The right, has for the past decade or so taken a moral high ground with regards to cancelation. Seems that now they've adopted a "turnaround is fair play" mentality.
One of the defining characteristics of the right is not placing any value on logical consistency. Being a hypocrite will not lose you any support with them.
You can go a lot further back than that. McCarthyism was a powerful cancel culture and vestiges of that still manifest today. Linguistically, the weird and inexplicable way anything to the left of fascism in America can be described as "communism" if someone is in the mood to be pejorative is a vestige of McCarthy, or something even further back from the First Red Scare, I think.
we have a right wing and then a righter wing. bernie sanders is an anomaly, elizabeth warren is just left of center, and i can't think of too many other current politicians at the national level who actually lean left. i guess nominally "the squad" but they mostly present fairly centrist platforms by worldwide standards. no current politicians at the national stage are talking about meaningful economic reform (as in, away from capitalism), police abolition, nationalized health care, or any other typical leftist ideas - not that i'm trying to argue any of these points in this thread - just providing examples of what i mean by "leftist".
whether or not "the left" weaponizes commitment to free expression, "the right" is the only side of that binary who has ever wielded serious political power, and they use it to extremely destructive ends at all times.
maybe someday if we ever have a political party that actually represents leftwing politics we can judge them as harshly. i'll wait.
And that's my cue to take yet another hit to my HN karma by asking, incredulously, "WTF are they teaching kids in school these days?"
> During World War II, the United States forcibly relocated and incarcerated about 120,000 people of Japanese descent in ten concentration camps operated by the War Relocation Authority (WRA), mostly in the western interior of the country.
> During World War II, the camps were referred to both as relocation centers and concentration camps by government officials and in the press. Roosevelt himself referred to the camps as concentration camps on different occasions, including at a press conference held on October 20, 1942.
> In a 1961 interview, Harry S. Truman stated "They were concentration camps. They called it relocation but they put them in concentration camps, and I was against it. We were in a period of emergency, but it was still the wrong thing to do."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camp
> Not to be confused with Extermination camp. A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitation or punishment.
People are more contradictory than pure theory. FDR was progressive in some aspects, regressive in others. A leftie, he wasn’t, and there’s more to politics than mere left/right, or we wouldn’t have trans Trump supporters.
They - and Hitler - are notable for their totalitarianism. I bear no illusions that folks like Stalin wanted anything more than power.
FDR’s era, the furthest left the U.S. has been, true to form had this element... showing how concentrated state power, left or right, risks curtailing freedom.
In modern times, we've seen Guantánamo survive multiple admins on both sides.
In this case I’m not sure if that was inherently related to Roosevelt’s progressive/left policies. A moderate or rightwing government likely would have done something similar at the time.
My argument is that New Deal policies paved the way - culturally, institutionally, legislatively - for the United States to quickly mobilize for war, which also significantly reduced the friction for something like this to occur.
So yes, it could have happened under more centrist regimes entering the war, but the scale and timing would likely have been minimized in comparison.
Culturally I don’t see it as somehow exceptional. US government regularly employed highly authoritarian policies to suppress or remove people based on racial or ideological grounds since the very beginning.
Even in WW1 German Americans had the benefit of being white and forming a very significant proportion of the population so anything like this was obviously infeasible. But their cultural and linguistic identity was suppressed and they were forced to assimilate under the threat of violence.
When you take the Sedition Act and other similar policies in relation to how much of a threat US faced in WW1 compared to WW2 I’d day what Roosevelt did wasn’t that extreme.
In WWI the country was smaller, less centralized, and suppression was cruder - local violence, language bans, mobs.
By WWII the U.S. was far larger, more cohesive, and had a strong federal state; without that scale and central capacity, something like internment would have been much harder to pull off.
During Jim Crow, at the State level in the south, it would be applicable, but that doesn't mean much in today's terms.
Education?
Religious values?
Neanderthal versus Cro-Magnon genelines?
