Aren't you worried that by applying political labels like 'left' (or equally often seen in the US context: 'liberal') for something that does not really represent that political ideology, you are at risk of further polarizing such debates?
This specific instance seems like an overreaction of some in both corporate and social media culture. One poster already pointed out that this is likely more about corporate fear of getting targetted by a vocal but ultimately small 'woke' crowd (there, another label, but at least a bit more specific than just generally someone who wishes to achieve basic goals like welfare, equality, and regulation of private industry). It does have all the looks of virtue signalling without any real justification.
In debates like this sometimes a small number of loud, well-meaning but naive people get much more influence than they should for fear of the other being painted the bad guy, while a significant number of people who are actually affected by the underlying issues don't get heard at all.
> Aren't you worried that by applying political labels like 'left' (or equally often seen in the US context: 'liberal') for something that does not really represent that political ideology
I don't have the experience of any other group doing this. I agree that it is not inherently a political ideology.
The people involved proudly proclaim to be left and liberal. I think it is important to say that because I know people in other parts of the country that see these as insults and would be surprised to know that people commonly self-identify as these terms.
I find that this group thinks their behavior is better and more helpful than apathy, "silence", and the idea of rampant exclusionary hate from the right. When its really not better, its different, but its not more helpful. There is absolutely a constant threat from people afraid of bird watchers in a park, people that blend into their ranks and are willing to weaponize their understanding of race, two seconds after donating to the Democratic Party.
>The people involved proudly proclaim to be left and liberal.
I don't think Microsoft do claim that, nor is that really why they did this.
Microsoft is a profit seeking entity that is trying to maximize its profit and goodwill (an intangible asset) at the same time.
Thus for them the best moves are those which:
* Have minimal cost.
* Distract people away from profitable dirty laundry which doesn't attract goodwill (e.g. concentration camp contracts).
* Buy them some goodwill among some people - especially through the mechanism of "outrage marketing" (people who by dint of attacking "the right" when they attack this will naturally defend Microsoft - a bit like how Nike used colin Kaepernick).
They did this because "change master to main" appeared in a local maxima that maximized these three conditions.
This is being reflected all around the corporate sphere because what applies to Microsoft applies to a lot of other companies.
Yeah, that definitely seems to be a big part of it. And I don’t understand. Okay so your company is the target of some activists on Twitter for a few days. End of the world? Maybe I just can’t understand what it’s like to lead a big company.
Just abut the only company to handle one of these situations in a way that seems rational to me is Trader Joe’s. Some people on Twitter decided that having a burrito labeled “Trader Jose” was a horrendous form of cultural appropriation and demanded the company change all products with this kind of word play in branding. TJ’s considered it and just basically said “no, move along” and the whole woke twitterverse moved on to some other target.
Agree completely. But you have to understand the mindset of everyone involved.
The marketing/PR people in any organisation care passionately about what other people think of the organisation - naturally, because it's their job to care about this.
Journalists are insanely influenced by what other people are saying and love nothing better than a nice piece of juicy controversy to get those ads clicked.
Stock markets are notoriously twitchy about rumours and "public perception".
Most corporate CEO's got to that position by climbing a greasy pole where what other people think of you is literally the most important factor in your climb.
So almost everybody involved in making these kinds of decision are exactly the people most vulnerable to being bullied like this.
But if you can resist - there's only a few thousand Twitterati who will bother even trying to enforce any kind of boycott, and they're probably not your customers in the first place. It's completely ineffectual if you can just ignore it.
Yes great points. Another factor that I hadn't considered until recently (can't remember who pointed this out) is that most C-suite employees / executive editors at media co's / deans at universities are probably in their 50's and are in what is arguably the most financially critical parts of their life ... as in, they have a big mortgage (or two), need to be contributing significantly to their retirement, are likely staring at at least a few VERY expensive college tuitions, etc. They're levered up both literally and figuratively. The cost of losing a job in this situation is a serious threat that likely has many taking what they feel is the safest path to keeping their job, and many times that is whatever that really loud crowd is demanding.
True. Also, office politics means that senior management at large organisations tend to be very risk-averse (the old "try not to be in the room when a decision is made" trope).
Telling the geeks in the IT basement to change the name of the "master branch" on that "git" thing that the organisation apparently uses, so that thousands of angry people (some of them journalists at large media organisations) aren't shouting at you on Twitter seems like such an easy choice to make ;)
I think when individuals or even companies roll over, it's because the mob's attack can be quite scary. It's easy to point at the people who stay their ground and say, "see, they didn't cave and did just fine."
