
If It’s Not “Cancel Culture,” What Kind of Culture Is It? - andrenth
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/if-its-not-cancel-culture-what-kind-46a
======
wait_a_minute
It is undoubtedly cancel culture. But some people will deny it because they
benefit from it and/or agree with it. It is a trend that must be stopped
before we irreparably damage the free movement of ideas that has enabled
America and the rest of the world to flourish. If you cannot speak against the
orthodoxy without fear of being forced into poverty, then the orthodoxy will
grow unchallenged into a monster that eats even the people who helped create
it.

~~~
softwaredoug
You can't stop cancel culture without harming the speech of those 'canceling'.

~~~
wait_a_minute
Those people are not speaking - they are doxxing and actively harrassing
employers in order to get the wrongthinkers fired. I am sure you know the
difference between speech and cancel culture.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Those people are not speaking - they are doxxing and actively harrassing
> employers in order to get the wrongthinkers fired.

So they are both speaking true facts about people and speaking their desired
outcome to people positioned to realize them. How is that not speaking?

~~~
loopz
It's opinion, mob rule and destructive, without trying better approaches
first, it's toxic, immature and egotistical.

~~~
dragonwriter
Perhaps, but it's still pure speech.

~~~
loopz
Mob rule is assembly. Decisions have consequences and are action.

~~~
dragonwriter
Speech always has consequences (that's rather the point of both speech in
general, and the entire concept of free speech in particular: if it had no
consequences, there’d be no reason to protect it), and is always a subset of
action. Assembly is inseparable from speech which is why, lest the flimsy
excuse that a thing is one rather than the other be used to justify a ban,
it's wrapped up along with all the other speech-equivalent expressive rights
in the first amendment.

~~~
loopz
Some speech is not protected, some speech is judged harshly, all along
spectrums. Speech doesn't exist in a vacuum and may be criminal, inorderly,
trollish, moderated away, unheard, misinterpreted, untruthful, etc. If there
are better approaches, people should be steered in better directions.
Sometimes a jolt is needed, but continued bullying is usually on the bully. A
bully may also be bullied, but the outcome is rarely educational since some
people don't bother to care. Besides, bullying works against socializing.

Just action need to follow some due process. Mob rule becomes medieval. Even
because modern technology platforms enable despicable behaviour, which speech
is part of, does not necessarily protect because of free speech. Freedoms to
hurt others need be limited.

When people lose interest in the whole, only to fancy duality, there's no
dialogue happening, only escalation.

Speech doesn't imply much consequence beyond enlightenment, when people learn
to listen and appreciate diversity.

Speech seems worthless compared to right action. Principles and freedoms mean
nothing in isolation.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Some speech is not protected, some speech is judged harshly, all along
> spectrum

The claim I was addressing from upthread is not “these people are not engaging
in goodspeak” but “these people are not speaking”, so as true as that may be
it is not relevant to the discussion.

~~~
throwaway894345
Seems like you’re making a pointless semantic debate. “Speech” in an ethical
philosophical context is “expressing ideas”. Threats are not this because the
intent is to intimidate or coerce somebody. To your point, there is a
definition of the word “speech” that means something like “any communication
at all”, but of course that’s what precisely no one is talking about in a
debate about free speech.

------
softwaredoug
A lot of the 'canceling' is legitimate expressions of speech, even if you
disagree with that expression of speech!

Consider a lot of what gets classified as cancel culture is:

1\. Boycotts - OK we should be forced to purchase things (like Goya, or ads on
Tucker Carlson's show) that don't share our values? No, that's crazy...

2\. Organizational politics - The Pinker thing[1], and the issue with the
Poetry society, has more to do with the internals of some organization. Should
we restrict those advocating for changes to organizations they belong to?

3\. Firing - Either organizations are able to have 'speech' or they're not...
And without cultural norms, we're not going to from on high create top-down
standards around which values are 'correct' or not.

I have yet to see a PoV neutral definition of 'cancel culture' that doesn't
devolve to litigating whether the issues for the canceling are legit or not.

