Regardless, I've had this theory about cancel culture. I don't necessarily agree with cancel culture, for the aforementioned problem of it being mob social justice. But it seems to me like it has arisen out of a failure by the real justice system. Issues like sexism in particular, which affect half of the population, have been ignored and marginalized. It took how long for Bill Cosby's heinous crimes to finally be prosecuted? More over, how likely would it have been for his crimes to yet again have been swept under the rug had cancel culture not fostered an environment where the victims felt comfortable coming forward?
The very topic we're discussing, the terrorist attack on our Capitol, is another example of racist failures of our police force.
So is it really any surprise that society has collectively taken matters into their owns hands?
Again, I don't _agree_ with the idea that society at large should pass their own judgements. I'd rather the courts do that. But they haven't been. And aren't. And we just suffered through one of the worst years on record of blatant police abuse and court inaction.
If we want to get rid of cancel culture I think we need to fix our policing and justice system to the extent that society feels they don't need to take up the mantel of justice themselves.
In other words, I don't see value in deriding cancel culture. If one feels that cancel culture is wrong, my belief is that one should be calling for action to repair the _cause_ of cancel culture, not the symptoms. And that cause is a prejudiced justice system.
It is not the society. The virtual mobs that hunt people online, even though looking massive (1:N is scary even for N==100), are absolutely tiny when compared to the society as a whole.
And as for the reasons, every mob in history, including the ones that did absolutely horrible things (such as pogroms), had some reasoning as to why their activity is virtuous and noble. And putative inefficiency or corruption of the legal system was one of them. Check up on history of lynching - that was done because the legal system was perceived to be "soft".
> In other words, I don't see value in deriding cancel culture.
This is apologism, and starting such an argument with "I don't agree with this but..." is just a way to trick a few more people into taking your ideas seriously enough to read to the end of the paragraph.
And terrorists, really? You could use your same EXACT logic, in fact even more justifiably, as a defense for what happened at the U.S. Capital.
I use the word terrorist because _many_ of the people involved in the group brought guns and bombs, were prepared to take hostages, and voiced their intent to murder members of the government. For example:
https://nbc-2.com/news/national-world/2021/01/08/police-foun...
Additionally a large noose and cross were erected at the scene. The former is a symbol of violent white supremacy in the United States, and the latter is both a religious symbol and a frequently used symbol of an existing terrorist organization, the KKK. Some of those involved were self-professed followers of a known conspiracy cult (QAnon). Also at least one speech during the event quoted Hitler.
It's hard not to use the word "terrorism" to describe what happened that day, given the breadth of violence, both implied and actual, and the wide associations with cults, terrorist organizations, religious organizations, and despotic figures. All of those things are hallmarks of past terrorist acts both within and outside of the United States.
Not three months ago another event occurred, which Wikipedia describes as a "domestic terror plot": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl...
I see little difference between that, a group of individuals plotting to kidnap and murder a government official, and the events at the Capitol which involved groups plotting to kidnap and murder government officials.
> is just a way to trick a few more people into taking your ideas seriously enough to read to the end of the paragraph.
That was certainly not my intent, and I don't believe your comment addresses the best possible version of my argument.
Yep. I lived in China for a few years, speak Chinese, and never heard of anybody being kicked out of a job at a private company because of their social credit score.
Also, how were those events a racist failure of the police force?
If I don't want to buy a Musk-mobile because I don't agree with Musk on issues like racism[0] or don't like how he treats his employees[1], I am allowed to act on it. I am also allowed to share these thoughts with people on appropriate platforms, like I'm doing here.
I can understand the frustration coming from people digging up problematic tweets from 4 years ago, but this whole idea that "the internet forgets nothing" isn't new. I learned it in grade school. If you want to post racist/sexist/homophobic things on your public Twitter, so be it, but don't be surprised when someone finds it. There's also a delete button.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18119832/tesla-elon-musk...
[1] https://www.ibtimes.com/elon-musk-hot-water-after-tesla-empl...
So, what is going to be the kiss of death in 2050? Do you know in advance? How many of your contemporary comments are going to run afoul of the standard of 2050 and will you remember to delete them all, including from Internet archive/wayback sites, in 2049?
Remember, a senior manager at Boeing was forced to step down 33 years after he wrote an offending article. The article was published before WWW even existed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/business/boeing-resignati...
What I'm more referring to is situations like JK Rowling where she is openly posting hateful content publicly (people don't even have to dig for it!) and she's criticizing cancel culture as the reason people don't want to read her new book, which just looks like it'll be awful[1].
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/15/entertainment/jk-rowling-trou...
I just can't find any sort of argument being made here.
No one can predict the future but do you believe culture is static and that the cultural landscape of 2050 will the same as 2020?
Close to 30 years ago everyone was up in arms that Murphy Brown was a having a child out of wedlock and without a man! Shock! Horror!
This is something that, IMHO, the society should frown upon and discourage. Destroying people should be as hard as possible, that is why nation states built so many protections into law over centuries.
I don't have any particularly noteworthy political opinions; most people would probably put me in the "surprisingly ordinary" box if they had to categorize me. Despite that, I wouldn't dream of getting into something like a political discussion on Twitter. It's simply impossible to know whom the mob will go after next, or in 10 or 20 years.
I don't know how many others feel the same way, but I do know there are others out there. There is a non-zero chance that one of us has something really important to say, but won't, because we don't want to face a potential angry online mob in the future.
So, “cancel culture” been a matter of fact, at least in the US, for quite some time now. It’s just given a scary name when those who have been “canceled” in the past are doing the “canceling”.
There’s a baseline among progressives which, once reached, will create entirely new divisions, trust me.
What is the war on education?
Briefly, our education system in the US is one of the least well performing systems amongst modern states. It is also the least well funded systems with conservatives trying to practically hand it over to private schools.
Then you have public funding issues too numerous to list that contribute to the low quality of education including student loan debt being debt you cannot bankrupt your way out of, or cutting off funds to channels like PBS...
Did most of the federal judiciary die or resign? Was the Constitution amended to remove supermajority to requirements for certain actions?
Of course that criticism is never consistent temporally, and always depends on which party is in which office and doing the criticism.
Either way, I'm not particularly excited about leaving things up to the courts.
Social actions will always have social consequences; that's a necessary corollary to freedom of speech. What's different today is that social conservatives and especially the radical right are starting to experience those same social consequences. If people are going to use their freedom of speech and association to, say, support Nazis, then other people are free to use their freedoms of speech and association in response.