There is an awful lot of people who go on TV or their popular youtube channel to promote their book and speaking tour in which they complain about being silenced.
> I feel like a lot of 'privilege' talk sort of leaked out of good / valid ideas and areas of academic study and now are sort of used as a magic wand (or sometimes a baseball bat) that really don't solve anything
> There is an awful lot of people who go on TV or their popular youtube channel to promote their book and speaking tour in which they complain about being silenced.
I'm going to quote Paul Graham's Twitter here:
"Many fans of cancel culture have mentioned that it's mostly powerful people publishing opinions about it, as if that were some kind of contradiction.
Of course it's mostly powerful people who are speaking openly about a phenomenon that gets less powerful people fired."
That’s an excellent counter-argument in the general sense of promoting freedom of speech.
It’s a fairly bad counter-argument in the case of specific celebrities claiming loudly on national TV or in the national press that they personally are being silenced.
My position is not at all settled. I pity, rather than envy, the famous; their adoring audiences can turn on them in an instant if their preferences are not socially acceptable, which prevents them from being true to themselves.
I think there is a lot of yin and yang to that though.
1. Folks who shout they are being silenced, to some extent obviously aren't and usually follow that up with some direction to ... their ideas they're being silenced.
2. Anyone who is really silenced, who do we hear about it from? Group 1.
Outside of say a government straight up banning speech or outright removing it... I have real trouble weeding out who / what is truly being silenced and what the issue really is.
And I'm highly skeptical about Group 1's ability to tell me honestly about Group 2.
Many aren't arguing that they themselves are being silenced. They are arguing that others are being silenced either out of sympathy for those being silenced or recognition that the force silencing the less powerful may one they have the power to silence the person speaking out.
Those of us that still have a voice should be pro-active in speaking out for those that don't lest we one day find ourselves without a voice as well.
"They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up." – Martin Niemöller
I think a lot of people’s reaction today might be more like: “First they came for the communists, and because a lot of people spoke out about it, I assumed they didn’t actually come for the communists and I got sick of hearing all of their dumb communist whining, and that’s why it’s actually a good thing that we came for the communists.”
It’s kind of funny since before the Nazis, Communists were the original archetype of a violent fringe political movement that had lots of people murdered for no good reason. People were terrified of Communists and resolutely devoted themselves to making sure to stop Communism as fervently as possible, by any means necessary. Considering the millions of people murdered by Communists this is even a completely understandable and justifiable impulse. This is exactly why the Nazis exploited this fear.
I gotta say I really don't see a lot of 'arguing other people are being silenced' as much as alluding to it, and then citing their own circumstances, so that's still kinda Group 1.
As far as 'they came first for the communists'... I just don't see that as a situation ... at least not generally in the geography or areas I'm thinking of outside big state sponsored acts. Not at scale, and not anything more than people disagreeing or wanting to host someone else's content ... and frankly when you dive into it, it's often not just some banal content, or just someone with a new idea. It just never pans out that way...
I'm not sure I buy into any friction anywhere being 'orthodox privilege' or persecution.
In certain high profile cases certain groups tried hard to silence certain people but - for better or worse - failed horribly, kind of like an Streisand effect, only
- not initiated by the person themselves but by someone else
- and working for the benefit of the person who was attempted silenced.
I agree it's hard for people to be truly silenced nowadays. If you have something you really want to say, you can probably find friends and jobs and news outlets that allow it.
But the question of orthodoxy is, which things can you say without optimizing your life for them? If you have an average job and average friend groups, which opinions can you express without a risk of losing them? The answer will vary depending on exactly what's "average" in your area, but in most places it's going to be a much smaller set than the opinions you could in principle say.
There's an amusing parallel with the justification Foucault gives for his focus in the first volume of "The History of Sexuality".
He points out that, for a very long time, people speaking/writing about sexuality have tended to make some sort of gesture at the fact that we can't or aren't supposed to talk about these things.
