So the policing of speech may be vastly more common than it was, say, 15 years ago. But the discourse itself is vastly greater in scope. Political correctness has in fact run amok, but so then has everything else.
In fact, the increase in bias at the NYT and WAPO may be more than offset by increased attention paid to podcasters like Bret Weinstein or Ben Shapiro. The intent to introduce “anti-racism” curriculum into schools may be more than offset by the way that the virus is creating a situation that lowers the status of school teachers among parents.
people left-of-center [are] wondering why, suddenly, to be anything but radical is to be treated as a retrograde heretic. Thus the issue is not the age-old one of left against right, but what one letter writer calls the “circular firing squad” of the left: It is now no longer “Why aren’t you on the left?” but “How dare you not be as left as we are.”
Here is where I think Pluckrose and Lindsay have the explanation, in Cynical Theories. The liberal philosophy that these older left-of-center academics share is incommensurate with what I would call the “folk” postmodernism of the younger leftists.
3. I think that there is at least a 30 percent chance that cancel culture has already peaked. The mobs, whether on Twitter, on campus, or in the streets, are engaged in bullying and making dominance moves, which create fear but also resentment. Academic administrators and progressive mayors are Neville Chamberlains, and I sense that an increasing number of people want to see a more Churchillian approach.
“In fact, the increase in bias at the NYT and WAPO may be more than offset by increased attention paid to podcasters like Bret Weinstein or Ben Shapiro.”
I wish that this was true, but probably isn’t:
1) NYT and WAPO have the advantage of being able to market themselves as objective journalists (vs. a podcast with an ideological slant). Your average person views the two as qualitatively different.
2) NYT and WAPO have vastly greater reach, spending power and legacies, which allows them to be on all of the major news aggregators by default (in addition to their own landing pages and apps). Podcasts, on the other hand, have to be actively discovered and your average person won’t necessarily take the time to do this work.
So, in this regard, it’s basically Fox News vs. all of the other large news media organizations.
Lastly, I would add Dave Rubin to the list in addition to Weinstein and Shapiro. Any others?
Limbaugh has an audience of about 20 million, much larger than any other show or columnist. Keep in mind that most people don’t read the opinion section of newspapers
“Keep in mind that most people don’t read the opinion section of newspapers”
You may have misunderstood my comparison or I should have made it more clear: it’s the front pages (i.e. self-described objective journalism) of the major media outlets vs. the podcasters.
Let me know if you need any recent examples of front page “objective journalism” articles that are really nothing than heavily slanted opinion pieces. Also, search the archives here on ASK…he has posted on his significant concerns with the WAPO reporting in the past.
Arnold,
There are three trends that make it impossible for cancel culture to get any better.
1) More and more people are growing up in a world saturated in woke culture. They are taught it in schools and in popular media. I suspect K-12 is going to get an even harder does of what we’ve seen in universities and HR departments. Something like half of all people under 40 think the founding fathers are fundamentally evil according to polling. There is a huge generational gap there.
2) Demographics are going to get more and more brown. Why would these people stop supporting something that benefits themselves?
3) I think you should take a hard look at places where even more extreme versions of wokeness have endured for longer. My own experience is with the Malaysian students that attended my university. They have institutionalized racial quotas at all levels of society to a degree that we haven’t seen in the USA yet. It never stops. It never goes away. Even though the Chinese Malaysians think it’s all bullshit they can’t do anything about it.
In the podcast you linked awhile back a lot of them predicted that wokeness will last about another decade. I have two comments.
First, here are a few ten year ideological spirals to consider.
Basically every country in the 1930s
China during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution
A lot can happen in ten years.
Beyond that, let’s say everyone becomes a Brezhnev cynical believer rather than a true believer. That doesn’t mean “the regime” and all its injustices fall. It could just lumber on for decades more oppressing people out of inertia and cold calculation, just as the USSR did.
“Demographics are going to get more and more brown”. This is the thought that conservatives get consistently wrong and also the one that, if they were to get it right, would be of greatest benefit to the movement. Antipathy toward Donald Trump aside, there is little to unite “brown” people. Latinos are very aware that it isn’t “Brown Lives Matter”, and Asians are much more likely to live among, go to school with, and marry “white” people that those of other races. The hurt that Donald Trump has caused the Republican party by scapegoating immigrants will have reprocussions long after he is gone. I say this as someone who is indifferent to the Republican party, but also finds little joy in the new Democratic party.
