
Politically-correct witch-hunt is killing free speech - 737min
https://medium.com/@sarahadowney/this-politically-correct-witch-hunt-is-killing-free-speech-and-we-have-to-fight-it-7ced038d33ae
======
Thorentis
I hope people realise this sooner rather than later. No matter which side of
the political spectrum you are on, it is clear that PC culture is making the
world a worse place for everybody.

Telling people which causes they must publicly support or else be assumed an
enemy? Does that ring any bells? I swear there's another regime in human
history that made you hang flags outside your house to show your clear
support. This comparison is made to death so I won't name it, but the
similarities - despite accusations flying in the other direction constantly -
are constantly increasing.

Removing TV shows from Netflix because somebody covered their face in black
paint, with no regard for context or what was being made fun of it? (hint: it
wasn't black people).

"Cancelling" somebody's career because their daughter said something that
might be deemed racist? "Cancelling" somebody because they said something 10
years ago that might be racist? Absurd.

I honestly think our society is getting soft. You cannot disagree with
somebody without them immediately deciding whether or not they can publicly
shame you or if you broke any laws in the process of hurting them. Comedy is
getting less and less funny, debate is increasingly meaningless because you
have to tip-toe around everything. We are making society blander and __less
diverse __in the name of diversity.

Diversity at all costs: except diversity of opinion.

~~~
cma
> Telling people which causes they must publicly support or else be assumed an
> enemy? Does that ring any bells?

Are you talking about Kapernick being cancelled from the NFL by conservative
cancel culture and the Vice President's staged NFL walkout to support
conservative cancel culture?

~~~
jlos
Kapernick made a political statement as his place of work. He made a
calculated risk to his career for the sake of his convictions. Choosing to
take a stand strikes me as different than being pressured and judged for not
taking one. As a non-fan of football, I read the distate for Kapernick's
statement as foisting another political binary on fans (mostly by the media,
not so much by kapernick). Should you kneel or not kneel? Now you _have_ to
have an opinion.

I think the progression is:

1\. Make a political statement against an injustice (hashtags, kneeling, etc)

2\. Making a lack of support a form of complicity with injustice.

3\. Narrowly define what support looks like.

Exact quote from #ShutDownStem website: >> Unless you engage directly with
eliminating racism, you are perpetuating it. [0]

[https://www.shutdownstem.com/](https://www.shutdownstem.com/)

~~~
Thorentis
> Choosing to take a stand strikes me as different than being pressured and
> judged for not taking one

Fantastic point. And I would hope those in favor of democracy can accept it.
If you choose to support a political party publicly, you can reasonably expect
people to engage with you about it. But nobody should be able to coerce you to
support any particular party or candidate.

What we are seeing now, is not the freedom to choose a particular stance or
cause. We are seeing the mob react with force to a lack of opinion.

You must have an opinion. And it must be the right one.

~~~
Barrin92
>But nobody should be able to coerce you to support any particular party or
candidate.

well, nobody is able to coerce you for not doing anything, but people can
still judge you for it, and that may be perfectly reasonable.

Inaction can be as devastating as action. Withdrawing in the face of some
injustice is as much of a choice as participating on either front.

It's an overused quote but really all that is necessary for evil to triumph is
good people doing nothing. Of course today sometimes the causes are
hyperbolic, but nothing is wrong with the principle. If someone is the victim
of racism say, and people look away rather than stepping up, that's a failure.

~~~
parineum
>Inaction can be as devastating as action.

It can be but rarely is.

In the case racism, it isn't. Sitting in my house doing nothing isn't as bad
as attacking blacklivesmatter protesters.

The call against inaction is an exaggeration to shame people into action for
their side. It's the "if you aren't with us, you're against us" repackaged for
the woke.

~~~
spangry
To take it another step further, a bias towards action can be harmful as well:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_non_nocere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_non_nocere)
. I have often wondered if Google/Alphabet erred in switching from "don't be
evil" to "do the right thing".

------
bvinc
The real story here is the story of someone who has actively avoided politics
all of her life, but Twitter's engagement increasing algorithms got to her. It
showed her outrageous Twitter mobs to feed her outrage cycle until she was
hooked on politics and seeking out alt-right thinkers.

The interesting thing is that all those people in Twitter mobs that she's so
upset about are also in an outrage cycle, hooked on Twitter.

The real hidden enemy here isn't political correctness, it's social media.
It's the massive social experiment that no one signed up for, and it's driving
us all insane.

~~~
ismyrnow
I like your wording on this - outrage cycle. I agree that social media
algorithms promote that, which is why I have largely withdrawn from twitter,
facebook, and instagram. They're nowhere near representative of my real life
social networks. While platforms like instagram have the capability to keep
friends connected and inspire people, they've turned into toxic waste sites.

That said, their effect on society hasn't been limited to raging twitter
tirades. Companies, governments, and other institutions seem to be bending the
knee to their outrage, which has led to not only our cancel culture, but to
things like the CHOP situation which went on for far too long. Leaders are
scared of making the mob angry.

------
blacksqr
"We’re supposed to have a First Amendment right to freedom of the press, but
this phenomenon is ruining it."

Writer of linked article claims to be a lawyer, but strangely seems unaware
that the First Amendment protects speech and the press from the _government_.

No examples of government restricting free expression were given.

~~~
waheoo
Id say the stance on platforms is stifiling free speech.

Private companies should not be able to moderate speech and claim to be a
platform.

You're either a publisher or your not. If you're a public platform, your users
should be protected by public laws.

For rhe most part the current state of affairs has worked so far but i would
suggest it hasnt for some and is starting to show its weaknesses in a more
polarized environment.

