Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Felton. For the next two weeks, We're going
Speaker 1: to try something a little different. Over the past year,
Speaker 1: I've been having conversations with experts across the ideological spectrum
Speaker 1: about a topic that I care a lot about, the
Speaker 1: freedom of speech. I am extremely excited to share them
Speaker 1: with you now, and one positive side effect of being
Speaker 1: able to do so is that it will give a
Speaker 1: chance for our hard working producer, shore Runner here a
Speaker 1: Deep Background, to have a little summer break. This episode
Speaker 1: in our Free Speech series is about cancel culture. The
Speaker 1: idea of quote canceling someone is itself relatively new. One
Speaker 1: of the first times the word was used in this
Speaker 1: way was in the nineteen ninety one action movie New
Speaker 1: Jack City. I Know I'm Dating Myself Now, in which
Speaker 1: Wesley Snipes plays a drug lord and actually says it
Speaker 1: about his girlfriend can pitch. The idea of canceling someone
Speaker 1: then pretty slowly made its way into pop culture, first
Speaker 1: used in a humorous way and then eventually more seriously.
Speaker 1: Osita Jenevu, a writer at the New Republic, wrote a
Speaker 1: really insightful article about this phenomenon called the cancel culture Khan.
Speaker 1: He's been following the evolution of the term. I spoke
Speaker 1: to Osita back in February, when the public debate around
Speaker 1: cancil culture was really gaining steam. Here's Osita's take. A
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, before cancel culture was a phrase
Speaker 1: in circulation, you would see people on Twitter, especially sort
Speaker 1: of ironically say that things had been canceled. Pop star
Speaker 1: disappointed you in some way, or that person's canceled. There's
Speaker 1: a popular shift of celebrity on Twitter pointing to a
Speaker 1: coffee machine and had been broken and saying, oh, that's
Speaker 1: canceled out. You know. It was that kind of usage.
Speaker 1: And one I think it's interesting about that to me
Speaker 1: is the phrase political correctness originally emerged in a very
Speaker 1: similar way. People in the New Left in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies began using it as a way of describing
Speaker 1: a kind of orthodoxy or political orthodoxy within their circles.
Speaker 1: It's a politically correct thing to believe X, Y and z.
Speaker 1: But then it got picked up by conservatives. He used
Speaker 1: it earnestly to describe ideological tendencies on the left that
Speaker 1: they didn't like. So I think in a very similar
Speaker 1: way we see now with cancelation cancel culture. I think
Speaker 1: that kind of mirrors the way that that terminology has emerged.
Speaker 1: That's totally fascinating. Can I just say, as a purely
Speaker 1: linguistic matter, the reason this is so fascinating is when
Speaker 1: we think about appropriation of phrases, we're kind of acclimated
Speaker 1: to be thinking about cases where you have a term
Speaker 1: that is a racist term, or is enophobic term, or
Speaker 1: some other form of bias a homophobic term, and then
Speaker 1: the group that is subject to bias appropriates the term,
Speaker 1: repurposes it and makes it a term of pride. You know.
Speaker 1: The term queer is the sort of archetypal example of
Speaker 1: this where this happened in my lifetime when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, Queer was solely at least an ordinary discourse,
Speaker 1: a homophobic insult, and then it came to be taken
Speaker 1: over in the process of act up in the movement
Speaker 1: against AIDS as a statement of pride, so it went
Speaker 1: from badness to self appropriation. In this case, this is
Speaker 1: actually really fascinating. You're saying that the movement is the
Speaker 1: other way it starts with an ironic self description by
Speaker 1: the in group that sort of light heart did, and
Speaker 1: then comes to be as it were appropriated by the outgroup,
Speaker 1: and then it gets reaffied as an actual thing. That's
Speaker 1: a great point that you're making right there. That's certainly
Speaker 1: my understanding the history of the phrase political correctness. And
Speaker 1: I think that's particularly interesting to me is that in
Speaker 1: that translation, or in that appropriation by the right, you
Speaker 1: lose all of the iron it. You lose the sense
Speaker 1: that when people originally use the phrase political correctness, they
Speaker 1: were saying something self aware about themselves and their tendency
Speaker 1: to get carried away about certain things. Right, it was
Speaker 1: an acknowledgments within those circles. That's some of the things
Speaker 1: that they believed or said, you know, we're a little wacky.
