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Surprising how much press "cancel culture" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the left. We've always ha

Surprising how much press "cancel culture" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the left. We've always had cancel culture. Some might remember the Dixie Chicks. How about the Rachael Ray ad that Dunkin Donuts pulled merely because it looked like an Arab scarf? Jerry Falwell came to prominence entirely based on his pushing of cancel culture. When I lived in North Carolina, one of the things that was repeated all the time was that a newspaper editor would lose his job for publishing a story with a positive spin on free trade. You can go back further to McCarthyism, Turing being prosecuted for being gay, and on and on. Cancel culture remains a thing. Apparently now that folks aren't just being cancelled for supporting gay marriage, the free exchange of ideas is suddenly important. The outright hypocrisy of so many on this issue is the biggest story. Edit: Forgot to mention this extreme example of cancel culture: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/professor-who-wore-hijab-us-christian-college-resigns https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/professor-who-wore-hijab-... A professor was cancelled because she wore a hijab. There was no outrage at all from the usual suspects.

mywittyname 6y ago
The Dixie Chicks are a great example. They vanished from the mainstream basically overnight. People still hate them to this day and probably don't even really remember what they said.
- jimbokun 6y ago
  Well, the "Dixie Chicks" have been cancelled again, and now are just "The Chicks".
- wk_end 6y ago
  Is this sarcasm or a window into a different side of American culture? In my circles the Dixie Chicks rebounded from the Bush backlash and had their biggest pop hit ever in response to it ("Not Ready to Make Nice"); they became more respected in the wake of it than they ever had been.
- monocasa 6y ago
  And the attempt to cancel France. Going so far to rename french fries "freedom fries". All because France thought going to war with Iraq in 2003 was a bad idea.
  - cgb223 6y ago
    The “freedom fry” troupe can actually be traced back even farther to WWI If you’ve ever wondered why “frankfurters” are now called “hot dogs” or why “sauerkraut” was called “liberty cabbage” for a hot minute, it’s because of anti-German sentiment in the US [1] [1] https://www.hppr.org/post/freedom-fries-liberty-cabbage-myth https://www.hppr.org/post/freedom-fries-liberty-cabbage-myth
    - pbourke 6y ago
      Not just the US - Berlin, Ontario was renamed to Kitchener (after British WWI general Lord Kitchener) in 1916.
  - andrepd 6y ago
    I thought this was a joke. It isn't.
- rayiner 6y ago
  By “vanished from the mainstream” you mean their 2003 album still went 6x platinum, and then their 2007 album went 2x platinum and won 5 Grammys?
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    Yeah, you unexpectedly demonstrated how effective the ban was. After being blacklisted from thousands of radio stations (including ClearChannel, one of the biggest), their album sales plummeted. Except in Canada. Also, their next studio album came 14 years (!!!) after Taking The Long Way.
falcolas 6y ago
Frankly, who cares whether this is new or not? Why does that even matter? It's negatively affecting people (for this article, the young authors who are self-censoring), and should be fought against.
- xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
  Because we have people pretending it's new so they can drum up outrage and gain power. Because we have people playing the victim after being fired for being intolerable to work with. Most importantly, we have politicians adopting authoritarian attitudes as a reaction to it. Private companies have a right to "cancel" whomever they want, whether that takes the form of banning someone from a website or of canceling a contract. Yet certain politicians want to interfere in private websites or publishers by limiting their ability to exercise editorial control. I don't know the situation across the pond. I'm writing from an American perspective, where the term "cancel culture" has been entirely co-opted by cynical politicians.
  - tryonenow 6y ago
    >Because we have people pretending it's new so they can drum up outrage and gain power. Because we have people playing the victim after being fired for being intolerable to work with This is the mindset at fault. This idea that intolerance is objective, when clearly it isn't. This idea that certain ideas, regardless of their merit, are simply intolerant and must be met with collective, unilateral intolerance, which typically aligns with progressive politics. >Most importantly, we have politicians adopting authoritarian attitudes as a reaction to it This is an ironic take, considering the entire premise behind cancel culture is a collective authoritarianism. >Private companies have a right to "cancel" whomever they want, whether that takes the form of banning someone from a website or of canceling a contract. And this is perhaps the most misleading part of the comment. This isn't strictly about private companies cancelling people (although that's also a problem when incentives are aligned to effectively remove cancelees from the public square). This is about rabid, authoritarian mobs attacking individuals for dissent, and the fact that loud minorities are dictating corporate action with a specific political slant. People were complaining about cancel culture long before politicians. And possibly the most pressing issue is the fact that it isn't that these ideas themselves are intolerant, or even factually incorrect, it's the fear of some of their implications that is responsible for this conditioned suppression of their discourse, and unpersoning of anyone daring enough to ask certain questions. It's like banning research on fission because it could be used to create nuclear weapons. It's egregious anti-intellectualism to forbid certain questions or discussions strictly because of their worst implications.
echelon 6y ago
Before Twitter, I never saw headlines like "X actor under fire for previously dating Y actor". Clicking on such trends, you find the Twitterverse raging and debating totally invented controversies. People are becoming offended by everything now. They're being suggested reasons to be offended, and many seem to adopt that stance. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this is being stoked by robots. Perhaps corporate or state actors. What if "being offended" is a mind virus that spreads easily through the power of suggestion?
- vmladenov 6y ago
  The media landscape is more diverse now. In the past, television stations would regularly censor material in order to avoid getting “cancelled” by the Christian right.[1] Cancel culture is just a new word for an age-old illiberal phenomenon. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention_conservative_resurgence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention_co...
  - notsureaboutpg 6y ago
    Idk most of that is reasonable though. Censoring sexually explicit things (for example) is common around the world and all of human society generally agrees that sexually explicit things have a time and place and that time and place isn't publicly available media that children can access. But getting fired because 20 years ago you didn't approve of gay marriage is silly and that's the cancel culture right now.
- president 6y ago
