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I find it bizarre that comments like these seem to think the main battle ground for free speech is young people like myself "cancelling" people on twitter, when

by oisdk 6y ago

I find it bizarre that comments like these seem to think the main battle ground for free speech is young people like myself "cancelling" people on twitter, when at the same time protestors are being arrested by secret police in the US. Like there is an authoritarian government right there for you to criticise, but you choose only to talk endlessly about tweets like "can white people make rice, or is it cultural appropriation? A thread (1/329)".

rclayton 6y ago
I agree. I would like for someone to enumerate all the people who have been “cancelled” and then compare it to those that have been violently attacked.
- oisdk 6y ago
  I mean I think there's an argument to be made that discourse has become more rigid (although I do think it's overblown), but like I don't understand how you can write this: > Also from an ex soviet state. Also feel alarm bells going off. I'm legitimately scared. I've seen this before, I know where it goes. And not be talking about a massive police crackdown on protest and the army being brought in to police civilians. Like your alarm bells are dead silent for all of that, but some celebrity has to apologise for not saying "latinx" or whatever and suddenly you're all "ah yes, just like in the Soviet Union"?!
  - hnal943 6y ago
    You don't understand, and that's the problem.
    - rclayton 6y ago
      Well, elaborate please.
      - Sacho 6y ago
        It's difficult, when we are in thorough disagreement of the facts. > And not be talking about a massive police crackdown on protest Is the police crackdown on protest or rioting? I can buy an argument that Trump hates the protests and is secretly hoping that sending the police will also disperse protesters, but on its face, do we disagree that there's rioting in Portland, and that it's the police's job to stop it? > and the army being brought in to police civilians. Huh? > but some celebrity has to apologise for not saying "latinx" or whatever This is disingenuous strawmanning. There's plenty instances of people losing their jobs for saying the wrong thing, and even a few extreme cases of people ending their lives after intense internet vitriol(although it would be equally disingenuous of me to focus on those cases and claim that cancel culture "kills people"). I don't know why parent jumps on celebrities as go-to examples - a stronger example would be academia, where political censure has been normalized for decades.
        rclayton 6y ago
        I think that’s the point. “Cancel cultural” has always been around in some form or another when you challenge the cultural norms of some society or institution. The outrage over it now seems silly, particularly when it’s predominantly liberal people suffering from it. However, unlike other oppressed minorities of the past, the consequences are much less severe.
- ptero 6y ago
  Your "just count the cancelled" does not work. I have lived in the East Europe pre-Perestroyka and back then, it was "just count political prisoners; see how few there are!". And it was true -- there were not that many by 1980s. But there were few not because thought police was not real, but because any appearance of acting against it would be quickly dealt with. So very few people would dare. That's the path we are taking today.
  - oisdk 6y ago
    > "just count political prisoners; see how few there are!" You see how it comes across as a little ridiculous when you equate "being cancelled on twitter" to "being a literal political prisoner"? Especially when there are actual political prisoners, in prison, in the US right now?
    - free_rms 6y ago
      Losing your livelihood, in a nation famous for it's relative lack of safety net, is in fact a big deal. Here's the thing, you don't have to pick a side so hard. It's not, either we get this dude fired for citing a study about the 1968 riots or you're in favor of the border patrol arresting citizens without due process. These things are actually highly unrelated, and both can be bad.
      - oisdk 6y ago
