It's a weird situation:
So many people are a victim of being silenced now.
As evidenced by how many people you hear about constantly telling you about it...
So many people are a victim of being silenced now.
As evidenced by how many people you hear about constantly telling you about it...
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?
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?
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...
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.
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..."
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.
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
Until they're deplatformed.
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.
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.