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Comment by bachmeier | Hacker News Reader

Surprising how much press "cancel culture" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the left. We've always had cancel culture. Some might remember the Dixie Chicks. How about the Rachael Ray ad that Dunkin Donuts pulled merely because it looked like an Arab scarf? Jerry Falwell came to prominence entirely based on his pushing of cancel culture. When I lived in North Carolina, one of the things that was repeated all the time was that a newspaper editor would lose his job for publishing a story with a positive spin on free trade. You can go back further to McCarthyism, Turing being prosecuted for being gay, and on and on.

Cancel culture remains a thing. Apparently now that folks aren't just being cancelled for supporting gay marriage, the free exchange of ideas is suddenly important. The outright hypocrisy of so many on this issue is the biggest story.

Edit: Forgot to mention this extreme example of cancel culture:

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/professor-who-wore-hijab-...

A professor was cancelled because she wore a hijab. There was no outrage at all from the usual suspects.

View on HN

The underpinnings of the "cancel culture", the intolerance and mob mentality, were always around.

The "cancel culture" adds two news things to the picture. One is the ability for anyone to participate, not just the few on the TV screen or newspaper pages. Another is the attempts at totality: expel the victim from every social media platform, every internet hosting, every payment platform, every public venue. It's not yet as bad as it was during the fascist years in Italy, but the approach is pretty similar. There is also no formal totalitarian party to drive it; people just join the cause by reposting a tweet, and acting accordingly when in a position to ban, expel, deplatorm, etc.

I think the inward-lookingness of cancellation is key here. Regarding attempts at totality, in the past, if you were cancelled, it was because you were group A masquerading in a group B world, and group B found out and kicked you out of B-world. But, importantly, Group B couldn't cancel you in the eyes of Group A, only in their own eyes. So if you were found out, your direct life got cancelled but there was frequently another segment of society welcoming you with open arms.

But now with the inward-lookingness of cancellation, you have people from group B who are cancelled by group B, and have no one to fall back on.

An example would be a teacher arguing for the support of gay marriage getting cancelled by a catholic school they work for. That person, in the past, could pick up their bags and move in with the liberals next door. Yes, they lost their job, and maybe half of their associates, but they still have the other half who would be more than welcoming of them for the plight they've been through.

But what happens when a group cancels their own? For example, the Peru N-word journo. By all appearances, he is a liberal-minded person, who worked for a liberal-minded newspaper, in one of the most liberal-minded cities in the nation. But now he got cancelled by his colleagues. What is he supposed to do - go hang out with white supremacists? Neither side would find that appealing. So instead he has to...not partake in society at all?

The world isn't split into liberals and the far-right.

It's split into tolerant people and intolerant people.

Some people wear a thin veneer of tolerance to cover their intolerance. These are the people doing the canceling. These are the people you don't want to associate with anyway.

But there's still plenty of tolerant people around in society.

> But there's still plenty of tolerant people around in society.

I would argue people that don't really care are in fact the majority.

> What is he supposed to do - go hang out with white supremacists?

Do you imply that the only groups in society are liberals and white-supremacists?

This is the problem liberals have...they have to get onboard with all the progressive stuff because they don't realize that everyone else is not a white supremacist as they are told by the NYT.

A lot of Trump support came from former Democrats who realized that they are no longer onboard with the ideals of the modern Democrat party pandering to the Progressives. These people didn't want a traditional religiously crusading Republican - they wanted opposition to identity politics and globalism.

There are good people in the center, and this Peru guy will be fine - but he should have realized a long time ago the NYT is not for people like him.

Spot on. The interesting thing to note about the "mob mentality" of cancel culture in 2021 is that it is truly "power to the people". Essentially you have major corporations, politicians, and a media environment that are ceding to the cancelling demands of a certain majority because they will reap the rewards of this massive group of people whether that is more sales/profits, more votes, or more views. It is a story of a society that does whatever it needs to win, regardless of the collateral damage it creates.

I'm not even sure it's a majority, just a very vocal and intolerant group, seen by many non-participants as doing a virtuous thing, fighting for social justice.

Of course most businesses would not oppose such a force, because otherwise they will be a target themselves, and enough of a public opinion would be against them, at least vaguely. They have everything to lose, and very little to win if they do not conform. This is why the "cancel culture" easily makes them cooperate.

Apparently, in the eyes of many, freedom is seriously less important than justice, and justice is often seen as the right to not be offended by anything. Not that it's impossible to achieve, but the resulting society would end up extremely homogeneous.

Yeah, I’m very skeptical of who is the “majority” here. If you read Twitter and the NYT, you’d think that my minority group (American Muslim immigrants) is full of people like Ilhan Omar and Linda Sarsour. And it’s not. I literally know more Bangladeshi Trump supporters than super-progressive Bangladeshis. Plenty more Democrats, sure, but not particularly liberal ones.

One thing that’s important to keep in mind is that most people of color largely don’t even read the NYT, or NPR. Fox News is a far more popular news source among people of color, even Democrats: https://www.journalism.org/2020/03/11/black-and-white-democr...

It's not unusual for 0-gen or 1st gen immigrants to be conservative (at least culturally and fiscally). The Republican party to their detriment has not taken advantage of this reality --being too busy fighting for somewhat edge cases or constituencies (conservative religion and corp interests) to the detriment of growing their base. Not that dems have not been guilty of the same mistakes (catering to edge constituencies like the progs and corp interests, just differently).

