McGill Students Tried to 'Cancel' Me Over PJ Media Articles - "The open letter targeted a more general policy, that of academic freedom. The view expressed in the open letter is that academic freedom should not allow opinions that the signatories disagree with or facts that they might find uncongenial. The signatories believe that they should be the arbiters of what may be thought, said, and written. This is an ambitious role for students to claim, rather akin to a ministry of truth in a closed, Soviet, or Maoist dictatorship... The open letter does not take issue with the truth of the offending statement, or offer argument and evidence attempting to show that it is incorrect, but the letter’s authors limit their efforts to calling me names—“racist” and “Islamophobic”—about an article in which neither race nor Islam were mentioned. In other words, there is no attempt to engage in academic or even common civil discourse to ascertain truth, because truth is not of interest to the students; as far as they are concerned, only their feelings count. The letter is explicit in saying that the only criterion that should be applied is “the right of Muslims and People of Colour have to feel safe.” Apparently, only opinions that make people feel good about themselves allow them “to feel safe.” This is of course a new definition of what “safety” is: never hearing anything, no matter how true, that you find unpleasant. Unlike most of these student signatories, including the ones from Middle Eastern and Islamic families, I have spent considerable time living in the Middle East, much of it engaged in ethnographic research in the desert with tribal peoples. My concern about the violence in the Middle East might be taken by fair-minded readers as an admirable, humanitarian concern. It seems likely that many of the McGill student signatories are from families that left the Middle East and brought their children to Canada in order to have a safer and more secure, as well as a freer and more prosperous life. These students do not appear to have learned the lesson of their emigration, or the values of the country to which they immigrated. In the open letter, and in subsequent articles, critics have cited many of my articles, mentioning them by subject or title, denouncing them as expressing unacceptable opinions. But none of the opinions expressed in my articles are explained, none of the arguments presented, and none of the evidence countered. In many cases, the students’ gloss on my articles radically distorts what the articles actually say. It seems uncertain whether the students ever actually read the articles. Certainly, neither the open letter nor subsequent student newspaper articles criticize the articles in any serious substantive fashion. The students apparently hold some woke quasi-religious creed that may not be challenged and regard those who do challenge that creed as heretics who must be canceled. Re-education camps are already working in many institutions, with diversity and inclusion officers policing heretics. I have already replied to the anthropology students. Anthropology when I entered as a student and then as a professor was an intellectually serious field. Now, having succumbed to grievance narratives, it is little more than a font of woke victimology. Its social analysis is warmed-over Marxist class conflict between identity classes and advocacy for identity politics. Contemporary anthropologists have betrayed anthropology and academic values, which are rarely found in universities today... Like the cruelty and violence in the Middle East, there are many truths that we are no longer allowed to speak about, lest these truths offend someone’s “identity” or contradict the extremist and false views of woke activists. For example, it is forbidden to say that men and women are biologically fundamentally different, and that, other than in imagination, men can never be women and women can never be men. It is forbidden to say what statistics prove absolutely, that African Americans are at great risk, not from police, but from African American criminals. Above all, it is forbidden to state that “systemic racism” does not exist in America, and that statistical disparities among racial census categories are primarily the result of social and cultural conditions and not the result of discrimination. Today, the official institutional culture in the English-speaking world is a set of motivated lies designed to distinguish the elite from the mass of the population and to divide and weaken the people in favor of the elite. Students, encouraged by their Marxist and neo-Marxist professors, and by university policies of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” that privilege students from some minorities, have become America’s and Canada’s Maoist Red Guard, upholding the official lies by attacking fellow students and professors who do not endorse extremist views in order to silence and destroy them. No unwelcome opinions are tolerated, and no discussion of difficult questions allowed. This is no less than the death of the Enlightenment academic tradition and its replacement with far-left Marxist and far-right Islamist propaganda. Recently many academics have been “canceled,” losing their posts, salaries, and even careers for expressing an opinion or even saying a word that some students and professors found objectionable. In my case, the McGill Red Guard was foiled. Strong support for academic freedom and for myself was provided by the Canadian Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship through letters to the University and to the student signatories, the American National Association of Scholars in an international petition, and the British Free Speech Union in another international petition, as well as letters and articles from a number of colleagues. In the end, McGill affirmed its commitment to academic freedom, saying that “no single idea, argument, word, or work is ‘prohibited’ at McGill.” Regarding the student demands that my emeritus status be revoked, McGill stated that “Although ‘emeritus’ status may be revoked for misconduct, that term refers to misconduct as defined by the regulations and policies that apply to tenure-track and tenured academic staff. The exercise of academic freedom or freedom of expression, within the boundaries acknowledged by law, is not misconduct under those regulations and policies.” I am an Emeritus Professor still."
