"“we believe the essay does not align with Chicago Review’s editorial and political agenda.”"
It's interesting that some academic literary magazines are now being forced to admit they have political agendas, which is a step in the right direction.
People like Kunin are the conscience of our generation, daring to stand up to the mobs and tell the truth - a political act that conflicts with the Chicago Review's agenda. But it is the truth tellers, not the political enforcers, who will be acknowledged as heroes, as the future belongs to the truth, not to the political lie.
The hardest thing for my generation to understand is that the politics of our youth are no longer the politics of the present.
To quote the many times canceled Orwell: And this tolerance or plain dishonesty means much more than that admiration for the USSR happens to be fashionable at this moment. Quite possibly that particular fashion will not last. For all I know, by the time this book is published my view of the Soviet régime may be the generally-accepted one. But what use would that be in itself? To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.
I don't meant this as a personal attack but there is something faintly ironic about this statement
Orwell is pretty the much the one-stop gramophone record for quotes when someone wants to express concern about censorship or authoritarianism in a vague, semi-lyrical way
He was cancelled in Britain from when he went to fight in the Spanish civil war until the end of WWII and the start of the cold war.
Which is what makes his quote so noteworthy, he was right, his view became the dominant one, but it still wasn't an improvement because the people repeating it did so without thinking.
I'm not criticizing Orwell or the quote itself. I'm pointing out the irony of seeing this quote and others by the same author get regularly popped out following the very same gramophone mindset he warns about. People just pop an Orwell and call it a day. Could it be called recursive irony? I don't know if that's a thing.
I look forward to the day that we can't use reheated arguments from last century about current events. It doesn't help that people who want to destroy our ability to think use Orwell as a manual - hate speech might as well be something he coined in 1984 for all the emotion and lack of logic behind it, that it's law today will be judged harshly by future generations.
History never repeats quite the same way. There are some low-hanging parallels to 1984, but if we limit ourselves to that frame of reference we miss a large range of elements that might prove to be enormously important. There's stuff like hate speech regulations and all that but there's also a million things going on elsewhere, and any patterns only seem obvious many years later in retrospect, if they ever become so.
Future generations will probably have a frame of reference completely different from what we expect them to have now. Come to think of it, it would be hard to explain all the motivations of life in 2021 to someone in 1984 who had yet to live through the intervening years...
The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the lapdogs of the 1% are using divide and conquer to keep this going.
That is something Cicero would understand, let alone someone with a working brain from 1984. Of course one need to have a working brain first, something very few manage in any time.
Depends on what you mean by politics. Poems that don't engage in the specific electoral politics of the day? Yes. Politics in the sense that all interactions that involve more than one person are political (ie the nothing burger that is "everything is political")? Probably not, no.
I was unaware there is One True Way™ to do poetry.
It's like any other art: sometimes it's just a aesthetically pleasing series of words (or musical notes, or colours, or shapes) with no real deeper meaning, or just because it's funny. And other times it's something aesthetically pleasing intended to provoke thought about some aspect of life such as love, the nature of humanity, or something else – some of these might be deemed "political".
Art generally, and poetry specifically, ideally elicits emotion based on its engagement with universal human experiences. If I'm reading a poem from 200 years ago, I don't give a fuck who the poet supported politically; I give a fuck that their poetry is artistically durable enough to make me want to keep reading 200 years later.
THE HEART of the rulers is sick, and the high-priest covers his head:
For this is the song of the quick that is heard in the ears of the dead.
The poor and the halt and the blind are keen and mighty and fleet:
Like the noise of the blowing of wind is the sound of the noise of their feet.
The wind has the sound of a laugh in the clamour of days and of deeds:
The priests are scattered like chaff, and the rulers broken like reeds.
Algernon Charles Swinburne, A Song in Time of Revolution. 1860
That fragment I quoted is much better poetry than yours.
Not all of Swinburne's poetry is so explicitly political as that poem. And some of his poems are better than others. But I don't see any correlation between how good (in my opinion) some of poem of his is and how explicitly political it is.
I dislike TS Eliot. I'd much rather read Swinburne than TS Eliot.
Great art and comedy both can illuminate truth in a way that prose and rhetoric can't touch, because they can approach it obliquely and not get hung up on the details.
This get missed by the overly ideological, and you can tell because they produce bad art and no comedy.
Ironically, this poem underline's cumming's general contempt for politics.
Also, cummings would struggle to be published in today's literary world, since he leaned to the right and was an ardent anti-communist (which began after visiting the Soviet Union in the early 30s).
> some academic literary magazines are now being forced to admit they have political agendas
I think "have political agendas" is a logical leap. If your employees or customers are going to be angry with you for working with someone, you don't work with that person. To go against the wishes of your employees and customers would be having a political agenda.
In this case, "political agenda" was claimed to be a direct quote from the magazine's staff, so it's a little less of an imputation than it might be in other contexts. :-)
I'd never heard of this guy, but this is some good writing. The editors who blacklisted him display such abject cowardice when they say they are cancelling him because of the “reception” of his previous article in a different journal. Not because of what the article says, but because of its “reception.”
This is the moral and intellectual equal of the 14 year old girl who won’t sit with Suzy in the cafeteria because some of the other 14 year old girls think that Suzy is weird.
If you ever had to deal with the literati you'd know that they never got past the level of 14 year olds.
I'm convinced that they are lgbt friendly because it lets them have twice the drama since they aren't limited to sleeping with only half their acquaintances.
Edit: in case you're too stupid to realize: I'm not attacking lgbt's I'm attacking the vapid vampires that are sucking the life out of the movement.
Is there anyone that wants to defend this blacklisting of the author by the Chicago Review for writing this article [0]? That is, not to reconfirm that they do indeed have the right to do so, but to argue that they are right to do so? Maybe some of us can avoid this fate if we understand the grounds for it, since they decline to make it explicit. What did he say that was not just wrong, but so wrong that he should not be associated with?
It's a pretty standard anti-inclusivity rant (although it starts by attempting to position itself as more than such), and then ends with an anecdote/strawman (which is contrary to every notion of inclusivity advocacy that I've seen) to propose that those advocating for inclusivity are the real people who want segregation.
I think what a lot of the commenters are missing is that this article, and statements like "If I must revise my teaching to conform to a popular view of inclusivity that I do not share" have an impact on not just his research, but also sends a message to his students: that he doesn't whether they feel safe being there matters, and that they don't deserve to have representation in studied works.
I know a lot of people (mostly white, mostly men) don't think that's true, but these types of attitudes can easily allow harmful messages to fester in academic classrooms. Just because an idea is controversial doesn't mean it's worthy of debate. The idea that we should want more students to feel welcome in academia, and that we should study history and literature that has largely been ignored (or often, deliberately destroyed) is one such idea to many people.
So I know most of the people on this forum will disagree, but I think it's perfectly reasonable for an organization to say that they don't want their name associated with that.