First, this is about Woke culture in general and not just Rep/Dem politics. The darkening of America will have affects no matter whose in the White House.
Second, this take it bullshit.
Trump did BETTER with minorities than Romney or McCain did.
In fact, “Trump is what minority outreach looks like”. Who seems more like a Central/South American politician than Donald Trump.
Here’s the bottom line. The Republican party is gets exactly as many votes are you would suspect they would get from minorities. They get 20-40% of the Hispanic vote and mostly win the white hispanics and lose the dark hispanics.
Asians break down in a similar way, with East Asians like the Chinese being more favorable to Republicans, dark skinned Asians with low performance being anti, and successful immigrants from unsuccessful countries falling in-between (Indians, etc).
Which is about as good as you can expect to do. In no country do minority ethnics vote with majority ethnics. And East Asians don’t vote that differently from their relevant white peers (educated professionals on the coasts), but nobody really cares because they aren’t a big % of the population.
The only demographic that matters is Hispanics and the Republicans spent twenty years and untold political capital trying to win them over and never got close to 50%.
“Trump did BETTER with minorities than Romney or McCain did.”
Reminder: McCain and Romney went head-to-head vs. a very charismatic black candidate as opposed to the unlikeable Hillary Clinton. You will need to adjust for this in your analysis.
Why did Hispanics and Asians not go for Romney and McCain then? It’s not as if they like blacks.
Will Harris throw Biden under the bus? 80% chance by this time next year, she denounces his white privilege or attacks him in other cancel culture terms.
How long will Douglas Emhoff get a cancel culture pass? 90% chance articles questioning whether the marriage is “problematical” and attacks on his whiteness by March next year.
Solzhenitsyn wrote that he met a prisoner in a gulag who had been high in the party. Asked how he ended in the gulag he said, Never be the first to stop clapping.
Hayek covered all of this in Road to Serfdom
I don’t buy the Chamberlain analogy. To take it to its logical conclusion, for every administrator, mayor, or city council person who is a well-meaning Chamberlain, at least 20 are German agents, who aren’t even trying to keep that fact a secret any longer.
+1
Unfortunately, Arnold either missed the mark on the analogy or he is being way too optimistic. What would Bret Weinstein and Erika/Nicholas Christakis say based on their experiences? I tend to trust them more than Arnold on this particular topic.
A recent example (not from the Babylon Bee):
USC prof no longer teaching after using Chinese word that sounds like racial slur
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=15580
Yes, separating the Chamberlains from the Oswald Mosley’s is an impossible task in this day and age. The other important thing about this analogy was that Churchill was cabinet at the time; therefore, it was a relatively simple matter for him to slip into #10 Downing Street after the Panzers crossed the Polish frontier. In contrast, I get the sense that many of our institutions have weeded out the Churchill types long ago, perhaps not consciously, but the leadership selection processes in place in bureaucratic organizations tend to weed out any person of principle or independence of mind at the middle management level.
I read Cowen’s article as Straussian lip-service.
The idea is to present an argument that is so clearly weak (but with just enough plausible sincerity) that it immediately provokes a big crowd of people into repeating the many obvious criticisms (see the comments), which has the effect of allowing people to see the real level of support for various positions, and of signal boosting the “PC has run amok” half of the article, like one of those coded messages where one has to cover up every other word.
“I think that there is at least a 30 percent chance that cancel culture has already peaked.”
I will happily take those odds for a bet, if we could settle on how to measure the cancel culture index. Maybe something like, “Accusatory woke word usage frequency declines 50% by 2025”? Back to the level of, what, two years ago? Pays three to one!
“Academic administrators and progressive mayors are Neville Chamberlains”
Seems to me they are on the same side of the war, not appeasing their opponents. Woke Supremacy.
Perhaps one day we will discover the secret texts between some university administrators somewhere that say, “This is all crazy and horrible and we don’t agree with this at all, but we can’t afford a PR disaster, so just give them whatever they want and maybe they’ll go away?” I’m not holding my breath.
George Mason University President Gregory Washington just announced that Anti-Racism will be an important component of re-accreditation. From the task force initiative:
Public money paying for these things. If the wokesters are pressing for this, they are pushing on an open door.
See if Tyler will take a bet on if/when George Mason cancels him.
