It’s always easy to point to the extreme examples, but the controversy is about what happens in between. The perception—rightly or wrongly—is that the middle ground is being eroded, in favor of a ‘you’re either with me or against me’-mentality. The tolerance towards disagreement, the ability to live with a spectrum of views is being lost, and replaced by a simplistic sorting into ready-made categories.
The fact that attempts to point this out are immediately met with ‘Oh, so you want for Hitler to scream his views from the rooftops?’ is exactly symptomatic. Every gray area must immediately be cleaned up to black or white, and, to be on the safe side, it’s easier to condemn than to find common ground. Moral ambiguity can’t be tolerated, everything is either good or bad, right or wrong, and if somebody disagrees, they’re wrong—not merely factually wrong, but morally wicked.
I think that’s the main misunderstanding. The letter is aimed at the stifling of differing opinions through ostracism—i. e. only those expressing the right opinions get to speak. Take the recent call on the Linguist Society of America to sever its ties with Stephen Pinker: this isn’t a constructive contribution to debate; no engagement with Pinker’s views, and whether they merit consideration or condemnation, is fostered thereby. It’s simply: we don’t like what Pinker says, so he must be barred from having a forum.
I think that the letter is very explicit in arguing that the desired outcome from sharing an opinion is that opinion being debated, but what happens instead is judgment. Also, I think you’re misjudging the signatories of the letter by painting them as some sort of alt-right reactionaries aiming to stifle progressive voices—but of course, as regards to its content, that’s neither here nor there.
To me, this is a troubling view: it implies that racism is OK as long as society thinks it is (or at least, that societal judgment of racism is what ultimately matters). I don’t believe that’s true; I think that society has objectively bettered itself by moving towards a more accepting place. But I think that, with the recognition that the old categories we used to judge people—race, gender, sexuality—maybe aren’t so great, we’re running a danger of just replacing these categories with new ones—based on agreement with whatever views we hold. In other words, rather than slicing humanity up along lines based on overt characteristics, we’re now slicing it up along party lines, along holding the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ views, whatever they may be.
That’s where this impulse of demanding an organization sever its ties with an individual whose views don’t fit with ours comes from. They’re no longer part of our tribe, so to speak, and thus, should be shunned, cast out.
Again, going right to the extremes is part of the problem. The issue here is that we need to figure out how to handle the middle ground, how to bear disagreements without immediately erecting new border lines.
As for what the remedy could look like, well, the Aztecs had an interesting take on moral philosophy. They likened the aim to lead a moral life to walking on the ‘slippery Earth’: it’s difficult, and occasionally, you fall. Crucially, Aztec ethics were less character-centric, and more social: when somebody slips, others help them up. Slipping, moral failure, then doesn’t entail a direct indictment of another’s character, but rather, an opportunity to reach out and help; walking on the slippery Earth is made easier within a group that mutually supports each other.
What happens these days, or so I understand the point of the letter, is rather the opposite: whoever slips up, isn’t merely not helped, but actively shunned—they’ve become dirty by their fall, and we’re afraid of the dirt rubbing off by association.
So if we see (what we perceive as) moral failure within others, we might treat this less as a failing of character, as an inescapable shadow cast over them, and more like any other error—as something that needs correction, sure, but not condemnation.
There’s a notion I like, of so-called ‘cross-cutting cleavages’. People can be sorted into groups in multiple, orthogonal ways; we’re these days concentrating on which cleavages divide us, but for every two individuals, they’re probably on the same side of lots of divides, as well. Focusing on one as opposed to the other then leads to a society dominated by division—we only see, or only note, what separates us, and fail to take account of what unites us. If we only see the rift between us, we can’t reach out to the other. But if we’re made aware that we’re already on the same side along some other axis, we can reach out to others that are separated from us—can steady them on the slippery Earth, so to speak.
This doesn’t mean we have to give Hitler his space to express his opinions. But the vase majority of people are neither Hitlers nor Gandhis. We all just muddle through in the end, and it’s just not helping anybody to condemn where instead we could’ve connected.