For the downvoters, this isnt some new opinion of mine because of the talking
points from trump, ive had this view since the torrent debates of the early
2000s and other similar situations with people like snowden.

If you disagree because with what i have to say, please explain.

~~~
OminousWeapons
Are you implying that if I stand up a small public forum or message board for
some niche interest using my own assets that I am unable to boot people off it
or moderate in any way without being deemed a publisher and being liable for
content?

~~~
Thorentis
I think it is about scale. If you stand up a public forum and you have 100
users, do your moderation choices actually sway a large percentage of public
opinion? Consider instead a social media platform with a billion users and its
moderation choices. It is time for us to use some common sense and not just
dissolve everything down to that simplistic binary terms. Having a forum
doesn't make you a publisher. Moderation isn't always bad. There are many
other nuances like reach, scale, trust, etc. For instance, there is a huge
difference between me posting disinformation of my private blog, and me
publishing disinformation is a newspaper read by hundreds of thousands daily.
My responsibility and influence over the public increases with the reach I
have. We need to think the same way about social media.

~~~
darekkay
> I think it is about scale. If you stand up a public forum and you have 100
> users, do your moderation choices actually sway a large percentage of public
> opinion? Consider instead a social media platform with a billion users and
> its moderation choices

Where's the line (aka "Sorites paradox")? And who is making the decision?

------
rvz
I have to say that the web in its early days never had this level of
politically correct moderation or witch-hunting acts until YouTube, Facebook
and Twitter rose in popularity and were used beyond their intended purpose; as
tools used to dox and cancel opponents. Fast-forward to 2020, it has gotten
too far and out of control.

One could say that social media has definitely accelerated this nonsense to
new heights, taking everyone who disagrees with the PC-crowd underground.

~~~
Thorentis
Social media empowered the mob, and gave them an inflated sense of worth for
their own opinions. Because your opinion can instantly be broadcast to
millions of people, it must have value. But along with this came the mob
mentality, where this new power will be used to silence opposition.

The fault really lies in the companies, politicians, and media outlets who
have given credence to what "the mob" on social media has to say.

Example: a comedian/author makes a tweet that is mildly offensive to some
small minority, but they didn't mean anything by it, or it was just a joke.
Somebody sees the potential to kick up a stink, and retweet it with "can't
believe they just said this. apologise now". It gets maybe 10% the "likes" of
the original tweet. A media outlet sees this tweet (some intern is browsing
"latest tweets") and writes an article saying "Internet in an outrage: is x a
racist?". Author immediately issues an apology, resigns from their job, and
goes into hiding, their career destroyed forever.

What could have been done differently? The company they worked for could've
stood by them. The author/whoever could have just ignored it. The media outlet
could have had higher quality standards of publication. And almost nobody
would even know what was said in the first place! Our society thrives on
conflict, and any small hint of a conflict is blown up beyond all proportion.

------
awb
Appreciate the article, but a few points I feel are off the mark a bit:

> But despite his killer getting fired and arrested, the protests became more
> violent, more destructive, and more divisive.

A lot of rioting and violence came in the early days, even before the arrest
and murder charges. The vast majority of protests were peaceful. And this
seems to insinuate that the protesters and rioters were the same people, which
I don't think is a widely held belief.

And maybe the protests are about more than just the murder of George Floyd...
If this was an isolated incident, maybe expectations of a quick return to
civility would make sense, but it's almost like people (including white
people) are tired of this happening.

> If you aren't posting #BLM, you’re racist. If you ARE posting #BLM but you
> say it in the wrong way, you're racist. If you're white and you're silent,
> that's violence. If you're white and you're speaking up, you're talking over
> black voices and only they should be heard.

Maybe this is several folks trying to take the culture wheel. The debate is
messy right now and that's OK. It's a messy topic and people are tossing out
their ideas.

If you want to post #BLM great. If you don't that's fine too. I'm glad we're
having a conversation about it even if it's just to simply say we're all
confused.

Props to the author for sharing her views. If folks take issue with what
you've said, don't sweat it. And if you're looking for other folks on
direction on how to "do it right", you're looking in the wrong direction.

~~~
Thorentis
> If you want to post #BLM great. If you don't that's fine too.

Anecdata: in a company all-hands 2 weeks ago, an employee asked the CEO why
the company hadn't yet made a public statement about BLM. The CEO looked
visibly agitated, almost fearful, and stumbled through some response that
equated to "will we do that by the end of the week".

Whether or not the pressure actually exists, people are scared of what will
happen if they don't conform. People have been fired over tweets, roasted in
the media over not speaking out "when they should", and for things they said
10 years ago. Nobody wants to be on the front page of buzzfeed for being outed
"as a racist". There is a collective societal fear that is driving us faster
and faster off the PC cliff.

~~~
mike503
This.

I sometimes worry about anything I may have said years ago or anything I say
now that could be construed as offensive by ... almost anyone at this point.

Early on (day after the _riots_ started) I posted an article about a POC
business owner’s business being destroyed due to protests (rioting) - I had
someone call me gross and “where was your outrage when a Black man was killed
by a cop? I didn’t see you post anything then”

After that I started having to make a risk analysis before doing anything.

At this point you HAVE to say something about everything and cover your bases,
or you’re complicit; oddly enough you can say something AGAINST the movement,
be called out, and apologize, and that’s acceptable. But trying to stay out of
the shitstorm? No, you’re complicit. Say something positive, or say something
negative and then retract it. But say something...

~~~
awb
> I sometimes worry about anything I may have said years ago or anything I say
> now that could be construed as offensive by ... almost anyone at this point.

I hear this complaint a lot and don't quite understand it. I don't think the
goal in life is to not offend anyone. Just live your life as best you can and
if others get offended that's OK. Learn from it if you want to, if it's
nonsense ignore it. If someone injures you, sue them. If someone threatens you
call the police. If someone stops being your friend get new friends. People
are free to get as offended as they want and you're free to not let it bother
you.

When there are laws passed that create penalties for offending someone then we
have a problem. Until then the outrage about the outrage is just like the
outrage itself.

