As ‘cancel culture’ spreads, is America entering Orwellian territory? - "Public opinion shows that cancel culture is having its intended effect and not just on conservatives... A majority of the electorate (52 percent) identified with the statement that “true free speech and freedom of belief do not exist in this country today because of political correctness and potential consequences such as losing a job for not conforming to beliefs and narratives being promoted by the media, academia and elites.” Only 34 percent agreed that “free speech and freedom of belief exist in this country” and felt free to speak their minds and express their personal beliefs in the workplace and social settings. Across party and ideology, the only ones who felt free to express their beliefs at work or in social situations were, not surprisingly, liberal Democrats, by a 51 percent to 38 percent margin. In a 2019 Freedom Forum Institute survey on the First Amendment, almost half the respondents (46 percent) said they were willing to shut down a speaker at a public institution if the appearance would be “likely to offend.” Anyone who values liberty should be concerned that so many Americans are willing to let others restrict their right to free speech and assembly. When one side can effectively stifle the views of the other, that’s not democracy. It’s tyranny. And who gets to decide which thoughts are allowed and which are not? A student mob, the faculty Senate, the university president?... What’s alarming is how quickly the cancel culture has taken root throughout society with conservative thought its first casualty, but not likely its last... When a conservative student stays silent in a liberal professor’s classroom rather than risk a grade, we lose ground. When a Chuck Todd announces that those who disagree with his views on climate are no longer welcome on “Meet the Press,” we lose ground. When an opinion piece costs an editor his job for believing that airing opposing views is not only right but necessary to honest political debate, we are entering dangerous territory, the kind Mill and Orwell warned us about."
YouTuber Who Said Cancel Culture Was a Good Thing Gets Cancelled - "YouTuber Ethan Klein, who previously said that cancel culture was a good thing, complained about losing all of his sponsors after being targeted by a cancel culture mob over alleged “homophobic” remarks. You reap what you sow. Earlier this year, Klein announced he was deleting his previous interviews with author Jordan Peterson over the Canadian academic being a “dangerous gateway to the alt-right, transphobia, and covid misinfo.” Peterson responded by warning Klein that “those who engage in cancel culture generally live to regret it,” adding, “the chickens will definitely come home to roost.” “You will be held to higher and higher and soon impossible to maintain ethical standards by the very mob you currently wish to please,” said Peterson. “Then you will make a mistake, and they will devour you. With glee. Please take this warning seriously. I liked you,” he added. Klein responded by asserting that being cancelled can sometimes be “a good experience.”... During his show earlier this week, Klein complained, “Today we have no sponsors because…our wonderful fans have taken it upon themselves to write all our sponsors and to have them can(cel), not to support us.” Klein appeared to be cautious about using the word “cancel.” The YouTuber went on to explain how it was “painful that people would do that.” “It’s kind of crazy that they just drop you like a bag of dirt over some bullshit,” said Klein, referring to the sponsors who cancelled on him. After having initially opposed ‘woke’ snowflakes in a series of videos several years ago, Klein reversed course and became a creature of the establishment after meeting YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki. He has repeatedly called for other people to be deplatformed and cancelled over ‘controversial’ remarks, so the fact that it’s now happening to him isn’t without irony."
Perma Banned - Posts | Facebook - "He was right."
