On "Cancel Culture"

my dear if you take upon yourself to place onesself on the tee you should not be surprised when someone happens to take a swing.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

given the propensity of certain posters willingness to twist things its needed. though some of us are not intimidated by the written word.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

No one is intimidated by the written word. Most of us are bored and annoyed by Tiassa's posts. It hasn't been years such someone pointed this out. I do it frequently...ya'know.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Did I seem surprised? I call out crap writing when I see it, especially when it is delivered in such a pretentious style. I must say I am disappointe d in your position. My recollection was that your posts were often pertinent and your perception clinical. A shame you've been taken in on this occassion.

 

Ah, yes, because we let the dishonest and delusional set the terms.

It's one of those points you seem to have missed along the way; crackpots have been kind of freaking out the whole time, and hoping to cancel the discussion.

We get it: A thread ceases to be what a thread is about whenever the angry and clueless say so.

Or, as noted previously, those whose reasons to disagree are aesthetic at best, and do not actually seek discussion, but, rather disruption.

There isn't any mystery why some people show nothing but worthless embitterment; it's not like they have anything else to offer.

 

I do not worry about embitterment. It is it's own curse on the user.



You are doing better at getting to the point without using the whole dictionary.

 

I guess it's possible to "moderate" a forum out of existence. There's barely enough traffic to "moderate", wouldn't you agree? Is there is golden ratio for moderator to poster? Something like 3 moderators for every poster?

 

sorry i don't usually read your posts, something about the whole hunting poor for sport mentality you have. Most of us aren't but you have the typical right wing conceit of thinking you speak for a majority. and clearly you are.

 

yes why would i have mentioned it other wise.

i hope you aren't an editor than.

why because it disagrees with your own?

there is nothing to be taken in on here.

 

Flashback, 2018:

What exactly are the ideas that have made people like [Eric] Weinstein, Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, Ben Shapiro, and Christina Hoff Sommers into what a recent New York Times profile described as intellectual "renegades"? According to the Times writer Bari Weiss, most emphasize the biological differences between men and women, a feeling that free speech is "under siege," and a fear that "identity politics" is a threat to the United States's social fabric.

A listener of Harris's podcast might add to the list a vociferous defense of the validity of genetic explanations for IQ differences between racial groups, a follower of Peterson's videos might insist on the nefarious influence of "postmodern neo-Marxism" on college campuses, and a fan of Ben Shapiro might contribute a skepticism toward the reality of "transgenderism."

The movement sees itself as an alliance that defies established political categories in order to defend these ideas against the creeping influence of thought control. This leads us to another important meaning of the term intellectual dark web, the suggestion that its ideas are not only controversial, but particularly innovative in our political moment. If the dark web arouses the anger of certain commentators in the media or the academy, it is for the same reasons that new technologies in the internet age are "disruptive."

It would take a short memory, however, not to notice that these sorts of polemics over political correctness are anything but novel: they have been around for at least 30 years, ever since a strikingly similar set of media debates centered around college campuses took off in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Toward the end of the Reagan years, political correctness became a favorite bugbear of conservative intellectuals, who believed that college professors had latched onto illiberal or totalitarian notions of equality, and were indoctrinating their students with a subversive view of American society. Today's "dark web" provocateurs rarely mention these predecessors, who not too long ago occupied a similar place in national media debates. But the comparison suggests that the "iconoclastic" ideas of these figures are actually a well-established institution in American discourse: an institution whose home is on the political right.

(Hamburger↱)​

What a list of renegades.

The history involved isn't so simple as the basic recollection to the conservative backlash of the 1980s, but if what is "novel about the 'intellectual dark web' is … its claim to be eclectic and transpartisan", the period since has helped more clearly identify that pretense of transpartisanship as invested in antisociality.

In principle, these dark web media stars are correct that reason and science belong to neither right nor left. But upon examination of the actual ideas put forward in defense of these values, these supposedly centrist crusaders against political correctness may have more in common with their conservative predecessors than they let on. Though opposed to political "tribalism," as one writer put it in the online magazine Quillette—the closest thing there is to a party organ of the dark web—the movement does tend to think of liberals, progressives, and leftists as its primary adversaries. But not only do these thinkers oppose themself to "the left," broadly speaking, they recycle the neoconservative indictment of "postmodernism" in order to explain why this left has been taken in by political correctness ....

