Cancel Culture, the 1st Amendment, and Censorship
I was listening to 'Boycott Me' by Mischief Brew (below) and it set my mind to wandering. It quickly went from Boycott Me to boycotts and from there to 'cancel culture' and before I knew it I had an idea for a new rant.
Recently (in recent months, not news cycles) the wailing and gnashing of teeth over 'cancel culture' has been a bit hard to miss. It seems every time you turn around someone has climbed on a soapbox and is carrying on about it. I must admit, this usually brings me a bit of amusement and joy.
One can be forgiven for mistaking the apoplectic ranting emanating from the right about 'cancel culture' for a legitimate complaint with some sort of merit. After all, censorship is bad, no? As with much of what comes out of their mouths these days, their shrill tirades bear little resemblance to reality.
All this crying over 'cancel culture' is a calculated attempt to reframe the discussion about 'deplatforming'. Deplatforming is a tactic often utilized by antifascists/antiracists as a means to hit racists/bigots/fascists where it hurts (in the pocketbook), as well as to deny them a platform for spewing their hate.
Two intersecting factors are behind all this. First, here in the US any speech that falls short of the 'fighting words' test is protected from government restriction by the 1sts amendment to the Constitution (more on this in a minute). The second is the paradox of tolerance, which states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant.
The shrieking cries of "free speech!" and "the 1st Amendment!" that punctuate the screeds decrying 'cancel culture' miss (conveniently and intentionally I suspect) an essential point. To wit, the 1st Amendment protects speech from GOVERNMENT interference. "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech." Until the 14th Amendment and incorporation doctrine came along, the Bill of Rights only applied to the federal government. With incorporation doctrine it now applies to state law as well but that is as far as it goes.
Corporations are in no shape, form, or fashion restricted by the 1st Amendment and this is both what deplatforming targets and why. Although I suppose the irony is probably lost on them, it was conservatives that brought about the Citizens United decision which basically declared money to be speech, making 'cancel culture' the very speech that its opponents claim it threatens.
Beyond all that is the blatant hypocrisy of it all. The ones yelling loudest (and their ideological kin) have historically shown no hesitation in cancelling those that they don't agree with. Remember the Hollywood blacklists? Pulling Beatles tunes from the air and burning their records after Lennon's "more popular than Jesus" comment? 'Freedom' fries? The shunning of the Dixie Chicks? I could go on but you get the idea.
The rage and ranting directed at 'cancel culture' boils down to some people getting a taste of their own medicine and not enjoying the flavor much. Bless their little hearts 😎
On a related note, I've seen hive (and it's previous incarnation) promoted as censorship resistant but didn't Justin Sun prove that that only holds true until the censors were willing to spend lots of money?
Thanks for the post on here, though sad to see not a lot of banter in it!
Cancel culture is definitely something that’s tough to deal with. In lots of peoples lives that work in large companies, it’s always something that’s lurking in the back of ones mind, at least for me. I’ve self censored so much recently because I don’t want to fall victim to the stuff. It’s a bit different here with blockchain, once it’s in here, it’s permanent. The big tech companies targeted the loudest voices like Alex Jones first then have progressed down the ranks to much less famous voices left and right. I removed all of the ones that I found to be controversial from things like my YouTube account for the reason of not wanting to be associated with viewing their content. It might be a little extreme but there’s a huge effort to silence dissonance in many ways and it’s growing. Cancel culture and self censorship is another product of it all, I think.
I don’t like anyone that’s not advocating for violence or anything egregious to be cancelled, regardless of their opinion. We need lots of differing voices for people to find their own truths and make their own idea of what’s right and wrong.
Thanks for dropping by! Hopefully it'll pick up soon, especially with the rollercoaster hive is on lately.
I tend to forget how much large companies mess with their employees lives, even outside of work. I used to self censor more, primarily because I wanted to sell photos to everyone and didn't really care about anything besides whether their money was good. Now, particularly after my experiences last year, I have trouble thinking of a reason to bother with censoring myself.
I have reservations of my own with 'cancel culture' (and related things like political correctness), primarily that yelling "Bad!" at people isn't going to accomplish much in terms of changing their viewpoint. Then again, there's plenty of incorrigibles who are never going to change their views/actions no matter how much you engage with them.
What gets me with all the ruckus over cancel culture is that it's nothing new, it's just that the tables have been turned and the ones who have traditionally done the cancelling aren't enjoying being on the receiving end. The 1st amendment has never protected one from being subject to social/economic consequences for saying unpopular and/or reprehensible things, just criminal charges or civil sanctions.
What inspired this rant was the disingenuousness of the arguments against cancel culture. As an anarchist, I've personally witnessed a wide variety of means of communication and getting a message out without utilizing mainstream channels, you can't cancel an idea or message if someone is intent on getting it out. You can make it difficult to profit from it though and I suspect the profit factor is a lot of what is behind the anger directed at cancel culture.
This brings us back to the paradox of tolerance, how do you deal with ones who take advantage of tolerance to advocate for intolerance? Often it is not so cut and dried as 'advocating for violence,' last year I got to face off with hundreds of angry, armed, and armored individuals who were hopped up and egged on by bullshit they'd been peddled. You don't have to call for violence to create a situation conducive to it occurring, how do you deal with that? (That is a serious question, not a rhetorical one)
Ah the result of an extra word changes the message, doesn't it? The message I was trying to convey was supposed to be sans the word "not", tough miss :). The sentence doesn't sound well either way, but I think you might get the point I'm trying to make with it!
Thanks for the engagement! One of the most frustrating things is working for a company and be in a position where I have to be incredibly careful of what I say and do. I'm by no means a controversial person but some of the things I've seen come out as apologies, for things that are unbelievably innocuous, keep me a lot quieter than I was before on things. The position is great and the pay is good but these fine lines I have to walk with just getting my work done and keeping to myself, and self censoring what I say is challenging.
One thing that's really been apparent is people yelling at each other online indeed doesn't change anything with peoples viewpoints. I have learned it first hand before giving that effort up.
I do find it interesting that people get cancelled and are confused at why, when they often scream the loudest for others to get cancelled. It's as you say, they don't like that they are the victim of the things they propose.
A single word can make all the difference sometimes, or even a single letter or bit of punctuation. I do the same thing on a fairly regular basis, I can hardly bring myself to proofread something I just wrote.
During the protests last year I ended up talking to some of the press quite a bit (while standing next to them taking photos, not as part of news coverage) and discovered that they're not allowed to engage in any public political activity (or at least the ones I talked to weren't). Personally, I don't think I could abide by that...or at least have serious doubts that anyone will ever offer me the money that would require.
Yeah, the yelling just makes people dig in deeper. I actually enjoy debating/arguing with people, even so I'm past the point of having much enthusiasm for it anymore. There's better ways to play 'gotcha' games that don't involve so much yelling.
I've spent plenty time on the interwebs being provocative and controversial but the only thing I was confused about when I got banned was as to which thing I said was the final straw.