disappointed to see david blight, garry wills, and a couple other cool ppl on this list
extremely not-surprised to see greil marcus here, honestly
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, 7 July 2020 22:17 (three years ago) link
You know who actually lost his job and didn't sign this spineless piece of shit' statement? Salaita. But that's because him and anyone with any sense knows this is upper-class liberal hand-wringing because these idiots are afraid.
― blue light or electric light (the table is the table), Tuesday, 7 July 2020 22:25 (three years ago) link
Forgive bad grammar, I just hate this so much I'm losing my cool. I also just shotgunned a Steel Reserve.
― blue light or electric light (the table is the table), Tuesday, 7 July 2020 22:26 (three years ago) link
probably should’ve checked in to see who else was signing and adhered to the failsafe rule “Don’t put your name to anything that’s been co-signed by Bari Weiss”
― A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Chooglin (will), Tuesday, 7 July 2020 22:26 (three years ago) link
xp nice
― mookieproof, Tuesday, 7 July 2020 22:26 (three years ago) link
letter is vague enough that you could agree w it w/o knowing what it really means, esp if you’re not imbedded this in mind numbing discourse where every other word is some ingroup code & nothing actually means what it looks like it means on the surface. idk how many of these ppl that applies to, I’m not too generous
you sometimes get people folding actual censorship/harassment/violence by the powerful against vulnerable people into “cancel culture” which could make it look less of a non issue even tho 9/10 times it’s decried are when there’s mild pushback against this behaviour. there are good words for those other things which aren’t tied to a moral panic about celebrities and pop intellectuals not getting their arses kissed enough
― If you choose too long a name, your new display name will be truncated in (Left), Tuesday, 7 July 2020 22:30 (three years ago) link
I would quite possibly OTM it anyway but the way it's written, it's tbh too vague and chickenshit to say much.
― Feel a million filaments (Sund4r), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 00:28 (three years ago) link
How is this a free speech issue? Who is being silenced? Do these people think that other people exercising their own speech to tell them to fuck off means their freedom of speech is being taken away? Also, hasn't Harper's fired like multiple editors over the last couple of decades because their perspectives were too liberal? how is that not "being cancelled"?
― Dan I., Wednesday, 8 July 2020 01:13 (three years ago) link
Lithwick is the only person on that list that I'm surprised at and disappointed in.
I don’t really care what this letter says, I’m just putting it in the pile with the rest of the anti-trans bullshit that Harper’s has peddled.
― all cats are beautiful (silby), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 01:27 (three years ago) link
wtf happened to Harper's, I had a subscription ~15 years ago and always enjoyed it
― Dan I., Wednesday, 8 July 2020 01:32 (three years ago) link
Matthew Yglesias & Jeet Heer but no Matt Taibbi
I think the people who organize stuff like this have never heard of Matt Taibbi
xp or Salaita
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 01:35 (three years ago) link
Lewis Lapham wrote like a small town Gore Vidal imitator.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 01:35 (three years ago) link
Someone on Twitter wrote 'give Chomsky TERF bangs' and I can't stop crying laughing
― blue light or electric light (the table is the table), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 01:49 (three years ago) link
oh no
― all cats are beautiful (silby), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 01:50 (three years ago) link
I don't expect the average person to know who Salaita is, but that one of the most obvious recent examples of an academic losing their job over protected speech didn't sign on is evidence that these people are hand-wringing liberal fakes who deserve nothing but scorn
― blue light or electric light (the table is the table), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 01:58 (three years ago) link
Not sure either tweet applies to, say, Kamel Daoud.― pomenitul, mardi 7 juillet 2020 17:04 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink…or Khaled Khalifa. I think it's safe to assume that not everyone signed this open letter for the same reasons.xp― pomenitul, mardi 7 juillet 2020 17:08 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
― pomenitul, mardi 7 juillet 2020 17:04 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
…or Khaled Khalifa. I think it's safe to assume that not everyone signed this open letter for the same reasons.
xp
― pomenitul, mardi 7 juillet 2020 17:08 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
More privileged concern trolling from Salman Rushdie. Learn to take some feedback!
