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Cancel culture IRL

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Had the studios implemented ideological blacklists on their own initiative, would you say it was okay?

There are at least a few levels of "ok" to parse through.

I'd say that government pressuring private business to blacklist people based on political ideas is considerably more troubling than private businesses deciding not to work with people of particular political persuasion. When governments are going the pressuring, there's no way around it. When private businesses are doing it, you can at least potentially find work at a business that's sympathetic.

All other things being equal, the lack of government pressurepushes things more towards the "ok" realm. I'm a bit surprised this had to be argued, I thought this was one of the few points where I was in agreement with some of the more conservative posters.

Now certain details can put those closer together. If businesses hold monopoly power and or collude together to create comprehensive inescapable blacklisting across industries, it gets pretty close.

And while the law should be content neutral, I'm not content neutral on what I find to be "ok". I'm fine with the law allowing businesses to fire or not hire people (as long as contracts and unions allow) based on most things rather than protected class. But there are certainly some reasons for taking such an action I'd find more ethically acceptable than others. Some might make me want not to patronize that business. Maybe make a tweet encouraging others to do the same.
 
Had the studios implemented ideological blacklists on their own initiative, would you say it was okay?

Haven't they though? Nazism is an ideology isn't it? Even if an extreme one. No studio would work with a Neo-Nazi, therefore Nazi's are de facto blacklisted. Theres no "officially kept blacklist" to be sure. But I don't believe there was during the "red scare" either. Legally speaking, political views/ideology are not protected federally, so yes, legally speaking, it would be OK for them to decide not to work with anyone for their views.

Morally, no I have no problem with them refusing to work with people with certain ideologies. Other people take it much further. Ie the people calling for Chris Pratt to be "cancelled" for just being conservative. I think those people are morons, I also think they are entitled to their opinion, and are free to express it. Disney is free to do what they will, including recasting "Starlord". I'd be free to cancel my Disney+ sub and let them know why, which is what I'd do if that were the case.

ETA: if the studio colluded not to hire a specific person, and that could be proved, then it may fall afoul of anti-trust legistlation. Yeah I'm OK with that. But all of them deciding not to work with communists, or fascists on their own... well thats their business
 
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Illegal in my country.
In the UK, a corporation cannot refuse to contract with otherwise qualified employees b/c they are communists or fascists or what-have-you? I have to admit this comes as something of a surprise.
 
Haven't they though? Nazism is an ideology isn't it? Even if an extreme one. No studio would work with a Neo-Nazi, therefore Nazi's are de facto blacklisted. Theres no "officially kept blacklist" to be sure. But I don't believe the was during the "red scare" either. Legally speaking, political views/ideology are not protected federally, so yes, legally speaking, it would be OK for them to decide not to work with anyone for their views.
There were a few lists being published and passed around during the red scare, such as the Red ChannelsWP pamphlet.

Also, I wasn't really asking for a legal opinion. We already know it was legal for the studios to blacklist as they did. My question is whether you think it was ethical. I do not.
 
All other things being equal, the lack of government pressure pushes things more towards the "ok" realm.
Agreed, although I'd point out that the government wields somewhat less influence over what is publishable these days. Quite a few landmark 1st Amendment cases between then and now, and several lightly-regulated media platforms have arisen.

Now certain details can put those closer together. If businesses hold monopoly power and or collude together to create comprehensive inescapable blacklisting across industries, it gets pretty close.
I'm not sure if they need to collude if there is a list of undesirables floating around. Dunno if it will come to that, though.
 
There were a few lists being published and passed around during the red scare, such as the Red ChannelsWP pamphlet.

Also, I wasn't really asking for a legal opinion. We already know it was legal for the studios to blacklist as they did. My question is whether you think it was ethical. I do not.

Still not clear on how determining the ethics of fantasy scenarios is useful.
 
I'm not sure if they need to collude if there is a list of undesirables floating around. Dunno if it will come to that, though.

In this particular case, Carano was pretty promptly given another job opportunity.

There's enough diversity in company values and culture, that we're pretty far from industry wide blacklists for simple reasonable political beliefs. I suppose there might be certain acts of speech that might get someone drummed out of an industry. Coming out as a proud neo-nazi as someone here mentioned might do it.

I suppose you could say that if culture shifted significantly, that same fate could happen to a belief that I don't think deserves such exclusion, even without government action. You'd be correct, and that has in the past been the case in many places and times. There have been times where you could become unemployable if you were known to be gay.