But that's an obervation we make in hindsight, and without knowing it was like for the targets. At the time, their phone is probably ringing off the hook, media are calling, etc., and they have no idea when the attack will end or if people are getting fired, advertisers withdrawing or any of that.
I'll applaud anyone, left, right or other-vectored, who stands up to mobs, though. I'm not a fan of the phrase "cancel culture," but it gets one thing right: it is a cultural development, both the culture of outrage and the culture of appeasing the mob. The injustice of a, outraged mob declaring itself judge, jury and executioner only works if targets try to appease them. So while the culture of outrage is a hard problem because it's diffuse, anyone who refuses to accept that injustice is has an outsized effect in pushing back against the appeasement side of it.
I've been on the sharp end of a minor version of this, and you're right, it's scary. I only coped by not paying attention to it all and buckling down to deal with the things that matter. And alcohol, which helped, though it cost me in other ways.
a) modern corporate culture trying to make employees take on the company they work for as part of their personal identity
b) young, liberal people working in PR departments who would be horrified if anyone personally called them racist / sexist / homophobic etc
These people go to work, see some random account on twitter saying "<your company> is racist" and a) and b) combined makes this feel like a personal attack on them that they have to defend and social signal against.
This is the most likely explanation I have come up with, because as you said, none of this really makes sense from a logical business perspective.
The problem lies not in that you are wrong in concluding that these people are adherents of leftists ideologies (most are), but that you are falling for the pars pro toto fallacy: people who think that 'master' is an offensive word to use in a source code repository are 'left/liberal', thus all or most of 'the left/liberals' are such people.
You are saying 'this group thinks' as if all people who would identify as adhering to leftist ideologies (from the extremes to common social democracy) act like this. You are trying to stuff people into boxes: you are either team A or team B. That is polarization; something we can sorely do without.
Again, availability bias. The people screaming the loudest about this are also screaming the loudest about other Left/Liberal issues. The normal left-leaning folks don't get heard. It's pretty natural to conclude that this group represents the whole.
I'm also convinced that the screamers aren't really interested in stopping black people from being offended (let alone actually harassed/murdered). I think they're much more interested in getting recognition for fighting the fight.
I think you're right. I'm an independent and I'm guilty of doing this to right and left leaning folk, but I've done it because I believe that the people screaming will only listen to people within their ideological interests. It was my way of making them accountable for their compatriots that are loud enough for me to notice. I've also stopped doing this because it's not really effective. People don't feel like they should be responsible for outliers and I somewhat agree, but don't know how to solve the problem of vocal trouble makers.
The problem lies that there is not enough (any?) push back from this kind of garbage (and specifically in this case) from the 'left/liberals'.
There needs to be push-back if they [those left/liberals not in this camp] want to disassociate. But where is it? I don't think there is appetite for this argument.
I know many of left/liberal-types (in the Bay Area) all who either believe, or accept this as silly but somehow think it is meaningful to some people and so should be gone along with...
This goes way beyond just trying to get ahead of a potential PR disaster. I can think of nobody out there in non-nerd world that would've raised a stink about the word "master" being used in some programming context, just like they haven't raised a stink about the term MC. This is ultra-woke privileged white tech lefties who truly do feel like their fighting for social justice by doing this kind of thing.
> Aren't you worried that by applying political labels like 'left' (or equally often seen in the US context: 'liberal') for something that does not really represent that political ideology, you are at risk of further polarizing such debates?
> It does have all the looks of virtue signalling without any real justification.
If you combine both the statements, you are committing a no true Scotsman fallacy.
I don’t think so. It’s not that no true Scotsmen are idiots, it’s just that the idiots are not representative. Maybe 10% of Scotsmen are idiots. The other 90% are fine.
This is a soft form of the same argument. Whatever may be the proportion of those people, the community still has to own up to it if this portion exists.
When it comes to political ideology invoking a no true Scotsman is not always invalid.
As an example, as a leftist I can say: “A socialist revolution without social justice is not socialist”. Yes, this is a no true Scotsman fallacy, but here I am merely disavowing a subgroup of people that might share my economic believes that workers ought to take over the means of production, but fail to see that the racial injustice in our economic system is part of the problem. In my view, if you don’t see that, you are not a real leftist.
