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Remember: it never feels like an Outrage Mob when you're a part of it. https://twitter.com/emilyvdw/status/1281153701290274819
This really could be a series. But rather than make a simple point about hypocrisy, let me try something slightly more constructive. https://twitter.com/JeffreyASachs/status/1278481606462889985
As we all know, cancelling (usually bad) is difficult to distinguish from critical speech (frequently good). In fact, it's entirely possible for a person to directly cause a person's cancellation without ever meaning to or aware of what they were doing.
In this sense, cancelling is a lot like heckling. Heckling is protected speech, and rightly so. Heckling is unpredictable, spontaneous, disruptive. At a time when most public speech is tightly choreographed, we arguably need more heckling, not less. https://knightcolumbia.org/content/a-raucous-first-amendment-1
OK, so heckling should be permitted. The heckler's veto should not. The trick is telling where one becomes the other. Sometimes, it's straightforward, like when authorities shut down the event (a true heckler's veto) or the heckling is so loud and sustained that no other...
...interpretation is possible. But these situations are less common than you'd think. Often, what happens is the speaker gives up. Maybe they're embarrassed or feel they've lost the audience. Maybe they're emotionally exhausted. Maybe they're too furious for words.
The point is that whether or when heckling transforms into a heckler's veto depends in large part on the endurance of the speaker. It is trial by ordeal. Qualitatively, the heckler's intent matters only tangentially.
Maybe you can see where I'm going with this.
Maybe you can see where I'm going with this.
Cancellation works in a very similar way. When does loud, persistent criticism become an attempted cancellation? Again, absent intervention by an authority (e.g. when a boss fires an employee), it is very hard to tell and much depends on the response by the person being targeted.
The point is not that cancellation never happens or that there aren't bad people out there trying to shut down debate. Rather, it's that much of the time (most of the time?), the *intent* to cancel is absent. If we only measure these things by their outcome, we miss that.
Was @jessesingal *trying* to cancel VanDerwerff? Was @CathyYoung63 *trying* to cancel the Harvard student? Who knows. What I want is for them to understand -- for ALL signatories to the Harper's letter to understand -- that these things they are so upset about...
...i.e. Outrage Mobs, deplatformings, cancellations, etc., are very often not perceived by their participants as being objectionable at the time. They may not even realize what they are participating in. They may have no ill intent whatsoever!
That may be a little unsettling, but mainly it's meant to be reassuring. There are far fewer supporters of Cancel Culture than there are participants. Even the most vocal critics of Cancel Culture can find themselves, entirely by accident, in charge of an Outrage Mob.
Not Rod Dreher, though. That asshole does it on purpose. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/harpers-letter-progressives-hate-free-speech/