The position in that article isn't a new or particularly interesting idea: it's been rehashed over and over, and studied, and it's an idea that many people have decided is harmful and they don't want to associate with it or people who continue to spread those ideas.
I probably don't have the eloquence to properly convey these thoughts, but there's a whole field out there that cares deeply about these things and has been working on making them better for, literally, centuries. In tech I often see people frustrated that the public doesn't understand what they're talking about when they discuss technologies (see the 5G conspiracy theories!). If you're interested in understanding why many people think doubling down on these ideas that inclusivity is in contradiction to good research/teaching/whatever, there's a whole field of literature out there to read up on that can help explain that. If you're in the US, one decent starting place is the history of black people in the US, and the history of women in the US. I've heard really good things about this series, for example: http://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/
I know a lot of people (mostly white, mostly men) don't think that's true, but these types of attitudes can easily allow harmful messages to fester in academic classrooms.
> 88 percent of students agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that “the climate on my campus prevents students/faculty from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive.” Sixty-three percent of faculty agreed or strongly agreed with the same statement.
No, it's not mostly white men, 88% is a figure large enough that it necessarily includes large swathes of other demographics.
The question in that survey is different: it asks whether people self-censor because of others. That's pretty different than whether inclusivity is a worthwhile goal, and surveys are notoriously variable based on wording. For example, I would answer yes to that question, I censor myself to avoid offending people (I have done so in this thread, to try to keep it constructive), but I strongly support work to make colleges and workplaces more inclusive places.
It didn't just ask about censoring specific words or terms, or staying polite. It asked about censoring beliefs.
Say someone who is very much in favor of legal abortion stays silent as one of their co-workers goes on about how abortion should be banned, for fear of offending said co-worker. Is the fact that this person held back from sharing their beliefs an example of inclusivity? I'd say that this is not only false, it is the opposite of what is true. The fact that this person self-censored out of fear of causing offense is evidence of an environment intolerant of pro-choice people.
Inclusivity is a worthwhile goal. That is why such extensive self-censoring beliefs is a prominent concern, it's strong evidence that we are not being inclusive of people of different beliefs.
> I think what a lot of the commenters are missing is that this article, and statements like "If I must revise my teaching to conform to a popular view of inclusivity that I do not share" have an impact on not just his research, but also sends a message to his students: that he doesn't whether they feel safe being there matters, and that they don't deserve to have representation in studied works.
You're making a jump there: from whether Kunin's class covers works from authors with certain demographics, to whether his students feel safe. The character sequence "saf" doesn't appear in either of Kunin's articles. I think if it had been conveyed to him that his students' feeling of safety depends on his choice of curriculum, then he would have mentioned this argument (he'd probably call it absurd but I expect he'd mention it). His impression was: "That way, students from underrepresented minority communities will see themselves reflected in the readings. The students will feel included, and empowered to succeed, when they read works by writers who look like them."
Do you think it's really true that a significant number of students were feeling unsafe as a result of curriculum choices, and if so, why hadn't Kunin heard of it?
I might be making a jump, because I've followed a lot of these discussions over time.
To my understanding (and as a disclaimer, I advocate strongly for it), "inclusivity" in general means making an environment safe for people of marginalized backgrounds. So to me, his declaration that inclusivity as a value ought to be up for debate seems to indicate he doesn't think it's a top priority that students of marginalized backgrounds feel welcome in his classroom.
Is that a jump? A bit, but it's based on seeing similar situations play out in other areas.
But the choice of curriculum was to my second point: I think students deserve the chance to study a wide variety of history and literary viewpoints, including when feasible some from backgrounds similar to theirs. There has been tons of literature written by black authors, written by women, written by LGBTQ folx. Often times those works have been, in the past, deliberately destroyed (like the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft) or not considered for publication (George Elliot choosing a pseudonym to publish outside romance), which is a significant component to why there are so many more white men authors historically.
If you teach a course where all the literature you choose is from white men, you really limit what history you are teaching, and you can subtly reinforce that others may not be welcome to succeed in literature. Inclusivity asks us to consider those implications and pick some variety of authors--there are many great writers of so many different backgrounds to choose from.
I think what the parent poster is getting at is that many of us are bewildered at the way you are using the word “safe”.
I take it you aren’t saying that students believe that an assailant will be hiding in the classroom with a bat ready to assault them as the enter the classroom.
Rather I take you and others to be using safe to mean something like comfortable. But unsafe and uncomfortable are two different words. There’s rarely or never good cause to make someone feel unsafe, but sometimes being uncomfortable can lead to growth. Or at least people used to believe so.
I mean psychological safety, as in https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/after-years-of-research-go... , or as in "will i face verbal bullying in this space". That is a different type of safety than physical safety, but it's very real. How much people experience not feeling psychologically safe varies widely, though.
I'm a visible minority, and my rights are frequently a part of political debate. In spaces where those debates are allowed to happen, it's often not safe for me to participate. It's a hard feeling to describe or put into words for someone who hasn't experienced others saying that they shouldn't be allowed to do participate in some aspects of society because of a characteristic they can't change.
> In a team with high psychological safety, teammates feel safe to take risks around their team members. They feel confident that no one on the team will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea.
Well. What happened when Kunin took a risk and published an essay asking some questions and offering what he thought was a new idea? He faced verbal bullying and was punished. Is the point to give psychological safety to minority students but not bother about other people? (In fact, I suspect many of the minority students who happen to agree with Kunin would not feel psychologically safe saying so.)
At this point the classic rejoinder would be to say "look at these suffering minorities; your argument is invalid" or to talk about Kunin's privilege, but you seem to make better arguments than that.
> So to me, his declaration that inclusivity as a value ought to be up for debate seems to indicate he doesn't think it's a top priority that students of marginalized backgrounds feel welcome in his classroom.
Well, Kunin says: "My sense is that students and faculty are unsure of the meaning of inclusive teaching. To the extent that we feel any certainty, we do not agree with one another." I don't think he ever says that he thinks inclusivity, the way he interprets it, is a bad thing or isn't worthwhile.
Is that a distinction without a difference? Suppose, for illustration, that I declare that "inclusivity" means everyone has to sit in a circle for the whole class, because otherwise some people won't be seen by others and therefore won't be properly included in the classroom experience. Kunin protests that this would make it impossible for him to write on a chalkboard or project an image onto a screen. I tell everyone that this means Kunin opposes inclusivity, and the minority students start to feel unsafe. Is this Kunin's fault, or mine? Is the solution for Kunin to buckle up, or for me to stop scaring the students?
If you think that's a silly idea, consider this: "Last year when I proposed to teach a seminar in which the syllabus would include essays by Ralph Ellison, two of my colleagues wrote to the Curriculum Committee, as well as to the dean and the president of the college, objecting that it would be “literary blackface” for me to study Ellison." (The more general term "cultural appropriation" could be used if Ellison were a non-black minority.) I wouldn't be surprised if someone had actually proposed sitting in a circle.