But as I mentioned before, I'm not content agnostic. It's not possible to remove the tools entirely that could potentially lead to abuse without removing freedom of commerce and association entirely. I'm happy to save the alarm bells for the actual abuse, when the mere potential of abuse is nothing new and nothing that can be eliminated.
 
There were a few lists being published and passed around during the red scare, such as the Red ChannelsWP pamphlet.

Also, I wasn't really asking for a legal opinion. We already know it was legal for the studios to blacklist as they did. My question is whether you think it was ethical. I do not.

No I don't think its ethical for the major studio heads to get together and come up with a list of undesirable persons that none of them will hire. Thats cartel power.

ETA: and one post up Cavemonster just mentioned Carano received another offer from a studio. Therefore it seems there is no studio blacklist and this is all hypothetical posturing.
 
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Now let's consider reciprocity.

This takes a little more self-reflection, and consideration for the long-term consequences of the approach.

This is utterly failed reasoning because it doesn't take into the equation that the things currently getting people 'canceled' are things that strongly indicate or outright state they wouldn't hold up this reciprocal approach in the first place. It's demanding to maintain a peace treaty with people who would, and have, broken the terms already and will happily break them again.

If the 'conservative' side becomes the popular one in ten years, there is absolutely zero reason to believe they'd reciprocate even the current level of tolerance for opposing ideas that outright obvious lies about reality enjoy which people like you find unacceptably low.

Others have taken apart some other aspects of your reasoning, and Joe already pointed out the banality of pretending the paradox of tolerance isn't a well known phenomenon, but it bears repeating that not being tolerant of things like moronic rationalizations for a party to undemocratically seize power is one of the only ways to maintain a functioning modern society.

tl;dr - It's not valid to pretend the people arguing in bad faith will start arguing in good faith if we're nice to them. They won't honor a peace treaty they already say they should be able to break.
 
...one post up Cavemonster just mentioned Carano received another offer from a studio.
Not sure if I'd call The Daily WireWP a studio, even in the off-off-Broadway sense. Suppose we'll see what comes of it, though.

Therefore it seems there is no studio blacklist and this is all hypothetical posturing.
It is hypothetical, to be sure. I'm trying to wrap my mind around what made the original Hollywood blacklists bad, and I'm unconvinced that it was either (1) the fact that they were kicked off by HUAC or (2) the fact that they were industry wide. The second fact is in some doubt, actually, since screenwriters were still paid to do their usual work, albeit paid somewhat less and uncredited for a time.
 
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Now here's the challenging part of this. What if the tables turn? What if, 10 years from now, it's not conservatism that is viewed as evil and unacceptable, but liberalism? What if it is your own political beliefs that are painted as socially unacceptable and justifying retaliatory measures such as Sandmann faced?

To expand on what Tyr said.

We don't need to imagine this. Conservative "cancelling" is and has always been rampant. They've been a little less effective lately, but god bless em they try.

For most of history many, maybe the majority of things that would create widely held extrajudicial consequences were the beliefs and actions that a conservative majoity frowned on. Go back to the Scarlet Letter. The Million Mom's. Trump's calls against... lots of stuff.

There's no imagining if the shoe were on the other foot. The shoe has been on the conservative foot consistently as long as shoes existed.

So in this moment where a small amount of the power has shifted, the suggestion that exercising that power is the thing that creates the risk for the other side to use it looks silly.
 
Now here's the challenging part of this. What if the tables turn? What if, 10 years from now, it's not conservatism that is viewed as evil and unacceptable, but liberalism? What if it is your own political beliefs that are painted as socially unacceptable and justifying retaliatory measures such as Sandmann faced?

Here's the thing. Conservatism isn't evil in itself, but currently it has embraced a lot of evil ideas, in that those ideas project anyone that isn't conservative as being evil just for wanting to be treated equally.

Conservatism has embraced White Nationalism, Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, and Transphobia. It has embraced the anti-science movements in climate change and now medicine. It tries to install religious laws all while claiming that it doesn't have to follow any law than it doesn't want to because of religious reasons. Its representatives are openly hypocritical and openly lie, while its supporters don't just embrace and celebrate those lies, but defend them even when they are indefensible. Conservatives call non-conservatives demons, the devil's army, and worse, all while trying to claim that they are the moral ones, and they blame all of their own faults and errors on others rather than taking actually responsibility for their own actions, something that is a major part of conservatism. A lot of conservatives are now to some degree supporters of the QAnon movement which openly calls for the massacre of Democrats and their leadership. And these are just a few of the things that conservatism in the US has become. (and it's leaking out into the rest of the world too!)

