No I wouldn’t, because the scenario being discussed isn’t illegal, nor should it be. I don’t want the government to outlaw Nazis owning coffeeshops, I just don’t want to buy coffee off of them.
You seem determined to be confrontational here. No, the party to believe is the independent one commissioned by AMC in conjunction with a major law firm. If the conclusions of the report are completely wrong, and Hardwick turns out to be the sexual abuser that Dysktra alleges, then some very big organizations are taking a very big risk. Do you really think they would take that risk without strong confidence that Hardwick was in the right and that Dysktra was an attention-seeking bullshitter?
Hopefully this isn’t too far afield, but I don’t think the Nazi bit of this really matters.
If I lived in a community where everyone wears green on Greensday, and a shop owner refused to participate in the communal event, it would be absolutely within one’s right to put pressure on that shop owner to conform to social norms by refusing to patronize their shop, and maybe even spreading the word to let other people know who care about the issue.
How reasonable a response this is is tied to how important the social norm of wearing green on Greensday is. If there is a critical mass of folks who really care enough to impact the shop owner’s livelihood, then the owner will feel pressure to conform.
For better or worse, it has always been thus. We are not fully independent- part of life requires compromise, compliance, and conformity. Our families, friends, and communities support and nurture us, and also pressure us to fit in and adopt the group culture.
Our government has a short list of groups of people who are protected from certain kinds of community pressure, discrimination, or exclusion (protected classes). Outside of that, we’re all at the mercy of our communities, and we
Whether it’s a Greensday denier or a Nazi doesn’t really matter, the community can exert pressure on people to conform.
There are degrees of this: I think it would be inappropriate for a town government to refuse to allow the Greensday denier to lease a shop and open a business. But if the people want to boycott? That’s their right.
I do think that one of our crises in 2025 is that community accountability and cohesion is fundamentally broken by technology. We are encouraged to be reactionary and aggressive based on incomplete information, and enjoy the power of exerting influence against strangers with no personal consequence.
Nope. I do get to do that. So do you. So does everybody. People suffer and enjoy consequences for their actions all the time. Are you sincerely suggesting that no one should ever experience a negative outcome or response to their behavior unless and until that behavior is addressed in a court of law?
Do I think a large corporation was confident its paid agents would exonerate its cash cow? Let me think a sec…
‘Believe big companies’ is right up there with ‘believe rich older men’ in the strategies I don’t rate very highly in these kinds of situations.
Wow, sounds like I just discovered One Neat Trick to get out of jury duty!
But, in reality, nobody is getting dismissed from a jury for asserting they have the ability to make moral decisions without the input from the legal system.
Next time what? Next time I’m on a jury deliberating if someone broke the law against being a Nazi coffeeshop owner?
I’m never going to be on that jury, because that’s not something that’s against the law.
I think they most likely made the decision based on not enough facts to verify, because Chloe Dykstra refused to participate in the investigation. Or in other words, I don’t believe Hardwick was exonerated, so much as nothing could be proven. Which I don’t think makes Hardwick guilty, but also doesn’t really prove he is fully innocent either. Which in default means I think Hardwick should keep his career. But also be default I have no idea if Dykstra was lying, exaggerating or just giving her actual unvarnished take on the situation and 100% telling the truth.
Let me help you think. The whole entire point of cancel culture is that organizations don’t want their reputations tainted by social media gossip, so they will often jettison an employee whenever they can even without solid proof of the allegations. That’s what makes cancel culture so toxic.
Only in the reactionary narratives of the defenders of the status quo. In reality the corporations continue to employ/pay/award the Kevin Spaceys and Louis C.Ks and similar rat bastards of the entertainment industry.
We have no idea the conclusions of the investigation. Nothing was released. Why are you saying otherwise?
Because you’re the only one who thinks there needs to be a “process” for that. There doesn’t need to be a legal process in place before you can say, “I think that guy’s an asshole.”
People are allowed to have opinions about things.
So, if I think some guy’s an asshole, I’m required to still associate with him? I’m not allowed to tell other people, “That guy Steve is an asshole?” until I’ve taken him to Asshole Court and received a judgement of “Legally a Sphincter”?
“Asshole Court” sounds like a reality show I would watch.
Why not?
I get to decide what i believe. And i can choose not to do business with most people, too, for whatever reason i want.
Hey, that’s real. As a Jew, i hadn’t kept track of St Patrick’s Day, and wore a vaguely orange shade of brown to school one year in Greensday. Yes, there were a lot of Irish Americans in my school. Let’s just say i didn’t make that mistake again.
Each one of us gets to decide, based on whatever information we can gather. And each one of us makes decisions based on what we decide.
You know, you can’t single handedly run anyone’s life just by personally boycotting their shop. If you have evidence that convinces a lot of other people that the guy is an asshole, maybe you can. Or maybe most of the community doesn’t care that you think he’s an asshole.
Kevin Spacey is still doing very well, thank you.
Why are you wasting your time considering the facts of the case when he is old, powerful, wealthy, White, and male? Isn’t that enough to conclude he is guilty?
Laws criminalizing the false shouting of fire in crowded theaters are not fucking censorship.
That folks can not remember that the quote specifically refers to falsely shouting is telling. No one at any time in human history has had a problem with shouting fire in crowded theaters that are, in fact, on fucking fire.
Yes, this is the problem. If I honestly believe the theater is on fire, you bet your ass I’m shouting about it.
I’m afraid social media is full of people who believe ‘inclusion’ means excluding anyone with differing views, and defend this position by misusing Popper’s paradox of tolerance. If the DEI industry really believes inclusion includes everyone, the message is not getting through. (Not implausible, the version of social justice beliefs I encountered on Twitter seldom matched up with what posters here claim is the ‘true’ academic version.
Yeah, a lot of the opposition is to affirmative action (and openly opposing that can also get you in trouble depending on industry). The double standards inherent in modern DEI also draw ire, though.
Sure, but we should be extending tolerance to more people, not taking it away from those who had it. We are going in the wrong direction on this, and that is why I believe it’s an issue.
Yeah. One may as well trust some Maga idiot calling a teacher a ‘groomer’. It’s possible either is correct, but I’d want to know what specifically the person is accused of before doing anything more than shrugging.
The multiple posts in this thread in which you endorsed boycotting people and businesses (and even doxxing people!) for doing things you disapprove of, and celebrated the fact that ordinary people now have the power to censor speech.
I’m not asking you not to mention it. I’m asking you not to decide that it means he must be a terrible person who deserves to be fired/boycotted/ostracised by all his friends, and not to try and make that happen. If you wouldn’t do that anyway, I’m not asking you to do anything.
I don’t want to stop anyone expressing their views, I want them to stop trying to censor other people.