[1] The Linguistics Society did NOT remove Pinker
[https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/1280950807819628546](https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/1280950807819628546)

~~~
sdinsn
You are missing the _external_ and _unhinged_ nature of 'cancel culture'.-

What if I decide to buy Goya black beans, and someone takes a picture of me at
the grocery store, and brands me as a affiliate of some certain political
mindset of Twitter because of it... When in reality, I bought these beans
because I just wanted to eat beans?

It's perfectly reasonable for an employer to fire someone for something they
said. But what if they fired them solely due to public outcry; the pressure
from people who _aren 't_ affiliated with their company at all, _never_ bought
any of their products before, etc.

~~~
zug_zug
>> But what if they fired them solely due to public outcry...

It's interesting to me that this is always put on the outcrier and not the
company itself.

~~~
sdinsn
I personally put blame on all parties involved

------
throwaway894345
> It [the woke revolution] spends most of its time constructing an
> impenetrable vocabulary of oppression and seething at the lumpen proles who
> either don’t get it or don’t like it.

Man, does this resonate. The woke message is just uninspiring and the word
play and circular reasoning are just tedious. I've never met a philosophy that
depended so strongly on appropriating existing, morally-weighty words.

~~~
watwut
Taibibi is good at resonating when you are predisposed to agree with him.
Mostly because he is good at finding funny sounding insulting but still right
below line sentence.

He is good at emotional level, but less good with actual rational arguing.

~~~
calmlynarczyk
The logical fallacies with many modern examples of "cancelling" have already
been pointed out far and wide. Not every bit of writing needs to be a
statistical analysis (and considering the value of quantitative data is
overrated, I'm inclined to agree that a well-written passioned analysis is
just as welcome).

Also, lol at the very same circular reasoning the above mentioned whereby
agreeing with his ideas is wrong because the people his ideas attract are
already wrong.

~~~
watwut
Funny thing, I did not said whether he is wrong or right. I said what
literally all his articles are, regardless of whether he is wrong or right.

The only one that I think he really really should not write was one about
civility and discourse.

And I am not asking for statistical analysis either. All I am saying is he
resonates with those who agree with him, because his whole thing is insulting
common ennemy while being funny.

~~~
throwaway894345
> All I am saying is he resonates with those who agree with him, because his
> whole thing is insulting common ennemy while being funny.

I think this is a fair point. I’ve noticed this myself as someone who agrees
with him. He’s clearly a talented writer; I wish he would wed that talent with
reasoned critique instead of being a mere cathartic voice. The primacy of
catharsis is a distinguishing feature of cancel culture and moderates getting
their own cathartic voices risks creating a moderate counter-mob. Moderates’
strength is reason and tolerance and we should stick with those virtues even
if it demands emotional strength and moral courage.

------
xyzal
This post from Taibbi is in my opinion also worth a read:

On “White Fragility”, A few thoughts on America’s smash-hit #1 guide to
egghead racialism

[https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-white-
fragility](https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-white-fragility)

~~~
charia
Taibbi's been on a roll with his writing recently. His breakdown of the
current state of the American press is also quite illuminating.

[https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-
destroying-i...](https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-destroying-
itself)

------
calmlynarczyk
The only evidence I need to see that what the author refers to is very much a
serious concern for everyone is that everytime I refresh this comment section
another comment agreeing with the author disappears. I used to defend the
folks that participated in the doxxing and very real harassment of people they
didn't agree with as misguided, but I've become convinced it's nothing more
than malicious at this point. Such a grand scale of people can't lack that
much self awareness.

~~~
iron0013
Down voting is speech.

~~~
calmlynarczyk
Unless I'm mistaken about how this site works, downvotes shouldn't completely
delete comments, just fade them. Who is stepping in and removing them entirely
without a "[deleted]" marker displaying?

~~~
perl4ever
Are you saying you have "showdead" turned on?

------
duxup
>This is an excerpt of a longer article about the Harper’s letter

I guess that makes sense then why I felt like I didn't get anything out of it.

>To read the entire post and get full access to the archives, you can
subscribe for $5 a month or $50 a year.

Oh I see... that's disappointing. At least with the WSJ right up front I know
I'm not going to get anything out of it without a subscription.

~~~
Justsignedup
basically. there's no argument here other than some platitudes.

