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Comment by newacct583 | Hacker News Reader

The first example cites what I guess is an attempted cancellation of Peter Thiel:

> In his recent book “The Contrarian,” journalist Max Chafkin assigns an ideology to Mr. Thiel, then defines it as “fascist” and even tries to blame this concocted “Thielism” for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. There is little doubt that the book would never have come to be had Mr. Thiel not supported Donald Trump in 2016.

I mean, OK. I guess it's probably unfair. But... to cite this kind of thing as an example of censorious excess and the decline of society and not at least nod to Thiel's own successful cancellation and destruction of Gawker media seems... logically suspect.

I mean, who is it not OK to destroy for ideological reasons and who is fair game?

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> who is it not OK to destroy for ideological reasons and who is fair game

IMHO, that's the problem right there. Once you get into this "you did it, so can I" game, you've set into motion the wheels of destruction. This seems best summarized by this quote:

> Destroying the mechanisms of democracy to preserve democracy won’t work

Incidentally, the history of the aptly descriptive idiom "fighting fire with fire" offers a cautionary tale of its own[0]:

> The source of this phrase was actual fire-fighting that was taken on by US settlers in the 19th century. They attempted to guard against grass or forest fires by deliberately raising small controllable fires, which they called 'back-fires', to remove any flammable material in advance of a larger fire and so deprive it of fuel. This literal 'fighting fire with fire' was often successful, although the settlers' lack of effective fire control equipment meant that their own fires occasionally got out of control and made matters worse rather than better.

[0] https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/fight-fire-with-fire.htm...

Gawker was not "cancelled.". It was driven to bankruptcy by losing a massive defamation lawsuit. They brought it on themselves.

Seems a lot like it's only "cancelled" if the target is right-wing.

They got to make their case in open court and lost. That's like saying Derek Chauvin was "cancelled."

The court system is not particularly equal if you piss off a billionare. And Thiel just went and found something to sue about because he didn't like Gawker's _other_ coverage.

Defamation is illegal and should be illegal. Publications that go around exposing the details of famous people's private lives are trash and nothing of value was lost. This type of lawsuit should happen more often

Gawker chose an illegally filmed sex tape of a washed up celebrity as the hill they wanted to die on, and die they did.

Did Thiel make them host the video in the first place? Did Thiel make them ignore initial injunction for them to take the video down?

I think of “cancellation” as being tried and convicted in the court of public opinion; this is somewhat orthogonal to being tried and convicted in an actual court of law. An example of someone on the left being cancelled is Al Franken.

I don’t think Thiel really changed the public’s opinion of Gawker. They were always considered extremely low-brow tabloid media, and to their users I think that was sort of the appeal. They didn’t shut down due to a drop in popularity, they shut down because a lawsuit bankrupted them.

Right-wing cancelation happens, but it is usually reported as a campaign of harassment.

Instead of calling your advertisers to complain about perceived racism, think unsavory stuff like spam and GamerGate threats.

Right canceling grew out of troll and gamer culture. Left canceling SJW grew out of decades-old activism.

It is of similar type: ganging up on someone your group picked as the next victim, robbing them of their safety or speech without a formal and fair judgment.

But left-wing canceling (say, leaving 100 bad reviews on Yelp for a family business of someone going viral for a 10 second out of context clip on Twitter) is way more advanced and sophisticated. 4chan lost gamergate the moment the press focused on the death threats of a few incapable of expressing their autistic rage in an argument.

The left is more savvy. It knows that a single newspaper photo of 3 activists has similar value to a hundred uncovered protests. They know how to wield the taboo of racism as a weapon to avoid critique. They make you remember why their victim deserved it.

Correct. A canceling is social/mob justice, never settled in a court of law.

To conflate the two is playing into the pitchforks of the cancel crowd. These label legal acts or free speech as illegal racism or hate speech, and we should not go along with that madness.

Cancel tactics are precisely the way they are, because they were designed to function without playing by societies formal rules, or the reasonable defense of choosing not to listen to someone you deeply despise, yet leave their speech and platform alone (they do not care about Alex Jones, but care about the views of those who like to listen to him).

Your absolutely valid point was downvoted/cancelled in a similar manner: projected to be factually incorrect due to political bias against Thiel.

Why would Thiel, an individual, "cancel" and destroy an entire corporation? (And how often does that even happen, anyway?)

It seems disingenuous to not also mention why Thiel was angry with Gawker, and to not also mention that most people will never be in a position to be able to fight back when a giant media corporation publishes private and personal details about our lives.

What is an "attempted cancellation"? Apparently, saying you don't like Peter Thiel's ideology in a book counts.

If I say I don't like your ideology in a hacker news reply, am I attempting to cancel newacct583?

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