Is there some source of truth, that all responsible people should obviously recognize as the source of truth, about what is the ideal "inclusivity"? If it were a serious attempt at "making an environment safe for people of marginalized backgrounds", then one thing I would expect to see is for these recommendations to be backed by studies; is that usually the case?
Also, by the way, receiving a failing grade on a test is probably very distressing to many people (perhaps a majority), and failing a class even more so. Surely making students feel "safe", at this level, would imply eliminating the possibility of such distress and making sure the students knew it was gone?
"but also sends a message to his students: that he doesn't whether they feel safe being there matters, "
That is some very serious gaslighting.
To suggest that somehow students would be 'unsafe' around writers such as him or his works, is a toxic form of rhetoric.
That term - 'unsafe' - used in in an intellectual context such as it is is anti-intellectual and oppressive.
There is no 'harm' in his words.
Even if the publication felt it wasn't exactly perfect - they could have published it anyhow at very least on the basis of erring in the side of expression.
Then people cold read it, make up their own minds, disagree, not care, whatever. We're adults, we can do that, that's the point.
And FYI nobody is arguing that any real, material history should not be taught.
> And FYI nobody is arguing that any real, material history should not be taught.
This is in the context of his literature courses. There are so many literary authors that aren't white men, that arguing that he should have the right to decide to only teach works from white men (if he deems them to be the best works), does seem to me like arguing that we shouldn't teach the history of marginalized people.
If you only mean non-literary history, the history of black people and LGBTQ people are both very under-taught in United States schools. That's a real thing that some people do want to continue, and argue for. (But this seems a bit outside the topic at hand)
> There are so many literary authors that aren't white men, that arguing that he should have the right to decide to only teach works from white men (if he deems them to be the best works), does seem to me like arguing that we shouldn't teach the history of marginalized people.
No, it does not remotely seem like arguing that we shouldn't teach the history of marginalized people. How do you go from "I should be able to decide to only teach works from white men" to "other people shouldn't teach anyone other than white men"? To go from "I should be allowed to _____" to "nobody should do anything except ______" is a massive leap.
A course in classics is going to have overwhelmingly male authors, likely exclusively so. The reality of the ancient Mediterranean was that patriarchy was extensive, and women were not afforded the opportunity to contribute in that space. This is in now way saying that other courses in other fields should feature women or minority authors.
That's fair. I should have said he's arguing for the right to not teach the history of marginalized people, not that he's arguing that others shouldn't (though he does seem to be arguing that others should be allowed to not teach it).
As I read it, he's arguing for the right not to have to choose what literature to teach on the basis of whether it came from marginalized people. He wants to teach the best literature, not black literature or brown literature or white literature.
I mean, if you were teaching physics, you wouldn't teach ideas based on what race or nationality the person was who came up with the idea. I know, literature is different - it's more subjective, it's not empirically verifiable to determine the quality. Still, the desire to pick the best books based on the content of the books rather than the race of the author does not seem to me to be that horrible of an idea.
"I have a dream that one day my children will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." And let books be judged not by the color of their author's skin, but by their content.
> A course in classics is going to have overwhelmingly male authors, likely exclusively so.
Not of necessity; there are plenty of known women writers of the period (it's hard to imagine a broad survey excluding Sappho, but she's far from the only example.)
> The reality of the ancient Mediterranean was that patriarchy was extensive.
Perhaps, but also much less so than in the exclusively male, until very recently, academic society which did so much to shape the lens through which we see the classics.
Does the Chicago Review position itself as an academic organization? I'm under the impression it's a literary publication, which seems pretty different than a research publication in my lay eyes.
I notice that yew responded to a lot of the comments here, but not to any of them that asked him to point out specific dog whistles.
This generation has learned a debating style where they call anything that they strongly dislike as being "fascist". Such a style is not conducive to a working democratic society (is that the goal?).
Can we please not redefine fascism to mean “something I don’t like”? This article has nothing at all to do with the power or primacy of the state.
We have tons of pejoratives in the English language, why do we have to homogenize every word with any negative valence into yet another pejorative stripped of all nuance?
There are several underlying concerns. One is a persistent redefinition of words to suit a political narrative. Another is the rejection of words without consideration or analysis of what the words mean.
Up next: "support the expanded Fascist Party under the leadership of generic Hitler. You haven't changed, only our definitions have, by people who are mildly to the left of you. They call everything you support Fascist, so we clearly can't be so wrong."
I'm being sarcastic but this really isn't at all funny. But judging by the largely negative response i got last time i pointed this out, this doesn't majorly bother anyone else. At least they didn't respond to this specific point.
I'm just going to have to vote for Stalin.
Edit: ignore the elephant. Obviously this article is not relevant to you. It's only about a publication in Chicago.
I would most likely have downvoted your reply if I'd encountered it in any other context, but I upvoted it because you were replying to an invitation to defend the magazine's decision that purported to be curious about why someone would defend it.
I really don't like the pattern of asking "I'm curious whether anyone would seriously advocate opinion X that's controversial in this community, and why" and then downvoting people who try to seriously advocate opinion X. (I know people can't downvote direct replies, but it seems like this pattern indirectly discourages curiosity and conversation and encourages a sort of official party line.)
In general I agree with you, baiting people into stating an unpopular argument and then dog piling kills conversation.
That being said, I downvoted that particular response because there's no argument being made. It's the typical gnashing of teeth and hurling of slurs you see everywhere on the internet, and is also harmful to a useful conversation.
I tried writing a response three different times (specifically on the concepts of "safety" and "representation") and didn't manage to hit the right notes. ... Maybe next academic cancel-culture thread? :-(
It certainly makes following the conversation more difficult, but you needn't feel obligated. I don't mind watching the total go up and down with the tide...
Edit: but as my answer (including quote!) below has been flagged, I think I'll just leave this to stand on its own.
I just read it, too. I find your take, frankly, bizarre. Everything he said there makes perfect sense. He is defending the idea that the reason to study a work of literature is because it is good literature. Shocking.
Good grief. I will start by agreeing with you on one thing. Chicago Review does not owe the author a platform.
Other than that, it is genuinely hard to respond to this comment without wondering whether parents' post is serious. I just read both articles and I do not get how the irony of what the author discussed is lost. What are those collections of dog whistles? I think I need an example. Is it the mere mention of a nazi? Saying they are human beings too with all that comes along with that simple fact? Is the 'literary blackface' that throws people off?
I genuinely want to know, because if this is a serious comment and people hear dog-whistles here, they probably have not heard an actual racist, ever.
I'd submit that someone with the name of Aaron Kunin is unlikely to be a fascist.
From the essay:
"Last year when I proposed to teach a seminar in which the syllabus would include essays by Ralph Ellison, two of my colleagues wrote to the Curriculum Committee, as well as to the dean and the president of the college, objecting that it would be “literary blackface” for me to study Ellison."
Here we have professors talking like children, and this is an example of what Kunin complains about.
Also, Ellison was a great writer, but bringing attention to his work doesn't really advance the Cause.
The whole point of Invisible Man is that Ellison doesn't want to be reduced to a dehumanized representative of some collective. He is a person in his own right.