If the Republicans could find a candidate who better reached out to conservative minorities while not alienating their present constituencies they certainly would prove a strong contender, specially if the Democrats veer further to the Progressive agenda. Trump's problem was while he appealed to more minorities than most past Republicans he did not market it well and didn't put it front and center enough and also turned off the so called 'soccer moms' with his poor approach to the pandemic.

My mom reliably votes Democrat but is basically conservative. She was Trump-curious (she loves his “energy” lol) until he stopped governing in the last six months during the pandemic.

It’s not clear to me that you can make the coalition work. It depends on what issues you surface. Opposition to cancel culture is apparently something right wingers and my mom can both get behind—apropos nothing, she shared Bill Maher’s recent segment about McNeil on Facebook. I don’t think she’s ever watched Bill Maher in her life.

But of course, opposing cancel culture and winning back nervous Democrats like my mom is also a clear opening for... Democrats. Hint hint.

What was the social justice being fought for when Colin Kaepernick was cancelled?

Quality of football. Kaepernick wasn't that good. Take a mediocre player brings in a controversy and its not worth the gamble. Have him out of the league and his skill falls further. What's more telling is that he is still talked about, most similar talent football players simply fall to the wayside. If he had been good he would have been playing football.

Funny how it took 6 whole seasons to figure that out. Must have been a coincidence to do so when a lot of NFL fans are tweeting out messages saying they'll boycott the league if it doesn't cancel him due to his "disrespect for the flag" (a flag I saw recently being used at the capitol to beat up on one of those blue lives that I heard matter so much).

Modulo specific technology, that's how life was if you were gay, Jewsish, Black, Asian or communist at certain times. None of that is new and the point stands.

It was wrong then too.

And what claim stands, exactly? Are you suggesting that because something bad has happened before, it shouldn't be opposed now?

Because something bad has happened before, we should look at it happening now as part of an ongoing problem, instead of characterising it as new phenomenon.

I get your point, but if you tell me I did a bad thing, I can answer in one of two ways: “you did a bad thing too, so you have no right to criticise me”, or “you did a bad thing too, maybe we should have a frank conversation about why we both fell into the same trap”.

I don't think anyone's denying that the desire to cancel those who believe differently is an ongoing problem; in fact, that is implicitly acknowledged when recent actions are described as witch-hunts or McCarthyism. Those allusions to history are powerful precisely because this behavior isn't new.

And I'd love to see a frank conversation about how we can avoid falling into that trap, but such a discussion has to start by acknowledging that it is a trap; that is to say, that cancel culture is wrong.

If what you’re saying is that the New York Times is now the progressive version of Liberty University then I accept that concession.

Regarding your edit:

> Edit: Forgot to mention this extreme example of cancel culture: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/professor-who-wore-hijab-...

The professor was fired from a Christian school for making an assertion (that Muslims and Christians “worship the same god”) that, according to its theology, amounts to heresy: https://www.businessinsider.com/professor-maybe-fired-for-hi...

> “Contrary to some media reports, social media activity and subsequent public perception, Dr. Hawkins' administrative leave resulted from theological statements that seemed inconsistent with Wheaton College's doctrinal convictions, and is in no way related to her race, gender, or commitment to wear a hijab during Advent," Wheaton's administration said in a statement released December 16th.

So if your point is that cancel culture is the expression of a new progressive theology, then again I accept your concession.

I had to cancel my NYT (after 15 years) because it has gone from center left to far left cancel culture bastion. They follow the guilty until proven innocent mindset of the current generation of "twitterati" and sucumb to their whims.

Do you have examples of the NYT cancelling someone for nonbigoted views?

Who did the NYT cancel who had anything other than mainstream center-left views? (Serious question. Maybe they did and I just wasn’t aware of it.)

As it happens, there's an example being discussed here on HN right now: the NYT pushed out Donald McNeil Jr. for saying "You should never call someone a [N-word]".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26306020

From the daily beast -

> McNeil repeatedly made racist and sexist remarks throughout the trip including, according to two complaints, using the “n-word.”

I don’t understand how this is related to cancel culture, given it’s been corporate policy to not make racist and sexist remarks for decades? And just, regular human decency? What are the arguments for keeping this person employed by a major news organization?

That’s not what he did, any more than the dictionary is “racist” for printing a slur in order to refer to it. See: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/new-york-times-don-m...

From the article:

> In the absence of a full accounting of this episode, I can’t make any firm judgment about the merits of McNeil’s departure. For all I know, he could have been acting unprofessionally for years, and it took a few teens to force the Times to take action it should have taken years ago.

So this is a he said they said situation. The nymag article doesn’t account for the sexist accusations as well. The NYT say they performed an investigation and based on that decided to fire him. So if you believe the NYT is liable to fire a senior reporter over the say so if a few “woke” college students you will feel justified to protest this. If you believe the NYT corroborated the college students story that were extremely uncomfortable due to actual sexist/racist behavior and then fired him, it doesnt look like much of a story.

Neither you nor I know the specifics of what he said or didn’t say - that’s only him, the students, and maybe to an extent the NYT investigators. I’m not saying I inherently agree with the assessment of one side at all here, just that to say he was “canceled” is quite a bit of a reach.

First, the students were in high school, not college. This story is all about details.

Second, what sexist language, exactly? What did he actually say? We certainly can't trust the mere accusation from a source like The Daily Beast. And again, this story is all about details.

