my opportunities". And then there is "My mom was raised by someone who's parents were sent to an internment camp" and that has somehow trickled down to impact me in some undefined way."
And then we need to discuss how this impacts the offspring of mixed parentage, are they equally victim/beneficiary? How far down the rabbit hole do we go?
Exactly the same people who paid reparations for the Japanese internment camps -- something you support.
> That seems logical to you?
Yes, it's logical. Because that's what you agreed was appropriate for the Japanese internment camps.
> Also, how do you prove direct harm?
Which is why I gave an explicit example of direct harm, for the beach resort that was seized because of race prejudice.
Was returning that property racist? You still haven't answered.
> my dad was sent to an internment camp by FDR, and as a result
Which is why I started with asking about reparations for those people who are still alive.
Do you think a law providing for redress for Black people directly harmed by racist Jim Crows laws, and who are still alive, is itself racist?
Instead, you seem to say "it's complicated, so we can't do anything. Oh, and it's racist to think about doing anything."
Two specific examples:
- the "vel d'hiv" sweep is taught in schools, as an example of the nazi collaorators gathering in a stadium and deporting/murdering thousands of jews ; that the same stadium was reused for the same purpose in 1967 against algerian people is not taught in schools
- Jules Ferry is revered in french schools as father of the public school system; yet schools do not teach us that he was famously racist/supremacist, and that his public school system served as a tool to colonize many regions and practice cultural genocide against many ethnicities (including a dozen on the French soil)
Fortunately, we have some decent academics studying/teaching the history of racism in this country (ex: Bouamama, Ouassak, Rigouste, etc). Unfortunately, they're under relentless attacks (especially since 2015) to be shut down by the far right who accuse them of being anti-white racists and/or "islamo-leftists". If that last expression rings a bell, that's probably because "judeo-bolsheviks" was an expression used by the nazis: should it surprise us that debates about "islamo-leftism" have reached mainstream TV in a nation that's built on the blood of countless peoples?
And you say they have no hope to "deplatform" people, but hey what happened with the crackdowns on Riseup, Indymedia, Unicorn Riot, Wikileaks and other platforms? The fascists, due to having strong ties/networks within the institutions, have a bigger impact when talking about their own hurdles and we barely talk about anti-left censorship.
The authors are calling to fill in potholes on a bridge that’s about to collapse. It’s not whataboutism to point out that their priorities are out of whack.
> Then an ideological regime obsessed with race came to power and drove many of the best scholars out, gutting the faculties and leading to sustained decay that German universities never fully recovered from. We should view this as a warning of the consequences of viewing group membership as more important than merit, and correct our course before it is too late.
https://www.newsweek.com/diversity-problem-campus-opinion-16...
The stated goal of the programs he was opposing here is to increase diversity at universities. You can reasonably disagree that it will do that (and he does in the remainder of the article, some of the points are very good) without invoking Nazi Germany. It's incredibly disrespectful and unlikely to convince people who aren't already on your side. And if the consequence of this is that you can't give a lecture one time, well, I'm having a difficult time finding the Zylkon B cans nearby.
Actually he disagrees with the goal itself (diversity, or rather what kind of diversity is desiderable to pursue).
> And if the consequence of this is that you can't give a lecture one time, well, I'm having a difficult time finding the Zylkon B cans nearby.
Yep. That's no Nazi Germany. But it's disingenuous to say that the only consequence is he won't give a lecture one time. And canceling a lecture is a very worrying thing to do, especially for such a mild "offense". The quote attributed to Voltaire is very relevant in this context.
Alerting the possible bad outcome much later down the line, is not comparing the morality of these present-time signals to the bad future-time outcome that one could fear.
It's only with historical hindsight, that you're able to say that _of course_ these weak signals in Germany were early signs of a fatal spiral, and people should have known better. From the point of view of someone living at that time, it would have been much harder not to view these opinions as exaggeration.
I never said it did. I'm saying you're falling to split whatever hairs you were looking for with this argument.
Sure, and some haven't. So being able to imagine one means exactly nothing.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/states-that...
In the 1970s cultural anthropology and genetics were both hotbeds of cancel culture. And the canceling attempts were vividly reciprocal. For a recent incident: see EO Wilson’s shameful post-modern “obituary” in Scientific American, or read Napoleon Changnon on the warfare among tribes of anthropologist.
For example I could just ignore opposing opinions I don't agree with, but I won't be ignoring threats, bullying etc. which are so common nowadays. I remember the times where you could have your opinions and if you did not directly attacked somebody or didn't break the law in your country you could post nearly anything you want and these were the times of the freedom of speech.
