There might be some examples of average people who end up taking a disproportionate hit for something said or done that’s misinterpreted. In all of the cases I’ve personally witnessed, it wasn’t that one situation that led to the action against them; it was just the last straw in a series of events.
As well, you have to remember that, for decades (centuries, really), bigots and assholes could pull this shit constantly and face zero consequences. A reckoning is long overdue, and “innocent “ victims of that reckoning usual missed the signs (and oh so many corporate sensitivity trainings) that they need to be more careful in what they say and do.
Hell, they were often given fucking statues and medals for doing so… and good jobs and nice houses, and lots of fucking money and respect from our society…
This story was covered in a lot of places at the time, but this was one of the first ones that came up when I Googled for it now, so I had to go with it, given that I wasn’t interested in spending 30 minutes coming up with something that might be deleted within 2 minutes, anyway.
Most of the time I run across articles through NPR and BBC, although I get some info about more mundane internet drama through social media type stuff or random people I know being like “omg did you hear about blah blah blah” and I end up searching for things about said thing because they keep bringing it up and acting like if I don’t immediately drop everything and care about said thing I’m “part of the problem!“ A lot of the times things I look into start to seem kinda ambiguous.
Either way, I am fine with accepting my own immediate experiences as people “in the know” on the internet who call themselves progressive use “lived experience” as a source of truth constantly.
I think it is true that white straight cis men often get away with a lot of things, but I also have seen people act shitty from a lot of backgrounds and in the right circles one can get a lot of leeway! I also think popularity, social finesse, and social capital goes far for a lot of people of any background.
ETA: Also, if the argument is that trying to economically impact powerful people using social media mobbing tactics is ineffective, why are people even bothering to try to do it? What is the point of continuing with an utterly ineffective tactic?
There’s a interview with Thomas Chatterton Williams in the New Yorker.
I think he makes his case much more thoughtfully than the actual open letter. Which may be the point-- perhaps Chomsky and some of the other signers will individually write something elaborating on the letter’s premise. He also says that the letter was a collaborative effort.
It doesn’t answer some important criticisms, though, and the Williams still claims that the canceled authors remain part of “polite society”-- that rings hollow. (I’m not familiar with Williams. Perhaps he’s said some horrible things. In which case, I apologize for my naïveté.)
I read it, too. Mostly disingenuous self-justification BS about the letter. Chotiner is a tough interviewer, but it’s obvious that Williams (consistent with the letter) still believes that most readers will be too stupid to see through his BS.
Lived experience is a source of truth. Denying individual points of view is denying truth. Obviously if you add all those stories up they become rich data about the human experience. Essentially by denying it for a long time we’ve been saying, “It’s just too hard to integrate all this information!” It comes across to me as a bunch of people saying “I can’t figure this out, therefore no one can!” People are grasping at truth, and they are making sense doing so.
That’s different than saying, “Enh, whatever I think goes.” Which is a lot closer to what the Harper’s letter signers are saying.than what people who talk about lived experience being valid are saying.