        I mean I agree with you: broadly I think things like the Yascha Mounk case are bad (I mean there are even better examples on the left: take Matt Bruenig, for instance), but like it's totally insane to say it's the main authoritarian crisis in the US today in the midst of brutal police violence. Also, I do think that the Mounk or Bruenig case are actually a little different from "cancel culture": they seem much more like political machinations at the places those people worked. Like I think either of those things could have happened just as easily 20 or 30 years ago. When I think "cancel culture" I think more about random people getting twitter mobbed for saying something offensive. Really I think it's an issue of emphasis. And I think identifying some social pressure to be more "woke" with threat of ridicule on social media as being the first step on the way to totalitarianism, while simultaneously insisting the police brutality is nothing of the sort, reveals quite a lot about people's lack of perspective and warped priorities.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  The point, to spell it out, is about chilling effects. If some organization starts killing everyone wearing a blue hat,pretty soone nobody would wear a blue hat. And then people like you would think that since no blue hat wearers get murdered, this is fine. Even call it "non violent" perhaps.
  - rclayton 6y ago
    Have we started killing cancelled people? Who has been “cancelled” anyways? What punishments have they endured? A lost job at a very public position? As someone wisely pointed out, the only person possibly going to be jailed in the #MeToo movement will be Harvey Weinstein. Many comedians and politicians have recovered. Look at Al Franken - polls show he’s electable in his state (by the group that ostracized him no less). More importantly, if cancel culture had any teeth, this President would have been cancelled.
    - free_rms 6y ago
      That's actually a great summary of the beef with cancel culture -- it only punches down. They can't touch Trump, or Ben Shapiro, or any of the other people that they really hate. Those people's actual jobs are to say things progressives hate. Who can the cancelers get? Moderate liberals, working in liberal enclaves, who said the wrong thing. Get'em! That'll make me feel better.
      - rclayton 6y ago
        That’s actually my point. Overestimating the reach of cancel culture because you live in a liberal enclave.
        free_rms 6y ago
        Maybe we're very precisely estimating the reach and are appropriately terrified? If you can't get the people you want, but you really want to get somebody...
tome 6y ago
> protestors are being arrested by secret police in the US I genuinely don't have reliable information to determine whether they are peaceful protestors or violent rioters, nor whether the police are secret or not. Where would I go to find out?
- oisdk 6y ago
  Peaceful protestors being brutalised by police has been documented in almost countless cases by now. I find it hard to believe that you're asking this is good faith, but if you you are then you can: * Watch any one of the hundreds of videos documenting what I'm referring to. * Read pretty much any major news source in the US documenting these cases. I'm sorry that I don't have a specific source to point you to, but it's genuinely because there is just so much evidence for the statement that it's hard to pick out one thing. As to the secret police question, that's really down to your definition of secret police.
  - tome 6y ago
    > Peaceful protestors being brutalised by police has been documented in almost countless cases by now Yes, I've seen plenty of evidence for that[1]. On the other hand you said "protestors are being arrested by secret police in the US". That's quite a different claim and I haven't seen any evidence for that. I've heard a few reports and associated videos whose reliability I haven't been able to verify. [1] For the avoidance of doubt my belief is that that kind of behaviour does not belong in a civilised society.
    - oisdk 6y ago
      I assume you're aware of police obscuring their badge numbers, and refusing to identify themselves? That phenomenon is at least as common as the actual police violence. While I have many problems with the following snopes article, I think the facts it presents are pretty incontrovertible: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/feds-unmarked-vans-portland/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/feds-unmarked-vans-portlan...
wrren 6y ago
Because there's a mechanism for changing that government: the upcoming presidential election. Whereas changing a cultural movement like the one we're watching unfold is a lot more difficult.
- oisdk 6y ago
  It does not make sense to me that we should say the actions of a government are less important to criticise or examine because we can vote on that government.
  - wrren 6y ago
    I didn't say they were less important, just that they're more easily solved.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      They're more easy to take one concrete step to try to change. How much that will actually solve remains to be seen.
- mononcqc 6y ago