Keywords: youtuber who celebrates cancellation gets cancelled, celebrate demonetisation gets demonetised youtube, celebrates cancel culture gets cancelled
‘More Weight’: An Academic’s Guide to Surviving Campus Witch Hunts - "In the fall of 2020, I became the target of a cancellation campaign after I’d suggested that the best policy for a university seeking to support underrepresented groups, while staying true to its mission of producing knowledge, is to ensure that hiring and admissions decisions are based on merit. It’s an idea that directly reflects bedrock principles advanced during the Civil Rights movement, and which are still supported by a large majority of Americans. But to the mob, I was just an irredeemable enemy of progress and social justice. As part of the now-standard playbook, my attackers formed a Twitter mob and wrote a denunciatory public letter, cynically misrepresenting my views, demanding that my research and teaching at the University of Chicago be restricted, and urging that my department formally denounce me. Fortunately, at a crucial juncture in the proceedings, the Free Speech Union launched a change.org petition in my support, which was signed by more than 13,000 people"
Rowan Atkinson: Cancel culture is like 'medieval mob looking for someone to burn'
Fitz on Twitter - "hi guys. i want to come out and say that i made a lot of racial, sexual, and insensitive jokes in my past. it’s something I’m proud of, i still think a majority of them are funny, and i genuinely couldn’t give less of a fuck if anyone finds them offensive"
Marc Bola: Middlesbrough defender charged by FA over nine-year-old social media post - "Middlesbrough defender Marc Bola has been charged with misconduct by the FA over a nine-year-old social media post made when he was 14. The charge relates to a post which "is insulting and/or abusive and/or improper", including a reference to sexual orientation... West Ham winger Jarrod Bowen was charged by the FA over a tweet written when he was aged 15 in 2012 which contained a racist term."
Facebook - "If the world’s richest man—Elon Musk—and the world’s best selling author—J. K. Rowling—are not safe from the Woke-scolds, who are you to think you can win your way to acceptance? Get over it. Take the way of the Cheerful Pariah."
Cancelling Comedians While the World Burns—A Review - "In 2013, British philosopher and cultural critic Mark Fisher found himself exhausted and losing interest in politics after spending too much time in the “miserable, dispiriting zone” of left-wing Twitter. Leftist politics, he wrote, had become a “vampires’ castle” the sinister denizens of which were driven not by thirst for the blood of the living but “a priest’s desire to excommunicate and condemn, an academic-pedant’s desire to be the first to be seen to spot a mistake, and a hipster’s desire to be one of the in-crowd”... The vampires are supported by the institutions of capital, which found them useful for disrupting working-class solidarity. In Cancelling Comedians While the World Burns: A Critique of the Contemporary Left, Ben Burgis... follows Fisher into (or out of) the vampires’ castle... Burgis sets out his diagnosis of the pathologies afflicting the modern online Left and proposes “a smarter, funnier and more strategic” kind of progressive politics. In a chapter dealing with Antifa and the “pathologies of powerlessness,” Burgis warns that fistfights at rallies held by marginal white supremacist groups are no substitute for real political action and that such altercations risk bringing far-Right extremists attention and sympathy. He describes the assault on activist Andy Ngo as “morally and strategically indefensible.” In another chapter, he criticises “Tankies”—apologists for the totalitarian Communist regimes of the 20th century—for their “maddeningly counterproductive” approach of “insisting that the Soviet Union was actually good and blurring the distinction between the ‘socialism’ of militarized one-party states and the better world that might finally be within our reach.” He is sceptical of the utopian anarchists who believe it is possible to abolish the coercive institutions of the state, such as police and prisons, and those who complain about the behaviour of political institutions in which they refuse to participate. But Burgis also worries that too many of those who share his goal of creating a fairer and more equitable society have given up on achieving practical change to pursue petty vendettas against other leftists... “No-one is ever really cancelled,” a claim made by critics of concerns about cancel culture who point out that most of those subjected to high-profile “cancellations” keep their platforms (or find new ones), their audiences, and their sources of income. Some emerge better off with a higher profile and more readers or viewers. Burgis has three responses to arguments like these. First, he points out that cancellation does sometimes end careers and ruin lives, particularly for those who are not famous journalists or public figures, don’t have a big following, and depend on income from an employer. Besides, it is bizarre for a mob to insist that some innocuous comment is literal violence but that the torrents of abuse directed at the person who made it is part-and-parcel of public speech and accountability. Second, cancel culture can still be a problem even if it doesn’t lead to extreme consequences—a “Whites Only” sign, for example, is not the only evidence of racism. And third, the inefficiency of cancel culture is a problem in its own right—all this “huffing and puffing” makes the Left look unappealing and powerless, particularly when it is targeting other progressives. Burgis points to the examples of Natalie Wynn, better known the YouTuber ContraPoints, and Barbara Ehrenreich, both of whom are progressive figures and both of whom were subjected to unjustifiable Twitter mobbings. In a memorable phrase, he observes that the online Left doesn’t eat its children—it gnaws away at them. Burgis is writing for his friends (and critics) on the Left, and so his chief concern is improving the strategy of those who, broadly speaking, share his political aims. But he isn’t afraid to tell them when he thinks their premises are also incoherent or simply wrong. For example, he wonders why ostensible advocates of rehabilitative justice tend to be most eager to condemn their opponents as beyond redemption, and notes that accusations of “unearned privilege” carry the (surely unintended) implication that freedom from oppression must somehow be earned... Burgis also explores topics which the right-wing critics of cancel culture haven’t dug into, such as the link between an employee’s ability to speak outside the workplace and questions of workers’ rights and job security more broadly... “Left-wing people are always sad because they mind dreadfully about their causes, and the causes are always going so badly” she laments. “The comrades are sweet,” she adds, “but they never chat, they make speeches all the time.”"
