Thank you so much for being kind enough to provide us with a sample of a low effort Gish Gallop of false assertions.
Now, I ask @DemonTree, is this really the sort of thing that would be conducive to productive debate?
How do you engage someone when their mind is already closed?
Advocating basic liberties and condemning violence employed against those who are exercising basic rights such as wearing a hat or waving a flag is the opposite of having a closed mind. The left is systematically attempting to shut down debate by labeling any opposing view or any supporting view that isn’t enthusiastic enough as racism, bigotry, anti-BLACK or some other ridiculous assertion which will provoke a Pavlovian response in the indoctrinated mob.
Denying obvious and objective reality like those who continue to use the euphemism ‘peaceful protester’ is only convincing to the willfully deluded.
Do you have a cite for any of this?
Are you honestly asking for a cite for that which you know to be true? Surely you aren’t unaware of ‘mostly peaceful’ deplatforming at major public universities. Surely you aren’t unaware of ‘mostly peaceful’ assaults on people wearing or voicing non regressive approved political apparel or messages.
Oh, wait, that is not on universities. Now the problem then should be a big one… or could be exaggerated to become a right wing talking point? Mmm, Could be…
The raw numbers here should already raise questions about the so-called political correctness epidemic. According to the Department of Education, there are 4,583 colleges and universities in the United States (including two- and four-year institutions). The fact that there were roughly only 60 incidents in the past two years suggests that free speech crises are extremely rare events and don’t define university life in the way that critics suggest.
Moreover, there’s a consistent pattern in the data when it comes to conservatives — one that tells a different story than you hear among free speech panickers.
“Most of the incidents where presumptively conservative speech has been interrupted or squelched in the last two or three years seem to involve the same few speakers: Milo Yiannopoulos, Ben Shapiro, Charles Murray, and Ann Coulter ,” Sanford Ungar, the project’s director, writes. “In some instances, they seem to invite, and delight in, disruption.”
What Ungar is suggesting here is that the “campus free speech” crisis is somewhat manufactured. Conservative student groups invite speakers famous for offensive and racially charged speech — all of the above speakers fit that bill — in a deliberate attempt to provoke the campus left. In other words, they’re trolling. When students react by protesting or disrupting the event, the conservatives use it as proof that there’s real intolerance for conservative ideas.
The other key thing that emerges from the Georgetown data, according to Ungar, is that these protests and disruptions don’t just target the right. “Our data also include many incidents, generally less well-publicized, where lower-profile scholars, speakers, or students who could be considered to be on the left have been silenced or shut down,” he writes.
Examples include Princeton professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s commencement speech being canceled after receiving death threats for criticizing President Donald Trump and the president of Sonoma State University apologizing for allowing a black student to read a poem critical of police violence at commencement.
There’s little reason, according to Ungar, to conclude from any of this that conservative views are uniquely unwelcome on campus.
Most of what you’re saying is inaccurate, and you’re not offering any support for your opinions. Just because you believe this stuff to be self evident doesn’t make it so.
Assuming those who disagree with you are being dishonest might make it easy to never have to back up your arguments, but it doesn’t make for much of a debate.
…for the record this was overturned (quite rightly) on appeal.
For the record, I very much doubt that there is a “new breed of leftists” that are pushing for the state to punish people for publishing the words of marginalised black artists.
Um, how is showing evidence that left-wing academics and students are being targeted even more supposed to convince us there is no free speech problem? Am I missing something?
Good. I agree. This means that there are some cases where it’s warranted to call for ‘cancellation’ (a term I really don’t like, and don’t think it adequately captures the issue, btw, but it’s become the accepted shorthand), and others where it’s not. Then, we can frame the core issue of the Harper’s letter essentially as stipulating that that ratio is off, in current discourse: things that should invite debate are instead met with calls for cancellation.
I think this is a better grounds for discussion. For one, it means we can leave the whole ‘it’s just rich white people complaining about having to face criticism’ strawman behind, and concentrate on a more appropriate topic: is this ratio, in fact, off, or are these people just collectively deceived?
Now, it should come as no surprise that I believe that yes, it is the case that debate culture is, on certain issues at least, giving way to a culture of reflexive ostracism and wagon-circling. That’s after all why I wrote the OP, last year; I feel that the fact that more and more have joined in bemoaning this point vindicates me at least to some extent. I acted on my own perceptions, and since, more and more people have spoken out to the effect that they share this perception. That doesn’t mean this isn’t a misperception, but it does put me in a different place than I would be if things had developed differently. Plus, the fact that people speak up now, with everything else going on in the world and in their lives, at least attests to this being an important issue, to them.
In support, many individual stories have been put forward. I don’t think it’s ultimately all that useful to dwell on the particulars of each case. Every party can construct a narrative around a given incident that suits their predilections. Maybe David Shor was fired for something else entirely. Maybe Boeing overreacted. Maybe Andrew Sullivan had it coming. Maybe James Bennett fucked up one time too many. And so on.
