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Wow, 14 years ago. I hope the current progressive correct-thinkers realize the takes they make today have to hold up over a decade from now, otherwise the next

• frockington1 5y ago
  And that is why I stopped calling myself a progressive years ago. In my youth I thought progressive meant trying to continually better yourself and your community. Now the focus seems to be on cancelling any viewpoint that conflicts with yours. The new trend of digging further and further back in the past makes it even more counter to my previous beliefs of the word
  • vernie 5y ago
    So what do you call yourself now?
    • frockington1 5y ago
      Nothing, politically speaking Shrek is my role model. Get off my swamp, I don't care at all as long as people leave me alone
  • chewmieser 5y ago
    I just don't understand this viewpoint as it completely ignores the history of humanity. "Cancel culture" has been used for many centuries to silence dissenters. Take a look at Galieleo as an example. He was excommunicated or "canceled" by religious organizations that held the primary means of power. He was even forced to recant his positions by these groups. How is this any different than today?
    • TeMPOraL 5y ago
      Is the cancellation of Galileo by the Church a good example? A way a civilized society should function? If not, if we consider historical examples like these as failures of past societies, then things "not being any different than today" suggests our society is also failing.
      • chewmieser 5y ago
        My response was around "cancel culture" being a new phenomenon, as posed by the parent comment. I am not suggesting that this is a good or bad behavior, just that it has existed for a long time and nothing is new about it. So, yes, in the context of my post the Galileo example is a good example IMO.
    • Siira 5y ago
      Exactly. It’s no different. Who wants a world that is no different from the classic dark ages?
    • frockington1 5y ago
      It is not different than today. I think instead of the word changing I just grew up and had a reality check. Progressive means following culturally approved thoughts, when in my youth I thought it meant pushing boundaries and trying to better the world (even if it meant the occasional wrong think to get a different perspective)
    • jbjohns 5y ago
      The scale. In the past you had to watch what you said about those who had the power to hurt you. Now you can have your life derailed by people you've never met and never will, who's only power is being popular in some community you may have never heard of (and may not even exist until years from now).
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • at_a_remove 5y ago
      I will address this in the spirit with which it was intended. Cancellation, back then, was largely top-down, driven by kings and popes. The current form of cancellation emerges from below, pressuring larger organizations to fire people and denounce them. And as I have mentioned elsewhere in this, those calling for cancellation derive increased status when their attempts succeed. It's a bit more equivalent to witch hunt mania than papal disapproval.
  • flippinburgers 5y ago
    The hard left is religious in mentality and approach.
    • Radim 5y ago
      The causal connection here being, of course, "someone's watching me at all times, judging". Such heavy self-censorship, wed to brutal paranoia, necessarily leads to an erosion of "self", a loss of personal culpability. Submission to a higher power – conveniently represented by its clergy. It's the same playbook, repeated across millennia and societies. The Soviets in 1930s-40s played it out too, with chilling adroitness. They didn't call themselves religious (quite the opposite), but you can easily know the pattern by its fruits. A chilling lesson for today.
• ericd 5y ago
  One of the most striking things when reading about the French Revolution is seeing some of the original key agitators for Revolution being eventually denounced as insufficiently revolutionary, and some of them even being killed for being considered counter-revolutionary.
  • HelloNurse 5y ago
    In revolutionary France the self-destruction process was fast, less than 10 years. What historical lessons can be applied to the current situation?
    • genericone 5y ago
      Extreme violence against leadership figures makes conflicts end sooner because leadership is incentivized not to be a target. True believers die in the tumult, compromisers rise up and rebalance.
    • inglor_cz 5y ago
      A Napoleonesque figure appearing soon. On Twitter, probably. Only half joking. After a certain time, most people get tired and afraid of constant paranoid vigilantism and start searching for protection. Any protection. And whoever gained positions of power from the previous tumult, will seek immunity from further revolutionary tumult, which is easiest to achieve by suppressing the worst Robespierres and ossifying the new structures. From an outside perspective, it is striking how much the woke wave is waning compared to 2020. Trump is gone from Twitter, so a constant irritant has been removed, and people are starting to having a bit of a hangover. Plus the new rulers of the nest need a bit of calm for political business as usual.
