[Julie Steiner]

I appreciated the following Twitter essay (unrolled) about the letter, and think others will, too:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...692234753.html

For those unfamiliar with the term "sea-lioning":
http://wondermark.com/1k62/

[Mark McDonnell]

It's an interesting piece and largely true I’m sure, and the sea-lion cartoon is genius, but it completely misses the point of the letter. The letter isn't complaining about the impossibility of reasoned debate on the internet (as this suggests). It's complaining about the real life consequences, including being fired, of saying the 'wrong' thing or being on the 'wrong' side of a debate, both on and offline.

[Andrew Szilvasy]

Mark,

Are there scenarios where a person's speech should get them fired? The obvious answer is yes. It's not an infringement of free speech--they're not going to jail.

If we all agree that there are some things a person could say that could and should lead to an employer, we're discussing where that line is. The reality, though, is most people don't actually get "cancelled," and when they are fired, it's because the organization thinks it's not worth having someone like that in their midst.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...burst-n1233161

This man was fired. Is this about his speech being infringed, or is this ultimately about him being a jerk and not being aware we live in a world always being recorded? Why would a real estate agency want this guy working for them?

Meanwhile, DeSean Jackson (an American football player for the Philadelphia Eagles) said a whole bunch of terrible antisemitic things on instagram. He still has his job. Why? The team thinks he'll still make them money. So much for cancellation...

Ultimately if speech is being "chilled" it's because of the panopticon. "Cancel culture" is a natural consequence of the fact that now, when you're in public, everything you do and say is public.

[Mark McDonnell]

Andrew,

I haven't read beyond your opening question yet, the answer to which, I agree, is yes. That misses the simple point I was making that the link Julie posted had missed the point of the Harpers letter. This whole issue seems to lead to a tendency for people to miss the point.

[Julie Steiner]

Okay, if the point of the letter is concern that the free exchange of ideas is constricted by the chilling effects of "real life consequences, including being fired, of saying the 'wrong' thing or being on the 'wrong' side of a debate, both on and offline," maybe you will find Elizabeth Picciuto's take more on topic. Snippets (bolding mine):

I believe the signers would agree with me that the most clear-cut free speech violation is when the state uses its power to punish citizens who criticize it. I believe they would also agree that someone’s free speech is violated when they are threatened with physical injury or death for speaking, even if the threat is made by a person who is not in government. Even though such violations are currently occurring, the signers’ focus is elsewhere.

Their primary concern is that social, cultural, and institutional (but not governmental, except perhaps in its role as an employer) pressures will be brought to bear on people simply for expressing their beliefs. Their letter decries that people have been fired and publicly shamed for their words, that certain works of journalism or art have not been published or exhibited, that creators and academics feel constricted in what they can express without retribution.

They write, “The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation.”

An intolerant society can sometimes inhibit speech wrongly. But it is absolutely not the equivalent of a repressive government inhibiting speech.

They are missing the free speech forest for a few free speech trees. Government inhibition of speech is wrong, full stop. Threatened and actual violence in retaliation for speech are wrong, full stop. Firings, deplatformings, and social stigma for self-expression are not always wrong. They are wrong on a case-by-case basis.

Social, cultural, and institutional pressures in response to self-expression can absolutely be cruel or unjust, even if I don’t always agree with the signers about which specific cases are the cruel or unjust ones. In at least one case I think they are referencing — “a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study” — I absolutely agree that firing was unjust.

[...]

Such consequences, though, are not antithetical to a marketplace of ideas. They are part of that marketplace. It is a legitimate, even worthy, endeavor to determine whether a specific person who has been fired, socially rejected, or unpublished due to their beliefs was treated unjustly. The letter, though, argues from the position that firing, social rejection, and deplatforming due to expressed beliefs is inherently wrong — that such actions create a “stifling atmosphere,” part of “the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.” If there are some expressed beliefs the writers believe warrant social consequences, they do not say.

[...]

If all speech is worth defending, even the expression of bad ideas, then surely speech that is harshly critical of writers, that demands someone’s firing, that rejects a given work, would be worth defending. Yet the signers are using their cultural and institutional power to convince people to hesitate to express beliefs about who deserves to be fired or socially stigmatized.

[...]

The letter signers evidently think some speech is harmful, because the entire point of their letter is to argue that speech that demands firings or stigmatization brings about an illiberal society. They are not arguing that such speech should be checked by the state — or by anything but their and ideally others’ criticism — but it is still an acknowledgement that some speech has serious consequences, and speakers should therefore hesitate before expressing it.

[Mark McDonnell]

He still has his job. Why? The team thinks he'll still make them money. So much for cancellation...

Or, more likely, the DeSean Jackson story just didn’t get the online ‘cancel machine‘ revving enough, so his team think they can ride it out. I’d not heard this story, but looking it up it seems not to have caused too much of a Twitter storm. I can’t see any news stories that quote any condemnation from ordinary social media users, which these stories are usually full of, and apparently none of his team have condemned him. Several comments on his Twitter seem to be along the lines of “where is the outrage about this?”. Maybe, despite the obvious antisemitism, the fact that he ostensibly posted it in support of racial justice for African Americans makes it too confusing a story for the black and white world of social media outrage.

[Quincy Lehr]

This essay by Jeet Heer makes some useful points, particularly:

"Some of the signatories can fairly be taxed with being the rankest of hypocrites when it comes to free speech. This is especially true of speech that expresses solidarity for Palestinians or speech that is, God forbid, voiced by actual Palestinians. These unreliable free-speech advocates include New York Times editor Bari Weiss, literary scholar Cary Nelson, and political scientist Yascha Mounk....

"With free speech advocates like Weiss, Nelson, and Mounk, the forces of censorship will always enjoy a good night’s sleep. Yet to simply say that Weiss and company are hypocrites is only half the story. Thomas Jefferson was a hypocrite when he penned 'all men are created equal.' Jefferson’s slave-owning doesn’t discredit the principles he articulated. Rather, the principles give us language with which to criticize Jefferson. In the same way, the letter I signed provides standards by which hypocrites can be held accountable."

[Julie Steiner]

Fortunately, nothing else of note is going on this week, while writers are focused on this.