  A lot of the people "being cancelled" on twitter are only freaking out because for the first time in forever, they get the direct opinion of people reading their texts unfiltered, and they find out that they are prey to criticism. For example, Kelly Loeffler, claims to have been "cancelled" while being a sitting US senator. Cancel culture by popular action is not new (see letter-writing to TV stations, Frank Zappa having to testify in front of congress about censorship for his music albums). The only thing freaking people out is that people who have traditionally been structurally shielded from criticism and direct action (and often behind the cancelling itself) are just now on the receiving end of it.
  - wrren 6y ago
    People expressing their opinions about one's ideas is not cancel culture: it's when critics go one step further and try to destroy the person they disagree with. Many people have lost their livelihoods and even more are afraid to express their opinion at all because of the disproportionate cost they might incur. People having been structurally shielded from mob justice in the past is a state worth returning to.
auggierose 6y ago
I can't real imagine how you can say that you "cancel someone" on Twitter and not shudder inside.
- oisdk 6y ago
  My intention was to be self-deprecating. (or, rather, I was trying to acknowledge that I know I am part of the demographic commonly held as responsible for "cancelling" people. Personally I find it impossible to use the word without a massive heap of irony)
ekianjo 6y ago
since when are the feds a secret police?
vorpalhex 6y ago
You're engaging in a straw man of both sides and it makes me want to disregard your argument entirely. > you choose only to talk endlessly about tweets like... Do you really think that's what people are complaining about here? Not the professors being fired, the well known economists being forced to resign? There was a professor who lost his status running a residence hall because he was on the legal defense team for someone despicable. As a society, we've decided that yes, even criminals need lawyers. To cancel someone and permanently affect their career for engaging in the most liberal of virtues and defending even criminals (especially if you believe we live in an authoritarian state) is beyond the pale. > when at the same time protestors are being arrested by secret police in the US. I've been working for police reform in what I believe is a flawed system for years. Everything the protestors are doing has probably set us back a decade. Every protestor killed by a fellow protestor (17 is the current count), every major spike in crime due to police being defunded instead of retrained, and every cop sent to the hospital because of folks throwing glass bottles and chunks of brick is not going to magically dry up and go away the next time we want to raise a serious issue. We have a legal and social framework for affecting longterm change and it works much better than arson.
- jacobush 6y ago
  But the reform way hasn't worked very well, if at all, either. Not saying that means one should revolt or anything, just that America seems like it's stuck between a rock and hard place, currently.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    >But the reform way hasn't worked very well, if at all, either. You don't see a difference between USA, 1960 and USA, 2020?
    - BoiledCabbage 6y ago
      And you know what was the cause of the largest changes between 1960 and 2020? The civil rights protests. And those protesters were disapproved of / hated by the majority of the population at the time. For upsetting the status quo - and "pushing for change to quickly". There are surveys that list this - that mirror the exact same responses that a number of people give today about BLM.
biophysboy 6y ago
Twitter warriors are absolutely a small piece of the pie, but I think you could say they are the online face of the amorphous force that the authoritarian secret police are attacking. Each unit of the force is trivial (rioters are a trivial part of the protests, campus activists are a trivial part of the student body, AOC is a trivial part of congress, moral clarity journalists a la Wesley Lowery are a trivial part of news mastheads, online "SJW" people are a trivial part of Twitter, etc). However, in aggregate it freaks out and motivates the authoritarians you are talking about. When they criticize any of the forces, they are simultaneously fearing the larger whole.
- oisdk 6y ago
  Listen, if people want to say that “cancel culture” is a real phenomenon and it has a chilling effect on speech that’s one thing: I’d even be sympathetic to that point of view (although, as I said, I think it’s vastly overblown by people like Graham who are simply experiencing criticism from a broader range of people due to social media). What I think is ridiculous is to jump to the authoritarian/soviet comparisons, especially when the US is in the midst of a horrific authoritarian violent crackdown by a militarised police force. I think that emphasis reveals a real lack of perspective.
  - biophysboy 6y ago
