A lot of my closer regular readers are surely familiar with the letter that Harper's Magazine released earlier this week, decrying the so-called "cancel culture" without using that phrase explicitly.
Seeing nobody I recognize as an actual leftist among signatories was antennae-raiser No. 1. No, Noam Chomsky, safely ensconced in the "duopoly-only" world on voting issues, and a co-signer of another letter this spring, one calling on Green Party nominee (just the leading candidate at the time) to run a "safe states only" strategy. Howie politely, and I impolitely, told Chomsky to shut the fuck up. (Chomsky has LONG been a sheepdogger.)
More serious issues arise after that. And yet more after Jesse Singal wrote a column at Reason magazine defending an attempt to cancel free speech. So much for First Amendment absolutism from libertarians, eh?
So, I shot out a thread of Tweets to Jesse about some specific problems. I'm going to drop them in, with additional comments on each.
Let's start:
Seriously? When I saw Fucking Bari Weiss as a signer? Game over RIGHT THERE. And the thing is, Singal has, elsewhere, called out BDS opponents. She's not the only one, by any means. And, beyond active opponents of BDS, you've got a bunch of neocons, and a bunch more bipartisan foreign policy establishmentarians, all of whom arguably perform "cancel culture" on free discussion of Palestinian issues in the US.Reason magazine, in favor of free speech and thought ... except when it's not. The biggest fails by Jesse Singal? .@jessesingalhttps://t.co/yZKJVCM42n— Green Party convention & fireworks time! 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) July 11, 2020
1. Not ackowledging that many of his fellow signees themselves REGULARLY perform #CancelCulture on #BDS. 1/x
Pinker, and I assume wife Rebecca Goldstein, are both vigorously anti-BDS. So is Jonathan Haidt, though the way he phrases his opposition, I'm sure he'd deny he's an opponent.
Haidt, and others on that list, also have a consistent history of overstating illiberalism, or often more specifically, anti-conservativism, in academia. I've specifically called out Haidt before, for ignoring how in much of both the social sciences and the natural sciences, religious conservatives self-select out of academia because of anti-intellectual stances.
Even IF the letter were totally right otherwise, how two-thirds of signatories could have put their names to the other one-third, I don't know. Were I famous enough in the media world (I wish) to be asked to sign such a letter, I would have refused, even if it were totally right.
Note those IFs and let's go on in the thread.
2. Not noting the "false equivalence" issue. Yes, there is some illiberalism in precincts of the left, but, equivalent to Trumpism? Not close. 2/x— Green Party convention & fireworks time! 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) July 11, 2020
That said, this is coming from someone who actually largely agrees with Jesse's take on the trans activists' portion of cancel culture.
BUT! While Jesse mentions trans activists' response to the letter in his column, that issue is nowhere mentioned in the letter itself.
That leads to:
3. Third? No explanation of why this suddenly had to be written now. When you have Black Lives Matter, a resurgence of #MeToo and other things, and the signees don't say WHY they had to write now and WHAT they see as so bad on the left? 3/x— Green Party convention & fireworks time! 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) July 11, 2020
Seriously. We're now, as I told an email list, into massive muddle-headedness. That, too, is not something I would have expected from Harper's, but, I guess this is the new normal. Without listing a specific "redress of grievances," to get back to my second tweet, one can't even make a reasonable assessment of how close to proportionality we are. Is the "cancel culture" left one-quarter as bad as Trumpism? One-tenth? One-fiftieth? For that matter, to go back to my first tweet, is the "cancel quarter" left one-quarter as bad as anti-Palestinian Zionists? One-tenth? One-fiftieth?
Onward to No. 4.
So, in summary, the signees of the Harper's letter offer a mix of some kind of privilege, muddle-headed thinking, and lack of clarity and explanation. SKEPTICAL LEFTISTS can and do call that out in the Harper's letter .@Harpers 4/x https://t.co/W5fS2HYQ15— Green Party convention & fireworks time! 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) July 11, 2020
And, yes, beyond other issues, I see a certain amount of privilege there. It's a word used a lot by SJWs, and often overused.
Per Idries Shah? This is another issue with more than two sides, though:
I think that privilege — of CLASS as well as race and sex (and religion versus secularism or atheism) — does exist, even if I agree that the idea is also abused and overused.
And, I see many of the signatories exemplifying that as well. So:
I personally could have accepted a more limited and MUCH more clear Harper's letter minus half the signatories. The actual letter? Not quite dreck, but it IS a badly fallen soufflé. 5/x— Green Party convention & fireworks time! 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) July 11, 2020
And, you chose to sign it, Jesse. You chose to defend it. And, by ignoring the hypocrites, you're choosing to defend it and their hypocrisy.
And, we haven't even tackled other illiberalisms and hypocrisies. Like this:
And, I haven't mentioned other illiberal signers of that Harper's letter, like Malcolm Gladwell and his history of shilling for #BigTobacco and other illiberal interests. 6/x https://t.co/4cshbKGe06— Green Party convention & fireworks time! 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) July 11, 2020
When I saw Gladwell's name, that Exiled Online piece at the Twitter link was the first thing I thought of.
And, not part of the thread to Jesse, but worth including:
Given the previous dreck Matt Taibbi has written, AND, his being an uncritical Tulsi-stanner, I sure as hell ain't paying money to read him fellating the Harper's letter. https://t.co/XYaeM2AKdu— Green Party convention & fireworks time! 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) July 11, 2020
This dreck about Lee Fang etc. is what I refer to. His Tulsi-stanning? Referenced here.
That's more than enough food for thought, and I'll post this live instead of going up in the morning so I can link it to my thread.
