Just proving that nobody* really cared about their stances on cancel culture except as that they could use it as a cudgel for their existing views, as we see the "accountability culture" and "free speech absolutists" meant nothing.
*Rounding to nobody; there are some small handful of principled people to be sure.
Regardless, the current situation doesn't prove much about intellectual consistency. It's perfectly reasonable to put endorsement of political violence in a separate category, and it's not valid to conflate all cases of "cancel culture" with each other and consider it as a "is this okay y/n" question.
If a leftist were saying "this rightist who glorified the murder of a leftist should be fired" and had previously said "this leftist who said nasty things about white men shouldn't have been cancelled by the rightist mob", would you see any hypocrisy in that? I would not.
So today, as rightists tell me "this leftist who glorified the murder of a rightist should be fired", while I don't necessarily agree, I don't go reminding them "remember that time you thought a rightist who said nasty things about black women shouldn't have been cancelled by the leftist mob?", because it's not actually relevant. (And in reality, I have seen people get cancelled for far less objectionable things.)
It's very hard to find people who take "free speech absolutism" so seriously as to oppose the SCOTUS standard of "incitement to imminent lawless action". And I can't recall ever seeing one who would agree, in as many words, that employers have any kind of moral responsibility to ignore what their employees say, even from work accounts.
FIRE has a list of people fired for making offensive comments after Kirk’s killing [0]. FAMA has something similer for people fired for making offensive comments after Floyd’s killing [1].
FIRE calls it the tragedy cycle: "A tragedy happens. Someone reacts by celebrating that tragedy for whatever reason. Then the social media mob comes to demand this person be fired, expelled, or otherwise punished for their views."
I could not monitor my submission owing to other duties.
Short lived, that is too bad, especially as I see that the few posters have not mentioned the dark-galaxy-in-the-room noted in the article, about what would constitute grounds for enmity.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 34.0 ms ] thread*Rounding to nobody; there are some small handful of principled people to be sure.
Meanwhile the lines dividing us become deeper and wider.
Regardless, the current situation doesn't prove much about intellectual consistency. It's perfectly reasonable to put endorsement of political violence in a separate category, and it's not valid to conflate all cases of "cancel culture" with each other and consider it as a "is this okay y/n" question.
If a leftist were saying "this rightist who glorified the murder of a leftist should be fired" and had previously said "this leftist who said nasty things about white men shouldn't have been cancelled by the rightist mob", would you see any hypocrisy in that? I would not.
So today, as rightists tell me "this leftist who glorified the murder of a rightist should be fired", while I don't necessarily agree, I don't go reminding them "remember that time you thought a rightist who said nasty things about black women shouldn't have been cancelled by the leftist mob?", because it's not actually relevant. (And in reality, I have seen people get cancelled for far less objectionable things.)
It's very hard to find people who take "free speech absolutism" so seriously as to oppose the SCOTUS standard of "incitement to imminent lawless action". And I can't recall ever seeing one who would agree, in as many words, that employers have any kind of moral responsibility to ignore what their employees say, even from work accounts.
FIRE calls it the tragedy cycle: "A tragedy happens. Someone reacts by celebrating that tragedy for whatever reason. Then the social media mob comes to demand this person be fired, expelled, or otherwise punished for their views."
[0]: https://www.thefire.org/news/we-are-cancel-culture-part-trag...
[1]: https://fama.io/post/fired-racist-comments-george-floyd-prot...
Short lived, that is too bad, especially as I see that the few posters have not mentioned the dark-galaxy-in-the-room noted in the article, about what would constitute grounds for enmity.