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Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Links - 26th March 2024 (2 - Cancel Culture)

Now Durham student union demands principle RESIGNS over 'insulting and humiliating' Rod Liddle talk - "Durham Students' Union has been blasted for demanding a leading academic resign after he invited journalist Rod Liddle to talk at an end of year event in front of hundreds of students.  It comes as footage emerged of Professor Tim Luckhurst and his wife Dorothy talking to 'woke' students who stormed out of the speech on Friday night.  The video shows him arguing with them as they left Mr Liddle's speech, which addressed trans issues, women's rights and institutional racism. The students branded the talk 'humiliating and 'vile propaganda' and the clip shows the professor remonstrating with them but his words were unclear... The incident provoked Durham University into launching a dramatic investigation while the SU called for his resignation.  The Free Speech Union slammed the five officers who penned a rambling statement in a bid to oust South College principal Professor Luckhurst... Durham SU moved to try to oust Professor Luckhurst in a rambling statement about an 'abuse of power' and 'calculated behaviour'.  Seun Twins, Jack Ballingham, Jonah Graham, Declan Merrington and Charlie Procter claimed hosting one of the UK's best known writers was an 'abuse of power'.  Ms Twins has previously wirtten of her hatred of the Tories, calling for them to be 'dealt with'... The Free Speech Union said: 'The vilification and abuse of Professor Luckhurst for inviting Rod Liddle to give an after-dinner speech is an absolute disgrace.  'If students cannot cope with hearing opinions they find disagreeable they shouldn't be at university.  'Durham says it believes in upholding academic free speech, but if so why has it placed Professor Luckhurst under investigation for describing the decision of students to walk out of the speech as 'pathetic'?  'In expressing that perfectly lawful view, Professor Luckhurst was exercising his right to free speech and penalising him for doing so could well be a breach of the law that requires universities to uphold free speech on campus... Fresh footage emerged today of the former national newspaper editor and his wife talking to students during the event on Friday night.  They were speaking to them calmly and appeared to be helping them understand universities are supposed to be bastions of free speech.  It came after some of them claimed that the journalist's jokes had left them 'frightened'... She asked: 'What are you frightened of you silly... what are you frightened of?' One of the students squealed back: 'What do you mean?'  The rest of their exchange was inaudible but Mrs Luckhurst went on to repeat the word 'a***' before another asked: 'Don't we all have one?'  She tweeted later that night: 'Bunch of inadequates thought it was clever to walk out on a speech tonight because they were afraid of what the speaker said…'  She added: 'Incidentally they thought it was ok to ask my husband to apologise for my comments…  'I know it's an old notion but I can speak for myself. Maybe the woke generation haven't heard of women's equality.' Mr Liddle, the associate editor of the Spectator, started his speech at a college formal by joking he was disappointed not to see any sex workers.  It was in reference to a recent controversy over safety training provided by the university to students working in the sex industry.  He also said the Left were ignoring science over transgender issues, colonialism was not the main cause of Africa's problems and the underachievement of pupils of Caribbean descent had nothing to do with institutional racism.  After the speech, students bayed 'disgusting' and 'racist' at Liddle as he walked out of the venue. That evening, a Stonewall poster was stuck on the door of Professor Luckhurst's office reading, 'Some people are trans. Get over it!'  Students wrote to Durham vice-chancellor Mr Long, claiming Liddle made 'transphobic, sexist, racist and classist remarks'.  The open letter, signed by more than 1,000 students, complained they felt 'distressed' and 'emotional' after his speech...
The left-wing student leader behind a campaign to oust Professor Tim Luckhurst described Jeremy Corbyn as 'the white king' and suggested Tories should be 'dealt with'.  Seun Twins has said the union's objective is 'unravelling the unfair power dynamics which permeate into a culture of privilege' at the university.  She has launched a 'culture commission' to 'explore and locate and ultimately deconstruct toxicity at Durham'. After she was elected, Miss Twins called for Tories to be 'dealt with' by 'roadmen' in a leaked post from her private Instagram account.  Roadman is a slang term defined as a young person who spends 'a lot of time on the streets in a group, and who may be involved in selling drugs', according to Collins dictionary. She wrote: 'I don't condone violence in the slightest, but sometimes when you are in the presence of such grotesque entitlement, do you ever just want to say 'We need to take these tories to South London and let roadmen deal with them' but you realise that you have to be the palatable and charismatic black girl since you are going to be their president for the next year and you must to smile and wave.' [sic] She later insisted the post was in response to a specific incident of bullying and was an expression of the way she felt she had to present herself 'because of racism and sexism'... Miss Twins, a former head girl at Camden School for Girls, a comprehensive in North London, became student union president after taking senior roles in the Durham People Of Colour Association and the Intersectional Feminism Society."
From 2021
These are the people who go on about "white fragility"