.... The intellectual dark web does not only recycle conservative theories explaining our supposed wave of left-wing irrationalism. The ideas they claim to defend from politically correct opponents of truth are themselves a longstanding part of the United States's conservative tradition.​

It's worth recalling that Bari Weiss canceled herself, quitting the New York Times in order to protest cancel culture, which in turn is nearly emblematic of the movement. If, for instance, we have "little reason to think that Sam Harris and the TV host Bill Maher … seek a return to 'family values' traditionalism", well, Jordan Peterson does, or did before silencing himself. Rogan, Rubin, and Hoff Sommers are still in circulation, feeding antisocial commentary not so distant from family-values tradition. Ben Shapiro recently had a viral hit pitching a fit over wet-ass pussy. Two years ago:

The intellectual dark web appears with each passing day to be earning itself a place in the American conservative tradition. The fact that many of these figures have no links to the conservative movement or denounce the Republican Party is hardly evidence to the contrary .... Despite some of the novelty attributed to the dark web intellectuals, perhaps the signs of their belonging to the right have always been there. Dave Rubin's YouTube show and Harris's podcast, for example, have featured a number of mainstays of the old PC debates, including [Dinesh] D'Souza and Charles Murray. And though Christina Hoff Sommers may appear to break with neoconservative opponents of the women's movement such as Midge Decter and Gertrude Himmelfarb by calling her video blog "The Factual Feminist," one should not fail to notice that the channel is hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, the think tank where both elder women were once affiliates.​

Nor do we fail to notice, this time later, the attempt by radical exclusionists to usurp feminism. Terfs were not new in 2018, but in 2020 are prominent among the complaints against cancel culture.

We might reflect on Hamburger's note that, "One need not doubt that some of the dark web's critiques are made in good faith and based on valid interpretations of social science data". Those critiques are few and far between. The advice is not wrong—

Progressives and leftists can and should deal with these claims on their merits and faults, both in moral and empirical terms. But they should not indulge the intellectual dark web's veneer of novelty or appeals to transpolitical reason. These thinkers ought not to be allowed to pretend that its ideas are, historically speaking, anything other than conservative.​

—even if the circumstantial projection was far too forgiving about the prospect of good faith.

Despite … potential to achieve a greater clarity in our public discourse, there are still reasons to worry about the future of the intellectual dark web. Unlike earlier crusades against political correctness—which were available primarily to people who subscribed to certain newspapers and magazines, or who happened to be present on the college campuses in question—this intellectual right in waiting has amassed an incredibly large audience through its various social media platforms. Much of this audience is composed of young men for whom these entertaining take-downs of political correctness is their first exposure to "intellectual" discussions of politics and culture. When this dark web finally does come out of the shadows, it may prove a formidable weapon for the next iteration of the conservative movement.​

On that last, it both has and hasn't. The loss of certain media platforms has certainly disrupted popular growth, but the underlying dysfunction about conservative, antisocial irrationality really has asserted itself in the time since, and it is considerably harder for these renegades to pitch themselves as some sort of heroes amid a societal Nazi eruption.

And let us be clear: Responses to harm do not force others to become harmful. The line about idwer good faith really was too cheery and hopeful.
____________________

Notes:

Hamburger, Jacob. "The 'Intellectual Dark Web' Is Nothing New". Los Angeles Review of Books. 18 July 2018. LAReviewOfBooks.org 19 October 2020. http://bit.ly/2zP6VXX

 

That should read:
"I hope you aren't an editor then."

 

It seems worth noting that prominent anti-feminist and anti-antiracist, infamous hoaxer and notorious bawler against cancel culture, James Lindsay, yesterday publicly committed his support to Donald Trump. Apparently some liberal at a neoliberal magazine appealed quite radically to democracy. Admittedly, it's one of those occasions when better writing would certainly make liberal author's point better, but the idea that this was the clincher just reminds there never really was any question about Lindsay's political orientation.

 

cancel culture is the mainstay of politics . Disagree your Out .

 

In Wisconsin , If I remember right , if a representive is caught in corruption , then the retirement pension is fully revoked . Brilliant !!

 

That'll stop corruption in a hurry.