Third, it's easy to believe the NYT overreacted here given the evidence from other incidents. For example:

James Bennet, the editorial page editor, resigned under pressure after publishing an op-ed by a sitting US Senator.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/business/media/james-benn...

Lauren Wolfe, a freelance editor, claims she was fired for tweeting “Biden landing at Joint Base Andrews now. I have chills.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/25/lauren-wo...

Bari Weiss, who accused the paper of "unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge" described the situation as:

> Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor.

> Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.

> All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they’ll have to do to advance in their careers. Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain.

> Even now, I am confident that most people at The Times do not hold these views. Yet they are cowed by those who do. Why? Perhaps because they believe the ultimate goal is righteous. Perhaps because they believe that they will be granted protection if they nod along as the coin of our realm—language—is degraded in service to an ever-shifting laundry list of right causes. Perhaps because there are millions of unemployed people in this country and they feel lucky to have a job in a contracting industry.

> Or perhaps it is because they know that, nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back. Too wise to post on Slack, they write to me privately about the “new McCarthyism” that has taken root at the paper of record.

https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter

You can read McNeil's perspective: https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-p...

No one reasonable thinks he made a racist remark.

I think he posted a reasonable and thoughtful response - in it however be pretty much admits he could’ve said some very disparaging things.

> I told him what I’d actually said in Peru. He said, “Donald, you sound exactly like my father. He would also say ‘You can’t dress like a thug to a job interview and expect to get the job.’ But from you, it sounds racist.” I said “How is ‘thug’ racist? What about Thug Life Records?” He said “It’s almost the equivalent of the n-word. Don’t you know about Marshawn Lynch?’’ I said: “He plays for Seattle?” I could hear him sigh. “No, Donald, let me explain…”

So it seems like he by his own admission probably said some stuff that was frankly out of bounds. But doesn’t necessarily mean he deserves to be fired.

Being blind to how one speaks and how it affects others however, is not a trait that I’d imagine most newsrooms are looking for, at all. His finally thought:

> One last thought: what’s happened to me has been called a “witch hunt.” It isn’t. It’s a series of misunderstandings and blunders.

I mean, I feel like that says it all? A victim of a changing culture? Probably. But sound judgement in the here and now is a prerequisite for employment in an industry like journalism. You can’t just lie back and wax nostalgic about how things that were acceptable aren’t now, and believe that excuses ones current actions. Hopefully we’ve progressed a bit. It’s sad what happened to him, but I get the feeling he knows he did make a few “off-color” remarks and was quite unaware of the lens society views comments like that. The latter part is probably the real fault.

This is such a perfect example, thank you. The outrage machine, ever in search of new fuel, can never stop finding new things to be outraged about.

Now it's manufactured outrage about the word "thug", a word used quite recently by President Biden, and not that long ago by President Obama.

Suddenly "it’s almost the equivalent of the n-word."

How could a coronavirus reporter possibly keep up with that?

When my grandpa used the word thug its absolutely racist. He would call literally any black person without chinos on a thug. That was and is common.

Alright, but what does that have to do with McNeil?

If you don't understand, you're not paying attention. There's a big difference between saying a word and using a word. He was answering a question about someone else's use of the word and trying to clarify. What he essentially said was "Did she actually say 'n_____'?"

It sounds to me like a few kids at this conference were butthurt for being told they were wrong about completely unrelated questions, and pounced like jackals for anything to make this guy look like a nazi. "I might be completely wrong about Jared Diamond and look like a dumbass... but 'n______' came out of this guy's mouth at some point! Get him!"

I’m paying attention, but my filter is different than yours. I am pretty liable to think that sheltered college students can be very overly sensitive to usages of words, but on the other hand the accusations (according to the daily beast article) don’t seem to center around the usage of a word, and the NYT investigated.

If it fits ones narrative then they’ll believe it one way. If it fits ones narrative that old reporter said a bunch of stuff that demonstrated really questionable judgement if not disdain, then you’ll believe it that way. The NYT say they investigated, so it comes down to whether you believe them to be fair in that process (I would think if I worked there I’d want it to be a fair process). Not having any primary information, I don’t feel compelled to make any judgement of fault here.

Older reporters are expensive. It was an easy way to force early retirement and save on payroll; an economic decision.

Are we supposed to believe a vague allegation from a publication that so badly misrepresents a statement like "You should never call someone a [n-word]"?

His use of that word was supposed to be a smoking gun, but instead their story seems to be all smoke and mirrors.

That's a perfect example of cancel culture: the mere allegation is enough, proof is neither required nor given.

The problem is that Christians are varied. For Catholics, for instance, God of Muslims and Christians is the same, and the Pope has explicitly stated so.

Some Evangelical Christians, being Protestants, have a ton of disagreement with Catholics, and disagree at this point, too.

Muslims universally agree, AFAICT, because Muhammad himself stated this explicitly (and Christ figures prominently as a prophet in Quran).

See a short analysis in [1].

Even though the OP was not correct at classifying the case as a manifestation of "cancel culture", I can see the similarity. It is in the same intolerance and unwillingness to discuss and listen in either case. The truth is known, any doubt is a vice, whoever disagrees should be shamed away. This is what I find the most dangerous part of the phenomenon.

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2015/12/20/460480698/do-christians-and-m...

The Christian faith is based on the fundamental fact that Jesus is God in human flesh. I worship Jesus. Muslims do not. No Muslim will claim to worship the same God as I do.

