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Comment by Nursie | Hacker News Reader

The rants about "cancel culture" from the US right are hilarious, given their long history of boycotts of brands they dislike and escalating hate and fear for everything up to actual book burnings of material like Harry Potter.

I'm not saying that the accusations of cancel culture are unfounded, I'm saying they are wildly hypocritical.

(It's good that efforts at censorship on the right are raised in the article as a pressing concern, the point is that this is not new, in fact it looks to me like the 'left' are the newcomers at the censor-burn-suppress game)

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I think there would by hypocrisy if you had the same people who supported censorship in the past now opposing it, though even then it begs the question of whether that is hypocrisy or simply an evolution of views. But as for parties, in the US there are, for all intents and purposes, only two parties. And as the views of society change, these parties change out of necessity.

To give another example, as recently as 2004 [1] the majority of those within the "US left" to use your phrasing, opposed gay marriage, and as recently as 2012 leading "US left" politicians were publicly opposed to it. Then in a remarkably brief period of time LGBT rights (including marriage) become a fundamental cornerstone of the party's political identity. It's not really hypocrisy so much as the fact that in order to maintain electoral dominance, the parties need to adopt to society. They (the parties) can then do the mental gymnastics to rationalize on their platforms how big war and surveillance is small government, or how censorship is liberal, afterwards.

And this isn't just a contemporary phenomena. Sometime from the mid 19th to early 20th century the parties swapped their positions on nearly everything. And this was entirely organic - it's not like the groups just made an official decision to nameswap. I could illustrate this with details, but it's much easier to just use an example. Abraham Lincoln was a republican, and every single confederate state was democrat. The transition from democrats becoming republicans and vice versa is something you can find plentiful hits online for if you're interested in more details.

[1] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/350486/record-high-support-same...

It's entirely hypocritical to call out one side for something that both sides have been doing for a long time, and when it in fact appears that the side the commenter is on has been doing it longer.

Yes, positions grow and change. No, that doesn't make it not hypocritical to call out the other side for something your side has done and still does.

> It's not really hypocrisy so much as the fact that in order to maintain electoral dominance, the parties need to adopt to society. They (the parties) can then do the mental gymnastics to rationalize on their platforms how big war and surveillance is small government, or how censorship is liberal, afterwards.

This is a handwaving claim about "motivation" ("in order to maintain electoral dominance"), when the only thing for which there is much evidence for is the change of thinking. Do you find it so unbelievable that a bunch of people might, en masse, change their minds about gay marriage? Do you find it so unbelievable that a bunch of people might change their minds about wholewheat bread? Jogging? Mixed-race marriage? What is the reason why you (cynically) assume that the change is motivated simply by electoral politics?

> I could illustrate this with details, but it's much easier to just use an example. Abraham Lincoln was a republican, and every single confederate state was democrat. The transition from democrats becoming republicans and vice versa is something [ ... ]

Instead of taking the easy way out and focusing merely on a label swap, I would suggest you check the way political positions did and did not change during "party swapping" periods. It's not much of a transition if everyone's actual opinions remain substantively the same, but they just swap labels.

Legitimate boycotts are against stuff that people are currently doing bad, and they end when the bad stuff does. Cancel culture goes after people that tweeted something bad 15 years ago, that they've already recanted and apologized for, and never ends.

And burning Harry Potter books? Trying to fearmonger about D&D and heavy metal?

Are these legitimate boycotts?

> they end when the bad stuff does

I would dispute this too, actually. Once you've proven yourself to be a shitbag, I'm not going back to your products ever if I can help it. Nothing illegitimate about that, it's called "voting with your wallet", which is nicely capitalist behaviour.

Regardless, whichever way you want to define legitimate vs illegitimate, the US right have been doing it for generations.

> And burning Harry Potter books? Trying to fearmonger about D&D and heavy metal?

Yes. The people doing those boycotts believe those things are actively causing harm to people. I don't agree, of course, but that doesn't make them illegitimate.

> Once you've proven yourself to be a shitbag, I'm not going back to your products ever if I can help it. Nothing illegitimate about that, it's called "voting with your wallet", which is nicely capitalist behaviour.

Imagine you lived in the first century AD, and you boycotted everything Saul of Tarsus was involved with, because of the religious persecution he committed. After he had his conversion and became Paul the Apostle, would you really continue to boycott him?