    Sure - I get it. The violent crackdowns are big part of why I'm making authoritarian/soviet comparisons, in addition to the institutional battles in universities and media/tech companies.
  - gpanders 6y ago
    > What I think is ridiculous is to jump to the authoritarian/soviet comparisons, especially when the US is in the midst of a horrific authoritarian violent crackdown by a militarised police force. I mean, this too warrants authoritarian/Soviet comparisons, does it not? Besides, what happens when someone who is ideologically aligned with the angry Twitter mobs takes the reins of power and has the full force of the government behind them (including that militarized police force)? Can you not see why people might be concerned about systematic suppression of "bad" thoughts and ideas from the top-down (apropos the Soviet comparisons) in that scenario?
jimbokun 6y ago
Obviously the Trump administration is, by far, the bigger threat. The trouble is the left are staring to adapt his tactics. At the beginning of Trump's term, there was a lot of concern about how Trump was trying to silence the press through his rhetoric about "fake news" and threatening spurious libel claims, trying to shut down speech he didn't like. Now the left is adopting the mirror image policy of trying to shut down speech they don't like. Very few are left to actually stand up for the principle of granting freedoms, even to people you don't like or disagree with.
- sparkie 6y ago
  > Trump was trying to silence the press through his rhetoric about "fake news" Trump wasn't trying to "silence the press" - this was left-wing media rhetoric. He was simply calling them out for their sloppy journalism, and it worked to his favour. Remember, the term "fake news" was conjured by left-wing media in response to Trump's election victory, referring to up and coming media companies which were eating away at their numbers (there were some obvious fake ones, but not with any significance to sway an election). Those on the left were unable to imagine from their bubbles, how people would vote for Trump, despite all of their efforts to put Hillary in the White House. It was a shock, and "fake news" was their reaction to it. Trump managed to take their term, aimed at him, and aim it back at them. Now when people hear "fake news", they think of CNN. > Very few are left to actually stand up for the principle of granting freedoms Freedoms aren't granted, they exist. They can only be taken away. The State is usually the one taking them away, so anyone arguing for "more state" is really shooting themselves in the foot. We need less state, not more.
  - RonaldRaygun 6y ago
    > Remember, the term "fake news" was conjured by left-wing media in response to Trump's election victory, referring to up and coming media companies which were eating away at their numbers This is completely untrue and a deliberate reframing of Donald Trump's actions in the most benevolent possible light. "Fake news" referred to actual fake news. Like 5G causes coronavirus, Hillary Clinton runs a secret pedophile ring and literally kills people fake news. Trump repurposed it to refer to any news item that he disagrees with or that casts him in a negative light. (And in fairness, some actual fake news falls under this category as well, but the proportions are small enough to make this useless as a differentiator.) He labels CNN "fake news" for calling him out on easily verifiable lies. At this point, anyone who doesn't acknowledge that he often conveys falsehoods to his audience is being purposefully obtuse - I have more respect for the people that admit this but believe it is a justified means to what they see as a desirable end. > We need less state, not more. I assume this means you are opposed to the untrained and unidentifiable federal troops occupying US cities in direct contradiction of the desires of local officials, right?
throwaway326429 6y ago
It goes beyond Twitter. Take a look at what happened at Evergreen State College in 2017 [1] and you will find close parallels with the Red Guards mentioned in this thread. This is just one incident. Multiple people are telling you they have personally lived through similar things, and they are scared because these things did not end well. These people are aware of the events you believe pose the greater threat, and they disagree with you. > I find it bizarre that comments like these seem to think the main battle ground for free speech is young people like myself "cancelling" people on twitter I truly don't mean to be patronizing, but I will say the following because I believe there is a lot at stake and I'm trying to get you to see the other side of this. If you find this view "bizarre", maybe there is something important you are missing. Is there something these people see that you are missing? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_State_College#2017_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_State_College#2017_p...