> Aren't you worried that by applying political labels like 'left' (or equally often seen in the US context: 'liberal') for something that does not really represent that political ideology, you are at risk of further polarizing such debates?
That's missing polsci 101, left/right exist, that's why they have names, not the opposite.
Do you know a lot of "woke" people who aren't otherwise on the left? I don't.
Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd? I know very few. Almost all of them who speak on the topic, speak in unequivocal support of "woke" ideas and talking points.
If "the left" doesn't want to be equated with the woke culture, they should publicly and consistently disown it. You know, in the same manner as they demand that conservatives disown Trump and his crowd to not be counted as racists.
It's in everyone's power to start extinguishing the extremes. Until then, I'll take silence on your nearest extreme as your tacit approval of it.
> Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd?
Certainly. The majority really. That's in the Netherlands, but compared to the vocal internet crowd most people I know who vote on parties left of the political compass worry about climate, animal and human welfare, and inequality. Rarely will someone go all 'woke' and demand changes like this.
Haha, GP specifically assumed US in the first line of his comment and then got responses from the Netherlands and twice from UK. Yeah, it's largely an American phenomenon so far but I wouldn't be too happy about it because American culture exports these things all over the world and Hollywood is among the most woke.
While you're protesting this notion on HN, plenty of your countrymen are learning English from some of the wokest trash on Netflix.
Ha I saw that too. But there’s nothing European HN users love more than commenting with their super well-informed takes about the US, so it should have been expected.
Yeah, the US is such an exceptional country that you can only have opinions about it when you're actually American - I hope you do see that this view is rather short sighted? Especially given that the US itself has no qualms with interfering in foreign politics all over the world.
The reason we chafe at this is because those opinions usually distill and treat us as a singular group. Like one of us saying “the British believe,” for example, prefaced behind something the Welsh and English disagree on.
Not your fault, though. Our internal borders are meaningful. We lie to ourselves that they aren’t, and the rest of the world goes with that. Minnesota, Michigan, and Mississippi may as well be different countries for all they have in common.
It’s ironic that you did exactly what I mentioned is the problem while responding to a comment where I pointed out I’m aware of, and sensitive to, subtle cultural differences within Britain. I’m at least n=1 for giving a nuanced shit about people outside our borders, but that didn’t fit your reductionist narrative. I get it, but I don’t respect it.
Perhaps they chipped in because GPs phrase "Assuming the US" is not a very clear way of saying they want to talk specifically and exclusively about the US, or they thought it fair to broaden the discussion?
I don't see how your sweeping generalisation in the last paragraph adds to the considered discussion here either.
> Do you know a lot of "woke" people who aren't otherwise on the left? I don't.
I'm in the UK so maybe it is different, but lately "woke" is anyone that is seen as an enemy of the far right. Including those who are on the right of the spectrum, but just not as far as those throwing the "woke" label around.
I'm in the UK so maybe it is different, but lately "woke" is anyone that is seen as an enemy of the far right.
I am also in the UK and there is lots of hand-wringing about "the extreme far right" but if you gently probe what people mean by "extreme far right" they mean "Brexit" or "not electing Jeremy Corbyn".
I expect in a few months the term "ultra extreme far right" will enter the lexicon, and we'll keep adding superlatives as the term "right-wing" becomes more and more diluted and gradually encloses the entire population except for a few Momentum die-hards.
I've certainly seen many outside the Momentum bubble being labelled 'Tory' (e.g. Lib Dems as 'yellow Tories', Blair/Starmer as 'red Tories', etc.), but you're speaking pure hyperbole.
"Extreme far right" is reserved for the likes of NationalFront/BNP/UKIP/BritainFirst/BrexitParty/Reform/whatever they're calling themselves these days (plus their goons like EDL, DFLA, People's Front of Judea, Judean People's Front, etc.)
It saddens me to see this sort of word-muddying (especially on HN), since it makes it easier to deflect this sort of crap:
Yes, for a few years the Brexit Party was the I'mNotRacistBut Party. It looks like they've now been rumbled (hence becoming unelectable), so they're rebranding as Reform, which might last for another few years.
The previous I'mNotRacistBut Party was UKIP (featuring Stephen Yaxley-Lennon as advisor for racially-charged issues, and denounced as racist 24 years ago by its own founder)
Before that the BNP was scoring a few percent in general elections.
And around and around it goes, all the way back to Mosley's blackshirts.
Nigel Farage left UKIP for that very reason. The Brexit party is fairly moderate and would be described as center-right, just shy of the conservatives.
