Why cancel culture is still rooted in freedom

[Romanov]

I saw a recent PragerU post in my Facebook feed the other day saying, “Cancel cancel culture” along with its herd of likes. Then I thought to myself, that’s still cancelling. Not only that but PragerU also mentions how the media is lying and brainwashes people. Isn’t PragerU media as well? They’ve got millions of viewers and supporters, what are they smoking?

Now back to the title of this thread. If there is no freedom, then there can be no cancel culture. If we can’t cancel anything or anyone, how is there any freedom? 

[mr_engineer]

In theory, you are right. But, in practice, the people doing the cancelling aren't doing it as an expression of their own freedom. Because that would be hypocritical! What they're actively pushing for is a suppression of freedom of others. 

The height of selfishness is to say 'Freedom is bad, it's dumb, freedumb, blah blah blah' when you're for cancel-culture because you want to cancel Donald Trump, but when you're the target of cancellation because you propagated cancel-culture, to cry about your own freedom to cancel others. 

You lose the right to play the freedom card yourself when you're for cancel-culture. You are fundamentally anti-freedom. And then, when you play the freedom-card when it serves you, it is despicable. It shows an utter lack of principles, that you're not willing to respect other people's freedom, only other people should respect your own! You are the butt of the criticism of those who criticize libertarianism, when you play your freedom-card in this context. 

The point of playing the freedom-card is to free yourself and to help others escape from enslavement. It's not to defend hypocrisy. 

The way I see the people for cancel-culture, is that they are traitors to humanity. Snitches, essentially. Useful idiots who think they're morally self-righteous and have the right to take justice into their own hands. The Karen-meme fits that bill very neatly. 

[mr_engineer]

A point about the critique of libertarianism - the reasons the anti-freedom people are saying that freedom is bad, is because they look at other anti-freedom people abusing freedom! When you abuse your freedom, you are anti-freedom. You cannot truly be pro-freedom until the day you are ready for all of its ramifications. Until that day, don't claim to understand libertarianism, cuz you don't. 

The first step to seeing this, is to see that criminals are also human beings. With opinions. And those opinions matter and they shape a lot of our society. A lot of our policing and governing. And that criminals are not pro-freedom! They want their own freedom and not other people's freedom, cuz they're low in consciousness. Whereas the actual libertarians want freedom for everyone and then, let the chips fall where they may. Cuz they truly believe that in the final battle, the good side will win. Whereas, the anti-freedom people believe that the bad side will win. That's the difference. 

Edited November 6, 2022 by mr_engineer

[Romanov]

1 hour ago, mr_engineer said:

In theory, you are right. But, in practice, the people doing the cancelling aren't doing it as an expression of their own freedom. Because that would be hypocritical! What they're actively pushing for is a suppression of freedom of others. 

The height of selfishness is to say 'Freedom is bad, it's dumb, freedumb, blah blah blah' when you're for cancel-culture because you want to cancel Donald Trump, but when you're the target of cancellation because you propagated cancel-culture, to cry about your own freedom to cancel others. 

You lose the right to play the freedom card yourself when you're for cancel-culture. You are fundamentally anti-freedom. And then, when you play the freedom-card when it serves you, it is despicable. It shows an utter lack of principles, that you're not willing to respect other people's freedom, only other people should respect your own! You are the butt of the criticism of those who criticize libertarianism, when you play your freedom-card in this context. 

The point of playing the freedom-card is to free yourself and to help others escape from enslavement. It's not to defend hypocrisy. 

The way I see the people for cancel-culture, is that they are traitors to humanity. Snitches, essentially. Useful idiots who think they're morally self-righteous and have the right to take justice into their own hands. The Karen-meme fits that bill very neatly. 

In that last bit where you mentioned that those who are for cancel-culture are traitors to humanity and snitches…I assume you mean digging up a person’s past social media comments that are particularly racist or homophobic in nature, and then using those to cancel said individual. I want to add that on the flip side, you have to be careful what you post. I agree with what Leo said regarding IDing people on social media so that it can have real world repercussions. Those “snitches” have only exposed how much more careful you have to be and to think before you speak. 
 

Then again, people conflate hate speech with cancel culture. Freedom of speech only extends to the government not being able to suppress your speech, not to the TOS of social media companies who are protected by section 230. 

[mr_engineer]

IDing people on social-media defeats the purpose of protecting them from getting cancelled, actually. Because they are the same authorities imposing the rules that make cancellation toxic! 

And, of course, this is not going to have freedom of speech be a thing on social-media. Cuz cancel-culture actually works for them. If it didn't, they would've done something about it. But, it does. It does help the authority's position when Karen comes to them with a complaint. It gives them more work!! 

The real solution is for Karens to take responsibility for solving the problems they blame others for. To see not just the one racist person, but racism as a whole. To detach themselves from this issue/cause itself and to focus on actual solutions. This is the message that Karens need to hear, mainly. And, if you want to do your Karen-thing, don't talk in terms of statements, such as 'That's racist/homophobic/transphobic/etc.' and instead to talk in terms of questions, in which you're actually exploring the other person's perspective. You would have to disidentify from your idealistic morality, though, to do that. 

