1787

I don’t think we really have to worry too much about “both-siderism” here, though we do have a couple posters that only show up to pop their monocles on Democratic / Liberal plans when they go awry.

I had a pretty succinct take on Cancel Culture last night, and am not sure i’m awake enough at work to recapitulate it as cogently as i had it yesterday, but setting aside the Ellis controversy i think driving mechanism of “Cancel Culture” is the apparent inability to tell vulnerable groups that they are wrong without being an asshole.

Essentially, if a vulnerable group online says “this offends me / this is wrong to me” then by the logic of progressive thought today it is wrong on some kind of tautological conception. What online society (and maybe increasingly offline society) needs is the ability to recognize and accept the validity of a point of view but also, at the same time, be able to explain why that view is either incomplete or actually has the capacity to be wrong.

But since this entails telling a vulnerable group that “they’re wrong” and by definition that’s either 1) not possible since it’s “my” point of view or 2) reinforcing the “oppression” of vulnerable peoples, it becomes impossible to object to a point of view once it has been expressed by or in defense of vulnerable groups. So that opinion becomes true, and the mob pounces on the offending party.

It’s possible to do this, but it’s probably necessary to do this abstractly, since what it means today to have an opposing view is to be pushed toward or be embraced by the “shit eating grin” revauchism alt-right / counter-right whatever asshole-right side there is, a commentariat that exists only to pull any and every progressive point of view down.

If it’s a binary “Lindsay is wrong, i’m still a good liberal” vs “Lindsay is right / did nothing wrong, so now i have to vote Republican”, that’s not a healthy place for any society to be in. But in a very real sense that’s kind of the reductionism that’s taking place on the Left.

1788

Yeah, that was a great thread, thanks! I particularly liked these points:

1789

The problem I have with all of that is I’m not even sure it was “legitimate criticism” in the first place. This is the deleted tweet that kicked off the trouble:

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That’s it. Then some folks jumped her shit because apparently likening Raya to Avatar is a crime against POC that devalues their work because how dare she have an ungenerous hot take about Raya. Her follow-up tweet was this, which obviously was a poor choice of words when in a discussion with Asian folks:

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When she tried to explain that “squinting at a thing” was a legit turn of phrase and not an insult directed at all Asians, the genie was out of the bottle.

1790

People are posting about social media because the whole thing happened on social media. Yes, of course the far left has its share of assholes. Every group has its assholes, and social media allows them to band together into a voltron of assholeness.

1791

I wish I had a harder time believing this.

Some people’s entire purpose in life is to be offended. Seems like a sad way to live, but what do I know.

1792

Sure, I agree. The whole situation is dumb and tragic. I have no beef with Ellis at all, and I’m sad and angry that another woman has been hounded off social media. Are there leftist assholes online who engage in mob-like dogpiling based on perceived slights or idiotic boundary crossing? Yes. Is that bad? Yep, I categorically reject it. Those people, even though we probably share a large degree of ideological preference, are fucking assholes.

I’m trying to avoid a no true scotsman argument here: those folks really are leftists/liberals/whatever. And they’re also assholes doing asshole things: stifling conversations, policing speech, shaming people for bullshit. So what’s the conclusion I’m supposed to draw? Should we recognize that this behavior exists on the left and call it out? OK, I acknowledge it exists on the left and I’m calling it out. Does it mean that liberalism is hopelessly compromised? Has disapprobation of racism and sexism gone too far? Should we just cool it with the identity politics? Stop white knighting? Only speak in soft voices?

Has the left made it impossible to speak freely anymore? Do we live in a dystopia where any slip of the tongue can lead to ostracism? Is it impossible to be funny? Are the right the champions of free speech who are trying to free us from the oppression of liberal groupthink?

1793

Hah, well put.

1795

I think for people that largely live and work online, they’re headed there.

1796

This is why I’m careful where I set up stakes.

1797

When I was in college and grad schools (88-97) the Puritanical left (then called PC, now called woke) had a monopoly on affected outrage and rhetorical lynch mobs, but it was largely restricted to universities and the occasional highbrow publication. I wasn’t right wing, but I don’t do well with Puritans or anyone presuming to scold or accuse me, so they were my enemies.

Now thanks to social media it’s largely drowned out by shitbags angry that a sexily chunky Asian girl had too many lines in a Star Wars retread, or that a Ghostbusters remake (???) still had a black Ghostbuster in it. Now I see that few things matter less than snarky grad students, even amplified by Twitter, whereas SWATters, rape threateners, and Proud Boy auxiliaries do matter, no matter how stupid and ineffectual they are, simply because they can vote and harass. Let them all be slain by my shamshir-wielding horde.