If you're an activist, the kind of thinking represented by Ellison is actively counterproductive. It's old-school Liberal stuff -- "outdated". It interferes with building the proper Consciousness.
Hence the objection to someone, and in particular a "white" person, working to advance Ellison without enough criticism. Instead you need someone who can "properly contextualize" Ellison, which is to say, to treat him with a little surface respect, but ultimately to make clear to readers that his work is somehow misguided. Nobody will go so far as to say "Uncle Tom" or "counter-revolutionary", but that's the subtext.
I wouldn't call this "talking like children", because the people are highly-educated adults and they understand exactly what they are doing.
Wow. I’m actually at a loss for words. I think we’re in deep, deep shit as a society if this is what a significant percentage of the younger generations believe (and from what I’ve seen, it is). Not from the point of view of “you’re bad, I’m good”, but that no country can survive this kind of radically different outlook on life from subsequent generations. It even surpasses the 60s.
> It's a collection of crypto-fascist dog whistles about race;
I read it having already seen you say this about it, looking for those, and, like the other sibling replies to you, did not find them. Could you please point them out?
'crypto-fascism' and the concept that anyone can easily identify 'dog-whistle politics' strikes me as a somewhat McCarthy-style method by which to coerce a group of people to condemn an individual without much need for explanation as to why they should be condemned -- even if the individual being condemned is pleading against the perceived hostile opinion.
It seems to be a very trendy right now.
It's sort of a perfect technique to mention in a thread about blacklisting.
"We don't care if you say you're not a member of the Communist party; look at who you hang out with and the opinions you write -- we have read between the lines and understand the secret message held within your action, and we know that you're a communist."
Oh come off it. "Dog whistle" is just a made up term used by dishonest bullies to accuse people of saying things they didn't say. I challenge you to list the "dog whistles" in the original article referenced.
It seems like calling it a collection of dog whistles is directly addressed by this paragraph:
"The trouble is that Nazis are human beings, and they have many benign thoughts along with their antisemitism. So I might avoid repeating some ordinary, unthreatening statement uttered by someone with a Nazi reputation, lest you think that I sound like a Nazi. Soon only actual Nazis and a few weirdos who don’t care what other people think are willing to repeat these unthreatening statements — which now appear rather threatening. In this regime of self-censorship, even arguments defending academic freedom (which is not a traditional Nazi commitment!) or aesthetic judgment (a commitment shared by many people, including a few Nazis) can look like signs of crypto-Nazism. This increases the costs of honest discussion."
But why discuss Nazis if they are not strictly necessary for the article? It rubs me the wrong way that some people seem to delight in the intellectual brinksmanship of philosophising about what we can keep from Nazis and what not. It's normally useless and foolish speculation that just serves to delegitimze the threat of nazism.
Please just forget about the Nazis. Never forget what they did, but don't rationalise them. It's just plain insensitive.
I'm not sure what part of my comment could possibly be argued against with a straight face. Someone thinks there's something fundementally correct in Nazism?
Dog Whistle (Politics): The use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to garner support from a particular group without provoking opposition. [Wikipedia]
To what group is this directed? What about this speaks to the "Crypto-fascists" the above commenter mentions? Is it simply the word Nazi? I have read through this a few times and I'm having a difficult time finding the angle in which this could be a nod and a wink to a skinhead.
Calling it dog-whistles instead of calling out specific issues with the argument implies that the problem isn't what he is saying, but that he is saying things that sound like things said by other people.
IE, calling it crypto-fascist dog whistles is saying "I think he is a fascist because he says things I think fascists say, but isn't actually coming out and saying fascist things". Which, in the end, means that no one can say things that fascists might also say, without sounding like a fascist.
I understand and completely agree. I suppose my comment would have better been directed at the original commenter, as their take was so alien to my reading of the text.
By including Kunin, they lost enough other contributors that their project was threatened. As a voluntary effort by grad students, they don't have the time or money to make a spirited defense of Kunin. He's had to take up his martyrdom on his own.
I'm sure Kunin would have been very happy for them to burn their project down for his sake. Kunin's sake is not the only one at play here.
Ok, let's take that at face value. Are the unspecified others who would burn them down justified? At the end of the day, is there any positive moral case for this?
The others aren't burning them down, the others are making clear that they have conditions on participating, and if they're met, they're happy to do so. Triaging your project to get it done by excluding the one person who makes five others leave, by forcing the one guy out, is basic management. It's the basic stuff of editorial decisions.
As for the larger case of "blacklisting", as Kunin describes it, the moral case is that amplification is bad, that by appearing onstage with a villain, you dignify his villainy by taking it seriously, when it should be rejected out of hand; you provide a platform for odious ideas that, even met with a superior response, get more airtime and borrowed legitimacy than they would otherwise.
You can certainly disagree that avoiding amplification justifies cancel culture, but acting like there isn't a moral case for not getting onstage with someone you don't want to amplify, begs the question.
How many degrees of separation can you get in here and still feel justified?
Kunin opposed the idea of blacklisting in general, he didn't even endorse any person.
So now, for those who refuse to be published in the same magazine as him, the chain goes "unspecified other" -> Kunin didn't disavow -> they can't publish anything where Kunin might also publish? There's not even a specific idea they're condemning besides general open-mindedness.
What about if the magazine had allowed him to publish, and you had been in there as well? Would you deserve censure as the third link? After all, you shared a stage with someone, and god only knows how many stages they've shared with how many people.
Kunin opposes blacklisting that resulted from others voting with their feet. He heaps scorn on the editors of the magazine, who have, I think, the best defense of their actions, namely that it was him or them, and they chose them so they could continue publishing.
Kunin's target is really the other contributors who effectively strongarmed the editors into ejecting him, and he later in his essay falls back on the old chestnut that the best response to terrible speech is better speech--an idea that the amplification argument is explicitly trying to reject.
So what's really being discussed here is whether the other contributors leaving is justified, and I think that this is the best form of freedom of expression. It's the most powerful form of expression to walk away from someone uttering something you find terrible to express. And when they sputter that you should engage them to demonstrate your own superiority of thinking, that's just demanding you amplify them as the price of showing off yourself. Sometimes, the better response is really to just walk away. This is the marketplace of ideas at its most effective.
It's really funny to me that this is 'inclusivity'. We have a tiny clique of upper-middle-class people who want to control all discourse in the name of 'inclusivity'.
If you're one million percent sure that you're right about everything, that's justifiable. You're maximizing inclusivity. But if you're not?
"Villain", "odious ideas"? Name them explicitly instead of the usual general ranting employed by demagogues like McCarthy in the past and the left inquisitors these days.
I'm not naming them because I'm not addressing any specific ideas, I'm saying something about the mechanism of amplification and why there's a moral case for cancelling some people. It works in all directions. It's the marketplace of ideas.
> Is there anyone that wants to defend this blacklisting of the author by the Chicago Review for writing this article?