by oisdk 6y ago

rclayton 6y ago

I agree. I would like for someone to enumerate all the people who have been “cancelled” and then compare it to those that have been violently attacked.

oisdk 6y ago
I mean I think there's an argument to be made that discourse has become more rigid (although I do think it's overblown), but like I don't understand how you can write this: > Also from an ex soviet state. Also feel alarm bells going off. I'm legitimately scared. I've seen this before, I know where it goes. And not be talking about a massive police crackdown on protest and the army being brought in to police civilians. Like your alarm bells are dead silent for all of that, but some celebrity has to apologise for not saying "latinx" or whatever and suddenly you're all "ah yes, just like in the Soviet Union"?!
- hnal943 6y ago
  You don't understand, and that's the problem.
  - rclayton 6y ago
    Well, elaborate please.
    - Sacho 6y ago
      It's difficult, when we are in thorough disagreement of the facts. > And not be talking about a massive police crackdown on protest Is the police crackdown on protest or rioting? I can buy an argument that Trump hates the protests and is secretly hoping that sending the police will also disperse protesters, but on its face, do we disagree that there's rioting in Portland, and that it's the police's job to stop it? > and the army being brought in to police civilians. Huh? > but some celebrity has to apologise for not saying "latinx" or whatever This is disingenuous strawmanning. There's plenty instances of people losing their jobs for saying the wrong thing, and even a few extreme cases of people ending their lives after intense internet vitriol(although it would be equally disingenuous of me to focus on those cases and claim that cancel culture "kills people"). I don't know why parent jumps on celebrities as go-to examples - a stronger example would be academia, where political censure has been normalized for decades.
      - rclayton 6y ago
        I think that’s the point. “Cancel cultural” has always been around in some form or another when you challenge the cultural norms of some society or institution. The outrage over it now seems silly, particularly when it’s predominantly liberal people suffering from it. However, unlike other oppressed minorities of the past, the consequences are much less severe.
ptero 6y ago
Your "just count the cancelled" does not work. I have lived in the East Europe pre-Perestroyka and back then, it was "just count political prisoners; see how few there are!". And it was true -- there were not that many by 1980s. But there were few not because thought police was not real, but because any appearance of acting against it would be quickly dealt with. So very few people would dare. That's the path we are taking today.
- oisdk 6y ago
  > "just count political prisoners; see how few there are!" You see how it comes across as a little ridiculous when you equate "being cancelled on twitter" to "being a literal political prisoner"? Especially when there are actual political prisoners, in prison, in the US right now?
  - free_rms 6y ago
    Losing your livelihood, in a nation famous for it's relative lack of safety net, is in fact a big deal. Here's the thing, you don't have to pick a side so hard. It's not, either we get this dude fired for citing a study about the 1968 riots or you're in favor of the border patrol arresting citizens without due process. These things are actually highly unrelated, and both can be bad.
    - oisdk 6y ago
      I mean I agree with you: broadly I think things like the Yascha Mounk case are bad (I mean there are even better examples on the left: take Matt Bruenig, for instance), but like it's totally insane to say it's the main authoritarian crisis in the US today in the midst of brutal police violence. Also, I do think that the Mounk or Bruenig case are actually a little different from "cancel culture": they seem much more like political machinations at the places those people worked. Like I think either of those things could have happened just as easily 20 or 30 years ago. When I think "cancel culture" I think more about random people getting twitter mobbed for saying something offensive. Really I think it's an issue of emphasis. And I think identifying some social pressure to be more "woke" with threat of ridicule on social media as being the first step on the way to totalitarianism, while simultaneously insisting the police brutality is nothing of the sort, reveals quite a lot about people's lack of perspective and warped priorities.
BurningFrog 6y ago
The point, to spell it out, is about chilling effects. If some organization starts killing everyone wearing a blue hat,pretty soone nobody would wear a blue hat. And then people like you would think that since no blue hat wearers get murdered, this is fine. Even call it "non violent" perhaps.
- rclayton 6y ago
  Have we started killing cancelled people? Who has been “cancelled” anyways? What punishments have they endured? A lost job at a very public position? As someone wisely pointed out, the only person possibly going to be jailed in the #MeToo movement will be Harvey Weinstein. Many comedians and politicians have recovered. Look at Al Franken - polls show he’s electable in his state (by the group that ostracized him no less). More importantly, if cancel culture had any teeth, this President would have been cancelled.
  - free_rms 6y ago
    That's actually a great summary of the beef with cancel culture -- it only punches down. They can't touch Trump, or Ben Shapiro, or any of the other people that they really hate. Those people's actual jobs are to say things progressives hate. Who can the cancelers get? Moderate liberals, working in liberal enclaves, who said the wrong thing. Get'em! That'll make me feel better.
    - rclayton 6y ago
      That’s actually my point. Overestimating the reach of cancel culture because you live in a liberal enclave.
      - free_rms 6y ago
        Maybe we're very precisely estimating the reach and are appropriately terrified? If you can't get the people you want, but you really want to get somebody...

tome 6y ago

> protestors are being arrested by secret police in the US I genuinely don't have reliable information to determine whether they are peaceful protestors or violent rioters, nor whether the police are secret or not. Where would I go to find out?

oisdk 6y ago
Peaceful protestors being brutalised by police has been documented in almost countless cases by now. I find it hard to believe that you're asking this is good faith, but if you you are then you can: * Watch any one of the hundreds of videos documenting what I'm referring to. * Read pretty much any major news source in the US documenting these cases. I'm sorry that I don't have a specific source to point you to, but it's genuinely because there is just so much evidence for the statement that it's hard to pick out one thing. As to the secret police question, that's really down to your definition of secret police.
- tome 6y ago
  > Peaceful protestors being brutalised by police has been documented in almost countless cases by now Yes, I've seen plenty of evidence for that[1]. On the other hand you said "protestors are being arrested by secret police in the US". That's quite a different claim and I haven't seen any evidence for that. I've heard a few reports and associated videos whose reliability I haven't been able to verify. [1] For the avoidance of doubt my belief is that that kind of behaviour does not belong in a civilised society.
  - oisdk 6y ago
    I assume you're aware of police obscuring their badge numbers, and refusing to identify themselves? That phenomenon is at least as common as the actual police violence. While I have many problems with the following snopes article, I think the facts it presents are pretty incontrovertible: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/feds-unmarked-vans-portland/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/feds-unmarked-vans-portlan...

