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This is a brilliant, detailed piece by @EmilyYoffe on what "cancel culture," increasingly a misnomer, actually means in practice—self-censorship, safetyism, contamination by association, narrowing of Overton Window
Includes some of my thoughts
[Thread] https://www.persuasion.community/p/a-taxonomy-of-fear
Includes some of my thoughts
[Thread] https://www.persuasion.community/p/a-taxonomy-of-fear
This is very well put. So many of us have felt it, a mixture of not saying what you actually think and then feeling liberated to say what you think—and overstating it more aggressively—because you've been "liberated" by the crowd
I've been trying to explain to my mom what "wokeness" is, with limited success. When you embark on a project like this, the sheer absurdity of it really dawns on you. To a normal person, not initiated in the discourse, it all sounds exactly like you might expect: bizarre
When explaining the new progressive discourse to ordinary people, they're often confused and respond with something like, "wait, Shadi, isn't that racist though?" No, essentializing people based on race or immutable characteristics is also a form of *anti-racism*
The notion that arguments that would have been considered mainstream two years ago are now "violence" is especially pernicious. It twists language and minimizes actual violence. And it closes debate by recasting legitimate difference as something that threatens physical harm
As I tell @EmilyYoffe, the time I've spent with Islamists informs how I view anything related to "cancel culture"
To understand almost anything in politics requires a deep engagement with those who hold opinions that are unsettling, or worse
https://www.persuasion.community/p/a-taxonomy-of-fear
To understand almost anything in politics requires a deep engagement with those who hold opinions that are unsettling, or worse
https://www.persuasion.community/p/a-taxonomy-of-fear
Everyone has red lines. The question is where to draw them. I believe in drawing them as widely as possible. Almost everything should be fair game—the only exceptions being white supremacists and terrorists
The hyper-woke want to narrow the range of discussion to include only about, say, 40% of the American population (perhaps much less). My preference is to expand it to about 98% of the population, since white supremacists are a relatively small group
And all of us who oppose "cancel culture" have to be consistent. If we truly support expanding the Overton Window, it means that otherwise radical ideas should not be canceled just by virtue of their radicalism, including from Marxists, socialists, Catholic integralists, etc.
Too often, cancel culture has limited the range of debate on controversial foreign policy issues like Israel-Palestine, with pro-Palestinian voices and one-state advocates being delegitimized. That has to end, no matter how much you dislike the ideas being advocated
In practice, this means that the vast majority of Trump voters are in the mainstream of American politics, and should not be "canceled" or delegitimized as evil or irredeemable merely by virtue of their choice at the ballot box
The same holds for voters of anti-Muslim far-right parties in Europe. They should be engaged, and that's something I've tried to do as someone who's been a vocal opponent of Islamophobia—talk to them, understand their worldview, and hear what they have to say
