Cancel culture

[Shotgun]

6 minutes ago, bennett said:

I might be being whooshed here but if he never told the joke, how do you know if it was homophobic?

I didn't know him very well, but I knew him and his opinions well enough that when he began a joke with a conspiratorial lean in and a lisping "There was these two gay guys...", it wasn't going to be positive. His responses confirmed it.

[topcat(The most tip top)]

The Paradox of Tolerance covers most of this thread

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance?wprov=sfti1

[Guest JTS98]

5 hours ago, velo army said:

I'm a bit unclear what you're objections to my post are (if, in fact, your objections are linked to my post). I mentioned J.K. Rowling because she is obviously high profile and is the most recent example of being held to account for her abhorrent views. 

I don't see who is writing off the objection of the above named academics. I'm grateful for the information regarding their roles in academic life though. I'll look them up.

Perhaps poorly worded. I wasn't objecting to your post. See the first sentence.

[Theroadlesstravelled]

Another day, another boomer hitting the career self destruct button by posting on Twitter.

What’s more shocking is that Ted Cruz is only 49.

[Guest JTS98]

3 minutes ago, Theroadlesstravelled said:

Another day, another boomer hitting the career self destruct button by posting on Twitter.

What’s more shocking is that Ted Cruz is only 49.

What have I missed here? All I can see is something about goya beans.

[Shotgun]

10 minutes ago, JTS98 said:

What have I missed here? All I can see is something about goya beans.

1) Liberals advocate a boycott of a company after the CEO spoke out in support of Trump. Cruz whines about "The Left" trying to cancel them and suppressing free speech. James Woods agrees and talks about the suppression of speech and praises the CEO for leading the fight against liberal terrorism.

2) Cruz brags about boycotting a company for supporting an athlete who spoke out against Trump.

Another day, another case of "when you do it's bad, when we do it it's good." 

[Theroadlesstravelled]

14 minutes ago, Shotgun said:

 

Another day, another case of "when you do it's bad, when we do it it's good." 

 The Lib #metoo movement was quickly shut down when Sanders was outed as a misogynous and people came forward about creepy Biden.

The mug slinging is unreal.

[Shotgun]

19 minutes ago, Theroadlesstravelled said:

 The Lib #metoo movement was quickly shut down when Sanders was outed as a misogynous and people came forward about creepy Biden.

The mug slinging is unreal.

I'm assuming you meant "mud slinging" but I kinda like the sound of what you said.

There are many reasons why I wouldn't want to run for office. Not least that I would be completely un-electable. There are things I've done in the past, things I do in the present and things I hope to do in the future which, given the USA's odd standards of morality would see me buried before things got started. However, I haven't done anything as disgusting as that video someone posted the other day of Biden creeping on those young girls. Or remotely close to anything that Trump says and does on a daily basis. The pair of them should get all kinds of shit for it and if that means I'm guilty of suppressing free speech and being part of the cancel culture then I'll take that hit. I don't want either of those sleazy old fuckers as my president and I'm fine with dirt being dug up on the pair of them.

 

 

[Guest JTS98]

9 hours ago, Marshmallo said:

"Cancel culture" is just the consequences of spouting bigoted rhetoric. People voting with their feet.

I take it apartheid South Africa was "cancelled" in the early 90s?

I'm surprised this hasn't been picked up on. This is a dreadful false equivalence that speaks to the overall point of the letter.

The South African apartheid state was not guilty of expressing an unpopular opinion. It was guilty of deliberately impoverishing a huge section of its population due to race. It was guilty of deliberately under-educating a huge section of its population. It was guilty of choosing to deny a huge section of its population access to acceptable healthcare. It was guilty of racially-aggravated murder, arrest, beatings, and torture.

Apartheid South Africa was not 'cancelled' for expressing an opinion. It was 'cancelled' for actual, grievous crimes of violence.

There is absolutely no comparison between this and the public cancelling of an academic, or business person, or actor, or MacDonald's employee for expressing a personal opinion. It is not a crime to have an opinion. Any opinion. This is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

[Marshmallo]

And it's not a crime for me to say I won't go to a venue that books a bigoted speaker, for example.

[Guest JTS98]

2 minutes ago, Marshmallo said:

And it's not a crime for me to say I won't go to a venue that books a bigoted speaker, for example.

Has anybody ever claimed it is? Or tried to imply you should lose your job for doing so?

[coprolite]

7 hours ago, Theroadlesstravelled said:

Another day, another boomer hitting the career self destruct button by posting on Twitter.

What’s more shocking is that Ted Cruz is only 49.

The boom was surely well finished by 1971?

[Guest JTS98]

1 hour ago, MixuFruit said:

Don't you think the USA's paper of record publishing a piece written by a republican senator criticising BLM with the headline 'Send In The Troops' is prodding the needle in that sort of direction? I can't imagine he was writing about this without licking his lips thinking about 1968.

Nope. There's a world of difference between thinking someone else should do something and actually doing it yourself. And the example you give requires a bit of imagination (you even use the word imagine yourself) and assumption to get to the end of it.

Similarly, agreeing with the invasion of Iraq is not equal to being a war criminal. Denying the massacre at Srebrenica, or even holding the view that them Bosnians had it coming, is not the same as being one of the guys that did it.

