In my 20+ years of being a professional, and especially after having been in leadership positions I’ve always been careful to watch what I say, when, and to whom. This isn’t paranoia and I haven’t felt “unable to express myself”, this is just part of functioning in polite society.
While I do agree there is more calling out of people for saying things (for better and worse) it also seems there is an increasing sense of entitlement to be able to say whatever you want and not be held accountable for it. This article seems to be falling into the latter bucket.
While I agree with this, I think its important to keep in mind that students right out of college and who have not taken part in our society's big discussion on how to address racial/gender inequality and working towards equal proportion may not speak with the greatest of nuance. Give room for people to speak on their authentic experience (without trying to feel any personal offense) and give this forum to people who identify on any side of the political aisle. I happen to take the opinion that this so-called "Anti-Racist" movement happens to espouse quite a few policies that are discriminatory. Its not to say that some of their efforts are bad, but there needs to be room for critique without accusations of harboring racial resentment. The lack of room of express is creating resentment IMO.
>> The lack of room of express is creating resentment IMO.
Some say the election of Donald Trump is in part due to the backlash against the intolerance of the left. He definitely does not say things to be "politically correct".
I think the whole DEI movement is a great example. It's easy to say "we should hire a POC or woman for this position", it's not ok to say "we should not hire based on gender or race".
The "E" means "Equity". I still don't know exactly what this means but I know it's not supposed to mean Equality. I think it infers affirmative action. I think it's one of those terms that's vague by design.
It’s equity as in “equity in your house” equity. Many people have been denied access to equity in “the system” and if the disenfranchised have skin in the game then this stabilizes the system.
It is similar to policies that made access to home ownership easier (for some) because having a mortgage (and equity) is implicit buy into the system which lowers the likelihood that you’ll fight against it.
"Good" discrimination, a worldview that requires racial essentialism and stereotypes.
Reduce everyone to their immutable attributes and tailor your behavior accordingly.
Since in the minds of social justice people, one group is unconditionally placed below another group (think of the vocabulary they use when they say "the work is never done"), we must actively discriminate to fix things.
"it also seems there is an increasing sense of entitlement to be able to say whatever you want and not be held accountable for it. "
???
I think it's definitely the opposite.
The evidence seems clear - dozens of the centre-left's most foundational global thinkers (i.e Noam Chomsky et. al.) have had to take out a page in Harper's to literally tamp down the authoritarian tendencies of those suppressing speech, mostly more extremists of 'their own side'. [1]
This represents a profound shift in sentiment from just one generation ago whereupon thinkers (such as Chomsky!) would have been fighting the 'other side' for the ability to speak their minds - as in the case in more classical authoritarian societies (i.e. Belarus).
We are not entering a world where 'those evil racist using the n-word are finally being called out' - frankly - this was already the case for at least generation.
We are now entering the phase where people are destroyed for having slightly controversial, but nevertheless respectable opinions that fit within civil discourse.
Student unions are banning comedians, and thinkers with whom they disagree.
Aside from 'public statements' - there is of course the reasonable act of contextualization. What people say while they are partying, drinking it up, among one another, as friends, is not 'public discourse'. This notion that people must live 'professionally sanitized lives every waking moment' is rubbish. The whole point of 'privacy' is the ability to speak freely.
I'm concerned by your statement, because as your professional life encroaches upon you with 'greater degrees of responsibility' - you may be projecting that narrow perspective onto society at large, and risk authoritarian moralizing from a sanitized executive bubble 'where even thoughts are guarded'.
So yes, there are a few dirtbags being called out, but for everyone one of them there's a long list of legit thinkers being blacklisted, and a much longer list of regular plebes unable to just act normally, within their own context with the moral beam of globalism like a spotlight upon them at all times.
>> In my 20+ years of being a professional, and especially after having been in leadership positions I’ve always been careful to watch what I say, when, and to whom. This isn’t paranoia and I haven’t felt “unable to express myself”, this is just part of functioning in polite society.
>> While I do agree there is more calling out of people for saying things (for better and worse) it also seems there is an increasing sense of entitlement to be able to say whatever you want and not be held accountable for it. This article seems to be falling into the latter bucket.
> ???