The Brexit Party was just a face-saving rebrand for UKIP. It didn't take long for the mask to start slipping, with the party's founder resigning after retweeting racist posts from far-right figures.
Of course, Farage himself may denounce such things:
> I set the party up, she was the administrator that got it set up.
Friendly reminder that it's very easy, and very common, for racists to disavow their racism when it's expedient to do so (e.g. an extreme example https://youtu.be/zcoYKuoiUrY?t=1568 )
>I am also in the UK and there is lots of hand-wringing about "the extreme far right" but if you gently probe what people mean by "extreme far right" they mean "Brexit" or "not electing Jeremy Corbyn".
Yeah, the funny thing about the UK is hearing from a country where the center-left party bombed an election precisely because it couldn't throw away its woke wing on two big "woke" issues (Brexit and antisemitism), and hearing that "anyone who's not far-right is woke". Well no. Keir Starmer won his place as head of Labour precisely by his willingness to reject further coalition with the "wokes", when Corbyn had been unwilling to really oppose them at all.
It feels odd to portray the 2019 election as lost on "wokeism", or that Corbyn let that policy take over. By the end, Corbyn was the target of that crowd, being branded as an anti-semite for what amounts to "being too critical of Israel", and "being leader while being seen as too soft on others accused of anti-semitism".
Aside from that, the 2019 election was really a Brexit election. Labour failed to pick a side, and the Conservatives were promising to get Brexit done and were early enough in the negotiations that they could promise it would be a soft brexit or maximum brexit depending on which crowd they thought would hear their comments.
Totally agree. Everyone who's not far right is woke and everyone who isn't far left is racist, if you listen to Twitter etc. That's intentional, gotta make moderates afraid to speak up, leaving the discussion to extremists, bot farms and professional opinion havers.
But I was talking about a more agreeable definition of "woke". Many people on the left are very comfortable with this subculture, just like many people on the right are very comfortable with Trump. I very rarely hear people on the left saying anything against the woke culture, so in my mind it's very reasonable to equate or at least strongly affiliate the two.
Many people are not ok with either. We just left social media a decade ago but still somehow have to put up with its bullshit leaking out all over the internet.
What is "far right"? Is there "near right"? "middle-reach right"? 'Far right' is just a BS title used to 'adjust' the perception of people that anyone not left wing is crazy extremist nutjob.
> Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd? I know very few. Almost all of them who speak on the topic, speak in unequivocal support of "woke" ideas and talking points.
This article we are commenting on is an example of this.
>" Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd?"
Bill Maher is a fairly prominent liberal who has been vehemently anti-woke. This is regular fodder on his Friday night HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher as well in his regular standup comedy.
The question wasn't "Do you know any people on the left who aren't woke?" The question was "Do you know of anyone NOT on the left who is woke?" I.e., wokeness is a problem of the left.
Well everything in the US currently is extremely polarized. Very few people on either side are going to criticize groups on their side, as they are spending all their energy fighting the other side.
> Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd?
There's a lot of them. But do you really expect them to do it all the time? Disavow every single misinformed but loud person? (Why don't you actively speak against Ted Bundy - are you supporting serial killers?)
For example I can argue with my mom who says she's a feminist because women are better than men. Or I can spend that time preparing a lesson for the local programming club for kids. Why would I choose the first option? Who would benefit?
Disavowing Trump is massively different - a single, elected person with power. Taking that position and bringing it to their local representatives would be worth the effort.
What is this "the left"? Bernie Sanders, by far the most left leaning of the democratic presidential candidates was hugely against the narrative that Trump voters were racists.
Noam Chomsky has an extremely long track record of being extremely consistent in his support of free speech and open debate in a way that the most obsessive first amendment types would rarely stick to.
Amongst the more left leaning people I know there was a hugely negative attitude towards the CNN/MSNBC style coverage of the past 4 years that fixated on Trump and conspiracy theories and gotcha stories.
Every side is gonna be smeared, it's much more important to look at what they're actually trying to offer people. And offering nothing but vague platitudes tends to be worse than offering lies, as Hillary's pretty vapid 2016 campaign showed. This move by github seemed to bring more attention to them working with ICE and the like than anything else that I could see.
$15 min wage was super popular in Florida, Trump won Florida by a significant margin. Had the dems actually offered this obviously popular thing and stood by it that state could've turned out very differently as it'd force Trump to take a side on something that mattered to people.