I will not even try to discuss the intricacies of Trinity; the Nicene Council tried hard to come to an agreement regarding it, and in 1054, details of it were the cause of the Great Schism.

We’re not talking about the intricacies, though. We’re talking about the basics of it.

Every Christian worships Jesus as God. No Muslim will. It’s that simple.

When Muhammad says that Jesus is a prophet, it is a rejection of what Jesus claimed about Himself. “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me.”

Many of course have tried to act as though the two are compatible, but when you come right down to it, I believe what Jesus said, and Muhammad didn’t.

If you believe this, then you must also believe that Christians and Jews do not worship the same God since obviously Jews do not believe in the deity of Jesus either.

Correct. But this is nothing new. Just as when the Jews were bowing down to the golden calf that Aaron made, they were not worshipping Jehovah, though they claimed to be.

Jesus is "the son" and Muhammad is "the prophet" of the same God.

If you’re trying to tell me what I believe, you’re wrong. By the way, I’m a pastor.

If you’re trying to tell me what Muslims believe, you’re also wrong.

Saying that Jesus is the Son of God is very different from saying that He is a prophet of God. That difference is precisely why Muslims cannot agree that Jesus is the Son of God and why I cannot agree that Muhammad is a prophet of God.

> If you’re trying to tell me what I believe, you’re wrong. By the way, I’m a pastor.

I don't dispute that's what you believe, but it isn't the position of all Christians.

The Catholic Church is quite explicit about its belief that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. It has expressed that belief in the decree Nostra aetate of the Second Vatican Council, and numerous other Vatican documents since. And the Catholic Church is not alone among Christians in this belief.

I think there is a real disagreement among Christians as to whether the God of Islam is a (somewhat distorted) account of the God of Christianity (the official Catholic position, but certainly some Protestants agree with it too), or whether it is a completely different entity (the position of yourself among others).

I think from the Muslim point of view – the Islamic designation of Christians as "People of the Book" only makes sense if Muslims believe that Christians worship the same God as they do, even if wrongly and confusedly.

Geez Christians can be so sensitive about minor things. You can believe whatever you want, I don't care. But it is a fact that the traditions derive from the same jewish abrahmic God. If you don't like it that doesn't change the fact.

Me: Javascript is a version of Java for the web.

Techy: Ummm... no.

Me: Techies can be so sensitive about minor things. You can believe whatever you want, I don't care. But it is a fact that Java and Javascript are both programming languages. If you don't like it that doesn't change the fact.

> So if your point is that cancel culture is the expression of a new progressive theology,

Wheaton’s college is an extremely narrow evangelical Protestant theology, that as well as dismissing Hawkins for her statements and firing a professor a few years before for becoming Catholic as it violated the schools duty to employ faculty embodying it's Protestant ideals, also led it to sue against the ACA’s preventive services mandate.

I'm not sure why you would suggest that “cancellation” under that theology has anything to do with progressivism.

I’m not saying Wheaton’s cancellation is progressive. I’m pointing out that OP is essentially admitting that left-wing cancel culture is a progressive analogue to Wheaton’s “extremely narrow evangelical Protestant theology.”

>We've always had cancel culture.

It seems pretty obvious that you don't understand that any culture has norms and boundaries, but only pathological cultures become entirely reactionary and define themselves purely in terms of opposition to something.

>You can go back further to McCarthyism

That's exactly what we're going back to and you have to be truly blind to think this is a good thing.

I don't know if I've met or heard of anyone that defines themselves solely in a reactionary way. Maybe you could expand on some ways you're seeing that?

many of us were against it when the puritanical right was censoring people/art/media, and we're still against it now that it's a puritanical left censoring people/art/media.

why is that so hard to understand and to be consistent about this? people need to stop getting distracted by naked partisanship and focus on the issue. a principled stance is key!

now we're seeing big tech getting roped in and the tools of censorship are expanding. you may be fine with that now, but the tools will change hands. imagine them in the hands of your enemy.

Exactly some of my younger friends don't understand that voices from the right have a place too. Cancelling everything that you don't like or that makes you feel uncomfortable is a dangerous echo chamber philsophy that leads to dictators in waiting (see Trump) . I am a progressive who highly values the Bill of Rights as critical to keeping us free from despotism but I know that a huge portion of the country isn't progressive and to turn them into villains and "evil" people that are easy to hate is very dangerous.

Frankly, who cares whether this is new or not? Why does that even matter?

It's negatively affecting people (for this article, the young authors who are self-censoring), and should be fought against.

Because we have people pretending it's new so they can drum up outrage and gain power. Because we have people playing the victim after being fired for being intolerable to work with.

Most importantly, we have politicians adopting authoritarian attitudes as a reaction to it. Private companies have a right to "cancel" whomever they want, whether that takes the form of banning someone from a website or of canceling a contract. Yet certain politicians want to interfere in private websites or publishers by limiting their ability to exercise editorial control.

I don't know the situation across the pond. I'm writing from an American perspective, where the term "cancel culture" has been entirely co-opted by cynical politicians.

>Because we have people pretending it's new so they can drum up outrage and gain power. Because we have people playing the victim after being fired for being intolerable to work with

This is the mindset at fault. This idea that intolerance is objective, when clearly it isn't. This idea that certain ideas, regardless of their merit, are simply intolerant and must be met with collective, unilateral intolerance, which typically aligns with progressive politics.