> I think it's definitely the opposite.
> The evidence seems clear - dozens of the centre-left's most foundational global thinkers (i.e Noam Chomsky et. al.) have had to take out a page in Harper's to literally tamp down the authoritarian tendencies of those suppressing speech, mostly more extremists of 'their own side'. [1]
You're both right:
On the right, there seems to be a growing view that "free speech" means that you should be able to say whatever you want (even if it's literally a factually untrue lie), and not experience any social censure and be welcome on any platform or venue. For an example of this, see the nonsense around the false claims of election fraud and people quitting Twitter for Parler because of Twitter's labels on that misinformation.
On the left, there's the extreme form of political correctness that's metastasized into "cancel culture," where in some quarters there's an unwillingness to tolerate differing opinions and perspectives on many topics.
" there seems to be a growing view that "free speech" means that you should be able to say whatever you want (even if it's literally a factually untrue lie)"
This is a good point, however, it's worth pointing out that 'free speech' definitely covers 'untrue and false facts'.
I guess, if you're the President of the US, lying about election outcomes, the the results of the lies are so outrageous, that there may be some 'sanction' on a private platform.
I'm not sure what the 'censure' should be for private individuals, sometimes regular people have difficulty with the facts.
>> On the right, there seems to be a growing view that "free speech" means that you should be able to say whatever you want (even if it's literally a factually untrue lie), and not experience any social censure and be welcome on any platform or venue.
> This is a good point, however, it's worth pointing out that 'free speech' definitely covers 'untrue and false facts'.
I suppose so, but such things are often not protected by the First Amendment, and expressions of falsehood have no positive value except when corrected. The point I was making was actually the clause after the one you quoted.
> I guess, if you're the President of the US, lying about election outcomes, the the results of the lies are so outrageous, that there may be some 'sanction' on a private platform.
> I'm not sure what the 'censure' should be for private individuals, sometimes regular people have difficulty with the facts.
What I meant by "social censure" was criticism, condemnation, correction, social rejection, etc. The people on the right that I was talking about seem to believe the free speech means they should be immune from those things, or that their statements should be presented with a false balance (e.g. as a he-said-she-said, "Trump says the sky is green, but Biden disagrees and says the sky is blue"), or that others should be obligated to repeat them without further comment. The Parler things show that clearly, since their main objection was that their false statements on Twitter were being paired with corrective warnings and sometimes even hidden behind them.
Frank self-expression -- what a lot of people think they mean by honesty -- isn't a virtue.
One can be frankly horrible as easily as one can be forthright.
What most people actually value is probably better referred to by terms like "fidelity" or even "trust." We care most how accurate and forthcoming people's statements are when we're putting together agreements on how to behave and cooperate. On some occasions (like, say, court proceedings) we need to gather a picture of reality and we ask people for fidelity as witnesses.
None of these situations are about frank self-expression.
FSE does matter in some situations, usually involving personal relationships, though even there most people eventually learn that has its limits too. For example, unless you have an unusual relationship with your SO, you might be cautious about frankly expressing any passing attraction you have to other people.
Most people should be cautious about FSE. And that caution, as it turns out, is a productive systemic warning. You have in your head a model of other people. It's not perfectly accurate any more than your probably not particularly well-formed opinions are, but both may have some merit, and the former tells you something about the problems of the latter that you should probably listen to.
There are people who don't have to listen to that as much. You can probably think of examples you've observed. They seem to have certain privileges in certain contexts relative to you which enable them to get away with behavior you find distasteful or even wrong.
It's likely enough that could be you with only minimal social checks on FSE.
If "afraid to express yourself honestly" means "fear of violent retribution", it's possible things have gone off the rails. If "afraid to express yourself honestly" means "I feel like there might be consequences to my social standing if I frankly express my thoughts and feelings without polite moderation", then it might be that what you value is the privilege of indulgent expression without challenge.
"People who want to be brutally honest are more interested in being brutal than being honest."
Old phrase that pulled me out of an old phase. Tact is as much about communicating in a way that people will learn from, as it is protecting other peoples' feelings.
Cancel culture has taught us to hide behind online anonymity, and to never respond honestly about our true feelings, and opinions. Which has had the effect of forcing most people into being more suspicious and less trusting of others.
