How do you end 'cancel culture'?

[Cloud_Strife]

more than one

He's trying to hide his power level and cloak it behind a differing ideology but it's there and it's definitely coming through;

Disdain for minorities rights? Check.

Thinks criticism of white America is racist? Check.

Likes posts by an avowed white supremacist? Check.

Conveniently blind to obvious racism in front of his eyes whilst simultaneously claiming that statistics and the reasoning behind using them in a specific way can't ever be racist? Check.

How exactly are we supposed to keep ignoring this pattern? Just pretend these things exist in a vacuum?

Imagine how disengenuous it'd be if I entered a thread and tried to claim explicitly or implicitly that Im neutral on the issue of trans rights but we're expected to continuously give the benefit of the doubt

 

[Traitorfish]

So basically baton down the hatches and wait it out as if a hurricane just made landfall?

Most of the time, for most of us, I think that simply refusing to engage with this moral panic, refusing to give it oxygen, is the soundest course.

I'd call that arbitrary mob rule, not merely cancel culture. The problem isn't from the enforcement of new standards, it's the power bestowed to certain individuals to direct that enforcement.

Most of the actual "cancelling" is carried out by powerful institutions, and I think it's naive to imagine that "the mob" is actually wielding power over these institutions. I'm not convinced that the intention of "the mob" is to achieve such power, because of most of the leading figures of "the mob" are deeply invested in these institutions: they represent the lower ranks of the managerial and professional strata who staff these institutions, and their zeal is driven at a basic level by competition for the limited opportunities for advancement within these institutions. Not only has there been no change to who wields power, there has been no challenge to who wields power. That's why all of the demands of "cancel culture" resolve themselves into calls for "representation", because those leading "the mob" assume that they will be the ones called upon to "represent" whatever minorities they purport to advocate for.

In your post, you comment,

(although I do sympathize with those who invested their lives in climbing the ladder now under threat of getting kicked off)

Have you considered that this may not describe only the victims of "cancel culture", but also it's perpetrators?

 

[Robert Can't]

We all agree that on a large scale cancelling doesn't work in the sense that it seems nearly impossible to get a hateful person like JKR out of the spotlight. Lets also say there are a couple of people out there who were cancelled unjustly.

However there also exist numerous example of people being cancelled for things like sexual misconduct and then being removed from positions where they have authority over students (I mentioned Daniel Krall earlier in the thread and that was just a couple of weeks back). I don't know if you count MeToo as cancelling, its at least seems to be part of the terrifying culture you are afraid of. It seems to me that if you remove that culture then that involves no longer taking allegations of misconduct seriously. Large steps have been made in the world recently, we aren't all the way there yet, but getting rid of a culture of accountability seems like a step in the wrong direction.
You could say that the answer to this is we need companies with better HR or more thorough background checks or whatever else, but I don't think any of this compares to giving a space for victims to talk, hearing them out, and holding people accountable.

 

[EnglishEdward]

There is a distinction btween (a) people in positions of authority molesting vulnerable students AND (b) people saying things on the Internet that you don't like.

Yet cancel culture enthusiasts would, if they could sack, the lot.

Difficult to see how it helps, if people define isms such as rascism in such a way that nearly everyone else is guilty of it.

 

[Robert Can't]

Well if you can choose between saying both abusers and the twitter racists lose their jobs or nobody does then it seems obvious to me that the former choice is the better one.

It seems to me though that cancel culture, if it exists, actually does target the abusers more than people who just have bad takes on twitter - the best of both worlds.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Thing is that the woke crowd seem to regard most non BAME people as racists
which means your former option seems to amount to sacking most white people.

That is hardly likely to endear them to support the Black Lives Matter movement,
regarding excessive black deaths at the hands of police in the USA.

It may motivate them to vote for people like Trump on emotional logic; if I am going
to be called a racist/sexist/transphobist no matter what, and If the choice is voting
for (a) those who call me that OR (b) for an out and out anti-woker; I'll vote for (b).

 

[Robert Can't]

I think you are wrong in saying that woke crowd believes all white people are racists
It sounds to me like you are blaming the fact people hold bad views on this woke crowd. But racism is the fault of the racists, not the anti-racists.

 

[Senethro]

What a lot of fuss right-wingers make about the radical notion of egalitarianism across gender, religion, culture and all

 

[Commodore]

People can use their own judgement. We aren't stupid.

I disagree. People in general are very, very stupid. Most of the people I work with are college educated and think very highly of their own intelligence, yet a lot of them struggle to figure out how to use the thermometers we mounted on our walls at work.

 

[Modder_Mode]

Cancel culture is the notion that something someone or a group of people say that you don't like is deemed as hateful, so therefore the only way to get rid of cancel culture is to shutdown free speech, which is exactly what cancel culture is trying to achieve, once the right to offend is taken away, cancel culture has accomplished what it set out to achieve, only then will cancel culture cease to exist....that is until another group of "victims" emerges from the pits of absurdity that this toxic ideology crawled from.

