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> The right, has for the past decade or so taken a moral high ground with regards to cancelation. Have you been in a coma for that decade?

kulahan 1y ago
Man, can you at least elaborate? This kind of comment isn’t what I wanna see HN devolve into. He’s definitely right with that sentence. Do you not think it’s generally true that the right has been on the defensive with regards to cancel culture, and thus is constantly preaching about how cancelling is wrong? The few times they’ve gotten to go on the offensive, they play the same game, cancelling whoever it is they’re upset about. It’s horseshoe theory all over again.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._national_anthem_kneeling_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._national_anthem_kneeling_...
  - kulahan 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      “Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch! I was there when it was written.“
      - kulahan 1y ago
        You clearly forgot it ages ago, then
PaulHoule 1y ago
I first saw a moral panic over ‘cancel culture’ circa 2013 from The Atlantic and the opinion page of the New York Times. (The first because it’s demo is the naive liberal and pearl clutching parents of college students and the second because folks like Brooks and Blow don’t want to be canceled themselves). It was until 2017 or so that conservatives noticed the phenomenon and started to talk about it in The National Review and such. Ezra Klein, who I generally respect, said he got more crap over https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/opinion/charlie-kirk-assassination-fear-politics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/opinion/charlie-kirk-assa... than anything else he’s written but I think it was unfortunate that he chose the words because Kirk, among other things, promoted Trump’s lies about the 2000 election, bussed people to the Jan 6 riot, and had a hit list of professors he wanted to punish just like David Horowitz, dad of the Andressen-Horowitz Horowitz. That bit about “prove me wrong” was always disingenuous, it would fool the pearl clutching parents who read The Atlantic and the likes of Ezra Klein. Probably the most harmful thing about illiberal campus leftists is that they allowed illiberal rightists to appear to take the high ground.
- kelnos 1y ago
  Cancel culture has been a thing a lot longer than since 2013. McCarthyism, anyone? Funny how cancellation has historically been wielded by the right, but once the left gets a few (comparatively minor) cancel-jabs in, it's a Real Problem.
  - asdff 1y ago
    The important distinction is that the left cancels by utilizing consumer choice vs the government.
    - gsf_emergency_2 1y ago
      Government the Father, consumer choice the Mother. To push a domestic metaphor (Or are the gender roles switched)
- gsf_emergency_2 1y ago
  "Cancel culture" gets piled on by conservatives sometimes because it's such an obvious own goal that used to be a prerogative of the right I might be off my rocker on this, but! >prove me wrong Is such a right-wing to say. Because it signals that a conservative believes that *self-improvement is possible*. (Their actions tend to suggest otherwise-- Thiel and Wolfram are my go-to not even mala (fide) examples. Lack of faith in learning happens in liberals or self-styled moderates, but we'd call that pessimism ("depression" in the empathetic or clinical). With thinking right wingers it's normally narcissism..Ezra is a pessimist but he carelessly assists the own goals) Calling out cancel culture today: the youngest kid signals that they give up on self-improvement in favor of acting out, so the elder sibling, who used to be punished for a very similar thing, jumps (gleefully) on it . "Mama look at what she just did!" knowing the parents gonna wring their hands
  - PaulHoule 1y ago
    Yeah. Klein did a good interview with Ben Shapiro in his last pod https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAqG00FUOK8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAqG00FUOK8 who covers a lot of ground: Shapiro seems rather strong when it comes to articulating that idea of personal responsibility but his satanization of the economic left (e.g. Bernie Sanders) seems forced and unreasonable and Klein sorta "owns" him when it comes to pointing out that many of Trump and Vance's policies and viewpoints are examples of the envy and resentment-based "scavenger" thinking that Shaprio discusses in a dehumanizing way. Shapiro's attempt to foreclose any difference on economic issues is mirrored, I think, by a certain wish on the left to foreclose difference on cultural issues. One one hand there is an axis that runs through Trotskyites to centrists like Klein who would like to shut down the culture wars because as soon as the culture wars started we started losing [1] [2] but the leftist who enjoys the culture wars is more inclined to satanize the "christofascist" as opposed to the likes of Milton Freedman [3] There's a tendency on the right to say there is an "objective" reality (the Bible, Ayn Rand's philosophy) whereas Marxism leads you to see there are "two sides" to any issue. It gets the left in no end of trouble thinking about Blacks because if you go talk to Black people you will find they really do see things differently from white people in the aggregate but that they also see things differently from one another. So like Rhett Butler or Han Solo if I'm asked to take a side on something like "cancel culture" I'm going to say "my side". I'm sure someone got canceled who deserved it and someone got canceled who didn't deserve it. There is no "due process" but there's also a feeling (see Klein) that due process is as much a problem as it is a solution. I sure as hell hate the "debate" over it. [1] that theory would say that Reagan's economic policies didn't have any appeal to a mass base [2] to be fair, almost always white male although sometimes gay [3] and it's a credit to the rise of financialization: when I grew up I learned the financial advice that if I take care of my bank account my credit score will take care of itself; the paradigm for financial advise on both the internet and in magazines has been "(1) stop people from stealing your identity, and (2) use this one weird trick to raise your FICO score" since 2010 -- leftists once might have cared about labor, opportunity, taxes and such, today they care about insurance (e.g. health insurance) and credit (student loans). The idea that you might have your own money to spend on something you want to spend it on is right out of the 1950s like the stay at hom emome.

