A letter on Justice and Open Debate

[smokedout]

Chomsky has, though.

As for there being no such thing as "cancel culture", these people certainly ended up cancelled, and for no good reason in most cases:

Stop Firing the Innocent

America needs a reckoning over racism. Punishing people who did not do anything wrong harms that important cause.

www.theatlantic.com

The online twats who do and defend this stuff would reply "but dude, we have to like, stop racism". I don't think these people have any sincere concern about racism or its consequences whatsoever. The goal is to bully, humiliate, and if possible destroy other people. Look at the way Angela Nagle (whose work I am in basic agreement with, yes) was driven off twitter. I have never seen any of her detractors issue anything similar against Trump (may he burn in the hellfires) or people of that ilk. A lefty Irish bitch who was getting too big for her boots - that was a different story.

I don't really disagree with you except for the last couple of sentences. Trump probably gets more shit than anyone alive on twitter, as you'd expect of a gobshite US president, and I'm sure plenty of Nagle's detractors have played their part in that. Incidentally, and I didn't follow it myself, but Nagle says here she was not bullied off twitter, she just didn't think it was a very productive platform to discuss things.

I think there are real problems with twitter and internet shaming that leads to the examples given in The Atlantic piece and if it is widespread in the UK (and I'm not sure it is) then it strikes me as a trade union issue. But whilst it may be manifesting in a new way, this is nothing new for working class people. Plenty of trade unionists have been cancelled for example, and whether you have strong views on the left or right, or a host of other matters from religion to drugs legalisation, if you're in a working class job then you probably have to be careful about airing those views at work.

I also think there are lots of highly paid commentariat types and celebritities - who are quite happy to engage in cancelling and whipping up twitter mobs when it suits them - who are furious not just at being criticised, but also of no longer having a monopoly on public political discourse. And most of them have not been cancelled, they still have their jobs, and their platforms and their money and are free to air their views. In fact many have done quite well out of their so called cancellations.

 

[flypanam]

You can take the boy out of the SWP but you can't take the SWP out of the boy.

"Delta Farce"

Am a little confused. We’re basically in agreement. Those signing the letter are asserting their position not to be questioned by any of us that isn’t in their circle/class/tenured position. We both know they do harm, we both know they shit on others to maintain their position.

As for that swp comment we both know my time in the swp was in the irish organisation. Fucked as that organisation is, I’m glad I joined it, I learnt a lot. I Got to stand on picket lines, I got involved in preventing evictions, got nicked a few times and had a laugh, But do feel free to cast your delta comments at me without basis. However if you feel like it, you could ask Harper’s if you could add your name to the signatories.