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Signees Of Letter Against ‘Cancel Culture’ Exposed As Frauds
On July 7 Harpers published a letter which condemned the 'cancel culture'. In the 'cancel culture' online masses seek to censor controversial speakers with whom they do not agree. Some 150 prominent writers and academics had signed the A Letter on Justice and Open Debate:
The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.
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Said shorter: "Don't cancel the Fascist but, more importantly, DON'T CANCEL US!"
The people who signed the letter, all in influential positions, seemed more concerned with being criticized themselves for the nonsense they write.
Next to Noam Chomsky there were quite a lot of warmongers and false 'liberuls' amongst the names, for example David Frum and J.K. Rowling. These are people who are themselves prone to practice 'cancel culture' when they disagree with others.
Counter letters were written and published:
The signatories, many of them white, wealthy, and endowed with massive platforms, argue that they are afraid of being silenced, that so-called cancel culture is out of control, and that they fear for their jobs and free exchange of ideas, even as they speak from one of the most prestigious magazines in the country.
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[T]he irony of the piece is that nowhere in it do the signatories mention how marginalized voices have been silenced for generations in journalism, academia, and publishing.
That the original letter and its signers can not be taken seriously was emphatically proven with this:
Jeremy Repanich @racefortheprize – 23:14 UTC · Jul 17, 2020
LOL. Thomas Chatterton Williams, who wrote the Harper's letter, admitted today that Glenn Greenwald was kept off the letter b/c other signees didn't like his views.
The signers of the letter against the 'cancel culture' had cancelled Glenn Greenwald from signing it.
I am not sure who should be more embarrassed about this – Greenwald or the other signers.
The mark of T. S. Eliot intellectual elitism:
The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture
So, it’s good to be aggressive if you’re in the right-wing of the political spectrum, but you can’t use the same tactic if you’re at the left-wing of the political spectrum? And who said the left-wing of the political spectrum is your fief (“our culture”)?
The rationale for this becomes clear as the text goes on:
We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.
Ah, so that’s the problem: counter-speech is the monopoly of the snob center-left intellectual living in his flat in Manhattan or in London. It’s bad when it becomes “too common”.
The letter ends with a corporativist call for privileged protection:
Whatever the arguments around each particular incident [N.A. – of “cancel culture”], the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.
This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time.
[…]We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.
Oh, ok – so it was all about protecting your own jobs, or, better yet, your previous status as the untouchable sacred cows of Western capitalism. The good times of the Cold War are over, it seems, and the cash and respect stopped flowing to those “intellectuals”.
As a bonus, here’s their list of complaints:
More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes.
Examples?
Just to give you the case of J. K. Rowling: she felt the heat on Twitter (which is a very serious authority…) from a couple dozen pro-trans blowhards and felt offended. That’s it: no life threats, no physical altercations, no legal ramifications, no censorship, no State intervention, none. Is she really equating an insignificant twitter scuffle with political-ideological persecution?
I have a better idea to J. K. Rowling: get out of Twitter.
Oh, wait, she can’t: she’s a glorified entertainer, her agent has already told her she must keep active in social media because that’s good for business. That “pro-trans” attack was simply bad PR for her.
And the last phrase is hilarious: “clumsy mistakes”? Well, if you’re good and great of Western intelligentsia – most of them with English or Old English degrees in Yale or Cambridge – then you shouldn’t make “clumsy mistakes”.
Posted by: vk | Jul 18 2020 20:33 utc | 37
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