Even this article that we are commenting on seems to me to be a _leftist_ critique of liberal/moderate virtual signalling, and is calling for them to actually do things that matter for anti-racism.
>Do you know a lot of "woke" people who aren't otherwise on the left?
The best I've seen is sentiments along the lines of "yeah that's overkill" which is about equivalent to what fiscal conservatives and libertarians were saying about the moralizing christian right back when those clowns ran the show.
People don't generally speak out against people who make their positions look like a reasonable middle ground. Woke crap makes basically every mainstream left position look reasonable by comparison so of course they don't want it to die. It makes them look good.
The way to improve things is to speak "truth to power", and the moral way to do it is to always "punch upwards".
I've been riling against Trump, Bannon & Co for the past 4 years. Before that I've been vocal about Obama's reign of terror, his broken promises of closing gitmo, and his drone wars. No doubt in my next 4 years I'll be hurling insults against Biden.
There is no need to add disclaimers or enumerating all things that a comment doesn't stand for. Doing so not only makes for "boring reading" but also looks like the person feels very insecure.
>Do you know a lot of "woke" people who aren't otherwise on the left?
Yes. The majority of them are performative liberals.
>Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against the "woke" crowd?
Yes. There is infighting to an extent but it's really not hard to find leftist critiques of what you call woke culture.
>If "the left" doesn't want to be equated with the woke culture, they should publicly and consistently disown it.
I highly doubt bad faith actors would care about what people on the left are doing. Sure hasn't stopped you from mischaracterizing them all this while.
>You know, in the same manner as they demand that conservatives disown Trump and his crowd.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding as to who "the left" are. The majority of actual (not what passes for American left) leftists will agree that disowning "Trump and his crowd" is the same kind of performative wokeness that you accuse liberals of. Disowning and denouncing for appearances does nothing because it doesn't tackle the root cause that allowed a movement like Trump's or the larger right to come to power.
I didn't mean "disowning" as performative act but as an honest expression of preferences, including in-person and online discussions and voting choices.
The general population publicly expressing their honest moderate views and opposing the extremes is not "for appearances". It's the core of what's missing in today's public debate, dominated by far left/right activists, bot farms, and personalities/celebs.
My point is, the (American) left is justly associated with wokeness because they are its primary visible supporters. Maybe it's because those on the left who don't support it just don't speak up, in which case, my message is: please do. I'm not just going to assume your existence.
Associating the Democrat with "wokeness" is the same as assiociating Republicans with trump supporters and "Storm the Capitol" crowd.
It's an easy way to discredit your political opponent.
Also, i am sightly offended when people call the Democrats "left". I've talked to a real "leftist" (and by that i mean, sightly left on european political board), he felt forced to join the democrat to have a shot at a representative position, and some support for his flyers, but he agreed with my broth: the democrat would be barely center in europe.
And honestly, the far right and the conventionnal right have only themselves to blame for the right of the woke/cancel culture. They are the one who started to open up the overton window, they can't start crying when their politicals opponent do the same.
There are "left" parties in the US too, like Gloria La Riva's PSL.
The Democrats push for what can at best be termed social democracy, even though real social democracies in Europe would still be to their left after they fulfilled most of their campaign promises. Left right and centre are kind of reductive categorizations but social democracy is left of centre.
>as an honest expression of preferences, including in-person and online discussions and voting choices.
As I mentioned, I've seen plenty of this, but with filter bubbles being what they are, it's hard to fault someone for not coming across them enough.
What I'm saying is that it's not that they (we?) don't exist, more like you don't come across us because of xyz reasons that are getting harder and harder to pinpoint as discourse is manipulated each passing day.
I also broadly agree that nuance is missing in the "modern debate", which causes bad faith interpretations like everyone on the left being either "woke police out to cancel everything you love" or "stalinists looking to establish USSRv2" and everyone in the right being "uneducated white people who don't know what's best for them" or outright Nazis. I wanted to push back against this kind of monolithic interpretation, hence my previous comment.
> ... but as an honest expression of preferences, including in-person and online discussions and voting choices.
Isn't that really dangerous though?
eg if you're unlucky enough to become targeted by some of the more "out there" people, they can do career-and-effectively-life ending things by blowing it out of proportion, getting it in the media, etc.
Cultural left, ie, "woke" and economic left are two very, very different things. Americans have this wonderful way of completely slaughtering their political terms.
Slavery as class struggle seems a popular method of argumentation, but it's hard to pin down that logic when any discussion of it generates anger instead of explanation.