Chris Rock rips cancel culture for rise in 'boring' entertainment - "“I see a lot of unfunny comedians, I see unfunny TV shows, I see unfunny awards shows, I see unfunny movies — because everybody’s scared to make a move,” he said. “And that’s not a place to be … Now you got a place where people are scared to talk,” he said, saying it was bizarre, “especially in America.” He said it was particularly pointless to target comedians because they already face the “ultimate cancel” of their jokes failing... dictating what people should find funny is “disrespecting the audience,” he insisted... The funnyman was just the latest to accuse cancel culture of ruining art. Last Week, Donald Glover, the 37-year-old actor and director also known as rapper Childish Gambino, tweeted, “We’re getting boring stuff and not even experimental mistakes(?) because people are afraid of getting canceled.”"
Facebook - "Cancel culture & white fragility are two ends of a double sided pill"
"Best proof yet that Woke garbage is a cult. This is astonishing. They're using their own contradictions to brainwash themselves even further. It's just made-up, manipulative nonsense.
This is some high level gaslighting
Social Media Explodes Over Old Tweets From Track Star Sha’Carri Richardson, Homophobic & Defending Chris Brown (TWEETS) - "Sha’Carri Richardson has been receiving nothing but praise after she qualified for the Olympics, but things quickly changed after someone started pulling up old tweets of hers on Twitter. On rapper-country music artist Lil Nas X: “If your support Lil Nas X, you can unfollow me”... On Chris Brown and Rihanna situation: “Oh my gosh SHUT UP !! Women like you are so annoying. None of us are perfect that was a mistake he made years ago & was dubbed throught the mud about for YEARS. It’s not right for anyone to put theirs hands on another person but y’all don’t say anything about the fact that”... A homophobic tweet: “If you a nigga & you wear PINK ..die in a pit…because you gay asf”"
Of course people defended her. "Accountability culture" isn't for everyone
The cancellation of Martin Parr - "The controversy focuses on two images, laid out next to each other. On the left page is a photograph of a black woman worker for London Transport, and on the right is an image of a caged gorilla at London Zoo. The juxtaposition of these two images is, of course, perplexing in 2020, over 50 years after the book was published. Why did Butturini place these images alongside each other? Is he comparing the black woman to a gorilla – is it a racist image? Or is he making a different kind of point? After all, the beauty of art is often its ambiguity. However, critique was not enough for the women who picketed the gallery... a concerted social-media campaign against Parr has now led to his resignation as director of the inaugural Bristol Photo Festival. Like a sinner, Parr has been forced to admit his error of allegedly promoting racism in photography. His letter of apology reads like a forced public confession, of the sort that was demanded in Maoist China. His public apology, and specific letter of apology to his accuser, are sad to read. He is almost grovelling to his accusers, begging for forgiveness for being a white man of nearly 70 years of age, and failing to see his accusers’ perspective... Parr’s apology also goes one dangerous step further, by calling on the publishers of Butturini’s book to immediately withdraw it from sale and destroy all existing copies. So there we have it: another step closer to book-burning. It is extremely worrying that a photographer of Martin Parr’s standing voluntarily placed his head under the guillotine and requested the destruction of a book that he previously had no problems with appreciating and supporting. It seems that critical debate is not enough for many politically correct photographers, students and academics. These protesters never simply want to open a discussion about contentious art. Instead, it is all about denunciation and censorship. Even those who criticise this trend are mobbed... Parr is sufficiently wealthy to withstand this humiliating experience, but younger artists and curators without his status and success will suffer most from this climate. Which artist’s or photographer’s head is next on the block? In the wake of Parr’s cancelling, some on Twitter are going after photographer Lua Ribeira, for a photograph she took of a black woman with the chain of a handbag draped around her face."
To be safe, you shouldn't have "diversity" in case there's some angle for offence that you don't catch
John R Lott Jr. on Twitter - NYT: "Mount Rushmore was built on land that belonged to the Lakota tribe and sculpted by a man who had strong bonds with the Ku Klux Klan. It features the faces of 2 U.S. presidents who were slaveholders."
".@nytimes' founding editor, Henry Jarvis Raymond, published an editorial supporting slaveholders getting escaped slaves returned to them. Will the NYT go out of business to atone for this grave injustice? BTW, slavery around from beginning of civilization. US helped end slavery."
ESAM (Panda) on Twitter - "I don’t believe cancel culture is real. If you did something awful recently, people can justifiably not trust you/dislike you. If people want to dig into ur past 8 years ago to find something u did that was bad, but you’ve grown so that doesn’t reflect who you are, you KNOW" - June 28, 2020
ESAM (Panda) on Twitter - "I’ve been made aware of a video that surfaced of me in 2014 saying both racial and a homophobic slur. I am so sorry for ever thinking it was okay, as a straight white man, to say those things. It is gross and disgusting and I wish I never thought it was acceptable." - June 30, 2020
Facebook - "Imagine really thinking that thinkers as diverse as Noam Chomsky, Gloria Steinem, Margaret Atwood, and Salman Rushdie are just making up a myth about cancel culture, for no reason apparently."
ZeroHavens Deux - Posts | Facebook - "It's hard enough to remember who has been cancelled and why but let's also have a moment to share the pervasive fear of potentially supporting someone who has or is, perhaps at this moment, doing something that will get them cancelled. I honestly hesitate now to be too enthusiastic about anyone in particular because what if we look like fools or clowns for it later? I worry about this a lot."