But I think that one ends up stringing altogether too many ‘maybes’ together in this way. Every single case may have some attenuating circumstance that one can point to if motivated enough, but this ignores the preponderance of the issues, the culture from which they spring. At some point, it becomes reasonable to think that maybe there’s actually something going on here.
The point is that the people who, say, sign a letter calling for the Linguistic Association of America to sever its ties with Steven Pinker, think that what they’re doing is a reasonable reaction. These things don’t occur in a vacuum: they’re an expression of the pervasive culture from which they spring. And I don’t think that that’s a culture amenable to reasoned debate, and thus, will ultimately just be detrimental to itself—it will grow stale, dogmatic, and oppressive.
On the other hand, I’ve got a rosy position here: if I’m wrong about this, then the views I hold dear won’t suffer from it, and we’ll hopefully see much more positive change in the world; and if I’m right, at least I get to say I told you so. 
Well, I can only speak to myself, but I didn’t come to this from the point of view of power. To me, it was the everyday interactions that first brought me to this topic—people shouting each other down on facebook, twitter, and other such venues; vegans ostracizing vegetarians, flame wars breaking out about misused pronouns, opinions being denied because they didn’t come from the right source, debates being derailed by irrelevant points aimed to establish ideological alliance, or lack thereof. That’s the sort of thing I noticed first, not some ‘handful of high-profile cases’. Many of those hadn’t even occurred when I wrote the OP.
So this got me interested in the phenomenon, leading to me reading a book on it:
There, too, the focus isn’t on the powerful being censored, but rather, the mutual self-censorship in left-wing discourse, where opinions only hold water if they can be substantiated by the right ideological credentials. One of the first reactions to this topic was to prompt me to identify as an ‘ally’, because apparently, the world neatly decomposes into allies and enemies, and if you’re not with me every step of the way, well, you’re against me: a position neatly engendering immunity from all criticism, because if you do criticize, then you’re the enemy, and who cares about what they think.
The Rowlings, Sullivans, Bennetts, and Weiss of this world: fuck 'em, I can’t say I’m gonna shed a tear. Besides, if you’re right and canceling them isn’t actually hurting them, then that just seems to mean that we shouldn’t bother, right?
If there’s any point to including their specific stories into the narrative at all, it’s that due to their visibility, they’re the first time many will come into contact with this issue—canaries in the coal mine, so to speak. But that doesn’t mean the issue is centered on, or even particularly relevant to them: it’s fundamentally about how all of us police our in-groups range of acceptable opinion.
This really isn’t about those in power, but about the way all of us interact with one another. One of the more widely publicized cases is the infighting resulting in the breaking down of a community of knitters on instagram: not a traditional seat of power.
I think that the notion of ‘active filter bubble’ captures this to some extent: we’ve already grown accustomed to keeping information that doesn’t fit with our biases from filtering down to us; so what is ostracizing those producing such information if not the next logical step? So if you’ve ever worried about the effect of filter bubbles—perhaps not on yourself, as such, but on the society they create—then I think this deserves at least some open consideration.
It’s not so easy to find examples of research not done and stories not written.
The Council of Europe thinks there is a problem with censorship in media:
https://www.coe.int/en/web/human-rights-channel/media-self-censorship
Here’s an article about censorship in universities:
Now before I spend more time I don’t have doing research, what would actually convince you there is a problem? Every time someone brings up free speech, people here start talking about Nazis, and now you’ve picked on scientific racism for some reason, but there are a lot of controversial opinions that aren’t so clear cut. Do you think the cancelled speakers mentioned in the Spectator article are on the same order as Nazis? Is it a problem that so many UK universities and students unions limit free speech? What about the examples from the Vox article?
Re Joe, it’s more like we admit everyone is a little bit racist, but then turn around and say anyone with racist views is a bad person and we don’t want them in our party. If you insist all your allies have to be perfect and agree with you on every particular, you soon won’t have any. And they won’t necessarily go out and vote for Trump, but a lot of people stayed home in the last election and that swung it.
Could I have a cite for this information please, so I can judge for myself? You didn’t need to write a paragraph, a link would have been fine. (And I could have linked to the Reuters article about it, but I thought we were all familiar enough with that version.)
Okay, thanks for the thoughtful response.
I think there is something going on, but it’s not negative - it’s empowerment. For maybe the first time in history, marginalized groups and individuals are starting to feel they can speak out and criticize the powerful. Maybe some of them go too far, or pick the wrong targets sometimes, but by and large this is a good thing. People who previously felt they should be quiet if they weren’t happy about what some powerful person said now feel like they have a voice.
This should be welcomed. Feel free to call out the specific incidents you think have been handled wrong, but overall I think this is clearly a sign of a more equitable society and culture.
I agree that that’s going on, and it’s an unreservedly good thing, and benefits all of society. It’s just that I think that’s not all that’s going on. Historically, we (as in, humans) have been bad at making the best out of a good thing; I think there’s systematic reasons for that, mostly having to do with what I wrote in the OP, for short, with the need of separating in-group from out-group, which paradoxically gets more pressing the more want to join your in-group, and which feels most threatened not by the out-group itself, but those who seem to endanger the clear boundary between in- and out-group.