I was struck by the task of evaluating the names of the university’s buildings, monuments, conference rooms, and memorial plaques to make sure those honored were free from bias and other related bad behavior or dishonorable thoughts.
As a long-time student of human behavior I submit this endeavor will represent a Herculean task. I have never met anyone who was truly so pure of heart that they did not harbor some failings; even Jimmy Carter admitted to lust; and we all know about Bill Clinton and Woodrow Wilson! Even some of the great civil rights advocates had serious weaknesses. Indeed, I have been told that, simply by definition, the only human being to ever live a perfect life free of sin was Jesus Christ.
Since it would probably be unacceptable to name all the buildings after Jesus, I suggest removing all proper names and replacing them with more pleasant monikers– such as, if we use flowers, Rose Hall, Lavender Green, Lilly Square, etc. Or use the very innocent and likable avians: Robin Hall, Chickadee Haven, Cardinal Square, and so on.
The only other logical solution, (true to the dedication to sound reasoning that educational establishments are renowned for pursuing) if we wish to retain the names of individuals on such landmarks would be to develop a scale of transgressions so we could eliminate the most evil honorees and keep the least evil. Starting with the Ten Commandments and a few added criteria if needed, we could measure each name against a list of 15 failings, and if the honoree had failed to keep the requisite number of Commandments, his or her name would be struck from all public display.
Unfortunately, the lying, lusting, adultery, blasphemy, bribery, arrogance, bias, coveting, racism, intolerance, envy, and cheating would eliminate most everybody. Maybe the birds and flowers would be good after all? Or does a recognition that even the best were imperfect contain a worthwhile and humbling educational lesson for the students? As they say, “Let whoever is free of sin cast the first stone.”
Sorry, Arnold. I think Tyler Cowen is Neville Chamberlain and he will never be Churchill. You can bet he will always find an excuse to be a Chamberlain.
Most academic administrators and many professors are submissive agents of the new revolutionaries. They will implement the revolutionaries’ orders.
Progressive majors have joined the revolution with the aspiration of being leaders. They opened the doors and embraced them.
Dem politicians at the national level believe that they can collude with the revolutionaries to grab power and once in power they will be able to contain them with candies. Yes, you can bet that if they win the election, Pelosi & co. will be disappointed.
I don’t think that the fact that half of university academicians are concerned about cancel culture signals the peak. Professors, though it would no doubt horrify them to think, are part of “the establishment,” and pissing off the establishment is what activist student do.
I don’t think that it will peak until a critical mass (40-50 percent?) of SJWs have been on the receiving end of cancel culture Maoism.
Another theory is that, if Trump wins, the SJWs will get the blame for the loss. If so, the liberal-left and the mainstream media will start clamping down on it rather than either denying its existence or excusing it as they’re now doing.
Any other ideas as to what will signal the “beginning of the end”?
“Another theory is that, if Trump wins, the SJWs will get the blame for the loss.”
I think Biden is enough of a moderate that if he loses, most will react the opposite way, the way so many reacted to Clinton’s loss, and say, ‘if on’y we’d nominated someone more extreme like Sanders who could inspire the base, we’d have won.’ Note that SJWs were largely to blame for Trump’s 2016 win, probably moreso than Hillary Clinton, though there initially were some calls on the left to abandon ‘SJWism,’ none persisted beyond 2017.
I think someone like Ocascio-Cortez – someone no one would doubt is an avatar of that ideology – would have to be nominated then go down in flames in order for people to actually take it as a defeat for ‘SJW’ ideology (but even then they’d probably blame it on racism/sexism and double down).
Let’s say they nominated OC and she went down in flames? Would it matter? Didn’t Mondale go down in flames.
They would just wait for demographics to run its inevitable tole. Sure, you needed Bill in the 90s, and Obama in the aughts, and maybe Biden in 2020. But all of them are father and farther to the left, the trend is clear.
“Didn’t Mondale go down in flames.”
Is Hubert Humphrey better for analogy purposes at this point?
As far as public policy during their administrations, Clinton was to the right of Johnson (and Nixon for that matter), maybe Carter. Free trade, deregulation, ‘fiscal responsibility,’ (basically neoliberalism) reached its zenith under in the 90s. Maybe you think if it weren’t for congress he would’ve been to the left of Johnson or Humphrey, but I doubt a Johnson or Humphrey would have been as willing to ‘roll with the times’ the way Clinton did and signed trade agreements and welfare reform and ‘tough on crime’ laws.