"This is the most insidious, least talked about element of cancel culture: the withholding of warm appreciation and genuine human kindness - the feelings and actions that make our species worth keeping around - due to a ubiquitous, inescapable fear of being attacked or harassed for it or even simply looking stupid down the line. This mentality frays the fabric of our society, isolating us by causing the risks of making real human connections to far outweigh the rewards. “Down by the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me” - because apparently there’s an Orwell quote for everything these days. It’s time for this to end. And none of that “they started it” stuff; be the change you want to see. Stop engaging in this behavior, even when it benefits you. How much good have the George Floyd riots done for the rioters’ cause? How many minds have the violence and arson changed? Why do you think it’d be any different with something like this? Quit waiting for the other side to stop first; when both sides feel that way nobody ever stops and nothing ever changes."
Facebook - "I spoke out against the anti-British, pro-far left hysteria in my workplace and almost got cancelled. My job was on the line for almost a year as I battled two disciplinary proceedings initiated by the vindictive woke mob. This is one reason why I haven’t posted much on this page over the past year; I was going through hell. In the end I was able to save my job, so I guess you could say that I have defeated cancel culture. However, I’ve been subjected to personal attacks and harassment from fellow colleagues, including outright slanderous lies about me. Even management turned against me. All this has taken a heavy toll on me. A year later I’m mentally exhausted. They’ve worn me down. But I regret nothing. And I’m also proud that I held my ground and didn’t apologise to the woke mob in order to save my job. However, will I speak up again? Probably not in the foreseeable future. I’ve done my bit, played my part in the fight against the woke tyranny. And I almost paid a hefty price with my job and career, not to mention the impact on mental health. My conscience is clear. Dr Jordan Peterson is my role model and he was one of the people who inspired me to speak out against the intolerable wokery. I had a choice: I could either speak up, or I could play it safe. I chose the former. And I think if we all pushed back to the best of our abilities, then this culture war would soon be over."
‘Cancel culture’ threatens the future of the Church, warns Archbishop of Canterbury - "Cancel culture is a “huge threat” to the future of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said as he defended the right to freedom of speech. Wading into the “culture wars” debate, the Most Reverend Justin Welby expressed alarm at growing censorship in the UK, singling out the “very, very dangerous” trends that had emerged in universities. He warned that the process of cancelling or “no-platforming” speakers or people whose “views you dislike” could “very quickly” lead to “cancelling everyone who disagrees”. Amid a growing debate over the tearing down of statues and memorials to controversial historical figures, he said the Church had identified “one or two” that were “really terrible” and would be moved to museums, but added that “we cannot cancel history”. “The past is a reality. I think cancel culture is a huge threat to the life of the Church,” he told the Italian newspaper la Repubblica. “We need to be able to express truths or to express our views, whether they’re good or bad.” The Archbishop also said there was a need to uphold the right to free speech when asked about the row over the showing of a picture of the Prophet Mohammed at Batley Grammar School. While describing blasphemy as a “morally bad choice”, he pointed out that the Church had supported the abolition of blasphemy laws in the UK"
'Kung Fu Cavemen' isn't racist — just the victim of moral panic by a self-righteous few - "First, they came for Seuss. Then, Ook and Gluk. The Cultural Revolution in our midst. It’s a story about two cavemen buddies — one black, one white — traveling through time and space to fight an evil corporation stealing natural resources from their hometown of Caveland, Ohio. Along the way, they meet Master Wong, who teaches them kung fu and imparts nuggets of Chinese philosophy, knowledge and training that they eventually use to defeat their nemesis and save their village. In a world that values cultural pluralism and inclusivity, “The Adventures of Ook and Gluk: Kung-Fu Cavemen From the Future” should be widely celebrated and beloved. Indeed, the 2010 children’s graphic novel spent 33 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller List. But today, cancel culture has come for the scalps of Ook and Gluk — for apparently “perpetuating passive racism.”... All this because of a Change.org petition started by Billy Kim, a Korean-American father of two, who demanded an apology after borrowing “The Adventures of Ook and Gluk” from a library... In a groveling apology that harkens to a forced confession extracted from a Maoist struggle session, Pilkey explained that he had “intended to showcase diversity, equality and nonviolent conflict resolution.” He had, in my view, succeeded, but not in the eyes of Mr. Kim and the 289 petition signatories. Why did it take fewer than 300 people to cancel Ook and Gluk for everybody else? For Scholastic to cease distribution of a popular book that had a sequel in development? This comes right on the heels of the announcement that six Dr. Seuss books will no longer be published for similar reasons, and part of a larger moral panic that is ignited by media narratives surrounding the recent spate of anti-Asian crimes. Mainstream media have mostly pinned the allegedly white-supremacist, anti-Asian “kung flu” rhetoric from the Trump administration as the main driver of ongoing anti-Asian hate (unlikely to those who have eyes and can see who is perpetuating these crimes and where), fomenting a climate that is extra-sensitive to any book, film, news article and speech that can be construed as remotely stereotyping of Asians. This is how two esteemed children’s authors known for their messages of pluralism and tolerance have had their works canceled for racism in recent weeks. Media narratives shape perceptions, and perceptions can shape reality, which is exactly how a small group of race-baiting activists can exert such an outsized influence on our institutions. In a closing monologue on “Real Time” weeks ago, Bill Maher weighed in saying, “You know who doesn’t care that there’s a stereotype of a Chinese man in a Dr. Seuss book? China. But the left cares very much. It’s another opportunity for performative outrage, which fuels the media business and another opportunity to construct the facile illusion of an irredeemably bigoted country in need of total scrubbing. It’s hardly the end of the world, but ceding the left’s argument that several Dr. Seuss books are so racist they should no longer be printed sets a standard.” He’s absolutely right. We don’t need the firemen that Ray Bradbury described in “Fahrenheit 451” to carry out book burning. There’ll be no books to burn when publishers and authors cancel their own books, seemingly on their own volition, but really because of Twitter mobs and busybody Change.org petitions. And there’ll be no books to read when writers, who will learn to anticipate market power, resort to self-censorship."