Well, first, “blacklisting” for an exclusionary practice is a poorly chosen term for an act by a single actor and not a coordinated action across a group of theoretically competing actors.
Second, are you looking for a defense of the act within Chicago Review’s “editorial and political agenda” (which is difficult for any outside actor since they haven't specified what it is) or are you looking for a debate on that agenda (again, difficult for any outside actor for the same reason) or an argument for why a similarly situated might be justified on the basis of some set of goals which may not be Chicago Review’s agenda or for defense of a set of goals which might justify it that may not be Chicago Review’s agenda?
Because the last two seem like a pure waste of time while the first two seem like a waste of time if you aren't specifically asking the Chicago Review editorial staff.
Why are the last two pure wastes of time? It seems to me that they could be productive lines of inquiry.
Also, let's not be coy -- it's pretty obvious what their agenda is. At the very least you and I both know. I've seen you round these parts before, partner.
"I do not imply that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. We should claim the right to suppress them if ... they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument." - Karl Popper.
People advocating "deplatforming intolerance", a.k.a. applying censorship, should ponder this quote.
I’d be willing to bet that those who cite the paradox as support for censorship have only ever read the stupid meme cartoon about it that gets passed around on Facebook and Twitter, they always seem surprised into silence when someone posts quotes back from the actual text that show their argument is as strong as their research.
The looming elephant in the room here is that the marketplace of ideas is extremely crowded. Universities becoming job training centers and/or finishing schools is one thing, but even if that were not the case you'd still have to deal with the simple phenomenon of your voice getting drowned out in the unending torrent of societal criticisms in various forms of media. Ironically, getting censored in this way is probably quite helpful for that professor to broaden their reach.
Kunin writes: “Look. I’m a weirdo. I have worshipped strange gods. I have strange opinions about various subjects, and I have published some of these opinions in books, essays, and poems. My sexual preferences are unusual, and I have written about them extensively. There are lots of statements in my published writing for people to take issue with. However, I must admit with some embarrassment that the views expressed in ‘Self-Censorship in the Academy’ are completely unoriginal and vanilla. It’s just liberalism.”
There are parallels to what’s happening on the right: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/05/return-of-the-st.... This essay posits that the milquetoast nature of late 20th century liberal causes people (in that case in the right) to pine for the return of “strong gods.” It describes the status quo ante as follows: “All of this is summed up in his catchphrase the ‘weakening of Being,’ which he sees as a happy unburdening of the West, for weakening promotes tolerance, peace, and freedom. If there are no strong truths, nobody will judge others or limit their freedom. If nothing is worth fighting for, nobody will fight. Vattimo looks forward to a disenchanted world that encourages us to adopt a ‘moderate and generous’ approach to life.”
The essay argues that this absence of hard moral truths is unsatisfying to many, and is giving rise to thinking in the right wing that seeks a return to moral clarity. Kunin’ experience suggests similar things may be happening on the left as well.
> "All of this is summed up in his catchphrase the ‘weakening of Being,’ which he sees as a happy unburdening of the West, for weakening promotes tolerance, peace, and freedom. [...]"
That sort of reminds me of Rorty's Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (although I read it when I was much younger and felt that I didn't full understand it, so maybe the connection isn't as strong as I imagine), or Singer's Unsanctifying Human Life (though maybe I'm reminded of the latter just because of the "disenchanted world"). Or, in another rather different direction, Haidt's moral foundations theory.
In my recollection Rorty and Singer (both writing from academic philosophical backgrounds and mostly associating themselves with the secular left) feel that, as we've lost touch with certainties and transcendent values, we've gained an opportunity to be nicer and more thoughtful, as well as less apt to fight each other. A rival view, which I think has been expressed on the right for generations, is that losing touch with certainties and transcendent values will mainly leave people casting around for other certainties and other transcendent values that will let them rediscover something to fight for!
As a liberal, I feel there is plenty of moral clarity and purpose in defending liberalism against the extremists besieging it. They've always got their latest slick marketing for why the culture should become more totalitarian and illiberal, whether it's "RIGGED ELECTIONS!!!" Or "objectivity is white supremacy culture".
For me, defending good old liberalism from the loonies will never get boring.
Cancel culture is only the symptom of those institutions being taken over by ideological extremists. The solution is competition. Universities are destroying their brand with those positions. I am probably not the only engineer unimpressed by slogans like “decolonise maths”, and I would think twice before hiring graduates that excelled in that environment. Likewise, companies that push those ideologies should be boycotted. I don’t want to buy razor blades from a manufacturer who calls me a rapist. I just switched.
Is that not the worst kind of cancel culture? You’re going to discriminate against graduates of a university with a professor or department you don’t like?
It depends how inclusively you define the term. It doesn't involve posting the candidates on social media or otherwise forming a mob, nor creating negative publicity to pressure an institution into doing something they wouldn't otherwise do. There may be people who use the term "cancel culture" more loosely than that, but I think the above criteria are useful—they cover many examples, yet are specific enough to justify the assertion "cancel culture is dangerous, destructive, and likely bad".
Not really. You are basically arguing that anyone who provides a platform for viewpoints, must provide a platform for any viewpoint, no matter how abhorent they (and their readers) might find it.
Well, it gets interesting if you actually look into it. Somewhat simplifying it, but there are 4 types of actors:
1. Content creators. People that share viewpoints. They are motivated by influencing others who read their pieces.
2. Content consumers. People that read what is published by creators. You can split these in 2 groups:
2a. Non-activist consumers. They don't have much free time and generally just skip over something they don't like. They are the majority.
2b. Activist consumers. They have lots of free time and want their share of influence. By influencing what content creators can write they feel an influence over what non-activist consumers can consume.
3. Providers. They provide platforms connecting content creators and consumers. They generally just care about making money and rely on partnerships with other providers (banks, payment processors, hosting companies, domain registries, etc). They would gladly cut off business that brings negative PR to them.
So what is happening recently is a very small vocal minority of activist consumers is getting increased control over what content creators (1) can share to regular consumers (2a). They do it by forcing big providers (banks, cloud providers, etc) to cut ties with smaller providers that are not aligned with the activist consumers' viewpoints. Hence, many other providers are forced to self-censor in fear of losing access to banking and other vital services.
It's a rather weird negative selection process powered by the social media. Instead of encouraging the unhappy unproductive people to learn from their more successful peers and knock off what worked for them, we are giving them increasing control over the media space, so they can make their views (that lead to unhappiness) more mainstream, resulting in more unhappiness and more social tension.
Though the FCC's justification for the Fairness Doctrine was akin to part of their justification for prohibiting profanity in broadcasts: the huge scarcity of broadcast spectrum and the relatively small number of channels that could exist in a particular media market. They never attempted to apply the Fairness Doctrine to media other than licensed broadcast stations, and, when they repealed it, they noted that broadcasters would then have the same editorial freedom as print publishers -- who are allowed to be biased and treat others' viewpoints unfairly.
