America is in the midst of a profound renegotiation of speech norms. That process can be messy. But it’s not “cancel culture.” It is necessary and overdue.
I have to challenge whether this is a "precursor", or just the same phenomenon going back to the sixties at least. I liked the comment that they invent a new insult for "empathy for the powerless" every few decades. The key to seeing it as all one phenomenon, is that the old insult vanishes from popular usage when the new one is adopted: "bleeding-heart liberals" lasted to 1990, when "politically correct" was invented, and "political correctness" has vanished from discourse since the more economical "woke" came into use. (I noted one truck with a faded "politically incorrect" sticker and several newer "woke" stickers here: http://brander.ca/stackback#woke )
As to the argument over whether it has ever been a valid complaint, just go back to those sixties, when the Berkeley Free Speech Movement was all about whether you could even stand on a soapbox in the Quad and make an anti-war speech. Now they complain if you don't support their business model of charging students to hear them by renting them a hall. (Hall down the street, not good enough: they want that "speaking at Stanford" on the poster, for status.)
I would be grateful to anybody who can google up an article I've lost. Dating back to when Milo Yianopoulis was still an alt-right celeb, the article said that 80% of the complaints about 'cancellation' were from five celebrity speakers: Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, Milo, and two I forget. And they were notorious for publicly saying something extra-outrageous before a talk, to get publicity, and hopefully, get themselves cancelled. It's a business model.
Not just the Bad Old Days, of course: try the Iraq War. Pat Robertson's show was cancelled. Most popular on MSNBC. Then they cancelled Jesse Ventura's, just a few episodes in, when they realized he was anti-war. That's cancelled.
How is the "woke" side of this acting any different? They are also claiming that *they* should define what is and is not acceptable public speech and deciding what the norms are - they're just drawing the line at different, more speech-restricive places than TCW and friends.
There's plenty of other examples, and Martin's examples are fine. But my favorite is probably the Stanford "Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative", in which Stanford's IT department tries to draw the line of what is acceptable speech to include words like "guys", "he", and "American". https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/stanfordlanguage.pdf
It actually proves my point! Thomas relied on someone else’s Substack for his argument there, which claims: “The document proposes (again: proposes) to regulate something that the IT department is also responsible for: what kind of language appears on Stanford’s official websites.” So, despite all of the downplaying about how inconsequential it was, it was only a suggestion and not policy, blah blah blah, it was still an attempt by these students to unilaterally “define what is and is not acceptable public speech and deciding what the norms are.” Thanks for that, though
Stanford deciding how it presents itself on it's website is not an attempt to define acceptable public speech. They are exploring how best to attract students as societal norms are changing.
An excellent piece. It's main points fit neatly into what the "establishment" free-speech clique fear most. They recoil in horror at the fact that, slowly but surely, America is becoming a true multi-ethnic, multi-racial, democracy. One in which, as the author points out, the white patriarchal elements are no longer calling the tune.
For more on the "political correctness" term, the best piece was Moira Weigel in The Guardian, 2016:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/30/political-correctness-how-the-right-invented-phantom-enemy-donald-trump
I have to challenge whether this is a "precursor", or just the same phenomenon going back to the sixties at least. I liked the comment that they invent a new insult for "empathy for the powerless" every few decades. The key to seeing it as all one phenomenon, is that the old insult vanishes from popular usage when the new one is adopted: "bleeding-heart liberals" lasted to 1990, when "politically correct" was invented, and "political correctness" has vanished from discourse since the more economical "woke" came into use. (I noted one truck with a faded "politically incorrect" sticker and several newer "woke" stickers here: http://brander.ca/stackback#woke )
As to the argument over whether it has ever been a valid complaint, just go back to those sixties, when the Berkeley Free Speech Movement was all about whether you could even stand on a soapbox in the Quad and make an anti-war speech. Now they complain if you don't support their business model of charging students to hear them by renting them a hall. (Hall down the street, not good enough: they want that "speaking at Stanford" on the poster, for status.)
I would be grateful to anybody who can google up an article I've lost. Dating back to when Milo Yianopoulis was still an alt-right celeb, the article said that 80% of the complaints about 'cancellation' were from five celebrity speakers: Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, Milo, and two I forget. And they were notorious for publicly saying something extra-outrageous before a talk, to get publicity, and hopefully, get themselves cancelled. It's a business model.
Not just the Bad Old Days, of course: try the Iraq War. Pat Robertson's show was cancelled. Most popular on MSNBC. Then they cancelled Jesse Ventura's, just a few episodes in, when they realized he was anti-war. That's cancelled.
How is the "woke" side of this acting any different? They are also claiming that *they* should define what is and is not acceptable public speech and deciding what the norms are - they're just drawing the line at different, more speech-restricive places than TCW and friends.
There's plenty of other examples, and Martin's examples are fine. But my favorite is probably the Stanford "Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative", in which Stanford's IT department tries to draw the line of what is acceptable speech to include words like "guys", "he", and "American". https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/stanfordlanguage.pdf
Did you read the first part of this series?
Your 'favorite example' is discussed and shown to be bullshit.
It actually proves my point! Thomas relied on someone else’s Substack for his argument there, which claims: “The document proposes (again: proposes) to regulate something that the IT department is also responsible for: what kind of language appears on Stanford’s official websites.” So, despite all of the downplaying about how inconsequential it was, it was only a suggestion and not policy, blah blah blah, it was still an attempt by these students to unilaterally “define what is and is not acceptable public speech and deciding what the norms are.” Thanks for that, though
Stanford deciding how it presents itself on it's website is not an attempt to define acceptable public speech. They are exploring how best to attract students as societal norms are changing.
An excellent piece. It's main points fit neatly into what the "establishment" free-speech clique fear most. They recoil in horror at the fact that, slowly but surely, America is becoming a true multi-ethnic, multi-racial, democracy. One in which, as the author points out, the white patriarchal elements are no longer calling the tune.