~~~
TerminalSystem3
The problem is that these rules worked in prior times, but social media has
given the offended the power to group up with 10000 other people who would be
similarly offended. And once they are all offended, they adopt a mob mentality
and ruin the lives of people. There's no examination of evidence, no due
process, and no deviation from the mob's mentality.

It's the exact opposite of the norms that the United States had been built on
for it's history. And there's little to no legal recourse for victims of the
mob who have been fired from their jobs and labeled as a racist online.

~~~
awb
History has plenty of examples of mobs ruining people's lives without due
process. I'm not disagreeing that it's bad just that I don't think it's a new
phenomenon or even worse than it used to be. The mobs used to kill you not
just harass you.

Unfortunately, something within us seems to want to blame, shame, control and
punish other people.

------
lasky
Are anyone’s rights to free speech actually threatened? Or is there just
backlash from the public.

I’ve noticed how this “You take away my free speech when I get backlash when I
speak some idea that is now interpreted as X-phobic or harmful” argument seems
to pop up among during movements that cause painful resistant power shifts.

also this....

“Personally, I think adding trans performers would breathe life into Drag
Race. But I’m a viewer, and I don’t get to decide that. The point is that
RuPaul’s Drag Race is RuPaul’s show, and we don’t get to scream and cry and
throw tantrums until he changes his own show.“

.... but what about free speech you were just arguing for?

why don’t people get to scream and cry?

This appears to be conservative grief masked as liberally tolerant protection
of free speech.

~~~
jpxw
The culture of backlash from the public is causing free speech to be
threatened. Both are true.

~~~
spopejoy
> causing free speech to be threatened.

[citation needed]. Social media platforms are not 1st-amendment platforms.

What's hilarious about the author of this article is her admiration for South
Park. And yet, they did the satire of anyone with the ashen-faced fear of
being "kicked off Twitter" as a fate worse than death.

I fail to see how the PC left is changing any of the things that really run
society. If you don't like the noise, maybe take a break from Twitter? Because
being kicked off twitter is NOT a threat to free speech.

------
glenda
You're still free to write whatever you want, no one is taking that away.
However, just because you have something to say doesn't mean that I or anyone
else has give it the time of day.

I am also free to respond however I'd like, and in some cases there may be
many more people that share my opinion rather than yours!

~~~
neonate
Agreed, but it starts to be a public interest issue when real harm is done to
people, such as getting them fired.

I also think there is genuine psychological harm being done by mobs online.
This is not so hard to see in other contexts, where it would be called
bullying or harassment. Consider the cases of high school students publicly
informing on their peers and denouncing them. Unfortunately, for political
reasons people are trivializing that right now and acting like it's no problem
at all, just everyday communication and no one has a right to expect
different. That's ironic since I assume most of these people would say that
they believe in a politics of empathy.

I also think that, contrary to a common objection, there _is_ a genuine free
speech issue with denying access to the social media platforms which have
grown so large as to become de facto standards for public communication. It's
popular right now to say "it's not a free speech issue because they're not the
government". But Facebook, Twitter, etc. are the public squares of our time.
Private institutions that become that large and monopolistic begin to encroach
on the public sector in importance, and it's too legalistic an argument to say
that doesn't count because e.g. the first amendment only applies to the
government.

Those are three areas that go beyond just expressing disagreement with
someone, and have elements of actual harm in them. Also, all three are
escalating and the logical next steps are worse.

~~~
clairity
societies and civil discussions will not adhere to some moral and orderly
procession, so let's not cling to that unascribable ideal. we're also per
capita way less violent and offensive toward each other than most of human
history.

sometimes repercussions greater than disagreement is warranted, and psychic
injury to usher in real, positive change is a small price to pay, smaller than
during most prior evolutions.

but let's spell out clearly that the complainants are largely folks who want
to assert power as privilege on minority groups and are meeting rightful
resistance. it's true that sometimes the resistance goes too far, which is
unfortunate, but that's a non-sequitur borne of an imbalance of perception,
entitlement, and extra-sensitivity.

that's the nexus of the clash, and a key part of why it just won't be civil
and orderly. this is the internet era's version of a power struggle. feet are
gonna get mashed and we're not gonna like it.

~~~
neonate
This is a "you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs" argument. That is
more honest than the argument I was criticizing, which pretends that
significant harm isn't being done to people. You seem to be saying that they
mostly deserve it, and if they don't, that's "unfortunate". Collateral damage,
one might call it, in a righteous cause. I find it scary when people arrogate
to themselves the right to injure others, and I doubt that it serves justice.
But I appreciate the clarity.

~~~
clairity
you're welcome!

you're missing some of the nuance, the asymmetry of cause and action, though.
there is already historic, perpetual violence, acting to subjugate and
disenfranchise, and it's quite understandable and reasonable to resist that
subjugation.

the resisters weren't initiating this thread of violence but rather had it
thrust upon them. the initiators activate the risk of injury on the rebound,
not the resisters. no initial violence, no rebound injury risk.

asserting dominance is risky business, no two ways about it.

------
Miner49er
I don't get the argument here. Is the Twitter mobs not entitled to _their_
free speech? To me this seems like she just doesn't like that a majority of
people's opinions are changing and is trying to silence them.