> that doesn't make them illegitimate.

neither is it illegitimate to continue to boycott something you think is likely still causing harm but is now just being quiet about it.

> After he had his conversion and became Paul the Apostle, would you really continue to boycott him?

Given I don't believe in any of his writings, nor that the church he helped bring into being is a force for good, sure, why not? I'm boycotting him right now.

But all of this is a sideshow - the hypocrisy is the point.

Okay, pick anyone else then. Someone who definitely did something bad enough to be boycott-worthy, but later completely turned over a new leaf. Would you really never forgive them?

Yes, the notion that one mistake (or even behavior over a period of time) is forever irredeemable does not forge a path to a more enlightened civility.

I can forgive people certainly. But if (for instance) a public figure has espoused some pretty abhorrent views then I'm probably not going to bother looking them up or engaging with them specifically - we have an excess of talking heads as it is, and they've made clear that they are prone to holding those sorts of views. I wish them well in another career.

Yes, people can be redeemed and forgiven. But that doesn't mean we don't take their past into account at all, or believe the first set of crocodile tears or profit-preserving contrition that they punt out to save face.

Let me throw it back - Would you trust a new medical testing company headed up by Elizabeth Holmes?

I wouldn't, regardless of how genuine her regrets and apologies on the matter seem. That doesn't mean she shouldn't be able to get a job and live a life, after she's served her time, paid her dues to society and demonstrated she's moved on. Perhaps she'll achieve something honest and good with her life. But I'm never getting a blood test from Theranos MkII, regardless.

In realpolitik, hypocrisy is a feature not a bug.

You do not have to go that far to find hypocrisy. It is quite alive and well here for example.

Yeah, the "you started it" tone of this article is very, very funny. I play the satanic game d&d and listen to metal regularly. No thanks to the right, on those.

An accusation of hypocricy is not an argument in the debate; it is a simple ad-hominem, and as such it is a fallacy which can be disregarded.

Pointing out that the person decrying behaviour in others is in fact excusing or even ignoring the actions of their own side (whom they consider more virtuous) is not an ad-hominem, it's an inconsistency or an error in their argument.

The accusation of hypocrisy, and blindness to the faults of their favoured group is pertinent and relevant to the arguments being put forward.

(Further, I am not expressing a logical disagreement with the premise of the article, merely laughing at the bald-facedness and ignorance of it. Are we not allowed to laugh without logical consistency these days?)

> is not an ad-hominem, it's an inconsistency or an error in their argument.

If your position is that one person can make an argument and be wrong because of other things that other person did, you are not denying that the same argument could, possibly, be made by another person and be right. Therefore, this is not arguing against the argument, it is simply opposing the person making it. Hence, ad hominem.

> The accusation of hypocrisy, and blindness to the faults of their favoured group is pertinent

Well, maybe. But at best it’s a tangential issue to the actual argument put forward.

> relevant to the arguments being put forward.

No. Bad things are wrong, and you shouldn’t need to resort to personal attacks in order to argue against them.

> I am not expressing a logical disagreement with the premise of the article, merely laughing at the bald-facedness and ignorance of it.

Sure, but take care that you do not lower the discource down to “Well, you’re ugly!”. Try to argue the points, not the people.

I have concern here in the speaking in absolutes. Plenty on the right listen to metal or read Harry Potter, and play D&D. The right is not a homogeneous group. Being against anything the left proposes puts you on the right. If you still think the right wing is predominately Mitt Romney types who clutch their pearls at the sight of a metal band then you are not paying attention to the drastic swings in politics that have happened in the past 7 years.

Well, you are right that conservatives are hypocritical about it, but why should that excuse the behavior of their opposition which has much more grasp on large tech companies that provide platforms for content.

Since you invoked "US right", I'll assume you're not American. Criticism of "cancel culture" is not limited to the right wing. If you think it is, then you haven't done your homework.

The article is about the US right, written by someone on the US right. The US right makes a lot of noise about it. The UK right does too.

It's massively hypocritical given their history. This article points out that the fringes of the right have now started doing it, my contention is that the whole of the right has been doing it for decades.

That's fair, but it's worth acknowledging that many of the criticisms—especially the legitimate ones—come from the intellectual left. Especially given that most of us do not live in the right-wing extremist media ecosystem.

> Sometimes I wonder if I should have become an academic.

Really? HN recently has given me the opposite idea.

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