Cancel culture is not interested or concerned at all with the outcomes of what will happen in the future as a result of their worldview and their actions taken is of little interest to them, it is the immediate feeling of moral superiority that they lust for.

What's interesting about this cancel culture movement is that they are apparently oppressed by whites, males, heterosexuals, Christians etc. but they can only write such hate against whites, males, heterosexuals, Christians etc. in countries that consist of exactly those same whites, males, heterosexuals and Christians, which in itself is a contradiction of the very thing they claim...then when people are actually being silenced for having an opinion they rejoice in joy for the very thing they claim to be fighting against...oppression.

We all agree that on a large scale cancelling doesn't work in the sense that it seems nearly impossible to get a hateful person like JKR out of the spotlight. Lets also say there are a couple of people out there who were cancelled unjustly.

However there also exist numerous example of people being cancelled for things like sexual misconduct and then being removed from positions where they have authority over students (I mentioned Daniel Krall earlier in the thread and that was just a couple of weeks back). I don't know if you count MeToo as cancelling, its at least seems to be part of the terrifying culture you are afraid of. It seems to me that if you remove that culture then that involves no longer taking allegations of misconduct seriously. Large steps have been made in the world recently, we aren't all the way there yet, but getting rid of a culture of accountability seems like a step in the wrong direction.
You could say that the answer to this is we need companies with better HR or more thorough background checks or whatever else, but I don't think any of this compares to giving a space for victims to talk, hearing them out, and holding people accountable.

Be careful now, if we use your standard of what "hate" is, you could find yourself out of a job if you post something "hateful" about Donald Trump and/or Republicans on social media that his supporters don't like, they should after all, be able to come after you and your job because they find something you have posted as hateful to THEM, its only fair that way isn't it? Remember equality also entails equal responsibility.

 

[Senethro]

Cancel culture is the notion that something someone or a group of people say that you don't like is deemed as hateful, so therefore the only way to get rid of cancel culture is to shutdown free speech, which is exactly what cancel culture is trying to achieve, once the right to offend is taken away, cancel culture has accomplished what it set out to achieve, only then will cancel culture cease to exist....that is until another group of "victims" emerges from the pits of absurdity that this toxic ideology crawled from.

Cancel culture is not interested or concerned at all with the outcomes of what will happen in the future as a result of their worldview and their actions taken is of little interest to them, it is the immediate feeling of moral superiority that they lust for.

What's interesting about this cancel culture movement is that they are apparently oppressed by whites, males, heterosexuals, Christians etc. but they can only write such hate against whites, males, heterosexuals, Christians etc. in countries that consist of exactly those same whites, males, heterosexuals and Christians, which in itself is a contradiction of the very thing they claim...then when people are actually being silenced for having an opinion they rejoice in joy for the very thing they claim to be fighting against...oppression.



Be careful now, if we use your standard of what "hate" is, you could find yourself out of a job if you post something "hateful" about Donald Trump and/or Republicans on social media that his supporters don't like, they should after all, be able to come after you and your job because they find something you have posted as hateful to THEM, its only fair that way isn't it? Remember equality also entails equal responsibility.

The refusal to give an inch without making the most incredible pouty fuss is what has got you into this mess. The American right wing establishment has been committed to a strategy where they maintain the appearance of civil, reasonable debate while absolutely refusing to listen or negotiate. It should not be a surprise that people are seeking other avenues given the stonewalling they've received from trying to do it the correct way.

 

[EnglishEdward]

I said:

Thing is that the woke crowd seem to regard most non BAME people as racists
which means your former option seems to amount to sacking most white people.

You said:

I think you are wrong in saying that woke crowd believes all white people are racists.

In the universe I live in, there is a distinction between the words most and all.

 

[warpus]

This completely works while you are small and niche.

A hiking gear/clothing company I shop at "cancelled" one entire manufacturer because enough people complained about them. Why? Because they also manufacture bullets. But these guys make great gear! It upset a lot of people and some people have stopped shopping there as a result.

You can buy into complaints on twitter, which is full of morons.. or you can just ignore the noise and continue doing business *shrug*. Some subset of your clientele will always be loud morons, and those are the people who start yelling first. If you remember that this is a tiny minority it will make it easier to ignore them.

Yes, larger companies are afraid of ending up internet famous, when enough morons yell loud enough and it affects their bottom line. But that's how you're going to run a business? If enough people yell you change up your business plan and start firing people? That's your problem.

And is this really only a problem when you're a large company? I've seen small businesses taken down by "activists". I've also seen "activists" drive more business to small niche businesses, because us normal people didn't buy into the yelling and decided to support the business instead. So it can go both ways.