Not all Durham students want to silence Rod Liddle | The Spectator - "  As a Durham finalist, I’m fed up. The university has released more communication about Rod-gate in the last three days than I have received all term about what is going to happen with my exams. My college, my department and the university governing body have all sent me emails telling me about the appropriate welfare resources to turn to if I have been unduly affected by hearing about comments that I might disagree with. The university has been quick to affirm that it ‘categorically does not agree with views expressed by the external speaker at this occasion’. This is precisely my worry: since when has inviting someone to speak been a sign that you agree with everything they’ve ever said? After all, by giving someone a microphone, it should be clear that you are not irrevocably aligning your institution with them. Who would think otherwise?... Durham students should be better than this: educated, liberal-minded young people who see themselves as crusaders for tolerance must realise that we need to at least be in the room to have conversations with those we disagree with. Yet we seem to be rapidly re-defining ‘discussion’ to mean ‘talking with people I agree with and nobody else’. This is concerning for a university that has produced two Supreme Court judges and six in the High Court. Do we expect our future lawyers to walk out of court when the other side starts speaking for fear of disagreement? Had Liddle announced a plot to burn the Bill Bryson Library down, I could understand the need for all this clamour. Instead, the speech that the protestors missed by storming out concluded with Liddle emphasising the importance of listening to different perspectives and avoiding the opinion echo-chamber to which we have all become accustomed. Oh, the irony."

The case for cancellation insurance - The Spectator World - "That thing that isn’t happening has happened again. Cancel culture has seemingly claimed its latest victim in Sasha White, a literary agent reportedly fired by her employer after trans activists complained about her retweeting a social media post that said ‘being vulnerable to male violence does not make you women’. Her biography on a previously anonymous Twitter account asserted that ‘gender non conformity is wonderful; denying biological sex not so’ and she had also expressed support for J.K. Rowling, a hate-figure for gender extremists. That’s that... This is a function of coercive progressivism: ‘an ideological project to enforce a progressive moral code through law, social convention and brute force’. Ideally, we would recognize this for the calamitous path that it is, not least because, as with all insurgent ideologies, coercive progressivism’s opponents will invariably come to mimic its tactics even as they decry its objectives.  The answer is liberalism (free speech, open debate, pluralism, tolerance and a non-partisan civil society) but in its absence opponents of cancel culture should get creative — and entrepreneurial. There is a gap in the market for a temporary solution to the threat of being fired, expelled, anathematized, deprived of income or even rendered homeless for expressing a political opinion: cancellation insurance. You can insure yourself against fire, flooding, property damage, even death, so why not against cancellation by the mob?...  Basic policies might cover loss of income, healthcare benefits and costs incurred retraining for a new career, while more comprehensive coverage could include legal costs should you choose to bring suit against your employer or college, or even your cancelers. Cancelers often seize on a few prominent examples of canceled people who land on their feet and even end up more prosperous or influential than they were. This is a progressive echo of right-wing efforts to highlight outlier welfare recipients who, deprived of their EBT cards, quickly find stable work. The truth is that, while some canceleds secure a higher-paying job, make an overnight success of Substack, or can fund their way through the head-down period, most Americans lack the financial means or social connections to ride out cancellation. Fifty-three percent have no emergency savings while research from JPMorgan Chase found that, on average, middle-income households have only $2,000 set aside while low-income households have just $700. Sixty percent of millennials could not cover an urgent need for $1,000. Being canceled means being ruined financially as well as reputationally. That is another aspect that a full-service insurance policy could incorporate: crisis communications... The downside of anything beyond basic cancellation insurance, and specifically services that linked it to reputation salvaging, is that it would probably end up adopting the bullying behavior of the cancelers. More aggressive protection programs would inevitably offer to dig through the social media archives of your cancelers or of senior management at your workplace or institution for potentially offensive material. You would become implicated in the canceling of others and the infinite outrage generator would chug faster and spread harm wider. Yet, because cancellation not only imperils your income now but reduces your future earning potential, the demand for something more than a few months’ support to pay the rent would eventually asset itself"