You can't have your opposing opinion now in some of the topics because if you do, then you're risking getting cancelled, (shadow) banned, muted or at least having your opinion removed. Or as it's common you would get the badge of being left or right even if you're not. You won't find many people who could support your opinion or at least try to calm down the conflict/argue because most of the people don't care about the "wars" that are happening in the social media, they just want to have a nice and peaceful life.
So, my opinion at the end is that we shouldn't care who creator is or what he did, the only thing we should care about is or isn't his creation, whether it's valuable or invaluable for me, my relatives, society or the environment. And if somebody disagree with some opinion, then he should post his opinion/argument if it gives any value for future on-topic discussion or some unique view, but do not start a flame war or literally try to destroy somebody' life or day because of that. In the end you do you and i do me.
Also, just to clearly point that out, I'm not from the US and I'm neither so called far-left nor far-right as probably no one is.
Has anyone actually backed this with data? Threats are more common now? Really? How do you know? Just because some "free speech" media pundit says so doesn't make it true.
There may be a way to thoughtfully discuss this issue, but this article is a poor attempt at it.
1: https://cen.acs.org/research-integrity/ethics/Essay-criticiz...
The law should also bring back ostracizing and outlawing. Humane but more effective and just than prison. Joined ISIS? Get outlawed. Participated in mob robbery, riot or insurrection? Will pay for your ticket out of the state or country because you are now banned.
The comfort and protections of a civilized society do not belong to those who reject civilization.
Would have been even nicer if Nazis (and not just the scientists) were “cancelled” before WWII.
The other form of cancel culture that needs to be stopped is the taboo against asking uncomfortable questions. If you look around the world looking for admirable governments, do you see a pattern? If so, would you be cancelled for naming it? Is that okay? Are we so committed to egalitarinism that we want to forcefully ignore measuring differences between human populations, or even framing hypotheses that imply a difference?
Is Krylov seriously asking us to consider this censorship? This is called politeness.
The citation for the list of innocuous terms to "censor" is another, very similar piece by Krylov, which cites this [0] memo from the University of Michigan's IT department. It lists no consequences for failing to use the alternate terms. Quote:
> Not all words on this list may be offensive to everyone. Regardless, if a colleague considers a word or phrase offensive, their lived experience should be acknowledged, and an alternative word or phrase should be used.
This is not "All who refuse to adopt our Newspeak must be re-educated", this is "If someone says a term is offensive, just be polite and go with it, and here are some alternative terms to help with that." It doesn't even tell you to stop using it in general, just when someone objects! Calling this "censorship" is ridiculous.
Let's look at the other two examples as well.
First, consider what happened to Tomáš Hudlický after he wrote the article.
> The journal removed the paper from its website. ... A planned special issue of Synthesis in his honour was cancelled, invitations to speak at conferences and to review papers ceased, citations to his papers were deleted, and collaborators were encouraged to dissociate themselves from him.
He wasn't fired, or demoted, or disciplined. Mainly, people just stopped wanting to associate with him. Was this proportionate? Let's now consider what the wider chemistry community thought about the article:
> Sixteen editorial board members resigned in protest of the publication. The journal ... issued an abject apology, suspended two editors, and began an internal investigation. Condemnation ensued in blogs, journals, and statements issued by chemical societies.
What happened to Hudlický seems like the straightforward consequence of holding a deeply controversial view. Lots of people won't like you for it. They don't owe you the things they were planning to give you before you wrote an article everyone hates. Saying all of them simultaneously "capitulated to the mob" is an entirely baseless framing (that's all too common in this type of writing).
As for Dorian Abbot, paraphrasing the article, "A group of activists initiated a social media campaign to uninvite him. MIT cancelled the event."
Again, unpopular people are not owed speaking appearances. Disinvitation is not punishment. The point of these talks is the prestige of having a respected expert make an appearance and share their views. If the audience doesn't like you, there's no reason for the university to invite you to speak. If this is all that happened to Abbot, I'm struggling to see why I ought to care about this.
In summary, an organization asked people to consider other peoples' feelings before publishing things, and some unpopular people were not allowed to give prestigious lectures. Going back to the top of the article and reading Krylov compare this to autocratic regimes and murder highlights just how dishonest and hyperbolic the framing is on all of these "cancel culture" articles. They're all like this.
[0] https://drive.google.com/file/d/11a8cUt1SCfIxQRBZk_TnRYM5ltE...
[1] Further reading: https://michaelhobbes.substack.com/p/moral-panic-journalism