“Anyone” is doing a lot of work in your sentence. Universities are given a huge amount of special dispensation by society because they of their commitment to free inquiry. A literary magazine at a university should embody those principles. If it doesn’t, then why give them a privileged place in society?
Back in the day conservatives alleged that “free inquiry” was a pretext and universities were a Trojan horse for radical leftism. This strain of thought vindicates those critics.
I wouldn't call expunging racism from society "radical" or incompatible with any inquiry worth making free. If conservatives need to "allege" about that, what more do you need to hear?
No, but it is radical to do that while redefining “racism” to encompass literally every aspect of existing society radicals don’t like: capitalism, the U.S. Constitution, individualism, being white (“whiteness”), etc.
Not all the time, the problem is that certain viewpoints and grifters are so incessant and relentless with their garbage, most likely because being controversial is a cheap trick to making a lot of money, that there needs to be some filter or management to prevent actual discussion from being drowned out.
Imagine we invited Stormfront to join HN for a day? Would these opposing ideas cause growth? Of course not.
Yes, this is a coherent, stable proposal. For a tolerant society to adopt complete tolerance, even of things designed to destroy their society, is unstable.
In your definition of tolerant, is it required to tolerate even attempts to destroy the tolerant person? i.e. is there a line beyond which tolerance doesn't apply? Where do laws fit in here? I honestly thought that tolerance already included this concept - it actually means tolerant of difference of opinion, except for attempts to overthrow and replace the system of tolerance itself.
I've thought that the "attempts to destroy" and "attempts to overthrow" are limited in the sense of "imminent lawless action" and not "mere teaching or advocacy". E.g. if someone says "we should have a dictatorship of the proletariat/guardianship of the Islamic Jurist/integralist monarchy/national socialism/etc. instead of the social order that we have now", that statement doesn't cause or create those systems. Tolerating it presumably does increase the chance that one of those systems will eventually come to power (because advocating it could be an important step in creating it), but there's no guarantee of that, any more than there's a guarantee that tolerating any other idea or belief will lead to that idea or belief's ascendancy or general acceptance!
(And on the other hand, not tolerating these ideas also opens the door to making other beliefs shared with any of these belief systems taboo.)
Right. The original comment suggested that any prohibitions made by an allegedly tolerant society invalidate their claim.
I don't think that is a very useful definition of tolerance. The only stable system here, if there is one, might be something like hardcoded self-defense actions, plus otherwise general tolerance. Not saying it's logically or morally consistent.
Thanks, I think I might be gradually understanding more of what you're saying.
I feel like I've often heard the paradox of tolerance invoked in regard to what U.S. free expression law would call "pure speech", but it seems like your point is more along the lines that there's no group or society that would literally do nothing at all to defend itself in any circumstances, and that that's an unachievable or unsustainable extreme. Maybe something like the most extreme form of pacificism, where people imply that they will literally allow themselves to be killed without trying to prevent it in any way.
right - and this all started when someone who said "hey, let's stop people from shutting down discussion" was accused of being intolerant. When in fact for the existence of tolerance to continue, some self-defense is necessary.
First of all, you're mixing up opinions and actions. Two completely different things.
Second, I think of tolerance as a personal thing. But on a level of society or government, that you're talking about - I don't know, you tell me.
Let me ask you, do you tolerate sexist jokes? Because I really doubt many of the today's proponents of this theory do. Sexist jokes are not intolerant, making them is not an attempt to overthrow any kind of system, it's just jokes. But yet, a lot of people do not tolerate them. Either don't want to be in the same room as the person who makes them or will even try to harm this person in some way. Both fit the definition of intolerance. Former is completely fine, latter probably not so much.
But as I understand it, it's not so much about petty things like this, but about intolerant ideologies. Well, communism happens to be one of those ideologies. It does not tolerate anyone who owns or argues for private ownership and seeks to overthrow any system that protects it. And if we were honest, that would mean that we should also get rid of a large part of Antifa (ironically a manifestation of this theory), because many of them self-identify as communists or subscribe to ideologies derived from it.
> Where do laws fit in here?
Speech laws, freedom of association. Criminal law in case a real harm was done. The word "tolerance" should not appear anywhere in the law.
It's a bit of an eye opener. Our supposed moral advancements is merely a part of the human condition, and not a product of it. Essentially, we are guided by principles that we think we are controlling. Wow.
I'm kind of surprised at how the "paradox of tolerance" has gained so much currency in the past few years as if it were an obviously-established principle in free speech theory or something.
In the recent past, this idea was much less accepted in the U.S. because it was not assumed that allowing people who were intolerant in some regard to express their ideas (or people who were hostile in some regard to U.S. society or culture) would inevitably lead to destroying the tolerant social order. Instead, the "marketplace of ideas" theory was usually taken to mean that people would consider various ideas (including intolerant ideas, or ideas aimed at radically changing the social order) and, in most cases, largely find them unappealing and not act on them.
In the Cold War era, there were lots of civil libertarians who thought Communism was gravely evil and threatening, but that there was no "paradox" in allowing Communists to advocate their views because those views would lose an open discussion. The fact that Communists didn't necessarily believe in free speech or intend to reciprocate this tolerance did nothing to undermine this confidence; it was like "Communism is a bad idea and it's not going to win in a free marketplace of ideas; only the Communists need to use censorship to shore up their bad ideas, whereas we don't".
Similarly, the ACLU defending Nazis in Skokie (etc.) didn't think that it was a paradox to defend and tolerate people who themselves would not tolerate the ACLU or other minorities. They believed that those people had pretty crummy ideas and that most Americans would see through those ideas.
Similarly, there have always been religious groups that are wildly intolerant in the sense that they believe that their religion is the only true religion, that everyone should follow it, and even that ideally people should be forced to follow it, if that were possible. (To say nothing of the harshness with which they may treat people who disbelieve or mock their religions, or of people who flout their precepts.) Nonetheless, tolerating these religions isn't really a "paradox" except in the case where they're capable of taking over a whole society. Which is not never, but also not always.
The stability question is subtle because it depends a lot on your assumptions. But isn't the paradigmatic unstable equilibrium case where most people in the society are willing or eager to become more intolerant, and tolerance is only maintained because they're kept from hearing suggestions that would move them in that direction? As I've been noticing more and more, that's what the west said about our adversaries in the Cold War: rickety societies propped up by lies and suppression!
I was just bringing it up to get an admission that "there is a line". Everything else is about debating where that line is. The old ACLU set it really far into the "freedom" zone - recently people want to restrict it more, by for example talking about classifying relatively generic/common/vague speech as violence, when previously only direct incitement to violence was considered beyond the line.
My main point was that the GGP's concept of tolerance, as something which can have no line at all, has never been the case in the US, and doesn't seem advisable, since his argument that any resistance is invalidation of tolerance would lead it to be easily destroyed.
Thanks for the clarification! I still don't really see why this is so. Lots of people in lots of countries want a theocracy, and are allowed to say so, but only a tiny number of countries have ended up getting one as a result. (I even think a fair amount of the advocacy in Iran in favor of the Islamic Revolution was probably illegal under Pahlavi, in which case its success isn't even much of a prophecy of what happens if that kind of advocacy is tolerated.)