Are you referring to Kevin Hart who bailed on the Oscar hosting gig? I mean, he publicly said a ton of _rough_ homophobic stuff and eventually he was held to account for it. That said, the Oscars went on as scheduled, I saw Hart in Jumanji 2 earlier this year, and I see he’s got a new flick with Woody Harrelson coming out. So exactly who/what was cancelled?
As far as I know, JK Rowling still has a career as an author, her books haven't been banned, and she hasn't been fired.
And Gal Godot is still a working actor. Her films haven't been banned or boycotted, she hasn't been fired or replaced in any roles.
Neither of them have been deplatformed from any social media sites, been denied the ability to speak or to earn income.
The right's definition of "cancel culture" seems to have degenerated to the point that it encompasses any criticism of anyone for any reason. Having someone disagree with you and express that disagreement isn't cancel culture, it's free speech.
You’re possibly being downvoted because you lay it at the doorstep of “the right” when the problem is bigger than that.
But thanks for more directly making my original point that, as the GP’s post shows, many people’s working definition seems to be “criticism == cancel culture”
"Neither of them have been deplatformed from any social media sites, been denied the ability to speak or to earn income"
???
Vindictive campaigns, which you've tacitly admit exist - are clear evidence of cancel culture - that said campaigns don't always work, is not evidence that they don't exist.
These hate campaigns have a chilling effect on institutions. They tried to 'cancel' Stephen Pinker, hardcore Harvard secular humanist [1] - who will survive the ordeal but much erstwhile reasonable science won't get published.
"The definition of "cancel culture" seems to have degenerated to the point that it encompasses any criticism of anyone for any reason. "
... this is obviously false given the examples above.
It's an easy lie: "Some people use the n-word, so cancel culture is acceptable in all cases" is the logic implied.
But this:
"Having someone disagree with you and express that disagreement isn't cancel culture, it's free speech. "
... is the crux of the lie.
It's fine that people disagree. That's probably a good thing actually. 'Cancel culture' is not about disagreement, it's about sanctioning people for having opinions.
Nobody is 'up in arms' that people are 'disagreeing with JK Rowling - they are concerned because of attempts to stop her books from being published, to stop her films from being made, to stop her public opinions from being published. [2] And if she were any less powerful, the campaign would be more successful, in 2020 you need to be a billionaire to have an opinion.
Couching the aggressive dismissal and deplatforming of people's who's opinions are different from yours merely as 'disagreement' is really a devious and wilful ignorance of the rhetorical goalposts.
Please take a moment of self awareness and reflection and read your comment, because I think really is the foundation of Orwellian authoritarianism.
Have you considered that:
1) It's quite difficult to assert what actually does hurt people and;
2) more likely that these powers are merely going to be used for arbitrary political vindictiveness.
If someone is saying 'ban the KKK from Facebook', sure, that's fine.
But banning speech such as 'trans women are like women, but still different' - is totalitarian. 'Deadnaming' a trans person is also not very nice, but it's also not 'hate speech'. It will technically get you banned from Twitter, which is ridiculous.
Side Note: the oddest thing about the people who want to suppress speech, is that I find they tend not to be 'overt, assertive people'. This is not the alpha-style nationalist authoritarianism of the gilded class, oddly, it's the opposite - it's the authoritarianism of the ostensibly vengeful transgressed and hyper-sensitive. It has Jacobin kind of element to it: populism of a kind of underclass, with shades of angry revenge.
American cancel culture is borderline cultural imperialism akin to communist China. Ask any (eastern) european open source maintainer how badly they are being treated because of their different opinions.
Dealing with anything american is the same liability like dealing with anything chinese.
It's not a matter of "if" but "when" you will be cancelled.
You think? God forbid anyone have an opinion that isn't progressive through and through.
Just to be clear… I don't like Trump, and didn't vote for him. Being a conservative does NOT mean you're a Trump fan.
But here's the real issue… if you're not someone progressive (or on the hard left) the VAST majority of people will not even converse with you. Game over. Discourse is dead, if you don't fall between the lines.
You don't have an acceptable thought, your viewpoints are not welcome here.
