Glenn Greenwald was cancelled from the Harper's Letter warning about "cancel culture"

I don’t even know who to begin to answer this. It’s like someone asked what common interests a shark, an octopus, and coral have in defending being wet.

Everyone who signed the letter was someone whose name increased the likelihood that the editors of Harpers would publish an open letter signed by them. They don’t want to be people whose names would make the editors of Harper less likely to publish an open letter signed by them.

It seems they thought that Glenn Greenwald was such a person. What they have in common is precisely the power to do what they did, and what they fear losing is that power.

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Some example of the too hasty and ill-targeted variety:

BTW, Chomsky says:
https://twitter.com/UD880/status/1282311000285315075

Link found in the discussion at

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/07/11/blog-about-a-column-about-the-harpers-letter-heres-some-discourse-about-a-discourse-about-what-happens-when-the-discourse-takes-precedence-over-reality/

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One of the best discourses that I’ve heard on the topic lately was on a recent episode of The Gist podcast. The host pointed out that most of the debate over the Harper’s letter has come in the form of competing opinion pieces (such as the ones mentioned above!) but not many actual back-and-forth debates, so he arranged to have one on his blog between one of the signatories of the letter and a prominent writer who disagreed. I thought it was helpful to understand the issues at hand.

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Unfortunately Chomsky is only seeing half of it too, and the other half don’t have voices that can be heard individually.

That other half is my lived experience, transphobia, homophobia, death threats, gaslighting, victim blaming, DARVO. I didn’t get a letter in Harpers though.

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Agreed, I just don’t see any evidence of a common ulterior motive for signing the letter among all the signatories. I think some, like Chomsky, signed without a whole lot of context on the issues surrounding some of the other signatories (e.g. JKR).

Some probably were genuinely responding (albeit from a golden throne of privilege) to the honest observation that public discourse has become ugly, fueled by a culture of personal grievance and at times mob mentality.

Whatever else it is, I just don’t see an organized cabal of elites here trying to maintain a stranglehold on some uniform hegemonic power. Some of the signees, yes for sure.

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They’re all part of the American cultural establishment. You don’t get to sign a letter like that unless you’re a member of the club. Don’t believe me? Write Harper’s asking to be added to the list of signatories on the original on-line post, in alphabetical order with the others.

The privilege that they and others in their group can be arseholes in public without losing their platforms or facing real consequences, even if they’re calling for second-class citizenship or repudiating the existence of certain groups or espousing fascist and bigoted doctrine. As we’ve seen, a lot of people outside the cultural establishment are getting tired of that garbage, so the signatories are worried.

I can go into more detail, but these quotes from two of my comments in the earlier topic will do the job:

America’s cultural elite, at least as represented by the names still on this list, needs to get over its privilege and realise that 99% of Americans have never had a chance to participate in open debate in reputable public forums – frequently because they’ve been barred from them by gatekeepers like the signatories. They might also want to re-acquaint themselves with Popper’s Paradox.

The clubby attitude expressed by the piece not only preserves the “glass floor” for the serial screw-ups and liars they’ve invested themselves in (as prelude to welcoming into the elite), but also enables the presence and tolerance of “missing stairs” in elite circles. I really have to wonder how many of the signatories – including those I admire – at one time or another socialised with the likes of Harvey Weinstein or Jeffrey Epstein, knowing full well about the open secrets of their “quirks” or “pecadilloes” but choosing to laugh it off as “Harvey being Harvey” or “Jeffrey being Jeffrey”. There is deep, deep dysfunction represented by this open letter.

I’d expect better of him and anyone else who signed a brief (2-minute read) but provocative letter without considering context or inquiring as to exactly who else is signing this letter.

Well, you know how it is, when someone is saying that you have no right to exist or you don’t deserve equal rights or that you’re less intelligent due to an immutable characteristic, you tend to take it personally.

Or perhaps you don’t know how it is.

Which the signatories see as members of the out-group using new media platforms to critique them. Critiques of their peers, you see, are only the province of the in-group.

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Middle of Nowhere, France. One of the last places you can self-eject in a stranger’s home, or even enlist that stranger to talk you through your self-expelling, without being cancelled.

You answered your own question.

Public discourse and has always been ugly. Discourse is a nice-sounding word we use to disguise the fact that people make odious, dishonest arguments all of the time and, historically nearly without much public criticism. The difference now (and one of the unifying threads of these signatories) is that now that nearly everyone has access to a (mostly) equal voice, the people that acted as gatekeepers no longer hold that privileged position exclusively.