The End of "Cancel Culture"? - "“requests for safe spaces and trigger warnings” began “to spread only when iGen began arriving on campus, around 2013.” For those of us concerned about pluralism and free speech, it is unfortunate that this youngest cohort of Americans seems to have gone on, after graduation, to increasingly enforce their new norms in a range of institutions, from leading publications to the Fortune 500. In organization after organization, you would find a cohort of young people eager to demonize their colleagues over political differences and shun or shame people for transgressions that previously would’ve been handled with a polite conversation... Overall, cancel culture is quite unpopular among all cohorts, with each generation viewing it more negatively than positively. Millennials appeared to be most supportive of cancel culture: 19 percent said they had a positive view of it, while 22 percent were neutral, 36 percent were opposed to it, and 22 percent said they had no opinion. Perhaps surprisingly, given its progressive leanings and similar social and political beliefs to the millennial generation, Gen Z was the cohort most opposed to cancel culture: 55 percent said they had a negative view of cancel culture, 8 percent were supportive of it, 18 percent were neutral, and 19 percent had no opinion. Moreover, it’s the youngest cohort within Gen Z—currently ages 13 to 16—who are most opposed to cancel culture, with 59 percent having a negative view of it. That number falls to 48 percent for the oldest cohort within Gen Z—ages 21 through 24... One possible explanation is that hypersensitivity may simply be a fad that is starting to burn itself out. Moral panics about such pressing topics as Halloween costumes may have consumed students at America’s most elite campuses during the mid-2010s, but no social or political trend lasts forever. Just as Gen X did not simply inherit the most pressing concerns of the baby boomers, Gen Z may very well be developing its concerns independently. Another explanation would be to look at the environment in which Gen Z has grown up. Millennials came of age at a time when the internet was slowly introduced into every facet of our lives. They still have a bit of separation between the internet and the real world. When someone is piled on or even fired for an embarrassing old tweet or Facebook status, a millennial’s first impulse is often to think that this person simply shouldn’t have shared that thought online. It’s easy enough for them to shrug off these events as simply a matter of personal failings. Gen Z, on the other hand, has grown up immersed in the internet and social media. To them, the barrier between what’s personal and what’s public is fluid, and many Americans of this age don’t find it particularly unusual to broadcast everyday life and thoughts to the entire world. A puritanical mindset that seeks to persecute people over the expression of their beliefs is hard to reconcile with a world where so much of what was once private is now public. The teens in this generation have also had to deal with the ever-present reality of their peers being dogpiled for their social media posts. A teacher I met recently described to me how her classroom’s entire climate would be affected by events that had occurred earlier that day on social media. Gen Z has first-hand knowledge of this Panopticon-like environment and how suffocating it can be."