Definitely not worth a post on HN

~~~
duxup
I certainly felt like I got a couple words of meaning at most out of those
paragraphs. Lots of volume and platitude as you say... I wasn't getting much
beyond that... but then it asked me for $5.

------
api
The meat of this article is its last paragraph or two, and particularly in the
observation that modern "woke" culture is humorless and incapable of parsing
sarcasm. I disagree however that this is peculiar to "woke" culture.
Literalism and humorlessness are everywhere.

We are living in a profoundly conservative era whose deep conservatism is
masked by the triumph of certain select socially liberal causes such as
partial drug decriminalization and LGBT rights. IMHO those few specific
victories are on the inertia of a previous era.

I am referring to the 60s through the 90s, the era that created modern rock
and roll, techno, hip hop, burning man, and rave culture, some of which is now
decidedly retro. Very little culture of this sort -- or of _any_ sort really
-- is being created today. Ours is an era of sterility.

You can really see this in how the "alt-right" was able to look hip and edgy
with nothing more than shitty memes and ideas like "alternate reality gaming"
appropriated from old 90s issues of Mondo 2000. Everything else is so damn
sterile and dull that the sorts of aesthetically tone deaf CHUDs that hang out
on 4chan /pol could sort of look cool. It doesn't take much color to grab
attention in a monochromatic world.

I'm not really that pessimistic. This stuff is very cyclic and the pendulum
will swing yet again. I'm thinking COVID marks the end of the post-9/11 era
and things will start getting interesting again in the mid-2020s. COVID has
also crashed the Trump train, which is significant.

~~~
visarga
Dig deeper, there are still excellent music and works being published. Maybe
they are hard to find because they are flooded with junk, commercial stuff and
misinformation, but they exist and grow faster than in the past.

------
ggregoire
For the other non U.S. readers:

> The act of canceling, also referred to as cancel culture (a variant on the
> term "callout culture"), describes a form of boycott in which an individual
> (usually a celebrity) who has acted or spoken in a questionable or
> controversial manner is boycotted. [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_shaming#Call-
outs_and_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_shaming#Call-
outs_and_cancellation)

~~~
throwaway894345
Usually I hear this term in context to attempts to doxx or have someone fired,
and while the cancellation of celebrities garners more press, it's due to the
notoriety of the victim--probably many more non-celebrities are canceled (and
usually with worse consequences unless good and decent people intervene). It's
the climate of fear, not the criticism, that people take issue with (we're not
talking about "criticism culture" after all).

~~~
iron0013
Yeah, but the “climate of fear” arises only because powerful people with
prominent platforms are afraid of being criticized. And criticism is protected
speech.

------
aqme28
It really does feel like there are bigger problems these days than if there's
_too much_ accountability for op-ed writers.

Anyways, this article doesn't even try to say anything other than that Kids
These Days are different than they used to be.

~~~
amadeuspagel
>It really does feel like there are bigger problems these days

Not even a red herring, but just gesturing at red herrings somewhere.

------
ASTP001
Pardon my ignorance but what is the difference between "witch hunt" and
"cancel culture?" and do people who are part of "cancel culture" refer to
their own actions as such?

~~~
joshuamorton
A witch hunt is usually characterized by

1\. Either no wrongdoing, or minimal wrongdoing.

2\. The ability to grant oneself absolution by implicating others

The implied result is that since there isn't really any wrongful act, the only
way to avoid the hunt is to accuse others. And in this way the "investigators"
can go after whomever they want.

There's also an implied (3) The investigation is done by someone with
traditional authority. The connotation of a witch hunt is therefore a fake
investigation for solely political purposes. That is used to implicate more
political enemies.

So cancel culture: If I had to, I'd describe this as a movement (or a
collection of them) that tries to pressure powerful entities to take acts they
deem to be moral by through social and economic pressure. That's really it.

To people who _disagree_ with the moral position, there can be similarities to
(1), but (2) certainly isn't present, and the people pressuring for
accountability/action/whatever aren't usually traditional authority figures.
In fact individual movements may be entirely leaderless and decentralized (so
no 3).

Since moral and political lines are correlated, there can also be an
appearance of similarity to the politicalized investigation aspect, but beyond
the most surface level similarities, there isn't much in common.

------
luord
I've noticed that discussions about this issue never lead anywhere, and that
seems almost by design (don't know if that's ironic or appropriate).

The reason is that apologists of cancel culture are talking about "influential
people/powerful corporations being boycotted/yelled at in twitter". Meanwhile,
detractors are talking about "normal people without any kind of power or
influence being harassed and/or losing their livelihoods because they cracked
their knuckles".

