One of the greatest developments of the modern age is the ‘presumption of innocence’ - if you bring accusations against someone, you are required to prove their guilt and they are not required to prove their innocence. There is no room for histrionics in a courtroom: you study the evidence, consider any defence the defendant might mount,…
One of the greatest developments of the modern age is the ‘presumption of innocence’ - if you bring accusations against someone, you are required to prove their guilt and they are not required to prove their innocence. There is no room for histrionics in a courtroom: you study the evidence, consider any defence the defendant might mount, and then pass judgement. If, on one hand, you see the defendant making racist speeches to a hate group, you would reasonably conclude that the defendant is, in fact, a racist. On the other hand, if the defendant pointed out that foreign students do worse in school because they are learning a second language from scratch, that is not a racist statement and people who insist otherwise are trying to cause trouble.
If someone is found guilty of being a racist, after a careful examination of the evidence and the defence, punishment can be administered in a calm and sober and inherently deserved manner. That is how the courts are supposed to work. We don’t shoot a suspect on the grounds he might be guilty and then put on trial; we put him on trial first, we ensure he has a lawyer and the presumption of innocence, and then we determine, to the best of our ability, if he is guilty. The central problem with cancel culture is that punishment is administered first and then - far too often - the victim is discovered not to have been racist, or the punishment is so massively over-the-top that the publishers wind up looking like monsters.
I think most right-wingers such as myself would have far less problems with the concept of cancel culture, or accountability in general, if there was actually a process for considering such charges soberly, without administering any punishment before guilt is actually established. But instead, we live in a world where accusations of racism are recognised and any credibility cancel culture once had has been lost in a nightmarish world of accusations, denunciations, struggle sessions, and a bunch of other horrors that ruin careers and lives, destroy any belief in actual racism/bigotry and imbue far too many people with the belief that anyone who practices cancel culture is not right, and cannot be right, but someone who is dangerously insane and must be stopped.
Whatever you think of gun rights, would you be happy about someone walking down the street letting off rounds at random? No, no one would. And Donald Trump is reaping the rewards of his enemies boosting his credibility to the skies while simultaneously destroying their own. He could not ask for better enemies.
The point is not that bigotry doesn’t exist. The point is that cancel culture has provoked a knee-jerk reaction that accusations of bigotry are nothing more than lies, attempts to silence debate and quash dissent, and anyone who makes those accusations is de facto untrustworthy. This provides cover to real bigots. Dealing with it will require, at first, an open admission that there were problems and doing what is possible to repair the damage done to innocents who found themselves the victims of witch-hunts.
I think you've strained the analogy to breaking point here. People aren't, by and large, declared racist in a court of law. We don't expect the same evidentiary standards when taking about where a person said or did something racist, sexist, etc as we do in a criminal case. This would be obviously insane.
And on that note, what "open admission" or "damage repair" are you looking for as reparations for cancel culture? What would this look like? Who should be apologising? The white guy who snapped a photo of Emmanuel Cafferty? Or the very likely white guys who fired him? Who should receive the apology? How is any of this working in your mind?
Cancel culture was and is terrible. I've written condemning it several times over the years. I even condemn it in this very article. But again, the fact that some people went over the top doesn't mean that racism/sexism/etc no longer exist. Nor does it mean that the only way to detect bigotry is to have a notarised letter, signed in triplicate, declaring that the person in question is racist. Or that if you can't meet that impossible evidentiary standard, you should default to making excuses for it
I don't and never have thought the solution to bigotry, except in the most egregious cases, should involve firing somebody. I've never, not a single time, made a defence of cancel culture. I'm saying that knee-jerk reactions to anything, even bad things, are almost always childish and irrational and make matters worse in the long run.
And that the "cover" which you rightly point out is being provided to bigots is being provided by the people whose knees are doing the jerking.
TLDR: I'm just not very impressed with or sympathetic to people who abandon reason and nuance, regardless of the consequences, because they blame entire groups for the excesses of a minority of people, many of whom, I'll remind you, were white.
Because, again, if someone is knowingly providing cover to bigots because they're mad at cancel culture, what is the meaningful difference between them and the bigots?