kulahan 1y ago

Man, can you at least elaborate? This kind of comment isn’t what I wanna see HN devolve into. He’s definitely right with that sentence. Do you not think it’s generally true that the right has been on the defensive with regards to cancel culture, and thus is constantly preaching about how cancelling is wrong? The few times they’ve gotten to go on the offensive, they play the same game, cancelling whoever it is they’re upset about. It’s horseshoe theory all over again.

ceejayoz 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._national_anthem_kneeling_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._national_anthem_kneeling_...
- kulahan 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    “Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch! I was there when it was written.“
    - kulahan 1y ago
      You clearly forgot it ages ago, then

PaulHoule 1y ago

I first saw a moral panic over ‘cancel culture’ circa 2013 from The Atlantic and the opinion page of the New York Times. (The first because it’s demo is the naive liberal and pearl clutching parents of college students and the second because folks like Brooks and Blow don’t want to be canceled themselves). It was until 2017 or so that conservatives noticed the phenomenon and started to talk about it in The National Review and such. Ezra Klein, who I generally respect, said he got more crap over https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/opinion/charlie-kirk-assassination-fear-politics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/opinion/charlie-kirk-assa... than anything else he’s written but I think it was unfortunate that he chose the words because Kirk, among other things, promoted Trump’s lies about the 2000 election, bussed people to the Jan 6 riot, and had a hit list of professors he wanted to punish just like David Horowitz, dad of the Andressen-Horowitz Horowitz. That bit about “prove me wrong” was always disingenuous, it would fool the pearl clutching parents who read The Atlantic and the likes of Ezra Klein. Probably the most harmful thing about illiberal campus leftists is that they allowed illiberal rightists to appear to take the high ground.

kelnos 1y ago
Cancel culture has been a thing a lot longer than since 2013. McCarthyism, anyone? Funny how cancellation has historically been wielded by the right, but once the left gets a few (comparatively minor) cancel-jabs in, it's a Real Problem.
- asdff 1y ago
  The important distinction is that the left cancels by utilizing consumer choice vs the government.
  - gsf_emergency_2 1y ago
    Government the Father, consumer choice the Mother. To push a domestic metaphor (Or are the gender roles switched)
gsf_emergency_2 1y ago
"Cancel culture" gets piled on by conservatives sometimes because it's such an obvious own goal that used to be a prerogative of the right I might be off my rocker on this, but! >prove me wrong Is such a right-wing to say. Because it signals that a conservative believes that *self-improvement is possible*. (Their actions tend to suggest otherwise-- Thiel and Wolfram are my go-to not even mala (fide) examples. Lack of faith in learning happens in liberals or self-styled moderates, but we'd call that pessimism ("depression" in the empathetic or clinical). With thinking right wingers it's normally narcissism..Ezra is a pessimist but he carelessly assists the own goals) Calling out cancel culture today: the youngest kid signals that they give up on self-improvement in favor of acting out, so the elder sibling, who used to be punished for a very similar thing, jumps (gleefully) on it . "Mama look at what she just did!" knowing the parents gonna wring their hands
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  Yeah. Klein did a good interview with Ben Shapiro in his last pod https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAqG00FUOK8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAqG00FUOK8 who covers a lot of ground: Shapiro seems rather strong when it comes to articulating that idea of personal responsibility but his satanization of the economic left (e.g. Bernie Sanders) seems forced and unreasonable and Klein sorta "owns" him when it comes to pointing out that many of Trump and Vance's policies and viewpoints are examples of the envy and resentment-based "scavenger" thinking that Shaprio discusses in a dehumanizing way. Shapiro's attempt to foreclose any difference on economic issues is mirrored, I think, by a certain wish on the left to foreclose difference on cultural issues. One one hand there is an axis that runs through Trotskyites to centrists like Klein who would like to shut down the culture wars because as soon as the culture wars started we started losing [1] [2] but the leftist who enjoys the culture wars is more inclined to satanize the "christofascist" as opposed to the likes of Milton Freedman [3] There's a tendency on the right to say there is an "objective" reality (the Bible, Ayn Rand's philosophy) whereas Marxism leads you to see there are "two sides" to any issue. It gets the left in no end of trouble thinking about Blacks because if you go talk to Black people you will find they really do see things differently from white people in the aggregate but that they also see things differently from one another. So like Rhett Butler or Han Solo if I'm asked to take a side on something like "cancel culture" I'm going to say "my side". I'm sure someone got canceled who deserved it and someone got canceled who didn't deserve it. There is no "due process" but there's also a feeling (see Klein) that due process is as much a problem as it is a solution. I sure as hell hate the "debate" over it. [1] that theory would say that Reagan's economic policies didn't have any appeal to a mass base [2] to be fair, almost always white male although sometimes gay [3] and it's a credit to the rise of financialization: when I grew up I learned the financial advice that if I take care of my bank account my credit score will take care of itself; the paradigm for financial advise on both the internet and in magazines has been "(1) stop people from stealing your identity, and (2) use this one weird trick to raise your FICO score" since 2010 -- leftists once might have cared about labor, opportunity, taxes and such, today they care about insurance (e.g. health insurance) and credit (student loans). The idea that you might have your own money to spend on something you want to spend it on is right out of the 1950s like the stay at hom emome.