Speaker 1: But they could be humorous about it, and they're aware
Speaker 1: of it, and they could criticize it. But when it
Speaker 1: moves over to the right, you don't just have the
Speaker 1: phrase shift over it, but you lose the sense that
Speaker 1: you were talking about a group of people that is
Speaker 1: capable of self criticism, and it's capable of the knowledging
Speaker 1: its own limitations, and you start believing in earnest, and
Speaker 1: these are people who are wildly doctrinaire about crazy out
Speaker 1: there identity political beliefs, with no sense of self awareness.
Speaker 1: I think that's the thing that's so striking to me
Speaker 1: about that shift, and I think that with cancel culture
Speaker 1: there is also that self awareness now where people will,
Speaker 1: partially as a reaction to the way that this has
Speaker 1: become a discourse, will sort of jokingly say they're about
Speaker 1: counseling somebody for making a particular joke that is like
Speaker 1: just over the edge, but not really that's the offensive.
Speaker 1: There is no a serious use of it as well, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, so I completely buy what you're saying. And
Speaker 1: a huge number of the uses of cancel are clearly
Speaker 1: intended lightheartedly or ironically, and certainly when critics of cancel
Speaker 1: culture say that everyone has been canceled, part of the
Speaker 1: reason for that is that people are using the term
Speaker 1: sometimes in this lighter way. But there is some phenomenon
Speaker 1: of people on Twitter using the term non ironically. Yes,
Speaker 1: what when do you see that getting used and what
Speaker 1: trends do you see in that usage. I think that
Speaker 1: when Chappelle came out this special, you know, it was
Speaker 1: a good example of this. People were offended by some
Speaker 1: of the things you said about transgender people and the
Speaker 1: jokes made by Michael Jackson. And I'm sure if you
Speaker 1: saw videos that were being posted on Twitter on the
Speaker 1: social media's time, you'd see in the comments people saying, well,
Speaker 1: now Chappelle is canceled, and they'd mean it. You know,
Speaker 1: they didn't mean that the special would literally be canceled,
Speaker 1: because it wasn't. But they may have meant that they
Speaker 1: would like that to be the case, or they may
Speaker 1: just have meant that they personally were canceling him in
Speaker 1: the sense that he was now out of their pantheon
Speaker 1: of comedians that they would listen to. So it's really unclear, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know that most of the people who use
Speaker 1: the term would say, well, now Chappelle should literally be
Speaker 1: like the special should be pulled from Netflix and Chappelle
Speaker 1: should be removed from all of his contracts. But I
Speaker 1: think it's most of the time it's people saying personally
Speaker 1: to them, as far as they're concerned, Chappelle is no
Speaker 1: longer good in their eyes. So you know, that's that's
Speaker 1: that's a real thing, and it's a real way that
Speaker 1: people use the phrase, I think one of the things,
Speaker 1: I guess the main thing really I'm trying to get
Speaker 1: out in the pieces to what extents are we watching
Speaker 1: a sort of new phenomenon in these critiques? Is it
Speaker 1: really the case that there is a new culture of
Speaker 1: criticism that's emerged that is uniquely and troublingly unsparing and
Speaker 1: un empathetic, or is it take case that we are
Speaker 1: seeing forms of criticism that have always sort of been
Speaker 1: around translated into a new medium on social media and
Speaker 1: that is sort of upsetting people's understanding of the line
Speaker 1: between creators and artists and their audience and journalists and
Speaker 1: their readers. And are we basically just watching technology transform
Speaker 1: something that already existed into a new and unfamiliar and
Speaker 1: kind of scary seeming novelty. And your argument is that
Speaker 1: very much it's the latter that we've always had, you know,
Speaker 1: people saying, cancel my subscription, or we've had people engaging
Speaker 1: in systematic criticism or saying, you know, such and such
Speaker 1: a person is outside the pale because of this or
Speaker 1: that view that they hold, and that there's a kind
Speaker 1: of cancel culture panic going on out there. Is that
Speaker 1: a fair read of where you come down. I mean,
Speaker 1: I certainly think so. I start the piece talking about
Speaker 1: Lenny Bruce, a very controversial comedian in his day, who
Speaker 1: made a lot of jobs at powerful people and rubbed
Speaker 1: people a ang way. His use of language was also
Speaker 1: self consciously designed to shock and to break taboos. He
Speaker 1: was breaking taboos, especially about swearing, and he gained an
Speaker 1: audience for doing that, and he gained a lot of