― Feel a million filaments (Sund4r), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 02:07 (three years ago) link
haha ikr everything's gotta be a fatwa with this guy
― j., Wednesday, 8 July 2020 02:19 (three years ago) link
every fuckin month another 'fall of the roman empire' column
he wasn't wrong, just exhausting and premature
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 8 July 2020 02:23 (three years ago) link
that *is* a surprise, maybe he got a peek at the guestlist in advance
― k*r*n koltrane (Simon H.), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 02:26 (three years ago) link
oh so here’s where we’re talking about this bullshit
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 03:27 (three years ago) link
just be glad it can still be localized
― j., Wednesday, 8 July 2020 03:31 (three years ago) link
Imagine if people took the same swift effect wrt mass-blocking this gaggle of morons that they did with the list of people that followed Nick Mullen on Twitter
― The Mandymoorian (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 03:32 (three years ago) link
one of the most obvious recent examples of an academic losing their job over protected speech
I totally agree that it's bizarre and inexplicable that this entire incident, relevant by any standardd, has somehow been memory-holed.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 03:32 (three years ago) link
Well, at least I know about it now.
― Feel a million filaments (Sund4r), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 04:29 (three years ago) link
here's what salaita wrote a couple weeks ago: https://stevesalaita.com/should-we-cancel-cancel-culture/
― Wayne Grotski (symsymsym), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 05:42 (three years ago) link
The coalition begins to crumble
I did not know who else had signed that letter. I thought I was endorsing a well meaning, if vague, message against internet shaming. I did know Chomsky, Steinem, and Atwood were in, and I thought, good company. The consequences are mine to bear. I am so sorry.— Jennifer Finney Boylan 🐕 (@JennyBoylan) July 7, 2020
― Anti-Cop Ponceortium (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 09:53 (three years ago) link
presumably all the replies to that are "sounds like SOMEBODY doesn't believe in free speech after all!"
and tbf they'd have a point, this is cowardly vacillation is it not
― imago, Wednesday, 8 July 2020 09:58 (three years ago) link
anyway this third-way culture war uprising doesn't seem especially good-faith across the board, but as a general rule we should all try to cancel each other a bit less imo
― imago, Wednesday, 8 July 2020 09:59 (three years ago) link
it's almost like putting your signature on vaguely worded letters with a bunch of other people you don't know might be... a bad idea?
― Anti-Cop Ponceortium (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 10:01 (three years ago) link
yeah but if you have done it, own it, this is probably the kind of *horrified* social-media handwringing that a lot of the more well-meaning signatories are sick of
― imago, Wednesday, 8 July 2020 10:02 (three years ago) link
the real problem is that the word "canceling" has been (often deliberately) misunderstood, we could just use different words, but then they would also inevitably be (often deliberately) misunderstood
― Anti-Cop Ponceortium (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 10:03 (three years ago) link
well yeah there should be a difference between being cancelled for sexual assault and cancelled for having a reactionary opinion, but it suits both cancellers and the cancelled to conflate the two, everyone is invested in maximising conflict and drama
― imago, Wednesday, 8 July 2020 10:05 (three years ago) link
Otm about owning it once you agreed to have your name under it.
We could easily fill a "100 things of multi-signed open letters"-thread. There'll be the people who regret signing it, the people who'll say they support the message but didn't know that fucking X dumbass signed it as well, the people who in hindsight regret with the letter's aim but not the wording etc etc etc
Multi-signed open letters are bad not good. This is canon.
― Scampidocio (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 10:09 (three years ago) link
everyone is invested in maximising conflict and drama
i swear i misread this as marximising conflict and drama
― Scampidocio (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 10:10 (three years ago) link
Salaita's been thinking and writing about these issues for a long time, and gets it right more often than not.