A more-enlightened electorate?
Nothing but your own empty prejudices and comforting assumptions?
It can happen here, and it can happen to your party, too. It just didn't this time.
I consider myself a leftist, but it's a bit naive to think that "this bad, horrible thing" must be associated only with right-leaning ideology. Leftists can do bad, horrible things just as much as right-wing folks can. "Putting people in concentration camps" isn't a right-wing or left-wing thing, it's a totalitarian/anti-human-rights thing. We can argue that, as of late, right-wing people seem to have more of an appetite for that sort of thing, and I'd probably agree, but that doesn't make concentration camps a "right-wing thing".
I would absolutely consider FDR to be one of the most (if not the most) leftist presidents the US has had. His putting people in concentration camps doesn't change that; it just makes him a racist piece of shit, like so many others of his time (not that the time period excuses it).
Well.. if you exclude all the very successful political movements which considered themselves “leftist”.
Bit of a no true Scotsman thing.
These are not even close to the same.
It's devoid of proportionality & it accepts a narrative crafted by the right-wingers themselves through repetition for exactly this purpose. There was never ever any doubt that all the hyperbolic outrage from the right about grassroots "cancel culture" was going to be used by the authors to excuse actual censorship as far as their current power and societal normalization allows them to. Preparing the ground for a "You did it first!" is not exactly innovative, it's fascism 101.
Have you been in a coma for that decade?
He’s definitely right with that sentence. Do you not think it’s generally true that the right has been on the defensive with regards to cancel culture, and thus is constantly preaching about how cancelling is wrong?
The few times they’ve gotten to go on the offensive, they play the same game, cancelling whoever it is they’re upset about. It’s horseshoe theory all over again.
Ezra Klein, who I generally respect, said he got more crap over
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/opinion/charlie-kirk-assa...
than anything else he’s written but I think it was unfortunate that he chose the words because Kirk, among other things, promoted Trump’s lies about the 2000 election, bussed people to the Jan 6 riot, and had a hit list of professors he wanted to punish just like David Horowitz, dad of the Andressen-Horowitz Horowitz. That bit about “prove me wrong” was always disingenuous, it would fool the pearl clutching parents who read The Atlantic and the likes of Ezra Klein. Probably the most harmful thing about illiberal campus leftists is that they allowed illiberal rightists to appear to take the high ground.
To push a domestic metaphor
(Or are the gender roles switched)
I might be off my rocker on this, but!
>prove me wrong
Is such a right-wing to say.
Because it signals that a conservative believes that
*self-improvement is possible*.
Calling out cancel culture today: the youngest kid signals that they give up on self-improvement in favor of acting out, so the elder sibling, who used to be punished for a very similar thing, jumps (gleefully) on it . "Mama look at what she just did!" knowing the parents gonna wring their hands
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAqG00FUOK8
who covers a lot of ground: Shapiro seems rather strong when it comes to articulating that idea of personal responsibility but his satanization of the economic left (e.g. Bernie Sanders) seems forced and unreasonable and Klein sorta "owns" him when it comes to pointing out that many of Trump and Vance's policies and viewpoints are examples of the envy and resentment-based "scavenger" thinking that Shaprio discusses in a dehumanizing way.
Shapiro's attempt to foreclose any difference on economic issues is mirrored, I think, by a certain wish on the left to foreclose difference on cultural issues. One one hand there is an axis that runs through Trotskyites to centrists like Klein who would like to shut down the culture wars because as soon as the culture wars started we started losing [1] [2] but the leftist who enjoys the culture wars is more inclined to satanize the "christofascist" as opposed to the likes of Milton Freedman [3]
There's a tendency on the right to say there is an "objective" reality (the Bible, Ayn Rand's philosophy) whereas Marxism leads you to see there are "two sides" to any issue. It gets the left in no end of trouble thinking about Blacks because if you go talk to Black people you will find they really do see things differently from white people in the aggregate but that they also see things differently from one another.