wrren 6y ago

Because there's a mechanism for changing that government: the upcoming presidential election. Whereas changing a cultural movement like the one we're watching unfold is a lot more difficult.

oisdk 6y ago
It does not make sense to me that we should say the actions of a government are less important to criticise or examine because we can vote on that government.
- wrren 6y ago
  I didn't say they were less important, just that they're more easily solved.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    They're more easy to take one concrete step to try to change. How much that will actually solve remains to be seen.
mononcqc 6y ago
A lot of the people "being cancelled" on twitter are only freaking out because for the first time in forever, they get the direct opinion of people reading their texts unfiltered, and they find out that they are prey to criticism. For example, Kelly Loeffler, claims to have been "cancelled" while being a sitting US senator. Cancel culture by popular action is not new (see letter-writing to TV stations, Frank Zappa having to testify in front of congress about censorship for his music albums). The only thing freaking people out is that people who have traditionally been structurally shielded from criticism and direct action (and often behind the cancelling itself) are just now on the receiving end of it.
- wrren 6y ago
  People expressing their opinions about one's ideas is not cancel culture: it's when critics go one step further and try to destroy the person they disagree with. Many people have lost their livelihoods and even more are afraid to express their opinion at all because of the disproportionate cost they might incur. People having been structurally shielded from mob justice in the past is a state worth returning to.

auggierose 6y ago

I can't real imagine how you can say that you "cancel someone" on Twitter and not shudder inside.

oisdk 6y ago
My intention was to be self-deprecating. (or, rather, I was trying to acknowledge that I know I am part of the demographic commonly held as responsible for "cancelling" people. Personally I find it impossible to use the word without a massive heap of irony)

ekianjo 6y ago

since when are the feds a secret police?

vorpalhex 6y ago

You're engaging in a straw man of both sides and it makes me want to disregard your argument entirely. > you choose only to talk endlessly about tweets like... Do you really think that's what people are complaining about here? Not the professors being fired, the well known economists being forced to resign? There was a professor who lost his status running a residence hall because he was on the legal defense team for someone despicable. As a society, we've decided that yes, even criminals need lawyers. To cancel someone and permanently affect their career for engaging in the most liberal of virtues and defending even criminals (especially if you believe we live in an authoritarian state) is beyond the pale. > when at the same time protestors are being arrested by secret police in the US. I've been working for police reform in what I believe is a flawed system for years. Everything the protestors are doing has probably set us back a decade. Every protestor killed by a fellow protestor (17 is the current count), every major spike in crime due to police being defunded instead of retrained, and every cop sent to the hospital because of folks throwing glass bottles and chunks of brick is not going to magically dry up and go away the next time we want to raise a serious issue. We have a legal and social framework for affecting longterm change and it works much better than arson.

jacobush 6y ago
But the reform way hasn't worked very well, if at all, either. Not saying that means one should revolt or anything, just that America seems like it's stuck between a rock and hard place, currently.
- luckylion 6y ago
  >But the reform way hasn't worked very well, if at all, either. You don't see a difference between USA, 1960 and USA, 2020?
  - BoiledCabbage 6y ago
    And you know what was the cause of the largest changes between 1960 and 2020? The civil rights protests. And those protesters were disapproved of / hated by the majority of the population at the time. For upsetting the status quo - and "pushing for change to quickly". There are surveys that list this - that mirror the exact same responses that a number of people give today about BLM.

biophysboy 6y ago

Twitter warriors are absolutely a small piece of the pie, but I think you could say they are the online face of the amorphous force that the authoritarian secret police are attacking. Each unit of the force is trivial (rioters are a trivial part of the protests, campus activists are a trivial part of the student body, AOC is a trivial part of congress, moral clarity journalists a la Wesley Lowery are a trivial part of news mastheads, online "SJW" people are a trivial part of Twitter, etc). However, in aggregate it freaks out and motivates the authoritarians you are talking about. When they criticize any of the forces, they are simultaneously fearing the larger whole.