I don’t think we can count on a backlash among regular people mattering much. They may hate it, they may listen to heterodox podcasts or youtube channels, but they have lives to live, they’re not going to boycott institutions ideological reasons (or very few will). Most will even keep sending their kids to leftist, McCarthyist colleges; they’ll keep using Google, Twitter, and Facebook; they can’t afford to homeschool their kids and keep them out of elementary and high schools that inculcate them with these norms. And most young people already either support said norms or if they nominally oppose them, think they’re nothing compared to the ‘threat of white nationalism sweeping over America,’ and will this continue to give financial and moral support to institutions that proliferate McCarthyist norms because they’re opposed the ever ascendant threat of white nationalism.
In short, I don’t think it has peaked, not by a long shot. It may decelerate a bit if Biden wins in 2020, but not reverse direction.
+1, with the exception that a Biden win will accelerate not decelerate things. The Great Awokening began in Obama’s second term as a response to his re-election and gay marriage ruling in the Supreme Court.
People back a strong horse, victories make one stronger.
That is started during Obama is why I don’t think it’ll reverse course and can’t be written off as a reaction to Trump, but Trump definitely inflames them.
It seems deeply weird to talk about “folk” postmodernism among people whose defining characteristic is formal education. But so few of them seem to understand postmodernism that it’s not wrong. A legitimate postmodernist would be deeply skeptical of overarching master narratives, including the narratives of oppression championed by the folk postmodernists.
As I’ve mentioned previously, Jonathan Haidt has a nice video clip in an interview with Joe Rogan that discusses the incentives. “When did SJW culture start” is the name of the clip, it’s from Joe Rogan show #1221. On the timer, start at about 10:00
Haidt says the people who try to get others cancelled are structurally a bit like members of a headhunting tribe. They are playing a status seeking game in which their status increases by imposing costs on others who outside the tribe.
I think “cancel culture” will not really start to ebb until the incentives are realigned so that the “cancellers” have a cost imposed on them for frivolous accusations.
I apologize for using the moralistic lingo such as “cry-bully” but no other word seems as good. Canceller?
In a game theoretic sense, for a while now it has been pretty easy for someone with an impulse to be a “cry-bully” to indulge their impulses. One could say that they are playing a cancel culture game.
I’m not certain how the incentives can be realigned.
1. Glenn Harlan Reynolds suggests fighting back through legal means against false accusations. Legal pushback.
a. The “Covington Kids” lawsuit is one example.
b. The lawsuit against Rolling Stone magazine following the “A rape on campus” article is another example.
c. Oberlin College got hit hard in a lawsuit.
d. I believe Evergreen College’s reputation has been permanently damaged. That was clear the next year when enrollment tanked. A legal settlement was made. Much of the damage was to the college’s reputation.
2. I recall Prof. Kling saying that the Washington Post is so bad that he no longer reads it (or, presumably, subscribes). So there is refusal to support publications. Prof. Kling made this assertion long before the incident where a 2,00o word article focused on a woman of no particular fame who wore blackface to a Halloween party 2 years previously. The woman soon lost her job.
3. A problem is that particular moral panics seem to be started by individuals who can succeed in an institution even while the institution suffers in the long run. I think this is the “principal-agent” problem.
Do the journalists at the Washington Post who wrote about the Halloween party still have their jobs? Follow that line of analysis.
Where is the student from Yale who screams at Nicholas Chrstakis, “You are disgusting!”
Where is Oberlin’s Dean of Students, Meredith Raimundo?
I’m just thinking off the top of my head. But my point is that the incentives matter. If trying to cancel people is cheap and easy and there are few costs to those who initiate the gambits, the problem will not go away.
On one level I think we should understand that trying to cancel someone, or whipping up a mob, is an act of aggression. Physical aggression is no longer kosher in large bureaucratic organizations such as universities and corporations, but with Twitter and H.R. departments, it is easy to weaponize gossip and reputation destruction.
Jordan Peterson used that phrase “gossip and reputation destruction” in an interview. He put it like this: As a general observation, men tend to resolve disputes with physical agression, while women resort to gossip and reputation destruction.
Final point: “Cancel Culture” is far mor than one thing. We have to unpack that category. A topic for a different day. Thanks for listening.