Comment by mrandish | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrandish | Hacker News Reader

We really need to stop the cancelling of people for saying controversial, disagreeable and even deeply offensive things. I don't agree with what Kimmel said and I wouldn't have said it myself but it also wasn't outside the bounds of opinions which should be able to be expressed.

If you're nodding along in agreement, then you should also know my long-term commitment to consistency in tolerating factually wrong, distasteful, divisive and even hateful speech has also left me in the uncomfortable position of defending (at least in part) the right of Charlie Kirk, JK Rowling and many others I don't agree with to be heard without anyone calling for silencing them. I'm 100% supportive of disagreeing, debating, peacefully protesting, ignoring and even mocking ideas we don't agree with but I draw a hard line at shouting down, deplatforming or canceling them. If you just stopped nodding along, and instead started coming up with reasons why Kimmel should be heard but Charlie Kirk shouldn't, then you might be part of the problem. IMHO, the only truly defensible ethical high-ground on this requires consistency regardless of the person, politics or offense their speech might cause.

What did he say, though? In the video he says that the killer is one of "them" (I'm not familiar enough to know who "them" are), and makes fun of Trump for apparently not caring at all.

What was the offensive or disagreeable part? Seems like standard satire to me.

Just because someone is allowed to freely express themselves doesn’t mean I have to support a platform for them to do it on. They can have their platform with their supporters, it doesn’t mean that the hateful rhetoric have to be constantly shoved in my face at a public level. And that the public has to constantly debate it. That is what cancelling is. No one wants to hear the hate.

No one has died from being cancelled so spare everyone the pity story.

If you want to spend your time defending JK Rowling, that’s on you. It doesn’t make you a hero for making sure people fully understand precisely what kind of a bigot JK Rowling is.

What is deplatforming if not a group of people choosing to ignore that person? It is not fair that you get to decide at what level ignoring another is okay. Deplatforming and cancelling are just methods of taking away easy access to a platform for hateful bad faith arguments. Those affected by it can still can go build their own platform to host that rhetoric (Trump has done this with Truth social).

[flagged]

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