Every conservative I've talked to has been willing to discuss and differ and disagree, and peacefully coexist with those with whom they have differences with.
The left? My experience has been that they will scream in your face. Your opinion does not matter unless you agree with them completely.
You get shouted down.
You get fired from your job.
You get branded as a racist.
JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE CONSERVATIVE.
It's no wonder people are afraid to express themselves.
>>This isn’t a partisan issue. “The percentage of Democrats who are worried about speaking their mind is just about identical to the percentage of Republicans who self-censor: 39 and 40 percent, respectively,” Gibson and Sutherland report.
From the article. How odd that a partisan issue would occur at the exact same rates on both sides.
I think you're getting downvoted because your post includes a great deal of profanity and comes across as an angry rant. I say this as someone who is generally politically conservative: like all things in life, you've got to pick your battles.
I am actually starting to see a backlash against the politicization of the workplace and think Coinbase got it right, personally. At the end of the day, companies are not college campuses. Trying to turn it into one makes the company uncomfortable, less productive and just... weird. See the recent flare ups at Google, which is hardly a bastion of conservative thought, as an example.
I'd like to think conservative doesn't necessarily come with the persecution complex and lack of coherence on display in your comment. I can think of a few counterexamples.
You’re bang right about the GP, but you should probably read more conservative thought if you can only think of a few coherent conservatives. (Trump and his boot-lickers are not a good advert for the movement....) The guys at The Dispatch might be a good start, they’re insightful and funny.
(Mind you, I'm skeptical; in general I find a lot of $POLITICAL_DESIGNATION thought falls short, and `conservative` thought more than average. But there are exceptions and they often turn out to be really illuminating, so I try to keep an eye out.)
>God forbid anyone have an opinion that isn't progressive through and through.
Realize that this cuts both ways. This sentiment, and the various more extreme versions of it, are why I don't typically say things that sound left/liberal in real life.
I was just thinking about this the other day in a happy hour call. People were asking about favorite christmas (crap can I even say christmas?) movies. I actually have one, but then I was thinking, this is an older movie, and who knows, maybe it's now controversial in some way. Were any of the actors caught up in a scandal that should make me now dislike the movie? People may judge that I like a movie with X terrible person. Honestly, I'd rather just not say anything.
>Were any of the actors caught up in a scandal that should make me now dislike the movie? People may judge that I like a movie with X terrible person.
I think that's fundamentally a side-effect of the "regulate decency by voting with your wallet and advocating others do the same" mantra of neoliberalism and libertarianism.
People's attitude towards this has always bugged me - "if you really believed that, you'd put your money where your mouth is", and yet somehow e.g. vegans (no, I'm not vegan) are the butt of jokes instead of held up as people who are morally responsible with their spending.
Like, which is it? It seems to me like people adore the concept, but love to hate on any actual people who meet that concept.
Vegans are the butt of jokes not for their adherence to a clear and consistent moral code but because of their desire to coerce everyone around them to become vegan too.
I have not noticed as much militant veganism in the last few years, perhaps because the people I associate with are older and wiser, or maybe I am just going deaf.
Is this “the gay cabal are grooming our children to be homosexuals” thought train, but against vegans? What’s the point of such broad generalizations/conspiracies?
More like the people who love to tell you they're "child-free" or "don't own a TV/smartphone" (or a thousand pro-gun bumper stickers or open-source laptop stickers or punk rock patches . . .
Virtue signaling is like tryinf to help people see in the dark by shining the flashlight you're carrying in their eyes.
>It's no longer safe to have an opinion that's not mainstream.
If a company is trawling your private opinions on social media, then they're not just opinions, they're public statements. Maybe they ought not to be, but they are.
Of course, your main point stands that companies generally shouldn't hire based on an employee's political opinions (unless it's a PR/representative position or such), outspoken or not, but let's use the correct terminology here:
publicly stating political stuff under your real name is more than just "having an opinion".
> publicly stating political stuff under your real name is more than just "having an opinion".
You're reasoning as if only "political" speech is relevant, but everything can be made "political stuff". Saying the words "master bedroom" is considered racist now. What will be racist tomorrow? No one knows. What is racist today that I don't yet know is racist? What is considered racist by one group if I say it but racist by others if I don't say it (Silence is violence and all that)?
