[Emma_Goldman]

> 'Clearly we should value debate. Clearly we "should" persuade people we disagree with. The question is whether we should be forced to.'

So you agree with the criticisms I made of cancel culture?

> 'If I'm an employer, should I be forced to hire people who I personally find unpersuadably vile?'

I don't think this is a helpful example, for two reasons. First, it is generally accepted that employers should have more latitude in the grounds on which they hire, than the grounds on which they fire. This reflects the fact that we are generally more concerned with actions of commission (e.g. killing someone) than omission (e.g. failing to give someone life-saving drugs). If we ask instead, 'Should you fire someone because they believe transgender women shouldn't be admitted into female sports', or 'Should you fire someone because they believe in the aggressive extradition of illegal immigrants', or 'Should you fire someone because they watch Fox news', it's much less clear-cut.

Secondly, and more to the point, what is at issue is rarely cancel culture among employers, but the way in which cancel culture pressures employers to fire people.

> 'If I run a forum (like HN, or Reddit), I can't ban people even if they're "debating" in a way that is disruptive and driving off users? That too, is the "anti-cancel" position as far as I can see. How do you square this? Be specific. Tell me the rule you want to enforce so that no one gets "cancelled" but we aren't swamped by garbage in online forums.'

I haven't thought about it, but my initial answer: I think the rules on large community websites like Reddit and HN should be to sanction abuse, hate speech (understood roughly along the lines of current British law), and various activities which undermine the aim of the website - e.g. persistent trolling, systematic lying, spamming adverts.

> 'It absolutely does. Because if you can't cite me[1] someone who got "cancelled" who isn't "vile and awful", then doesn't it mean the whole "problem" doesn't exist?'

You seem to think that the only evidence of cancel culture is the complete destruction of the lives of individuals. But those only the most extreme of cases. I just gave you a less extreme but far more representative case: the Guardian journalist that I read being harassed this morning (her name is Helen Pidd). Every time I go on Twitter I see a constant stream of tribalism, abuse and retributivism - these are not rare occurrences, they are omnipresent.

Take a more prominent case: J.K. Rowling's post on transgenderism. I disagree with 90% of what she wrote in that post. But I think her arguments should be engaged with, people should try and persuade her and those like her, that we should not abuse and deplatform her, and I don't think she is evil or malignant because of what she wrote.

[newacct583]

With all respect, you seem to be retreating here. I don't think I disagree with any of your remedies, they sound fine. They also sound like pretty much the way our society and internet culture already work.

So I can't tell what you're arguing against. If "cancel culture" isn't the giant problem you originally jumped into argue against, and our existing protections are already in place... what are you arguing against?

I'm not saying that people aren't jerks on the internet. I'm saying that (1) it does happen at anything like the scale people like to think of (i.e. there is not Great and Terrible Woke Conspiracy), and (2) the excesses that are happening, at the scale they're happening at, are just not something we can "fix" via any remedy.

And the Rowling thing seems like a complete misinterpretation on your part. HUGE quantities of ink have been spilled at this point (including on this very site) explaining why the trans-exclusionary position is hurtful and counterproductive to modern feminism. Don't tell me she wasn't engaged with productive discourse. Rowling herself did like half a dozen interviews on the subject! You're acting like no one was willing to listen to her, when that's absolutely not the case.

You're saying that because someone was an asshole that means the rest of us are too? J. K. Rowling wasn't "canceled" in any way that matters. She was just wrong.

[Emma_Goldman]

> 'With all respect, you seem to be retreating here.'

Nothing I said in my last post with inconsistent with the letter or spirit of my foregoing posts.

I didn't set out any 'remedies'. You asked me about about two relatively narrow issues. As I have repeated, I take 'cancel culture' to be, in the first instance, a cultural problem. The fundamental remedy is, therefore, cultural. Abolishing Twitter would help, though I don't see that happening.

If you don't know what I'm arguing against, return to my first post.

> 'And the Rowling thing seems like a complete misinterpretation on your part.'

You seem to be implying someone can only be negatively affected by cancel culture when: (i) their lives are destroyed; (ii) everyone who engages with them is participating in cancel culture. Why?

Obviously not everyone who engaged with Rowling disagreed, and not everyone who disagreed exhibited the pathologies that I attributed to cancel culture. But there was a very large -certainly the majority of voices on Twitter - contingent of people who didn't engage with Rowling's arguments, had no interest in persuading Rowling or those who sympathised with her, castigated her as evil and hateful, and called for a boycott of her books, and on authors writing for her publishing house to terminate their contracts.

