I hear you, but that's the core of the problem. It's all being labeled as cancel culture by the right to discount the valid parts of "cancel culture" and focus on the often absurd parts of it. When in reality it should be split into a few different categories of cancel culture. Purity canceling, economic cancelling, and social justice canceling. The economic and social often work in conjunction.

It's all related, though, even the purity cancel. But the purity canceling is born out of ignorance because it's nearly all young people who don't have the life experience to understand how culture evolves and changes, coupled with the explosion of technology. 20 years ago, we didn't have all these eyes on us, recording every little thing we did. It was a rare situation over 20 years ago, that someone would be called out for something they did 20 years prior (40 years ago), because there wasn't as freely available documentation of this.

What we should be talking about imho is the incoming Tsunmai of all these young people who are recorded saying and doing things that are acceptable today, but won't be in 20 years from now. There's going to be a lot of careers killed, opportunities lost, because culture evolves, and they don't have the life experience yet to understand that.... but they have the proof of their "indiscretions" and mistakes on their FB / twitter pages today.

I don't want to derail the thread of course. Your original post is stating you don't think the intolerant left should be able to shout down debate on campus. If you want to solve that as to not provide fuel for the conservative right's fire on the culture wars, then we need to address the issues that got us to this moment.

Ty. I personally wouldn't equate cancel culture w/ "muck" of conservative fights, but I understand what you mean.

The typical playbook of the oppressor is to marginalize, false equivocate, and claim victimhood. Conservatives are always trying to marginalize any movement in American democracy, by pointing to the most absurd aspects of it, and claiming it as the whole of the movement. It's an easy strategy, and powerful when you control the vast majority of the narrative. The left can try and employee this strategy, but they don't control the media narrative at large, so it will never work, unfortunately. And even if the left could, the right has been convinced they are the victims of a liberal media, which is... well.. a beautifully evil manipulation of people's minds.

Significant pressure to be more considered. Rarely any significant pressurre to shut up - it can happen and it can be bad.

Tne worst example i've seen was over covid where an expert was shut down by a BBC interviewer because she was going against the consensus view on how to handle the epidemic. I was very much (and still am) with the consensus view but I really wanted to hear an expert explain their thinking.

I'm not suggesting you incorrectly put more import on celeberity views. But huge number of people do.

It definitely is power to the people. That is what it arose as. And yes grassroots being empowered is a good thing.

That said there is however a mob within that set of people and that mob menaces the entire group and not just the deplorable right. If this forum wants to deny such cancel mob's, Facebook or Twitter (SM) mobs exist they would be pretty alone in that denialism. Most people, even on the left can speak to and recognize the rise of what is called the cancel culture left.

I think a small amount of partisans on each side will pretend it is only a function of one side and not the other. Most everyone else recognizes it has its forms on both sides.

Interesting talk and view points one and all thx. Despite the same 2 characters spamming only with the usual empty posting and attempts to derail, this topic, as did my prior one (incels) garnered a lot of pages and discussion real quick so glad to see people were willing to engage.

I know it offends some that others will discuss topics they think should not be discussed but we wont be CANCELLED! :}}

You absolutely have the complete freedom to talk endlessly about topics with nothing really productive coming out of it, other than murdering time. Not sure why you think I want to cancel you, I think this is as good a use of your time as possible. Keep going. Start a bunch of new threads on equally important topics, chit chat with a few people who are talking at you, declare your efforts a complete success and then onto your next topic.

All the best.

Please name ANY public figure who self-identifies as a CONSERVATIVE who has in the last thirty days said "kill the gays" and/or "the only good D's are dead Ds". Thanks.

Btw, I can name a score of Liberals who have advocated for " a woman's right to abort[sic]* their unborn baby" in the last thirty days.

You up for the challenge?

*KILL is the most correct word.

Lagtight you realize you don't need to post a resson for your edit. You can leave that blank

The threat of the mob is what gives power to cancel culture. Its existence is a necessity.

The position of abortion rights supporters is not "kill all the embryos/fetuses" or "the only good embryo/fetus is a dead embryo/fetus". Women don't get abortions because they categorically hate embryos/fetuses.

I realize that. Thanks.

I agree with all the above. However, I was specifically addressing WetWork's claim that on a weekly basis some Conservative "calls for violence of some form." I was quoting WetWork's own examples of alleged calls for violence.

Check out the Breitbart comment section on a variety of articles. You will not have to wait a week. Some of the "suggestions" offered in response to their their current transgender article to get a good mixture of misogyny, violence, and even the election was rigged stuff. Keep in mind that these are the consumers of this type of rhetoric and the way the articles are presented (the tone, the title, even the fonts) do stir up some extra emotional reaction. I get that many people here, particularly the derpy passive consumers, place no value on how messaging is delivered, but it does matter, and places like that website take full advantage of it to monetize their consumers.

I understood WeWork's statements of "kill the gays" and/or "the only good D's are dead Ds" to be without exemption, and that is the critical difference from your example. It doesn't matter what those groups are doing, they should be killed.

I think it would very difficult to find scores of liberals supporting abortion at any time for any reason. They would certainly measure far less than conservative voters or politicians supporting violence categorically towards the groups WetWork mentions.

I can't say exactly how often these things occur or what Wet Work hand in mind, but it is not an uncommon occurrence. It has been a few years since I batted an eyelid at some conservative pundit or conservative politicians alluding to violence, implying violence or even directly encouraging violence.

In late march, Robert Foster, a former Mississippi House lawmaker called for lining those who "pretend men are women" against a wall before a firing squad. This means that a former US state lawmaker not only believes that a lot of posters on this forum who has posted in support of transgender people should be executed, he has called for that execution in public.