Speaker 1: respects for doing that as somebody who you know, is
Speaker 1: bringing first values to their fullest expression. But he was
Speaker 1: also basically persecuted by obscenity laws. And there was a
Speaker 1: time in which cancelation, or what we sort of think
Speaker 1: of now is cancelation, wasn't sort of just a purely
Speaker 1: social phenomenon or purely a matter of public opinion. It
Speaker 1: was the law that if you said certain things, you
Speaker 1: could lose your gigs or end up at a workhouse,
Speaker 1: you know, as he was sentenced to. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that in examining episodes like that, in examples
Speaker 1: like his life, it comes very clear that there's nothing
Speaker 1: particularly new about the act of saying that something is
Speaker 1: beyond the pale or offensive. Obviously, there's not even something
Speaker 1: new necessarily about the public on mass congregating to say
Speaker 1: that a particular television program, particular comedian, particular article was
Speaker 1: wrong or bad or off the mark or offensive in
Speaker 1: some way. People used to send in letters. You'd have
Speaker 1: the Parents Television Council dial up the FCC when they
Speaker 1: thought things on television that they didn't want their kids
Speaker 1: to see in etc. I think what particularly concerns people
Speaker 1: is sort of it called a mob like. It's the
Speaker 1: fact that you have the worst cases, maybe hundreds of
Speaker 1: people with thousands of people coming together and saying this joke,
Speaker 1: this TV program, this movie, whatever, is wrong in some way.
Speaker 1: Even that the fact of people on mass coming together
Speaker 1: to criticize people. It's not like an invention of the
Speaker 1: social media age. It used to happen. It's just the
Speaker 1: social media has made it particularly easy and particularly visible.
Speaker 1: It doesn't always see all they hate mail that you
Speaker 1: would have used to flow into magazine mail rooms. You know,
Speaker 1: that wasn't something that the public could look at and
Speaker 1: feel a ghast about, but you do see tweets and comments.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back as I am very very convinced
Speaker 1: by your argument that that kind of opposition is not
Speaker 1: new but is just much more observable. But I've been
Speaker 1: really trying to come up with the most sympathetic account
Speaker 1: that I can of the form of the criticism. So
Speaker 1: let me try out the following hypothesis on you of
Speaker 1: the other side's view. And I'm not attributing this to
Speaker 1: any actual person who's criticizing Cancel culture. This is just
Speaker 1: my attempt to reconstruct the best argument you could make
Speaker 1: on their side. The argument would be this, the distinctive
Speaker 1: form of criticism that one hears again and again and
Speaker 1: again today is that we should break down the distinction
Speaker 1: between the artist or the author or the maker on
Speaker 1: the one hand, and the human being on the other side.
Speaker 1: That we should admit that we can't distinguish the dancer
Speaker 1: from the dance, and for that reason, when we see
Speaker 1: a moral failing in the person, we should respond by
Speaker 1: sanctioning the artwork that that person creates. So to take
Speaker 1: a concrete example, you know, if one is convinced that
Speaker 1: the allegations from many years ago against Woody Allen that
Speaker 1: he abused his daughter, an allegation that's important to note
Speaker 1: he was cleared of at the time. But if one
Speaker 1: came to believe that that allegation were true, one should
Speaker 1: therefore not watch any Woody Allen movies. And in the
Speaker 1: sense that fits into the word cancel because it's not
Speaker 1: canceled the thing or argue against the utterance. Usually a
Speaker 1: human being is the direct object of the verb to cancel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so if that's what they're really upset about, I
Speaker 1: think one can have a very serious debate or argument
Speaker 1: about this, because I'm not sure there's a clear correct answer.
Speaker 1: I can see both sides of the argument. But that
Speaker 1: does seem to be some trend that is a little
Speaker 1: greater today than it was, say, ten years ago. What
Speaker 1: do you think about that hypothesis? See, I just don't know.
Speaker 1: Like I think, one of the things that's so hard
Speaker 1: about these conversations is that they're very hard to quantify.
Speaker 1: It's very hard to bring any kind of empirical evidence
Speaker 1: to bear sure, and a lot of this stuff, but
Speaker 1: you know, you can go back to Ezra Pounds and
Speaker 1: people talking about his anti semitism and the extent to
Speaker 1: which it may have you know, it should influence the
Speaker 1: way you see his poetry. You can talk about Roman Polanski.