The student mob proves Eric Kaufmann’s point - "Every time an academic, student or journalist raises the problem of cancel culture on campus, someone will pop up to say it’s a myth. But a clear case of cancel culture is currently unfolding before our eyes. Politics professor Eric Kaufmann is one of the few academics to have spoken out against this pernicious phenomenon – and now students are attempting to oust him from his post.  The Birkbeck Students’ Anti-racism Network has denounced Kaufmann as a racist, a white supremacist and alt-right. It has produced a lengthy Twitter thread listing examples of the views he has expressed that it says are ‘not welcome at Birkbeck’. The students have also started a petition calling for Kaufmann to be investigated, which they are sharing using the hashtag #KaufmannOut.  Those who deny the existence of cancel culture will say that Kaufmann has not been fired or banned from speaking… yet. But the intent of the students is quite clear – to shame him into silence by publicly accusing him of racism, and to have him sacked. This then sends the message that anyone who holds views like Kaufmann’s is not welcome to express them on campus. But the accusations of racism are inflated in the extreme. For instance, the students argue that phrases Kaufmann has used, such as ‘woke hijacking’, are dog whistles for white supremacy. They also denounce Kaufmann’s use of the term ‘woke Maoists’ and his complaints about a ‘woke reign of terror’ taking over universities. Bizarrely, even retweeting an article by spiked editor Brendan O’Neill is also treated as evidence of white-supremacist leanings. The purpose of the accusations is not to shed light on Kaufmann’s views or to counter them, but to smear him and to justify his cancellation. Anyone who thinks there is no free-speech problem on campus should read what the students have to say about free speech. One of the first things the students complain about in their Twitter thread is Kaufmann’s ‘mission’ to ‘fight for “academic freedom’”’ and to ‘cancel “cancel culture”’. In the petition, the Birkbeck Students’ Anti-racism Network argues that Kaufmann should not be ‘free to reproduce racist and anti-migrant discourse under the guise of scholarship and free speech’. Free speech and academic freedom are talked about as something only racists or those with the most appalling views would defend."
From 2021

The Petulant Campaign Against Eric Kaufmann - "Sir Roger Scruton—the prodigious conservative philosopher—once noted of his time at Birkbeck that it was “traditionally a left-wing place, haunted by the fear that somewhere, somehow, a conservative might have infiltrated the corridors.” Though he added that “the students were terrific because they were all grown up.” One suspects that if Scruton were still alive, he’d reconsider his opinion of the students... a Twitter account called “Birkbeck Students Anti-Racist Network” posted a long thread denouncing one of the academics at that institution, the political scientist Eric Kaufmann. In typical self-righteous fashion, the thread begins, “Kaufmann is a politics professor & former head of that department at Birkbeck … We want to publicly denounce him as a white supremacist and racist apologist.” (Accusing Kaufmann of being a “white supremacist” is particularly risible, given that the man is not only Jewish, but part Chinese and part Latino.)...  It also notes that Kaufmann has “links to the right-wing Policy Exchange.” The word “links” is used to suggest some kind of clandestine relationship, which is bizarre given that Policy Exchange is a well-known organisation with which many public figures have been associated.  