pg has been opining about so-called "cancel culture" on twitter, and the last paragraph makes it clear that this entire post is his attempt to formulate a response:
>Once you realize that orthodox privilege exists, a lot of other things become clearer. For example, how can it be that a large number of reasonable, intelligent people worry about something they call "cancel culture," while other reasonable, intelligent people deny that it's a problem? Once you understand the concept of orthodox privilege, it's easy to see the source of this disagreement. If you believe there's nothing true that you can't say, then anyone who gets in trouble for something they say must deserve it.
"Orthodox privilege" is, he sees, why some people are not worried about being "cancelled." In his mind, these people are saying what is considered correct, so they don't fear cancellation. Perhaps this is true for some people, but I think that it is inventing (or at least overscoping) a phenomenon to answer a question that has another, simpler answer.
Some people are able to honestly assess their past positions and statements, understand why things could be construed as problematic, and make efforts to better themselves. That, and a sense of what conversations are appropriate for public forums versus informal conversation over drinks, act as pretty great cancellation buffers.
Some parts of the US have culture such that a working class utility worker can get fired for unintentionally making the OK symbol, because a Twitter mob decided it's racist and harassed his employer [0].
It's McCarthy 2.0 (although not the entire US), driven by employers worried about their brand. Talk of "understand[ing] why things could be construed as problematic, and mak[ing] efforts to better themselves" is detached from this realty.
Not just a working class utility worker, but a working class Latino utility worker from a multi-racial family, who would be exactly the kind of person a white supremacist might hate. I'm sure there are Latino white supremacists, but they are much rarer than even white white supremacists.
the twitter mob didn't "decide it was racist," racists started co-opting that symbol to identify themselves to one another in a way that flies under the radar[1]. The term is "dog-whistle."
I can't speak to the case in question, but my guess is that there were other dynamics in play if the "ok symbol" was enough to get him fired.
No, it's more like claiming a regular whistle contains an additional imperceptibly high frequency, with the intent of trolling progressive people into confusing legitimately ordinary whistles for dog whistles.
In far-right internet communities, these sorts of troll-whistles are concocted all the time for their own amusement and to sow discord and backlash. The true dog whistles are the private, opaque lingo they use among themselves.
Sometimes these troll-whistles do grow to become actual dog whistles once news and social media take the bait for a while, but that's only because their manipulation game successfully worked. They're constantly trying to see how far they can push it. They exploit the ability to make something taboo purely through light astroturfing and propaganda work. The current political climate makes it very easy.
I sometimes find myself identifying real dog whistles and getting accused by one side of paranoia for pointing it out (until I provide detailed sources explaining the terminology), and identifying troll-whistles and getting accused by the other side of apologism for saying they've gotten played by trolls.
> but my guess is that there were other dynamics in play if the "ok symbol" was enough to get him fired.
Hypothetically, if it turned out that there were no "other dynamics in play", would you then agree that his firing was wrong and every single twitter user who demanded it is morally responsible?
"The lynch mob demanding they hang the person didn't murder them, the actual two guys doing the hanging did, of course they shouldn't bear responsibility."
Yes but actual racists have since actually started using the symbol, which has the added advantage of them being able to laugh at the mainstream media, and for adding plausible deniability. Though certainly there are non explicitly racists trolls using the symbol as a joke.
We should not let trolls or racist steal whatever symbol they want. What if troll or racist want to steal <whatever>?
Where <whatever> can be the "thumb up/down", "chocolate eggs", "sandals with socks", "the red cross", "black shirts"? They look like stupid racist symbols, but if you had a travel machine and go to 2018, you will not convince anyone that some trolls or racist can steal the "ok symbol" and make it a racist symbol.
I agree, but the only reason the "ok" symbol is racist now is because of alarmist, reactionary people who are looking for something to be offended by. It's like when my kids fight each other, all it takes is for one of them to walk away but they never realize that.
The Nazis stole the swastika. Should we consider it unfair to factor the use of that symbol in to our judgment about whether someone is/supporting/identifying as a Nazi?
The problem is that is is interpreted as a Nazi symbol even when it is used with it historical meaning, even when it has not the Nazi symbol rotation/orientation/details. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika
> In Japan, the swastika is also used as a map symbol and is designated by the Survey Act and related Japanese governmental rules to denote a Buddhist temple.
When I have to explain to my aunt over Christmas that The Circle Game isn't some neo-nazi thing, it's a complete failure of the intelligentsia. Regardless of what actual racists are or aren't doing.
I think it's more that most people realise "I get in trouble if I say that, so I just won't say it anymore" or "everyone seems to disagree with me on this, so I won't even think about it anymore". Those people might be leading healthier lives (why die on a hill you don't have to die on), but it doesn't mean they're closer to the truth necessarily.