oisdk 6y ago
Listen, if people want to say that “cancel culture” is a real phenomenon and it has a chilling effect on speech that’s one thing: I’d even be sympathetic to that point of view (although, as I said, I think it’s vastly overblown by people like Graham who are simply experiencing criticism from a broader range of people due to social media). What I think is ridiculous is to jump to the authoritarian/soviet comparisons, especially when the US is in the midst of a horrific authoritarian violent crackdown by a militarised police force. I think that emphasis reveals a real lack of perspective.
- biophysboy 6y ago
  Sure - I get it. The violent crackdowns are big part of why I'm making authoritarian/soviet comparisons, in addition to the institutional battles in universities and media/tech companies.
- gpanders 6y ago
  > What I think is ridiculous is to jump to the authoritarian/soviet comparisons, especially when the US is in the midst of a horrific authoritarian violent crackdown by a militarised police force. I mean, this too warrants authoritarian/Soviet comparisons, does it not? Besides, what happens when someone who is ideologically aligned with the angry Twitter mobs takes the reins of power and has the full force of the government behind them (including that militarized police force)? Can you not see why people might be concerned about systematic suppression of "bad" thoughts and ideas from the top-down (apropos the Soviet comparisons) in that scenario?

jimbokun 6y ago

Obviously the Trump administration is, by far, the bigger threat. The trouble is the left are staring to adapt his tactics. At the beginning of Trump's term, there was a lot of concern about how Trump was trying to silence the press through his rhetoric about "fake news" and threatening spurious libel claims, trying to shut down speech he didn't like. Now the left is adopting the mirror image policy of trying to shut down speech they don't like. Very few are left to actually stand up for the principle of granting freedoms, even to people you don't like or disagree with.

sparkie 6y ago
> Trump was trying to silence the press through his rhetoric about "fake news" Trump wasn't trying to "silence the press" - this was left-wing media rhetoric. He was simply calling them out for their sloppy journalism, and it worked to his favour. Remember, the term "fake news" was conjured by left-wing media in response to Trump's election victory, referring to up and coming media companies which were eating away at their numbers (there were some obvious fake ones, but not with any significance to sway an election). Those on the left were unable to imagine from their bubbles, how people would vote for Trump, despite all of their efforts to put Hillary in the White House. It was a shock, and "fake news" was their reaction to it. Trump managed to take their term, aimed at him, and aim it back at them. Now when people hear "fake news", they think of CNN. > Very few are left to actually stand up for the principle of granting freedoms Freedoms aren't granted, they exist. They can only be taken away. The State is usually the one taking them away, so anyone arguing for "more state" is really shooting themselves in the foot. We need less state, not more.
- RonaldRaygun 6y ago
  > Remember, the term "fake news" was conjured by left-wing media in response to Trump's election victory, referring to up and coming media companies which were eating away at their numbers This is completely untrue and a deliberate reframing of Donald Trump's actions in the most benevolent possible light. "Fake news" referred to actual fake news. Like 5G causes coronavirus, Hillary Clinton runs a secret pedophile ring and literally kills people fake news. Trump repurposed it to refer to any news item that he disagrees with or that casts him in a negative light. (And in fairness, some actual fake news falls under this category as well, but the proportions are small enough to make this useless as a differentiator.) He labels CNN "fake news" for calling him out on easily verifiable lies. At this point, anyone who doesn't acknowledge that he often conveys falsehoods to his audience is being purposefully obtuse - I have more respect for the people that admit this but believe it is a justified means to what they see as a desirable end. > We need less state, not more. I assume this means you are opposed to the untrained and unidentifiable federal troops occupying US cities in direct contradiction of the desires of local officials, right?

throwaway326429 6y ago

It goes beyond Twitter. Take a look at what happened at Evergreen State College in 2017 [1] and you will find close parallels with the Red Guards mentioned in this thread. This is just one incident. Multiple people are telling you they have personally lived through similar things, and they are scared because these things did not end well. These people are aware of the events you believe pose the greater threat, and they disagree with you. > I find it bizarre that comments like these seem to think the main battle ground for free speech is young people like myself "cancelling" people on twitter I truly don't mean to be patronizing, but I will say the following because I believe there is a lot at stake and I'm trying to get you to see the other side of this. If you find this view "bizarre", maybe there is something important you are missing. Is there something these people see that you are missing? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_State_College#2017_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_State_College#2017_p...