~~~
adventured
If it's intimidation, threats, etc. then it isn't free speech, it's violence.
That's why maliciously yelling fire in a crowded theater isn't covered by
freedom of speech, the action is intending to violently harm other people.
That's also why placing a bullhorn next to someone's ear and blasting a screed
through it in a way that destroys someone's hearing isn't a behavior protected
by freedom of speech (it would be considered assault, it's an act of violence;
the person could easily express their screed without harming someone in that
manner).

The mobs on Twitter frequently cross over into committing mass acts of
criminal behavior through threats and intimidation, organizing to harm people.
They don't hide it, this criminal behavior is all out in the open. Hurt this
person next, no no no hurt this person. Threatening to harm people is violence
(it doesn't have to be a physical threat to be violence), not freedom of
speech.

~~~
Miner49er
I see what you're saying, but that sort of comes down to opinion. If you ask
these Twitter mobs, I'm sure they'd say that are only responding in kind.
They'd say that the people they're attacking are already attacking them or
attacking others.

------
pcurve
I think the move towards real identity killed free speech online.

Anonymity was easy for regular folks back in the 2000s.

I'm actually baffled at how some people so willingly express their personal
views online these days.

~~~
yepthatsreality
It’s called being discovered. You want your tweets discovered so that you can
have a sense of something earned by writing it.

------
ipv6ipv4
Social media is the Babel fish:

"... the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to
communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and
bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."

------
tbabej
The author has a point. When going to upvote the article, I caught myself
subconsciously running the risk analysis of HN DB getting hacked and the
upvote data getting publicly exposed.

------
bravoetch
People have complained about PC culture since at least the mid-90s. This
article is yet another of the same. I have news for the author - the thing
you're upset with isn't going away. You can't hide from it, and you'll never
understand it.

~~~
3131s
Are you telling me that over-zealous leftist college kids aren't actually at
the root of all the world's problems?

------
dkdk8283
I’m thrilled to see this article here. Politically correct culture has gone
way too far.

Privacy and free speech are quickly eroding and it seemed like not many people
are willing to get loud about it.

------
BrandoElFollito
It's not only diversity. It is also the fact that grown ups will write f%%ck
instead of fuck because it may offend some people.

A breast on TV sent America crazy. A woman breast. Sorry, a n%%%ple. Most of
people had one right in front of their eyes at some point in life. Or their
mouth, which is disgusting enough to have women cover their breast when
breastfeeding.

I am French. Our culture is way more aligned with normality than others when
it comes to fuck, fucking and breasts. But even here, when I compare to what
we had as teens in the 80's,I have the impression that today we are back in
the middle ages.

~~~
f1refly
As a german, I think this is mostly a problem with American culture and law
being exported globally through their monopolist tech giants. I used to think
that the german youth protection laws regarding sexual content where over the
top, but now the disconnect between the lived sexualized reality of teenagers
and the public and the representation of it in the "social" media is bizarre.

------
carapace
There's a simple solution: quit Twitter.

I resuscitated my old neglected Twitter account recently. It stressed me out
and felt addictive, so I quit.

It turns out that if you're not on Twitter you don't hear that noise and it
doesn't affect you.

~~~
coffeefirst
Correct. Twitter is a bubble that magnifies the angriest opinions and makes
them look more popular than they are. Outside of that bubble, most of these
controversies don’t even exist.

------
ismyrnow
I feel pretty strongly that the vocal "majority" on the internet isn't at all
representative of our local, national, or global communities. Both government
and business leadership need to stand up to the bullying that these online
mobs are doing, and employ reason instead.

------
nullc
This is what we get when we connect everyone's minds to filters which amplify
the most most viral and most vicious soundbites and rewards people based on
how much blind rage they can induce in others.

If you avoid twitter and facebook and anyone that interacts too much with
those things, you'll see a lot less of this stuff and probably be a lot
happier.

------
hindsightbias
PG told me it’s a good thing that there are things I’m afraid to say.

Up until more recently, it seemed the majority of folks on the internets felt
they were obligated to let their freak flag fly.

So color me confused.

[http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

Or at least give Jonah Goldberg credit for Liberal Fascism, written over a
decade ago.

------
Barrin92
I'm extremely convinced the "anti-cancel-culture"-culture has to be the most
thriving white collar subscription industry of our times. For people being
cancelled I can't really tell how many dozens of blog posts with thousands of
likes like this I see of people publicly talking about not being able to
publicly talk.

Following the obligatory comparisons to 1984 for being cancelled out of the
network-tv drag queen tv show community, comparisons to the Soviet Union
followed promptly.

As someone who had family in East Germany let me tell you what Soviet cancel
culture was. Being thrown into a dungeon where the light doesn't shine or
someone being shot in the head by a Stasi agent.

Extremely bored people being cancelled out of some community by other
extremely bored people on the noise generating machine that is social media is
about as much Soviet Union as Trump fearing STDs was his Vietnam.

This reminds me of the valiant defenders of the intellectual dark web, which
is so dark that it seems to occupy the permanent topspot on every podcasting
service on the internet

~~~
9HZZRfNlpR
The cancel culture in soviet union (i was a citizen) was very similar, more
often than not you weren't shot in the head but you weren't accepted to
university, couldn't get a goid job etc all because you or your parents shed
the guilt of disagreeing with extremists communists. For the average person
the culture was similar what were seeing today, during the Stalin times they
preferred bullet or Siberia indeed.

~~~
Barrin92
Let's remember though the woman writing that article in particular is a lawyer
and partner at a VC firm. I've seen Eric Weinstein talk about this stuff a
lot, he's managing director at Thiel Capital.

We're not talking about factory workers being cancelled by the communist party
for not spying on their neighbours, we're talking about a bunch of upper-class
professionals being cast out of the intelligentsia, which annoys them a lot.
As the saying goes, "the conflict is so fierce because the stakes are so low".
But this is not the Soviet Union. Not even as a metaphor.

The entire cancel culture debate is in itself extremely limited to the kind of
people who are overly online. Nobody who is flipping burgers or driving Uber
is being cancelled, because they don't have an audience, or the time to waste
and probably the good judgement to waste their time like we do