Nobody gets fired for saying master bedroom though. Some things might be considered tactless, other just plain insulting or harmful. It's the latter that gets you in trouble, not of you forget to rename your branch to "main".
You're speaking as if the words are merely considered tactless, but they are being erased from the language for being considered racist, not for being tactless. I don't know if anyone's been fired yet for saying "master bedroom" specifically, but people have been fired for even more innocuous things than that. Like that professor in the UK who was fired for expressing his admiration of the competence of the Jewish people.
Of course anyone can get fired for saying "master bedroom" or absolutely anything else if it's said to be racist. I could agree with your take if the dialogue around those terms was that they were merely harmless. But that is not the dialogue. They are being labeled racist, and being racist naturally implies that they must be stamped out along with the people that say "racist" things. The entire point of labeling things "racist" rather than "tactless" is so that the dogma of the week can be enforced with actual consequences. You can't get a Twitter mob together for someone being tactless, but you can absolutely do it to someone that's "racist".
There is absolutely no chance in hell I'm going to work at a company who screens my social media presence. I'll freeze to death on the street corner before that.
The alarming bit IMO is how many candidates are willing to submit to such a policy. Totalitarianism creeps in incrementally through the weakened will of the individual.
> Just to be clear… I don't like Trump, and didn't vote for him. Being a conservative does NOT mean you're a Trump fan.
One problem is that the conservatives in national politics or state politics who are not Trump fans have to a large extent gone silent on any issues in which they disagree with Trump, at least publicly, for the last four years. That tends to give people the impression that being a conservative does mean you're a Trump fan.
Progressives will scream in your face, and conservatives are aiming guns at them. Sounds rather expressive.
Sounds like it’s more of a range than black and white. Some conservatives and progressives have always been quiet.
People from both sides of the political divide have lost their job.
Do we need to run the list of political positions that the GOP holds that would hardly be called conservative? Drill baby drill?
Incongruity between rhetoric and behavior is pretty obvious.
Perhaps that the national party you support has kids in cages, suspended Habeus corpus under GW, and is at least in part carrying on about overturning an election plays into the view?
Barr is the one who said whoever wins gets to write the rules. I wonder if politicians are simply using words as a political tool.
You are grossly exaggerating. The leaders of most businesses (executives and CEOs) are conservative, the millions of people are able to get along just fine. The people who are being ostracized are people who say or advocate for awful things. I am guessing based on your intense, ridiculous sensitivity on this issue that is what happened to you.
City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a leading free-market think tank.
From TFA.
The Manhattan Institute (MI) is a right-wing 501(c)(3) non-profit think tank founded in 1978 by William J. Casey, who later became President Ronald Reagan's CIA director.[1] It is an associate member of the State Policy Network....
The Manhattan Institute has received funding from the Koch brothers. The Claude R. Lambe Foundation, one of the Koch Family Foundations, reported giving $2,075,000 to the Manhattan Institute between 2001 and 2012, the last year for which data is available. The Charles G. Koch Foundation gave $100,000 to the Institute in 2012.
That site is downweighted on HN, but not banned, along with other ideologically motivated journals that sometimes produces interesting (in HN's sense of the word) articles.
I was elevating visibility of probable bias. I was surprised at the effectiveness here.
I'm aware of HN's policy regarding material rather than sources. I disagree: quality assessment costs are significant, HN struggles with this as it is, time and attention finite, and reputation a useful and generally, if not universally reliable mechanism and heuristic for effecting low-cost dismissal of noise.
MI are part of a global network of strongly-motivated, well-financed, ideologically-driven, truth-averse rganisations, "of 461 partners in 97 countries around the globe".
They've been highly effective in shifting the Overton Window since 1947, to the benefit of their backers, largely monopolists (a topic on which they've most spectacularly influenced discussion, policy, law, and judicial decisions).
Knowing who wrote something is a useful data point to determine whether the author has an agenda, but it doesn't invalidate their point, if that is what you are getting at. Perhaps my own personal bias is showing, as I loathe the Koch brothers. But I find the article to be reasonable.