How “Cancel Culture” Impeded My Film About Tennis Legend Martina Navratilova - "In 2017, I decided to make a feature-length documentary not only about Navratilova’s life, but also her role in my life, devoted to exploring all of these questions. We quickly found a partner in Reese Witherspoon, who had shortly before created a new production company called Hello Sunshine devoted to telling stories of “strong, complicated women,” and we then announced the project... several fascinating episodes emerged that are reflective, if not a pure manifestation, of what is being called “cancel culture,” involving two LGBT women who are both brilliant and pioneering filmmakers who used their cinematic talents to radically advance trans visibility and equality, as well as Navratilova herself... what happened to Peirce after being invited in 2016 to speak about “Boys Don’t Cry” at Reed College in Oregon. The speech was to take place after a showing of the film. But almost immediately after Peirce tried to begin to speak, student protesters rushed the stage and began screaming and hurling insults and epithets. Signs had been posted aimed at Peirce that read: “Fuck Your Transphobia,” “You Don’t Fucking Get It,” and “Fuck This Cis White Bitch.” For more than two hours, screaming students refused to let Peirce speak and vowed never to let the event happen at Reed. Peirce stood accused of transphobia. How did the gender nonbinary director of one the most groundbreaking films for trans people ever produced by Hollywood become the violent enemy of these trans activists to the point of being deemed so irremediably evil that Reed students could not hear the event? They accused Peirce of being a profiteer off of trans lives and a privileged “cis woman” for having cast another cis woman, Swank, in the role of Teena, rather than a trans male actor. Peirce tried explaining that, though she wanted to cast a trans male actor and interviewed many, at the time she could not find an openly trans male actor in Hollywood who could carry the film the way Swank was able to; that Peirce was not a cisgender woman but gender fluid; that the condition for Swank being cast was she had to live as a male for months before shooting; and that the Oscar that Swank won over Hollywood’s most acclaimed actresses was proof that she did justice to Teena. Peirce also echoed what Swank herself said when accepting the Oscar shortly after being embraced by Peirce: that nobody made money off the film and instead did it as an arduous labor of love, knowing the career risks (Swank’s total fee for the film was $3,000). But the opportunity to explain any of that was crushed. As Columbia professor Jack Halberstam — who is nonbinary and was assigned female at birth — detailed on his blog covering queer issues on campus, Reed students did everything possible to prevent the event from taking place... An editorial in the entertainment industry publication IndieWire about the Reed students’ shutdown of Peirce’s speech mostly took the students’ side even while noting that “‘Boys Don’t Cry’ became the first film to represent transgender masculinity in a believable way”... The denunciations of Navratilova as an anti-trans bigot were instantaneous, swift, and brutal, and they took zero account of her lifetime, pioneering devotion to LGBT equality, including the extensive and sustained sacrifices she made by having a trans woman as a coach decades ago when gay women, to say nothing of trans women, were all but invisible. All of that activism and courageous sacrifice for her beliefs was all wiped out with a single tweet... If Martina Navratilova is the bigoted enemy of the cause of trans inclusion and equality, who are its enlightened allies?... Navratilova then went into full-blown repentance mode... But none of that was good enough"
Meme - "Harvey Milk grooming teenagers was worse than anything the Founding Fathers are being canceled over."
DEBUNKED: Liberal media falsely claims that a 'conservative mob' got a NYT editor fired | The Post Millennial - "Journalist Lauren Wolfe's contract was 'cancelled' by The New York Times. Conservatives on social media were then blamed for her ouster. The only problem is conservatives on social media were not calling for her removal from The Times. The Times dropped Wolfe on their own... It was decided on social media that conservatives had done this to Wolfe, as though The Times has any concern for anything conservatives say with regard to their journalistic method and practices (they don't)... The left desperately wants the cultural capital that goes along with "being cancelled" So they have to make up cancellations to blame on conservatives... The Times doesn't listen to conservatives at all, and went so far as to fire and disrupt their entire opinion page over the publication of a conservative senator's op-ed claiming that Antifa and BLM riots should be stopped by force."
I thought liberals were for "accountability culture" anyway
Jared Holt on Twitter - "This is the most important thing I've ever written. My friend and family Lauren @Wolfe321 was just fired by the @NYTimes after the NYT was pressured by fascists, Trumpkins and hypocrites on the right for tweeting she had "chills" after witnessing Biden's landing on the 20th."