I believe the main point of the person you're replying to is that it's a relatively small, vocal minority of people on Twitter who care about this stuff, and the media snowballs it into a big ugly controversy for clicks. As far as I know, this is true also of the following examples of "the right" "cancelling" stuff:
* Colin Kaepernick and kneelgate
* calls to boycott Starbucks for celebrating an inclusive holiday season, rather than Christmas in particular
* republican voters "cancelling" Mitt Romney and other republicans for being vocally anti-Trump, even though their political principles have not changed
I can think of at least one more serious example that goes beyond just a vocal minority: The long, ongoing fight to teach children about LGBTQ issues in public schools. Teachers can be fired for simply revealing to their students that they have a same-sex partner.
Not long ago, too, was it career-ending for a Hollywood actor to come out publicly as LGBTQ. Ellen comes to mind as an example.
People on the right don't have the power to really cancel anything anymore. Some on the right may attempt to cancel stuff, but it is mostly not effective.
>Colin Kaepernick and kneelgate
Kaepernick wasn't canceled by the right. He just wasn't the best player out there and didn't get onto another team. He now is making millions from Nike and other deals all without playing the game. If this is what be canceled is like I would gladly sign up.
>calls to boycott Starbucks for celebrating an inclusive holiday season, rather than Christmas in particular
There was an attempt but nothing happened. As far as I know Starbucks' revenue didn't even drop (but I haven't really looked into it). Again a complete failure of a cancellation.
>republican voters "cancelling" Mitt Romney and other republicans for being vocally anti-Trump, even though their political principles have not changed
Romney still has his senate seat and is still on all of the committees he was original on. There is no cancelling here, unless you mean voting out a politician is canceling.
>The long, ongoing fight to teach children about LGBTQ issues in public schools.
This is a bit more complicated. Some people believe it is more than just an objective teaching that LGBTQ people exist and you should treat them as any other person but more of encouraging people to engaging in such behavior. Some people also accuse the schools of focusing on random LGBTQ people or assuming people's sexuality when they weren't married in history class instead of focusing on more important people or just the facts. I don't think I was in school when this was going on so I can't really comment on what it is like.
> Teachers can be fired for simply revealing to their students that they have a same-sex partner.
I have only seen this in private religious schools. In theses cases the teacher agreed to publicly follow the church's teachings and they failed to follow their employment contract. You shouldn't work for a church if you disagree with the church's teachings.
>Ellen comes to mind as an example.
Are you saying Ellen was canceled for being LGBTQ? I am pretty sure she is being attack for being abusive to people who work / worked for her.
They successfully got the NFL to ban kneeling, you might remember someone saying "Get that son of a bitch off the field".
Liz Cheney, Murkowski, Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy have successfully been censured by the GOP, and motions are in progress against the rest that defected from the Trump cult.
The NFL would have almost certainly done it themself since the NFL was losing viewers massively. Just not watching a show is not canceling in my view. If that is the case then almost everybody is canceling almost everything else.
>you might remember someone saying "Get that son of a bitch off the field".
Last I checked Trump can't cancel any NFL player.
>Liz Cheney, Murkowski, Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy have successfully been censured by the GOP
I agree these are [partial] cancellations, but members of the GOP being censured by the GOP is not really the same as organization you did not choose to be a part of cancelling you.
Am I? I personally haven't met a single left-leaning adult who doesn't think Twitter's "cancel culture" has gotten out of hand. However, I've never lived in the bay area, where I understand things may be different.
Can you say anything to demonstrate to me that it really is more than just a vocal minority of people?
Perhaps we have different definitions of "cancel culture"? I don't consider the fall of e.g. Louis C.K. to be an example of cancel culture, but rather a clear-cut case of someone in a position of authority abusing their power, and rightfully losing public support for it. I do think the master vs main issue is silly, though. I'm not sure where you draw draw the line between "cancel culture" and "social consequences for toxic / abusive behavior in public".
People on the right participate in cancel culture all the time. It is truly deafening to hear them complain about things they do from their pulpits at FOX, Congress, and Senate.
Anyone who watched TV in the late 90s and early 2000s should be very familiar with how right-wing[0] cancel culture works thanks to organizations like the AFA.
