I think one big rule the rights is violating this time is government officials being THIS involved, and using their powers of office to effect the cancelations
Something about this doesn't sit right with me, and I think it's the distinction between the use of social sanction against opinions that you hate, and "cancel CULTURE".
As you say, everyone approves of using social punishment against people you think are truly awful. However, to me the term "cancel culture" describes something like an atmosphere of fear that emerged in the late 2010s, when in liberal professional circles everyone suddenly developed an acute fear of having their life ruined by a pile-on because of some minor perceived transgression against constantly shifting norms, or something in their past that had been trivial, or perfectly OK at the time.
I grew up in the former Soviet Union, and while this is not at all equivalent (you wouldn't be sent to the gulags for running afoul of progressive shibboleths in the US), the atmosphere of fear, widespread preference falsification, and everyone just "keeping their head down" felt similar.
So yes, we all generally want to be able to direct social punishment against truly bad actors. But that's not the same as a culture of fear, which I think only the extremists on both sides approve of (when the balance of power benefits them).
I think there was an especially large amount of handwringing about left wing cancel culture in the late 2010s bc it was novel. The cultural left probably had tried to cancel lots of people throughout history, it just didn’t work until that point and it’s probably social media that made it effective for the first time. This spawned a ton of content from all sides of the political spectrum when, as this post suggests, the actual practice is banal power politics. These think pieces don’t come out when the right does it because there’s nothing novel about the right doing it effectively. It’s the air we breathe. Plus the center and center left in the media loved to navel gaze and self flagellate in a way that the right does not because they understand their jobs to be staying on side.
I find “everyone’s in favor of it” glib. Of course everyone has circumstances in which they support someone being fired; everyone has circumstances in which they approve of violence, too, but “everyone is in favor of violence” obscures more than it reveals: where one draws the lines is important! Here’s my own piece from 2020 on how we liberals should remember post-9/11 cancellations and think twice before embracing the same tactics ourselves: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/conservative-cancel-culture-after-9-11/
“[RACE] people are disgusting, they’re subhuman monsters. They do nothing but leech on society. Their men are brutish apes and their women are worthless sluts. We should send all the {RACE} back where they came from”
The name cancel culture itself needs to be canceled 😞 it’s a vague term that covers a stupidly wide range of behaviors and unfortunately is worse when race or political affiliation is involved. The worst thing is that it can be a punishment with no due process and be applied when the political victors are able to fire people. Finally I think the Charlie Kirk data project is ridiculous and probably would not have his support ironically 🤨
As usual, the main difference is that "the Left" is often randos online while "the Right" is the literal president (or Veep, in this case). It's not "both sides" when one side's literal leader is acting like the might irrelevant fringe from the other side.
Part of the problem, as he defined it, was distinguishing between holding an opinion, signaling a propensity towards some behavior, and committing "speech acts".
I think one big rule the rights is violating this time is government officials being THIS involved, and using their powers of office to effect the cancelations
Agreed 100%. The formal powers of the state being involved is a qualitatively different situation than randos online trying to get you fired.
Something about this doesn't sit right with me, and I think it's the distinction between the use of social sanction against opinions that you hate, and "cancel CULTURE".
As you say, everyone approves of using social punishment against people you think are truly awful. However, to me the term "cancel culture" describes something like an atmosphere of fear that emerged in the late 2010s, when in liberal professional circles everyone suddenly developed an acute fear of having their life ruined by a pile-on because of some minor perceived transgression against constantly shifting norms, or something in their past that had been trivial, or perfectly OK at the time.
I grew up in the former Soviet Union, and while this is not at all equivalent (you wouldn't be sent to the gulags for running afoul of progressive shibboleths in the US), the atmosphere of fear, widespread preference falsification, and everyone just "keeping their head down" felt similar.
So yes, we all generally want to be able to direct social punishment against truly bad actors. But that's not the same as a culture of fear, which I think only the extremists on both sides approve of (when the balance of power benefits them).
I think there was an especially large amount of handwringing about left wing cancel culture in the late 2010s bc it was novel. The cultural left probably had tried to cancel lots of people throughout history, it just didn’t work until that point and it’s probably social media that made it effective for the first time. This spawned a ton of content from all sides of the political spectrum when, as this post suggests, the actual practice is banal power politics. These think pieces don’t come out when the right does it because there’s nothing novel about the right doing it effectively. It’s the air we breathe. Plus the center and center left in the media loved to navel gaze and self flagellate in a way that the right does not because they understand their jobs to be staying on side.
I find “everyone’s in favor of it” glib. Of course everyone has circumstances in which they support someone being fired; everyone has circumstances in which they approve of violence, too, but “everyone is in favor of violence” obscures more than it reveals: where one draws the lines is important! Here’s my own piece from 2020 on how we liberals should remember post-9/11 cancellations and think twice before embracing the same tactics ourselves: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/conservative-cancel-culture-after-9-11/
“[RACE] people are disgusting, they’re subhuman monsters. They do nothing but leech on society. Their men are brutish apes and their women are worthless sluts. We should send all the {RACE} back where they came from”
Least racist college admissions officer.
The name cancel culture itself needs to be canceled 😞 it’s a vague term that covers a stupidly wide range of behaviors and unfortunately is worse when race or political affiliation is involved. The worst thing is that it can be a punishment with no due process and be applied when the political victors are able to fire people. Finally I think the Charlie Kirk data project is ridiculous and probably would not have his support ironically 🤨
As usual, the main difference is that "the Left" is often randos online while "the Right" is the literal president (or Veep, in this case). It's not "both sides" when one side's literal leader is acting like the might irrelevant fringe from the other side.
Scott Alexander wrote a good piece about free speech principles long ago that lives here:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/is-it-possible-to-have-coherent-principles-around-free-speech-norms/
Part of the problem, as he defined it, was distinguishing between holding an opinion, signaling a propensity towards some behavior, and committing "speech acts".
Worth a read