You can live your life the way you want or you can sit on twitter all day and see who's upset with you and live your life accordingly, attempting to insult nobody ever. Have fun with that

 

[Traitorfish]

I think you are wrong in saying that woke crowd believes all white people are racists

The best-selling book on race relations in the United States today is White Fragility, which takes as its explicit premise that all white people are racist, or at least that they harbour racist attitudes. While it is true that the "woke crowd" does not believe that all white people are actively or maliciously racist, but that all white people are racist to some degree is an idea with a lot of currency.

The disconnect is that progressives use "racism" to encompass banal, everyday biases or prejudices, and this is primarily what is meant by the claim "white people are racist", but conservatives assume that such low-level biases are normal, natural and inevitable, and therefore cannot merit description as "racist", so what they hear is a claim that all white people are secretly hateful of other races.

This is partly a problem of progressive' own creation, because they have tended to use "racism" to describe this sort of banal racial prejudice only when expressed by white people against non-white people. Expressions of racial prejudice by non-white people are merely that, racial prejudice. This means that they will assert that all white people are racist, but will restrict themselves to the claim that all black people possess unconscious racial biases, an assertion which contains much more nuance, and on the face of it, more charity.

This all makes sense if you subscribe to the famous "power plus prejudice" formulation of racism, because then the nuance is already built into the phrase "all white people are racist". But the vast majority of people simply don't subscribe to this formulation, aren't even aware of that formulation; they take "racism" in its colloquial sense of "racial prejudice". This provides conservatives pundits with the opportunity to assert that progressives intend to characterise white people as uniquely toxic and bigoted, an argument which may appeal even to moderate members of the public (including non-white people) who do not agree with the conservative assumption that some degree of racial prejudice is normal and correct, who agree with progressives that racial prejudice is a bad thing, but do not accept as self-evident that there is something categorical which distinguishes expressions of racial prejudice by white and non-white people.

Progressives haven't really prepared a response to this expect to repeatedly outline their own specific, non-colloquial use of terms like "racist", which has so far not been a winning effort, because most people do not actually care what specific weird re-interpretation of colloquial language a particular corner of academia and/or twitter has adopted amongst themselves. Until progressives are prepared to meet people on language which they are comfortable with, instead of expecting that others should assume the fractious and shifting jargon of the progressive middle class, you should expect these sorts of protests, in both good and bad faith.

 

[Modder_Mode]

The refusal to give an inch without making the most incredible pouty fuss is what has got you into this mess. The American right wing establishment has been committed to a strategy where they maintain the appearance of civil, reasonable debate while absolutely refusing to listen or negotiate. It should not be a surprise that people are seeking other avenues given the stonewalling they've received from trying to do it the correct way.

You believe that this is what brought cancel culture about? Cancel culture predominately targets private businesses and institutions as well as individuals for having opinions that are deemed as hateful or offensive. If you are suggesting that government should be the arbitrator of what is deemed as hate speech or offensive speech then this is a scary proposition, it's the dictators of regimes that used this tactic to silence their critics.

It would also seem that you are supportive of reactionary movements that target the rights of others to achieve the goals of their worldview regardless of whether the outcome is good in nature or not, these scenarios never end well, we know this from history.

If like me you detest lobby groups that interfere in politics then I don't know why you would want to support a cancel culture, it wasn't that long ago that the Christian lobby groups controlled the narrative on what was offensive and what could or could not be discussed, or perhaps we should re-enact the Smith Act? Do you want to return to this era? I don't think communism is a good idea, some of the things that communist say could be considered hateful or offensive, but I don't want them deplatformed or silenced just because I don't like it, its infantile behavior.

 

[gay_Aleks]

White Fragility is an odd book to pick as an example, considering the fact that, for the most part, it is essentially the U.S corporate answer to racism, which, as one can expect, is based on individual actions and HR speak, acting towards non-white people as if they're some precious children, etc. It does not really look at racism as a structure [those "banal, everyday biases or prejudices", which are supposedly harmless but quite far from that; but, of course, it wouldn't be a best-seller book otherwise!] that is indispensable to the U.S as a nation. It is odd, then, to see it sorted out as an example of what "progressives" (an incredibly murky term in its own right!) believe or think.

You believe that this is what brought cancel culture about? Cancel culture predominately targets private businesses and institutions as well as individuals for having opinions that are deemed as hateful or offensive. If you are suggesting that government should be the arbitrator of what is deemed as hate speech or offensive speech then this is a scary proposition, it's the dictators of regimes that used this tactic to silence their critics.

It would also seem that you are supportive of reactionary movements that target the rights of others to achieve the goals of their worldview regardless of whether the outcome is good in nature or not, these scenarios never end well, we know this from history.

