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Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

bbc.com

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Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#501

Post by slibhb »

Daishiman wrote: post #480
slibhb wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If X and Y are wrong, and someone condemns only X, only Y, or X and Y, you should just agree with them. If someone condemns X and doesn't mention Y, or the reverse, it is unreasonable to react how you've reacted here.

Not really. The intention of OP is to demonstrate that the people often mentioning cancel culture are not doing it out of advocacy for free speech norms but rather because it suits their particular style of bigotry at this very moment.

There are people in that category. But do you think Kazuo Ishiguro is one of them?

It's just...jarring to read the OP. It reads (to me) like "the right-wing does this all the time...now it's our turn!"

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#502

Post by dragonwriter »

mc32 wrote: post #487
3np wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you’re talking about the IAC PR director publishing the following: Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white! if you’re directing PR for internet companies and post something like this from a public profile associated with your workplace - yeah, I wouldn’t call them an “unwitting victim”, and I think they would have lost that job if they made the same joke on a talk show in the 90s. That…

It’s in poor taste. Should not have been tweeted. It was an anti-racist commentary, but you know the mob, throw them some fresh meat. In firing her the company is complicit in casting her as racist when her sarcasm was pointed at low brow racism. But that escaped the shamers and cancellors. They were too busy frothing at the mouth.

> In firing her the company is complicit in casting her as racist

No, in firing her the company is complicit in furthering the idea that the duty of a PR representative to their employer is to have and exercise good judgement when it regards public relations for the firm.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#503

Post by nobodyandproud »

throwawaygh wrote: post #489
nobodyandproud wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His speech elicited a walk-out. It was received very badly and it led to his ouster. As far as I can tell he’s done well for himself since then, but that’s because he already had a network of connections. One misconstrued speech was all it took to ruin a chance to lead a premier east coast uni.

This thread started as a discussion about Liberty discriminating against boring rank and file faculty/gay students, and ended with “the world is ending because being president of an elite university is a GASP political job!” (Newsflash: uni prez is a deeply political job in every sense of the word and has been since the birth of the university many hundreds of years ago) The idiocy of that conversational arc is basic…

Liberty Uni is heavily biased. Let’s get that out of the way.

Now I’m responding to the assertion to that one doesn’t need to be of a certain stripe to make it in liberal institutions.

You downplay and say that a Harvard pres. position is highly political; which is fair, but the reaction also shows that a pervasive and intolerant groupthink is present.

It may tolerate the odd dissenting professor, especially if they’re protected by tenure, but the buck stops there.

No such protections for students first making their way into the world.

Not exactly a bastion of free thought and discourse.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#504

Post by abathur »

Solvitieg wrote: post #435
bachmeier wrote: post #117

Surprising how much press "cancel culture" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the left . We've always had cancel culture. Some might remember the Dixie Chicks. How about the Rachael Ray ad that Dunkin Donuts pulled merely because it looked like an Arab scarf? Jerry Falwell came to prominence entirely based on his pushing of cancel culture. When I lived in North…

I think what's interesting is the moral policing is no longer coming from the religious right. I recommend "The Realignment" podcast which often discusses why this shift has occurred: https://the-realignment.simplecast.com/

I agree that parts of the left are engaged in moral policing, but I think you may be mis-speaking when you say it is "no longer coming from the religious right."

I think it still is, it just isn't a monopoly?

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#505

Post by notsureaboutpg »

xirbeosbwo1234 wrote: post #403
falcolas wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, who cares whether this is new or not? Why does that even matter? It's negatively affecting people (for this article, the young authors who are self-censoring), and should be fought against.

Because we have people pretending it's new so they can drum up outrage and gain power. Because we have people playing the victim after being fired for being intolerable to work with. Most importantly, we have politicians adopting authoritarian attitudes as a reaction to it. Private companies have a right to "cancel" whomever they want, whether that takes the form of banning someone from a website or of canceling a co…

You aren't paying attention if you think people are complaining about being fired because they're hard to work with.

This (Mexican-American) guy was fired for a photo that for a brief moment showed his hand making an OK sign out the window of a truck because for a few months the mainstream media tried to convince everyone that the OK sign is a white supremacist symbol: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/502975-cal...

