In a semi-recent piece for The Nation, David Klion discussed what is by now no longer the “latest” bit of Internet “free speech” theater in response to the cancellation of a collection of Norman Mailer’s essays. I shouldn’t say “cancelled,” really. The publisher passed on publishing the book, which means it could very well be published somewhere else (even by Mailer’s estate), thereby making the meaning of a “cancellation” rather dubious at best. Can you really be “cancelled” in the lofty meaning that term has now taken (undeserved, really) when you’re both very much dead and your work is otherwise still available? I mean, the presumed offending work, “The White Negro,” is literally right there on the Internet. Google it if you must.1
What stands out about this latest bout of the same conversation we’ve been having for the last decade is how utterly banal it has become. It’s essentially the same handful of voices saying the same handful of things while critically missing both reality and actual issues happening over there that deserve a nuanced and stern response. I’m talking about the use of Internet mobs to destroy people’s lives, both by literally trying to ruin them over what are often extremely small offenses by blasting them for months or years on end in social media spaces (thereby making being there innately masochistic) or, worse, real world harassment (doxxing, sending threatening mail, showing up at houses, or, in rarer cases, much worse). Just a couple months ago, a friend of mine got blasted for what was actually a correctly nuanced tweet, and this became a kind of “rallying call” for those looking for a regular punching bag (and who, in some cases, had already been punching this friend for over a year in response to something else).2
What we’re witnessing happening around us is a kind of insidious sea change to which the so-called defenders of free speech have both failed to adapt and ironically brought about. What “cancel culture” used to mean in its political grift lexicon never had much to do with “cancelling” within the black community. It has always been a farce propped up by mountains of fake controversies, misunderstandings, and political posturing. The Norman Mailer incident is just another line in the “cancel culture” debate which fails miserably at dealing with the real threats. As Klion rightly notes, the U.S. alone has been beset upon by one of the most alarming increases in censorship by the State. Nearly all of them — the anti-CRT and other related bills — have been propped up by that same falsity: imagined scandals used by clever political elites to drum up support among the masses so utterly concerned by a thing they can’t really define and which has until recently largely been imaginary. The irony is pungent enough to taste: the very people who have used the grift to invent a controversy over something that isn’t actually happening as they describe have now been co-opted by people doing exactly what the first group claimed to be concerned about — restricting free speech, academic freedom, and related concerns.
In the midst of that is a current of true cruelty. That friend of mine is one of a number of people I know who have been targeted by online hate mobs. Those mobs are sometimes incredibly coordinated, using their collective power to persistently attack the same person for months or years on end. They’re also sometimes remarkably transient and fickle, which would seem to be a “good thing” except that one brutal mob can ruin someone’s life (and that same mob can draw the attention of a persistent mob later on). I don’t even need to get specific here to make the point because you probably have a suitable example in your head already. There is, in other words, a climate of fear swiftly filtering over much of “online life.” And it’s not a result of some nefarious leftist plot or the oft-repeated arguments about “cancel culture,” which are still quite wrong and are still oblivious to the real threats against free speech — there’s a dramatic difference, after all, between mobs online and governments enacting censorship laws. I see it as a consequence of multiple generations of people existing online (in far too much detail) in a culture that on the one hand does very little to protect people from actual abuse (by people, the state, etc.) and on the other hand has fostered an openly hostile environment of us vs. them.3
Here, I disagree with Klion slightly — oh so slightly. True, the “cancel culture” brigade have largely targeted the most powerless: the junior staffers, the vocal minority youth, etc. More importantly, that brigade has been wrong on nearly every front at nearly every stage. What they say young people are up to (or junior staffers, etc.) is often fiction and, worse, often sitting over a mess of illegitimate concerns about marginalized identities (trans people in bathrooms, trans athletes, gender pronouns, being overly sensitive, etc.).4 But they were right that we should be concerned about how online culture develops (though they weren’t right in terms of the details). Instead of targeting the correct things, they took us down a path that ironically created the very problem they should have seen coming. That us vs. them mentality of the web. That increasing degrees of harassment on social media. That snarky (and abusive) response culture which does little to foster conversation and everything to increase aggressive rhetoric. That attack on the academy, on businesses, on Twitter accounts, and so on which meant we were all fighting over a space that actually wasn’t the real problem to begin with.