First, they came for the Confederate Generals...
Star-Lord Actor Chris Pratt Reportedly Believes He's Next in Line to Get Canceled - "Even Marvel stars aren't immune to getting "canceled" on social media. Just this year alone, MCU actors like Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Mark Ruffalo, and Sebastian Stan all succumbed to internet activists and it goes to prove that nobody is safe in this day and age of cancel culture. Now, Guardians of the Galaxy star Chris Pratt reportedly believes that it's only a matter of time before the internet goes after him for the second time around. Tipster Daniel Richtman notes on his Patreon page that the Star-Lord actor is worried about his public image and is doing everything in his power to avoid getting canceled on social media. Pratt is no longer stranger to getting lambasted by fans online and just last year, the actor was accused of being a Trump supporter after he no-showed a Marvel fundraiser organized by then-U.S. Presidential hopeful Joe Biden. Chris was also referred to as anti-trans and a white supremacist but he never addressed the allegations thrown at him."
Nolte: Jon Lovitz Says Cancel Culture Is 'No Different than McCarthyism' - " People who work in Hollywood, academia, the news media, and anyone on social media can have their names, reputations, and livelihoods destroyed, their voices blacklisted, for expressing opinions unapproved by the establishment. And there’s no appeals court, no recourse. So you have to sit there and eat it. Yep, pretty sure that’s McCarthyism. Oh, and just like the McCarthyism of the 1950s, to rationalize this appalling and un-American behavior, those who practice and defend it like to run around uttering words like “safety” and “patriotism” and “violence.” The worst part, of course, and this also happened in the 1950s, is how many of these fanatics seek to destroy others as a means to prove their own moral purity... The sad thing is — and we all know this is true — there are a whole lot of other Jon Lovitz’s out there, plenty of famous people who, if they just stood up like Kirk Douglas did when he hired blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, could put an end to this modern-day McCarthyism if they’d band together and speak out. A small minority is pushing this. Even in Hollywood, it’s a small minority. But because these monsters hold the power to flip a switch and disappear you online, because they’re the ones who sit in front of the TV cameras and are willing to flop on the floor and scream bloody murder until they get their way, the quislings remain silent. History will not look kindly on them, either."
Not even children are safe from cancel culture, as Billie Eilish just found out - "Billie Eilish is the latest celebrity to learn the lesson that mistakes can come back to bite us. In a TikTok from her young teenage years, the 13-year-old sings along to Tyler, the Creator’s hit song Fish, emphasising the word “ch--k” in the first verse, going on to do what sounds like a mimic of a stereotypical Asian voice. In response to the resurfacing of the video and a spate of outrage online, Eilish has issued a grovelling apology, saying “I am appalled and embarrassed and want to barf that I ever mouthed along to that word.” Whether Eilish knew that that word was a racial slur, or whether it’s true that, as she claims, “this song was the only time I’d ever heard that word”, shouldn’t really matter. The singer, now an adult at 19 years of age, is quite clearly a different person, and hasn’t (to public knowledge) expressed any prejudice or racist sentiment against Asian people since. To suggest that her character be coloured by an idiotic thing she put online as a child is as stupid as the video she posted. While almost all of us have regrets, most of us alive today can remain safe in the knowledge that our past cringes remain memorable only to the people who were there at the time. For a younger generation growing up online, historical missteps are far less forgiving... There is something intensely mean about trawling through someone’s past looking for slip-ups. Keyboard warriors waited for cricketer Ollie Robinson’s international debut to release the mined tweets they’d found of him making offensive jokes about his Muslim friend. Then again, cancellations aren’t always universal – when former Labour MP Jared O’Mara’s internet history resurfaced, including lurid tweets about Girls Aloud, “sexy slags” and homophobic insults he made a decade earlier, many Labour-supporting commentators argued he should be allowed to atone for his past misgivings... But as insulting and ignorant as Eilish’s casual repetition of the c-word was, what’s more unnerving is that there are adults who can’t tell the difference between the moral capacity of themselves and a 13-year-old. If we lose that distinction, we’ve also thrown out the possibility of redemption. What’s the point in talking to young people about politics, or getting them to read books, or asking them to leave the house, if we don’t believe that they will grow and change as a result of their interactions? Eilish’s teenage mistakes - and the fallout from them - should be a lesson to us all. She’s not the only one who has some growing up to do."