Re: the memory-holing, it's safe to say that many people will not touch those who dare to treat the issue in Palestine as it is: an apartheid state that began with an extensive campaign of ethnic cleansing directed by the shapers of the modern Israeli state. Because Salaita insisted on this point of fact, and continues to do so, he will never have the imprimatur of liberals who are worried that by standing up for what's right, they'll be read as anti-Semites. Super fucked, IMHO.
― blue light or electric light (the table is the table), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 10:10 (three years ago) link
is it a massive irony that the free speech crew want to endlessly wank around with semiotics, or is this what they want free speech for in the first place?cancel everyone who has the impression they are some sort of public intellectual
― Anti-Cop Ponceortium (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 10:11 (three years ago) link
the only way out of this Fucked mess (sorry dril) is tbh good-faith engagement between different coalitions, and it feels like things are increasingly entrenched
― imago, Wednesday, 8 July 2020 10:14 (three years ago) link
Also ban kelpolaris
― I hear that sometimes Satan wants to defund police (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 10:56 (three years ago) link
I don't think there is a mess, only a moral panic being generated by people who don't like being argued with by their perceived inferiors
― Committee of Public Scampi (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 10:57 (three years ago) link
I think it goes beyond 'argued with' in a lot of cases, there is definitely a vituperative mob mentality to a lot of this and a desire to banish the wicked witch, but clarity comes in distinguishing between good-faith and bad-faith argument, and it feels like few people are doing this particularly well
― imago, Wednesday, 8 July 2020 11:14 (three years ago) link
as ever, Contrapoints is probably the most otm person I've seen about all this and her good-faith, critical and human engagement with transphobes and the alt-right has done more good than any amount of internet embattlement
― imago, Wednesday, 8 July 2020 11:17 (three years ago) link
Do you mean Wynn's bit on Cancel Culture from a few months ago?
― blue light or electric light (the table is the table), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 11:20 (three years ago) link
all her videos kind of touch on it but yes
― imago, Wednesday, 8 July 2020 11:21 (three years ago) link
she is the only person on the left I've seen where you have comments below with 2k likes from people saying 'yeah I come from the alt-right but you've really made me reconsider'
― imago, Wednesday, 8 July 2020 11:22 (three years ago) link
the people who'll say they support the message but didn't know that fucking X dumbass signed it as well
idg why this should matter. If you agree with the message who cares who else signs it? I guess birds of a feather and all that but JFB's sniveling apology is going to give her enemies and detractors a whole lot of "lol the irony" ammo
If I sign an open letter to, say, prevent people from killing puppies for sport, and unbeknownst to me the head of the local KKK chapter also signs it, I can still publicly denounce the Klan without apologizing for supporting the message, no?
agreed that open letters are problematic in general though
― Paul Ponzi, Wednesday, 8 July 2020 11:26 (three years ago) link
this third-way culture war uprising
lol, Chomsky is a Clinton, huh?
This is why i am only a Groucho Marxist. Whatever it is, I'm against it.
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 11:38 (three years ago) link
I quite like the coinage 'third-way culture war'. Represents a coalition who aren't necessarily MAGAs or Petersonians, but aren't Of The Online Left either - they're all kind of Piers Morgans and Gary Linekers, and they will tut while the world burns and they will care deeply about the 'idiots' on 'both sides'. Also they probably have deeply suspect views on trans rights for reasons that aren't quite clear
― imago, Wednesday, 8 July 2020 11:42 (three years ago) link
there is definitely a vituperative mob mentality to a lot of this and a desire to banish the wicked witch
how does this restrict the right to free speech? how do you prevent multiple people from expressing their anger at the same time on open media platforms? whose job is it to win the hearts and minds of people who express ideas that support or amplify the language of violent prejudice? how do you cancel somebody who lacks a public platform? when is a fit of the vapours a concrete example of an existential threat to somebody's ability to express their thoughts - without regard for the wellbeing or safety of other people?
― Committee of Public Scampi (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 11:45 (three years ago) link
in short, what are the "cancel cancel culture" people actually concerned about?
― Committee of Public Scampi (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 11:46 (three years ago) link