So like Rhett Butler or Han Solo if I'm asked to take a side on something like "cancel culture" I'm going to say "my side". I'm sure someone got canceled who deserved it and someone got canceled who didn't deserve it. There is no "due process" but there's also a feeling (see Klein) that due process is as much a problem as it is a solution. I sure as hell hate the "debate" over it.
[1] that theory would say that Reagan's economic policies didn't have any appeal to a mass base
[2] to be fair, almost always white male although sometimes gay
[3] and it's a credit to the rise of financialization: when I grew up I learned the financial advice that if I take care of my bank account my credit score will take care of itself; the paradigm for financial advise on both the internet and in magazines has been "(1) stop people from stealing your identity, and (2) use this one weird trick to raise your FICO score" since 2010 -- leftists once might have cared about labor, opportunity, taxes and such, today they care about insurance (e.g. health insurance) and credit (student loans). The idea that you might have your own money to spend on something you want to spend it on is right out of the 1950s like the stay at hom emome.
Ah, here was a great place to substitute your coinage "identarian"-- Ime I can't distinguish the identarians who enjoy the culture wars in terms of left from right (unless we equate right with white, & that's something we have to amicably agree to disagree :) one could forgiveably id the killer of Kirk as a right-identarian, eg, but that still feels less correct than simply "identarian" (normal folks would not resort to moderately planned violence).. you can see by the shell engravings TR sort of took pleasure in the planning vs Luigi..
(Yes, in other words, the economic left, or more precisely the nonpractising left, was too welcoming of identarians in precisely the same way the churchgoing center wasnt- 1970s to mid 1980s)
Now as for "leftist" in [3] I'd assume you mean "what passes for a classic leftist (like Bernie & 2000s Paul) amongst the millennials/gen z". More to say here, insurance over taxes is imho the correct Marxist valuation.. ? After all "from each according to his ability etc etc" is a succinct description of insurance
>due process is as much a problem as it is a solution
Now this is an interesting take, well, I can see Klein saying it in exasperation (in the podcast-to-be-read-- thanks!), but what is your emotional-valence here? (I can guess, but the guess would be more intricate than I can jot down from the hip :)
A mini-shot though.. if one truly enjoys hard work, problems would be as much of a joy as solutions. Centrists (like PG and "functional" Grothendieck) would be careful to tolerate schlep without seeing value in labor-in-itself.. schizos right+epsilon of center, or stoics* left+epsilon a-ways.. however..
*I would substitute "epicureans" here, but "stoics" would do fine for pedantry
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/notes-on-the-heavenly-a...
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/constituent-parts-of-a-...
I can't approve completely of his appropriate of dynamical systems theory but the idea that Kirk was "killed by memes" appeals to me as does Fred's description of these as "brainrot". People on the right are likely to see some transfurry in there [1] whereas left-leaning women are going to see anything coded young male as right wing. The FBI profile of the postmodern shooter is that he had a copy of The Communist Manifesto but he kept up his neighbors listening to Rush (the Canadian band) and people will make what they want of it.
As for Klein and due process I can say I am very frustrated not least because due process is frustrating but because we're in a dilemma because the alternatives are worse. (I can see how Curtis Yarvin's crypto-degrowth philosophy of "just wait until the dieoff and we can go back to solar-economy feudalism" could appeal to some) Of course that frustration with due process is the subject of his recent book Abundance which I have ambiguous feelings about: part of me wants to believe it, but I think it is a tough sell to many people who see it as warmed over neoliberalism [3] who think rent control is a good idea, like the populism of Matt Stoller, never mind this sort of usually unstated issue
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/good-cities-cant-exist-without...
as it is people will complain that somebody else complains about not being safe downtown while they (1) live a hikkiomori lifestyle or (2) live in the suburbs and/or order a private taxi for their burrito instead of going to a restaurant.