“cancel culture” isn't an actual thing, it's just the new term the Right has come up with for replace “political correctness” to make, almost word for word, the exact same complaints they've been making since the 1980s about the left doing...exactly the same thing the right has always done as much as it can get away with to everyone who publicly disagrees with them.
edit: I've re-read your comment, and I'm no longer sure which "side" of this you fall on, I think my point stands alone anyway, so I'll leave it:
You've not met me, but I'm a left-leaning individual who thinks the drama about "cancel culture" is mostly invented.
There's lots of people doing crappy thing on the internet generally and on twitter in particular.
In a world where you can get anonymous death threats for pretty much any reason, I've not seen any evidence that "the left" or "cancel culture" is an actual problem in this regard beyond the baseline of people being nasty when anonymous.
I have seen people, often on both sides of the same issue, point to unpleasant people on the other side and make some kind of argument that "those people" are all crazy. Some of the individual stories are horrifying but I've never found any of them convincing at the level of settling the argument (whichever argument it is invoke in). It's just used as a way to circle the wagons against the other side.
Indeed. My point is that "cancel culture" is a problem on Twitter, since Twitter intentionally amplifies the voices of the people who participate. So, "cancel culture" on Twitter is not representative of how real people on "the left" (or "the right") feel about current events.
For instance the vast majority of working professionals I know don't get themselves regularly involved in political arguments on Twitter, since they see it as unproductive.
So it is simultaneously true that:
* cancel culture is "a thing" on Twitter, in the sense that it's easy to find examples
* cancel culture "doesn't exist", in the sense that no one you are likely to encounter in real life is ok with cancelling people for tweets they made as a teenager
The argument "I haven't met a single..." is equally as strong as an unqualified "You are misinformed.", which I was responding to. Note that I asked for clarification :)
Since I have you here, would you mind elaborating a bit more about your stance on "cancel culture"? I'll also elaborate a bit more on my stance.
I think most people would agree that mobs by definition have no united agenda. It's a bunch of disorganized people with their own goals and motivations who all briefly get fired up about the same topic. Twitter mobs are a tornado of confirmation bias, where people in echo chambers spin up hot takes of current events to confirm their own worldview. The amount of meaningful debate that can be had in 280-character chunks is negligible.
When people talk about "cancel culture", my impression is not that they think there is any sort of coordinated attack on right-leaning figures by prominent left-leaning figures -- only fringe conspiracy theorists believe that George Soros is sending out weekly lists of names that should be "cancelled" this week.
It's that they believe Twitter is a place which has developed a culture of criticizing and ridiculing other users, public figures especially. I think it's undeniable that any time a public figure missteps, a vocal minority of people (e.g. angsty teenagers) on Twitter calls for the person to be fired or otherwise deplatformed, even before they have a chance to respond. Some people also receive death threats.
So, I don't think it's unreasonable to label that sort of behavior as "cancel culture". To me, it clearly exists, but there is room for debate about how prevalent it is, as well as how good vs bad it is.
I think we agree that "cancel culture" is not as prevalent as Fox / MSNBC would have their viewers believe. Twitter magnifies the opinions of their angry users to drive engagement, and then news organizations pick it up to serve one political narrative or the other.
Personally, I have seen many positive examples of public figures being called out for toxic or abusive behavior, and I'm all in favor. Louis CK was "cancelled" for extremely-scummy-but-not-necessarily-illegal behavior. Heck, #metoo is all about cancelling rapists, and that's a good thing! I also think that the JK Rowling controversy was for good cause, and led to both productive [1,2] and unproductive public discussion.
However, to me, the whole master vs main debate is silly. I don't see it as a driver of positive change.
My stance is: "Cancle culture" does not exist. The behaviour you describe existed before and there is no new development, that indicates the need of a new word. Death threats are not okay and that's totally independent of them being within or outside of something you call "cancel culture". And criticism doesn't get more or less reasonable if it is framed with "cancel culture".
I'm from germany. Here the phrase had a short burst of infamy as a comedian ("Dieter Nuhr") claimed people want to "cancel" him. By now the word is rarely used. And the discussion is better for it.
The only successful "cancelling" I witnessed was a left leaning twitter account, that was about fascism in austria. The woman behind it got death threats against her children and deleted the account. I think the use of the phrase "cancel culture" in this case is playing down the problem.
And if public figures try to silence criticism by the use of the phrase, than it's playing up the problem.
When and where - if ever - "cancel culture" is a useful term I don't know.
It is interesting you call it the "master vs main" debate. The problem is the combination of the words master and slave. You - maybe unconsciously - left the word slave out.