Americans’ Lust To ‘Cancel’ One Another Should Spark Soul Searching - "The New York Times ousted a top reporter, 45-year veteran Donald McNeil Jr., after 150 fellow employees demanded his firing. They learned that he had used the N-word while representing the newspaper during a 2019 trip to Peru. In his apology, McNeil explained that he was "asked at dinner by a student whether I thought a classmate of hers should have been suspended for a video she had made as a 12-year-old in which she used a racial slur." McNeil said he "asked if she had called someone else the slur or whether she was rapping or quoting a book title. In asking the question, I used the slur itself." The Times took an unyielding approach. "We do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent," the newspaper's top editors said in explanation. No wonder so many normal, non-racist Americans are concerned about canceling. Intent should always be a factor. Not that these incidents usually are judicial matters, but our legal system provides a guide... Many of us, however, feel frustrated by the inconsistent standards. The Times embraced "zero tolerance" with McNeil, but took a different approach in 2018 when it hired Sarah Jeong, who had used the hashtag #CancelWhitePeople... Canceling was designed to attack public figures. How about cutting non-public figures slack? Let's recognize a statute of limitations. Saturday Night Live featured a hilarious skit about cancel warriors who doxed 5-year-olds for their insensitive words... People who incite online mobs ride a moral high horse. Let's view them for what they really are: the online version of Mean Girls, who take perverse pleasure in humiliating others."
Gad Saad - Posts | Facebook - "I just finished reading the @Harpers which @sapinker had kindly emailed me yesterday. First, the old adage better late than never is operative here. That said, as I have repeatedly explained, signals are honest ONLY if they are handicapping/costly. Many of the signatories have been deafeningly silent until now, as others have been battling the Cancel Culture for years (at great personal and professional costs). Second, there was no need to mention @realDonaldTrump or to refer to right-wing movements on two separate occasions in the article. Much of the Cancel Culture in its current instantiation is a voracious beast of the Left. Academia, social media companies, journalism, entertainment are overwhelmingly populated by Leftists, and they are the architects of Cancel Culture. Hence, if you are going to politicize Cancel Culture, be honest about which political camp is responsible for the orgiastic self-cannibalism of Cancel Culture (as per the recent reality that befell @jk_rowling). This issue TRANSCENDS political tribalism. Trump will be gone soon so to mention him as part of your outreach is cheap. People should be disgusted and concerned by the ethos of the Cancel Culture as an inviolable first principle bereft of political machinations."
Apple Fires New Hire Hours After Employees Cancel Him as 'Misogynistic' - "The Masters of the Universe have once again demonstrated that cancel culture rules in Silicon Valley... Apple has fired a newly hired employee, Antonio García Martínez, after other company employees began to circulate a petition calling for an investigation into his hiring."
Paul Graham on Twitter - "Antonio García Martínez is actually a good guy. He might write the occasional shocking thing for effect, but he'd never, for example, organize a petition to deprive someone of their livelihood."
My New Study Proves It: Cancel Culture Is Much Worse on the Left - "Stories of mob-style cancel culture and violent protests at American universities like Yale, Evergreen State, and Middlebury are no longer the exception. Professors are now being regularly threatened with cancelation nationwide. Hardly a week goes by, it seems, without a new incident. A music theory professor at the University of North Texas published a critique of another scholar's critical-race argument about music theory and his dean opened an investigation in the name of reaffirming "our dedication to combatting racism on campus and across all academic disciplines." A Princeton professor of Classics came under fire for a dissenting letter against his colleagues' racial justice demands and faced professional consequences as a result. A professor at University of North Carolina was accused of creating an "unsafe learning environment" for a pedagogical role-play exercise on social and economic justice. Even at the at the University of Chicago, a school that has been on the forefront of free speech and civil debate and discourse with its Chicago Principles, a professor of geophysical sciences was attacked as "unsafe" for explaining his concerns about how his department was implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; he rejected the idea that in order to hire more women in science, the university needed to lower its standards. And attempted cancelation has ensued. Mobs coming for professors have become so commonplace that this phenomenon has petrified and silenced many students as well, students who regularly report wanting to hear a diverse set of ideas but are afraid to speak up, as well as the handful who challenge woke, intolerant ideas and make national news. A tribal mentality on college campuses built around progressive calls for reform has emerged, and students and professors who push back against these leftist ideas are essentially cancelled, leaving them at risk of ostracism, intimidation and facing threats of significant consequence. Worse, these tactics have spread from our nation's cloistered campuses to infect the nation at large. Many Americans report having censored themselves on salient socio-political issues out of fear of reputational consequences. This new dynamic is dangerous for democracy and threatens the societal progress that stems from healthy debate. Of course, it's true that cancelation happens on the right, too. But our recent study, which sought to quantify cancel culture, found that it is far more prevalent on the left... A person's likelihood to end a friendship over politics is tightly coupled with their politics. Just eleven percent of those who identify as ideologically moderate say they have lost a friend over political matters. The number is a bit lower for Republican leaners, 8 percent, and higher for Democrat leaners, at 18 percent. But a further breakdown of the responses reveals some troubling findings. While 10 percent of conservatives say they have lost a friend over politics, 28 percent of liberals say the same. For extreme conservative identifiers, 22 percent say they have cancelled a friendship, a handful of points higher than the national average. In