In both these cases, individuals are talking about broader societal trends. It's not a contradiction if they aren't talking about their own specific experience (i.e. "I'm silenced, therefore I can't talk, listen to me talk about how silenced I am"). An 18th-century writer discussing sex may contribute to the counter-argument that by virtue of their writing about sex, it isn't as taboo a subject as they imply. But in and of itself, it isn't proof that such a trend does not exist.
I didn't really try to make an argument, nor even say I agree with Foucault here--just that I see a parallel and it amuses me.
Caveats: 1) I read this over a year ago, 2) found it enough of a slog that my understanding feels pretty fuzzy, and 3) am still undecided/chewing on the main argument
My impression is that Foucault wasn't trying to deny a trend, but to highlight a number of other trends (including the explosion of discourse around sexuality) to open the reader up to challenging or re-framing their received knowledge about sexuality at the time. His focus is very much on all of the power and control dynamics at this nexus. It's a little hard to distill what I mean by that--because it includes actual sex and sexuality, the science/study of it, who is speaking, whose sex is being spoken about, what kind of sex it is, social/class dynamics, etc.
The comment sounds like a perfect example of siding with orthodox privilege...
We did hear from victims of silencing back in the day just as well (and not just in the sense of state censorship, which many Americans have this bizarro notion that only it matters).
From Lenny Bruce and Charlie Chaplin, to rap groups, from the Hayes code to book authors (including of masterpieces like "Junky"), from Hoover and McCarthy, to Jello Biafra, and from records getting thrown out of record store chains because they angered some group, all the way back to Galileo being silenced, black leaders (despite having large followings otherwise), etc.
People do lose gigs, have talks cancelled, have book contracts dropped, shows demonetised, and so on because of mob reaction, or because of some angry special interest group, or because of some vocal bloggers, or whatever.
Is the argument that they aren't completely stomped, so they should be thankful?
Or that how someone be a victim of silencing and still be able to talk about their silencing and have it know?
I feel like it goes both ways. I don't buy into the idea that 'any' friction is 'orthodox privilege' or anything else. In the meantime it is standard operating procedure / so easy for most humans to assume that any real friction is some sort of system or an act of bad faith.... and couldn't possibly be because of something else.
I'm not going to pretend that when people who say incredibly stupid, harmful, and provably falsifiable things that they deserve a pass for it. They can say what they want in the venue they want if they can find the support for it. People have a right to speech. They don't have a right to a venue or a platform, and they don't have a right from the consequences of their speech. If you're going to say something that is incredibly stupid and insensitive, then you shouldn't be surprised when you aren't invited to speak in most venues.
The venn diagram circle of those who believe that people with power deserve to have the right to reach the most people with their speech almost completely overlaps the circle of those who are currently whining about being demonetized because they're saying stupid, harmful, and reprehensible things.
This is literally the world they championed. They just thought that they would be the ones making the decisions.
>People do lose gigs, have talks cancelled, have book contracts dropped, shows demonetised, and so on because of mob reaction, or because of some angry special interest group, or because of some vocal bloggers, or whatever.
Does it matter whether the reason for the "cancellation" came from a mob, or only what the reason actually is?
If a group of crazy incoherent people get a Nazi cancelled by shouting "they're a Nazi!", and the person really is a Nazi, does it matter that they're a bit crazy and incoherent?
>If a group of crazy incoherent people get a Nazi cancelled by shouting "they're a Nazi!", and the person really is a Nazi, does it matter that they're a bit crazy and incoherent?
On principle, for me, it does.
For one, I don't want "groups of crazy incoherent people" dictating their terms.
Second, I want all voices able to being heard, and adult audiences judging for themselves if they like to hear them. This includes access to book deals, speaking halls, conference spaces, etc. This includes Nazis or people in favor of the extinction of all mankind, fans of royal government against democracy, fans of Bieber, the KKK AND black panthers, and so on. As long as they don't act illegally/violently.