~~~
zozbot234
It's not about the professionals themselves, it's what this cancel culture run
amok does to the climate of intellectual debate. We _want_ powerful people to
be meaningfully engaged with civil society, and they aren't going to do that
if they expect that they'll be treated unfairly. If the meaningful alternative
to being "cast out of the intelligentsia" is to start exerting arbitrary power
yourself... well, we can guess the outcome and it isn't pretty.

~~~
Barrin92
I think underlying the disagreement here is really a different estimation of
how much this stuff matters. To many people these sort of debates between
intellectuals appear very important, they have this idea that culture sort of
flows down from the 'elites' and so on. Hence say, Jordan Peterson being very
panicked about universities, and the university students being very panicked
about Peterson.

I don't think it actually matters at all, it's like the Seattle autonomous
anarchists. It's all simulated outrage. Ezra Klein points out in his book on
polarization that the US was much, much more violent during the 60s and 70s,
when there was very little polarization or cancel culture. Just count the
number of political assassinations or compare riots then to today.

Today is peaceful by comparison. Reactionaries haven't turned around
acceptance of gay rights yet, cancel culture hasn't cancelled the conservative
judiciary yet and ushered in the red guard. Very little has materially
changed, it's almost all pure spectacle, if anything a distraction for actual
change. You see how much Zucc cares about being cancelled? Anyone remember
occupy Wall Street? Maybe cancelling is at an all time high because of how
little it actually does.

~~~
spangry
> I don't think it actually matters at all, it's like the Seattle autonomous
> anarchists. It's all simulated outrage.

Perhaps not the best example. Two people have been shot and killed in the
CHAZ, one of them a 16 year old boy who was killed by CHAZ 'security forces'.

------
mythrwy
The thing I bemoan the loss of is general politeness.

Somehow folks have gotten the idea that it's ok to scream "Fuck You!!" at the
top of their lungs in public or on social media if the victim is perceived to
somehow be mildly racist for instance. And the entire cancel mob is impolite
and unmannered. No charity, no nuance, no stopping to think or consider what
is being said. Just rabid mouth frothing.

And really racism itself is impolite. It makes others feel bad for no good
reason. It's anti social. So is sexism. It's extreme impoliteness and dis-
consideration of others.

Ya, we get it, we should have the legal freedom to be impolite. But good
people just shouldn't do it. For most any reason. We can always invent excuses
why we should be disrespectful to others.

It seems the media really got on this trend early with a lot of right wing
folks starting with Rush Limbaugh and progressing to Glenn Beck and Nancy
Grace making an audience out of shouting and saying rude things in an attempt
to be edgy. The current crop of protesters out screaming obscenities at police
officers and the general public seem to have taken this to it's (hopefully)
final conclusion. It's like a scene from "Idiocracy" really. And the current
president is right in there, he's made an election platform out of
impoliteness.

I've been listing to a lot of free audio books from the late 1800 and early
1900's. The amount of general politeness and manners exhibited from people was
amazing. So different. It's too much for the current era, but I'd be ok if we
went back to a little respect and courtesy of others in general no matter what
someone thought or did or believed and this became custom once again.

~~~
kayodelycaon
A bit off topic but where do you get free audio books of old books?

~~~
mythrwy
There's a number of podcasts (Classic Tales for instance) where they read old
books. And you can do a search and find a bunch as well
([https://librivox.org/](https://librivox.org/),
[http://www.openculture.com/freeaudiobooks](http://www.openculture.com/freeaudiobooks))

But I've found one of the best sources is YouTube. Tons of readings of out of
copyright books and you can usually pick a narrator you like.

------
DavidVoid
Well that was a really biased article.

The more toxic parts of cancel culture are a problem yes, but to blame _the
left_ for Netflix deciding to remove episodes they shouldn't have removed is
just silly, especially when the vast majority of people on the left don't
agree with Netflix in those cases.

I'd argue that the part complaining about "the liberal media" is even more
applicable to right-wing media. What she's complaining about has been done by
Fox News and Murdoch owned tabloids for ages now.

And I have a very hard time taking anyone who recommends PragerU seriously.
PragerU is an awful and dishonest propaganda outlet and should be treated as
such. The fact that someone who claims to be pro choice, pro LGBTQ, and pro
environmental issues would even claim that PragerU is "rational" makes me
seriously doubt that person's judgment.

Honestly, the idea of abandoning your social political viewpoints just because
you think that some people on the left are mean is a really dumb way to go
about deciding your political opinions and who to vote for. It's reactionary
and inevitably leads to putting more shitty people in positions of power.

You should stand for your beliefs even if that means having to agree with some
dumb-asses.

\---

For a view on cancelling from someone on _the left_ , and talk about
experiences with it, I can recommend Contrapoints' video on the subject [1].
It's long but worth a watch if you want to hear someone talk about it who
doesn't just suggest that people abandon the left and vote against their
interests.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8)

------
jakkyboi
Another boring take that loves to claim social change and strong opinions as
limiting to free speech

~~~
apsec112
Getting fired for saying anything Twitter disagrees with limits your free
speech.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-
firin...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firing-
innocent/613615/)

------
thefz
> The entitlement required to think you deserve to benefit from someone else’s
> work by forcibly inserting yourself into it — while loudly criticizing it —
> is stunning.

Eloquently worded.