>Most importantly, we have politicians adopting authoritarian attitudes as a reaction to it

This is an ironic take, considering the entire premise behind cancel culture is a collective authoritarianism.

>Private companies have a right to "cancel" whomever they want, whether that takes the form of banning someone from a website or of canceling a contract.

And this is perhaps the most misleading part of the comment. This isn't strictly about private companies cancelling people (although that's also a problem when incentives are aligned to effectively remove cancelees from the public square). This is about rabid, authoritarian mobs attacking individuals for dissent, and the fact that loud minorities are dictating corporate action with a specific political slant.

People were complaining about cancel culture long before politicians. And possibly the most pressing issue is the fact that it isn't that these ideas themselves are intolerant, or even factually incorrect, it's the fear of some of their implications that is responsible for this conditioned suppression of their discourse, and unpersoning of anyone daring enough to ask certain questions. It's like banning research on fission because it could be used to create nuclear weapons. It's egregious anti-intellectualism to forbid certain questions or discussions strictly because of their worst implications.

You aren't paying attention if you think people are complaining about being fired because they're hard to work with.

This (Mexican-American) guy was fired for a photo that for a brief moment showed his hand making an OK sign out the window of a truck because for a few months the mainstream media tried to convince everyone that the OK sign is a white supremacist symbol: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/502975-cal...

It's new and bad that unknown authors can face massive backlash while they're still unknown. You can sell twenty copies of your first book and get twenty million calls for a boycott in response, if someone photographs a page and tweets a hot take.

That was technically possible before social media, but only if someone powerful decided to make an example of you. Now it can happen because a random person was bored or in a bad mood.

That's specifically what Ishiguro was complaining about. He even said he wasn't worried about influential people like himself (or all the examples you gave). I don't think he used the phrase "cancel culture," either.

> Apparently now that folks aren't just being cancelled for supporting gay marriage, the free exchange of ideas is suddenly important.

Some people suddenly started caring about the free exchange of ideas and others suddenly stopped, but you might be surprised how many just continued. To me, the ones who suddenly stopped are the biggest hypocrites of all.

Honestly, it's viewpoints like yours that I despise the most. We have innocent people losing their careers with no due process, just mob justice, and what do you people do? "Oh, republicans did it 30 years ago, so any criticism is invalid." Honestly, F that. I was never even alive for what you are talking about. How about we try to build a better society where people don't lose their jobs for their views, rather than pursue some sadistic version of "payback" towards the right for what they did 30 years ago?

Moral policing is a far older struggle than a recent US-centric partisan squabble. I’m with you in that I wish more people held liberal values, but reducing a complex, entrenched cultural phenomenon present throughout human history to such a myopic view of the present isn’t likely to improve the situation you’re concerned about.

I think this person isn't saying it's fine. They're pointing out that the outrage about this is dissociated from the fact that this has been a longstanding problem and therefore likely has significantly deeper issues than the surface-level symptoms (eg. self-censorship).

Pointing out one incident almost 20 years ago isn't evidence of a long standing problem. The world is a different place with social media today, making the problem both more widespread, and more damaging to people. There have always been boycotts and attempts at cancellation, but the power of the mob is amplified in the current moment.

Multiple incidents were pointed out, and I legitimately don't know if it's more damaging today than it was before. This is a country that burned black wall street to the ground over an accusation. I actually, seriously don't know if the problem is more widespread or more damaging given the history in the USA.

I will say it is most certainly a problem, and I think it likely has much deeper roots than "social media exists, only now are people being hurt by mob mentality". It may be that social media only makes mob mentality more obvious to people, so now everyone is aware of it. But then the problem is why did we ever develop mob mentality in the first place....

They edited in a second example after my comment. But it is a telling edit, they clearly looked for a second example, and the one they found is in no way a good one. There was no mob rallying against that professor. The school fired her (stupidly), and protests were in her favor.

There has always been a mob mentality, but it was hard to gather a mob. You had to get people to gather in person, and get them angry. Now you just get them angry, and you can do it sitting at home throwing together some memes and posting on Twitter. The bar didn't just drop a little, it dropped like 99%.

Unprofessional opinion, I think the powers on the right are pushing "cancel culture" to make the crazy stuff they're saying seem okay.

Like, we have a congresswoman blaming California wildfires on Jewish space lasers.

The republicans can deflect from the crazy by claiming "the left" is "cancelling" these people. When in reality any public figure that said crap like that would be shunned. Probably even more in past when American society was outwardly more polite.

I'm very puzzled by the assertion that disproportionate punishment for violating some tribal taboo is old news and uninteresting, while hypocrisy is the real big story. I mean, hypocrisy has been around as long as tribal taboos, so, if anything, you should be just as uninterested in the hypocrisy... and thus uninterested in the whole topic, so why bother making a comment?

The Dixie Chicks are a great example. They vanished from the mainstream basically overnight. People still hate them to this day and probably don't even really remember what they said.

By “vanished from the mainstream” you mean their 2003 album still went 6x platinum, and then their 2007 album went 2x platinum and won 5 Grammys?

Yeah, you unexpectedly demonstrated how effective the ban was. After being blacklisted from thousands of radio stations (including ClearChannel, one of the biggest), their album sales plummeted. Except in Canada.

Also, their next studio album came 14 years (!!!) after Taking The Long Way.

Is this sarcasm or a window into a different side of American culture?