The fact about some debates not being acceptable on public forums as opposed to private discussions would be fine, if it weren't for that fact that it's being applied extremely inconsistently.
> "everyone seems to disagree with me on this, so I won't even think about it anymore"
I would like to quote pg's own rhetoric of "is my situation unique?":
> And yet at every point in history, there were true things that would get you in terrible trouble to say. Is ours the first where this isn't so? What an amazing coincidence that would be.
I suspect that many people, myself among them, think "everyone seems to disagree with me on this, so I am likely to be wrong." Otherwise I am forced to believe that I am the only person who can see things correctly, a mindset that is at least statistically false, even if it might very occasionally apply to a particular person. This response I think naturally worries a lot of people, since it sounds awfully close to silencing dissent, but there are two things that I think make it meaningfully different.
1. If everyone disagrees with you about your scientific, or otherwise verifiable, ideas, then you definitely should not say "oh well, I must be wrong." You should test those ideas. The risk (failed investment in a test whose outcome was widely predicted) and reward (being the scientific or other leader in a discovery that upends expectations) here are both high, and many parts of science, at least, are set up to reward individuals who decide to make that trade.
2. There is a difference between my saying "everyone disagrees with me, so I am likely to be wrong", which I think is a good thing, and my saying "everyone disagrees with me, so I am wrong", which I think is a bad thing. Experiencing widespread disagreement should make me carefully examine my assumptions and biases, not just import opposite assumptions and biases.
I think we just disagree about the implications of "everyone disagrees with me". I may not be fully knowledgeable about many things, but in the few things that I do know a lot about, I know that many people have no idea what they're talking about; but this also means that even in the areas where I'm not necessarily 100% sure whether my opinion is right, I don't tend to just go with whatever everyone believes is true. That doesn't necessarily mean that I am correct, but it also doesn't mean that the other person is.
I do tend to believe well-respected and well-published scientists unless I have very, very strong reasons to believe the contrary, but that's about it.
edit: Furthermore, your statement assumes that it's always about a situation where you can be "right" or "wrong", but in many, especially ethical, questions, there is no "right" or "wrong", just different priorities and points of view. I think many people do recognise that "it can't be that wrong to disagree about this, whatever my personal opinion", but prefer not to object because why bother?
You assume dissent is because "everyone disagrees with me", but, from what I've seen, cancel culture-style fisagreements are about a side being way more vocal than the other, not necessarily correlated with thr number of people who agree.
It's worth it to me to question my perspective if even one person disagrees with me—frankly, even if no-one disagrees with me. If my beliefs can't hold up even under my own scrutiny, how can they hold up under anyone else's?
I would mention besides that, while there are often a few people very loud about their disagreement, there is no reason to think that there aren't more people made uncomfortable by an assumption I made that I didn't even realise I was making, people who don't feel safe confronting me about it. Maybe I hold the opinion sufficiently strongly that it's more important to me to say than to avoid worrying about it offending someone else, and I think that can be the right decision; but I'd rather make that decision consciously than bumble into offending someone out of ignorance.
I am not sure what you're saying. Of course you shouldn't hold your opinions infallible, but
>I would mention besides that, while there are often a few people very loud about their disagreement, there is no reason to think that there aren't more people made uncomfortable by an assumption I made that I didn't even realise I was making, people who don't feel safe confronting me about it.
I feel like, if you're making assumptions you don't realize you are making, the more reason you have to express your opinion so someone can bring it up.
>but I'd rather make that decision consciously than bumble into offending someone out of ignorance.
I'm not sure it's worth caring about people's feeling so much as to silence your opinions. This neither benefits you nor society, and only serve to appease people that cannot handle others having disagreeing opinions. The whole purpose of public discourse if to refine opinions.
I agree that it's worth scrutinizing your own arguments and try to be conscious of biases. I also agree that we all often do a lousy job at it. That said, I am generally open to arguments and I feel that I do at least sometimes change my mind when convinced by reasonable arguments.
But that doesn't at all imply that I should stop believing something just because a handful of people think they need to shout something at me.
And the argument "there might be other, silent people also disagreeing" goes both ways, there might be other people who agree with me but choose to remain silent too, and that are uncomfortable with what the other side is claiming.
I'm not sure what you're trying to imply here. All these things have happened and still sometimes continue to happen. I don't know whether anyone has ever denied that but I certainly haven't.
After scrolling past hundreds of comments, this is the highest top-level comment that's actually about the post, and not an unrelated monologue triggered by the words used in the post. So thank you.