In other words:

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Ok, I’ve heard this argument before and I have to say that, while there are plenty of valid reasons to criticize the arguments in the letter, saying that it should be dismissed because of some of the individuals making the arguments are bad people is the weakest form of criticism. Good arguments can come from bad people, and vice versa. And I’ll wager that some of the more liberal writers and thinkers who signed onto it knew exactly what they were doing, whether you agree with it or not.

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Sure, but to sign your name to a document that will live in history is to align yourself with those others’ beliefs. It is quite literally the same as not-actually-nazis marching in formation with actually-explicit-nazis in Charlottesville and claiming that they aren’t in alignment. You are welcome to believe that, but the flag you are marching under thinks otherwise.

Another way to look at it; if your beliefs and statements require clarification that you don’t believe the opposite of what you profess to believe, it’s time to re-examine how you present them.

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Absolutely, never said I didn’t, or that anybody shouldn’t, expect better from him or anybody who signed.

I absolutely agree and sympathize, even if I haven’t experienced the same oppressions or degree thereof. I apologize that my wording didn’t clarify better what I meant by culture of personal grievance. I definitely do not mean it as a way of dismissing the voices of people who are advocating for their civil rights.

And I am in no way defending somebody like JKR, whose views are abhorrent, nor saying she shouldn’t face consequences. Only that there are other signees who I respect and who I don’t believe are engaging in a cynical exercise to consolidate some kind of sociocultural power over others. Are they oblivious of their position, how they come across by signing it, and not suspicious enough of the motives of other signees? Yes, absolutely.

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That’s really the meat of the matter, isn’t it? What consequences do they actually face? Alex Jones is still a millionaire with a huge audience, even after a massive and sustained deplatforming initiative. As @thomdunn mentions:

In other words, people who already faced oppression, both in real, actual life and in the made-up glamour of social and professional online media. This is what being “cancelled” actually looks like:

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Point taken. But what real power does somebody like Greil Marcus, or for that matter Noam Chomsky, have? They’re academics. Most people ignore them, and we are all free to.

Wynton Marsalis – what power is he protecting? He has been a frequent champion of the voices of marginalized and ignored African Americans. You can’t lump him in with JKR.

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I respect a lot of the signatories, too. I’ve worked with a few of them briefly. And to be clear, I’m not one who’s necessarily against elites or experts in the populist sense. But I also understand that this letter is almost a knee-jerk reaction from those who’ve been so steeped in privilege for decades (not a lot of people under age 55 on that list) that they’re blind to it – to the extent that some of them signed the letter without really reading it or considering the motives of other signatories.

The Internet (not just social media) has democratised public discourse for good and for ill, and in the process reduced these signatories’ privilege. The letter comes out of this place:

They both have a lot of cultural capital amongst American intellectuals, either series as allies or enemies. Marcus is still an influential music critic and tastemaker who’s listened to by the industry.

He lumped himself in with her, not as a TERF but as a member of a clubby little group whose primary concern is protecting their privilege (including Rowling’s to be a bigot).

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Influence of thought. That’s pretty much what it means to be a famous academic.

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Chomsky has Numerous NYT bestsellers and over 200k followers. Marcus has access to one of the largest print and online publications on the planet. Compared to say, some actually disenfranchised person expressing concern on twitter to their 200 followers, I’d say he has quite a lot of power. Sure, it’s not the nuclear football, but most power isn’t that concrete.

But that’s exactly the point; he lumped himself in with JKR. And at a moment when her toxic views were on megablast culturally. To think that walking through dogshit won’t make you track it all over the house is ignorant, at best.

ETA: @gracchus and @Brainspore beat me to it. Agreed!

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That story only tells the start of the problems too. You survived an murder attempt or violent assault? Prepare for a lifetime of PTSD, people doubting your story, telling you that it wouldn’t have happened if you had “stayed” cis or going for the trans panic defence on the attackers behalf.

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Absolutely. Plus all of the LGBTQAI+ victims of domestic assault who never report, the assaults that are intentionally or ignorantly misclassified, the psychological and emotional abuse that has no category or mechanism for reporting and on and on and on.

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This is a “let them eat cake” letter. It is the cultural aristocracy telling the peasants and unwashed masses that don’t have a privileged platform themselves and are expressing discontent, to back off and stop bugging them.

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Appreciate all the informed perspectives on this thread, especially from @gracchus, @cannibalpeas, and @Brainspore. You’ve definitely broadened my thinking about the issue.

I definitely was not dismissing the issue of every signee’s accountability for knowing the context of the letter they signed, and the awful views of fellow signees. I just felt like, in general, people have assigned more power to this group of people than some of them actually possess. Rethinking that assumption now.

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