In my circles the Dixie Chicks rebounded from the Bush backlash and had their biggest pop hit ever in response to it ("Not Ready to Make Nice"); they became more respected in the wake of it than they ever had been.

And the attempt to cancel France. Going so far to rename french fries "freedom fries".

All because France thought going to war with Iraq in 2003 was a bad idea.

The “freedom fry” troupe can actually be traced back even farther to WWI

If you’ve ever wondered why “frankfurters” are now called “hot dogs” or why “sauerkraut” was called “liberty cabbage” for a hot minute, it’s because of anti-German sentiment in the US [1]

[1] https://www.hppr.org/post/freedom-fries-liberty-cabbage-myth

Not just the US - Berlin, Ontario was renamed to Kitchener (after British WWI general Lord Kitchener) in 1916.

I thought this was a joke.

It isn't.

Well, the "Dixie Chicks" have been cancelled again, and now are just "The Chicks".

I think what's interesting is the moral policing is no longer coming from the religious right.

I recommend "The Realignment" podcast which often discusses why this shift has occurred: https://the-realignment.simplecast.com/

>>I think what's interesting is the moral policing is no longer coming from the religious right.

The right (religious and otherwise) hasn't reduced it's policing of ideological orthodoxy at all.

Now, if you threw “exclusively” into that sentence, there might be something like a point.

maybe internally, but i haven't heard of conservatives getting random kids on twitter expelled from school lately

> haven't heard of conservatives getting random kids on twitter expelled from school lately

I have, for actual kids (as in children, not young adults), including lately. Usually for something like “their mother has an OnlyFans page”.

this example is obviously reprehensible but does not seem like the same phenomenon

Source please.

It's coming from both sides you can't deny that. Look at the dangerous appointments made to the judicial branch. While the far left dominate twitter and social media and try to cancel everyone the evangelicals are doing pretty well at cancelling liberal voting rights and women's rights if you aren't paying attention. It's as if people things others don't have a right to think in any way other than the way they think and live.

ACB is so “dangerous” she might vote to overturn Roe and thereby make abortion a legislative rather than constitutional issue, as in almost every developed country such as France. https://repository.law.uic.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2.... Far-right wing ACB might possibly vote the same way as the ... European Court of Human Rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A,_B_and_C_v_Ireland

> A, B and C v Ireland is a landmark 2010 case of the European Court of Human Rights on the right to privacy under Article 8. The court rejected the argument that article 8 conferred a right to abortion

Or maybe the Overton window has just shifted very left in the US about what social issues are human rights and what can properly be decided by legislative majorities?

And if far-right ACB were successful in making the right to privacy in the US similar to the one under the European Convention on Human Rights, the US states would be free to draw the line for on-demand abortions without any medical emergencies at 12-13 weeks, like nearly all European countries do and 70% of Americans support, instead of at 22-26 weeks, as is required by Roe. https://www.france24.com/en/20180525-abortion-laws-vary-eu-i.... https://news.gallup.com/poll/235469/trimesters-key-abortion-...

Of course, overturning Roe isn’t really in the cards. There are just 3 votes for it. In June Medical just two Justices, (not including ACB, who was not yet on the Court) signaled a willingness to overturn Roe. Unlike deciding a case in the first instance, overruling an existing precedent is an act of discretion. A Justice who disagrees with the merits can (and likely will) still support to uphold the precedent.

Much more likely than ACB overturning Ginsberg’s legacy with respect to abortion is ACB upholding Ginsberg’s legacy with respect to the Equal Protection Clause. At the ACLU, Ginsberg built that legacy on a textualist interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause, challenging laws that discriminated against men supposedly to benefit women as violations of equal protection. Under the current progressive worldview, that literal interpretation of “equal” treatment under the law will prove an impediment to importing critical theory into the law. That area, where the precedent isn’t as clear cut, is much more likely to be an area where ACB has an impact.

>Far-right wing ACB might possibly vote the same way as the ... European Court of Human Rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A,_B_and_C_v_Ireland

> > A, B and C v Ireland is a landmark 2010 case of the European Court of Human Rights on the right to privacy under Article 8. The court rejected the argument that article 8 conferred a right to abortion

Article 8 states:

1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

COTUS A14 states:

...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

The latter is clearly broader.

>the US states would be free to draw the line for on-demand abortions without any medical emergencies at 12-13 weeks,

A farcical conjecture, when we all know the actual likely outcome.

I agree that parts of the left are engaged in moral policing, but I think you may be mis-speaking when you say it is "no longer coming from the religious right."

I think it still is, it just isn't a monopoly?

Well, yes, some Left are no less religious, even if their religion is not the old Christianity usually confessed by the traditional Right.

If you look at the history of 20th century, you may find a number of instances when e.g. Communism was professed (and enforced) with a truly religious fervor and lack of doubt. Ironically, the same thing happens time and again to Atheism.

I also find this topic far more interesting than the fairly cliche discussion over “cancel culture”. It seems like conservatives have caught up to post modernism, whereas liberals are now passionate about objective truth and morality being black and white. I really wonder how tenable these positions are going forward.

No conservatives are still conservatives. They don’t need to embrace post-modernism to oppose what they perceive as a heretical religion.

Insofar as right-wing people now invoke the liberal notions of free expression it’s only because that was a middle ground that allowed coexistence and liberals are now sitting aside while progressives try to blow up that compromise. (And also because a bunch of center right people think it’s a good thing—it’s not like the right is uniformly absolutist evangelical types).