In the subsequent 27 tweets, Kaufmann is upbraided for his stances on free speech, academic freedom, and cancel culture; for poking fun at woke activism; for criticising the concept of indigenous knowledge; for the content of his 2018 book Whiteshift; and for being associated with “Quillette, UnHerd, Spiked and many other far-right & bigoted magazines.” Numerous screenshots of Kaufmann’s tweets are posted as “evidence,” making the thread a masterclass in offence archaeology (though most of the things Kaufmann said or retweeted aren’t remotely offensive.)... Most of the accusations against Kaufmann are so absurd (e.g., the claim that he is a “white supremacist”) they can simply be ignored. One that perhaps deserves a response is the claim that “he compared people of colour to a herd of cattle.” This refers to a (now-deleted) tweet by Kaufmann where he shared a picture of cows blocking a road in the countryside with the caption “Black Lives Matter protest in Saskatchewan.” However, this was obviously not meant to imply that black people are cattle; it was simply a joke about the fact that cows often block roads in rural Canada (Kaufmann’s country of birth). At the time, BLM protestors had been blocking roads in the United States, and many of those protestors were in fact white. Contrary to the outlandish claims in the activists’ tirade, Kaufmann is a serious scholar and public intellectual; he has worked on topics as diverse as Protestant identity in Northern Ireland, the relationship between religiosity and fertility, and the political attitudes of Brexit voters. His latest book, Whiteshift (which the activists unsurprisingly mischaracterise) was made “Book of the Week” in the Times upon its release, and was listed as one of the “Best books of 2018” by the Financial Times.  The reason Kaufmann has been targeted is simply that he departs from woke ideology... this ideology is far less popular among the general public than it is on university campuses. Nonetheless, any scholar who takes an unorthodox position on one of today’s hot-button issues—particularly race or trans, the two most explosive—is liable to be vilified. The thinktank Civitas found that, between 2017 and 2020, 55 percent of UK universities saw at least one open letter or petition that called for “the restriction of views of staff, students or visiting speakers”. What is particularly ironic about the attempt to defenestrate Kaufmann is that he has spent much of the last two years documenting the intolerant atmosphere at British and American universities... Another way he’s been spending his time is by making the case for the UK government’s new academic free speech bill. (The Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, actually cited Kaufmann’s research in the white paper he published back in February.) A further irony is that this bill aims to thwart precisely the kind of campaign of which Kaufmann is now a target. As I noted in a recent article for Quillette, by providing the targets of cancel culture with legal recourse, the bill may deter institutions from capitulating under pressure, and thereby make attacks that call for sanctions less common in the first place... the main effect of the activists’ latest stunt has been to engender a humiliating ratio on Twitter. Yet even when they don’t succeed, cancellation attempts still have a chilling effect on free speech.  One positive thing Kaufmann can take from this whole affair is that the case for the new bill he’s been backing now looks even stronger."