~~~
amadeuspagel
This could be a comment about net neutrality, civil rights law, privacy
regulations, or really any kind of regulation. But of course in those
contexts, no one speaks of "entitlement". Only to demand freedom of speech is
"entitlement".

------
courtf
Social media is not the government, and has no obligation to maintain free
speech. That said, social media has big problems.

The biggest is that they have, quite intentionally, encouraged the spread of
outrage and mob mentality all across the political spectrum. These companies
have installed levers for manipulating their users emotionally, and these
levers are for sale. You can even fiddle around for free if you have the time,
or get (un)lucky!

Oppressive PC culture, that can manifest as an almost Puritanical form of
moral authority, spreads quick on social media. As someone who grew up in
conservative, small-town America (and rebelled against it every chance I got),
I'm not about to have my opinions dictated to me by the new boss either.

If your social sphere is mostly composed of middle & upper class, highly
educated professionals, you might just feel surrounded by PCness. If you have
any connection to the white poor and/or rural however, you also know that
right-wing authoritarianism and racism are boiling too, with lethal results.
As far as PC culture can be viewed as a defensive response to racism, I think
it is clearly the lesser of the two evils, but it's probably a false
dichotomy.

------
fzeroracer
I saw zero mentions of Trump or the current administration and their efforts
to curtail free speech, threatening people into complying, the attacks on
journalists or protestors.

Instead what I see is fear of 'cancel culture', the fear of BLM being a bunch
of secret marxists (ironically she should be advocating for their right to
freedom of speech as well, but it seems that marxists are more scary than
nazis) and a bunch of links at the end to people who have done their fair
share to either stifle free speech or cancel people on their own.

She even links to Andy Ngo who is a known liar and provocateur and has even
himself encouraged violence against people he disagrees with. Frankly I'm
disappointing this article is even given a millisecond of anyone's time of
day.

~~~
cozuya
If Biden wins in November, Republicans will be hunted, and you will be dead
within a year.

This is what someone who she links to (known nutball Scott Adams) said
YESTERDAY.

But this is totally a good faith article that we should all read and
absolutely belongs on top of a serious discussion forum like HN. Yep.

------
t0astbread
I stopped reading halfway through because this article has sort of mixed
agree-ability for me but I guess my takeaway from this is that it's good to be
careful about calling extremes and jumping to conclusions when evaluating
others.

~~~
t0astbread
And just to get my word out there: I think the transgender passage was kind of
meh. To me it sounds like the article conflates the fact that biological sex
exists with the idea that it's somehow extremely important in our everyday
life. I think it's important to respect everyone's biological needs but the
way we see each other should definitely be our gender identity. Pressing on
"the importance of biological sex" kinda feels like a good way to make people
believe their identity must be defined by their biology.

(By the way, I am curios as to how biological sex is treated during a
transition. Like, changing your body isn't instantaneous, apart from that
there's also intersex people, so is it really all-binary from a scientific
POV?)

And the Rowling piece kinda read like a non-apology to me, sorry.

------
skanderbm
Jon Ronson wrote an entertaining book on the subject
([https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/So_You_ve_Been_Public...](https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/So_You_ve_Been_Publicly_Shamed.html)).

It recounts several examples of internet self-righteous mobs lynching people
for minor and larger offences.

In particular, one conclusion of the book is that aggressively not making
amends for bad behaviour, even raising the bar for offensiveness, is the
optimal survival strategy. See Trump ...

------
everybodyknows
For a superbly witty satire of academic "cancel culture", give a listen to
Zadie Smith's short story "Now More Than Ever":

[https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-authors-voice/zadie-
sm...](https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-authors-voice/zadie-smith-reads-
now-more-than-ever)

------
lifeformed
Counterpoint: progress is messy. In an ideal world, we'd shape society through
rational democratic debates where everyone is discussing in good faith. Maybe
we'll get there one day, but there are a lot of things in the way: poor
education, economic hardship, inaccessible healthcare, wealth inequality, and
biases deeply embedded in our culture. These factors not only make a lot of
people unequipped to express nuance in their frustrations, they also don't
exactly incentivize them to do so.

(And even if these issues are resolved, there are also the complexities of
crowd mentalities that affect even very rational people. To overcome these
complexities will take a mindfulness not really currently studied or practiced
at scale.)

Throughout history, we've seen that change usually comes from very messy,
ugly, forceful action. Polite discussion has its place, but when people are
pushed to the limits, politeness is discarded and those who take action get
what they fight for, polite or not. In those moments, enforcing "politeness"
only works to preserve the status quo.

Politically correct mobs are a form of this - they are ugly and
indiscriminate, but effective at shaping culture by stigmatizing ideas that
have been used to justify harm. I'm not saying it's great - this is only a
description of what is, not what ought to be. But people being mean or
annoying online is as old as the internet, and is not limited to politically
left-leaning people. It just happens that the mean left internet people are on
the side of society's conscience, and luckily for now it's generally working
for the greater good by correcting some big imbalances in American history.

Of course, the lack of accountability and balance makes this powerful hammer
prone to swing wherever gravity carries it. It's dangerous, but to lash out
against it is to lash out against the atmosphere for climate change - we need
to address the root causes. We need to improve the livelihoods of everyone so
they don't feel desperate and angry - this requires tackling hard economic and
healthcare problems. We need to improve critical thinking so people can
identify the truth - this requires solving difficult problems with our
education system (which also tie into economics and healthcare). We need
people to be more empathetic - this requires better urban planning, and all of
the above. We need so many things and solve so many tough interconnected
problems to get to the point where nuance and good-faith discussion rule
society. Interestingly, these are all the problems that the mean left people
are trying to fix. So it's possible to be on "their side" and not be in love
with their techniques. It feels complicated, but isn't that what nuance is
for?