Put differently, Christian evangelical are angry that liberals broke all these taboos in the name of free expression, and now progressives are trying to treat Christian evangelical beliefs as the basis for cancellation. There is nothing hypocritical or contradictory about this.

The fact that you go to the word “hypocritical” makes me think we’re already in agreement on the basic point. I’m not trying to make a value judgement here.

Go look at these arguments about confederate statues. Liberals condemn the moral faults of the person. Conservatives excuse it as values of the time; moreover they appeal to the virtue the society has chosen for the statue to represent. There’s nothing more post modern than that.

From your post, it seems your view is that conservatives adopted these tools because they are the tools of an oppressed minority, which conservatives now perceive themselves to be. I think that very well might be the right explanation. But I also wonder if this shift is more of a demographics thing. Post modernism can’t be the young, hip mindset for the rest of human history. I wonder if young people today are carving out some new view of the world, which is far more interesting to me than arguments over celebrity Twitter accounts.

I’d rather have them vigorously defending for their right to be a bigot than be a bigot actually with cultural power, having grown up during the latter.

Free expression of contrary views is also important (though not ALL contrary views). What I think will happen is further Balkanization of the internet. We can’t all play in the exact same sandbox. Echo chambers are not new - people lived within distinct communities before the internet. I lived in a 50/50 liberal conservative town growing up and I interacted with only other kids of conservatives outside of school.

Now if we could have platforms that didn’t reward shallow engagements maybe we could get somewhere.

> Now if we could have platforms that didn’t reward shallow engagements maybe we could get somewhere.

... and that is precisely why I find HN (despite its flaws) to be one of the most interesting places for discourse. The aggressive moderation by dang and friends gives this forum a coherence that is hard to find anywhere else.

> Apparently now that folks aren't just being cancelled for supporting gay marriage, the free exchange of ideas is suddenly important.

It was always important. What makes you think that the people (like myself) who oppose cancel culture were against gay marriage?

The demographic consisting of "people who oppose cancel culture" were instrumental in making progress for gay acceptance.

If we allowed cancel culture to flourish, there would be no acceptance of homosexuality, women wouldn't have equal rights, minorities would be denied opportunity, etc.

Considering all the benefits that freedom of speech brought us, you now suddenly want to take it away under the guise of "freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences"?

Do you seriously think that there are no more benefits from allowing people to advance their cause? To speak up for or against any particular idea?

I really really want to know: why are some ideologies so perfect that none be allowed to criticise them?

If X and Y are wrong, and someone condemns only X, only Y, or X and Y, you should just agree with them.

If someone condemns X and doesn't mention Y, or the reverse, it is unreasonable to react how you've reacted here.

Not really. The intention of OP is to demonstrate that the people often mentioning cancel culture are not doing it out of advocacy for free speech norms but rather because it suits their particular style of bigotry at this very moment.

There are people in that category. But do you think Kazuo Ishiguro is one of them?

It's just...jarring to read the OP. It reads (to me) like "the right-wing does this all the time...now it's our turn!"

A professor at a Christian college claimed to be in religious solidarity with Muslims. That’s pretty much like saying that you’re attempting to further Facebook’s goals as a Google employee. Of course you get fired.

She was fired for saying that Muslims and Christians worship the same god, which is literally heresy according to many Christians: https://www.npr.org/2015/12/20/460480698/do-christians-and-m.... Jews and Muslims reject the trinity, which is an essential part of the confession of faith in most branches of Christianity. So it’s quite loaded to say that the Jewish and Muslim god is “the same” as the Christian god.

It's exactly the same God. Islam is basically Judaism fanfic, and Muslims accept Jesus as a prophet of God (though denying his divinity). Christians are upset about the Mohammed thing, and about the two other faiths downgrading Jesus, but there's no question that the dude doing the smiting in the Old Testament is the same God in all three Abrahamic traditions.

Different religions are going to have angry doctrinal differences by definition, but you can't let that obscure the obvious. We're not talking about tengrism or Brahma here.

Right. That’s my point. It’s simply not an example of cancel culture.

Yes I’m agreeing, just elaborating. It’s like Planned Parenthood firing an executive for being a pro-life activist. That’s not cancel culture. The NYT doing the same would be.

I guess. The Jesuits taught me they were all pretty much the same dude.

> A professor at a Christian college claimed to be in religious solidarity with Muslims.

I'm not sure if the greater theological offense was the solidarity with Muslims or quoting the Pope in support of it (Wheaton had only a few years before fired a professor for converting to Catholicism; “Christian” isn't a label of a monolithic group in practice.)

It doesn’t matter. Either way you are not dealing with cancel culture. You are dealing with somebody who has gone on the record s as opposing the fundamental goals of the organization she works for. As I said before, of course you get fired.

Virtually every instance of firing or other institutional disaffiliation attributed to “cancel culture” follows the same pattern: someone—inside or outside an institution—complains to an institution (of those within it empowered to make decisions on this kind of issue) with an allegation that the institutions relationship with someone violates what they perceive to be the fundamental values of the institution, the institution reviews and reaches a similar conclusion, and the relationship is terminated.

That’s like equating a cruise missile with a cap gun because “they both just make explosions.”