  > I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this is being stoked by robots. Perhaps corporate or state actors. I have always believed that a platform should verify identities and have a zero-tolerance for bots if we (as a society) are to trust any information coming from that platform. This is not to say that platforms that don't do these things should not exist but that we should not take them as seriously as we do today. Unfortunately, this completely goes against the business model of many of these social media companies.
MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
The difference now is social media makes it easier for media outlets to publish libel as fact from unverified accusations solely interpreted as fact
Solvitieg 6y ago
I think what's interesting is the moral policing is no longer coming from the religious right. I recommend "The Realignment" podcast which often discusses why this shift has occurred: https://the-realignment.simplecast.com/ https://the-realignment.simplecast.com/
- mxcrossb 6y ago
  I also find this topic far more interesting than the fairly cliche discussion over “cancel culture”. It seems like conservatives have caught up to post modernism, whereas liberals are now passionate about objective truth and morality being black and white. I really wonder how tenable these positions are going forward.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    No conservatives are still conservatives. They don’t need to embrace post-modernism to oppose what they perceive as a heretical religion. Insofar as right-wing people now invoke the liberal notions of free expression it’s only because that was a middle ground that allowed coexistence and liberals are now sitting aside while progressives try to blow up that compromise. (And also because a bunch of center right people think it’s a good thing—it’s not like the right is uniformly absolutist evangelical types). Put differently, Christian evangelical are angry that liberals broke all these taboos in the name of free expression, and now progressives are trying to treat Christian evangelical beliefs as the basis for cancellation. There is nothing hypocritical or contradictory about this.
    - mxcrossb 6y ago
      The fact that you go to the word “hypocritical” makes me think we’re already in agreement on the basic point. I’m not trying to make a value judgement here. Go look at these arguments about confederate statues. Liberals condemn the moral faults of the person. Conservatives excuse it as values of the time; moreover they appeal to the virtue the society has chosen for the statue to represent. There’s nothing more post modern than that. From your post, it seems your view is that conservatives adopted these tools because they are the tools of an oppressed minority, which conservatives now perceive themselves to be. I think that very well might be the right explanation. But I also wonder if this shift is more of a demographics thing. Post modernism can’t be the young, hip mindset for the rest of human history. I wonder if young people today are carving out some new view of the world, which is far more interesting to me than arguments over celebrity Twitter accounts.
IAmWorried 6y ago
Honestly, it's viewpoints like yours that I despise the most. We have innocent people losing their careers with no due process, just mob justice, and what do you people do? "Oh, republicans did it 30 years ago, so any criticism is invalid." Honestly, F that. I was never even alive for what you are talking about. How about we try to build a better society where people don't lose their jobs for their views, rather than pursue some sadistic version of "payback" towards the right for what they did 30 years ago?
- KittenInABox 6y ago
  I think this person isn't saying it's fine. They're pointing out that the outrage about this is dissociated from the fact that this has been a longstanding problem and therefore likely has significantly deeper issues than the surface-level symptoms (eg. self-censorship).
  - WillPostForFood 6y ago
    Pointing out one incident almost 20 years ago isn't evidence of a long standing problem. The world is a different place with social media today, making the problem both more widespread, and more damaging to people. There have always been boycotts and attempts at cancellation, but the power of the mob is amplified in the current moment.
    - KittenInABox 6y ago
      Multiple incidents were pointed out, and I legitimately don't know if it's more damaging today than it was before. This is a country that burned black wall street to the ground over an accusation. I actually, seriously don't know if the problem is more widespread or more damaging given the history in the USA. I will say it is most certainly a problem, and I think it likely has much deeper roots than "social media exists, only now are people being hurt by mob mentality". It may be that social media only makes mob mentality more obvious to people, so now everyone is aware of it. But then the problem is why did we ever develop mob mentality in the first place....
swayvil 6y ago
Cancel culture used to be just a bear in woods. Scary but not super scary. Now it's Godzilla stomping through Seattle. It is magnified vastly by social media. That makes a big difference. And 10x that power when the engines of social media are in the hands of the cancellers, as appears to be the case.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  It was just never scary to social conservatives. Gay people got "cancelled" so hard they were thrown in jail and disowned from their families.
  - taurath 6y ago
    And laughed as 1/15 or more of a generation died from AIDS. The harm caused by the extreme right is astounding if you’re in one of the targeted groups. Someone being fired for bigoted comments when they work with minorities isn’t even in the same ballpark. And then they put up a gofundme and buy a house or get a conservative media deal.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- taurath 6y ago
  Is it? Or are we all working off of anecdotes here. Do you have data to back that up? Further - it was pretty scary getting cancelled by my parents and community when I came out. I’m glad it wasn’t scary for you.
  - swayvil 6y ago
    Yes. It was scary. And now it is much more scary. The present, much greater, scariness in no way diminishes the prior scariness. And it was, and is, scary for many many more than just the "gays". Get some perspective here.
    - taurath 6y ago
nine_k 6y ago
The underpinnings of the "cancel culture", the intolerance and mob mentality, were always around. The "cancel culture" adds two news things to the picture. One is the ability for anyone to participate, not just the few on the TV screen or newspaper pages. Another is the attempts at totality: expel the victim from every social media platform, every internet hosting, every payment platform, every public venue. It's not yet as bad as it was during the fascist years in Italy, but the approach is pretty similar. There is also no formal totalitarian party to drive it; people just join the cause by reposting a tweet, and acting accordingly when in a position to ban, expel, deplatorm, etc.
- guerrilla 6y ago
  Modulo specific technology, that's how life was if you were gay, Jewsish, Black, Asian or communist at certain times. None of that is new and the point stands.
  - leereeves 6y ago
    It was wrong then too. And what claim stands, exactly? Are you suggesting that because something bad has happened before, it shouldn't be opposed now?
    - pdpi 6y ago