All of that helped bring us this world we’re now watching rise up: a world where you, too, can become the Villain of the Day and have your life ruined while the government restricts your ability to talk about it. Orwell was perhaps not cynical enough to imagine a world which brought totalitarian rule upon itself without merely relying on the government to do the dirty work. We’re destroying ourselves to fight over rights and decency and kindness and intellectual diversity which all needn’t be defended. They should just be.
We’ve been talking about the wrong thing this whole time. “Cancel culture” was never the real concern. The problem was always that too many of us have forgotten what totalitarian governments look like and what happens when you turn your discursive environment into a toxic wasteland. Now, we get to watch and wait while tyrants shut down border crossings and annex city blocks…while mobs who have lost their ability to empathize ruin lives over often innocuous or comparatively minor slipups…while second chances are wiped away because every failure is a permanent scarlet letter…while state governments ban the ability to teach things that might make some people uncomfortable, creating a chilling censorship effect in education…and on and on and on.
The Ministry of Truth is here. It’s just crueler than anything Big Brother could have imagined…
As far as I can tell, this essay has been legally published online in Dissent since 2007. While I can’t say that all of Mailer’s non-fiction will be available in similarly legal venues, it’s not exactly hard to find his writing out there. ↩
I’ll note that I watched some of the very same people who directly or indirectly criticized my friend for that tweet then turn around and walk face first into the hole that necessitated that nuanced tweet in the first place. No, I’m not going to get more specific here for reasons this essay should make clear… ↩
This is not simply online. It applies elsewhere, too. However, social media has a concentration effect that isn’t quite as present in meatspace. There is also, of course, a factor of powerlessness at work here, too. A sea of voices can appear to have a greater impact on social media than they can in the real world. Things are happening to us out there which we can’t control. But if we’re with a group who tries to hold people accountable in here, we might gain some of that control back. It’s mostly a fiction, though… ↩
To be clear, the concerns on the part of marginalized people are legitimate, but I find it utterly absurd that we’re wasting our energy trying to keep an extremely small minority of people from playing sports in their preferred category. People are literally starving to death and suffering from a lack of access to various resources, but a trans person running with women is somehow the greater threat for reasons I still don’t understand. ↩
Reading Time
Not-So-Cancelled (or, Hey, We’re Still Talking About the Wrong Things)
In a semi-recent piece for The Nation, David Klion discussed what is by now no longer the “latest” bit of Internet “free speech” theater in response to the cancellation of a collection of Norman Mailer’s essays. I shouldn’t say “cancelled,” really. The publisher passed on publishing the book, which means it could very well be published somewhere else (even by Mailer’s estate), thereby making the meaning of a “cancellation” rather dubious at best. Can you really be “cancelled” in the lofty meaning that term has now taken (undeserved, really) when you’re both very much dead and your work is otherwise still available? I mean, the presumed offending work, “The White Negro,” is literally right there on the Internet. Google it if you must.1
What stands out about this latest bout of the same conversation we’ve been having for the last decade is how utterly banal it has become. It’s essentially the same handful of voices saying the same handful of things while critically missing both reality and actual issues happening over there that deserve a nuanced and stern response. I’m talking about the use of Internet mobs to destroy people’s lives, both by literally trying to ruin them over what are often extremely small offenses by blasting them for months or years on end in social media spaces (thereby making being there innately masochistic) or, worse, real world harassment (doxxing, sending threatening mail, showing up at houses, or, in rarer cases, much worse). Just a couple months ago, a friend of mine got blasted for what was actually a correctly nuanced tweet, and this became a kind of “rallying call” for those looking for a regular punching bag (and who, in some cases, had already been punching this friend for over a year in response to something else).2
What we’re witnessing happening around us is a kind of insidious sea change to which the so-called defenders of free speech have both failed to adapt and ironically brought about. What “cancel culture” used to mean in its political grift lexicon never had much to do with “cancelling” within the black community. It has always been a farce propped up by mountains of fake controversies, misunderstandings, and political posturing. The Norman Mailer incident is just another line in the “cancel culture” debate which fails miserably at dealing with the real threats. As Klion rightly notes, the U.S. alone has been beset upon by one of the most alarming increases in censorship by the State. Nearly all of them — the anti-CRT and other related bills — have been propped up by that same falsity: imagined scandals used by clever political elites to drum up support among the masses so utterly concerned by a thing they can’t really define and which has until recently largely been imaginary. The irony is pungent enough to taste: the very people who have used the grift to invent a controversy over something that isn’t actually happening as they describe have now been co-opted by people doing exactly what the first group claimed to be concerned about — restricting free speech, academic freedom, and related concerns.
