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JWeinCom said:

I certainly agree with your line "American history is full of examples of vicious forms of social censorship, and a lot of it was and is from the right."

I'm aware of those examples. And it was wrong. McCarthyism was a deep historical injustice. The religious right has often been deeply intolerant and totalitarian in the past.

That's why it's worrying that so many on left today seem to deny that cancel culture even is a thing.

About Trump tweeting, calling NFL players to be fired because they disrespect the flag. It's not entirely comparable. Let me explain.

The problem with cancel culture is that you tend to attack a person in the hardest way possible, disproportionately. Often in indirect ways.

A prime example being a college professors perhaps tweets something or writes something that offends some people, but the punishment is that he loses his job. Even though he never did anything wrong at his job.

With the NFL players it's about their performance at their job. If there was a rule that said you cannot kneel, and yet some players kneeled, it wouldn't be wrong to call for some consequences, reasonable reprimands. Now firing them for it would be too severe and disproportionate, and second, I don't think there even exists a clear rule that players must stand up for the flag and national anthem.

So I do not support Trump's call to fire them.

But more typical for cancel culture would be if Trump urged people, his supporters and masses of activists to attack the NFL players in indirect ways in order to punish them.

Let's say there were activists who would contact the private sponsors of NFL players and demand they drop their sponsorship contracts with kneeling players, or that they would pressure celebrities, parties and PR events that these players mingled with, and demand that they disinvite the NFL players in question. Or that the mob would pressure and shame all the other NFL players who don't kneel and force them and shame them to dissociate themselves from the kneeling players. That's the form of really nasty cancel culture.

So I do not support what Trump is doing, but it's not a good example of modern cancel culture.

There is absolutely no rule that players have to stand for the national anthem. Which you know... so I don't know why you even entertained the possibility. Such a rule would be a clear violation of the first amendment.

So, players exercise speech a person doesn't approve of. They call for them to be fired, regardless of how well they perform their actual job, which you admit is severe and disproportionate. Yet this is not an example of cancel culture?

By that definition can any individual be a part of cancel culture on their own? If so, give an example.

 

Rule or rule.  I didn't mean a rule that would violete the law. But everything is not so black or white.

I didn't think there was a rule because when the NFL BLM debate was at its peak, I heard in the newspapers there wasn't. But I entertained the possibility that there possibly would be something more than just informal tradition. Perhaps something written on paper. This can't be uncommon in the sports world. "Before players enter the field in FIFA World Cup games they are to stand in a line with the teams separated from each other". I could imagine there exists things like that, but I am just guessing.

I said "it's not a good example of modern cancel culture". Yes, you could say it's clearly an attempt to cancel another person wrongfully, but it's not typical for the modern phenomenon of cancel culture. It's isolated ramblings by Trump more than it's an elemental part of a coordinated campaign.

Also there is a different motivation, a different psychology. Trump and most right wingers aren't driven by an urge to silence and marginalize the opposition. I instinctively feel there is a great difference, but I haven't analyzed the actual difference in depth so I can't explain the full extent to why there's a difference.

I'm sure we could find it out together, but you are not interested in this. You seem more interested in downplaying the phenomenon of cancel culture, deplatforming and the attacks on free speech commited by progressives.

I think it's a bit surreal when people deny it, and there's a few here on VGC in recent years who dismiss it right off the bat similar to you.

I think it's lame that whenever worried people either on the right or left call attention to cancel culture and censorship, you have a phalanx on the left that simply dismisses the whole thing by claiming that cancel culture is just as big of a problem on the right, and point out that Big tech are private companies who have the legal right to decide what is and what isn't allowed on their platforms. But it isn't the same.

To me this is the most important political subject of our time, the biggest threat to our liberal democracy.

Have you heard about Bret Weinstein and Evergreen college? Your stance on that would help me understand how you view this phenomenon.