If in ten years Progressive Socialism has gone down that path, then yes, anyone still embracing it should be painted as socially unacceptable. When you do things that are socially unacceptable, you should be prepared to accept the consequences of those actions regardless of your politics.

Instead of whinging about how horrid people are being, maybe consider that when you openly support evil, people are going to consider you a part of that evil. And yes that includes Sandmann who by wearing a MAGA hat was promoting the evil of Trump and his policies and so while he may not have been the aggressor in that case, he doesn't get a pass any more than someone that waves a confederate flag or wears a swastika should get a pass.

This is the thing you and other conservatives seem to be unable to realise. When progressives and liberals do things that are socially unacceptable, they get turned on by other progressives and liberals and have to suffer the consequences. When conservatives do so, instead of other conservatives taking the lead and correcting them, they instead embrace them and leave it up to the non-conservatives to have to provide the consequences for those actions. Heck, look at the current state of the GOP. Instead of the GOP censuring Trump for creating such anger about a stolen election that wasn't, and then pointing that anger directly at Congress and his own VP resulting in the worst insurrection in modern times, the GOP is trying to censure those few Republicans willing to actually take a stand against Trump's reprehensible actions. Cancel culture is merely the delivery of consequences for those reprehensible words and actions by the other side because your own side refuses to take responsibility and do it themselves.

You want to end "Cancel Culture" then stop whinging like a bunch of victims because others want equality and stop embracing the bad actors in Conservatism instead of dealing with them yourselves when they cross clear anti-social lines. Stop standing beside them and expecting non-conservatives to either tolerate the intolerance shown to them or to have to deal with the crap themselves. Because non-conservatives are sick of having to put up with or clean up the **** that conservatives keep dumping on them.
 
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To expand on what Tyr said.

We don't need to imagine this. Conservative "cancelling" is and has always been rampant. They've been a little less effective lately, but god bless em they try.

For most of history many, maybe the majority of things that would create widely held extrajudicial consequences were the beliefs and actions that a conservative majoity frowned on. Go back to the Scarlet Letter. The Million Mom's. Trump's calls against... lots of stuff.

There's no imagining if the shoe were on the other foot. The shoe has been on the conservative foot consistently as long as shoes existed.

So in this moment where a small amount of the power has shifted, the suggestion that exercising that power is the thing that creates the risk for the other side to use it looks silly.
You argue that it has always been a good thing, and now it is just more good.
 
You argue that it has always been a good thing, and now it is just more good.

I don't think that was his point at all.

Conservatives have used it for decades, if not longer, to keep anyone that didn't fit the White, Christian, Heterosexual Male from raising their head above the parapet. To keep those unclean minorities in their place.

Now it has been turned against them by those that are sick of the constant stream of hate, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and sexism coming from conservatives it is the worst thing ever and poor conservatives are the victims! Well boo, bloody, hoo. Conservatives have been dishing it out forever, if they aren't willing to clean up their act on their own, then time for them to get some of their own medicine back.
 
You argue that it has always been a good thing, and now it is just more good.

That's not what I'm saying in the slightest.
Did you notice the quote at the top of my post? That means my post was meant to be read in the context of the point I was quoting. The same goes for the reference I made to tyr.

Emily's Cat argued that if people use pressure on businesses to enforce values currently held by the left we could be creating some terrible precedent that could be used to enforce values we don't think are so great.

I reminded them that we are not currently lacking such a precedent and there was never a pause in the actions they were warning about. Essentially that the argument to close the barn gate didn't hold much value when the horse was already out.
 
I don't think that was his point at all.

Conservatives have used it for decades, if not longer, to keep anyone that didn't fit the White, Christian, Heterosexual Male from raising their head above the parapet. To keep those unclean minorities in their place.

Now it has been turned against them by those that are sick of the constant stream of hate, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and sexism coming from conservatives it is the worst thing ever and poor conservatives are the victims! Well boo, bloody, hoo. Conservatives have been dishing it out forever, if they aren't willing to clean up their act on their own, then time for them to get some of their own medicine back.
This echoes the "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" argument.
 
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