Cancel Culture… can we talk about it (isn’t it just boycotts)?

[Ran]

Lets not monopolize the conversation with personal invective and tit-for-tat stuff, please.

[maarsen]

When I think back to the good old days when the teaching of evolution could get one in trouble. 

I have always found that when one puts out silly nonsense in an argument, regardless of how many  others believe it, people that know better may consider you to be an ignorant boob. No amount of indignation makes silly ideas any less silly.

[Filippa Eilhart]

„Dear colleagues” is always appropriate 

[Ran]

56 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

It’s not a boycott so much as in-group signaling and an enforcement of cultural power.

I think that's a good way of looking at it. It's why the topic about it on the left is often about media and entertainment, traditional areas where the left has been seen as ascendant.

As an example, Mike Pesca's The Gist podcast (quite a popular one, whose advertising revenue was apparently a good-sized chunk of Slate's yearly revenue) has come back on the air after nearly a year offline, once he disentangled it from Slate after they indefinitely suspended him from the company. The immediate reason for his suspension? In chatting in the office Slack about the resignation of Donald McNeil Jr. from NYT, he put forward his view that he thought the quoting of a racial slur by someone not of the race in question can in fact be appropriate in some contexts. This led to umbrage by younger journalists and IT people at Slate and management ultimatelu separated Pesca from the company over it, while other journalists at Slate who privately expressed support or dismay largely kept quiet for fear of being next.

The thing is, Slate itself would use quoted racial slurs in its own articles and podcasts both that year, and the year before, and on and on, when and as appropriate. The fact that something that was literally okay on the website lead to someone essentially being forced to leave the company for even expressing the idea that it was, indeed, okay in some contexts (without actually using any slurs himself) is absurd. And yet it happened.

But the sense I've gotten in regards to media companies like Slate or, indeed, The New York Times, is that management is afraid of negative social media outcry, negative social media outcry is very easy to drum up by employees, and so they make decisions like this that fly in the face of their own standards. 

 

[Madame deVenoge]

1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

In this moment in time (like, I don’t know, every other moment in time) both the right and the left are using social (and political) pressure to control public discourse of all different sorts.  A great current example on the right is focus on what is taught in public schools with respect to equity and inclusion.  Not teaching an idea (here, critical race theory, for instance) does not make that idea go away.  The idea exists.  But rather than focusing on the idea and critiquing it on its merits (and there are plenty of critiques! Which, I recognize even saying could get me “canceled” in some circles), the right is instead banning talking about the thing they don’t like.  It’s not a boycott so much as in-group signaling and an enforcement of cultural power.

Just as not hewing to the bright line of “Heath care for all” can get one….spoken harshly of, if not actually shunned (although, yes, there was also some shunning) in liberal social circles.

Using myself and Facebook former “friends” as an example. 

I literally got blocked by people I’d known and counted as friends for over 10 years over me expressing just the VERY OPINION on the issue.

[Derfel Cadarn]

37 minutes ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

„Dear colleagues” is always appropriate 

Woke Political correctness gone lefty-mad!!!

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I like:

”Yo… Everybody!” Before hitting reply all.

[sologdin]

”Yo… Everybody!” 

y'all is sectionally appropriate but politically untenable among some comrades.

 

in liberal social circles.

some liberals strike me as a thin-skinned bunch, normally young with the zeal of a recent convert, reminiscent of the red guards during the cultural revolution in ardor if not in doctrine. i wish they had a bit more of keats' negative capability, that is--

Quote

capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason

--with perhaps a touch of stoicism's dispassionate rigor, skepticism's willingness to accept the possibility that the opponent is correct, and the buddhist dissociation of argument from self. professor badiou argues against "the triumph of the affects: depression, fear, panic":

Quote

philosophy teaches us that none of these affects is in any way a good response, for they instead testify and even pay tribute, negatively and from our side, to the victory of the enemy.

secondary boycotts may have some value in certain  contexts, but ideological purity never helped anyone.

[IFR]

Cancel culture is an interesting sociological phenomenon and an effective tactic to coerce cultural groupthink. 

Sometimes I agree with the issues that motivate a given "canceling" effort, and sometimes I don't. I am opposed to the effort in general, because I value the promotion of free thought and the unrestricted exchange of ideas - irrespective of their content - very highly.

But cancel culture has been a powerful tool utilized to forward a lot of cultural movements, whether one agrees with them or not. So I can't blame a group for using what's effective in realizing their ideal of "social progress".

[Altherion]

The problem is not the boycotting as such, it's the concentration of power that gives it such influence. It's one thing for one individual to boycott another or a group, but it's a different case when this is done by a massive institution that fills a social niche and does not have any equivalent alternatives. That is, there is only one Facebook, only one Twitter, only one Amazon and so on and so forth. Similarly, the old fashioned media are owned by a surprisingly small number of individuals and if you don't agree with any of them, you're out of luck.

Also, it's not true that the "cancellation" is only done to those on the right. This is by far its most publicized usage, but try to start a union at Amazon or something of the sort and see what happens...

