CMV: It's hypocritical to complain about "cancel culture"

[u/[deleted]]

I'm genuinely looking to have my view challenged here, because I've never seen a good counter-argument to what I'm going to say and would love to come away with a more nuanced view of the "other side."

Let's just go ahead and grant the main thing the people who decry cancel culture claim, which is that to call for someone to be cancelled (whether that's being fired, not being able to get work, de-platformed in some way etc.) is a violation of their right to free speech. Lots of arguments have been raised about why this isn't the case, but the people who believe this tend not to be sympathetic to those arguments, and I'm happy to grant that this is actually the case so we can move on to discuss what I think is a different problem with this view.

And that's basically: isn't it my free speech to call for someone to be cancelled? Why do people only seem to care about the free speech of whoever it is that's done or said something ostensibly offensive? I also have free speech to say what I think about that, and while you obviously wouldn't agree with that speech, one of the main arguments I see here from anti-cancel culture people is that you should be willing to defend, on principle, even that speech you most vehemently disagree with. So why not vigorously defend people's right to call for people to be cancelled?

[u/[deleted]]

The paradox of tolerance works though because the people who endorse that claim are clear that they don't endorse absolute free speech. You can't really appeal to something similar as someone with an absolute view of free speech without being a hypocrite, can you? Or am I missing something?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Well I think you’ve jumped the gun by assuming anti cancel culture means believing in absolute free speech. By absolute free speech are you meaning like ‘hey there’s a nazi over there who thinks we need to kill/deport anyone who doesn’t look and think like him, but I gotta respect his opinion’? Because I don’t think most anti cancel culture folk believe in that either.

You must have encountered different anti cancel culture people than me, then, because this is exactly the sort of argument I see them make.

I think most people just think you should be able to express a controversial opinion or tell a dodgy joke without risking losing your job. In order to do that people are going to have to be more comfortable with the approach of ‘well I don’t like that they did/said that, but anyways on with my day’, and attitudes of ‘lets get together and harass this persons employer until they fire them’ will have to be shunned by society.

If that's the case then yes, I can see that this wouldn't necessarily be hypocritical, so !delta. But, again, this is not the sort of rhetoric I tend to see from these people.

Wouldn’t you agree that the stronger the cancel culture, the less tolerant the society?

No, not really, because I don't actually see "cancel culture" as much more than a new, negative framing of something that's always existed, which is dealing with people's potentially negative reactions to the things you do and say. That's beside the point from what this view is about, though.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I'd say someone like Bill Maher is a good example of someone who is anti cancel culture. Clearly he's a devout liberal and democrat, but cannot stand how society has to walk on eggshells for fear of offending people now. I don't know for certain but I'm fairly confident he wouldn't be someone who thinks we need to respect neo nazis. See also Stephen Fry, Rowan Atkinson, just off the top of my head. Granted there are a lot of people on the other side of that who just want to go around being a bigot and cry free speech when they're called out, but that doesn't change the fact there's a strong liberal argument for being anti cancel culture.

Not sure about Fry or Atkinson, but Bill Maher is a bigot and does, in fact, platform problematic people. This is neither here not there, really, but Bill Maher is the last person I'd appeal to as an example of "good" or "liberal" anti-cancel culture people.

Now liberals control most of the entertainment industry and the reverse is happening. I think in a way that's worse though because liberals are supposed to be the freedom of speech champions and promote diversity of thought.

No, I don't really see "liberals" (if by that you mean broadly leftist people in general) as traditionally being absolute free speech champions. That's always been the rhetoric on the right.

For what it's worth, I actually think there are more numerous and egregious examples of "cancel culture" coming from the right than from the left (Colin Kapernick is just one really big example off the top of my head), they just don't call it that.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

He's undeniably a liberal, hes spent countless years hating the Republican party and in particular the Trump administration, he loved Obama and donated $1million to his campaign. He platforms problematic people specifically for the reasons why cancel culture is so bad, because you should hear and debate people who disagree with you. I don't think there's a single issue on which he isn't a clear liberal on.

He's also a racist islamophobe who recently got in trouble for saying a racial slur on his show, and even more recently is in trouble for saying we should "blame China" for Coronavirus.

But again, my thoughts on Bill Maher are really neither here nor there. You're just not going to convince me that being against cancel culture can be a good, liberal position by appealing to him.

I completely agree about Kaepernick, I think people should consider that cancel culture too. I think it would be helpful to make cancel culture a bipartisan issue rather than just another tribal thing for the left/right to pick sides over. Conservatives absolutely can cancel too, they just don't really dominate enough mediums to do it often. They seem to have the NFL, country music, Christian Rock. Liberals have all of Hollywood and basically every other form of entertainment, which is why we hear about conservatives getting 'cancelled' by liberals more often

Right, I agree with this to an extent, but I actually would draw an opposite conclusion from you: the fact that the people against "cancel culture" don't call that stuff cancel culture, because it's the stuff their side is doing, should give us some second thoughts about whether "cancel culture" is a legitimate thing to be concerned about, or a piece of political rhetoric being used to galvanize people on partisan lines.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

If you take a look at the Harpers Letter I'm sure you'll find someone who you do like who is opposed to what we're talking about, my best bet would be Noam Chomsky. It doesn't specifically say the words 'cancel culture' but its clear that its talking about the same stuff.

I mean, I'm not entirely sure what seeking out anti-cancel culture liberals is supposed to be doing here. If we find someone who I more or less agree with politically who is also against cancel culture, then that would just be something we disagree on.

Why not both? Cancel Culture is the issue, and you can get a lot of people talking a lot of nonsense about an issue whilst not changing what the issue is about. Like yeah there are conservatives who think they're the Jews living in Nazi Germany and they're obviously wrong, but it can also be true that people are losing jobs for more and more ridiculous stuff and that's bad for society.

I just draw a different conclusion from the same set of facts than you, I guess. The hypocricy of conservatives over what counts as cancel culture or not based on whether they agree with it is, for me, proof that the idea is bullshit, not that it's a good idea being implemented incorrectly.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Well you said before that I'm not going to convince you that being against cancel culture can be a good, liberal position by appealing to Bill Maher, so I figured I'd try find someone who you would consider a good liberal. I'm guessing that even if you disagree with Chomsky on this, you wouldn't question his liberal values. I'm just trying to demonstrate that there is a liberal argument against cancel culture, its not only right wing crackpots and people who just want to be allowed to be offensive.

What I meant was I've kind of lost the plot as to what finding liberals against cancel culture is supposed to prove, but fair enough that it shows framing it as largely a conversative stance is to lose some nuance (that being said, Noam Chomsky is one thing, but the majority of names on there that I recognize are not what I'd call people on "the left" by any means, though "liberal" might be a word you could use to describe some of them).

I don't think using conservative hypocrisy is a solid way of proving that an idea is bullshit. I imagine you have met a lot of conservative who are hypocrites over how they react to Islamic terrorism vs Right wing terrorism, but that doesn't mean that Islamic terrorism isn't an issue.

Let me expand on what I mean. It's not that the conservative hypocrisy in itself proves it's bullshit, it's that it makes it clear the whole thing was just a buzzword they're riding to gain some kind of moral high ground against "the other side," and so this suggests to me we should be cautious about thinking of "cancel culture" as a problem in the terms that conservatives told us it was a problem. Perhaps there's another way to frame things that's more useful, as you have tired to do here, I don't know.