I want to preface this by saying that I am very ignorant when it comes to politics and philosophy, but here it goes:
Isn’t it logically inconsistent that rationalists/alt-right people, who usually are (always?) capitalists have such an aversion to cancel culture?
My reasoning is that they like free speech, so people can say what they want (e.g #FireGinaCarano) and by capitalism if a sufficiently large subset of consumers exclaim this the company realises that it is more profitable to fire the person. What link in this chain of events do they oppose to? Or am I missing something?
It feels like this “culture” they are talking about is just people expressing anger at bigoted people. Which implies that they really just agree with the “cancelled” party.
Please excuse my poor english and undigested idea. And feel free to critisize my argument.
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Here’s a recent post I enjoyed that explains “cancel culture” https://weeklysift.com/2021/02/08/why-you-cant-understand-conservative-rhetoric/
NB: your English is perfectly fine; your argument makes perfect sense
Well yeah, but it’s not that big of a deal in terms of internal consistency for the ideology, it’s more a deal in terms of the underlying logic of the whole thing
Political realism (of which I am an adherent) in political philosophy tells us that that liberal values are very often fundamentally in conflict with each other: so it’s just no surprise when people who would otherwise boost for capitalism turn out to be in conflict with their own implied values (re: capitalism, rationalism, so-called “cancel culture”)
The basic point is that a liberal mind-set is fundamentally flawed if its alleged adherents are allowed to just talk shit all day on twitter and in Quillette, or on LessWrong or OvercomingBias: there has to be something wrong with that worldview
The part where they think they might lose their own job for having horrible opinions about minorities. But they’re convinced that those opinions are true (and that everyone else knows it’s true too), so they think they’re being forced to “suppress the truth” or whatever.
It’s all about their philosophy of power, ultimately. The right essentially advances the view that power is what the majority inflicts on the minority, and all of the words in that sentence aren’t literal but symbolic.
Even when the right isn’t the majority, they still see themselves as the “REAL majority” and being the only people with “common sense”. Even when designated minorities are not mistreated by society, the right thinks that they should be mistreated, just by virtue of being a designated minority.
Any disruption of this formula makes rightists lose their fucking minds. Bad enough that you can’t call people slurs and keep them in their place, but to criticize the right? The designated winners!? The world has gone mad!
there is nothing contradictory about it - they simply hate ethnic minorities, trans people and women, so anyone who thinks those people have been transgressed against must be silenced by any means necessary. if the government needs to step in to force blue-dye-hair SJW college kids to buy 100 MyPillows per month, then that’s what’s necessary to protect free speech.
I’ve seen many rationalist-adjacent capitalists oppose cancel-culture in the same way they’d oppose a commercial product – “yeah the government has no business here but also this shouldn’t be a product!”
Lots of alt-rightists do think the government should step in tho. This isn’t logically contradictory because it would imply that logic could get within ten feet of alt-rightists
Yes. This. It’s just this. This is the fundamental right-wing use of cancel culture. They are building another epistemic weapon (akin to “SJW” or “Woke” or “PC”) to be aimed at anything that resembles consequences or backlash for bigotry, and using it to further raise the profile of bigots. And since most rationalist spheres are, at best, overrun with nazis, that’s how it gets used.
You know what, I’m going to say no. It’s only logically inconsistent if they either:
To be fair, some do fit either or both of those conditions. But by itself, there’s nothing contradictory about being mad at someone for doing something while also holding that they have the right to do that thing. You probably do it yourself on a monthly basis, at least.
Yup, you’ve got it in one.
More honestly, the aversion to “cancel culture” is more a negative reaction to the shifting of power. Plenty of talented people have been “cancelled” over the years by the rich and powerful; think about how many comedians had their careers cut short because they wouldn’t put up with Louis CK’s abusive bullshit?
Now, for better or for worse, some of that power has shifted from the traditional elite to the crowd, and oh boy does the elite not like it.