<
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/03/21/the-culture-of-free-speech-includes-criticism-of-others-speech-get-over-it/>
"Over the last few years we’ve seen this ongoing bizarre infatuation with
“cancel culture” despite little evidence to suggest that it’s a serious issue.
As we wrote nearly two years ago, in response to Harper’s trying to sound some
sort of vague alarm about cancel culture, so much of the debate conflates a
variety of different things. There certainly
are some cases of a mob of
voices misunderstanding or overreacting to something mostly innocuous said or
done by someone, and sometimes that leads to consequences that lots of people
feel are exaggerated or undeserved. But the issue is that a huge percentage of
the people using the term “cancel culture” or arguing that there’s some great
silencing happening are hiding behind those extraordinarily rare examples to
really say that they don’t like being criticized for their opinions.
Indeed, most examples of “cancel culture” don’t actually seem to be “canceling”
anything. They seem to be a combination of counter speech and consequences —
two things that are staples of believing in free speech. It really feels like
many of the people who scream about cancel culture are really trying to silence
their own critics, because they feel their criticism is too harsh, and the
consequences they face too severe. In other words, many of the people screaming
about cancel culture seem mostly focused on suppressing others’ speech — and
frankly, it’s often the speech of those who have traditionally been
marginalized or oppressed, who have had a chance to finally have their voices
heard.
Stepping into this breach last week was the NY Times, with the ridiculously
lazy take on how America has a Free Speech Problem. The analysis breaks no new
ground, has nothing particularly thoughtful to say, and presents ridiculous
false equivalencies from the very start."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