If like me you detest lobby groups that interfere in politics then I don't know why you would want to support a cancel culture, it wasn't that long ago that the Christian lobby groups controlled the narrative on what was offensive and what could or could not be discussed, or perhaps we should re-enact the Smith Act? Do you want to return to this era? I don't think communism is a good idea, some of the things that communist say could be considered hateful or offensive, but I don't want them deplatformed or silenced just because I don't like it, its infantile behavior.

I'm not sure where you've been the past fifty or so years, but the U.S government has done this all the time. Still is, in fact. So, one wonders, why in the world is so much hay made out of the people asking for some sort of responsibility with regard to racism, people who are, generally, powerless (for now), when you have jackbooted thugs literally kidnapping people? The past two or three months, one thinks, would've been proof enough that the U.S is the greatest enemy of free speech, of free expression and so forth. Yet, again, this bellies the illusion of "free speech" within bourgeois states. It is a privilege only of the powerful and the rich. Maybe the warriors for liberty, instead of chasing windmills in forums, ought to go out and stand in solidarity with the peoples of Portland, Seattle, Chicago, etc - they're struggling for YOUR rights.

 

[Traitorfish]

White Fragility is an odd book to pick as an example, considering the fact that, for the most part, it is essentially the U.S corporate answer to racism, which, as one can expect, is based on individual actions and HR speak, acting towards non-white people as if they're some precious children, etc. It does not really look at racism as a structure [those "banal, everyday biases or prejudices", which are supposedly harmless but quite far from that; but, of course, it wouldn't be a best-seller book otherwise!] that is indispensable to the U.S as a nation. It is odd, then, to see it sorted out as an example of what "progressives" (an incredibly murky term in its own right!) believe or think.

It is a best-selling book which has been widely-recommended as necessary reading in the wake of recent events. I accept that many progressives take issue with the text, but I did not mean to suggest that it represent some sort of manifesto for a movement, only that the ideas it expresses have some currency, which they evidently do.

And I don't think it is actually that far out of step with the fundamental description of modern American race relations propounded by most progressives, that the problem is that the dominant institutions are staffed by white people who carry their racial biases into their work. The difference is that Diangelo offers the illusion that white people can address their racial biases through therapy and public shaming, where the progressive mainstream argues that white people need to be replaced with non-white people until some sufficient saturation is reached to dissolve the influence of white people's racial biases. (And these programs are not in an way way mutually exclusive.) Despite the protestations of some socialists, the majority of the "woke" movement is comprised of middle class professionals embedded in elite institutions like media, academia, and NGOs, a downwardly mobile intelligentsia, and their political program reflects that.

"there you go, bringing class into it again." "well that's it's all about. if only people would listen..."

Neither Diangelo nor woke twitter are actually offering serious criticism of those institutions, and while it's absolutely possible that such discussions are taking part in some deep corner of left-twitter, breadtube, or the smoking remains of tumblr, the vast majority of people will never encounter these discussions. For the vast majority of people, the corporate-friendly version of progressive racial politics is wokeness, and that merits commentary.

 

[NinjaCow64]

which means your former option seems to amount to sacking most white people.

Completely unsubstantiated nonsense. You would be lucky to find even a couple dozen people who actually believe this.

That is hardly likely to endear them to support the Black Lives Matter movement,
regarding excessive black deaths at the hands of police in the USA.

It may motivate them to vote for people like Trump on emotional logic; if I am going
to be called a racist/sexist/transphobist no matter what, and If the choice is voting
for (a) those who call me that OR (b) for an out and out anti-woker; I'll vote for (b).

The overwhelming majority of people who go "I would totally vote for (supposedly) pro-worker parties if they'd stop doing X, Y and Z" are concern trolls who were never going to vote for centre-left parties in the first place! These are the same people who call someone as conservative as Biden a Communist. There are no way in which Liberals will attract these voters short of abandoning every principle that they claim to hold. Which they often do, which is why they are terrible.

 

[NinjaCow64]

where the progressive mainstream argues that white people need to be replaced with non-white people until some sufficient saturation is reached to dissolve the influence of white people's racial biases.

What on Earth are you talking about?

 

[gay_Aleks]

It's very weird to see a supposed leftist think that "the progressives" believe in some kind of a great replacement for the white populace but that's your prerogative. Generally, most "progressives" (here I envisage the Bernie Sanders, non-communist/anarchist left, for the record, i.e, the social democrats/DSAers) see a need for a policy of redistribution of the wealth towards non-white people, as a salve to the stark inequality existing within the U.S. There is generally no concept of such an idea as you pose it. Indeed, even amongst the communists and anarchists, who wish to destroy the white supremacist institutions that have such a commanding grip over the United States, you will never find anything remotely close to that, unless you see the process of decolonization as the replacement of white people with Black/indigenous peoples, which is quite racist, so I'm just curious how in the world did you get such an idea in your head.