Comment by endominus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by endominus | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

If I may quote Orwell, who opined at length on the tendency of his countrymen towards authoritarianism in support of 'good' causes, "But how much of the present slide towards Fascist ways of thought is traceable to the ‘anti-Fascism’ of the past ten years and the unscrupulousness it has entailed?"

And in the words of Aldous Huxley, "The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats."

Of course, C.S. Lewis also had a good line on the matter; "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

> C.S. Lewis also had a good line on the matter; "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.

Which reminds me of this gem by Alexis De Tocqueville from "Democracy in America";

        "" That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and
        mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like
        that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood;
        but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual
        childhood: it is well content that the people should
        rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For
        their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it
        chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that
        happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and
        supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures,
        manages their principal concerns, directs their industry,
        regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their
        inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care
        of thinking and all the trouble of living?""

To me, this is the very essence of "convenience" and shrugging moral relativism that allows technology to act as am enabler of tyranny.

> The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.

This is exactly where this current tyranny is coming from:

The radical leftists who promote it are thereby granted the license to abuse all who oppose them, since those "reactionaries" must be bigots, racist, sexist, transphobes, homophobes - in short: evil people who deserve the abuse of good people like themselves.

Dissidents who reject this new tyranny aren't respected fellow citizens who hold differing opinions: they are evil people who must be silenced. If this trend is allowed to proceed to its logical conclusion, the dissidents will be silenced permanently, by eradication.

> To be able to destroy with good conscience

Like those ignorant young students, barging into complex discussions they often fail to understand, to shut them down. To shut down thought, invention, investigation, and discussion. And to do all that primarily in the very academic institutions dedicated to promoting these projects.

> to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation'

A succinct description of cancel culture, the radical left's mob justice that has become normalized.

Cancel culture, while containing some truth, is very obviously a cudgel being used by the radical right to try and suppress any ideas they don't agree with. Sound familiar?

What do you mean by this exactly? I genuinely don’t understand and am asking in good faith.

Are you saying that the radical right is cancelling people?

Or do you mean the idea of cancel culture is being used to suppress ideas?

I don’t understand how either could be true. I am nowhere near being a radical right person, at least I wouldn’t consider myself to be, but I am very concerned about the behavior described in the article as I have experienced the behavior first-hand. We are talking about the suppression of people and ideas.

Generalization is a intellectual shortcut but, the bubble that the stereotypical typical Williams collage student was raised in supports this problem. I don’t know exactly what a “cancel” is, but in my mind, the behavior isn’t a left / right thing- it’s an extremest thing. There are plenty of examples from the right extremes, including banning of books and the unashamed desire to repeal the legality of gay marriage. Extreme political positions require a clean message of good and evil, and in my view, the “cancel” of anything (eg nuance) disrupting those messages is a broad issue in the future of our society and culture.

Razor sharp analysis; the left and the right are both involved in similar policies around "cancellation". As an example, the right wing has expressed disdain and called for a reduction of powers of the FBI[1] in the same way the left has expressed theirs for the police[2].

[1] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-republicans-will-com...

[2] https://time.com/5849495/black-lives-matter-defund-police-de...

Great example- there are more. The far left and the far right are so close they don't even know it. If they stopped seeking "good" and "evil", and hating on principle they'd see the absurdity.

But defunding the police was never cancel culture, that's a separate thing. Cancel culture refers to the practice of trying to get individuals fired for things they said, or sometimes to try and get customers of a company to abandon that company for the same reasons.

I think you are being disingenuous if you are denying that cancel culture is a thing. There is a long list of people who’ve been cancelled or have attempted to be cancelled and finding that list is a quick Google away. Examples include: JK Rowling, Dave Chapelle, Matt Damon, etc. the list is a mile long. Some cancellation attempts are more successful than others depending on how famous they are. But the key is that a large mob of people banded together and tried to get them deplatformed, usually using common language like “do better”, and calling them things like “fascist”, “bigot”, “racist”.

Additionally, those are just examples of people in the public sphere, there are tons of videos and other examples of online of students shouting down professors or guest speakers, calling them "fascists", demanding they be fired, literally cancelling speakers with opposing views. I mean there's just a lot of evidence online, very easy to Google. I can link it here if that's helpful, but I worry that the people who don't already know about this problem will probably just ignore the links since they were already willfully ignorant up to this point.

Of course there are examples of right extremes, nobody here is denying that, we’re talking about the extremes of the left and how they are having a chilling effect on scientific research.

For the record, I am not a Republican and I am not a Democrat.

I don't think I denied that "cancel culture" is a thing. The quote are because I have very limited exposure to social media (this site and some limited reddit) and don't follow any popular news (cnn/fox/abc/nbc etc), and don't talk politics socially- so I'm not comfortable that my definition of 'cancel' is the common definition. My intended point was this behavior is on both left and right BUT but more importantly, it is the extremes of each that are the problem and 'canceling' drives greater extremes. that is not good. I intended to make the point that the folks at Williams are likely extreme due to the bubble that they live in- and I don't support that at all. Fwiw: I'm neither Republican or Democrat either. I have deep distrust in anyone with power, which is dark soul of both of those organizations.

The right is using "cancel culture" as a boogeyman to deflect criticism of their ideas.

A few people complaining about you on Twitter now apparently constitutes being "cancelled", even if it comes with no actual consequences.

>The radical leftists who promote it are thereby granted the license to abuse all who oppose them, since those "reactionaries" must be bigots, racist, sexist, transphobes, homophobes - in short: evil people who deserve the abuse of good people like themselves.

Yes, and let's go further in. Is it really "all who oppose them" they're after? Or is it just envy, "all who have something I want?"

They would rather destroy society than admit what they are doing doesn't work for them.

Can you folks hear yourselves? "Radical left" here, "radical right" there, is there anything else in this world? Like moderate left, center, moderate right, and anything in between or perpendicular to that? I understand you have a war to fight but the first victim seems to be reality here.

There is but we live in a liberal society, and by definition if they reject it that makes them radicals (though more a "top = totalitarian" kind for both, rather than right or left)

This whole conversation reminds me of when I was sitting in a movie theater, watching Inglorious Basterds-- celebrating the death of an on-screen villain who is in a movie theater, watching a movie celebrating the death of an on-screen villain. Most people never step back and notice the irony of that scene and what it is supposed to say about ME, the viewer. Many people don't realize that they are a continuation of a cycle of villains, both the oppressed for one moment and the oppressor the next, demonizing groups as evil for some sort of tribal emotional reward deep in our ancient brain structures. And to that, I say, it's a very human instinct and though possibly the instinct is the root of most evil in the world, it's not something to hate someone for indulging.

The whole point of the OP article is that a radical leftist view is taking over major social, cultural, and academic institutions.

The author provides plenty of examples for this in the article, some of which are well-known, and none of which are factually disputed.

It seems the ones who ignore reality are those assuming and/or pretending "the center" is still firmly in control on these issues. That simply is not the case, which is really a key point in the article.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com