      • TMWNN 5y ago
        >From an outside perspective, it is striking how much the woke wave is waning compared to 2020. Trump is gone from Twitter, so a constant irritant has been removed, and people are starting to having a bit of a hangover. The ongoing self-recrimination in the media over the mass insta-dismissing a year ago of all COVID19 lab leak discussion—despite zero new evidence[1]—being one prominent example of the above, of course. [1] I don't mean to imply that I don't believe in the theory. On the contrary, I was amazed and alarmed to see how a year ago even stating that SARS-CoV-2 being accidentally leaked from the Wuhan labs was not impossible was censored by social media as "disinformation" and denounced by regular media as already having been "debunked", as opposed to a reasonable hypothesis worthy of exploration. My point is that, as far as I know, there is zero new evidence available today to support the reasonableness of said hypothesis versus a year ago. The only difference is that Trump is no longer in the White House.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• banannaise 5y ago
  He was not canceled by progressives. Equating anti-Zionism and anti-semitism is generally an anti-progressive stance in the US. This is progressive principles being morphed into a weapon to be used against progressives.
  • reccanti 5y ago
    At least one of the sources in this article, the Washington Free Beacon, is financed by a right-wing activist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Free_Beacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Free_Beacon So yeah, doesn't really seem like a case of progressives eating-their-own
    • TMWNN 5y ago
      banannaise's point is that the rhetorical weapons used by the left to bludgeon its enemies can and are being used by others. As esyir said, "It's hard to feel any sympathy when that chicken comes home to roost".
      • bjourne 5y ago
        This weapon has been wielded by the Zionist crowd for decades. It is hardly the left's invention.
  • esyir 5y ago
    If one develops a rhetorical superweapon, they should expect it to be used against them eventually. It's hard to feel any sympathy when that chicken comes home to roost.
  • 0xy 5y ago
    If progressive people create a weapon known as cancellation, then they absolutely deserve it when the same weapon is used against them. They created the new normal.
• pessimizer 5y ago
  The original cancel-culture was (and continues to be) against anyone who asserts that Palestinians are human.
• busterarm 5y ago
  Sarah Silverman's blackface sketch that lost her movie roles in 2019 was from 2007. Alexi McCammond's tweets as a 17 year old were made in 2011. She had already publicly apologized for them in 2019. James Gunn's old tweets were from 2011. Josh Hader's social media posts were from 2012, while in high school. Hartley Sawyer's tweets were from 2014. Where is that line?
  • thereare5lights 5y ago
    McCammond’s 2019 “apology” was along the lines of “sorry you’re offended”, not “I’m sorry for what I said”.
    • busterarm 5y ago
      She also called her comments "deeply insensitive". How bent out of shape are you going to get over what a 17 year old says? "Sorry you're offended" is much closer to accurate. I'm nothing like 17 year old me and if you asked me to take present day responsibility for that person I would tell you to toss off. How much did you do at 17 that you aren't proud of today?
      • teachingassist 5y ago
        > How much did you do at 17 that you aren't proud of today? Not that much. For sure I made some mistakes, as I continue to do, but I'd stand by what I did at 17. I didn't (for example) write down plainly racist statements and then publish them on the internet. I didn't do anything comparable to that. What were y'all doing at 17?
        • busterarm 5y ago
          > What were y'all doing at 17? Mostly really awkward attempts at being sexually active. Surely some of it cancelable. Just like most other 17 year olds.
        • cloverich 5y ago
          Do you believe racism is an incurable ill, or in any way related to ones lived experiences and education? I have met (and still know) plenty of people that are varying degrees of racist, and the majority of it involves some pretty fundamental ignorance. In some cases people are outright indoctrinated into racism. I have no idea if this particular person was desrving of cancellation or forgiveness, but I can personally imagine someone at 17 writing racist sentiments, and genuinely repenting and growing out of that. I can imagine someone at 25, or 35 doing the same. I can appreciate it is hard to imagine that a person can change their world view, yet it certainly happens all the time.
• xg15 5y ago
  To be fair, we don't know who made the decision to reassign him. It might have been a HR decision in preemptive fear of bad press instead of an actual demand by any group. Also, solidarity for palestinians is pretty widespread among progressives and left-wings in general. I think a push to cancel him for this entry would more likely come from right-wing, pro-Israel groups if anything.
  • ehsankia 5y ago
    I think the point is that the blog post is not really a big issue if you're an average engineer, but as head of DEI it's not a great look, hence the re-assignment.
  • rzimmerman 5y ago
    His old posts are more than just solidarity with Palestinians or criticism of the Israeli government (which obviously should never get anyone fired). > If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others. It’s really hard to read stuff like that and not feel attacked as a Jewish person. I know it’s an old post and people change, but I don’t want people walking away from this thread thinking someone lost their job for merely being critical of Israel. That just feeds the cycle of distrust and makes it harder to discuss.