Are you saying the fatwa on Salman Rushdie is part of cancel culture or did he do something?
It’s about the fatwa but I’m going to jump off of this ask to have a rant.
What this boils down to, at least to me, is a preoccupation with an assumed right to be adored, no matter what. It’s an attempt to allow public figures with bruised egos to intellectualise their way out of understanding a very simple idea: when you – particularly the famous – do things to perpetuate or legitimise ideas or actions that contribute to further harming others, you are not entitled to remain liked by some members of the public.
The added suggestion that individual consequences for specific misdeeds are a sign that things have gone too far is just as absurd. Like the “forces of illiberalism” discredited in this letter, many of those who’ve added their signatures in support of it simply wish to remain steadfast in their beliefs without having to engage in exactly the kind of discussions this letter suggests should happen. That’s the thing with glossing over the ugly or difficult issues to bolster your argument – shards of them inevitably push through the cracks.
Salman Rushdie signed the letter on justice and open debate that everyone has decided is about cancel culture because JK signed it.
We’ve got a baby/bathwater situation here. You’ve got a bunch of people who have faced death threats and political consequences and serious shit for what they’ve written (Atwood is on that list, Chomsky is on that list. Atwood’s books have been banned in a ton of places; Chomsky was monitored by the CIA for years because of his political philophy. Rushdie is on that list and people have tried to kill him for his writing) signing a letter saying “uhhhhhhhh fuck censorship” but because Jo also signed it the same week she decided to go mask off with the trans exclusion people are going “these things are the same” and “Uhhhh, it’s not cancel culture, your actions just have consequences” (that pullquote is from an article about this list; saying “it’s absurd to suggest that individual consequences for specific misdeeds are a sign that things have gone too far” is a HELL OF A THING to say about a list that includes people who have survived bombing attempts.
So yeah, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to simply call the letter a condemnation of cancel culture but it’s kind of a joke that people on tumblr are cancelled for having wrong opinions about Stephen Universe but then you see people who have actually lost their jobs because someone made a fake page calling them a possum fucker, or people who are getting called out as pedophiles for shipping two adults, well. Yeah. You know what, I think it’s probably a good idea to have a conversation about why cancel culture CAN be a thing and CAN be a bad thing and how to recognize it and avoid participating it.
Cancel culture *isn’t* just “your actions having consequences” and there IS a totally new mobbing culture that’s exploded in the last twenty years and it is misaimed CONSTANTLY and it does make people less likely to participate in discourse and an open exchange of ideas.
Like, fuck, a bunch of the tumblr “Abolish the police” crew is also the tumblr “kill all pedophiles” crew and trying to talk about intervention and science-based prevention tactics and compassionate treatment gets you labelled a pedophile sympathizer and there is a giant mob of people who don’t want to talk about any of that, they just want to tell you to kill yourself until you decide it’s not worth while to talk about anything controversial.
(My inbox, for example, is full of people who came by to tell me that they were glad I talked about atheism but the response that I got is exactly why they don’t talk about atheism here).
The every-other-week “Cancel Argumate” campaigns are another example of this. Argumate says something pretty clumsy about indigenous people, clarifies a position, makes a good faith argument, and is labelled a colonialist, cancel Argumate. Argumate makes a post about atheism, is challenged on that post by Jewish atheists, clarifies that the post wasn’t about that, continues to clarify that, is frustrated that people keep coming to make the same point in opposition to a point that was never in the post in the first place, is labelled as antisemitic, cancel argumate. Argumate makes a post criticizing US capitalism, is labelled a marxist, cancel Argumate. Argumate makes a post somewhat sympathetically discussing landlords, is labelled an anarchocapitalist, cancel Argumate. Argumate makes a post criticizing landlords for cutting corners and endangering tenants, is labelled an anarchist, cancel Argumate. Like. A bunch of Argumate’s individual posts are glib as fuck but all of the long conversations on that blog are really fucking nuanced and that’s coming from someone who got to know Argumate after initially going “Argumate’s an MRA, cancel Argumate” before then having a long, nuanced conversation about radical feminism.
It’s just frustrating that everything is presented as so black and white. “Oh, this letter is from JK, this must mean she’s whining about how we hate that she’s a terf” and way to go, buds, you just (oh god am I really going to do this) Spoke Over A Man Of Color Who Has Faced Institutional Violence As A Result Of His Writings.
Or, to put it another way: “I REALLY WISH THESE CONVERSATIONS COULD BE HAD WITH A DEGREE OF NUANCE BECAUSE PUTTING SOMEONE SURVEILLED BY THE CIA FOR DECADES FOR HIS ANTIWAR WRITING AND SOMEONE WHO SURVIVED A BOMBING ATTEMPT BECAUSE OF HIS FICTION IN THE SAME CATEGORY OF ‘BUTTHURT BECAUSE OF MEANIES ON TWITTER’ AS JK ROWLING IS LUDICROUS.”
And please! Block and unfollow and DNI people you don't want to interact with to your heart's content! Ban Nazis from your punk bar! Talk about the gross person you think might be a missing stair in your D&D group! But we all recognize that that's different than doxxing and dogpiling, right?
I dont disagree with the sentiment of this post, nor do I have anything but goodwill for OP, but I do think this, ironically, misses the nuance of the reaction against the letter.