I'll concede that there are people with much to gain from looking for the worst examples from social media and present these, a phenomena that occurs both ways. Even given that however, the above example was not a random drunk rambling from a bar stool to an audience of none, but a former lawmaker who has likely had a hand in drafting actual legislation.

Other examples at the top of my head is Louie Gohmer's comment that rulings that threw out Trump lawsuits after the 2020 election meant people had to take to the streets and use violence. You also have Paul Gosar who posted a cartoon of himself killing a prominent democratic politician. You have representatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has in the part fronted anti-semitic conspiracy theories ("Rothschild space lasers"), participated in White Nationalist conferences and holds a checkered history in social media with liking posts that calls for the assassination of democratic leaders.

On the more insidious level you of course have people who are better at dancing around the topic, who will more signal an acceptance of these things, but know better than to engage in such behavior directly. In that regard I also think we can find offenders from both political parties, but from my perspective the culture seems far more ingrained in conservative eco-system.

Perhaps the best example of how this had made it into mainstream GOP culture, is the RNC who declared the 2021 6th of January attacks on the Capitol for "legitimate political discourse". You of course also have "news" media like Breitbart, Newsmax etc, which often rely on rhetoric which often comes across as violent and accepting of violence. The articles might hold back a tiny bit, so as to have some leeway when making excuses, but like Monterey alluded to: The comment sections knows what is up and often goes completely rabid.

Politicians themselves also report an increase in threats, something that happens to members of both parties. There is also several credible reports out there that GOP party members who has spoken out against "Trumpism" publicly often experience a plethora of threats.

Every responsible parent reminds their kids of some version of what you wrote above. The phenomenon is likely to be amplified by the modern "pay attention to me" mindset that I mentioned earlier. That mindset promotes trolling and cultivation of an outre on-line personality.

But when you are called out for something you wrote 15 years ago on Twitter, a defense that you were trolling or cultivating an on-line personality isn't likely to be effective outside of the right wing derposphere.

That potential issue is mitigated by the sheer volume of that type of material. 20 years from now there will be billions and billions of inane Tik Tok and other assorted forms of messaging (most of which do not exist yet), so in the year 2042 a person being one of the tons of people that has something stupid posted in 2024 is relatively irrelevant. Most parents today grew up in an era (or toward the end of it) where minimal equivalent material exists when they were 18-24, other than perhaps some inappropriate yearbook photos, so the advice often times comes from people who grew up in a different world than exists today. The concerns come from a good place, but advice that a stupid video today will cost you a job 20 years from now is not as accurate as it would have been 20 years ago, because all the people hiring 20 years from now grew up in a much more "watch me" era.

So you're saying that only the right wing derposphere correctly identifies what goes on?

That can't be correct. The extreme is a few who use the "denying the 'only joking'" tactic but it is just the usual few. Most of us recognise that often it was a joke or at that at least it was far from being serious in varying ways (like trolling or outre. Not that that always makes it okay. Also the vast majority are more than happy to let go all but the most heinous stuff got after far less than 15 years.

Because some are just jerks about others there is also some need for a right to be forgotten.

Agree.

But the mob has become the beast driving the ship, in many instances. A beast that has escaped and now attacks supposed friendlies ("left eating their own") and is actively courting and creating controversy where there was otherwise none, which then wakes the deplorables on the others side, who respond with even worse outcomes.

The mob gets what it wants which is wars and the ability to point at bad people but a lot of people the mob virtue signals on behalf of, end up far worse off.

What the mob (far left) never does then is look at their role in creating the problem. Instead the consistent way to duck any responsibility is to joint point and say 'YEs but look how deplorable they are! Look at how bad they actions they took were!', which is true but misses the point. Stop actively trying to trigger the conflicts and there will be less victims of it.

Who are the leaders of this beast/mob and how are they organized and funded? You keep talking about them like a well oiled machine with laser zesty focus in their strategies, so you should have some ideas of how they are organized to do this. Stop roleplaying Grandpa Simpson yelling at clouds, and let's hear your beliefs of how this evil sinister mob is actually organized. Show us the money trail.

All the best.

Is this not just a function of changing times? At one point you would have been liberal if you objected to slavery but still held views that we would consider racist today. You could have thought a woman's right to vote was laughable. For a very long time you could express disdain for homosexuality. The change in attitudes towards those things would have been met by feelings of unnecessary controversy by elements within liberalism. Moderate liberal beliefs now were at one point the extreme radical left. What liberals think is acceptable behavior for a liberal is going to continue to evolve. If those people become the majority, that's how liberalism will be defined.

It sounds like you're blaming rape victims for dressing too provocatively.

The mob is trying to fight and win a culture war that the right started. It wins when there are less bad people, or at least less people behaving badly in public.

The Mississippi dude a few days ago?

Thank you for providing some real-life examples. Those folks you named seem "deplorable" indeed.

Sure. No one is saying their is no use for activism and pushing boundaries. There is.

And it is a skill to balance that with some pragmatism. The problem now is that the extremes on the right and left are more often driving than not.

If people here cannot see how extremism on both sides is way too often 'taking over the debate', I don't know what else to say as that seem way out of touch with what is generally understood.

But I would invite anyone who does not see it to test it. Use or create a SM account, and post something reasonable for debate but somewhat controversial to the far left and see if you are able to manage a reasonable discussion?

If you feel real brave make sure that account has links to your other SM accounts and LinkedIn, and see what happens?

See how long it takes for your post to be found and escalated and how long you can maintain any semblance of debate or reasoned discussion. The far left does not want such 'reasoned discussions' to have any place to take place just as they don't want certain comedians, authors, etc to have any place to be able to speak. If you think that hyperbole then test it.