After 20 minutes on the internet, I have grown so, so tired of reading long, principled, idealistic essays that just so happen to defend racists, sexists, nazis, etc at the end. It's obviously a huge coincidence that he happened to be thinking about privilege, and just happened to come up with this concept of Orthodox Privilege, and by only applying sound logic to this premise, it proves that actually cancel culture is bad mmk. There isn't a chance in the world that he started with the conclusion that he doesn't like cancel culture, and then searched around for some word used by those people that can be twisted into denouncing them. No sir.
And for the record, I felt the same way before getting to the end, not knowing any of this context, because the actual essay is entirely unconvincing. Sampling his other essays to refresh my memory, they're stuffed full of examples to convince you in between each logical leap. Where this essay should have done that, it just vaguely subtweets people disagreeing with stuff he says that you "can't" say. You're expected to fill in the blanks yourself with some noble suppressed truths (ideas... are bulletproof!), when the whole time he's really talking about people getting cancelled (yelling at black people on the internet).
Assuming that he started out not liking cancel culture and then searched around for how to denounce them, what's wrong with it?
I'm generally opposed to cancel culture but generally can't be bothered to clearly articulate my objections, i.e. search around for the best words to denounce them.
I think it's generally positive that some people, such as pg, are willing to articulate their objections to cancel culture.
Well, I don't like being lied to. In July of 2020, has there actually been a lot of talk about privilege? Is that really where this thought process started? It seems way more likely that he started by complaining about cancel culture, so the beginning of this essay seems dishonest to me.
While I'm replying, I might as well link the comic I was referencing for anyone who hasn't seen it. This is what I think of whenever someone starts getting really abstract about free speech or not being allowed to say things instead of clearly articulating what they actually mean:
You seem to be going from "There has been a lot of talk about privilege lately" to "this thought process started by thinking about the concept of privilege [not actual quote]". The link isn't obvious to me.
>In July of 2020, has there actually been a lot of talk about privilege?
The internet is big, it's safe to assume there's talk about privilege non-stop in some corners of it. Of course, there's nothing wrong with not having seen it. Anecdotally, I've seen this 2 days ago here on HN without looking for it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23821125
The problem is that pg is not honest about what his problem with cancel culture actually is. Clearly, his problem is that he is privileged and sexist, aware of it and afraid of being cancelled, or rather, of receiving criticism about his statements and beliefs (as he has in the past).
But what he is arguing is something entirely different. He's not searching for words to argue for his position (he has none), he's searching for words that misrepresent and denigrate his opponents. You can see this easily not just by how he abuses the word "privilege", but by how he asserts that any position that is not his is part of an "orthodoxy". This would only make sense if there was a set of positions that a large majority of people could agree on, which would then form that orthodoxy, but as pg himself well knows, that set of positions doesn't exist -- after all, the POTUS himself is anything but "woke"! The only other way the term "orthodoxy" makes sense here, then, is understanding "orthodoxy" to not mean an agreed-upon, but a proscribed set of beliefs, such as in the Orthodox church. Such a set of beliefs, then, would require someone in power who outlines and instates it. That idea -- that there is a cabal of people who decide about which opinions are acceptable or "orthodox" or not -- is a dangerous conspiracy theory. More than that, it is an important element of contemporary alt-right discourses, which also often focus on this idea that there are some vague people in vague power which make it so that you "can't say some things anymore", be those powerholders "Cultural Marxists", (((Jewish))) or otherwise.
So yes, I agree that it is positive when people articulate their objections to an opinion. However, those articulations should actually express an opinion that is being held, rather than form a smoke-and-mirrors defense against having to say out loud what you know will get you pushback. A dogwhistle is not an argument.
Yeah, I felt like a dupe when I read the ending. I'd rather read some alt-right drivel that makes no pretense about who they're attacking; at least it's honest on some level.
Orthodoxy is the domain of conservative and reactionary forces, it's not a true synonym of ideology or conformity.
Graham blithely repurposes the term as a pejorative against so-called "cancel culture" participants, which is clever until you think about it for more than five seconds.
The example of Niel Golightly demonstrates that opinions we held decades ago and have not held for many years can still get us fired. Thus, being willing to better yourself is no protection.
Just to give a sense, at the time more than 50% of Americans agreed with each of these statements: Women should not serve in the military. Homosexual relationships between consenting adults should not be legal. Interracial relationships are wrong.
Today, those opinions are a firing offense. And if you said them publicly, they are a firing offense no matter how many years it has been since you thought them.
I mean, they're a C-level executive, i could see why employees, especially women working under him, might be less than thrilled if they were still in power.
I think that his response in that article was appropriate, but I'm also not losing sleep for any millionaire airplane executives that now need to find something else to do with their time.
