Half a century ago, in Japan, someone wrote a fictional story critical of the Emperor, and someone broke into the publishers house and murdered their housekeeper and severely injured their wife. [0]
In response to the murder, the writer was pretty much universally condemned and the a bill was introduced in the legislature to ban writings of that sort.
The fact that so many have convinced themselves that somehow we're in some new illiberal age is comical.
For right-leaning, racist, sexist White male elites? Most of it.
Which is why that's where most of the whining that this is a new and dangerous phenomenon is coming from.
Heck, the government hyperfocus on rooting out Communism began almost immediately after the suggestion of turning the same apparatus against the KKK was rebuffed because of that organizations loyalty and patriotism.
I think the point is this had been around for a while, and what people are calling "cancel culture" is the same old-same old, but with (hopefully) less prison/death.
There's nothing new about receiving negative feedback for having and expressing unpopular opinions. That's really common in pretty much every single social group I've been in, including on HN.
There's also a difference between saying something stupid and having some people telling you to knock it off. And posting it or having it posted to Twitter with a possible consequence like a bunch of people emailing your employer demanding you be fired. Which they probably will because it's easier that way if you really did say something you shouldn't have.
>you honestly think that this is a new thing that never used to happen?
No, but I do think it's a lot easier for someone to tweet out an inappropriate joke or get caught on video doing something obnoxious today--that have at least the potential to blow up to a greater degree than a few decades ago.
I didn't really hear much about outrage mobs and repeated celebrity firings over unpopular political opinions 10 years ago. Hear about them all the time now.
> I didn't really hear much about outrage mobs and repeated celebrity firings over unpopular political opinions 10 years ago.
That's probably because you weren't listening, possibly because it was 30 years into the right whining about that under the label “political correctness” and everyone had learned to tune it out.
Now they've got a new label and marketing effort behind selling it as the boogeyman, and everything old is new again.
this is common whataboutism. What about the dark ages ? What about burning witches ? If we claim to be a compassionate society we should be anti-censorship and let ideas succeed or fail through the strength of their argument.
People are upset now that the current is shifting and you get shunned for being racist, rather than being shunned for not speaking properly or whatever the heck.
Nobody gives a shit when Uber classifies their drivers as independent contractors to stiff them on benefits, but everybody cares about the propriety of master/slave replication terminology. We're dealing with police violence by capitalizing Black in our style guides. Etc etc etc.
> Nobody gives a shit when Uber classifies their drivers as independent contractors to stiff them on benefits,
I think quite a few people gave a shit? I think you're attacking a straw man, it is perfectly possible to have opinions on small stylistic issues (like master vs main) while also thinking that there are fundamental economic things that need to change.
I'm sure that people 'care', and I suppose I'm straw-manning those people.. I'm not straw-manning the system. Time and again, challenges to monetary order aren't permitted but puritanical word-propriety is encouraged. It's an energy outlet.
> Time and again, challenges to monetary order aren't permitted but puritanical word-propriety is encouraged. It's an energy outlet.
I agree very much with this statement, but somehow have reached the opposite conclusion about whether "cancel culture" is a big problem that we need to spend a lot of time addressing. To me, that seems to be playing into the same issue you identified.
No one is complaining about going after actual racists. The problem is that things which aren't racist are now defined as racist and vice versa. e.g. saying that universities shouldn't admit students by race and only use grades and test scores is now "racist"
Me personally no, but I'm not so sure that I would risk saying it. On the other hand, I know I would be in no danger whatsoever stating that I favored racial admissions policies. I am sure that I would be in danger if I criticized my employer's hiring policies on that point. You set a high bar, though. The idea of getting called racist for advocating directly against racism should be no more than a bad joke.
People are upset that the definition of racist has been repurposed to apply to racially neutral positions and even anti-racism positions. If one advocates in favor of enforcing existing immigration laws, that's a quick way to get labeled a racist Nazi even though it's actually a very moderate stance. If one supports treating everyone equally regardless of race, then that explicitly anti-racism position is characterized as racist and attacked with baseless accusations of "bad faith".
I agree with your sentiment, but it wasn't that long ago that people were being brought to court in the US just for accusations of being socialist or communist. Any there wasn't even anything against the law with have different economic ideals.
In response to the murder, the writer was pretty much universally condemned and the a bill was introduced in the legislature to ban writings of that sort.
The fact that so many have convinced themselves that somehow we're in some new illiberal age is comical.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimanaka_incident