Third, the tricky part is not agreeing with silencing a Nazi (which many will agree, some will disagree because they favour free exchange of ideas, whatever they are, but in any case it would be popular to do so).
The tricky part is determining who is the "Nazi" (that is, the person to be silenced). And on that front, the tide turns very easily. Under Hoover a open leftist could lose their job. In the 50s a black rights supporter in the South could loose business deals, concert and writing gigs, get cancelled, etc. You think that this can happen from now on only on the "bad" side? Doesn't history taught you how fast the tides can turn? There was Obama just 4 years ago, and now it's Trump, for example...
Absolutely not denying what you or pjc50 are saying (there are far too many who cry wolf, or benefit "inappropriately"), but I can imagine the case where some people may be in the honest situation where they feel they have been silenced because they cannot say what they would like to say.
Individual 1: "I'm being silenced."
Group: "What would you like to say that you think you're being silenced about?"
Individual 1: "I cannot say for fear..."
This logic only follows if we assume censorship is applied to everyone, equally, all the time.
Someone saying "hey, look there are a lot of instances of people being censored over there, we should be concerned about it because it could affect us" cannot be refuted on the basis that the speaker isn't being censored.
It's like refuting someone saying that a bunch of people are ill on the basis that the speaker isn't ill themselves. Illness is something that occurs to individuals, not to society. Same with censorship. It isn't some absolute where people are totally censored or totally free to speak their mind. It's distributed unevenly across society. When understood as a distribution rather than something binary, it becomes obvious that instances of free speech about censorship doesn't disprove the existence of censorship, nor does it say anything about whether or not we are becoming a more censorious society.
Well, one approach is to find people in the same reference class who have spoken and, for speaking, faced serious consequences. For example, they got formally punished (kicked out of a group, demoted, fired) for it, and a sympathetic journalist gave them a platform to tell their story about it later.
This Twitter thread (oh lord, how did I end up citing Twitter multiple times in this conversation?), by the founder of an online magazine that seems to specialize in stories of this sort, has a long list of examples. https://twitter.com/clairlemon/status/1282215876553400321
how about considering that the people telling you they're being silenced is a group of privileged folks unaccustomed to being pushed back upon publicly, with "cancel culture" as the reactive appellation for that push back?
The fact that the set of people complaining about this includes people famous for openly discussing controversial ideas that they have received pushback and worse for in the past sort of refutes that.
Do you really think this is the first time anyone has pushed back against Noam Chomsky? Salman Rushdie had a fatwa declared on his life over a book he wrote. I think these people are very well accustomed to being pushed back upon publicly.
no, most of the noise is from people who aren't as well-known or intellectually rigorous as chomsky and rushdie (whether you agree with them or not). these well-known rhetoriticians expect and likely welcome the pushback (obviously the counterarguments, not the threats on their lives). theirs is the exceptional context, not the exception that invalidates the general condition.
The fact remains that both Chomsky and Rushdie signed the Harpers open letter and are hence two of the people publicly advocating on behalf of the people who have been silenced. You simply can’t honestly claim that this is an overreaction from people who aren’t used to pushback.
no, it's a rejection of your argument from authority, not a supporting claim of "overreaction from people who aren’t used to pushback". if you think there are other substantial coutnerclaims, please make them.
You said: “the people telling you they're being silenced is a group of privileged folks unaccustomed to being pushed back upon publicly, with "cancel culture" as the reactive appellation for that push back?”
Which I interpreted as: “the only people who complain about cancel culture are unaccustomed to pushback” and disproved by counterexample.
It occurs to me now that perhaps you didn’t mean “all”. You meant “some”. That’s called nutpicking and it means your original claim wasn’t substantial enough to discuss in the first place.
> I feel like a lot of 'privilege' talk sort of leaked out of good / valid ideas and areas of academic study and now are sort of used as a magic wand (or sometimes a baseball bat) that really don't solve anything
Yes, unfortunately.