I guess I don't understand the "any resistance is invalidation of tolerance" and "would lead it to be easily destroyed" part. Is it like this classic Onion article from 2003?
Like if you actively make a point of never opposing people who disagree with you in any way whatsoever, eventually they can take advantage of that in a more harmful or dramatic way?
Yeah, this debate has two instances of it from opposite sides: The original story claimed to feature people who were (voluntarily) not accepting speech from someone they suggested was subtly intolerant. Then someone said "we shouldn't restrict people like that, and we should restrict (or resist) people who try it".
It's hard to make self-modifying systems stable! I simultaneously want to preserve open debate, but also do want to reduce prevalence of views proposing easier rules to shut down debate (by defeating them in debate, not by law).
> Similarly, the ACLU defending Nazis in Skokie (etc.) didn't think that it was a paradox to defend and tolerate people who themselves would not tolerate the ACLU or other minorities. They believed that those people had pretty crummy ideas and that most Americans would see through those ideas.
Yet it seems like, in this day and age, they don't. The propaganda machines are on scales and intensities that most people's minds don't appear able to keep up.
> Blacklisting is an evil in itself, corrosive to the ideal of an open society, and to professional relationships in the small world of literary publishing in which this story takes place
Author wants to take one for their team. Everyone will let them. If it's about the ideas, then you can always get those out there. If it has to be attached to your name, well, you're in the realm of egos
Just the opposite, if what you were saying were even remotely true, we wouldn't attach names to anything, including scientific papers.
To suggest that people should hide behind pen-names to discuss the most important ideas of any given era is to accept and promote the vicious kind of black listing that is apparently happening all to frequently.
Names also provided a basis for reputation, we don't just publish any old bloggers words, that's not enough filter. Bloggers can blog, other institutions can publish.
The sane thing to do here is probably to publish his work if it meets basic editorial standards and that's it.
There's also an ongoing 'cultural revolution' in which older artistic creations are being reassesed by modern political correctness. (see the recent ebay and Dr. Seuss news for a most recent example)
I find this "revisionism" frightening. I fear it'll continue to get worse. I hope it does not.
There's even a movement to replace the term "Blacklist" with a less problematic words such as denylist or blocklist. Of course, "Whitelist" is just as problematic - if not moreso! - and should be replaced with allowlist or safelist.
Edit: The etymology of these words have nothing to do with skincolor, Blackness or Whiteness.
Although I agree with the thrust of your edit, I’d actually be okay with making the swap if a black person from an underprivileged background told me that terms made him uncomfortable. But somehow it’s always a white woman from a privileged background that’s insisting we say allowlist or Latinx.
No joke. I had a very Caucasian woman tell me why she was too “exhausted” to explain to me why America’s treatment of Muslims was abhorrent and damaging. I, an immigrant from a Muslim country who went to college in the south after 9/11, had possessed the temerity to say America had handled 9/11 with far more grace towards its Muslim population than Muslim countries would have done had the shoe been on the other foot, and praised George W. Bush’s handling of the issue. That was the wrong answer apparently.
But somehow it’s always a white woman from a privileged background
It's a pattern in part because of the way white women get socialized and the role they get assigned.
I'm not excusing it or saying it's okay. I'm just saying widespread patterns tend to be driven by larger forces.
I'm not going to say more than that because it tends to be a shit show to try to say anything about the whys and wherefores.
Yes, it needs to stop. Helping white women escape the role society assigns them would be a more effective means to address this than just pointing fingers and being blamey.
My company actually got into doing this. The only reason it eventually stopped is because it cost actual money to complete that change in one of the systems. All of a sudden, it was harder to justify that change. So it didn't happen. I get it though. We recently got inclusivity executive something or other. You gotta show you are doing something. Incidentally, how do you even get those types of jobs?
I wholly support “blacklist” being replaced with ”blocklist”, “denylist”, “exclusion list”, or anything else that is both more direct about the function and isn't a lazy use of a metaphorical reference to a centuries-long history of elite political and anti-labor (often both simultaneously) repression. (Ditto with “whitelist” which is itself a second-order reference to blacklisting.)
Just because something isn't specifically connected to race doesn't mean it is innocuous.
>Just because something isn't specifically connected to race doesn't mean it is innocuous.
No one said otherwise. Luckily, "blacklist" is innocuous, and the only ones calling for its replacement and removal are neurotic leftists.
Dragons breathe fire, and my family burned to death. For my safety, please change your username to something that won't trigger me, your username is not innocuous. I see your username and all I can think about is my family burning.
Just because something isn't specifically connected to race doesn't mean it is innocuous.
The Dr. Seuss estate decided not to publish some of his works anymore because they believed they were no longer appropriate. I stand by the right of a work's owner to say, "you know, I wish this hadn't been released and I've decided not to sell it."
It's closer to "you know, I wish this hadn't been released and I've decided that no one should be able to sell their copies of it."
According to wsj:
> Online marketplace eBay Inc. said it is working to prevent the resale of six Dr. Seuss books that were pulled earlier this week by the company in charge of the late author’s works because they contain offensive imagery.
eBay decided themselves they didn't want to be associated with it; the author's estate didn't dictate to them that nobody is allowed to trade in it. They're still on Amazon, of course, as are a bunch of racist bumper stickers and a billion other SKUs.
That's weird, I don't remember the book burning. I guess I must have missed it. I am sure it is totally impossible to get a copy of any of those books now that the publisher has decided to stop publishing them after 80 years.
Who said anything about book burnings? Claiming that it's just the owner of the work who decided not to sell it is not giving the full story, if it's not a lie by omission.
Except the author did no such thing. A corporate entity IP owner did. Those entities are subject to a myriad of whims, much the same as Nike or Apple.
It's laughably hypocritical in an era where pop culture is full of all kinds of 'offensive' material.
Go here, right now [1] to the Billboard Hot 100 and cruise down that list.
Over 50% of those songs are chock full of brutal misogyny, racism, sexism, violence, and all of the most vile and derelict behaviours we wold ever want to see in any person.
To think that EBay is 'banning' Dr. Seuss, but happily selling music that literally glorifies young men for murdering random people for looking at them the wrong way is a definite sign of social decline.
The author of this post is effectively correct.
The OP is correct to use Dr. Seuss as a point of concern eve if the owners of the IP have every right to stop publishing.
> Except the author did no such thing. A corporate entity IP owner did.
The author is dead, so couldn't. The IP is owned by Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which was founded by his wife. It's not some random corporation who swooped up the copyrights at an auction, but literally the organization created to manage them.
> Go here, right now [1] to the Billboard Hot 100 and cruise down that list.
Presumably those IP holders have decided to continue selling their stuff, which is also their right.
> To think that EBay is 'banning' Dr. Seuss
They're doing no such thing. They've decided to stop selling the specific books that are being pulled from publication.