      Because something bad has happened before, we should look at it happening now as part of an ongoing problem, instead of characterising it as new phenomenon. I get your point, but if you tell me I did a bad thing, I can answer in one of two ways: “you did a bad thing too, so you have no right to criticise me”, or “you did a bad thing too, maybe we should have a frank conversation about why we both fell into the same trap”.
      - leereeves 6y ago
        I don't think anyone's denying that the desire to cancel those who believe differently is an ongoing problem; in fact, that is implicitly acknowledged when recent actions are described as witch-hunts or McCarthyism. Those allusions to history are powerful precisely because this behavior isn't new. And I'd love to see a frank conversation about how we can avoid falling into that trap, but such a discussion has to start by acknowledging that it is a trap; that is to say, that cancel culture is wrong.
rayiner 6y ago
If what you’re saying is that the New York Times is now the progressive version of Liberty University then I accept that concession. Regarding your edit: > Edit: Forgot to mention this extreme example of cancel culture: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/professor-who-wore-hijab- https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/professor-who-wore-hijab-... The professor was fired from a Christian school for making an assertion (that Muslims and Christians “worship the same god”) that, according to its theology, amounts to heresy: https://www.businessinsider.com/professor-maybe-fired-for-hijab-2016-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/professor-maybe-fired-for-hi... > “Contrary to some media reports, social media activity and subsequent public perception, Dr. Hawkins' administrative leave resulted from theological statements that seemed inconsistent with Wheaton College's doctrinal convictions, and is in no way related to her race, gender, or commitment to wear a hijab during Advent," Wheaton's administration said in a statement released December 16th. So if your point is that cancel culture is the expression of a new progressive theology, then again I accept your concession.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > So if your point is that cancel culture is the expression of a new progressive theology, Wheaton’s college is an extremely narrow evangelical Protestant theology, that as well as dismissing Hawkins for her statements and firing a professor a few years before for becoming Catholic as it violated the schools duty to employ faculty embodying it's Protestant ideals, also led it to sue against the ACA’s preventive services mandate. I'm not sure why you would suggest that “cancellation” under that theology has anything to do with progressivism.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    I’m not saying Wheaton’s cancellation is progressive. I’m pointing out that OP is essentially admitting that left-wing cancel culture is a progressive analogue to Wheaton’s “extremely narrow evangelical Protestant theology.”
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  I had to cancel my NYT (after 15 years) because it has gone from center left to far left cancel culture bastion. They follow the guilty until proven innocent mindset of the current generation of "twitterati" and sucumb to their whims.
colllectorof 6y ago
>We've always had cancel culture. It seems pretty obvious that you don't understand that any culture has norms and boundaries, but only pathological cultures become entirely reactionary and define themselves purely in terms of opposition to something. >You can go back further to McCarthyism That's exactly what we're going back to and you have to be truly blind to think this is a good thing.
- danbolt 6y ago
  I don't know if I've met or heard of anyone that defines themselves solely in a reactionary way. Maybe you could expand on some ways you're seeing that?
undefined1 6y ago
many of us were against it when the puritanical right was censoring people/art/media, and we're still against it now that it's a puritanical left censoring people/art/media. why is that so hard to understand and to be consistent about this? people need to stop getting distracted by naked partisanship and focus on the issue. a principled stance is key! now we're seeing big tech getting roped in and the tools of censorship are expanding. you may be fine with that now, but the tools will change hands. imagine them in the hands of your enemy.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Exactly some of my younger friends don't understand that voices from the right have a place too. Cancelling everything that you don't like or that makes you feel uncomfortable is a dangerous echo chamber philsophy that leads to dictators in waiting (see Trump) . I am a progressive who highly values the Bill of Rights as critical to keeping us free from despotism but I know that a huge portion of the country isn't progressive and to turn them into villains and "evil" people that are easy to hate is very dangerous.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
slibhb 6y ago
If X and Y are wrong, and someone condemns only X, only Y, or X and Y, you should just agree with them. If someone condemns X and doesn't mention Y, or the reverse, it is unreasonable to react how you've reacted here.
- Daishiman 6y ago
  Not really. The intention of OP is to demonstrate that the people often mentioning cancel culture are not doing it out of advocacy for free speech norms but rather because it suits their particular style of bigotry at this very moment.
  - slibhb 6y ago
    There are people in that category. But do you think Kazuo Ishiguro is one of them? It's just...jarring to read the OP. It reads (to me) like "the right-wing does this all the time...now it's our turn!"
christophilus 6y ago
I’ve always been relatively libertarian, and the libertarians I know have consistently opposed cancel culture before it was a meme. There are plenty of folks who are consistent on this one, and I hope that we’re finally at a turning point (though I doubt it).
int_19h 6y ago
It's all well and good to point out the hypocrisy on this coming from the right; but that doesn't invalidate the issue. And you're right - it's pretty old, both on the right and the left. Here's a bona fide socialist ranting about leftist groupthink ... in 1943: "But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness." (https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-freedom-of-the-press/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...)
stjohnswarts 6y ago
Of course we've always had it but the current generation of political far left have turned it into an art form on twitter and other platforms.
civilized 6y ago
I'm very puzzled by the assertion that disproportionate punishment for violating some tribal taboo is old news and uninteresting, while hypocrisy is the real big story. I mean, hypocrisy has been around as long as tribal taboos, so, if anything, you should be just as uninterested in the hypocrisy... and thus uninterested in the whole topic, so why bother making a comment?
grumple 6y ago
I'd say that the left doing its best imitation of the worst things the right does is a bad thing. "But the right has always done this" should be all the evidence you need that what you're doing is wrong.
jonathanyc 6y ago
See also the phrase “Banned in Boston.” Some of the replies seem to assume that cancel culture is worse because it is more indiscriminate or less well-informed. Social conservatives in Boston banned a $5 bill for showing an unclothed breast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banned_in_Boston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banned_in_Boston
konjin 6y ago