'In any way that matters'. Rowling's entire profile has been shaped by the debate. This will define her life and career, and how she is remembered for the rest of history. Of course, she is a billionaire, and lives comfortably. But the point is that this is merely one (prominent) case representative of the very tendencies you deny exist.

The consequences are the degradation of the conversation in the public sphere, and of the willingness and ability of people to debate and think for themselves. Given that I share many of the broad goals of 'cancel culture' - i.e. curbing prejudicial and exclusionary discourses - I also worry that this kind of toxic approach will preclude the coalition-building and persuasion necessary to long-term hegemonic change. It also creates an avoidable blowback, i.e. most people feel condescended to, others take up the same style of politics on the right.

Read the Atlantic piece linked to above - there are many less prominent cases of individuals have been 'cancelled', often with little cause. I see this happening every time I log on to Twitter, in all directions.

[newacct583]

Again, you just seem slippery here. I'm not denying that people are mean on the internet. I'm not denying that people get harmed by it. I'm denying that it's a huge problem, thus my attempts to pin you down on What Exactly Is Wrong, and How Do You Propose to Fix It. And you keep moving the goalposts!

Basically, this is what I keep hearing: "OK, these people weren't harmed, exactly. But countless others were who I haven't named. And why do you demand evidence of "harm" anyway? Aren't there other ways of being harmed?"

I mean... people are jerks. We can't fix that. Twitter surely can't fix that. If employers are routinely firing people[1] based on what jerks say on Twitter, then that's a problem. But it's something employers are going to have to address on a case-by-case basis.

[1] They aren't. Seriously, they aren't. It's happened in the past. It's not "happening". Far more people get fired for far worse reasons and we don't freak out at HN over it.

[Emma_Goldman]

You claim I am 'slippery' and 'moving the goalposts'. You said in your last post that I was 'retreating'. Yet you have not even tried to show how anything I have said in my later posts is inconsistent with my earlier posts. Absent that, those claims are not helpful.

You say 'I'm not denying people are mean on the internet. I'm denying people get harmed by it'.

There are two simple problems here. The first is that we are not talking about whether people are 'mean', we're talking about the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour of a specific subculture: 'cancel culture'. I have set out what I take to be the pathologies of that subculture. Why are you ignoring those pathologies, and talking as if 'cancel culture' didn't exist, and if this was just people being generically mean?

The second is that you protest that cancel culture is harmless. I just set out why I take it to be harmful: it degrades the public sphere, inhibits thought and debate, undermines hegemonic change, and threatens a blowback. Why have you not engaged with any of those arguments?

Finally, you raise the issue of 'employers' again. I have already said I take this to be peripheral to cancel culture. The main harm of cancel culture, as I see it, is on the public sphere. A few extreme cases end in firing - and that's significant for those people - but it's a relatively small harm compared to the effect it has on the public sphere.

[newacct583]

> we're talking about the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour of a specific subculture: 'cancel culture'. I have set out what I take to be the pathologies of that subculture. Why are you ignoring those pathologies, and talking as if 'cancel culture' didn't exist

Yeah. This is the disconnect. You're asserting without evidence that "cancel culture" exists as "a thing" worth discussing. I assert it doesn't, it's just a bunch of jerks, and ask for evidence about its impact.

And you don't want to engage on that. Which tells me that maybe this isn't really "a thing" worth discussing, just something that you're personally upset about.

[Emma_Goldman]

> 'You're asserting without evidence that "cancel culture" exists as "a thing" worth discussing. I assert it doesn't, it's just a bunch of jerks, and ask for evidence about its impact.'

Your original response was that the listed pathologies 'were not that bad', but that they were only found in response to people who were genuinely 'vile and awful'. Now you're saying those pathologies are invented. Which is it?

You say I haven't provided evidence of its impact. In three of the four responses since my original post, I've given examples: Helen Pidd, J.K. Rowling, and The Atlantic piece linked to upthread. I could go on citing endless individual cases, but as I have tried to emphasise, the problem as I see it is a collective one: a culture degrading the public sphere.

You write in another of your replies: 'If you want to talk about individual instances of injustice, I'm there with you. If you want to paint a whole culture of internet progressives on the basis of a tiny handful of spiteful retributions, I think you aren't arguing in good faith.'

If individual cases can't prove anything, what evidence will you accept?

> 'Just something that you're personally upset about'.

I have to tell you, I am not the only person to notice the existence of a new 'cancel' culture, or to object to it. There was a prominent Harper's letter circulated on exactly this subject just a few days ago:

https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/