[ceejayoz]

> It's not about who "invented" it. It's about who started the most recent round.

Starting when? Several of the examples are quite recent; there's no point in my life where people of both political persuasions weren't boycotting or criticizing things.

> freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences

This remains entirely true. The First Amendment protects us from government-applied consequences. Being fired for being an asshole by a private employer has always been kosher. Being fired because the FCC threatens your employer with revocation of their broadcast licenses over protected speech has not.

[0xDEAFBEAD]

>Several of the examples are quite recent

The only one I'd consider recent is US national anthem kneeling.

I'm in my mid-30s. I only have the vaguest memories of cancel culture around 9/11. I have very vivid memories of progressive cancel culture during the late Obama administration and onwards. It very much was not a one-off sort of thing. It was a systematic practice which was systematically justified. The 9/11 stuff died down as 9/11 receded into the past. Progressive cancel culture only started dying down when Elon Musk bought Twitter.

I agree that progressive cancel culture was mostly not implemented with the help of the government. I agree that Brendan Carr overstepped in a way that wasn't a simple case of "tit for tat", and I think he should be fired.

On the other hand, consider Karen Attiah. If you took what she said, but replace "white men" in her statement with "black women", and imagine a white man saying it, he absolutely would've been risking his job just a few years ago. People were fired for far less.

[ceejayoz]

> I only have the vaguest memories of cancel culture around 9/11.

Maybe you agreed with the canceling enough it wasn't noticeable; I cited two specific examples directly related to that day. It was… not a fun time to be anti-war.

Go back a few years and you'll find further prominent examples, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puppy_Episode

> On the other hand, consider Karen Attiah.

I disagree with her firing, but there are no First Amendment concerns here. The Washington Post is free, under the First Amendment, to be shitty, even with regards to employment. They canceled her, as is their right, and as our ape evolutionary cousins do despite a lack of language, social media, or political parties. "I don't like you, so I won't associate with you" is deeply ingrained in us.

[0xDEAFBEAD]

>Maybe you agreed with the canceling enough it wasn't noticeable; I cited two specific examples directly related to that day. It was… not a fun time to be anti-war.

I was roughly 12 years old when Iraq was invaded. I was sitting in class staring at the clock and waiting for recess. It was a different political era from my perspective, and it feels a little disingenuous that you keep harping on it. It seems to me that there's been significant turnover in the US political power players since that time, so the hypocrisy accusations don't seem to land very well. Remember that Trump gained popularity with the GOP electorate in part due to his willingness to unequivocally condemn Bush & friends for their middle east misadventures.

>"I don't like you, so I won't associate with you" is deeply ingrained in us.

Sure. But when explaining why they fired Attiah, the Post wrote: "the Company-wide social media policy mandates that all employee social media postings be respectful and prohibits postings that disparage people based on their race, gender, or other protected characteristics".

They're applying the exact standard that progressives requested. It appears to me that they are actually applying it in an even-handed way. If I was a journalist circa 2017, and I made a post suggesting that America was violent because of people caring too much about "black women who espouse hatred and violence", in the wake of a black women recently being murdered, then the risk of progressive dogpiling, and my subsequent termination, would've been extremely high. It's not respectful, and it disparages on the basis of protected characteristics. Remember, Al Franken lost his job (even after he apologized!) for things like squeezing a woman's waist at a party.

I think you're a little fixated on the government thing, as cancel culture is generally speaking a non-governmental phenomenon, regardless of who is doing it to who. At least recently in the US.

[ceejayoz]

> I was roughly 12 years old when Iraq was invaded. I was sitting in class staring at the clock and waiting for recess. It was a different political era from my perspective, and it feels a little disingenuous that you keep harping on it.

It's a little disingenuous to go "I only have the vaguest memories of cancel culture around 9/11" and "I have very vivid memories of progressive cancel culture during the late Obama administration", in that case. I, similarly, have few memories of paying for health insurance when I was in middle school.

> They're applying the exact standard that progressives requested.

Maybe! But describing him as a "white man" is accurate, as describing Obama as a "black man" would be uncontroversial. If you start talking about white/black men as monolithic groups, you start getting into trouble.

> I think you're a little fixated on the government thing, as cancel culture is generally speaking a non-governmental phenomenon…

I am, because the people who whined incessantly about that phenomenon are now weilding governmental power to do the same thing, in a way that is clearly far less acceptable legally.