Sharon Stone: ‘Cancel Culture Is The Stupidest Thing I Have Ever Seen Happen’ - "While speaking to Stone about her upcoming book “The Beauty of Living Twice,” “Just Jenny” host Jenny Hutt touched on the phenomenon of cancel culture and people’s fear to speak out on tough issues.  “I think cancel culture is the stupidest thing I have ever seen happen,” Stone bluntly told Hutt, Fox News reported.  “I think when people say things that they feel and mean, and it’s offensive to you, it’s a brilliant opportunity for everyone to learn and grow and understand each other,” the “Casino” actress continued.  Stone emphasized that differing perspectives derive from our diverse backgrounds... we need to “give people an opportunity to discuss things before you wipe out their entire person over a statement or a comment or a misunderstanding.”  “Stop being so small,” Stone urged. “People have done so much more than one sentence.”  The actress advised folks to “grow up” and “grow some empathy.”"

Philip K. Fry on X - "Thread: Since so many claim that cancel culture doesn't exist, I propose a challenge: For every additional 1,000 followers I get, I will present 10 examples of cancel culture. I'm willing to bet I can provide 150 examples before running out. Right now I'm at 2680 followers."
He got to 322 examples

Ignore the gaslighting – cancel culture is real - "Perhaps the most obvious example of gaslighting is how the identitarian left has created a system of public shaming known as ‘cancel culture’, which its adherents carry out ruthlessly while repeatedly denying its existence. The denial is an extension of the strategy because it enables them to continue with impunity. They insist that they are not ‘cancelling’ anyone, but merely ‘holding the powerful to account’. But when a supermarket employee loses his job for a joke he posted on Facebook, it doesn’t feel much like a valiant blow against plutocracy and the ruling class.  Cancel culture is not, as its proponents claim, aimed at the most powerful in society. It is a method of systematically smearing ordinary members of the public for failing to toe the line... Denialists often argue that the experience of JK Rowling proves that cancel culture is a myth. After all, she has faced a barrage of online abuse and accusations of transphobia (as well as an internal revolt at the publishing house which produced her last book), and yet her sales are better than ever. But this example inadvertently refutes the claim that cancel culture is merely a means to critique the powerful. It’s probably true that Rowling cannot be cancelled. But less lucrative authors have lost their publishers and agents simply for defending her. That is not to say that harassment aimed at wealthy public figures is in any way justifiable, but rather that cancel culture most commonly impacts on ordinary people who have neither the finances nor the influence to shield themselves from the depredations of the online mob... Cancel culture works pre-emptively by fostering a climate in which most people are wary of speaking their minds for fear of misinterpretation. In many cases, this misinterpretation is willful. For instance, in October, students at Cambridge University mobilised to have a porter at Clare College sacked because he had resigned from his seat on the city council in opposition to a motion relating to trans rights. They claimed that his views made them feel ‘unsafe’, a tactic that has now become grimly predictable. Employers are unlikely to take action against workers for a simple difference of opinion, but once an allegation is made that personal safety has been jeopardised they are practically obliged to take action. The elision of words and violence is a linguistic trick of the social-justice left and it has been weaponised with ruthless efficiency. Although cancellations are often orchestrated deliberately by groups of activists, its danger lies in a broader attitudinal shift. In the past, when someone misspoke at work or unintentionally caused offence, a colleague might have spoken to the individual concerned in private in order to resolve the issue. Nowadays, there is a tendency to shame the person on social media – perhaps with a screenshot of an offending email – in order to initiate a pile-on. This is precisely what happened to William Sitwell, who resigned from his post as editor of Waitrose Food magazine, after a joke he made in a private email was posted online... Even towards the end of my former career as a teacher, many of my colleagues had given up on making jokes in the classroom because they understood that deliberate misconstructions of their words could be used against them by pupils or parents with a personal grudge. The result was an enervated and less stimulating learning environment, and all it took was a few unscrupulous pupils to make disingenuous complaints to ruin it for the rest of them. This is now an accepted feature of all modern workplaces, only it is adults who are generating these precarious conditions. When people are expected to behave like robots, who will never misspeak or inadvertently cause offence, the business of living is reduced to drudgery. We need to challenge this atmosphere of conformity by reasserting the values of basic human empathy and resisting unreasonable demands for moral infallibility. Those examples of cancel culture that make the headlines are often widely discussed precisely because so many people recognise that cancellation could happen to any of us at any time. There is nothing healthy about a society that no longer believes in redemption, in which a substantial proportion of the population chooses to self-censor rather than risk facing reprisals for the crime of thinking freely."

Opinion | Should We Cancel Aristotle? - The New York Times - "What makes speech truly free is the possibility of disagreement without enmity, and this is less a matter of what we can say, than how we can say it. “Cancel culture” is merely the logical extension of what we might call “messaging culture,” in which every speech act is classified as friend or foe, in which literal content can barely be communicated, and in which very little faith exists as to the rational faculties of those being spoken to. In such a context, even the cry for “free speech” invites a nonliteral interpretation, as being nothing but the most efficient way for its advocates to acquire or consolidate power. I will admit that Aristotle’s vast temporal distance from us makes it artificially easy to treat him as an “alien.” One of the reasons I gravitate to the study of ancient ethics is precisely that it is difficult to entangle those authors in contemporary power struggles. When we turn to disagreement on highly charged contemporary ethical questions, such as debates about gender identity, we find suspicion, second-guessing of motives, petitioning — the hallmarks of messaging culture — even among philosophers.  I do not claim that the possibility of friendly disagreement with Aristotle offers any direct guidance on how to improve our much more difficult disagreements with our contemporaries, but I do think considering the case of Aristotle reveals something about what the target of such improvements would be. What we want, when we want free speech, is the freedom to speak literally."