So both sides are talking about fundamentally different things, and because of
this, discussion on this matter is almost always a lot of people yelling past
each other.

------
kcplate
I’m old enough to recall when it was skillfully practiced by the religious
right in this country...

It was wrong then, and it’s wrong now.

~~~
082349872349872
I'm old enough to recall when people were "cancelled" by extra-judicial
execution. That's even worse.

------
orwin
This deplatforming and this "cancel culture" is only a manifestation of what
millenials heard for years: if you want change, vote with your wallet. Well,
we now are able to. I'm not agreeing with everything, but boycott is the only
power my generation have right now, and nobody can prevent this.

Twitter and the social network allowed people to have reach to explain why
they're boycotting this or that, share their outrage, sometime about really
dumb things, but still with their own reasons.

~~~
082349872349872
Boycotting has been proposed in previous generations.

In Martin Luther King's last speech before he was cancelled, he suggested
boycotting businesses until such time as they were willing to treat all God's
children fairly:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23414101](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23414101)
"All we say to America is to be true to what you said on paper."

------
lordleft
I generally favor free expression. I'd rather an ugly, obnoxious and
pernicious idea be expressed - so I can or others can be free to dismantle it
in the arena of ideas. Obviously there are tremendous shades of nuance here.
Free Speech does not mean free speech on private platforms. Still, if most or
all major platforms constrain what can be expressed, what we end up with is a
functional chilling of speech.

Part of what makes the current debate over cancel culture so difficult is that
most of us, even those who love free expression, would not be comfortable with
giving space to certain assertions even in places that are meant for
intellectual contention. As much as I believe a University should be a space
where intellectual debate is welcomed, I don't think any University should
give a platform to, say, a holocaust denier. We all draw the line somewhere.
Permuting where that line gets drawn is very, very difficult. Especially
because morality evolves, and our convictions about certain things are
constantly changing the light of new evidence, new understandings, especially
re: traditionally disenfranchised peoples.

The real danger of "cancel culture" is rhetorical, I think. People need to be
persuaded of an idea to really accept it. They cannot be hectored into
acceptance. You can shove them out of platforms, but they will hold their
beliefs, and externalize them at the ballot-box, or elsewhere. Moral
development takes time, and it takes suasion.