[1] my take though is furries are even-headed, as a committed kemonomimi [2] I always trying to bait them based on their bad taste in art
[2] https://safebooru.donmai.us/posts/3773068
[3] "but wait... we're not talking liberating the private sector from the government, we're talking about liberating the government from the government!"
Thanks for the Klein pointers, I see the sections on rent are precisely what I require to formulate copy for an insurance-market-based ad to thoughtful Marxists :) TODO-- close-read those with a postulate that Klein has read & wrestled with late era Jacobs
Decarlos Brown is someone I'd ID as right-identarian & more specifically that kind of center-right+epsilon schizo I was hinting at (if I put myself in a Martian's shoes)
But reflecting on that with FredDeBoer freshly paged in: the left-identarians (predominantly women plus a smattering of depressive gays who haven't mustered the courage to experiment with hormone replacement therapy)
Just do a better job of publicly suppressing their glee vizavis less emotionally adroit young cis-males, black or white
Hikkikomori culture in the US is only barely an appropriation-- I'm sure the HKs in ah Saitama dont get distracted by young women loitering in the backstreets of Shibuya/Shinjuku: rather it's the superior habits in moral hygiene (outsiders would say it's indoctrination, but why then would the mtgow-equivalent in Tokyo proper not succeed?)
Yep this is the disingenuity. If i were Ezra I'd have rehearsed with a unrepentant Randian 10x to come up with something more aggressive.
Dems will get that he's weaseling, but Republicans will have it go over their heads.. Mamdani-style listening would be marginally better; to throw Shapiros phrase back at him, it's the "praise" that he pretends not to notice that should be the most concerning
Self-help for Shapiros would not be writing Randian "bronze-age" fairytales (self-help as practiced by "narcissist by nurture" trivially succumbs to Kohutese infernos), but to get as far away from Rand and the Iron Age as sanely possible. (but that'd require some hormonal injections or dissociative research substances ?)
There have been a number of studies around the world, plus some real world examples (Utah gubernatorial 2020) where showing your opponents in a sympathetic light can make a big difference in reductions in political polarization.
It’s especially effective when signaled by the “elite”: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00323217241300...
Edit: I hear plenty of stories of people abandoning family members over a difference of political opinion. My MIL won’t talk to a niece of hers after the niece made the same decision. I won’t go so far as to say that’s never warranted, but it seems these days that it’s happening a lot more.
To me, this implies we’re losing acceptability of political “others”.
Turn on the largest mainstream media "news" channel, and you'll hear nothing but mindless hate for 20 hours a day, without consideration for what actual news is occurring.
So up until this point it was perfectly acceptable? Or is this only an issue when the wrong side does it in a fairly moderate way (since the other side regularly and openly embraces and encourages political violence).
However, some people support and vote for, a president who has told his supporters to perform acts of violence against those whose speech he disagrees with, clearly a portion of the population doesn't mind.
I think this is being seriously accelerated by Trump. Why should I treat those I disagree with with dignity and respect when the President (who theoretically is a leader for all Americans, not just the people who voted for him) says things like this?
"And when you look at the agitator, you look at the scum that speaks so badly of our country, the American flag burnings all over the place, that’s the left. That’s not the right."
When Trump and Vance start setting a positive example for others to follow, maybe I'll rethink my position, but leadership and accountability start at the top.
All you’re doing is ensuring the strength of their beliefs.
Edit: You don’t have to like someone to not actively attack them at every opportunity, even if what they believe is reprehensible to you.
Also, lets ignore the fact that there is a difference between consumers boycotting something and a government agency outright threatening a private company.
The right has consistently tried to cancel people, has tried to censor people, has complained/played the refs about moderation saying their rights to say racist stuff was being infringed even when it was a moderation decision by a private company not the government
And then under Trump it's only gotten worse/more divorced from any principles
If you are going to morally judge the actions behind cancellation attempts, "I don't find Dave Chappelle's jokes funny" is not morally equivalent to "I don't think people should celebrate the murder of those they disagree with."