"This situation is ridiculous. It is absolutely beyond time that publications stop letting their arms be twisted by bad-faith outrage culture morons…"
I thought "accountability culture" was a good thing and "cancel culture" didn't exist
I thought private companies could do whatever they want
Cancel Yale: Let’s stop and think about what we are actually doing - "Some of society’s half-baked thinking has been exposed and mocked the last several days by conservative pundit, Jesse Kelly. Last week, Kelly tweeted “Yale University was named for Elihu Yale. Not just a man who had slaves. An actual slave trader. I call on @Yale to change it’s [sic] name immediately and strip the name of Yale from every building, piece of paper, and merchandise. Otherwise, they hate black people. #CancelYale... Others jumped on his rhetorical bandwagon by saying that anyone with “Yale” in his biography is a racist and that Yale’s faculty is complicit by their participation in this “historically racist institution.” One person said, “Every person with a degree from Yale should be canceled. They should be forced to resign from public office. Resign from all Boards. Be disbarred. Lose their professional certifications. Lose judgeships.”... Many companies are changing their logos for being insensitive. Historical monuments have been torn down by protesters, and even country band Lady Antebellum shortened their name to rid themselves of any connections to the Confederate South."
Meme - Jesse Kelly: "There is no Confederacy without New York being a central hub for the African slave trade. New York should change its name and apologize. The New York Times should disband. @nhannahjones should be ashamed of working under that slave-trading name. #CancelNewYork"
Meme - "YEAH WE'RE GonnA GET You FIRED FRom YouR Job" *Guy reading book*
"YEAH You'RE NoT ALLOWED To uSE ANY NORMAL ApPS OR SITES." *Guy reading book with pistol*
"WE'RE USING THE MEDIA TO ConVINCE ALL YouR FRIENDS + FAMILY THAT UR EviL."
"It;s oKay To HuRT Evil PEOPLE" *Guy reading book with pistol and rifle*
"UH HEY THe GOVERNMENT ISN'T TREATING US FAIRLY. Don't You CARE???"
*Guy reading book with pistol, rifle and RPG*
Jimmy Galligan, Moral Monster - "Four years ago, a girl in his class, Mimi Groves, used an antiblack racial slur in a Snapchat video lasting three seconds, and sent privately to a friend. Somebody showed him the clip. He saved it, and waited for his chance... You might think that Galligan would rejoice in the fact that his classmate, who as a freshman had used a racial slur, had changed, had matured, had become more sensitive. Nope... The university forced Mimi Groves’s parents to withdraw her. She now lives at home with them and attends a community college... He is proud of having ruined Mimi Groves’s college experience... What a horrible person that Galligan kid is. Notice too how the black friend who accepted Mimi Groves’s apology (delivered before the clip became a big thing), defended Mimi Groves, and got bashed on social media for it. Mercy is a crime in this world we have created... The context of the Times story might make it seem that Galligan’s vengeful act might have been a necessary part of fighting cultural racism in that school. The lives of individuals don’t matter here; what matters is that Mimi Groves was a representative of a hated class: privileged white people. Galligan even tells a story about chastising his own white father about white privilege. What a life-giving ideology antiracism is: teaching people to despise their own parents in the name of social justice. My middle son is about to be 17 years old, and doesn’t understand why his parents won’t let him have social media. My kids were all raised to think of racism as evil, and never, ever to use racial slurs. But so was Mimi Groves. She made a mistake. A single mistake... This Times story will follow Jimmy Galligan everywhere too. If that kid applied for a job at my firm, I would never hire him. If he were my co-worker, I would stay away from him, lest I offend him and get the Little- Anthony-from-The-Twilight-Zone treatment. He has shown the kind of person he is: a hateful progressive who takes pleasure in causing others unnecessary pain and suffering for the sake of virtue. He wants to terrorize others. Everybody who goes to college with him now, and who crosses his path, should consider themselves forewarned."
Comedian cancelled by Massey Hall sells out two Toronto shows at a bigger venue - " Andrew Schulz, an American comedian, is going on tour across North America next year and originally was supposed to perform at Massey Hall in Toronto. But Massey Hall backed out... his team received the notice from Massey Hall only a week before tickets went on sale. Meridian Hall was available but Schulz and his team had some hesitation since it's a much bigger venue. But then tickets for his first show at Meridian Hall sold out in seven minutes and the second show sold out within an hour. A third night is now planned as well. "I don’t want to do venues that censor comedy," Schulz wrote in a tweet announcing tickets for his third night in Toronto."