I can think it would be good if someone bumped off Person X. That's a world of difference from bumping Person X off myself.

Edited July 11, 2020 by JTS98

[welshbairn]

2 hours ago, JTS98 said:

Apartheid South Africa was not 'cancelled' for expressing an opinion. It was 'cancelled' for actual, grievous crimes of violence.

Apartheid South Africa wouldn't have existed without enough people expressing their approval for it.

[Genuine Hibs Fan]

9 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Apartheid South Africa wouldn't have existed without enough people expressing their approval for it.

The black people should have calmly debated with the Boers to convince them of the benefits of a more egalitarian state and they would never have got into that mess SMH 

[Guest JTS98]

14 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Apartheid South Africa wouldn't have existed without enough people expressing their approval for it.

Sounds good, but clearly isn't true.

It existed because the government in South Africa possessed the necessary force to make it exist and not enough outsiders had the motivation to bother their arse about it. There was plenty of disapproval.

Huge difference between disapproving and having an actual 'interest' in doing anything.

Would you say the North Korean government enjoys a lot of approval?

Edited July 11, 2020 by JTS98

[Guest JTS98]

2 minutes ago, MixuFruit said:

OK - so what I see with that kind of thing is it cumulatively pushing a couple more cops or whoever over the edge and making them feel empowered to kill a black person. I've banged on about this before but it's an example of stochastic terrorism. You pump this stuff out all the time (getting it into the NYT and not Fox News was a major win for those people) and it prompts a few more killings, or even a few more calling the cops because a black person in a leather jacket is walking through your neighbourhood etc. You yourself didn't point at a black person and tell someone else to stand on their neck till they were dead but it didn't happen in an information vacuum. This builds up until one group of people in a population doesn't feel like they can do things, and that's without there being any explicit laws saying as much. That's what we see with black people in certain parts of the USA. In a less brazen and dangerous way it's what black people in the UK experience and it's what we're starting to see with trans people in the UK.

So when I see this I think it's important to attack it with a lot of energy which is why I'm delighted for example James Bennet lost his job and a lot of minority journalists at the NYT felt empowered to speak publicly about this after many years of being too afraid of what it would do to their careers if they did. I see this as an important watershed across a range of situations and it's no surprise that letter's signatories are mainly populated by old guard figures with power and influence to lose in these circumstances.

There's a lot I agree with in principle there.

I don't like some of these people's views. But the problem is that there is no basis for removing their right to have and express them.

I don't disagree that views being expressed in the mainstream may lead to bad consequences. But, I ultimately see that as being the responsibility of the person who commits the act.

It also leads us down the rabbit hole of what happens when someone else objects dreadfully to a view I agree with.

The only answer is education. People should be able to deal with being offended, be able to deal with being disagreed with, and be able to deal with hearing bad ideas. It's not perfect, but it's better than the direction of shutting people down when they're expressing their opinions. That's a no-no for me. Short of straight-up 'go and kill that guy now' levels of incitement to violence, I would outlaw pretty much no speech that I can think of.

[welshbairn]

14 minutes ago, JTS98 said:

Sounds good, but clearly isn't true.

It existed because the government in South Africa possessed the necessary force to make it exist and not enough outsiders had the motivation to bother their arse about it. There was plenty of disapproval.

Huge difference between disapproving and having an actual 'interest' in doing anything.

Would you say the North Korean government enjoys a lot of approval?

White South Africans could have ended apartheid at any time through the ballot box, they chose not to.

Edited July 11, 2020 by welshbairn

[Genuine Hibs Fan]

To support @JTS98's position a wee bit, which I mostly agree with, the "Let Nick Griffin (or whoever) speak at Universities etc" isn't the worst idea in the world. 

George Lincoln Rockwell was gaining pretty significant support in post war USA for his American Nazi Party, and every  time one of his rallies was violently broken up (usually by Jewish groups who were understandably a bit miffed about the emergence of an explicit Nazi Party in the USA), or he was denied the chance to speak somewhere, he was afforded another opportunity to whip up controversy and speak to news cameras etc. It was  exactly the same sort of faux-free speech grift that we see now, but just because it's untrue doesn't mean it doesn't work. 

Rockwell only faded into obscurity when he stopped getting press attention because a group of mainly Jewish-American community leaders managed to convince enough people to let him get on with it, to be shown up in front of college students or speak to 20 people from a stage. No controversy, no appeal. He ended up being shot dead (a good thing) by one of his own supporters, who said about his experience, "I should have been with Dr. King and the Civil Rights people back then. They were truly my people, not those Nazis" 

The massive caveat is whether that strategy can work now in the age of the internet where a speech in one location geographically can be watched by thousands online. 

[Guest JTS98]

2 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

White South Africans could have ended apartheid at any time through the ballot box, they chose not too.

That's a pretty simplified way of looking at a very complex issue.

What do you think the prospect of ending Apartheid looked like from the inside? I can see plenty of reasons for fear of doing so. It's easy to see how it would become a self-perpetuating thing.

Unless you think those South Africans were just inherently more racist than any other people in the world. I doubt they were.