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Why did this reporter have to go and publish Scott's real name when Scott requested him not to? The “why” is easy. The first part of this article makes the re

Why did this reporter have to go and publish Scott's real name when Scott requested him not to? The “why” is easy. The first part of this article makes the reason quite clear. This reporter believed that Scott’s site was giving safe harbor to “white supremacists” while making it hard for “social justice warriors’” voices to be heard [1]. So the reason he was doxxed is in keeping with a recent trend in the media: punish perceived right-leaning people for their views. Drag them out in the public square, and get them fired or at least ensure that their life will never be the same. It’s Mccarthyism, 2021 edition. Welcome to the newly “united” America. [1] The part of the article I am referring to is this: “...The voices also included white supremacists and neo-fascists. The only people who struggled to be heard, Dr. Friedman said, were "social justice warriors.". The author knew that the left-leaning readers of the NYT would be upset over this, and would want to know whom the person behind such a community was so that cancel culture could carry out its duties.

commandlinefan 6y ago
Because Scott is the most talented writer of the 21st century (so far, anyway) and he’s _not playing their game_. He’s not beholden to a publisher, an editor, or advertising cartels, and he’s demonstrating that their power is more tenuous than they’d like to believe.
zozbot234 6y ago
Note that Dr. Friedman has explicitly said that the NYTimes article includes fabricated "quotes" that he never actually said. IIRC, Scott Aaronson's Shtetl-Optimized blog talks about this.
- thu2111 6y ago
  I read the blog you mentioned and saw no mention of fabricated quotes. In fact Aaronson has blogged twice. The first time he said he words to the effect of: I talked to Metz extensively and told everyone else to, I didn't like the article but I'll keep talking to journalists as much as they want because the NYT is the "blockchain of civilisation". In the second he says he read the comments on his first blog post and changed his mind.
kmeisthax 6y ago
I'm going to point out that McCarthy was a fierce right-winger, and the "punish people for wrongthink" mentality has been almost exclusively a right-wing thing until very recently. "Cancel culture" is what right-wingers complain about when they've realized left-wingers have rifled through their rhetorical toolbox. Personally, I don't think "only we're allowed to cancel people" is a good enough reason to denounce this article. A better argument would be that Scott isn't the right-winger the article writer thinks they are, and that the article is poorly researched. At worst, I'd say he's probably a little too dismissive of privilege narratives, but that doesn't make him a white supremacist or a neo-fascist. Of course, that doesn't make an article, and we gotta keep the content grill sizzling, so here's some tenuous connections to make an interesting story to meet quotas.
- thu2111 6y ago
  McCarthy was fiercely anti-communist, but so were most other people at that time. He became famous for alleging large scale infiltration of the US government by communist agents. He couldn't prove it, there are some historians who believe McCarthy was largely correct about the scale of the Soviet activity in the US government. They argue he was effectively 'cancelled' as a consequence of being dangerously correct, and that declassified decrypts released by the NSA decades later prove it. An example of this argument is: https://www.amazon.com/Blacklisted-History-Senator-McCarthy-Americas/dp/140008105X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-0280032-8865773?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194391332&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Blacklisted-History-Senator-McCarthy-... Another is: https://archive.org/details/josephmccarthyre00herm/page/5/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/josephmccarthyre00herm/page/5/mo... A perhaps more accessible writeup in the Washington Post from 1996: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1996/04/14/was-mccarthy-right-about-the-left/a0dc6726-e2fd-4a31-bcdd-5f352acbf5de/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1996/04/14/w... "Cancel culture" is what right-wingers complain about when they've realized left-wingers have rifled through their rhetorical toolbox Can you give some examples. At least from the perspective of a British person, I cannot recall right wing people ever engaging in "cancel culture" during my life time. Are you thinking of religious people in the USA?
  - awnird 6y ago

commandlinefan 6y ago

Because Scott is the most talented writer of the 21st century (so far, anyway) and he’s _not playing their game_. He’s not beholden to a publisher, an editor, or advertising cartels, and he’s demonstrating that their power is more tenuous than they’d like to believe.

zozbot234 6y ago

Note that Dr. Friedman has explicitly said that the NYTimes article includes fabricated "quotes" that he never actually said. IIRC, Scott Aaronson's Shtetl-Optimized blog talks about this.

thu2111 6y ago
I read the blog you mentioned and saw no mention of fabricated quotes. In fact Aaronson has blogged twice. The first time he said he words to the effect of: I talked to Metz extensively and told everyone else to, I didn't like the article but I'll keep talking to journalists as much as they want because the NYT is the "blockchain of civilisation". In the second he says he read the comments on his first blog post and changed his mind.

kmeisthax 6y ago

I'm going to point out that McCarthy was a fierce right-winger, and the "punish people for wrongthink" mentality has been almost exclusively a right-wing thing until very recently. "Cancel culture" is what right-wingers complain about when they've realized left-wingers have rifled through their rhetorical toolbox. Personally, I don't think "only we're allowed to cancel people" is a good enough reason to denounce this article. A better argument would be that Scott isn't the right-winger the article writer thinks they are, and that the article is poorly researched. At worst, I'd say he's probably a little too dismissive of privilege narratives, but that doesn't make him a white supremacist or a neo-fascist. Of course, that doesn't make an article, and we gotta keep the content grill sizzling, so here's some tenuous connections to make an interesting story to meet quotas.

thu2111 6y ago
McCarthy was fiercely anti-communist, but so were most other people at that time. He became famous for alleging large scale infiltration of the US government by communist agents. He couldn't prove it, there are some historians who believe McCarthy was largely correct about the scale of the Soviet activity in the US government. They argue he was effectively 'cancelled' as a consequence of being dangerously correct, and that declassified decrypts released by the NSA decades later prove it. An example of this argument is: https://www.amazon.com/Blacklisted-History-Senator-McCarthy-Americas/dp/140008105X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-0280032-8865773?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194391332&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Blacklisted-History-Senator-McCarthy-... Another is: https://archive.org/details/josephmccarthyre00herm/page/5/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/josephmccarthyre00herm/page/5/mo... A perhaps more accessible writeup in the Washington Post from 1996: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1996/04/14/was-mccarthy-right-about-the-left/a0dc6726-e2fd-4a31-bcdd-5f352acbf5de/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1996/04/14/w... "Cancel culture" is what right-wingers complain about when they've realized left-wingers have rifled through their rhetorical toolbox Can you give some examples. At least from the perspective of a British person, I cannot recall right wing people ever engaging in "cancel culture" during my life time. Are you thinking of religious people in the USA?
- awnird 6y ago