[Maithanet]

Relevant is this episode of This American Life, about a black high school principal in Texas.  In 2020, he wrote an optimistic but fairly vague email about how he hoped that this moment in history (post-George Floyd) would lead to better racial understanding.  The 2020 reaction from parents and teachers was universally positive.  But in spring 2021, people came to PTA meetings claiming that he was teaching CRT (pointing to this same email), and needs to be fired.  Note that there were no changes to the curriculum whatsoever as a result of this issue, just an email, and he doesn't teach any classes anyway.  Nonetheless, that summer, he was suspended and then not renewed as principal for being "divisive to the community". 

To me, this is a much more tangible example of "cancel culture" than nonsense about Joe Rogan or Dr. Suess.  CRT is really about controlling what is taught in schools, and being able to potentially punish anyone who doesn't embrace a very whitewashed history. 

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

„Dear colleagues” is always appropriate 

who you calling colleague, pal

[Week]

55 minutes ago, Altherion said:

The problem is not the boycotting as such, it's the concentration of power that gives it such influence. It's one thing for one individual to boycott another or a group, but it's a different case when this is done by a massive institution that fills a social niche and does not have any equivalent alternatives. That is, there is only one Facebook, only one Twitter, only one Amazon and so on and so forth. Similarly, the old fashioned media are owned by a surprisingly small number of individuals and if you don't agree with any of them, you're out of luck.

Also, it's not true that the "cancellation" is only done to those on the right. This is by far its most publicized usage, but try to start a union at Amazon or something of the sort and see what happens...

The top trending articles on Facebook are consistently Sh*piro, B*ngino, J*sse Watters and others on the far Right. The moderation on all of those platforms is extremely light and still has an enormous amount of hate and abuse towards women, minorities, etc. (Which is largely, but not exclusively, from the Right). Please provide examples of what you're talking about.

Starting a union at Amazon is an example of cancel culture on the Left?? Since when is Amazon 'Left'. It's BIG CAPITAL. Union busting is violence against labor which is exclusively Left or Right -- it certainly isn't Far Left pro-labor. Not sure what your point is here.

[DMC]

4 hours ago, sologdin said:

a serious point. the maoists thought that they needed to be 'both the arrow and the target,' that the first object of critique is the party apparatus and its cadres, to expel remnants of the old regime from each member's consciousness, to prevent assimilatory opportunism and retrograde revisionism. the process can be despotic, as we have seen.

The permanent revolution in action!

3 hours ago, sologdin said:

according to people like burke, must be protected from the energy of the meritorious.

I don't think there's any remaining strain of the American right that can reliably be linked to Burkean conservatism.  Pat Buchanan was the last gasp.

Anyway, thanks for the tangents solo, they kept me reading (this version of) this thread.  Also - 

2 hours ago, sologdin said:

in my office, for instance, it's commonplace to say something like now who's this motherfucker every time someone enters.

Your office sounds like a fun place to work.

[Zorral]

Recall this? This is what canceling is and how it works, and those who howl 'cancel culture' are the ones who do it.

https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-ap-top-news-constitutions-ca-state-wire-ap-fact-check-9a1f128ebec6f25eee2c77fc08f738f5

Quote

 .... Trump told reporters he had “heard” rumors that Harris, a Black woman and U.S.-born citizen whose parents were immigrants, does not meet the requirement to serve in the White House. The president said he considered the rumors “very serious.” ....

 

[Ormond]

13 minutes ago, Week said:

 

Starting a union at Amazon is an example of cancel culture on the Left?? Since when is Amazon 'Left'. It's BIG CAPITAL. Union busting is violence against labor which is exclusively Left or Right -- it certainly isn't Far Left pro-labor. Not sure what your point is here.

I don't read his statement as saying that Amazon is "Left". It's the employees of Amazon who would want to start a union who would be on the Left, and he thinks that Amazon would go after them for it. 

[Week]

1 hour ago, Ormond said:

I don't read his statement as saying that Amazon is "Left". It's the employees of Amazon who would want to start a union who would be on the Left, and he thinks that Amazon would go after them for it. 

That doesn't make a ton of sense either. I suppose the workers might be more Left of the company but ... not necessarily?

[kairparavel]

Colin Kaepernick would like a word on *checks notes* 

Quote

Spot on. Neil Young isn’t merely leaving Spotify because he doesn’t want to be on the same platform as Joe Rogan, he demanded Spotify remove Rogan or he would leave. That’s not a boycott, that’s an attempt to permanently ostracize and remove someone from society. 
 

This quote pulled from the Canadian politics thread.

Anyhoo, let's go waaaaay back and discuss the inherent cancel culture in Salem, Massachusetts circa 1692ish. Now THAT was a deplatforming.

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, Week said:

That doesn't make a ton of sense either. I suppose the workers might be more Left of the company but ... not necessarily?

I mean, I didn't really follow Altherion's post either, but workers trying to unionize and employers resisting is a pretty formative cleavage of left/right politics.

[sologdin]

 remove someone from society. 

curious.  is this sort of liquidation what's intended by secondary boycott? we could be charitable and assume that there's good faith on the other end of the dispute, that the purpose of pressure campaigns is to affect policy rather than effect genocide.