Liberals will just pretend that it doesn't matter if people try to cancel you if you manage to do something in the end so cancel culture doesn't exist, and ignore all the cases where people are successfully cancelled
Facebook - "Yes explain to me how all the ppl who got doxxed and lost their job because someone took a photo of them doing the Ok sign and accused them of being White supremacist is just them "being held accountable". Explain to me how the people who have lost their jobs and careers over doing just some mild joke are just being held accountable. Or for writing an article that is scientificaly or factualy accurate but contradicts the dominating narrative. Explain to me how the guy who got doxxed, lost his job and the mob contacted all companies in the area where he lived so none would ever hire him, just for doing some dumb Flash game mocking Sarkeesian was just being held accountable. This mfs just pick some of the few cases when the cancelled was some open nazi who was caught attacking black people or something and pretend that means that the thousands of ppl getting cancelled all deserve their lives destroyed, no matter the context. This idiots pretend that because some ppl were rich and influential enought to survive being cancelled that somehow erases all of the small guys who have nothing to hold on and just get their lives fucked. How the fuck Bill the truck driver is comparable to a superstar actor? "Oh look that person whom 99% of media refuse to talk to has managed an interview in some small youtube channel focused con cancelled people. That totally means they're not cancelled!" I swear, the dunning kruger"
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "Did Pepe LePew add to rape culture? In every cartoon he grabbed, kissed, and even attempted to hold hostage the object of his desire. Yet, he never succeeded. Every time he failed in embarrassing fashion. The underlying message was: “This isn’t how you get a girl.”"
Some liberals claimed that the fact that he did the same thing every week taught kids that it was okay even though he always failed, because they didn't understand how TV shows work. Apparently TV and films teach us that terrorism and violence is okay, because they always have bad guys doing that, even if they're always defeated in the end
Meme - *Pepe LePew* "OVERLY AGGRESSIVE TO A CAT. PULLED FROM MOVIE"
*Cruella de Vil* "TRIES TO MURDER 101 DOGS. GETS A FRANCHISE AND 2 LIVE-ACTION FILMS"
The Cancel Culture Checklist - "Cancel culture now poses a real threat to intellectual freedom in the United States. According to a recent poll by the Cato Institute, a third of Americans say that they are personally worried about losing their jobs or missing out on career opportunities if they express their real political opinions. Americans in all walks of life have been publicly shamed, pressured into ritualistic apologies or summarily fired... Criticism marshals evidence and arguments in a rational effort to persuade. Canceling, by contrast, seeks to organize and manipulate the social or media environment in order to isolate, deplatform or intimidate ideological opponents. It is about shaping the information battlefield, not seeking truth; and its intent—or at least its predictable outcome—is to coerce conformity and reduce the scope for forms of criticism that are not sanctioned by the prevailing consensus of some local majority...
Six warning signs make up my personal checklist for cancel culture.
Punitiveness
A critical culture seeks to correct rather than punish...
Deplatforming
A critical culture tolerates dissent rather than silencing it...
Organization
Critical culture relies on persuasion. The way to win an argument is to convince others that you are right. Often, of course, schools of thought form, and arguments between them can grow heated; but organizing pressure campaigns against political or ideological targets is usually considered out of bounds. By contrast, it’s common to see cancelers organize hundreds of petition-signers or thousands of social media users to dig up and prosecute an indictment...
Secondary Boycotts
Is there an explicit or implicit threat that people who support you will get the same punitive treatment that you are receiving? Are people putting pressure on employers and professional colleagues to fire you or stop associating with you? Do people who defend you, or criticize the campaign against you, have to fear adverse consequences?...
Moral Grandstanding
Truthiness
Are the things being said about you inaccurate? Do the people saying them not even seem to care about their veracity? Do they feel at liberty to distort your words, ignore corrections and make false accusations?"