One of the greatest developments of the modern age is the ‘presumption of innocence’ - if you bring accusations against someone, you are required to prove their guilt and they are not required to prove their innocence. There is no room for histrionics in a courtroom: you study the evidence, consider any defence the defendant might mount, and then pass judgement. If, on one hand, you see the defendant making racist speeches to a hate group, you would reasonably conclude that the defendant is, in fact, a racist. On the other hand, if the defendant pointed out that foreign students do worse in school because they are learning a second language from scratch, that is not a racist statement and people who insist otherwise are trying to cause trouble.
If someone is found guilty of being a racist, after a careful examination of the evidence and the defence, punishment can be administered in a calm and sober and inherently deserved manner. That is how the courts are supposed to work. We don’t shoot a suspect on the grounds he might be guilty and then put on trial; we put him on trial first, we ensure he has a lawyer and the presumption of innocence, and then we determine, to the best of our ability, if he is guilty. The central problem with cancel culture is that punishment is administered first and then - far too often - the victim is discovered not to have been racist, or the punishment is so massively over-the-top that the publishers wind up looking like monsters.
I think most right-wingers such as myself would have far less problems with the concept of cancel culture, or accountability in general, if there was actually a process for considering such charges soberly, without administering any punishment before guilt is actually established. But instead, we live in a world where accusations of racism are recognised and any credibility cancel culture once had has been lost in a nightmarish world of accusations, denunciations, struggle sessions, and a bunch of other horrors that ruin careers and lives, destroy any belief in actual racism/bigotry and imbue far too many people with the belief that anyone who practices cancel culture is not right, and cannot be right, but someone who is dangerously insane and must be stopped.
Whatever you think of gun rights, would you be happy about someone walking down the street letting off rounds at random? No, no one would. And Donald Trump is reaping the rewards of his enemies boosting his credibility to the skies while simultaneously destroying their own. He could not ask for better enemies.
The point is not that bigotry doesn’t exist. The point is that cancel culture has provoked a knee-jerk reaction that accusations of bigotry are nothing more than lies, attempts to silence debate and quash dissent, and anyone who makes those accusations is de facto untrustworthy. This provides cover to real bigots. Dealing with it will require, at first, an open admission that there were problems and doing what is possible to repair the damage done to innocents who found themselves the victims of witch-hunts.
It’s what I call the Gobby problem. In spades.
https://chrishanger.wordpress.com/2024/01/25/the-gobby-problem-or-why-we-cant-have-nice-things-any-longer/
"That is how the courts are supposed to work."
I think you've strained the analogy to breaking point here. People aren't, by and large, declared racist in a court of law. We don't expect the same evidentiary standards when taking about where a person said or did something racist, sexist, etc as we do in a criminal case. This would be obviously insane.
And on that note, what "open admission" or "damage repair" are you looking for as reparations for cancel culture? What would this look like? Who should be apologising? The white guy who snapped a photo of Emmanuel Cafferty? Or the very likely white guys who fired him? Who should receive the apology? How is any of this working in your mind?
Cancel culture was and is terrible. I've written condemning it several times over the years. I even condemn it in this very article. But again, the fact that some people went over the top doesn't mean that racism/sexism/etc no longer exist. Nor does it mean that the only way to detect bigotry is to have a notarised letter, signed in triplicate, declaring that the person in question is racist. Or that if you can't meet that impossible evidentiary standard, you should default to making excuses for it
I don't and never have thought the solution to bigotry, except in the most egregious cases, should involve firing somebody. I've never, not a single time, made a defence of cancel culture. I'm saying that knee-jerk reactions to anything, even bad things, are almost always childish and irrational and make matters worse in the long run.
And that the "cover" which you rightly point out is being provided to bigots is being provided by the people whose knees are doing the jerking.
TLDR: I'm just not very impressed with or sympathetic to people who abandon reason and nuance, regardless of the consequences, because they blame entire groups for the excesses of a minority of people, many of whom, I'll remind you, were white.
Because, again, if someone is knowingly providing cover to bigots because they're mad at cancel culture, what is the meaningful difference between them and the bigots?