In the midst of that is a current of true cruelty. That friend of mine is one of a number of people I know who have been targeted by online hate mobs. Those mobs are sometimes incredibly coordinated, using their collective power to persistently attack the same person for months or years on end. They’re also sometimes remarkably transient and fickle, which would seem to be a “good thing” except that one brutal mob can ruin someone’s life (and that same mob can draw the attention of a persistent mob later on). I don’t even need to get specific here to make the point because you probably have a suitable example in your head already. There is, in other words, a climate of fear swiftly filtering over much of “online life.” And it’s not a result of some nefarious leftist plot or the oft-repeated arguments about “cancel culture,” which are still quite wrong and are still oblivious to the real threats against free speech — there’s a dramatic difference, after all, between mobs online and governments enacting censorship laws. I see it as a consequence of multiple generations of people existing online (in far too much detail) in a culture that on the one hand does very little to protect people from actual abuse (by people, the state, etc.) and on the other hand has fostered an openly hostile environment of us vs. them.3
Here, I disagree with Klion slightly — oh so slightly. True, the “cancel culture” brigade have largely targeted the most powerless: the junior staffers, the vocal minority youth, etc. More importantly, that brigade has been wrong on nearly every front at nearly every stage. What they say young people are up to (or junior staffers, etc.) is often fiction and, worse, often sitting over a mess of illegitimate concerns about marginalized identities (trans people in bathrooms, trans athletes, gender pronouns, being overly sensitive, etc.).4 But they were right that we should be concerned about how online culture develops (though they weren’t right in terms of the details). Instead of targeting the correct things, they took us down a path that ironically created the very problem they should have seen coming. That us vs. them mentality of the web. That increasing degrees of harassment on social media. That snarky (and abusive) response culture which does little to foster conversation and everything to increase aggressive rhetoric. That attack on the academy, on businesses, on Twitter accounts, and so on which meant we were all fighting over a space that actually wasn’t the real problem to begin with.
All of that helped bring us this world we’re now watching rise up: a world where you, too, can become the Villain of the Day and have your life ruined while the government restricts your ability to talk about it. Orwell was perhaps not cynical enough to imagine a world which brought totalitarian rule upon itself without merely relying on the government to do the dirty work. We’re destroying ourselves to fight over rights and decency and kindness and intellectual diversity which all needn’t be defended. They should just be.
We’ve been talking about the wrong thing this whole time. “Cancel culture” was never the real concern. The problem was always that too many of us have forgotten what totalitarian governments look like and what happens when you turn your discursive environment into a toxic wasteland. Now, we get to watch and wait while tyrants shut down border crossings and annex city blocks…while mobs who have lost their ability to empathize ruin lives over often innocuous or comparatively minor slipups…while second chances are wiped away because every failure is a permanent scarlet letter…while state governments ban the ability to teach things that might make some people uncomfortable, creating a chilling censorship effect in education…and on and on and on.
The Ministry of Truth is here. It’s just crueler than anything Big Brother could have imagined…
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