Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

xp nice

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

I would quite possibly OTM it anyway but the way it's written, it's tbh too vague and chickenshit to say much.

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"?

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.

wtf happened to Harper's, I had a subscription ~15 years ago and always enjoyed it

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

Lewis Lapham wrote like a small town Gore Vidal imitator.

Someone on Twitter wrote 'give Chomsky TERF bangs' and I can't stop crying laughing

oh no

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

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

More privileged concern trolling from Salman Rushdie. Learn to take some feedback!

haha ikr everything's gotta be a fatwa with this guy

Lewis Lapham wrote like a small town Gore Vidal imitator.

every fuckin month another 'fall of the roman empire' column

he wasn't wrong, just exhausting and premature

Matthew Yglesias & Jeet Heer but no Matt Taibbi

that *is* a surprise, maybe he got a peek at the guestlist in advance

oh so here’s where we’re talking about this bullshit

just be glad it can still be localized

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

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.

Well, at least I know about it now.

here's what salaita wrote a couple weeks ago: https://stevesalaita.com/should-we-cancel-cancel-culture/

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

everyone is invested in maximising conflict and drama

i swear i misread this as marximising conflict and drama

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.

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

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

Also ban kelpolaris

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

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

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

Do you mean Wynn's bit on Cancel Culture from a few months ago?

all her videos kind of touch on it but yes

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'

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

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.

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

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?

in short, what are the "cancel cancel culture" people actually concerned about?

but didn't know that fucking X dumbass signed it as well

Guilt by association is generally a dumbass concept. ILX loves it.

in short, what are the "cancel cancel culture" people actually concerned about?

According to a British academic friend, people calling for unclean authors to be purged from syllabuses and libraries.

something that isn't gonna happen, or has happened throughout the history of canon-forming then

interesting response here

https://newrepublic.com/article/158346/willful-blindness-reactionary-liberalism