Ppl arent JUST responding to JK. It can SEEM that way from a fandom perch(for reasons that will become obvsl since 80% of this discussion is abt stuff not actl in the letter), but that isn’t what this is about; why would a bunch of professional left journalists, who are the primary ppl talking about this on twitter, care about something Rowling said(other than as an example of TERF rhetoric, obvsl)? Just a warning: this is going to get Lore-Heavy and very, Very Stupid.
This letter’s being read as part of an ongoing debate over the legitimacy of activism, particularly the “turn” towards deplatforming and protest(which isn’t really a turn; these tactics have been used by activists of all stripes Forever), within US politics; a turn primarily blamed on the Left because centrist and conservative commentators dominate official social commentary(which, again, reveals the nature of this “turn”. If it’s a “turn” of any kind, it’s a “turn” in coverage and opinion-making). This subject is obviously relevant and topical in light of the George Floyd protests(which the letter is ALSO being read as a reaction against, probably because it directly implicates them as an EXPRESSION of this trend[1]). Specifically, it’s being read in relation to two recent articles: This Article From June 12 by Matt Taibbi where he posits:
…the American left has lost its mind. It’s become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.
The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation. They are counting on the guilt-ridden, self-flagellating nature of traditional American progressives, who will not stand up for themselves, and will walk to the Razor voluntarily.
Now Two Things:
- There’s a whole backstory behind this related to his reporting on the 2016 election, which he has long felt hasn’t been properly acknowledged(and Yes; his article rehashes this with all the Impartiality and Meticulous Honesty you’d expect from the aggrieved, one-sided account of a past golden-boy), his hostility to negative coverage of Russian foreign policy(the stuff re: Putin’s backing of Republicans primarily, but he was a big part of the [EDIT: originally wrote “Russia Times” but then remembered it was “Russia Today”. Oops X|]Russia Today crowd in the Shrub years, so he just generally treats any discussion of Russia’s geopolitical and ideological hostility to the US as illegitimate and suspect), and a recentish resurfacing of his misogynist behavior during the Bush II regime.
- As any Always Onlines xp’d in dealing with the Peterson, Shapiro, and Harris wings of conservatism can tell you “the left is abandoning traditional liberal beliefs”, sometimes written as “Englightenment Beliefs/Values”, is a major dogwhistle for right-wing “The Left are Cultural Marxists” discourse, which is itself a stalking-horse for unabashed Elders of Zion antisemitism.
So, to the journo-left twitterati and Always Online, this article had some major red flags: it’s rhetoric, it’s denouncing of the ~criminality~ of the protests, and that Taibbi, with all his problems and beefs and his perceived right-sympathies, is the one who wrote it.
The second article it’s being read in context with is This One From Ross Douthat about basically the same topic; pushing Wesley Yang’s “successor ideology” idea -which is basically just a Bari Weiss article about how college leftism is a threat to liberty flattered into a hyperventilating, conservative nightmare of a world-historical political theory- which is BASICALLY exactly what Taibbi was talking about so there’s really no reason to go over it as well[2].
Now why is it being read and reacted to in THIS context, as opposed to the context of long-time free speech advocates and censorship victims like Rushdie, Atwood, and Chomsky signing it? Because of a very particular batch of signatories, and because of particular passages within the letter. The Signatories are the Usual Suspects on the Right and Center who’ve been banging the drum about how evil leftist, anti-racist, anti-imperial activism is for decades(again; the Bari Weisses of the world). The passages are CLEARLY MENDACIOUS ones, clearly referencing bete noires of the right like the rebellion at the NYT against James Bennet’s editorship. So people are reading this letter NOT as a sincere expression of support for free speech -as it was clearly read by ppl like Rushdie, Atwood, and Chomsky- but rather as the usual right-wing weaponizing of free speech all of us on the internet know So Well cuz we’ve spent YEARS OF OUR LIVES getting in utterly fruitless arguments with the supporters of the right-wing trolls who SIGNED the damn thing, about it.
So like: this response isn’t about Rushdie, or fandom harassment campaigns, or internet mobs, or even what the Left thinks of free speech. This response is about the Right’s decades-long campaign to twist “freedom of speech” into a JUSTIFICATION for officially censoring Leftists and Liberals with the power of The State, and, mildly related to that, the growing tendency of well-off, comfortable ppl to deligitimize pushback their decisions receive by labeling it “cancel culture”.
“Canceling” is absolutely a real thing; we’re all on tumblr, we’ve all seen artists, writers, and just plain bloggers harassed to ATTEMPTED SUICIDE by the censorious, self-deceiving, self-justifying assholes in our midst. Hundreds if not thousands of our most prolific and beloved members were kicked off this platform just two years ago over a cataclysmic combination of Apple’s desire to meticulously meet US legal ~decency~ requirements, tumblr’s desperation NOT to be kicked from Apple’s marketplace, and the unchecked, mendacious cancel campaigns raging against its fan communities. But while this phrase has become a bloody-shirt of the Right, the actual reality of it isn’t what they mean when they commission and write letters like this. Those reacting with hostility to it Know this, and they are reacting to the larger campaign to discredit left activism which this letter was clearly meant to be a part of.