No, I definitely don't support any censorship of public officials, especially ones voted into office. Everything they say should be available to the public.

Then it is their constituents jobs to decide their political fate at re-election time based on their words and actions.

AOC didn't send the CEO a private email saying she was concerned with his praise of the president. She used a public platform where she wields considerable power to condemn him. This is definitely AOC sending a message of the consequences of verbally stepping out of line. It is textbook censorship.

I actually can't conceive of a good faith argument this isn't censorship.

WN, want to try? If nothing else I view your arguments as attempting to follow consistent principles and being made in good faith, even if I disagree with some of them.

We know you can't.

I don't think that an elected official condemning a CEO in a tweet, or a speech, or whatever is censorship. The CEO is free to respond using whatever platform they want and take other steps like encouraging customers and employees to vote against against the elected official or funding competitors and groups who oppose them, and lots of other things.

By this definition it seems there is no such thing as censorship in the US, as we all ultimately have legal freedom of speech.

You're almost there! Keep going!

I agree with campfirewest. Censorship requires actual suppression of expression. I don't see how AOC's tweet can be said to suppress any speech or expression. There is no actual threat involving the power of her elected office, as far as I can see. So, it's definitely not censorship.

AOC is free to say what she wants and we should be free to vote with our wallets.

And yeah, with some limits, we all still have our legal freedom of speech and are free to say what we want.

Ok, fair enough. Are there any real world US examples that you think would meet the threshold for censorship?

Seems like a trip to Wikipedia's entry on censorship in the US would clear up some confusion here.

I think more generally the whole "cancel culture" discussion involves a pretty wide range (or even a spectrum, in a sense) of phenomena involving norms about speech. Censorship would be at one end of the spectrum. Arguments about people being too dismissive of others' views (e.g. on the first page of this thread) are at the other end. Campaigns to get people fired are closer to the censorship end of the spectrum (and yet are not censorship) than being snarky on twitter or promoting a boycott.

I doubt it's possible to lump it all together or delineate a unified theory of speech norms. It's too complicated. Obviously there is not, should not be, and probably could not be any such thing as speech without consequences. I'm sure someone already said that the arguments are about cultural norms and how closed or open they ought to be in different contexts. I don't know really, it's hard to do more than evaluate on a case by case basis. AOC's tweet doesn't bother me. Nor anything in Emily VanDerWerff's tweets about Yglesias signing the letter. The letter about Pinker seemed over the top to me, and I think there have been other examples that did too. But there's never going to be a simple rule for this.

My main issue with her letter, and similar letters, is the accusation of plethora of anti-trans dog whistles, without articulating what those were. Like I said, if she was sitting down to do a Joe Rogan podcast (which I doubt she would ever do) he would give her the same respect and courtesy he gives all his guests, but he would definitely ask her what she means by that, and I would want to hear the answer.

Conservatism, in two tweets





Popehat is obviously correct:

Trumps tweets in regards to the NFL seem a pretty good comp for AOC's tweet against the GOYA CEO. In both cases a politician using their power to attempt to punish a private individual economically for speech they don't approve of.

I would label both anecdotes as examples of censorship. But it seems most of you have a more narrow definition of censorship and would not; so be it.

And clearly the signatories of the paper recognize the right uses their own version of cancel culture that they don't approve of. It was the first thing they said in the letter. So no big GOTCHA there.

I am actually watching Tucker right now. I never do, but this topic and his mention in it inspired me. At this moment Tucker and his guest (whom I don't really know who he is) pretty much seem to be giving suggestions (directions?) directly to the President what he should do moving forward. They didn't even really try to couch it subtly. The guy basically said, "If the President is watching now, this is what he should say and do..." Pretty wild.

none of this is censorship. cancel culture isn't real. stop being a racist bigoted piece of **** and people might like you/follow you/ buy your products. keep being a racist bigoted piece of **** and people might not buy your products/ give you advertising revenue.

we should be absolutely happy with the ability for the public to have that power.

censorship isn't being FREE of all consequences from your words and actions.

if you want to talk about how at will employment is shitty for the average person and how they can be fired for any reason including making the company look bad with online personal statements than that's maybe a conversation. if you want to talk about how absolutely insane and unjust citizens united is and how corporations are "people" and have "speech" and can try and use it to take advantage/punish actual people then maybe that's a censorship conversation. but people deciding to not buy from a latin food company because the owner supports and praices a piece of **** bigot isn't.

I just find it ironic that it is the left that champion the arts sector the most and campaigning for more funding for artists to be able to have a platform to show their original material (and getting paid for it too) and yet the left on the other hand are restricting their artistic freedoms. Not the overtly racist art as I think we can agree that these artists would not be creating that work but the more sensitive subject matter that might be considered to be offensive to certain races by some circles but acceptable to others as a showcase of either the reality of the current world of what certain people are still facing in terms of hardships or historically that this what certain people faced in the years before in terms of social inequality.

Cancel culture is probably the wrong terminology. It's really the increasing politicization in society. Things that were apolitical are now becoming political. It's not necessarily a bad thing. At one point agreement that blacks should have little political power or that non straight people shouldn't have open relationships filtered through society so having entertainment that made fun of black people or portrayed non straight people as deviant weren't even political points, they were just how things were.

Of course the opposite end of the spectrum is increased polarization and breakdown of society as politicization grinds every part of society down and everything becomes impossible to do with civil war, uncertainty, and violence real possibilities

lol The President vs some random House member isn't even close. A President has far more influence/reach. Trump's been attacking private citizens left and right since practically day1.

Back in the day the kkk/white supremacist morons might do their little march once a year or whatever then go crawl back in whatever hole they came out of and largely be tuned out of most people's lives. On the Internet they've been free to blast their terrible message round the clock--it's been a Massive boon for them.

This.

...

Damn, it took 20 less years.

I thought AOC was a Farrrrrrr Left radical commie?

lolol I knew about Bari Weiss trying to get anti-Israel professors cancelled in college but didn't know she had a Bret Stephens-like moment of trying to get one of her Twitter critics cancelled as recently as 2018

bahahahahahaha

A Democratic NYT writer is hypocritical?

Hold on, let me get my fainting couch.

I think the current, liberal view is pretty much the only way to "push society forward", whatever that means. People get very strong protections for who they are: race, gender identity, sexual orientation; but less for what they believe and what they say or do.

Conservatives want far less identity based normalization (Of course you can fire someone for being transgender or gay) and also want to cancel people for beliefs and what they do (flag kneeling). The conservative views were almost universally held 60 years ago, when cancel culture was far more pervasive and all encompassing than it was today.