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> If this is true, surely the right to not support people who's views you disagree with is just as necessary? Totally agree, but I think one of the nuances her
by tines 5y ago
> If this is true, surely the right to not support people who's views you disagree with is just as necessary?
Totally agree, but I think one of the nuances here is that what "support" means can be pretty narrow or very broad.
For example, if you don't like someone's message and they're speaking at your college, you can show your disapproval by choosing a point on a spectrum of refusals. You can start light by going to hear them speak but refusing to agree with them, and get a little more intense by attending and listening and then rebutting their arguments (i.e. refusing to approve the message). Sliding further along the scale, you might refuse to go to the talk at all. Further, you might refuse to attend the college that allows them to speak. Further, you might refuse to use any social media that allows them to post. And so on.
The further you go on that spectrum, the more your actions cause other people not to be able to support the speaker (or even hear them without supporting them), even if they want to. Not attending the speech yourself may cause the speaker not to be invited back if there is low enough attendance, which is just about the most minor form of that. Further along the spectrum, refusing to use social media that gives them a platform could get them banned if enough people do it, which is a more intense form of denying others access.
That's really long-winded but I hope my point is clear. I think "cancel culture" isn't so much about retaining the individual's choice to not support something, but rather denying that choice to other people. And it's not even about supporting really; the ACLU that defended Nazis because they realized that if Nazis' rights can be taken away then so can any minorities' be taken away might not exist any more. Certainly they didn't support Nazism, but they felt that they didn't have to in order to defend them in a court of law.
I think someone once said something like "it's the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it" and I feel like at a certain level you have to trust people to do that if you want to live in a democracy. My interpretation of opponents of cancel culture is that they don't want other people to keep them from entertaining ideas just because accepting them would be bad. You have to be able to entertain an idea to destroy it as well. The more you know about racist beliefs, for example, the more easily they're destroyed. The less you know, the more appealing they are. Best to bring them out in the light and let them be destroyed by the truth (would be their argument I believe).
I guess it's a difference in world view. Some think you can put people on the right track by focusing on providing them with the right information, and others think you can put them on the right track by keeping them from harmful information. The latter might be the way you can instruct a child, but for adults, the former is the only way it can work healthily (they would say).
Not sure whether any of that makes any sense, I could be completely wrong, would like to hear your opinion.
- Latty 5y agoPeople have a right to expression, but not a right to a platform. Not everyone can go on TV every day to talk about what they believe, so it must be curated, and that curation is an expression in and of itself. Should we try and be proportional and fair in our responses to people personally? Of course. Should we as a society try to limit people's responses? No. There used to be literal lynching, and clearly active violence is over the line, but we allowed racists and other bigots to boycott places that employed people they didn't like and express their views like that. Now that the bigots face being denied employment because of their bigotry, suddenly it's wrong to boycott and deny them their jobs. Is it wrong to refuse to spend money at somewhere that employs (and therefore uses the money I spend there) someone who seeks to deny human rights to someone I love? It may get them fired if enough people take that stand. Does it hurt others if they can't access that bigot's speech? You can argue it denies them an opportunity, but then the fact I can't go to their boss and make my point is denying that person an opportunity to. The reality is you are talking about pitting two pieces of expression against each other, and just because one came first and the other is a response to it seems entirely meaningless to me, neither should be restricted.
- tines 5y agoWhat do you think of the argument that the nature of boycotting has changed? In your example, people might boycott a restaurant they didn't like, but there were a ton of small restaurants, no one restaurant was very big. Now, we have a handful of websites that like 90% of all written human communication goes through, and people aren't boycotting a Twitter handle, they're boycotting Twitter itself (so to speak) to force it to deplatform someone. I guess it's somewhat related to the other argument of proportionality of punishment. Is it right to boycott someone to an unlimited extent if they're bigoted? What is the limit? would be the questions along that line.
- Latty 5y agoThis seems like an argument to have better "public squares" and better regulations against monopolies, rather than enforcing private entities to platform others.