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Comment by josephg | Hacker News Reader

> He expects that by calling the publishers of some journal "craven" and "scared", that he's going to elicit a reversal of their decision

Thats not my read of the situation. I agree that if his goal was to convince the authors, it would make sense for him to be more accomodating. And it wouldn't make sense to call them out in public.

But thats not his goal here. To my eyes, this piece takes a shot at the culture which produced their editorial decision. He's calling cancel culture (and its adherents) craven and scared, using this situation as an example.

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What I find amusing is that the same center-right and right-wing mouthpieces that complain the loudest about 'cancel culture' have themselves been deeply involved in attempting to 'cancel' things for the past 40 years, anything they dislike or find distasteful, a random assortment of which includes.

rap music and any music with "vulgar" lyrics (PARENTAL WARNING labels on CDs)

harry potter (satanic magic messages offending the christian right)

construction of neighborhood mosques (we can't have a foreign religion in our white christian suburb, can we???)

french fries (remember freedom fries???)

lgbtq rights

womens' reproductive rights

frank discussion of endemic police brutality

just about anything new, foreign, liberal, confusing or ethnically diverse else that would upset the sensibilities of a deep red state bible belt voter.

I generally agree with you here, but all opponents of cancel culture are not on the right. E.g. me. I can count on one hand the number of republicans I've voted for -- none of which were at the federal level.

It's wrong when people on the right do it, as well as now when those on the left do it.

There are plenty of people with liberal viewpoints that are against both of these groups of cancellers, myself included. Progressive cancel culture is cancerous and so is Conservative cancel culture. So too was the red scare and the inquisition and the Salem witch hunts. Moral panics as a general concept are ridiculous and dangerous to society regardless of political affiliation.

"The right wing censored us during the 20th century, now it's our turn"

Many actual liberals who admire the open and uncensored leftism of 1970 think that both the right wing censorship and the now prevalent not-woke-enough censorship are repulsive.

Except that one of these can only be criticized anonymously.

I don't think those are the same people. For example, one of the most vocal people I know who is speaking out against the culture of censorship is a school librarian. During the early '00s, she organized and promoted Banned Book Week events every year, against the wishes of the rather conservative community, because she thought it was important to have the freedom to read and form your own opinions.

Some people just don't like censorship.

Shouldn't that make us more sympathetic to the issue? In all the fights over those issues it was a constant among the left that free discussion is vital. Was that really just an attractive political stance, held only until it was no longer useful? I don't want to believe that, I have to believe that people were sincere and we can return to it as a universal principle.

It's basic tolerance of intolerance. We want to be tolerant in all things -- be sympathetic -- but the more you are tolerance of intolerance the less tolerance there is in the world.

It's a delicate balance and not one that is so black and white.

To be honest, I've always felt like this was an unproved assertion. Popper made it sound very good, but what attempts to show that it's actually true have been made?

Sure; sometimes its complicated. But it seems pretty simple here. The article in question[1] makes a liberal appeal to care about good art, and care less about the artist. It isn't overtly racist or sexist. It isn't a work of intolerance that we need to steel ourselves to be intolerant over in turn. Its a pretty middle of the road, classically liberal opinion piece that 15 years ago would have been entirely uncontroversial and boring.

Deplatforming someone over this isn't "bravely standing up to intolerance". Deplatforming the author is just simple anti-intellectual intolerance of the diversity of ideas that (used to) make the academy so great.

[1] https://arcdigital.media/self-censorship-in-the-academy-5241...

I think you're deliberately grouping everyone critical of the utter insanity of the modern day "right wing" that way you can attack someone who isn't who you're arguing against without having to discuss their point. It's like people who immediately assume a pro lifer believes in god. They're not necessarily the same people. Tipper Gore isn't Sam Harris.

Judging by the list you wrote, you seem to be very much opposed to moral panics and moralistic censorship. I find it surprising that you're not concurring with the people you're responding to on this. I would've taken you for a liberal person.

What's even more amusing is that the right views the left as hypocrites too, because they were previously against it. Seems like everyone is a hypocrite.

I was convinced that it's a good thing that the right is most impacted by the censorship, as the right was more supportive of capitalism and it caused them to notice some of its problems, while the left is already against it. Needless to say, it didn't turned out exactly how I expected and apparently we're bound to repeat this vicious cycle forever, only normalizing the worst possible tactics along the way.

Isn't that kind of lumping a great number of people with very different mindsets into a big group of Idiots Because They Don't Think Like Me?

I won't spend the time to go through and contradict every single one of your points, but let's not forget that Tipper Gore (Al Gore's wife at the time) was the main push behind the parental advisory labels, freedom fries is a joke to 100% of the people I've talked to about it, and just because not everyone agrees at what point (or whether) an abortion becomes synonymous with a murder does not mean that everyone on the right wants to rule over women (unlike some cultures that do exist to this day in other countries).

> What I find amusing is that the same center-right and right-wing mouthpieces [...] have themselves been deeply involved in attempting to 'cancel' [...] rap music and any music with "vulgar" lyrics (PARENTAL WARNING labels on CDs)

That was Tipper Gore and her cronies (from both parties). The same Tipper Gore that married Al Gore the left-wing/Democrat. I don't think this example supports your argument.

Al Gore also participated in that shit-show of attempted censorship.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipper_Gore [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center

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