[something_else]

If someone is spouting tons of direct racism, hate speech, nazi support etc. or if someone is a pedophile, essentially everyone agrees they should be cancelled/banned/prevented from spreading their ideas

So at some point there is a line that can be crossed where almost everyone collectively decides that someone should not be allowed to continue posting online. Mostly what you're talking about is just a disagreement over where that line should be, because everyone thinks it should be somewhere different. But the line always has to be somewhere or social media becomes a toxic mess.

So when someone says they want to cancel cancel-culture I imagine they mean that they want the line to be further to the right than it is currently, they don't want to abolish the line all together.

[Hatfort]

PragerU actively asks to cancel whatever he calls gender theory or critical race theory. There's that.

[Tyler Robinson]

Cancel culture is extremely important just like policing this forum is important. 

 

[John Paul]

All is fair in love and war-blue, orange, and green are all dirty rats just like red. That’s what SD will teach you. Be a good person, you can’t control anyone else but yourself. If you have a serious issue take care of it through policy and voting.

[Stovo]

Cancel culture is mostly stage green people misunderstanding stage red, blue, and orange.

[Leo Gura]

Why you taking propaganda seriously??

You're not supposed to engage with propaganda in good faith dialogue. There's your mistake.

Edited November 20, 2022 by Leo Gura

[Hardkill]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Why you taking propaganda seriously??

You're not supposed to engage with propaganda in good faith dialogue. There's your mistake.

How do you think the divisive and antagonistic rhetoric on social media, Fox News, and others outlets will ever cool down? Or do you think that it's all just going to keep getting worse and worse and worse until an actual conventional war breaks out?

[Leo Gura]

FoxNews is never gonna cool down.

Until maybe they lose that billion dollar defamation suit.

Tabloid media will always exist. The key is not to consume it.

Edited November 20, 2022 by Leo Gura

[Hardkill]

17 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

FoxNews is never gonna cool down.

Until maybe they lose that billion dollar defamation suit.

Tabloid media will always exist. The key is not to consume it.

So, then is our country doomed to becoming a perpetually polarized country until the end of time?

Or will ever come a time when there will be a widespread great quieting of all extremely divisive information from every  echo chamber in the country if our country ever gets to the brink of a second real civil war?

Edited November 20, 2022 by Hardkill

[Romanov]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Why you taking propaganda seriously??

You're not supposed to engage with propaganda in good faith dialogue. There's your mistake.

I assume you’re replying to me.
 

Since cancel culture is a thing that exists to the right, I am taking something they value (freedom), and making a case for how the thing they are against is based on what they value…essentially exposing their hypocrisy. 

Edited November 20, 2022 by Romanov

[Bobby_2021]

On 11/6/2022 at 11:30 PM, Romanov said:

 If we can’t cancel anything or anyone, how is there any freedom? 

If we can't kill anyone, how is there any freedom? 

[Lise]

I don't know if anybody is debating here still, but I'm curious about this topic. Isn't the problem here what's propaganda? What are morally despicable arguments. I see all kinds of meanings taken as propaganda, and attempted cancelled. Like saying that Russia might have felt threatened by Nato, without justifying or defending the war against Ukraine. Should you be silenced for this opinion? Isn't this OK to mean? And if it's not OK to mean, is it productive to silence you, instead of answering why it is despicable by trying to explain? This is a huge topic today! Because in a society, lots of people have opinions that are incorrect. We hopefully live in a democracy, so these people can vote. If we are going to live in a democracy and not trust people to find out the truth in open and honest dialogue, meanings are not going to be questioned, and if meanings are not being questioned, and questioning is punished by cancelling, how are you supposed to know what's true and not? How can you know that the views aren't themselves propaganda?

If you see this, I'd really appreciate a video (or blog post, I read you're response to the evil demon argument and you gave me a lot to think about) on this @Leo Gura. This is a big, divisive topic today, and I'm curious on a deep take from you on this. I disagreed with you a few days ago, and you shut me up, not by mere cancelling, but by explaining why I was wrong in your recent video. And I recognized that I was wrong. Would it be right to ban me? Because it seems like that's what most people think nowadays. But in this case, you're still allowed to vote when you're banned.

Then, the argument could be that a democratic society is not the best society. But plenty of people are saying that they are for democracy, but not for freedom of speech, and isn't that a contradiction, as you end up with established truths not being able to be questioned, which is defeating the purpose of democracy?

Edit: isn't it a problem that people can't distinguish Fox news from honest conservativism, and are using cancellation to silence both of these voices?

Edited March 29 by Lise
clarification

[Jodistrict]

The excuse for censorship is that the censor is only eliminating misinformation and propaganda.  But the problem is that implies that there is some magical referee who can decide what is propaganda.  In the practical world, the censor who determines what is propaganda is the actor who has the most power.  Thus, it is power that decides what is true or not.   The idea of free speech is to acknowledge that fact and take away the censor.  Each individual decides from the full source of information what is true.  When power decides truth, you can end up with a tyranny.  It’s the situation where the little boy says that the king doesn’t have any clothes.  Everyone is afraid to speak the reality because they will be punished by the powerful.  The official true version is that “the king has clothes”.

[Nilsi]

3 minutes ago, Jodistrict said:

The official true version is that “the king has clothes”.

Is that an allusion to Lacan? lol

[Lise]

🙌