America Exports Cancel Culture to the World - "Three days after it was published, the video was taken down. I contacted the journalist who interviewed me, asking what happened. He replied that although the video gathered over 176,000 views and was positively received by viewers, his employer determined that it “didn’t meet their profile.” He then revealed that his supervisors believed the video was too sympathetic to the targets of cancel culture. In other words, a video about cancel culture was cancelled. This social phenomenon is spreading beyond our shores. It is the latest American cultural export. Referring to the cancelled video, the Dutch sociologist Dr. Eric C. Hendriks has told me, “This would have been unthinkable in the Netherlands a year ago. Over time, American influence has spread cancel culture here.”... Because America still has reputational prestige across the globe, other societies adopt the views of our credentialed class. These individuals have been manipulating language and norms for personal gain. The reason provided for why the Dutch video was banned is revealing. The economist Tyler Cowen has suggested that the purpose of media is simply to raise the status of some individuals and groups and lower the status of others. Taking this idea one step further, Cowen’s fellow economist Arnold Kling has written, “So much of political and economic debate is about which groups and individuals deserve higher or lower status… Lowering another group’s social status is the most powerful message of all. It is more powerful than raising the status of those who one likes.” The video was taken down because it did not do enough to damage the status of cancel culture’s targets.  Consider the way charges of “racism” have been used to target individuals. People used to appropriately get rebuked or fired for expressing racist views. Today, though, people are getting cancelled for not supporting the claim that America itself is irredeemably racist. Never mind that such a position is in fact a Kafka trap: Danger awaits no matter how you respond. If America is a racist country, and you agree, then you are admitting that more purging and re-educating must be done. However, if you disagree, proponents of cancel culture take this as evidence that you and others like you are more racist than you realize, and thus more purging and re-educating must be done. The guidelines for what the writer Wesley Yang has termed the “successor ideology” are perhaps intentionally vague, and maximize optionality for undercutting political adversaries.  And status matters, particularly for how people evaluate beliefs and opinions. And this is a key reason why cancel culture has spread so swiftly. The Nobel Laureate economist John Harsanyi has said, “apart from economic payoffs, social status seems to be the most important incentive and motivating force of social behavior.”... another way people decide whether to believe something is through social proof. That is, how many of their peers believe it... sometimes people go even further. They take an article of faith, and stretch it to increase their own reputation. Indeed, in their forthcoming book Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk, the philosophers Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke refer to this as “ramping up.” They observe that, “Moral talk often devolves into a moral arms race, where people make increasingly strong claims… trying to outdo one another… to be the most morally impressive… to signal that they are more attuned to matters of justice.” This creates a spiral such that each person competes in a moral grandstanding contest. At first, people cancel Harvey Weinstein for real offenses. Then then ramp up, change their standards for cancellable offenses, and go after J.K. Rowling for tweets. Still, sometimes doubters remain. And these non-believers do not want to be ostracized from polite society. Thus, they either remain silent or publicly express a belief they do not privately hold.  The US used to export Coca-Cola, television shows, and music. Today, we export outrage, deplatforming, and social mobbing. The fact that cancel culture has seeped into other countries is evidence that American soft power is alive and well. The way things are going, though, eventually the only culture left will be the one that has “cancel” behind it."
The moral arms race is yet another example of the "myth" of the slippery slope

UBC embraces cancel culture at its own peril - "UBC is quickly making a name for itself as the nexus for cancel culture in Canada. Only weeks ago the University "distanced" itself from a basketball coach who dared to "like" a video criticizing Black Lives Matter. UBC has now excommunicated their Board of Governors, Chair. Michael Korenberg announced his resignation after it was revealed he had "liked" a number of tweets opposing the Black Lives Matter movement... Korenberg also "liked" a tweet by Charlie Kirk in which Kirk wished President Trump a happy birthday. So basically, according to UBC, Korenberg is the Devil... UBC education professor Annette Henry stated that Korenberg’s “likes” reflected a “white supremacist capitalist [hetero]patriarchy” worldview. A statement that is the definition of intersectionality. She went on to also declare “we still keep hiring white people where we have the opportunity not to.”... Ironically, an event about Antifa violence was cancelled due to Antifa violence. Even more ironically, the now tarred Michael Korenberg, was part of the overall body that handed us our cancellation. What started with us, will surely not end with us, but who exactly is spearheading these cancel campaigns?  Michael Korenberg’s tweets—and subsequent cancel campaign—was by UBC Students Against Bigotry, a student organization led by UBC PhD Student Jonathan Turcotte Summers. This same group was heavily involved in the cancellation of Andy Ngo at UBC. It’s admittedly impressive that a PhD Student successfully destroyed a man’s position in under 48 hours, and it goes to show how much power a single person with a computer can have.  Upon Korenbergs’ resignation, Students Against Bigotry immediately celebrated online and rejoiced in the fact that it is this easy to cancel people... Sooner or later, people concerned with being cancelled must realize that what seems like a mountain of complaint letter, are actually a vocal minority, spouting a plethora of defamatory statements. I receive private messages daily from students, professors, and others, all expressing their admiration and belief in free expression and soon after expressing their fear of public openness of their beliefs. I call this, “dinner table transparency” where people often espouse their honest beliefs in the privacy of their home, and mask them in public.  After you receive enough messages however, you begin to realize that we may all be walking on social justice egg shells. This is due to the fear that crazy people will fall prey to Godwin's law, and call you a Nazi for being in favor of the basic enlightenment principles that built liberal democracy. As someone who was just recently falsely labelled as a fascist, I can assure you, it doesn’t mean much when it comes from people who hide behind masks and spend their collective time on the internet. There is no reason to hand over the keys to the culture to a small group of radicals... cancel culture is completely weaponized as it doesn’t affect both sides equally. Korenberg liked a Trump tweet and got the boot, Justin Trudeau dresses in black face an uncountable amount of times, and is swiftly re-elected."
From 2020. Anti-racism means you can't hire white people anymore

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