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#506

Post by int_19h »

hannasanarion wrote: post #388
dash2 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone claimed that what happened to the Dixie Chicks was OK. Also, it sounds as if you think that cancellation is better if it's democratic. If so, you need to address the 150-year old argument made by Mill, that democratic popular opinion can be particularly oppressive and dangerous to minority viewpoints: "Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in…

You should maybe continue reading Mill, because nowhere in his writings, or those of anybody else who used the phrase "tyranny of the majority" prior to the modern age, believed that the solution was disempowerment of the majority and tyranny of the minority. Surely if you think that majoritarian tyranny is bad, you must also believe that minoritarian tyranny is far worse, right? Such as when a select few individuals…

> disempowerment of the majority and tyranny of the minority

These are two different things, though. You can disempower the majority without empowering the minority. Power is not a zero-sum game - you can disclaim it without handing it over to someone else.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#507

Post by jokethrowaway »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #14

I genuinely wonder what cancel culture is going to look like in the next 5-10 years and beyond. Just about everyone I speak to about the subject agrees that cancel culture is bad but very few people seem willing to confront it. I sense that people hope the rest of society will come to its senses and we all stop being so judgemental. But as much as I loathe cancel culture and it's chilling effects on the free exchange…

I agree with you, nobody will do anything until it's too late.

Look on the bright side: If we manage to win against the fourth reich people will remember, maybe for one generation.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#508

Post by mc32 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #502
mc32 wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s in poor taste. Should not have been tweeted. It was an anti-racist commentary, but you know the mob, throw them some fresh meat. In firing her the company is complicit in casting her as racist when her sarcasm was pointed at low brow racism. But that escaped the shamers and cancellors. They were too busy frothing at the mouth.

> In firing her the company is complicit in casting her as racist No, in firing her the company is complicit in furthering the idea that the duty of a PR representative to their employer is to have and exercise good judgement when it regards public relations for the firm.

That’s an ex-post excuse. They got blowback from her attempt at exposing people’s preconceptions. They didn’t like it. They caved in to the mob. PR isn’t perfect. They make mistakes judging public reaction to comms for their clients. Unless it’s super bad, they don’t lose their jobs in public. There was no opportunity fir her to explain her side. Nope. Hot potato.

Companies burry all kinds of misdeeds for their staff. So it’s not at all congruent.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#509

Post by int_19h »

hannasanarion wrote: post #433
jimbokun wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So...sounds like you are railing against Cancel Culture and thinks it's bad?

No, because the number of people who participate in an action influence its justness. When 1 person decides to make a new law, that's autocracy, and it's a bad thing. When a supermajority of voters decide to make a new law, that's democracy, and it's a good thing. When a couple dozen editors, CEOs, and DJs decided to end the Dixie Chicks' careers by banning them from access to all channels of outreach to the public,…

> When a supermajority of voters decide to make a new law, that's democracy, and it's a good thing.

Is it, really? Even if the new law is extremely oppressive to the minority?

I mean, our drug laws are a mess that caused extreme grief (prison etc) to millions of people by now. But they were supported by wide majorities of the electorate. Were they a good thing? How about the Prohibition? Sodomy laws?

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#510

Post by dragonwriter »

rayiner wrote: post #453
bachmeier wrote: post #117

Surprising how much press "cancel culture" gets these days as if it's a new thing or as if it's a new thing being pushed on society by the left . We've always had cancel culture. Some might remember the Dixie Chicks. How about the Rachael Ray ad that Dunkin Donuts pulled merely because it looked like an Arab scarf? Jerry Falwell came to prominence entirely based on his pushing of cancel culture. When I lived in North…

If what you’re saying is that the New York Times is now the progressive version of Liberty University then I accept that concession. Regarding your edit: > Edit: Forgot to mention this extreme example of cancel culture: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/professor-who-wore-hijab- ... The professor was fired from a Christian school for making an assertion (that Muslims and Christians “worship the same god”) that, acco…

> So if your point is that cancel culture is the expression of a new progressive theology,

Wheaton’s college is an extremely narrow evangelical Protestant theology, that as well as dismissing Hawkins for her statements and firing a professor a few years before for becoming Catholic as it violated the schools duty to employ faculty embodying it's Protestant ideals, also led it to sue against the ACA’s preventive services mandate.

I'm not sure why you would suggest that “cancellation” under that theology has anything to do with progressivism.

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