> But spare me the pearl-clutching over excess social orthodoxy from the side of the aisle that has for my entire life been foursquare for ideological orthodoxy and social conformance to their preferred norms. Change begins at home.
That's precisely why you should be concerned...
If the moralizers on the right, the ones you seem to resent, realize the left is taking it too far - it must be bad.
They only think the left is taking it too far because they no longer control the moral standards. They are not concerned about the magnitude of the pressure, which is still much higher on the right. They're only concerned that the direction counters theirs.
Following up, I think it's hilarious that people apparently concerned about threats to free expression due to social pressure have flagged and downvoted my post. I richly appreciate them proving my point: they're not opposed to it at all as long as they're the ones doing it.
Not a good article. The comparison with Stalin’s USSR is just absurd. And there are not many examples given. What are these unacceptable views that dare not speak their name?
“Afraid to express themselves honestly” usually means they don’t feel safe making public statements about, say, their belief that women are inherently less intelligent than men, that black people are inherently less intelligent and more violent than white people, or that Obama wasn’t really born in USA.
They consider being called on their nonsense to be a personal attack, and the persistent corrections they receive from people they talk to are a sign of a conspiracy against them.
> their belief that women are inherently less intelligent than men
Let's assume that the normal distribution of certain psychological traits differs slightly but in a statistically significant way between the members of the population who share certain biological traits. Should the study of these correlations be allowed or not? It seems an unspoken consensus exists that it is negative, i.e. if you pursue the study of these you might face difficulties when receiving grants and so on.
Is it really good for the society, including the groups that something might be hurt by these studies? One could argue the opposite: only by rigorous studies we can arrive to definitive conclusion as to which correlations exist, and this could be a starting point for understanding better how to deal with them.
There’s no reason not to study it, but the moment you use the well known bimodal distribution to make claims about men in general being smarter than women you have lost all credibility because the spread of the populations is far larger than the modal distance. Plus the distribution is based on tests that don’t necessarily measure anything particularly useful. Plus there is centuries of institutionalised gender roles, training differences and cultural differences to complicate matters.
So as long as your study is actually rigorous and you aren’t just claiming it is, then you are fine.
If you are like Jordan Peterson and use any difference however minor to form your argument, you are misusing the science and have entered the world of politics and oppression.
"don’t feel safe making public statements about, say, their belief that women are inherently less intelligent than women"
James Damore was destroyed for saying essentially men are different than women.
People are destroyed for implying that 'women menstruate' (!) - because of course the position that 'trans men menstruate' excludes them and is therefore 'transphobic'.
Jordan Peterson is banned from campus for questioning the
way in which we present and interpret 'equal pay' data etc..
Etc.
These are reasonable discussions to be had.
In reality - some groups are using terms like 'hate, racism, harm and violence' to suppress those they disagree with.
I don't think these have popular support, as generally pro-oppression articles meet with pretty strong resistance in the comments sections of the most reliable progressive online magazines, however, these people have outsized power in the media.
James Damore was destroyed for ranting against diversity policies, and claimed a lot more than just “men are smarter than women”. He claimed there was significant difference between any man’s and any woman’s intelligence, and that workers should be employed on merit as if they weren’t already selected on merit to start with.
Read his whole manifesto before you go simplifying his argument to one point.
These all reasonable points, but my comment was that this isn’t a good article. Indeed it didn’t mention any of these examples. (Plus it made the very, very silly Stalin analogy.)
Mostly at work or with strangers, I'll say what ever the fuck i want with my friends and with my family at this point.
Like at work, we have an inclusive language thing now.(Like words are banned) I wont ever share my opinion about that with coworkers. Same with strangers, some people are unhinged enough to rant and rave in public, i wont share my thoughts on anything until I know whether you are going to have a rational response or not, and i keep it to my self to avoid interjections from people who are passionate enough to complain to a stranger. Like some of my surf spots are filled with regulars who are vocal conspiracy right wing political people and let everyone know it. I'm not sharing my thoughts about anything in that kind of environment
though i agree, this article is kind of weak, the topic it self based off the headline could be interesting
While I do agree there is more calling out of people for saying things (for better and worse) it also seems there is an increasing sense of entitlement to be able to say whatever you want and not be held accountable for it. This article seems to be falling into the latter bucket.