Oh, for fuck’s sake. Why is it so hard for some white people to understand: being subject to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia (or just being an asshole) is exhausting, emotionally and intellectually; a subtle display of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia is still racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia; no one owes you the effort to educate and/or just deal with your ass (and certainly not anyone who is being subject to your racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia). It doesn’t matter if you don’t have “bad intentions” or aren’t “a bigoted person;” your intentions don’t matter at all (leaving aside the issue that people don’t want to admit their own bigotries, even - especially - to themselves). In demanding that people must deal with you, you’re demanding emotional labor from others to which you have no right.
It’s also fucking outrageous that the NYTimes hasn’t been giving anywhere near this kind of attention to actual right-wing censor culture which is literally banning - and burning - books, criminalizing speech, and doing real harm. I guess all that doesn’t hurt their fucking feelings…
Also, the emphasis on “no shunning” means they think they have a right to make people listen to it.
Oh, I think responding is okay with them - because that forces people to listen to and engage with whatever they’re saying, ultimately on their terms. What upsets them is the idea that people will actively be not listening to them in the first place (because of what they previously said), I think.
Given that a large number of the people who seem to advocate this view are of a certain persuasion, I expect they’d settle for “freedom speech”. We’d all know whose “freedom” they were concerned about, wouldn’t we!
Shaming and shushing is how we set acceptable norms in human society .
It’s also how we’ve controlled society in not such a nice way though. A lot of now acceptable things were “shameful” in the not-so-distant past. That’s kind of the problem. We all support shaming of things we feel unacceptable, but feel that shaming of things that we think are fine is itself unacceptable.
Well, yeah. People support things they support and oppose things they oppose. That fact tells you shockingly little about the inherent value of supporting and opposing in themselves though.
Sure, but part of how that was changed was the shaming of the shaming speech. If we had all been “polite” about al the speech it is more of a “first talker wins” situation (or in reality it is actually going to be a “speech closest to the norms of society wins, everything else is rude dissent!”).
How dare people object to attempts to normalize far-right extremism!
I bet this editorial was triggered by an incident at Yale. (Couldn’t read all the NYT article.)
The Toronto Star’s Heather Mallick was suckered by a classic example of the Trojan Speaker Strategy. (And Nicholas A. Christakis works for Koch-funded organizations.)
How dare protestors be upset by a speaker who is chief lawyer of a lawyer organization that advocates this:
“Many on the right, for all their braying about cancel culture, have embraced an even more extreme version of censoriousness as a bulwark against a rapidly changing society, with laws that would ban books, stifle teachers and discourage open discussion in classrooms.” (from NYT editorial)
Not furious just because it is true, but furious bc the NYTimes then says that the right’s behavior of Censorship and book bans and using the LAW to silence speech (which is against the Constitution, you dumb NYT editorialist) is somehow equivalent to the left’s refusal to give privately owned platforms to the very people that are telling lies and trying to use the law to silence opinions. “Both-sides” is BS when one side is saying “don’t spew racist crap” and the other is trying to outlaw teaching actual history.
This whole piece is disingenuous and not in good faith. It appears to have been written by someone like MTG or Bobo the CO Clown. The writer should be fired, and the NY Times should hold their collective head in shame for years to come.
Totally. The unspoken major premise is that if your shitty beliefs are sincere we are required to respect and accommodate them. That’s a notion pushed by hard-line religions the world over, but especially victim-card-playing American Evangelicals. That the New York Times is now dog-whistling said manufactured idea is very indicative of their continued listing to the right.
You’re conflating laws about speech with norms about speech, as well as societally accepted behaviours. As an immigrant trans lesbian woman, trust me, you don’t have tell me about being shamed for everything I say and do. I’m pretty sure I’m qualified to call out how that is different than what the NYT is advocating here.
And a lot of now-unacceptable things, like open bigotry, were far from shameful in the past. Society changes for better and worse in its view of who deserves the basic human dignity of being allowed to live as one’s authentic self. We push forward the goal of tolerance by pushing back against intolerance, which brings us back to Popper’s Paradox.
Or, put another way, feeling comfortable shaming someone for being gay or a PoC or a Jew or a Muslim (as was societally acceptable for a long time) is not the moral equivalent (or the ontological equivalent, for that matter) of feeling comfortable shaming someone for being a fascist or ethno-nationalist.
Only in America can you clutch your pearls and shout “Hate Speech!” when a fellow citizen displays their disgust at your racist comments. Free Speech* means saying whatever you want, as long as you don’t offend the feelings of the oppressor.
From the same mental geniuses that introduced “Snowflakes” and “Fuck your feelings” into the political lexicon.
Damn. Fuck your damn racist unapologetic bigoted feelings. Fuck them gently with a fucking chainsaw.
I can’t upvote your comment enough. The idea that because someone SAYS that they are sincere about the nonsense that they are spewing, and thinks said nonsense should then be taken more seriously due to their sincere belief in it, is itself not only ridiculous but it is also insultingly illogical.
I for one, have had my fill of being force-fed religious justifications for public policy decisions. And I’m exhausted with having to show kindness and understanding to zealots who don’t know the first thing about their own religion and who freely misinterpret it, and then make no effort to educate themselves or put themselves in others shoes.
I’m happy to show respect to any other human, but that does not require that I respect or tacitly agree with their beliefs. The ultimate irony is that the same individuals who squeal the loudest about “cancel culture” and CRT are the first to try to stifle others who disagree.
I think. on the whole, society is getting better, but it’s the fallacy of “whig history” to think that no changes are ever realized to be missteps in retrospect. And while shaming someone for espousing actual fascist or ethno-nationalist ideas may be laudable, these terms have a long history of simply meaning “something I disagree with” as Orwell noted even in his own time.
Which is precisely why I said “for better or worse”.
May be laudable? You seem to be implying that there was a time when shaming a fascist or white supremacist (or an open Stalinist for that matter, since you bring up Orwell’s views) because one disagreed with their views was not laudable. Could you expand on that?
