I was commenting on the thread more than Rice. As for Rice, insofar as she is saying people should generally put down the pitchforks I agree with her. Insofar as she is tying that issue specifically to political correctness I find her tiresome. Insofar as she refers to nebulous “forces at work” I find her ridiculous.
This is probably a good point about censorship being not just the state. If an entity actually has power to suppress something then it makes sense to start talking censorship, and I can see how you could have an oligopoly that does so by tacit agreement without any explicit collusion. On the other hand, book publishing in general is a very troubled industry and some people are starting to have success self-publishing, so I’m not sure that publishers really have that kind of power. I guess retailers like Amazon might.
As for mob mentality, we are talking about two different things. One is the mob on twitter calling for some author to be pulled from the shelves (the mob) and the other is the people who actually have the power to do so acquiescing. It’s the latter that might be censoring.
So…she’s saying that political correctness is straining her Dickensean principles to the max?
I wonder if her newly discovered hatred of censorship extends to now being okay with people writing fan fiction of her god-awful Vampire Chronicles…because I seem to recall her being cool with censorship of that sort.
In the United States, your employer can legally fire you in many places for having a specific political affiliation. There are zero laws on the books preventing that. Perhaps to the adherents of the brave new world of market capitalism, I guess that’s not censorship, but it is censorship to me. I find no solace or comfort in the illusion that capitalist forces are a form of just meritocracy where only the worst of us suffer the indignation of being silenced by the weight of the dollar.
I think I’m long past the idea of “legal=moral” and I think it’s time for us to collectively grow up and move past “non-government censorship=hunky-dory freedom to say whatever, man.” We can’t even pretend this kind of thing only happens to public personas with large mouths and larger salaries anymore. The right-wing has cottoned on to the “Name-em-and-shame-em” game (I’d argue they invented it) and it’s only a matter of time before they apply it to far more brutal effect. When it comes to entrenched power-structures, always remember: Anything you can do, they can do better, and with a lot more violence.
For my druthers, the line comes down between “is someone preventing you from saying something, or just giving you consequences for saying something?” It can be a fuzzy line.
An employer being able to fire you for your political affiliation isn’t STOPPING you from having that affiliation, it’s just providing a consequence for it, and so in the Legal-style “real world doesn’t matter, I HAVE TECHNICAL WORDS!”, I’d say that this isn’t censorship. To Ms. Rice’s point, she can still write and publish whatever she wants - and other people are free to respond to it as they choose, as well.
Meanwhile, if there was some sort of Official Council for What Books Could Be About, and Anne Rice needed to get approved by them to have a book published, that’d be censorship. If there was some sort of law against political affiliation (coughcommunism*) that’d be censorship. It’s explicitly preventing certain kinds of speech from taking place.
Now even if there isn’t technical censorship, it can be a problem. Firing someone for their political views isn’t censorship, but it’s awful. The Twitter Mob can be a bunch of judgmental lemmings, all pitchforks and torches and a hunger for monster-hunting. This can have an effect like censorship in that it marginalizes things that are “unpopular.” It’s something that needs to be worked against.
But it’s not censorship, it’s just…belligerence? The antidote to the twitter mob is a thoughtful book about raping black jews (or whatever), a book worthy of love and respect, and that might need to flow through outsider channels because no professional publisher would touch it since it’s hot-button.
The real issue there is that there’s a narrow cabal of powerful publishers who have near-total market dominance. “Outsider channels” shouldn’t immediately mean publishing it in your basement. And that’s MUCH more a story about the issues with media control and how capitalism’s tendency to accrete and concentrate power leads to monolithic voices.
The problem isn’t so much the Twitter mob, it’s the fact that once you get 5 people saying “no,” your options are pretty much exhausted.
First of all, I go back on my earlier suggestion that censorship had to be by the state. It has to be by someone who has sufficient power to actually censor. I’m sure in America that includes some corporations. Also, I think we have to be careful about what we consider official powers, given by the state. If the state set the murder penalty at 25 years, and allowed people to buy off years of prison for $100,000 each, would that be state-sanctioned murder for billionaires? I would say yes. When it comes to not protecting people from being fired because of their political affiliation, I would say that these days if a government isn’t protection human rights then it is fair to say it is violating human rights. The US has ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, they ought to actually enforce it.