contrast, a whopping 45 percent of extreme liberal identifiers have ended a friendship over politics—twice the figure of their conservative counterparts. While those on both extremes make up just under ten percent of the overall sample, extremely liberal Americans and their actions have made cancel culture a household name. Even amidst the political chaos of 2020, politics is not a regular point of conversation amongst friends. Only 6 percent of Americans say they talk government and politics with their friends on a near-daily basis. Another 15 percent say they and their friends discuss the matter a few times a week. About a quarter (24 percent) chat about civics a few times a month, while the majority (55 percent) do so less often. However, 44 percent of extreme liberals talk politics at least a few times a week, compared to just 13 percent of moderates and 32 percent of extreme conservatives... While there is an ample number of conservatives who talk politics frequently, conservatives are far less likely than liberals to lose or end friendships over disagreement; instead, it appears that it is primarily liberals who cut off ties with those they disagree with. Moreover, the impulse to cancel does not stem from traditional social cleavages... Neither race nor geography appear to play much of a role in an individual's likeliness to end a friendship over politics either... This behavior is not only hypocritical given the language of love and tolerance liberals preach, but it is also counterproductive. Our civic vitality is threatened when people cannot find shared humanity and fail to empathize with others and recognize that politics is about tradeoffs and hearing the other side."
Liberals will just pretend that criticism is the same as cancelling, and that all amounts of criticism is equivalent, and then proclaim that this shows that conservatives are hypocrites
An American Idol finalist was canceled for an old video where a friend wore a white hood. He was 12 at the time and it turns out it was a horror-movie costume. - "American Idol finalist Caleb Kennedy has been cancelled for the unpardonable sin of being 12 and hanging out with friends with low-quality costumes... We now live in a world where an aspiring young musician – potentially an upcoming national star – is absolutely demolished for an out-of-context video taken in middle school. Sadly, Kennedy apologized to the woke mob, which meant he was immediately devoured. Never apologize to the Woke Monster. In other news, Justin Trudeau is still the Prime Minister of Canada and Ralph Northam is still Governor of Virginia"
Woke Gamers Looking To Censor ‘Six Days In Fallujah,’ Before They’ve Even Played It - "The ’90s called. They want their moral panic-induced censorship back... But the ghost of the still-alive Thompson legacy has once again reared its ugly head, this time in the form of a concentrated effort to censor one particular video game — that no one has played — claiming it will lead to violence, even though such claims have failed to prove true in the past... The usual voices are seeking to ban this game before it even goes to market. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a press release last week insisting the game — which, again, no one has even played — is basically an “Arab murder simulator” that “glorifies violence that took the lives of over 800 Iraqi civilians, justifies the illegal invasion of Iraq and reinforces Islamophobic narratives.”... games journalists — who are supposed to cover games — are actively rooting for “Six Days in Fallujah” to be banned. The Houston Press ran an opinion piece from someone who built upon CAIR’s words to make numerous assumptions about the game, comparing it to “Cut-and-paste military shooters with racist bents” and suggesting it would be “yet another adventure where we focus on how hard killing foreigners and people of color is on Americans while still not addressing why we did it in the first place.” Kotaku, one of the most notorious outlets for “woke” commentary on video games, also parroted CAIR’s press release and suggested the game should be banned on various platforms, calling it “a step in the right direction.”... “The good news, and a reason to be cautious about stating such effects, is that evidence for other video game effects outside of the violence realm has generally turned up very little. That’s true whether we’re looking at body-image concerns, sexist attitudes, or pro-militaristic attitudes. In general, beliefs that fictional media can influence behaviors or attitudes is largely exaggerated""
Council on American-Islamic Relations Calls for Six Days in Fallujah Deplatforming; Asks Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox to Drop It - "The battle itself took place in 2004; where Iraqi insurgents including Al Qaeda controlled city of Fallujah. While documentaries claimed the US had used white phosphorous as a chemical weapon against civilians (rather than illumination or a smokescreen), the US military has denied this, using it against combatants. A petition was recently released demanding the game be cancelled or banned; as it “promotes the mass murder of Iraqis by American invaders” and “will also inevitably breed a new generation of mass shooters in America and brainwash gamers into thinking RACISM IS OK.” In March 2019, Oxford University released a “definitive” study, declaring “no link” between violent video games, and violent tendencies in teenagers. The report aligns with the findings of several other studies already conducted before"
Facebook - "I disagree with JK Rowling on a lot. I have never read a single word of a Harry Potter book. But seriously, every institution in the UK could learn something from her refusal to capitulate to the fuming mob who have spent weeks abusing and insulting her and trying to get her cancelled simply because she believes there is such a thing as biological reality. In their tens of thousands people have lined up to denounce her, to call her "pure scum", to tell her to shut the f**k up. Including the three actors who became famous on the back of the Harry Potter stories -- the celeb equivalent of children denouncing their parents in Stalinist Russia. She knows there will be protests if she speaks in public again, she knows some millennials are burning her books, she knows she will be defamed and boycotted for years. And yet she is sticking to her guns. That is so unusual in these yellow-bellied times. Imagine if every university, corporation, media channel, streaming service, local council and politician did likewise every time noisy agitators called on them to ban something or apologise for something or to sack people for wrongthink. Britain would be a very different, and far better, place."