> Surprising how much press "cancel culture" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the left. We've always had cancel culture. It's a new thing on the internet because the people who grew up here thought we'd be safe from the people who made our lives hell before university for not fitting in. Unfortunately the unwashed masses came in and took over and are now throwing us out because we don't act like how they expect us to act. That Stallman got cancelled for being right while everyone else who took money from a pedophile rapist got away should tell you all you need to know about the state of the internet.
daenz 6y ago
This is whataboutism. Just because something may have always been, doesn't make it any less valid to talk about ending it.
mr_toad 6y ago
> Turing being prosecuted for being gay Excluding people because they exclude others is not the same as excluding people because of who they are. Its the difference between ‘cancel culture’, and plain bigotry. If you don’t want to be excluded, stop being a bully.
jtbayly 6y ago
A professor at a Christian college claimed to be in religious solidarity with Muslims. That’s pretty much like saying that you’re attempting to further Facebook’s goals as a Google employee. Of course you get fired.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > A professor at a Christian college claimed to be in religious solidarity with Muslims. I'm not sure if the greater theological offense was the solidarity with Muslims or quoting the Pope in support of it (Wheaton had only a few years before fired a professor for converting to Catholicism; “Christian” isn't a label of a monolithic group in practice.)
  - jtbayly 6y ago
    It doesn’t matter. Either way you are not dealing with cancel culture. You are dealing with somebody who has gone on the record s as opposing the fundamental goals of the organization she works for. As I said before, of course you get fired.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      Virtually every instance of firing or other institutional disaffiliation attributed to “cancel culture” follows the same pattern: someone—inside or outside an institution—complains to an institution (of those within it empowered to make decisions on this kind of issue) with an allegation that the institutions relationship with someone violates what they perceive to be the fundamental values of the institution, the institution reviews and reaches a similar conclusion, and the relationship is terminated.
      - jtbayly 6y ago
        That’s like equating a cruise missile with a cap gun because “they both just make explosions.” This comment is a fine answer to your ideas: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26311621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26311621
lowdownfork 6y ago
It's new and bad that unknown authors can face massive backlash while they're still unknown. You can sell twenty copies of your first book and get twenty million calls for a boycott in response, if someone photographs a page and tweets a hot take. That was technically possible before social media, but only if someone powerful decided to make an example of you. Now it can happen because a random person was bored or in a bad mood. That's specifically what Ishiguro was complaining about. He even said he wasn't worried about influential people like himself (or all the examples you gave). I don't think he used the phrase "cancel culture," either. > Apparently now that folks aren't just being cancelled for supporting gay marriage, the free exchange of ideas is suddenly important. Some people suddenly started caring about the free exchange of ideas and others suddenly stopped, but you might be surprised how many just continued. To me, the ones who suddenly stopped are the biggest hypocrites of all.
bigger_cheese 6y ago
Socrates is a prominent early example of "cancel culture" he was cancelled circa 400 BC for Impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens. I suppose we are fortunate that nowadays a twitter ban doesn't come with an accompanying sip of hemlock. Impiety is essentially failing to respect something considered sacred. To (mis)quote another controversial philosopher "History repeats itself, first as tragedy than as farce"
scythe 6y ago
On this specific subject it's hard to think of parallels and if there were parallels then that was bad anyway. >He said they may be concerned that an "anonymous lynch mob will turn up online and make their lives a misery". >[...] >The 66-year-old said he was worried that less established authors were self-censoring by avoiding writing from certain viewpoints or including characters outside their immediate experiences. In the past you might have had e.g. Catcher in the Rye or Lolita or whatever banned from libraries, but low-profile authors weren't receiving death threats. The important question isn't whether the critics are fair or what their politics are; the important question is what kind of an impact do they have, and a chilling effect is worth being concerned about.
aaron695 6y ago
Surprising how much press "Flying Cars" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the VCs. We've always had "Flying Cars". https://weburbanist.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/curtiss-autoplane.jpg https://weburbanist.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/curtiss-a...
username34912 6y ago
I don't think this is a fair characterization. A lot of the biggest critics of cancel culture today (Sam Harris, Bret Weinstein, Bill Maher, etc) are moderate liberals who also criticized the right-wing Christian fundamentalist cancel culture of the Bush era. It's not hypocrisy, they really have been in favor of free speech the whole time.
lelanthran 6y ago
> Apparently now that folks aren't just being cancelled for supporting gay marriage, the free exchange of ideas is suddenly important. It was always important. What makes you think that the people (like myself) who oppose cancel culture were against gay marriage? The demographic consisting of "people who oppose cancel culture" were instrumental in making progress for gay acceptance. If we allowed cancel culture to flourish, there would be no acceptance of homosexuality, women wouldn't have equal rights, minorities would be denied opportunity, etc. Considering all the benefits that freedom of speech brought us, you now suddenly want to take it away under the guise of "freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences"? Do you seriously think that there are no more benefits from allowing people to advance their cause? To speak up for or against any particular idea? I really really want to know: why are some ideologies so perfect that none be allowed to criticise them?
throwaway189262 6y ago
Unprofessional opinion, I think the powers on the right are pushing "cancel culture" to make the crazy stuff they're saying seem okay. Like, we have a congresswoman blaming California wildfires on Jewish space lasers. The republicans can deflect from the crazy by claiming "the left" is "cancelling" these people. When in reality any public figure that said crap like that would be shunned. Probably even more in past when American society was outwardly more polite.
imtringued 6y ago
Cancel culture is just the modern witch hunt and it didn't start with the witch hunt either. It's just the most ridiculous form that everyone is aware of. This is engraved in into our genes as humans and no amount of thinking will make it go away. People love declaring individuals as enemies and receiving confirmation from a group of other people who are declaring that same individual an enemy.