Just like Carlin's suggestion that if you want to stop the drug trade, lock up some of the bankers that launder the drug money.

 

There was an occasion, not long ago, when an incumbent U.S. Senator made that very complaint. I happened to mention it in passing↑ a couple months back, but, yeah, Sen. Loeffler (R-GA) was upset that some celebrities wore t-shirts supporting her opponent, calling the occasion an example of "out of control cancel culture" trying to "shut out anyone who disagrees with them".

 

Agreed

And the same thing has happened in Canadian politics . No dessenters allowed , in the party .

Authoritarianism Philosophy is Trying to Take Hold . Dictatorship .

 

It's a good thing conservatives don't have anything to do with complaints about cancel culture, right?

Oh.

Anyway:

Sen. Marsha Blackburn used a Commerce Committee hearing Wednesday to ask about the employment status of a Google engineer whose criticism of the Tennessee Republican has become fodder for right-wing media outlets over the past two years.

Blackburn (R-Tenn.) asked CEO Sundar Pichai whether Blake Lemoine, a senior software engineer and artificial intelligence researcher, still has a job at Google.

“He has had very unkind things to say about me and I was just wondering if you all had still kept him working there,” Blackburn said during the hearing, where she and other GOP lawmakers accused tech companies of squelching free speech.

Pichai said he did not know Lemoine’s employment status.

(Overly↱)​

Or, as cartoonist Barry Deutsch↱ reminds:

Blackburn is repeating what right-wing websites and social media have been saying for about 2 years. Two years of continually trying to destroy this google employee.

So why isn't this "cancel culture"? Because those trying to "cancel" him are right-wing.​

I mean, it's just a U.S. Senator using the seat as leverage to ask if you have fired someone who offended her aesthetics. That's about as on-target for the cancel culture complaint as Blackburn's feminist argument that equality under law would offend and denigrate women.
____________________

Notes:

@barrydeutsch. "Blackburn is repeating what right-wing websites and social media have been saying for about 2 years. Two years of continually trying to destroy this google employee. So why isn't this 'cancel culture'? Because those trying to 'cancel' him are right-wing." Twitter. 28 October 2020. Twitter.com. 28 October 2020. https://bit.ly/3e5xYi7

Overly, Steven. "Blackburn asks Google if employee who criticized her still has a job". Politico. 28 October 2020. Politico.com. 28 October 2020. https://politi.co/31RiKst

 

Glenn Greenwald has resigned from The Intercept, apparently because the editors ... well, as he explains↱:

The final, precipitating cause is that The Intercept's editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.

The censored article, based on recently revealed emails and witness testimony, raised critical questions about Biden's conduct. Not content to simply prevent publication of this article at the media outlet I co-founded, these Intercept editors also demanded that I refrain from exercising a separate contractual right to publish this article with any other publication.

I had no objection to their disagreement with my views of what this Biden evidence shows: as a last-ditch attempt to avoid being censored, I encouraged them to air their disagreements with me by writing their own articles that critique my perspectives and letting readers decide who is right, the way any confident and healthy media outlet would. But modern media outlets do not air dissent; they quash it. So censorship of my article, rather than engagement with it, was the path these Biden-supporting editors chose.​

Given Greenwald's recent behavior on Twitter, there is a strong prospect that he may have just canceled himself in promotion of a fake scandal.

The article in question will apparently be published, but for the moment, this is apparently the hill where Greenwald wants to plant his flag and make a stand. It's been a strange few years for the congressional spouse and now former media CEO.

†​

Update: The Intercept↱ responded this afternoon:

The narrative Glenn presents about his departure is teeming with distortions and inaccuracies—all of them designed to make him appear as a victim, rather than a grown person throwing a tantrum. It would take too long to point them all out here, but we intend to correct the record in time. For now, it is important to make clear that our goal in editing his work was to ensure that it would be accurate and fair. While he accuses us of political bias, it was he who was attempting to recycle the dubious claims of a political campaign—the Trump campaign—and launder them as journalism.

We have the greatest respect for the journalist Glenn Greenwald used to be, and we remain proud of much of the work we did with him over the past six years. It is Glenn who has strayed from his original journalistic roots, not The Intercept ....