But I disagree that being fired for your political affiliation is censorship. It’s not theft or murder either. Losing your job isn’t being censored, it’s losing your job. That doesn’t mean it’s not totally unjust, but I can’t see how it’s anything like censorship. Even if your job was to write political columns and you were fired because you were writing about unpopular politics.
I’d say to call something censorship, it has to 1) be actually effective at suppressing speech; and 2) be in service of maintaining power by the censors. Without both of those it seems like a kind of backdoor Godwin to me.
Pretty sure people would have asked sailors not to swear when they came ashore 100s of years ago before political correctness was a “thing”.
Not swearing in front of people or in places that you know it will offend is just common courtesy, not political correctness. Or are you like this in church and day care too?
Before the Revolution, here in the East Europe, we used to joke that we have the freedom of speech, we just don’t always have the freedom after the speech.
It leads to fear to talk. Leads to self-censorship, the most pernicious kind of speech infringements.
Ooof. Yeah, self-censorship is the WORST, because it doesn’t rely on a legal code to be draconian and awful, so there’s nothing to directly push back at. It’s just…“you don’t say those things.”
I’m pretty sure that’s what Ms. Rice is seeing as one of the problems of the Twitter-mob! In her situation, the antidote is mostly to break up the publishing monopolies to encourage greater competition and allow for a diversity of ideas. That’s a big ask, but the main reason iron-fisted oligarchies fail isn’t usually because they stop trying to silence unpopular ideas. It’s usually because someone ELSE is better at popularizing those unpopular ideas, even to those within the bounds of the thought control. The best antidote to “you don’t say those things” is when someone says those things and it’s loud and clear and unafraid and then they get away with it.
Anne Rice doesn’t need the Twitter Mob to accept her black jewish rape novel, she just needs to show that the Twitter Mob can’t stop it and that it’s good and worthy despite their howls of protest. That’s harder than making another vampire porn series (and probably harder than it SHOULD be), but it’s always hard to go against the grain.
Maybe her and her sympathetic publishing connections (of which I’m sure there are some!) should found their own publishing house specializing in outsider fiction. I can promise I’d give it a fair shot.
I haven’t gone into the full complaint, but was this actually about her writing Jewish characters? Is she seriously going soft-Protocols here? You know, “those people who control the media” etc etc.
Well, that’s a reason it’s bad. I mean, my example of a state that lets rich people commit murder for a fee would also lead to self-censorship. But I don’t think labeling everything that scares people “censorship” makes much sense.
Who would have guessed that Anne Rice reads Jezebel?
Because calls for more diversity or inclusivity or sensitivity in a genre that is typically by and for middle-class/white/christians is met with blowback, resistance and calls of censorship… gee, this argument sounds familiar… where have I heard this before?
That’s obviously arguable. I don’t see anything inherently wrong with a few hours in the stocks as punishment, especially compared with what modern society does to punish criminals.
I bet public shaming and humiliation would have lower recidivism rates than the system we have now.
And “justice” can be defined as “a toasted bagel with chive cream cheese”, but that would be a stupid and confusing definition indeed.
Defining criticism as a form of censorship could actually be another form of censorship if it is used as an attempt to discourage criticism. It’s like a “first speaker” doctrine Oroborous.
Much better, I think, to use a strict definition of censorship so that we don’t have to carefully analyze every instance of criticism ever to determine whether it crosses the impossibly fuzzy line between criticism and this custom-made loose definition of censorship.
Suppose that 300,000 twitter users have something substantive, yet negative, to say about a person.
How do we determine the difference between this honest and widespread sharing of opinion vs. an attempt to use shame mobs to punish or censor someone?
Should people refrain from honest criticism because of the chance that many people might share and echo their opinion? EDIT: And isn’t that technically censorship according to the loose definitions being used in this thread?
It’s not like there’s a shadowy cabal of people coordinating twitter attacks on people they don’t like*. People express criticism on twitter, and sometimes that criticism is widespread.
*Well, actually, there is. But those people scream about political correctness and censorship louder than anyone. This whole thing is so recursive that I’m not even sure if that’s ironic.