This leads to what’s an unabashed moral good being used as a litmus test for purity; and once we are at that point, whoever can issue more stringent demands of purity usually carries the day, to the detriment of, ultimately, everyone. If you’ve got the time (~30 min), listen to the BBC 4 documentary on ‘purity spirals’; I don’t totally agree with the editorial spin being put on things, but I think it’s worth it just for the testimony, and for a bit of elaboration on the concept.
That’s why I think we need to tease apart the moral aspect of the issue, and its being used as an exclusionary measure. Otherwise, I think we’re in danger of two things happening—the counter-revolution, and the disintegration of the movement. The first is the danger that the ‘cancelled’ find common ground in their cancellation, a rallying call around which to organize, and perhaps, radicalize—those with initially mild views drifting further away to the margins from the center. I think the beginnings of that are illustrated in the NY Times article I posted already.
The other danger is more pernicious. It’s illustrated in the BBC documentary by the person calling for more diversity in the knitting scene—under the hashtag ‘diversknitty’, believe it or not—eventually, after calling for moderation in the resulting tumult, being labeled as an advocate of white supremacy, ending up suicidal and hospitalized. It’s a ‘the revolution devours its children’-type of thing: there’s always a more stringent interpretation to impose that suddenly lands you on the wrong side of the fence.
Now, one might agree with the ‘call for moderation’, or not. It’s certainly something that’s at the very least debatable: a white person calling for everybody to ‘be nice’. But I think that’s all it calls for: debate, correction, perhaps education. An indication of moral failure, perhaps, but not thereby of wickedness. If ignorance suffices to make you wicked, we’re all going to hell.
Of course, again, I might be wrong about all this. Maybe I’m just afraid for my own privilege, somewhere deep down. I can’t be certain that that’s not so. But I’m not calling for anybody to keep quiet, or to accept things as they are, or even to ‘be nice’. In a way, aside from the inherent dangers I see in any kind of exclusionary tendency, speaking in a brutally utilitarian sense, this is a strategic issue, for me: merely fighting for a good cause doesn’t mean you’ll win; you still need a solid tactic. And I think the sort of tactic being implemented at the moment hasn’t worked well, historically.
Yes, the fact that it is not as prevalent as it is screamed about, and many right wingers wrongly report it is affecting them specifically, as I have seen conservative posters in the SBMB propose.
In reality most controversial speakers go to speak at universities with little fuss, while there are incidents that need criticism, on the whole they are really reported under a confirmation bias lens.
I don’t think HMHW is conservative, and I never have been. I’m especially worried about it affecting left-wingers, actually, because purity spirals usually end up being harshest on former allies.
My alma mater tried to ban a talk by Maryam Namazie, a British-Iranian secularist, communist and human rights activist, commentator, and broadcaster, who by no stretch of the imagination can be regarded as right-wing. I really hope these are just isolated instances, but it’s not exactly encouraging when so many people defend them.
The French revolution was good, right? Sweeping away the corrupt aristocracy, empowering the peasants. But they still guillotined a lot of innocent people, including many supporters of the revolution, including the Jacobins in the end. And then after all that they ended up with an Emperor. The fact an overall movement is good doesn’t mean it can’t get twisted, even by people who have good intentions.
Ah hell, if you won’t listen to HMHW there’s really no point me posting. But you could at least read about the knitting purity spiral, it’s a good example and shows it’s by no means only the powerful who are affected.
Threats and stuff like that are always bad, and there are always parasites and bullies on the edges of causes, ready for any opportunity to be assholes. That stuff should be condemned, and I think it generally is.
And in addition to the clear bullies, there are folks who maybe are extra harsh and strident with their criticism, sincere as it is.
So it’s a shame when someone gets pushed out and threatened (or worse) for some innocuous comment. I’m sure it happens occasionally. That’s bad and I’m fine with calls not to do that.
In the meantime, we’re still in a white supremacist, patriarchal, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, and transphobic society and culture, and that’s where I think 99% of the focus should be in advocating change. The white supremacists, misogynists, homophobes, xenophobes, and transphobes are out there, with lots of power, wealth, and influence – generally far more than their serious critics. Once we have a remotely fair and equitable society, then I’ll be fine with moving more than a tiny fraction of my attention and focus from these ongoing injustices over to the possible occasional missteps by advocates and allies of justice. Right now these are blips – fine to point out what went wrong on these occasional blips, but that’s all they are, in comparison to these other awful things going on every day to thousands and millions.
Well, the issue is just that I’m not sure we’re going to get there, the way we’re going about things right now. We’re giving those opposed to progress ammunition, a common cause to rally against, and at the same time, alienate those that could be allies, and weaken ourselves by in-fighting. It may be that your optimism is warranted, but I’m not so far seeing any grounds to think so.
So what do you suggest? What should I be doing differently, or those who think like me?
I don’t pretend to have a ready-made solution, other than what I’ve already posted above. What did you think about that?