Raymond McCue ⚤⚣ on Twitter - "Democratic voting isn't "cancel culture." If states pass majority-supported bills saying that critical theory or Intelligent Design can't be mandated as part of school curricula, that is different -like it or not- from fanatics demanding the firing of citizens for normal speech."
"Interesting NHJ is suddenly so interested in protecting unpopular ideas from the chopping block, isn't it? At her work, she and her companions seem to love to do the chopping."
NHJ = the lady, Nikole Hannah-Jones
PBear101 on Twitter - "Conservative: “Man, they burned my burger again. I’m through with Five Guys.”
Liberal: “Oh, so cancel culture is okay now? Good to know.”
Think tank conservative: “As this example shows, cancel culture is just as big a problem on the right...”"
Now they’ve No Platformed Richard Dawkins - "Celebrated atheist Richard Dawkins was booked to address the College Historical Society (nicknamed the Hist) at Trinity College Dublin next year. But the society’s auditor has now announced that the invitation will be rescinded, citing Dawkins’ views on ‘Islam and sexual assault’. In line with his militant atheism, Dawkins has been highly critical of Islam – alongside every other religion"
The denunciation of Richard Dawkins shows that wokeism has become a new religion - "The Chinese authorities have created an app that will enable citizens to report those who express “mistaken opinions”. Personally, I can’t see why they’ve gone to such trouble. They could have saved themselves a lot of time and effort by simply lifting their ban on Twitter. After all, that’s what we in the West use it for. If anyone over here tweets a mistaken opinion, we make sure they soon regret it... the award of which Professor Dawkins has been stripped is Humanist of the Year 1996. By rescinding it, the AHA is in effect arguing that the Professor’s tweets in 2021 mean that he wasn’t the world’s best humanist in 1996 after all. But that can’t be right, because he hadn’t posted the tweets then – not least because Twitter hadn’t been invented yet. In my view, therefore, the AHA’s action betrays a profound misunderstanding of how time works. Normally, humanists tend to pride themselves on their rationality, so this is an unexpected lapse. The other thing on which humanists tend to pride themselves, of course, is not being religious. And to me, this makes the AHA’s attitude all the more disconcerting. Because in this instance, they’re behaving as though they’re very religious indeed. Historically, it’s been the highly religious who make a great public show of denouncing heresy. It’s been the highly religious who condemn any supposed failure to conform to the orthodox beliefs of the day. Yet look again at that statement from this group of American humanists. The Professor’s “subsequent attempts at clarification”, apparently, “are inadequate and convey neither sensitivity nor sincerity”. As a result, he is “no longer deserving of being honoured”. Fascinating, isn’t it? So sanctimonious. So pious. So holier-than-thou. No mercy. The heretic must be punished, or at least excommunicated. Maybe the real reason these people haven’t taken to religion is that they’ve never found one strict enough for them. Then again, maybe they have. Wokeism: the glorious new religion of our time, whose evangelists preach their dogma with a ravening zeal from their social media pulpits, while sinners are furiously decried until they repent. Dawkins himself doesn’t seem especially bothered by the loss of the AHA’s award. “Thinking to do my duty by deleting the entry, I opened up my CV,” he told a newspaper, “only to discover that there was nothing to delete.”... No matter how thoughtless and insensitive the Professor’s tweet might seem, I would have expected a humanist group to respect the freedom to ask uncomfortable questions, the freedom to test the boundaries of socially acceptable thought, the freedom to cause offence. Without that freedom, after all, there might well be no humanists."
Richard Dawkins: cancelled for woke heresy - "Unintentionally, the AHA underlined the point Dawkins was getting at: why is one form of self-identification celebrated where the other is not? There are good-faith responses to that question. But rather than try to answer it, the AHA and others simply condemned Dawkins for even asking it. As one prominent atheist blogger put it: ‘It’s not merely a question. There’s nothing to “discuss”.’ Those scare quotes say it all. Discussing the basis on which we understand trans identity does nothing to undermine the dignity, rights and respect that should be afforded to trans people, as they should any human being. But wokists, even atheist ones, those who pride themselves on their opposition to blind faith, seem incapable of even ‘discussing’ these questions. Dawkins’ great crime here is being a reasoned thinker in an increasingly religious age... the cancellation of Dawkins from within the atheist world confirms what has been clear for some time – that many Western atheists are fuelled not by scepticism, reason and humanism, but by a sense of moral superiority over ‘dumb’ conservative and religious folk. It is a sense of superiority which is very much misplaced. As the rage against Dawkins reveals, some leading atheists are gripped by precisely the same kind of rigidity and religious fervour that they condemn in others. All they have done is replace one form of religious dogma with another."
