Read on Twitter
Here is the most challenging pro-cancel culture argument out there (I'll tag in a later tweet). It's missing two things. In many cases, we would say that successful attempts to call certain speech - communist, atheist, etc. - harmful, and sanction speakers for it, are illiberal.
This argument suggests that liberalism allows any kind of public renegotiation of what speech can lose you your job and social status. But it doesn't. A society in which no Green Party voter could have a job or a friend would be an illiberal one. This just seems obviously true.
Second, these writers suggest that cancel culture involves "determining appropriate responses". But I have never seen any discussion of which responses are appropriate to which transgressions of these sorts of social norms. They are just called "consequences" or "accountability".
The question of whether it might be disproportionate for a bad joke told by a nobody to lead to thousands of people condemning them and years of hardship looking for a new career and a new social circle has, as far as I can tell, never been addressed by cancel culture supporters.
I think this is the burden that cancel culture defenders should take on. Which "canceled" person really deserved their fate, as a matter of fairness? Who really had it coming? Toss away the abstract language of "responses" and "consequences". Which cancellations were *justice*?
Thanks to @rinireg, and later @NGrossman81 and @zackbeauchamp, for putting this argument in its clearest and best forms.
Also thank you to @SpencerJayCase for a great conversation about these issues: https://www.buzzsprout.com/956725/4620788
And thanks to @heideggrrrl for this terrific and super-relevant thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/heideggrrrl/status/1282864014436044800
And thanks to @heideggrrrl for this terrific and super-relevant thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/heideggrrrl/status/1282864014436044800