And there is not really a debate. I do not believe anybody was bullied to change that. It was a decision that was made independently. And now in the aftermath people shout about it as if it is utterly impossible that this could have happened without some mobbing or a big "culture" that made this a unjust decision. Because: "I know not a single adult that like that change." Well, maybe the majority likes it. The majority just does not participate in online discussions, so it's invisible. Hard to tell.
Yes, large portions of the company I work for fall into this category. 4 out of 7 in our team fit the description.
> I don't consider the fall of e.g. Louis C.K. to be an example of cancel culture, but rather a clear-cut case of someone in a position of authority abusing their power, and rightfully losing public support for it.
That is cancel culture.. its just not an example of cancel culture run amuck which is what the problem has always been, not cancel culture itself which is widely accepted by most people for the most egregious behaviors.
Voters don't cancel their representative, they select the one they think will represent their wishes. Even removing someone from the office when the voters believe they no longer represent their interests is not cancellation, it is how democracy works. You don't cancel your lawyer if he misrepresent you, you fire him.
The exact same thing can be said about what people refer to as "cancelling". It's not whether they're banned from Twitter, losing their contract or are voted out of office that constitutes the cancelling, but why they were.
Mitt Romney was not attacked for not representing conservative/republican values, but for going against a mob/cult (of personality). That is as "cancelling" as it gets, regardless if it leads to him being voted out in Utah or not.
Criticizing a politician for not representing the values people believe he holds is not canceling. If that is the case 3/4 of congress has been canceled.
Romney is persona non grata in the national GOP now, which is exactly what being cancelled is: to be ostracized. His values haven't moved anywhere from eight years ago when he was good enough to be president, so something else must have changed.
He is not ostracized in the way I would consider it. As far as I know Republicans still work with him, are willing to let him sponsor bills, etc. My understanding is he is still invited to Republican lunches as well.
I think we are working with two different understandings of cancellation. He will almost certainly lose his next election though.
>he was good enough to be president
Well not good enough since he lost to Obama. Just because you win a primary doesn't mean the majority actually supports you.
>so something else must have changed.
I think people forgot what his views were. People have nostalgia and remembered they thought he was better than Obama which turned him into a more mainstream conservative in their mind. I think there are other things at play like Romney being a Morman and also having name recognition.
To clarify, I think you're right, and that all the disagreement about cancel culture really boils down to semantic arguments about what the word "cancel" means and whether it is subjectively fair or unfair in a given situation. I would argue that voting someone out of office is a democratic way of literally cancelling them.
I think that the most widely accepted definition of "cancelling culture" is suppressing someone that has opinions different than yours. For example you can cancel a comic that has different political views. Opposing to that, when you have someone representing you, either a voted politician or hired attorney, it is not cancel culture if you disagree and want to be represented by someone else.
What if a comedian loses his audience because views of his come to light that his audience doesn't support? It's no longer profitable for him to go on tour, or for studios to offer him roles on tv, etc.. Is that cancel culture or not? I'd argue that it's cancelling, but not the "bad" kind.
If you say it's not cancel culture when a majority of people change their mind about someone, then you're saying that almost by definition cancelling is when a small minority of people have the power to deplatform someone who missteps. So, it's not accurate to say that "the left is ok with cancel culture" (for instance) since only a small group of people are going it who are not representative of the larger population.
Ask the same question: what if people don't like the local restaurant food (new chef puts too much salt) and they lost the patrons? Is that cancel culture? No. Cancel culture is when you want to close the restaurant for everyone when the owner's daughter refused to date you versus not eating there because you don't like the food, but you don't interfere with others eating there because they like the food. It's "I don't buy" vs "close them down".
Calling welfare or regulation "basic goals" is misleading: the first is not basic as there is no right to welfare, but forcing others to support welfare while regulation is not a purpose by itself, it is a means to achieve specific goals.
Seeding wrong ideas in what seems to be a neutral context is not nice™.
This specific instance seems like an overreaction of some in both corporate and social media culture. One poster already pointed out that this is likely more about corporate fear of getting targetted by a vocal but ultimately small 'woke' crowd (there, another label, but at least a bit more specific than just generally someone who wishes to achieve basic goals like welfare, equality, and regulation of private industry). It does have all the looks of virtue signalling without any real justification.
In debates like this sometimes a small number of loud, well-meaning but naive people get much more influence than they should for fear of the other being painted the bad guy, while a significant number of people who are actually affected by the underlying issues don't get heard at all.