Pushing back against the mob for being too uncivilized is trying to stop the
swinging hammer, when it's probably best to just stay out of the way, and help
finish building what the hammer is working on.

~~~
TerminalSystem3
But here's the problematic part of your statement:

"Politically correct mobs are a form of this - they are ugly and
indiscriminate, but effective at shaping culture by stigmatizing ideas that
have been used to justify harm".

How do you define "harm"? It seems that the modern edition of "progress" is
trying to eliminate psychological harm by controlling people's speech. Is
psychological harm really something worth trying to eliminate in our society?

I'd argue no. Our society thrives on free speech and truth, and attempting to
silence people for the sake of keeping the feelings of others intact is not a
trade off that's worth making. A book I read that was very informative on the
topic was "The Coddling of the American Mind" by Jonathan Haidt - I'd highly
recommend looking into it.

~~~
relaxing
The “harm” is the literal murder of black people, transgender people, gay
people, etc. The tweets don’t do the murder, but status quo the tweets are
supporting does.

I think some here, when talking about freedom of political speech, lose sight
of the actual stakes behind the politics.

~~~
TerminalSystem3
I'm definitely against any tweets calling for the murder of anybody, I'll say
that. But the "anti-harm" movement is not as benign as you think. For
instance, see the firing of David Shor, who merely tweeted a study comparing
the effectiveness of violent and nonviolent protests. There's an instance of
someone who tweeted AGAINST harm, in that he was advocating for nonviolence.
Yet he was still censored.

This article does a good job outlining some of the craziness:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-
firin...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firing-
innocent/613615/)

------
joeax
I hate to remind everyone but PC culture is here to stay. We can all complain
about but the fact is no one has a solution, except for staying off social
media (which I generally have been doing, and I've never been happier).

Need proof? Go watch the movie PCU, made in 1994.

~~~
JAlexoid
PC culture has always existed, in different forms.

You couldn't say that you were gay or even supported same sex marriage,
without effective excommunication from society 50 years ago in US.

------
pragmatic
I feel the muckraking media lit this candle by starting a generational war
between millennials and boomers in Great Recession, Occupy Wall Street days.
IMHO, this is when the "destroy the other side at all costs" really took off.

------
hatenberg
What's killing free speech is failing to set and enforce reasonable limits to
hate speech and eventually forcing an over reaction to deal with the severe
consequences of that neglect.

------
fortran77
Having your organization investigate everything you've "liked" over the past
10 years seems horrible.

------
caffeine
If you didn't do something wrong, do NOT apologize. That is what gives them
their power.

------
thatnomadsucks
I like that the author is going into how insecurity has caused this problem. I
really wish they went into more depth on this issue. If we look back,
neoliberalism (trickle down economics) has stoked the fires that have led to
this issue. When Regan came into office, he set the stage for deregulation,
privatization and tax breaks for the rich. This has caused the average
American to sink into a role that is defined by economic insecurity. Of course
this economic idiocy has been embraced by both political parties over the past
forty years. So what we see today is a compounding of all of the issues
created by bad policy. This is why we see people doubling down on in group
identity and focusing on what I've come to call the brand self.

This has noting and everything to do with Marx, Edward Said, the Frankfurt
School, or critical theory. They are simply a way to justify an in group
narrative. I'm not saying that these narratives aren't just, but often times
they are create a black and white us vs them mentality that is there to
reinforce limited self beliefs. So when we are talking to someone that has
taken on this role of insecurity, we are talking to their anxiety that they've
justified using sound social theory. That's why all rational thought seems to
disappear and subjects often can't be changed.

I, for one, am tired of biting my tongue because I know one wrong word can
turn a great night out into a three hour conversation about x, y, or z social
issue without much back and forth. often times I'll be out and know that, by
simply saying the word vaccine, my night can be ruined. These conversations
don't live in the rational world. They live deep down in a state of anxious
insecurity.

------
ropable
Eh. In my observation, people who whinge "PC speech is out of control!" are
often really saying "I don't like being called out for saying whatever I
like!".

~~~
kayodelycaon
The article was a lot more nuanced than most people who say “PC speech is out
of control”. And I think they have a good point. Pulling up tweets from ten
years ago to get people fired is horrible.

Ten years ago, I hated gay and trans people because of the way I was raised.
I’ve changed significantly in those ten years.

Hell, I had a psychotic break. Should the things that I said then be forever
held against me? I clearly wasn’t in my right mind. The people that have held
those things against me were all from the “far left”. That’s one data point
but it’s something I’ve seen over and over.

I ran a convention where I had to fire a volunteer because they said something
“unacceptable” on Facebook. Defending them was not an option if the convention
was going to survive. I’ve seen what happened to conventions that tried to
defend people who had said similar things. It’s still ugly years later.

I say this as someone who would march in the protests here if I wasn’t at
sufficient risk Of dying from COVID. I’ve been in the pride parade here
despite my sensitivity to heat and poor physical condition at the time.

------
newacct583
The end gives it away:

> I’ll end with some quality, free-thinking people and resources who aren’t
> afraid to post their views. I have found it immensely helpful to diversify
> my feeds with different opinions and people.

Which is, of course, why it's almost 100% right-leaning libertarians, mixed
with a token handful of reliably leftward-shooting people like Taibbi and
Tracey. There's not a legitimate progressive voice in that whole list that I
can see. Not one.

This author, and this article's intended readership, isn't interested in
legitimate online discussion. She just wants a different echo chamber than the
ones she's being presented.