Facebook - "The American Humanist Association withdrew an award it awarded to Richard Dawkins in 1996 for comments they deemed offensive. Yet they are still proud of previous award-recipient, and noted anti-semite, Alice Walker. I often think making "the hypocrisy" the story is overblown and an act of whataboutism. But it's an interesting question to ask - at what point, and for what reason, is someone whose work you've found valuable persona non grata? Certainly among so-called humanists and free thinkers they are going to take a variety of positions, some of which will offend *somebody*. Walker's views are many times loonier and more offensive than Dawkins' - it's just that antisemitism is of no concern to the Elect when the person uttering it is sufficiently intersectional. But should quantifiably loonier views cancel out the other work for which they were praised?"
Facebook - "No scientist's contribution to science WILL EVER be worth validation of harmful, pseudoscientific views, no matter how arguably significant the contribution may be. Consider the horrible human being known as Richard Dawkins: Last week, I successfully argued against mentioning him in a piece I'm working on about a scientific concept he helped popularize ("selfish" genetic elements). One of the editors said that the audience would expect a reference to Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene in a piece about selfish genes. I agree, BUT maybe someday people won't expect to hear his name at all. I explained that I'm with another editor in not being able to stand Dawkins and that I don't want to mention his name in anything my name is attached to, in part because his unscientific bigotry over the last couple of decades is triggering for a lot of people whom he regularly dehumanizes. (I, of course, am fine with mentioning his name in work that is critical of him.) I informed her about the American Humanist Association withdrawing his "Humanist of the Year" award for his recent anti-trans (and racist) comments (he compared trans people to Rachel Dolezal). I told her that I also happen to have some traumatic personal experience with him, as I experienced racism and sexism when I worked with his organization, in addition to hearing his terrible views multiple times in person. She agreed wholeheartedly after I filled her in. Why am I sharing this? Because as much as I wish that "cancel culture" would work in one fell swoop to cancel pseudoscientific bigots who claim to have "science" on their side, in reality, what matters is the accumulation of several small actions. Each of these instances matter. Why? In a nutshell, the real problem with Dawkins isn't that he's a dangerous bigot on Twitter who stands out for his abhorrent hot takes that some people think are the worst of the worst views of people with PhDs. It's that, in being a caricature of the worst sort of old white guy in science, he distracts from the straight-up pseudoscientific biological essentialism hidden in plain sight in some of the *most respected peer-reviewed journals* and in the mainstream scientific community-- examples include all of the dehumanizing science trying to find consistent biological differences between LGBTQ+ people and cis-het people, non-white people and white people, neurotypical and neurodivergent people, and more. This is abhorrent racist biological essentialism that's as pseudoscientific as flat earth theory. Period. The idea that "wokeism" is ruining "intellectual inquiry" isn't at all a fringe notion. It's obvious that, for instance, NIH-funded, tenured scientists love to dabble in that ridiculous idea. If we can't cancel Dawkins, then there's no way that we'll be able to extricate dehumanizing pseudoscience from what we call "science.""
Ironic, given that trans mania is anti-scientific
Stephen King: J.K. Rowling 'canceled' me for supporting trans women - "Stephen King has revealed that fellow bestselling author J.K. Rowling completely blocked him when he stood up for the trans community... “Here’s the thing: She is welcome to her opinion,” King told the Daily Beast of Rowling’s much-maligned messages. “If she thinks that trans women are dangerous, or that trans women are somehow not women, or whatever problem she has with it — the idea that someone ‘masquerading as a woman’ is going to assault a ‘real’ woman in the toilet — if she believes all those things, she has a right to her opinion,” he insisted. But “what she got angry about” was “my opinion,” King said, suggesting his fellow wordsmith had been hypocritical." “It’s like the old saying, ‘I don’t agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,'” he said. “So, nobody has ‘canceled’ J.K. Rowling. She’s doing fine. I just felt that her belief was, in my opinion, wrong... King also bucked the trend and came out in support of cancel culture. “All that’s happening here … is that the way they’re used to doing business no longer works as well as it used to,” he said in the interview. “You’re going to be held accountable for what you say and what you do. “That’s the American way, OK? There’s nothing odd about that, and there’s nothing radical about that. “If you do the crime, you gotta do the time,” he insisted."
Apparently blocking someone on Twitter is "cancelling" him
Liberals claim that cancel culture isn't new and isn't special by broadening the definition of "cancel" until it loses all meaning (e.g. claiming Christians have been cancelling people through boycotts or even burning people at the stake)
Presumably Stephen King has never gotten angry about anyone else's opinion, or he'd been a super hypocrite (even more so than what he accuses Rowling of being, since he's the one with this weird logic). Of course, we know he has TDS, so this isn't true. Then again, King is doing fine too so he hasn't been "cancelled" either, so he's just incoherent (topped by his subsequent endorsement of cancel culture in the interview)
