[Cancel Culture … this doesn’t exist in The Jungle, only in the real world. This is the worst of human nature. It’s getting your way by being more annoying than your opponent. SB SM]
Today’s selection– from The Canceling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott. Vitriol in the American political dialogue is as old as the country itself, and a byproduct of the rapid and accelerating change that has always characterized the country, with periods of relative calm the exception rather than the rule. The cancel culture that erupted in recent American history is only the latest manifestation. The term was used in reference to a person being canceled in a relationship as early as the 1991 movie New Jack City, but by 2019 and 2020, the term had become shorthand in conservative circles for what they saw as overreaction to politically incorrect speech:
“In January 2020, Babson College was flooded with outraged tweets demanding the takedown of a supposedly dangerous professor. ‘Why does @Babson “College” have an America-hating terrorist supporter on their payroll?’ one post read. ‘Ask them,’ the user suggested, sharing the school’s phone number and inviting Twitter users to barrage the college with demands to fire Asheen Phansey.
“What did the professor say to invoke such a strong reaction? When President Trump threatened to bomb fifty-two Iranian cultural sites if Iran retaliated for the assassination of General Quasem Soleimani (a move by the then president that almost certainly would have constituted a war crime according to Article 53 of the Geneva Conventions had it been carried out), Phansey took to social media to criticize the president, jokingly suggesting American targets Iran could strike back at.
“‘In retaliation, Ayatollah Khomenei should tweet a list of 52 sites of beloved American cultural heritage that he would bomb,’ he wrote on his private Facebook page. ‘Um … Mall of America? … Kardashian residence?’ The post started gaining attention after a screenshot was shared with a local gossip blog, and soon a Twitter pile-on swooped in and began willfully misreading his joke as a literal threat. Phansey found himself in a standoff with a Cancel Culture mob.
“It was a stereotypical and outrageous case of campus censorship, in all ways but one: It wasn’t the left coming for him. Instead, he was facing down outraged conservatives.
“Babson almost instantaneously caved to the pressure, suspending Phansey pending investigation. The next day, after a single day spent conducting a ‘thorough investigation,’ he was fired for his speech clearly protected under the school’s own promises of free speech and academic freedom. In a statement, Babson condemned his ‘threatening words and/or actions condoning violence’ and even implied they had completed their investigation with police cooperation. An investigation by FIRE revealed that public records do not support such claims.
“Babson unceremoniously parted ways with Phansey after he’d been at the college for more than a decade … over a Kardashian joke on his personal Facebook page.”
| author: Greg Lukianoff, Rikki Schlott | |
| title: The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust and Threatens Us All―But There Is a Solution | |
| publisher: Simon & Schuster |
Good piece. I put the book in my cart.