mywittyname 6y ago

The Dixie Chicks are a great example. They vanished from the mainstream basically overnight. People still hate them to this day and probably don't even really remember what they said.

jimbokun 6y ago
Well, the "Dixie Chicks" have been cancelled again, and now are just "The Chicks".
wk_end 6y ago
Is this sarcasm or a window into a different side of American culture? In my circles the Dixie Chicks rebounded from the Bush backlash and had their biggest pop hit ever in response to it ("Not Ready to Make Nice"); they became more respected in the wake of it than they ever had been.
monocasa 6y ago
And the attempt to cancel France. Going so far to rename french fries "freedom fries". All because France thought going to war with Iraq in 2003 was a bad idea.
- cgb223 6y ago
  The “freedom fry” troupe can actually be traced back even farther to WWI If you’ve ever wondered why “frankfurters” are now called “hot dogs” or why “sauerkraut” was called “liberty cabbage” for a hot minute, it’s because of anti-German sentiment in the US [1] [1] https://www.hppr.org/post/freedom-fries-liberty-cabbage-myth https://www.hppr.org/post/freedom-fries-liberty-cabbage-myth
  - pbourke 6y ago
    Not just the US - Berlin, Ontario was renamed to Kitchener (after British WWI general Lord Kitchener) in 1916.
- andrepd 6y ago
  I thought this was a joke. It isn't.
rayiner 6y ago
By “vanished from the mainstream” you mean their 2003 album still went 6x platinum, and then their 2007 album went 2x platinum and won 5 Grammys?
- mywittyname 6y ago
  Yeah, you unexpectedly demonstrated how effective the ban was. After being blacklisted from thousands of radio stations (including ClearChannel, one of the biggest), their album sales plummeted. Except in Canada. Also, their next studio album came 14 years (!!!) after Taking The Long Way.

falcolas 6y ago

Frankly, who cares whether this is new or not? Why does that even matter? It's negatively affecting people (for this article, the young authors who are self-censoring), and should be fought against.

xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
Because we have people pretending it's new so they can drum up outrage and gain power. Because we have people playing the victim after being fired for being intolerable to work with. Most importantly, we have politicians adopting authoritarian attitudes as a reaction to it. Private companies have a right to "cancel" whomever they want, whether that takes the form of banning someone from a website or of canceling a contract. Yet certain politicians want to interfere in private websites or publishers by limiting their ability to exercise editorial control. I don't know the situation across the pond. I'm writing from an American perspective, where the term "cancel culture" has been entirely co-opted by cynical politicians.
- tryonenow 6y ago
  >Because we have people pretending it's new so they can drum up outrage and gain power. Because we have people playing the victim after being fired for being intolerable to work with This is the mindset at fault. This idea that intolerance is objective, when clearly it isn't. This idea that certain ideas, regardless of their merit, are simply intolerant and must be met with collective, unilateral intolerance, which typically aligns with progressive politics. >Most importantly, we have politicians adopting authoritarian attitudes as a reaction to it This is an ironic take, considering the entire premise behind cancel culture is a collective authoritarianism. >Private companies have a right to "cancel" whomever they want, whether that takes the form of banning someone from a website or of canceling a contract. And this is perhaps the most misleading part of the comment. This isn't strictly about private companies cancelling people (although that's also a problem when incentives are aligned to effectively remove cancelees from the public square). This is about rabid, authoritarian mobs attacking individuals for dissent, and the fact that loud minorities are dictating corporate action with a specific political slant. People were complaining about cancel culture long before politicians. And possibly the most pressing issue is the fact that it isn't that these ideas themselves are intolerant, or even factually incorrect, it's the fear of some of their implications that is responsible for this conditioned suppression of their discourse, and unpersoning of anyone daring enough to ask certain questions. It's like banning research on fission because it could be used to create nuclear weapons. It's egregious anti-intellectualism to forbid certain questions or discussions strictly because of their worst implications.

echelon 6y ago

Before Twitter, I never saw headlines like "X actor under fire for previously dating Y actor". Clicking on such trends, you find the Twitterverse raging and debating totally invented controversies. People are becoming offended by everything now. They're being suggested reasons to be offended, and many seem to adopt that stance. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this is being stoked by robots. Perhaps corporate or state actors. What if "being offended" is a mind virus that spreads easily through the power of suggestion?

vmladenov 6y ago
The media landscape is more diverse now. In the past, television stations would regularly censor material in order to avoid getting “cancelled” by the Christian right.[1] Cancel culture is just a new word for an age-old illiberal phenomenon. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention_conservative_resurgence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention_co...
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  Idk most of that is reasonable though. Censoring sexually explicit things (for example) is common around the world and all of human society generally agrees that sexually explicit things have a time and place and that time and place isn't publicly available media that children can access. But getting fired because 20 years ago you didn't approve of gay marriage is silly and that's the cancel culture right now.
president 6y ago
> I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this is being stoked by robots. Perhaps corporate or state actors. I have always believed that a platform should verify identities and have a zero-tolerance for bots if we (as a society) are to trust any information coming from that platform. This is not to say that platforms that don't do these things should not exist but that we should not take them as seriously as we do today. Unfortunately, this completely goes against the business model of many of these social media companies.

MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago

The difference now is social media makes it easier for media outlets to publish libel as fact from unverified accusations solely interpreted as fact

Solvitieg 6y ago

I think what's interesting is the moral policing is no longer coming from the religious right. I recommend "The Realignment" podcast which often discusses why this shift has occurred: https://the-realignment.simplecast.com/ https://the-realignment.simplecast.com/

mxcrossb 6y ago
I also find this topic far more interesting than the fairly cliche discussion over “cancel culture”. It seems like conservatives have caught up to post modernism, whereas liberals are now passionate about objective truth and morality being black and white. I really wonder how tenable these positions are going forward.
- rayiner 6y ago
  No conservatives are still conservatives. They don’t need to embrace post-modernism to oppose what they perceive as a heretical religion. Insofar as right-wing people now invoke the liberal notions of free expression it’s only because that was a middle ground that allowed coexistence and liberals are now sitting aside while progressives try to blow up that compromise. (And also because a bunch of center right people think it’s a good thing—it’s not like the right is uniformly absolutist evangelical types). Put differently, Christian evangelical are angry that liberals broke all these taboos in the name of free expression, and now progressives are trying to treat Christian evangelical beliefs as the basis for cancellation. There is nothing hypocritical or contradictory about this.
  - mxcrossb 6y ago
    The fact that you go to the word “hypocritical” makes me think we’re already in agreement on the basic point. I’m not trying to make a value judgement here. Go look at these arguments about confederate statues. Liberals condemn the moral faults of the person. Conservatives excuse it as values of the time; moreover they appeal to the virtue the society has chosen for the statue to represent. There’s nothing more post modern than that. From your post, it seems your view is that conservatives adopted these tools because they are the tools of an oppressed minority, which conservatives now perceive themselves to be. I think that very well might be the right explanation. But I also wonder if this shift is more of a demographics thing. Post modernism can’t be the young, hip mindset for the rest of human history. I wonder if young people today are carving out some new view of the world, which is far more interesting to me than arguments over celebrity Twitter accounts.

IAmWorried 6y ago

Honestly, it's viewpoints like yours that I despise the most. We have innocent people losing their careers with no due process, just mob justice, and what do you people do? "Oh, republicans did it 30 years ago, so any criticism is invalid." Honestly, F that. I was never even alive for what you are talking about. How about we try to build a better society where people don't lose their jobs for their views, rather than pursue some sadistic version of "payback" towards the right for what they did 30 years ago?

KittenInABox 6y ago
I think this person isn't saying it's fine. They're pointing out that the outrage about this is dissociated from the fact that this has been a longstanding problem and therefore likely has significantly deeper issues than the surface-level symptoms (eg. self-censorship).
- WillPostForFood 6y ago
  Pointing out one incident almost 20 years ago isn't evidence of a long standing problem. The world is a different place with social media today, making the problem both more widespread, and more damaging to people. There have always been boycotts and attempts at cancellation, but the power of the mob is amplified in the current moment.
  - KittenInABox 6y ago
    Multiple incidents were pointed out, and I legitimately don't know if it's more damaging today than it was before. This is a country that burned black wall street to the ground over an accusation. I actually, seriously don't know if the problem is more widespread or more damaging given the history in the USA. I will say it is most certainly a problem, and I think it likely has much deeper roots than "social media exists, only now are people being hurt by mob mentality". It may be that social media only makes mob mentality more obvious to people, so now everyone is aware of it. But then the problem is why did we ever develop mob mentality in the first place....

swayvil 6y ago

Cancel culture used to be just a bear in woods. Scary but not super scary. Now it's Godzilla stomping through Seattle. It is magnified vastly by social media. That makes a big difference. And 10x that power when the engines of social media are in the hands of the cancellers, as appears to be the case.

UncleMeat 6y ago
It was just never scary to social conservatives. Gay people got "cancelled" so hard they were thrown in jail and disowned from their families.
- taurath 6y ago
  And laughed as 1/15 or more of a generation died from AIDS. The harm caused by the extreme right is astounding if you’re in one of the targeted groups. Someone being fired for bigoted comments when they work with minorities isn’t even in the same ballpark. And then they put up a gofundme and buy a house or get a conservative media deal.
- deleted 6y ago
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taurath 6y ago
Is it? Or are we all working off of anecdotes here. Do you have data to back that up? Further - it was pretty scary getting cancelled by my parents and community when I came out. I’m glad it wasn’t scary for you.
- swayvil 6y ago
  Yes. It was scary. And now it is much more scary. The present, much greater, scariness in no way diminishes the prior scariness. And it was, and is, scary for many many more than just the "gays". Get some perspective here.
  - taurath 6y ago

nine_k 6y ago

The underpinnings of the "cancel culture", the intolerance and mob mentality, were always around. The "cancel culture" adds two news things to the picture. One is the ability for anyone to participate, not just the few on the TV screen or newspaper pages. Another is the attempts at totality: expel the victim from every social media platform, every internet hosting, every payment platform, every public venue. It's not yet as bad as it was during the fascist years in Italy, but the approach is pretty similar. There is also no formal totalitarian party to drive it; people just join the cause by reposting a tweet, and acting accordingly when in a position to ban, expel, deplatorm, etc.

guerrilla 6y ago
Modulo specific technology, that's how life was if you were gay, Jewsish, Black, Asian or communist at certain times. None of that is new and the point stands.
- leereeves 6y ago
  It was wrong then too. And what claim stands, exactly? Are you suggesting that because something bad has happened before, it shouldn't be opposed now?
  - pdpi 6y ago
    Because something bad has happened before, we should look at it happening now as part of an ongoing problem, instead of characterising it as new phenomenon. I get your point, but if you tell me I did a bad thing, I can answer in one of two ways: “you did a bad thing too, so you have no right to criticise me”, or “you did a bad thing too, maybe we should have a frank conversation about why we both fell into the same trap”.
    - leereeves 6y ago
      I don't think anyone's denying that the desire to cancel those who believe differently is an ongoing problem; in fact, that is implicitly acknowledged when recent actions are described as witch-hunts or McCarthyism. Those allusions to history are powerful precisely because this behavior isn't new. And I'd love to see a frank conversation about how we can avoid falling into that trap, but such a discussion has to start by acknowledging that it is a trap; that is to say, that cancel culture is wrong.