1798

“The left behave badly but anyone saying it is peddling a sinister racist message” ahhahaha no.

I was with her up to that point. The issue is nothing to do with PoC or even racial justice campaigning in and of itself, but instead the dialogue and social contract within far-left circles. These methods of aggressive denunication and exclusion, of demanding of self-criticisms of those who “stray” and uncompromising condemnation of those who disagree have been a feature of far-left politics since long before the far-left was identified so closely with the racial justice movement.

Indeed it’s been repeatedly noted tha the worst behaviour tends to come from “allies”.

It’s more about the way the far-left treats its assholes than the existence of said assholes. (The far right is obviously worse, and qualitatively so, actively elevating and rewarding its assholes. The most prominent far-left asshole I can think of is a second-tier guardian columnist. The most prominent far-right asshole is the last president of the US)

What I would want is for this kind of behaviour to be called out directly and publically, when it happens.

My experience is this does not happen on the left.

That would be a great start, and I think it would address a lot of the ideological discrimination that happens in academia by reestablishing the norm that differences of political opinion are normal and healthy. I don’t get this where all this “Does this mean that liberalism is hopelessly compromised” is coming from to be honest.

Or in academia. Or in the charity sector. Or in a lot of public sector jobs.

And let’s be clear - the mainstream-right has a long and unpleasant record of this - people campaigning for civil rights in the 60s or gay rights in the 80s/90s would be excluded and disadvantaged in their careers because of it, no question. Hell it’s probably still going on and I’m just oblivious.

1799

The paradox of tolerance is a real thing, and it has been manipulated heavily by the right in the past 40 years. It might be the biggest thing that led our country to its current messed-up state. I don’t think the answer to entirely to fight fire with fire, but I understand the sentiment.

That said, I’ve seen far-lefters yeeted out of some spaces from being too toxic. Much like the right, they find more radical spaces.

Every place has their own tolerable bounds. I’ve left spaces because they were too toxically left and I got a vibe of either a circular firing squad, or authoritarian duckspeak being required.

1800

Okay. Hasn’t exactly that happened here? Has anyone in this thread supported the harassers? Once presented with the information regarding this little corner of social media the reaction seems to have been in support of the harassed against the harassers.

1801

I guess too little too late? We can all nod our heads in agreement on Qt3 that this situation sucked, but that’s not changing what happened and the bad actors have celebrated and moved on to their next target.

1802

I’d agree that other members of the community should have stood up for them, called out the harassment, etc. Not being familiar with that community I couldn’t answer if or why it didn’t happen.

So, what’s the necessary change? Should there be some responsible party for uncovering or policing harassment online? Should youtube have more active ways for creators to prevent harassment?

1803

I have no idea how you could tell this. As in many similar situations, we only see the examples of cases where this didn’t happen. We never see the cases where there was an early intervention and everything went on as before. You could argue that lack of recrimination after-the-fact is evidence, but I don’t see that. There seems to be plenty of recrimination here, and I’d be willing to bet I could search and find 100 similar online left-leaning spaces engaging in similar conversations about this exact event. The very existence of a (sizable?) contingent on the left that is willing to engage with self-examination is a unique feature; I see nothing like it on the right.

1804

It almost certainly happened. It would be amazing if it hadn’t. Someone posted, right up there, a thread from someone in that community which was clearly supportive.

1805

I mean i think i outlined why it’s difficult for pushback to happen, because it means publicly saying that someone claiming “the privilege of the vulnerable” isn’t correct. So in theory anyone can say this, but at least right now it means people “in that community” (whatever community that is) speaking up when stuff like this happens. If there isn’t anyone in such a community, then WYS (now) IWYG, i suppose, since in practice not belonging to that community and chiming in is seen as “lecturing” or “privilege-splaining”, ect.

This is completely true and a big reason why the right weaponizes being self critical against the left, and in fact encourages it as much as possible. There’s this phrase i have about “benefiting from the actions of those you disavow” and one of the (global) right’s big sins is happily benefiting from the actions of the most radical of their kind even while disavowing them in public. If a groups is serious about disavowing bad actors they not only need to publicly disavow them but also intentionally give up whatever benefits they gained by those actions (let’s say, like an election, or some political or socioeconomic or cultural cachet or gain, ect).

1806

The service itself, twitter in this case, is responsible for enforcing standards. They failed.

1807

Ironically, if the left gave up on identity politics, it would probably be to our political advantage.

I tend to be more pragmatic than you about this though. I wouldn’t say anything so categorical as “ends justify means” but I do think it’s reasonable to consider implications.