~~~
DavidVoid
For someone claims to be pro LGBTQ, pro choice, and pro environmental issues,
she sure recommends a lot of "quality" resources that certainly aren't pro any
of those things.

~~~
kayodelycaon
Just because the author has an axe to grind, that doesn’t invalid everything
they say. It’s possible to read critically and decide what’s worth discussing.

~~~
newacct583
An appeal to free speech made insincerely isn't much of an appeal. The
question is whether she feels strongly enough about the inherent value of
contrasting enough to preserve them in her own recommendations.

And she doesn't. She's Just Another Angry Libertarian, only protesting when
"her" side is criticized. If you agree with her, she makes sense. If you
don't, she seems... duplicitous.

To wit: I don't trust this woman (or most of the posters here) to preserve
_my_ speech. Or that of many others. I mean, we're literally seeing _armed
suppression of peaceful protestors_ in the news. And what's the Real Problem
in her head? The protestors. Because they yelled at people on the internet.

~~~
throwaway2048
Yep, amazing how many brave online free speech warriors don't give a single
shit that there is government action violently suppressing free speech, you
know, an ACTUAL first amendment violation.

------
aklemm
Culture cancels abhorrent ideas, same as it ever was. Notice how it’s
COMPLETELY unacceptable to suggest slavery should be made legal. Or children
sent to work in factories. All commonplace 150 years ago and we only benefit
from the ideas being practically unutterable.

~~~
Thorentis
> Culture cancels abhorrent ideas

My issue with cancel culture, is that social media and the general "outrage
culture" has magnified beyond all proportion, what constitutes an "abhorrent
idea". Slavery and child labor is a very different level of abhorrent to "I
prefer my sexual partners to have vaginas" (which is not abhorrent at all to
any sensible person). This article is calling out the latter. This isn't about
saying society should tolerate every single possible opinion there is to have.
It's about bringing back some common sense to discourse, and not allowing the
mob outrage of social media to dominate our society.

~~~
aklemm
Well, it makes sense to ask the question whether that’s bigotry, and I
completely understand why a mob may form when the mainstream can’t even hear
the discussion, which is what the article and your comment display. To be
first worried about cancel culture over the issue at hand is to be deaf to the
issues.

~~~
Thorentis
Honestly, it doesn't make sense to question if that is bigotry, especially
when transgender and LGBTQ rights are predicated on sexual freedom and
liberation. Asking sincerely if that is bigotry shows that the questioner is
willing to contradict their own strongly held views, in order to call somebody
else a bigot.

~~~
aklemm
No, it’s a very important and basic question: what does it mean to treat
someone’s gender identity irrespective of their genital status. I don’t know
the answers, this isn’t one of my main issues that I follow, but it’s pretty
clear the question makes sense.

~~~
Thorentis
Sexual attraction includes attraction to genitals. You cannot separate the
gender identity from the genitals when it comes to having sex. Just because
somebody says they're a woman, doesn't mean I want to have sex with them. This
applies to trans and biological females. Plenty of biological females are
unattractive to me. That isn't bigoted. Why does them being trans suddenly
make me a bigot? It's such a ridiculous question to ask.

------
hintymad
It's far more than free speech being killed. "If you're not with us, you're
against us". "Silence is violence". Remember Pol Pot? If you're not a
revolutionist, then you're counter-revolutionary.

That said, isn't this logical under the moral framework of our political
correctness? You're either correct or you are not, after all. It's a binary
decision. If you're not correct, why do you insist staying incorrect? If you
do, of course you're a bigot, a racist, a xenophobia, a fascist, or an evil
person. So, all conservatives "should be jailed". All republicans "are evil".
A black police is a "black Judas", as yelled by a protester. A group of
protestors can trespass private property, and the property owner is public
enemy no. 1 if he stands in front of his house with a rifle. Residents in
Seattle CHAZ have nothing and "should not have nothing to complain" because
CHAZ "is Summer of Love", and because "personal loss is nothing compared with
fighting justice". Really, there's really no boundary under the current moral
framework of the US progressives.

And isn't this what we really want? All the media I read or used to read, be
it The Atlantic, the WAPO, the New Yorker, the NYT, the NBC, the CNN, the ABC.
They all tell me that we should brace such moral framework. We should join
such progressive movement. We should ditch law and order when a nation is hurt
and sinned. We should examine what we believe and cancel what's evil. See, if
"math is racist", what else is not?

And really, isn't this what we choose? We chose to vote Kshama Sawant, for
instance. Then, it shouldn't be a surprise that she led hundreds of people to
break into Seattle City Hall, and why is it a surprise that she or someone
leaked the mayor's home address even though the address is classified by law?

Either we have a better moral framework, or we probably will have to accept
what we have now and more in the future.

------
secretsatan
People saying my opinions are wrong is anti free speech!

------
baggy_trough
Unfortunately, the totalitarians are already in control.

------
fake-name
[citation needed]

> The point is that RuPaul’s Drag Race is RuPaul’s show, and we don’t get to
> scream and cry and throw tantrums until he changes his own show.

Wow, this article _literally_ doesn't understand what free speech is.

Aaaand it more horseshoe theory of politics, references the quillette, and
says they're now libertarian. Nothing of value here.

------
phnofive
Thesis needs work. There is a dearth of mass capitulation to lawful orders for
sheltering in place or wearing masks, and booing isn’t censorship (and before
you argue that it’s another form thereof, tell me again that gentrification
isn’t a term charged with meaning beyond the OED).