rayiner 6y ago

If what you’re saying is that the New York Times is now the progressive version of Liberty University then I accept that concession. Regarding your edit: > Edit: Forgot to mention this extreme example of cancel culture: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/professor-who-wore-hijab- https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/professor-who-wore-hijab-... The professor was fired from a Christian school for making an assertion (that Muslims and Christians “worship the same god”) that, according to its theology, amounts to heresy: https://www.businessinsider.com/professor-maybe-fired-for-hijab-2016-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/professor-maybe-fired-for-hi... > “Contrary to some media reports, social media activity and subsequent public perception, Dr. Hawkins' administrative leave resulted from theological statements that seemed inconsistent with Wheaton College's doctrinal convictions, and is in no way related to her race, gender, or commitment to wear a hijab during Advent," Wheaton's administration said in a statement released December 16th. So if your point is that cancel culture is the expression of a new progressive theology, then again I accept your concession.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> So if your point is that cancel culture is the expression of a new progressive theology, Wheaton’s college is an extremely narrow evangelical Protestant theology, that as well as dismissing Hawkins for her statements and firing a professor a few years before for becoming Catholic as it violated the schools duty to employ faculty embodying it's Protestant ideals, also led it to sue against the ACA’s preventive services mandate. I'm not sure why you would suggest that “cancellation” under that theology has anything to do with progressivism.
- rayiner 6y ago
  I’m not saying Wheaton’s cancellation is progressive. I’m pointing out that OP is essentially admitting that left-wing cancel culture is a progressive analogue to Wheaton’s “extremely narrow evangelical Protestant theology.”
stjohnswarts 6y ago
I had to cancel my NYT (after 15 years) because it has gone from center left to far left cancel culture bastion. They follow the guilty until proven innocent mindset of the current generation of "twitterati" and sucumb to their whims.

colllectorof 6y ago

>We've always had cancel culture. It seems pretty obvious that you don't understand that any culture has norms and boundaries, but only pathological cultures become entirely reactionary and define themselves purely in terms of opposition to something. >You can go back further to McCarthyism That's exactly what we're going back to and you have to be truly blind to think this is a good thing.

danbolt 6y ago
I don't know if I've met or heard of anyone that defines themselves solely in a reactionary way. Maybe you could expand on some ways you're seeing that?

undefined1 6y ago

many of us were against it when the puritanical right was censoring people/art/media, and we're still against it now that it's a puritanical left censoring people/art/media. why is that so hard to understand and to be consistent about this? people need to stop getting distracted by naked partisanship and focus on the issue. a principled stance is key! now we're seeing big tech getting roped in and the tools of censorship are expanding. you may be fine with that now, but the tools will change hands. imagine them in the hands of your enemy.

stjohnswarts 6y ago
Exactly some of my younger friends don't understand that voices from the right have a place too. Cancelling everything that you don't like or that makes you feel uncomfortable is a dangerous echo chamber philsophy that leads to dictators in waiting (see Trump) . I am a progressive who highly values the Bill of Rights as critical to keeping us free from despotism but I know that a huge portion of the country isn't progressive and to turn them into villains and "evil" people that are easy to hate is very dangerous.
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slibhb 6y ago

If X and Y are wrong, and someone condemns only X, only Y, or X and Y, you should just agree with them. If someone condemns X and doesn't mention Y, or the reverse, it is unreasonable to react how you've reacted here.

Daishiman 6y ago
Not really. The intention of OP is to demonstrate that the people often mentioning cancel culture are not doing it out of advocacy for free speech norms but rather because it suits their particular style of bigotry at this very moment.
- slibhb 6y ago
  There are people in that category. But do you think Kazuo Ishiguro is one of them? It's just...jarring to read the OP. It reads (to me) like "the right-wing does this all the time...now it's our turn!"

christophilus 6y ago

I’ve always been relatively libertarian, and the libertarians I know have consistently opposed cancel culture before it was a meme. There are plenty of folks who are consistent on this one, and I hope that we’re finally at a turning point (though I doubt it).

int_19h 6y ago

It's all well and good to point out the hypocrisy on this coming from the right; but that doesn't invalidate the issue. And you're right - it's pretty old, both on the right and the left. Here's a bona fide socialist ranting about leftist groupthink ... in 1943: "But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness." (https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-freedom-of-the-press/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...)

stjohnswarts 6y ago

Of course we've always had it but the current generation of political far left have turned it into an art form on twitter and other platforms.

civilized 6y ago

I'm very puzzled by the assertion that disproportionate punishment for violating some tribal taboo is old news and uninteresting, while hypocrisy is the real big story. I mean, hypocrisy has been around as long as tribal taboos, so, if anything, you should be just as uninterested in the hypocrisy... and thus uninterested in the whole topic, so why bother making a comment?

grumple 6y ago

I'd say that the left doing its best imitation of the worst things the right does is a bad thing. "But the right has always done this" should be all the evidence you need that what you're doing is wrong.