There's a lot more to unpack here. A part of me wonders if cancel culture is
just another expression of a kind of acrimoniousness that has always
accompanied political life. Or maybe not. I don't have all the answers. But on
balance, I still believe in favoring a space for debate.

~~~
hirundo
> most of us, even those who love free expression, would not be comfortable
> with giving space to certain assertions even in places that are meant for
> intellectual contention

I think that's the problem. Any condition beyond being not insulting and not
threatening leaves a place to drive in a wedge by those opposed to free
speech. They say, if you won't let this Nazi speak, you shouldn't let this
person I associate with Nazi-ism speak.

Instead we should let the Nazi speak. And the pedophile, human extinction
advocate, anti-vaxxer, etc. We don't have to listen, but neither should we
punch them, rhetorically or otherwise, as long as they follow some minimal
content neutral standard of decorum.

------
1propionyl
A friendly reminder: the "flag" button is not a super-downvote.

------
fernandotakai
there's currently out on the internet a letter that basically says "cancel
culture doesn't exist". it's signed by some ~160 people, mostly from left-wing
backgrounds (i don't know all of them to say they are all from left-wing
backgrounds).

a lot of those signatures are just "Unsigned, <affiliation>". the reasoning,
according to the letter, is:

>Many signatories on our list noted their institutional affiliation but not
their name, fearful of professional retaliation. It is a sad fact, and in part
why we wrote the letter.

if you can't sign something without putting your name on it, because you fear
you're going to get persecuted and fired... isn't that cancel culture?

------
mooted1
I appreciate so many of you are willing to crusade for free speech. But the
reality is that platforming isn't free, and the process of deciding who gets
platforms is political. The first amendment doesn't govern this process, nor
can it—no one can reasonably consume every piece of intellectual content, from
every angle, and process it.

My point is, cancel culture definitely exists. There has always been, and
always will be, political processes for selecting views we consider acceptable
discourse. Arguments against cancel culture that don't grapple with this
reality are missing the point. Canceling isn't about using the power of the
state to crack down on free speech. It's about deciding who gets access to a
scarce resource: their platform.

The way this get decided is unavoidably political, since it's about who wields
power.

A good example is this website. While most posts are technical, Hacker News
hosts a significant amount of discussion regarding social issues. If you read
this site using hckrnews.com, which preserves posts flagged off the front
page, it's easy to notice that there are political trends in how moderators
and users select what posts get prominence. This post, which espouses a more
centrist perspective on cancel culture, was briefly flagged, then restored.
Many, many other posts espousing more progressive views are systematically
downvoted or flagged (search for DEAD on hckrnews.com), many of which are far
longer and more carefully developed than Taibbi's piece. Regardless of how you
feel about confederate statues, I think it's hard to consider that this 538
post ([https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/confederate-
statues/](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/confederate-statues/)) isn't
comparable to this post in terms of quality, sophistication, and merit to be
on the front page of HN.

For those of you who agree with Taibbi... do you think those posts aren't
"canceled"?

If you think this example is contrived, because the nature of this
cancellation doesn't involve a visible mob, that's because of power
differences.

The nature of "cancellation" against minorities looks different. Mob justice
isn't necessary when people in power can just fire you. And progressives are
fired or otherwise censored for advocating for inclusion, against police
violence, for progressive social policy _all the time_. You don't see mob
justice in these cases because this kind of canceling is often enforced by
institutions. A mob isn't necessary. The _effect_ is the same: people are
regularly censored and excluded from mainstream prominence because their views
are considered unacceptable.

The reason this latest wave of (attempted) cancellations (nyt editorial, jk
rowling, adam rapaport, countless people resulting from #metoo etc) have
garnered attention is twofold:

1\. They require popular support. Lots of people support holding rapaport, the
founder of crossfit, Tucker Carlson, etc to account. No institution wanted to
punish these people, so a popular movement formed.

2\. They cancel views formerly considered to be within acceptable bounds.
Anti-trans speech, implicitly discriminatory pay practices, military
crackdowns on protestors, even if they weren't popular, are believed by many
to be "newspaper publishable". It's shocking to people like Taibbi that people
who share their views can get fired and singled out on social media—things
that happen to people with progressive views on a regular basis.

3\. Oftentimes, the people making the speech are civil and ostensibly in good
faith, even if their views are onerous.

To understand cancel culture, you need to define cancellation as "people whose
views are censored", and you need to look at people who espouse progressive
views. That "cancel culture" is prominent today means that our definition of
acceptability is changing, that powerful people require mobs to be held
accountable, and that we increasingly believe that how you present the
argument (good intent, good faith etc) is less important than what you
present.

Lastly, I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that cancellations are sometimes
off the mark. Mob justice is often unfair and harmful. It is often
disproportionate (the shor incident is the best example I can think of).
Holding people accountable for hate speech or discriminatory practices
_should_ be the job of institutions. But they're not _doing_ the job—this is
what progressives are protesting.

If you want to stop mob culture, change institutions to fairly enforce the
injustices that the mob is necessary to enforce today.

------
buboard
I wish Freud was alive today. I can't help but think that the hysterics
manifested in mainstream or social media are not actually real, that people
wouldn't make such illogical steps if they were alone in an island. Instead
they seem to be reactions , rooted in something deeper somewhere that's
causing mass hysterias and delusions. It does manifest in the shifting ways of
life too, the lack of sex, the lack of humor and the limited ambition shown by
the 1-2 latest generations.

I do love Taibbi's writing, even though i think he spends too much time
criticising things that soon won't matter

~~~
orwin
Freud was wrong with almost everything he said. He had merit from a
philosophical point of view, he coined terms extremely well, but he is
definitely not a scientific, was dangerous for his patients and his theories
are still dangerous (your child is an autist because you, poor mother, did not
pay enough attention to him! and other rubbish about children rape fantasy and
other). Lacan, at least, was not as dangerous (but still a pseudoscientific).

Psychoanalysis is still very much a pseudoscience and is based on even less
that the new psychological trend with microexpression and all that jazz.

> limited ambition shown by the 1-2 latest generations If this is really a
> thing, then the generation prior would have shown more entrepreneurship, is
> this the case in the US? It is really to opposite in Europe anyway, so this
> should be wrong.