You went from, "People who try to improve themselves are safe" to, "We can't have sympathy for rich people." But it doesn't just happen to rich people. And when you're presented with an example of that, you'll find another excuse.
The honest thing to do is to go back to your original statement and say, "I was wrong." To demonstrate in yourself the very open mindedness and willingness to rethink your beliefs that you think should be protection against shifts in political culture. (But which aren't.)
Are you going to be honest? Or will you continue moving goalposts to justify your wrong claim?
You're putting words into my mouth. I never said "People who try to improve themselves are safe;" the world is full of too much nuance and complexity for me to make a sweeping statement like that. Nor did I say "We can't have sympathy for rich people;" my main concern in the specific case mentioned would be power dynamics at play moreso than wealth dynamics (although there is an undeniable link).
I suggest you re-read my original post; I was trying to suggest in a broad way that pg was wrong about why some people aren't afraid of being cancelled in a way that has nothing to do with so-called "orthodox privilege."
Some people are able to honestly assess their past positions and statements, understand why things could be construed as problematic, and make efforts to better themselves. That, and a sense of what conversations are appropriate for public forums versus informal conversation over drinks, act as pretty great cancellation buffers.
And yet one of the top examples is someone who had that "great cancellation buffer" and it didn't help him one bit.
In another famous example, Emmanuel Cafferty, all the guy did was drive with his hand out the window with absolutely no idea that it resembled a signal used by white power groups. That "great cancellation buffer" didn't help him, either.
People feel safe because they don't think it will happen to them. I firmly believe that this shows ignorance of how political purges (which this is) work. Eventually the purge takes on a life of its own and people who started it are often shocked to later find themselves among the victims.
The quotes in the article are more extreme than what you imply in this comment. You're drawing a false equivalence between every possible reason someone could be against women in the military, and writing an article about how even though women could serve, they shouldn't, because it would destroy "exclusively male intangibles" about men fighting to protect "feminine images".
If you watch it, you will find that the "exclusively male intangibles" in that article were, at the time, messages brainwashed into every soldier during boot camp. In every service, in every military. This had been true for generations. The concerns in that article were mainstream concerns about how integrating women into the military could go wrong.
You probably find it brutish and offensive. That was by intent. It was part of a package of beliefs that was intended to turn young men into soldiers who kill at the right command. Whose use of force stops when it is supposed to. We want soldiers who take the town by force, but don't continue on raping and murdering for pleasure. We don't always get this package right. Graveyards are littered with the consequences.
As it happens, the generals were wrong in their concerns. We have been able to integrate women without losing military culture. However I guarantee you that if you scratch a soldier today, you'll find lots of beliefs you don't like. Beliefs instilled during boot camp for the same job - to turn young people (mostly men) into controlled lethal weapons.
>Some people are able to honestly assess their past positions and statements, understand why things could be construed as problematic, and make efforts to better themselves. That, and a sense of what conversations are appropriate for public forums versus informal conversation over drinks, act as pretty great cancellation buffers.
This is wonderfully sensible when the problematic things in question are unequivocally problematic (e.g. justification of genocide, or explicit racism). For those things that are borderline, as well as those whose problematic nature is in dispute, it's not so clear cut. Herein lies a strategy for silencing a viewpoint - descend on those who express it with vigorous Twitter fury, deprive a few of them of their livelihoods, et voila! Something that has been discussed in public (and perhaps ought to be discussed) is now confined to "informal conversation over drinks". The offensive-to-some viewpoint is silenced, all is well!
Well, not to me. I am a liberal, and thus I believe that discussion and disagreement over ideas helps improve the good ones and helps sink the bad ones. Disagreement is not a chore, it's the fundamental feature that every free society should cherish. But we should probably restrict justification of genocide, and explicit racism.
>Once you realize that orthodox privilege exists, a lot of other things become clearer. For example, how can it be that a large number of reasonable, intelligent people worry about something they call "cancel culture," while other reasonable, intelligent people deny that it's a problem? Once you understand the concept of orthodox privilege, it's easy to see the source of this disagreement. If you believe there's nothing true that you can't say, then anyone who gets in trouble for something they say must deserve it.
"Orthodox privilege" is, he sees, why some people are not worried about being "cancelled." In his mind, these people are saying what is considered correct, so they don't fear cancellation. Perhaps this is true for some people, but I think that it is inventing (or at least overscoping) a phenomenon to answer a question that has another, simpler answer.
Some people are able to honestly assess their past positions and statements, understand why things could be construed as problematic, and make efforts to better themselves. That, and a sense of what conversations are appropriate for public forums versus informal conversation over drinks, act as pretty great cancellation buffers.