Every last bit of this stuff is garden variety free market capitalism: an IP holder decided to stop publishing certain works, and a market decided to stop selling them. Because I support capitalism, I have to support their rights to make these kinda of business decisions.
There are plenty of books that are no longer being published, but you are not prevented from buying them on eBay. The issue is more than active publication, it's access.
Nobody owes you a free publishing platform. He expects that by calling the publishers of some journal "craven" and "scared", that he's going to elicit a reversal of their decision, and positive response from them, something to the effect of "oh, how dare we deny your article, woe unto us, we were so dreadfully wrong"... Really?
The biggest takeaway that I got from his December essay, and this one? A sense of self righteous entitlement, that whatever he writes must be of such great import and merit that of course publishers should be falling all over themselves to print it. Has he taken the time to sit back and consider that maybe he's not as critically important to the English language literature scene as he believes himself to be?
In general, insulting your potential publishing platform only serves to burn bridges. So, good luck with that, guy.
> He expects that by calling the publishers of some journal "craven" and "scared", that he's going to elicit a reversal of their decision
Thats not my read of the situation. I agree that if his goal was to convince the authors, it would make sense for him to be more accomodating. And it wouldn't make sense to call them out in public.
But thats not his goal here. To my eyes, this piece takes a shot at the culture which produced their editorial decision. He's calling cancel culture (and its adherents) craven and scared, using this situation as an example.
What I find amusing is that the same center-right and right-wing mouthpieces that complain the loudest about 'cancel culture' have themselves been deeply involved in attempting to 'cancel' things for the past 40 years, anything they dislike or find distasteful, a random assortment of which includes.
rap music and any music with "vulgar" lyrics (PARENTAL WARNING labels on CDs)
harry potter (satanic magic messages offending the christian right)
construction of neighborhood mosques (we can't have a foreign religion in our white christian suburb, can we???)
french fries (remember freedom fries???)
lgbtq rights
womens' reproductive rights
frank discussion of endemic police brutality
just about anything new, foreign, liberal, confusing or ethnically diverse else that would upset the sensibilities of a deep red state bible belt voter.
There are plenty of people with liberal viewpoints that are against both of these groups of cancellers, myself included. Progressive cancel culture is cancerous and so is Conservative cancel culture. So too was the red scare and the inquisition and the Salem witch hunts. Moral panics as a general concept are ridiculous and dangerous to society regardless of political affiliation.
Isn't that kind of lumping a great number of people with very different mindsets into a big group of Idiots Because They Don't Think Like Me?
I won't spend the time to go through and contradict every single one of your points, but let's not forget that Tipper Gore (Al Gore's wife at the time) was the main push behind the parental advisory labels, freedom fries is a joke to 100% of the people I've talked to about it, and just because not everyone agrees at what point (or whether) an abortion becomes synonymous with a murder does not mean that everyone on the right wants to rule over women (unlike some cultures that do exist to this day in other countries).
Shouldn't that make us more sympathetic to the issue? In all the fights over those issues it was a constant among the left that free discussion is vital. Was that really just an attractive political stance, held only until it was no longer useful? I don't want to believe that, I have to believe that people were sincere and we can return to it as a universal principle.
It's basic tolerance of intolerance. We want to be tolerant in all things -- be sympathetic -- but the more you are tolerance of intolerance the less tolerance there is in the world.
It's a delicate balance and not one that is so black and white.
Sure; sometimes its complicated. But it seems pretty simple here. The article in question[1] makes a liberal appeal to care about good art, and care less about the artist. It isn't overtly racist or sexist. It isn't a work of intolerance that we need to steel ourselves to be intolerant over in turn. Its a pretty middle of the road, classically liberal opinion piece that 15 years ago would have been entirely uncontroversial and boring.
Deplatforming someone over this isn't "bravely standing up to intolerance". Deplatforming the author is just simple anti-intellectual intolerance of the diversity of ideas that (used to) make the academy so great.
To be honest, I've always felt like this was an unproved assertion. Popper made it sound very good, but what attempts to show that it's actually true have been made?
I generally agree with you here, but all opponents of cancel culture are not on the right. E.g. me. I can count on one hand the number of republicans I've voted for -- none of which were at the federal level.
It's wrong when people on the right do it, as well as now when those on the left do it.
I don't think those are the same people. For example, one of the most vocal people I know who is speaking out against the culture of censorship is a school librarian. During the early '00s, she organized and promoted Banned Book Week events every year, against the wishes of the rather conservative community, because she thought it was important to have the freedom to read and form your own opinions.
> What I find amusing is that the same center-right and right-wing mouthpieces [...] have themselves been deeply involved in attempting to 'cancel' [...] rap music and any music with "vulgar" lyrics (PARENTAL WARNING labels on CDs)
That was Tipper Gore and her cronies (from both parties). The same Tipper Gore that married Al Gore the left-wing/Democrat. I don't think this example supports your argument.
Al Gore also participated in that shit-show of attempted censorship.
Many actual liberals who admire the open and uncensored leftism of 1970 think that both the right wing censorship and the now prevalent not-woke-enough censorship are repulsive.
Except that one of these can only be criticized anonymously.
I think you're deliberately grouping everyone critical of the utter insanity of the modern day "right wing" that way you can attack someone who isn't who you're arguing against without having to discuss their point. It's like people who immediately assume a pro lifer believes in god. They're not necessarily the same people. Tipper Gore isn't Sam Harris.
Judging by the list you wrote, you seem to be very much opposed to moral panics and moralistic censorship. I find it surprising that you're not concurring with the people you're responding to on this. I would've taken you for a liberal person.
What's even more amusing is that the right views the left as hypocrites too, because they were previously against it. Seems like everyone is a hypocrite.
I was convinced that it's a good thing that the right is most impacted by the censorship, as the right was more supportive of capitalism and it caused them to notice some of its problems, while the left is already against it. Needless to say, it didn't turned out exactly how I expected and apparently we're bound to repeat this vicious cycle forever, only normalizing the worst possible tactics along the way.
This is not how I read this. He is reacting to the phenomenon (he is calling 'blacklisting') of an editorial staff contradicting their own decisions under threat of power by unknown third parties motivated by ideological disagreement. If he had been offered a 'free publishing platform', there would be nothing for him to discuss.
Well, while I happen to have a sympathetic view of the author's plight, the goal ( and the tactic ) is not to change anyone's mind. Quite the contrary, the goal is re-entrench and have people rage against cancel culture. And it works. Facebook may have perfected it, but it does not mean a more elaborate click-baiting mechanisms were not adopted by humans. In fact, clearly, they were. Rage, sorry, engagement, sells.
It's interesting that some academic literary magazines are now being forced to admit they have political agendas, which is a step in the right direction.
People like Kunin are the conscience of our generation, daring to stand up to the mobs and tell the truth - a political act that conflicts with the Chicago Review's agenda. But it is the truth tellers, not the political enforcers, who will be acknowledged as heroes, as the future belongs to the truth, not to the political lie.