It's certainly pathetic when right-wingers only give attention to free expression issues when it's their ox being gored, but it's even more pathetic when those nominally on the left pretend that there aren't serious problems with free expression in the academy and the broader culture emerging from the neoliberal identity-politics movement. This article is a good antidote to the latter group of dissemblers; an excerpt:
Critics of the idea of “cancel culture” have a point when they argue that pushback against speech and expression we find morally offensive is a vital part of free speech. While disinvitations should be avoided on principle, there is nothing wrong with forcefully arguing that a college campus should not extend a speaking invitation to a far-right hate peddler like Ann Coulter or a progressive [sic] white-guilt grifter like Robin DiAngelo. Likewise, while taking down published articles should be a no-no except in case of egregious factual errors, plagiarism, or other misconduct, it’s not illiberal to argue that respected media outlets should not platform certain odious views, whether they’re unabashedly racist anti-immigration tirades or arguments that sexual liberation should extend to pedophiles. But it also seems clear that in a liberal society, the range of truly “cancelable” viewpoints should remain as narrow as possible, and the lines should be very carefully drawn.
Current “cancel culture” differs from the “normal” push-and-pull of speech-related pressures in several significant ways. First, the internet and the social media in particular have enabled much more public speech by people who aren’t journalists, politicians, activists, or other public figures—potentially exposing them to retaliation for speech that offends. Second, the internet and social media have become highly effective vehicles for collective retaliation for disapproved-of speech or conduct. (Gurri’s Liberal Currents article discusses these developments.) Third, a version of progressivism that stresses the “harm” done by very broadly defined racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise bigoted speech and expression—and even routinely labels such expression as “violence”—has moved from the margins of left-wing academia to the mainstream of universities, media, and other cultural institutions.
In such a framework, the suppression of speech becomes not just defensible but virtuous. Consider, for instance, this remarkable statement issued in 2018 by activists who tried to shut down an event with Christina Hoff Sommers, a feminist who challenges feminist orthodoxy on such issues as “rape culture” and the wage gap, at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon:
"We now understand how language works, and how it can be used to reproduce the systems of oppression we know we must resist at all costs. . . . Free speech is certainly an important tenet to a free, healthy society, but that freedom stops when it has a negative and violent impact on other individuals. There is no debate here."
This isn’t just the silencing of dissent; it’s the silencing of dissent as a cornerstone ideological principle.
Or take Zack Beauchamp’s rebuttal last year of the Harper’s magazine “Letter on Justice and Open Debate” (which I co-signed along with about 150 writers, academics, and artists). While Beauchamp acknowledged that social justice advocates have sometimes “overreached” and tried to shut down “legitimate debate,” he asserted that their advocacy should generally be seen as pro-free speech, in the sense of “making historically marginalized voices feel comfortable enough in the public square to be their authentic selves . . . and speak their own truths.” But a close look at Beauchamp’s argument shows that, in his view, the “comfort” of these “marginalized voices” does require drastically curtailing the voices of presumed oppressors. According to Beauchamp, for instance, J.K. Rowling’s opinions on transgender rights are so demeaning that trans people cannot be expected to debate them or accept their presence in mainstream civil discourse. (Rowling has argued that transgender people should have full civil rights protections and live as they please, but that biological sex should not be denied and concerns about male-bodied individuals in single-sex female spaces or about the medical risks of gender transition for minors should not be dismissed as bigotry.) Thus, Beauchamp explicitly admits that the goal of social justice advocacy is not simply to criticize or challenge “offensive” speech, but to drive it out of the public square....
[P]rogressive [sic] cancel culture...does not simply retaliate against speech by ideological opponents; it also quite often targets progressives or neutrals for sometimes accidental transgressions against the new norms of identity-based social justice. It does not simply punish opposition but demands allegiance, including repentance by transgressors. In that sense, the analogies to Stalinism and Maoism, much derided by the “anti-anti-cancel culture” crowd, have some validity. This is especially true since, in the last few years, social justice or “wokeism” really has become something of a party line not only in progressive activism and academia but in most of the established media, a wide range of cultural institutions, and large corporations....
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