jonathanyc 6y ago

See also the phrase “Banned in Boston.” Some of the replies seem to assume that cancel culture is worse because it is more indiscriminate or less well-informed. Social conservatives in Boston banned a $5 bill for showing an unclothed breast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banned_in_Boston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banned_in_Boston

konjin 6y ago

> Surprising how much press "cancel culture" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the left. We've always had cancel culture. It's a new thing on the internet because the people who grew up here thought we'd be safe from the people who made our lives hell before university for not fitting in. Unfortunately the unwashed masses came in and took over and are now throwing us out because we don't act like how they expect us to act. That Stallman got cancelled for being right while everyone else who took money from a pedophile rapist got away should tell you all you need to know about the state of the internet.

daenz 6y ago

This is whataboutism. Just because something may have always been, doesn't make it any less valid to talk about ending it.

mr_toad 6y ago

> Turing being prosecuted for being gay Excluding people because they exclude others is not the same as excluding people because of who they are. Its the difference between ‘cancel culture’, and plain bigotry. If you don’t want to be excluded, stop being a bully.

jtbayly 6y ago

A professor at a Christian college claimed to be in religious solidarity with Muslims. That’s pretty much like saying that you’re attempting to further Facebook’s goals as a Google employee. Of course you get fired.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> A professor at a Christian college claimed to be in religious solidarity with Muslims. I'm not sure if the greater theological offense was the solidarity with Muslims or quoting the Pope in support of it (Wheaton had only a few years before fired a professor for converting to Catholicism; “Christian” isn't a label of a monolithic group in practice.)
- jtbayly 6y ago
  It doesn’t matter. Either way you are not dealing with cancel culture. You are dealing with somebody who has gone on the record s as opposing the fundamental goals of the organization she works for. As I said before, of course you get fired.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    Virtually every instance of firing or other institutional disaffiliation attributed to “cancel culture” follows the same pattern: someone—inside or outside an institution—complains to an institution (of those within it empowered to make decisions on this kind of issue) with an allegation that the institutions relationship with someone violates what they perceive to be the fundamental values of the institution, the institution reviews and reaches a similar conclusion, and the relationship is terminated.
    - jtbayly 6y ago
      That’s like equating a cruise missile with a cap gun because “they both just make explosions.” This comment is a fine answer to your ideas: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26311621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26311621

lowdownfork 6y ago

It's new and bad that unknown authors can face massive backlash while they're still unknown. You can sell twenty copies of your first book and get twenty million calls for a boycott in response, if someone photographs a page and tweets a hot take. That was technically possible before social media, but only if someone powerful decided to make an example of you. Now it can happen because a random person was bored or in a bad mood. That's specifically what Ishiguro was complaining about. He even said he wasn't worried about influential people like himself (or all the examples you gave). I don't think he used the phrase "cancel culture," either. > Apparently now that folks aren't just being cancelled for supporting gay marriage, the free exchange of ideas is suddenly important. Some people suddenly started caring about the free exchange of ideas and others suddenly stopped, but you might be surprised how many just continued. To me, the ones who suddenly stopped are the biggest hypocrites of all.

bigger_cheese 6y ago

Socrates is a prominent early example of "cancel culture" he was cancelled circa 400 BC for Impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens. I suppose we are fortunate that nowadays a twitter ban doesn't come with an accompanying sip of hemlock. Impiety is essentially failing to respect something considered sacred. To (mis)quote another controversial philosopher "History repeats itself, first as tragedy than as farce"

scythe 6y ago

On this specific subject it's hard to think of parallels and if there were parallels then that was bad anyway. >He said they may be concerned that an "anonymous lynch mob will turn up online and make their lives a misery". >[...] >The 66-year-old said he was worried that less established authors were self-censoring by avoiding writing from certain viewpoints or including characters outside their immediate experiences. In the past you might have had e.g. Catcher in the Rye or Lolita or whatever banned from libraries, but low-profile authors weren't receiving death threats. The important question isn't whether the critics are fair or what their politics are; the important question is what kind of an impact do they have, and a chilling effect is worth being concerned about.

aaron695 6y ago

Surprising how much press "Flying Cars" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the VCs. We've always had "Flying Cars". https://weburbanist.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/curtiss-autoplane.jpg https://weburbanist.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/curtiss-a...

username34912 6y ago

I don't think this is a fair characterization. A lot of the biggest critics of cancel culture today (Sam Harris, Bret Weinstein, Bill Maher, etc) are moderate liberals who also criticized the right-wing Christian fundamentalist cancel culture of the Bush era. It's not hypocrisy, they really have been in favor of free speech the whole time.

lelanthran 6y ago

> Apparently now that folks aren't just being cancelled for supporting gay marriage, the free exchange of ideas is suddenly important. It was always important. What makes you think that the people (like myself) who oppose cancel culture were against gay marriage? The demographic consisting of "people who oppose cancel culture" were instrumental in making progress for gay acceptance. If we allowed cancel culture to flourish, there would be no acceptance of homosexuality, women wouldn't have equal rights, minorities would be denied opportunity, etc. Considering all the benefits that freedom of speech brought us, you now suddenly want to take it away under the guise of "freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences"? Do you seriously think that there are no more benefits from allowing people to advance their cause? To speak up for or against any particular idea? I really really want to know: why are some ideologies so perfect that none be allowed to criticise them?

throwaway189262 6y ago

Unprofessional opinion, I think the powers on the right are pushing "cancel culture" to make the crazy stuff they're saying seem okay. Like, we have a congresswoman blaming California wildfires on Jewish space lasers. The republicans can deflect from the crazy by claiming "the left" is "cancelling" these people. When in reality any public figure that said crap like that would be shunned. Probably even more in past when American society was outwardly more polite.

imtringued 6y ago

Cancel culture is just the modern witch hunt and it didn't start with the witch hunt either. It's just the most ridiculous form that everyone is aware of. This is engraved in into our genes as humans and no amount of thinking will make it go away. People love declaring individuals as enemies and receiving confirmation from a group of other people who are declaring that same individual an enemy.