Rowan Atkinson is dead right about cancel culture
spiked-online.com
spiked-online.com
It’s not clear to me how the government (or anyone else) would even go about protecting freedom of consequences in public perception to your speech, without limiting other people’s freedom to not associate with you. I’ve also never heard a convincing argument that this is socially desirable.
Overall pretty substance-free article.
Human rights in the EU is not limited to stopping government from doing bad things to citizens, but rather give fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being. The right to not be discriminated against is thus not limited by who is doing the discrimination, and it can limit peoples freedom to not associate with people if the reason behind the non-association falls within discrimination laws.
The US federal and state laws has also similar laws that limit companies from making completely free choices in regard to who them want to associate with. They are however not fundamental rights, and not as broad as the European versions.
The laws in the united states that prohibit discrimination this way do so only for “protected classes,” which are pretty much all things separate from a persons ideas and often an accident of their birth, with the exception or religions that accept conversions. This seems like something we would not want to conflate with someone’s ideas. It seems self evident to me that one should be able to judge people based on the ideas they espouse.
On a personal note, I find the very concept of people being born into a religion to be at odds with modern thinking. It would be like people being born into a political side. At most people are born into a cultural environment which religion can have been integrated into, but that says very little about the individual.
It’s meant to illustrate a difference between who you are and what ideas you have; jury is still out whether this works, but it seems reasonable to me. Ideas are protected from government by the first amendment separately. You are forbidden by the law, with limited exception, to treat someone differently because of their age, race or gender, but not the fact that they have insulted you. It seems absurd to extend the full force of legal protections to the latter to me.
At the end of the day, you need to enforce a positive human right, the law needs to change someone’s behavior. I don’t think that most Europeans or Americans agree that they have a right to offend their neighbor without their neighbor treating them differently, I think the rub is mostly in what specific ways they are to be prevented in treating them differently.
> In the US a demographic group is either on or not on the list of protected classes. In the EU the only group that exist is human and we are all on it.
It is not a protection of certain demographics in the US, it is a protection of certain attributes that you might use to define a demographic that are generally considered accidents of birth, plus religion.
> On a personal note, I find the very concept of people being born into a religion to be at odds with modern thinking.
It’s basically how it has always worked, people’s parents and culture is the main reason they stay in a religion, and it’s the reason it has been grandfathered in as a protected class in the US [conjecture on my part, I’m not a historian]. While this is changing, it’s changing very slowly and mostly in the direction of people becoming irreligious, definitely not converting to religions different from their birth in greater numbers, at least in the US. I could not find global numbers for this. https://www.pewforum.org/2016/10/26/links-between-childhood-...
> It would be like people being born into a political side
I don’t believe it personally but I remember some studies that pointed to this from a genetic sense. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/can-you...
It certainly seems likely to me that family upbringing for your first 18 years passes on political beliefs and culture for the many Americans.. but like you said we generally expect people to be able to change this, unlike the ability to change their race or gender. Somewhat less drastically, but equally seen as important to a person’s core at the time these laws were written, American laws don’t expect people to change their religion.
Let take a second example. A store employee is insulting a customer by calling them a penniless rat. Should such insult be treated different from the employer then if they used a racial insult? From an employment law perspective, is the fact that the customer belong to a specific demographic that the government has listed as protected mean more than the simple fact that a customer was insulted by the employee and the store was negatively impacted?
I think the practical result in EU has been mostly similar to those in the US, except for corner cases. Dress code rules are enforced equally for those who want to wear a religious symbol or a political one. Taking a break during work hours for religious purpose is treated the same as taking a break for coffee.
Can you think of an example where in a religious context some action should be legal but in a political context should not?
No of course not, and both American and European law handle this case in my understanding. Inciting violence isn’t “cancel culture”.
> Let take a second example. A store employee is insulting a customer by calling them a penniless rat. Should such insult be treated different from the employer then if they used a racial insult?
Yes, absolutely. Again, it isn’t the demographic that makes the difference, it’s the attribute used to define the demographic. There are a few attributes that the American government has decided are worth intervening by force to stop.
In this case, The shop keep can condescend to the potential customer, and that customer is free to tell everyone not to shop at their store as a result, which causes the damages and gives you a right to fire them. Sure. I mean, maybe as an American used to almost no labor protections I don’t understand the question :D
But in the case where the employee denied service on the base of race, a protected class, then you have a criminal issue in addition to the civil issue.
> Can you think of an example where in a religious context some action should be legal but in a political context should not?
I don’t understand the question to be honest.
Cancel culture is not a "medieval mob" - because there is no physical enforcement. It's simply a further expression of free speech. No one has to obey it.
If you are ok with with giving your $100 to someone like C.K. after it's been revealed that he pulls his penis out in front of random females, you totally can. I would prefer to make a less funny comedian wealthy whom doesn't whip their penis out at random.
I have the freedom to not participate in making certain individuals or companies wealthy, and I have the right to call for their "cancellation". That's MY free speech at work. If you want to un-cancel them, well, that's YOUR free speech at work.
The specific tactics of cancel culture are a DDoS. Oftentimes, when an individual is targeted by the mob, their employer doesn't particularly care about the views, beliefs, or words of the target outside the workplace. Sometimes, sure, but usually, if it doesn't impact the business, it would usually not result in career-ending consequences.
What currently happens, however, is thousands of angry mob members effectively DDoSing the employer's phone system, customer service and HR representatives, inboxes, etc. Regardless of how little the employer cares about their employee's outside-work views or activities, they end up with no choice but to pay the ransom to make the problem go away. And the ransom is the economic devastation of the target.
It is a DDoS, and conducting one ought to carry approximately the same legal consequences as renting a botnet and extorting a ransom.
Wealthy companies aren't great either. They're doing the cancelling.
Who needs physical enforcement when you can get people fired or threaten their livelihood?
Take a look at Mark Crispin Miller. This chap is feeling the mob heat right now.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-mark-crispin...
I see hacker news is canceling my opinion ion with downvotes while depriving me of the same power. Ironic.