.... We have no doubt that Glenn will go on to launch a new media venture where he will face no collaboration with editors—such is the era of Substack and Patreon. In that context, it makes good business sense for Glenn to position himself as the last true guardian of investigative journalism and to smear his longtime colleagues and friends as partisan hacks. We get it. But facts are facts, and The Intercept's record of fearless, rigorous, independent journalism speaks for itself.​

Ouch.

Greenwald did, as promised, post the disputed article↱, and part of what the reader needs to know is that if the New York Post bombshell fell flat, and by the end of the day it was published had attracted a federal investigation for the possibility of a foreign influence operation, none of that matters insofar as his argument↱, requires the evidence against Biden cannot possibly be false:

The biggest scandal in this whole tawdry, shameful episode isn't (yet) the misconduct or corruption exposed by the emails, but rather the way the intelligence community & journalists united to censor & just lie about these documents ....​

Which, in turn, brings us to NBC News↱:

One month before a purported leak of files from Hunter Biden's laptop, a fake "intelligence" document about him went viral on the right-wing internet, asserting an elaborate conspiracy theory involving former Vice President Joe Biden's son and business in China.

The document, a 64-page composition that was later disseminated by close associates of President Donald Trump, appears to be the work of a fake "intelligence firm" called Typhoon Investigations, according to researchers and public documents.

The author of the document, a self-identified Swiss security analyst named Martin Aspen, is a fabricated identity, according to analysis by disinformation researchers, who also concluded that Aspen's profile picture was created with an artificial intelligence face generator. The intelligence firm that Aspen lists as his previous employer said that no one by that name had ever worked for the company and that no one by that name lives in Switzerland, according to public records and social media searches.

One of the original posters of the document, a blogger and professor named Christopher Balding, took credit for writing parts of it when asked about it and said Aspen does not exist.​

†​

It is easy enough to remind that function is important, but the tension between what Greenwald considers principled reportage, to the one, and what the publication's legal department might have to say about potential exposure for factual errors in a consequential news story, to the other, is one of the more dramatic examples we have seen, of late, suggesting a problem about the cancel culture complaint.

There will always remain some possibility that it's all true, and if anyone on the side of goodness and rightness had simply failed to go about it in a less delegitimizing manner, we might have been able to prevent some great evil.

This is the same would-be scandal that has Tucker Carlson retreating↱, tonight. Glenn Greenwald is not silenced insofar as his article is up, but the cost is a fair enough question: He has resigned from the media company he founded. But the whole would-be scandal is a complete mess, and in this point we find the turn: The failure to meet certain standards does not mean one is being unfairly canceled or silenced.

And in a time when some dissenters apparently seek to boost their profile through self-cancellation, we come back to the point of the hill where Greenwald wants to plant his flag, and we might consider the possibility that he just canceled himself in promotion of a fake scandal.
____________________

Notes:

@ggreenwald. "The biggest scandal in this whole tawdry, shameful episode isn't (yet) the misconduct or corruption exposed by the emails, but rather the way the intelligence community & journalists united to censor & just lie about these documents. And why is the @nypost account still locked?" Twitter. 21 October 2020. Twitter.com. 29 October 2020. https://bit.ly/3oF6ULB

Baragona, Justin. "Tucker Carlson Suddenly Says It's Time to Leave Hunter Biden Alone". The Daily Beast. 29 October 2020. TheDailyBeast.com. 29 October 2020. https://bit.ly/34CKN0l

Collins, Ben and Brandy Zadrozny. "How a fake persona laid the groundwork for a Hunter Biden conspiracy deluge". NBC News. 29 October 2020. NBCNews.com. 29 October 2020. https://nbcnews.to/2TIx2Xz

Greenwald, Glenn. "Article on Joe and Hunter Biden Censored By The Intercept". Substack. 29 October 2020. Greenwald.Substack.com. 29 October 2020. https://bit.ly/3kGExKG

—————. "My Resignation From The Intercept". Substack. 29 October 2020. Greenwald.Substack.com. 29 October 2020. https://bit.ly/3kGwCgt

The Intercept. "Glenn Greenwald Resigns From The Intercept". 29 October 2020. TheIntercept.com. 29 October 2020. https://bit.ly/37YLa7L


(Updated 29 Oct 2020, 20.56 PDT)