Read on Twitter
This is, as everyone is saying, an exceptional thread and also a beautifully written one.
A few thoughts.
One is that while @Millicentsomer's argument is piercing when it comes to discourse on Twitter, there are other relevant domains where it doesn't apply. 1/9 https://twitter.com/Millicentsomer/status/1281414271692234753
A few thoughts.
One is that while @Millicentsomer's argument is piercing when it comes to discourse on Twitter, there are other relevant domains where it doesn't apply. 1/9 https://twitter.com/Millicentsomer/status/1281414271692234753
The biggest antecedent to today's debates took place largely on and around academia and the art world. There, bad faith as "the condition of the modern internet" wouldn't explain the ideological contours of the complex debate about free expression vs inclusiveness. 2/9
Wesleyan students trying to defund a newspaper for publishing a column critical of BLM https://bit.ly/2OfpuZI or calls at Yale for an administrator to resign for saying students, not administrators, should regulate costumes https://bit.ly/3iStjSE were not fueled by trolling.3/9
Those were actual ideological positions that, for better or worse, explicitly posited the idea that firings and leaning on administrative apparatuses to regulate expression were worthwhile. It wasn't a dismissal based on savvy about an adversary or proxy war over subtext. 4/9
And today, speaking for myself, I'm not concerned about social media dog-piling, but I *am* concerned about campaigns to fire perceived ideological challengers as an activist tactic and an ideologically grounded maneuver (e.g. the Shor firing for citing academic scholarship). 5/9
These are realms in which I'm not convinced that Loofbourow's sharp analysis shows us the path forward -- because they aren't examples of pure proxy wars where people are refusing to engage trolls or trying to get to the heart of the matter through dismissal. 6/9
As always, I basically think we need to be maddeningly precise about the examples and contexts we're talking about — something Loofbourow does well by focusing on intra-social media discourse. But there are other vectors here that pre-date or exist outside social media. 7/9
Lastly — and I'm not suggesting @Millicentsomer disagrees with this — I do think it is the job of professional intellectuals to persist in the the thankless, quixotic work of explaining _why_ some claims of free speech are bullshit when they are. 8/9
This is something she does very well in her thread.
And I'd say, for example, that @EricLevitz does it effectively in his critique of the Persuasion Project. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/persuasion-yascha-mounk-cancel-culture.html
9/9
And I'd say, for example, that @EricLevitz does it effectively in his critique of the Persuasion Project. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/persuasion-yascha-mounk-cancel-culture.html
9/9
