So here's the deal, Hans. Many of us are talking about situations that are somewhere in the middle. Situations like...
Nick Sanderman
Bret Weinstein
Emmanual Cafferty, David Shor, and Majdi Wadi
Niel Golightly
David Peterson
Greg Patton
By "in the middle", meaning that some of those nobody knows what actually happened (e.g., Shor I already talked about), but a lot of people feel like if they can
imagine some version that offends them, then that must be the absolute truth.
Others, are based on just flat out misrepresenting it. E.g.,
- the Peterson case: The very article you linked doesn't say he was actually cancelled. In fact, the college page still lists him as teaching there:
https://www.skidmore.edu/art/faculty/peterson-david.php
If anything, it makes the opposite case of the claimed BS that somehow the mob can dictate it, and the employer can do nothing but accept. In fact, his employer clearly could just investigate the incident, decide that there's no clear proof of wrongdoing, and keep him. What we actually see there is actually more of an example that it's not actually that easy to cancel someone, if they hadn't actually been doing something (too) wrong. But no, let's MAKE UP that it's some horrible cancellation story.
Because, I guess, why even bother being offended by the facts, when you can just imagine something that offends you
- Greg Patton, again, wasn't actually cancelled. He was just temporarily suspended from teaching while the college was investigating the accusation, then nothing bad happened to him. Again, the actual college site still lists him as still working there:
https://www.marshall.usc.edu/personnel/greg-patton
So again, contrary to the mis-representation being peddled, the case it actually makes is that it's actually pretty hard to cancel someone if they provably haven't done anything wrong. It's the polar opposite of the "cancel culture" narrative being presented.
- "Nick Sanderman" in the Lincoln Memorial incident is actually Nick Sandman. (Because I guess why bother even getting the name right, if you don't bother getting anything else right
) A schoolkid who not only didn't end up cancelled from anywhere, but got a settlement from CNN for defamation. Again, the case it actually makes is that it's not actually that easy to cancel someone who hasn't actually done anything wrong. In fact, that it can backfire.
I'm sorry, but "in the middle", doesn't also cover stuff you just made up, distorted or wildly exaggerated, in order to be offended by it
Others, frankly, I have no problem seeing why people were being outraged by them. E.g.,
- Niel Golightly actually published an article attacking, among others, feminists for pushing the idea that women are as fit for combat as men are and should have equal rights to join the army. An article which is even titled "
No Right To Fight" and starts from the summary with such gems as, and this is an exact copy-and-paste quote, "
Introducing women into combat would destroy the exclusively male intangibles of war fighting and the feminine images of what men fight for—peace, home, family." Yeah, women are just what men fight to protect, I guess. And it goes downhill from there, even including stuff like that allowing women on an aircraft carrier would mean dealing with problems like prostitution. An article which even he, in his apology, admits it is "
wrong" and "
offensive to women". Those are his words.
I can somewhat sympathize with it being in the past, and maybe he's changed in the meantime, but honestly, that opinion was way backwards and reactionary even for the time he wrote it. It was in fact backwards by a few decades even then. And it's not some fresh kid "experimenting with new ideas", that's a 29 year old guy who still feels a need to go vocal about keeping the girls out of his exclusive tree-house, decades after that opinion stopped being that mainstream. Really, 29 years old isn't the age that works as a "I was a young dumb kid", but at least 10 years overdue to grow up and out of having problems with girls bringing cooties into your exclusive tree house.
And at any rate, I see no problem with there being long term consequences for crapping the bed that hard. If you could just say "sorry" and all is forgotten and forgiven, frankly there wouldn't be any incentive not to. The logical course of action would be to see how far you can get away with it, say sorry, and at the end of the day you're no worse off than when you started.
Etc.
Honestly, I tire of just following your links to try to make the case for you. If you think any of those have merit, please do make your case yourself, not just pass a Gish Gallop of links for someone else to sort through.
It matters very little with whether or not I personally share any beliefs or sentiments with the person being persecuted in this fashion. The adoption of this method as acceptable behavior is a danger to a great many people, people who really have done nothing wrong and don't in any way deserve to have their lives ruined for not toeing the line of an internet orthodocxy.
Except again, even your own list of links shows that in most cases the narrative that random innocent people have their lives ruined purely arbitrarily by some mob, is flat out false. It's pretty much just a made up fiction. In fact most cases (where we know what happened, instead of just making up some narrative to be offended by) make the polar opposite case that it's not actually easy at all to cancel someone who hasn't done anything wrong, and in fact it can backfire.
"I dub thee *bad person*, and thus, now that thou art labeled such, I shall forthwith begin flinging invective in your general direction and will advocate that all others shall likewise shame thee as a bad person"