This comment is a fine answer to your ideas: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26311621

Cancel culture is just the modern witch hunt and it didn't start with the witch hunt either. It's just the most ridiculous form that everyone is aware of. This is engraved in into our genes as humans and no amount of thinking will make it go away. People love declaring individuals as enemies and receiving confirmation from a group of other people who are declaring that same individual an enemy.

Socrates is a prominent early example of "cancel culture" he was cancelled circa 400 BC for Impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens.

I suppose we are fortunate that nowadays a twitter ban doesn't come with an accompanying sip of hemlock.

Impiety is essentially failing to respect something considered sacred.

To (mis)quote another controversial philosopher "History repeats itself, first as tragedy than as farce"

On this specific subject it's hard to think of parallels and if there were parallels then that was bad anyway.

>He said they may be concerned that an "anonymous lynch mob will turn up online and make their lives a misery".

>[...]

>The 66-year-old said he was worried that less established authors were self-censoring by avoiding writing from certain viewpoints or including characters outside their immediate experiences.

In the past you might have had e.g. Catcher in the Rye or Lolita or whatever banned from libraries, but low-profile authors weren't receiving death threats. The important question isn't whether the critics are fair or what their politics are; the important question is what kind of an impact do they have, and a chilling effect is worth being concerned about.

It's all well and good to point out the hypocrisy on this coming from the right; but that doesn't invalidate the issue. And you're right - it's pretty old, both on the right and the left. Here's a bona fide socialist ranting about leftist groupthink ... in 1943:

"But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness."

(https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...)

I'd say that the left doing its best imitation of the worst things the right does is a bad thing.

"But the right has always done this" should be all the evidence you need that what you're doing is wrong.

> Turing being prosecuted for being gay

Excluding people because they exclude others is not the same as excluding people because of who they are.

Its the difference between ‘cancel culture’, and plain bigotry.

If you don’t want to be excluded, stop being a bully.

Of course we've always had it but the current generation of political far left have turned it into an art form on twitter and other platforms.

I’ve always been relatively libertarian, and the libertarians I know have consistently opposed cancel culture before it was a meme. There are plenty of folks who are consistent on this one, and I hope that we’re finally at a turning point (though I doubt it).

Before Twitter, I never saw headlines like "X actor under fire for previously dating Y actor". Clicking on such trends, you find the Twitterverse raging and debating totally invented controversies.

People are becoming offended by everything now.

They're being suggested reasons to be offended, and many seem to adopt that stance.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this is being stoked by robots. Perhaps corporate or state actors.

What if "being offended" is a mind virus that spreads easily through the power of suggestion?

The media landscape is more diverse now. In the past, television stations would regularly censor material in order to avoid getting “cancelled” by the Christian right.[1] Cancel culture is just a new word for an age-old illiberal phenomenon.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention_co...

> I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this is being stoked by robots. Perhaps corporate or state actors.

I have always believed that a platform should verify identities and have a zero-tolerance for bots if we (as a society) are to trust any information coming from that platform. This is not to say that platforms that don't do these things should not exist but that we should not take them as seriously as we do today. Unfortunately, this completely goes against the business model of many of these social media companies.

See also the phrase “Banned in Boston.” Some of the replies seem to assume that cancel culture is worse because it is more indiscriminate or less well-informed. Social conservatives in Boston banned a $5 bill for showing an unclothed breast.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banned_in_Boston

The difference now is social media makes it easier for media outlets to publish libel as fact from unverified accusations solely interpreted as fact

I don't think this is a fair characterization. A lot of the biggest critics of cancel culture today (Sam Harris, Bret Weinstein, Bill Maher, etc) are moderate liberals who also criticized the right-wing Christian fundamentalist cancel culture of the Bush era. It's not hypocrisy, they really have been in favor of free speech the whole time.

Surprising how much press "Flying Cars" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the VCs. We've always had "Flying Cars".

https://weburbanist.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/curtiss-a...

> Surprising how much press "cancel culture" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the left. We've always had cancel culture.

It's a new thing on the internet because the people who grew up here thought we'd be safe from the people who made our lives hell before university for not fitting in.

Unfortunately the unwashed masses came in and took over and are now throwing us out because we don't act like how they expect us to act.

That Stallman got cancelled for being right while everyone else who took money from a pedophile rapist got away should tell you all you need to know about the state of the internet.

This is whataboutism. Just because something may have always been, doesn't make it any less valid to talk about ending it.

Cancel culture used to be just a bear in woods. Scary but not super scary.

Now it's Godzilla stomping through Seattle.

It is magnified vastly by social media. That makes a big difference.

And 10x that power when the engines of social media are in the hands of the cancellers, as appears to be the case.

Is it? Or are we all working off of anecdotes here. Do you have data to back that up?

Further - it was pretty scary getting cancelled by my parents and community when I came out. I’m glad it wasn’t scary for you.

Yes. It was scary. And now it is much more scary.

The present, much greater, scariness in no way diminishes the prior scariness.

And it was, and is, scary for many many more than just the "gays". Get some perspective here.

Can you quantify how or why it’s worse? It seems like it could also just seem like it’s “worse” to you since it is something that could actually effect you.

It was just never scary to social conservatives. Gay people got "cancelled" so hard they were thrown in jail and disowned from their families.

And laughed as 1/15 or more of a generation died from AIDS. The harm caused by the extreme right is astounding if you’re in one of the targeted groups. Someone being fired for bigoted comments when they work with minorities isn’t even in the same ballpark. And then they put up a gofundme and buy a house or get a conservative media deal.

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