Speaker 1: These are conversations that people have had about arts and
Speaker 1: artists for a very long time. I think those are
Speaker 1: great examples. But the way I was taught those things,
Speaker 1: those were both taught as canonical people. So you know,
Speaker 1: the Norton Anthology of English Poetry, from which I was
Speaker 1: taught poetry and at a at a tender age, which
Speaker 1: influenced me, included all of the Ezra Pound poems one
Speaker 1: could want, including some of the ones that were anti Semitic.
Speaker 1: And sure a teacher might say, you know, ge, just
Speaker 1: so you know, he's got these terrible views. And there
Speaker 1: are some people who think we shouldn't, but the sort
Speaker 1: of canonical answer in the culture was, but you should
Speaker 1: certainly read the poems. The same with Polanski. I mean
Speaker 1: he left, he had to leave the United States because
Speaker 1: of indictment for statutory rape. And yet I don't know
Speaker 1: too many people who studied film in a serious way
Speaker 1: who were told, don't watch Chinatown because of Roman Polanski's immorality.
Speaker 1: That's a canonical film. I agree that people have been
Speaker 1: debating this. They're probably be debating this since there was art,
Speaker 1: But I think that more serious people today are saying
Speaker 1: that the person is out based on their immorality or
Speaker 1: the immoral features of some of their artwork than was
Speaker 1: the case in at least the classical reception. Maybe I
Speaker 1: just don't know. Like the thing that I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about in this realm of the past couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: although it's a little bit of a different example, is
Speaker 1: Kobe Bryant. He's been the subject of many, many moving
Speaker 1: and loving tributes, politicians issued statements talking about how wonderful
Speaker 1: he was and all he did for the support of basketball.
Speaker 1: But he's also somebody with who had a very serious
Speaker 1: allegation of sexual abuse level against him, and that hasn't
Speaker 1: really broken into a lot of the conversation we've been
Speaker 1: having since his death. In fact, the Washington Post reprimanded
Speaker 1: a reporter I believe on the afternoon came down that
Speaker 1: he had died for linking to an article mentioning this case.
Speaker 1: So you're saying this is the opposite of cancel culture,
Speaker 1: is this is the whitewashing culture. I have read things
Speaker 1: by feminists and others making the point that it's problematic
Speaker 1: that there's been this celebration of Kobe Bryant. But if
Speaker 1: your point is that, no, that the celebration, at least
Speaker 1: culturally has substantially outweighed the criticism. I think you're unquestionably
Speaker 1: right about that. I guess the point I'm making is
Speaker 1: that we still have a very broad capacity to overlook
Speaker 1: the bad things that famous people have done, you know,
Speaker 1: And I think that you would have to have a
Speaker 1: lot of evidence to suggest that. You know, we're now
Speaker 1: in this culture where any mark against you, if you're
Speaker 1: an artist or an athlete, or an entertainer or some kind,
Speaker 1: is now much more damaging to your public perception than
Speaker 1: it would have been previously. I think there's certain kinds
Speaker 1: of things you can do. I think that Brian example. Nonwithstanding,
Speaker 1: I think people are much less lenient about sexual abuse
Speaker 1: now and allegations of sexism. I think people are obviously
Speaker 1: more sensitive about racism. But I don't know that people
Speaker 1: now in general are willing to sort of metaphorically burned
Speaker 1: books or paintings, or sort of strike people from historical
Speaker 1: record as far as popular entertainment is concerned for having
Speaker 1: done something wrong in the past. You know, I think
Speaker 1: that there's a different conversation now happening about historical figures.
Speaker 1: That's certainly a related conversation. Conversation. Yeah, you know, one
Speaker 1: thinks of Calhoun's name being taken off of one of
Speaker 1: the Yale colleges, and there it's not fair to say
Speaker 1: was based on one thing that he did. It is
Speaker 1: based on the fact that the very thing that had
Speaker 1: gotten him recognition in the first place, namely his statesmanship
Speaker 1: in US history, could not be disentangled from the position
Speaker 1: that he advocated at all of those moments, which was
Speaker 1: South Carolinian quasi sovereignty in order to protect slavery right.
Speaker 1: And this sort of raises that it does seem kind
Speaker 1: of striking that maybe the is stereotypical, but the mostly
Speaker 1: white conservative critics of quote unquote cancel culture seemed to
Speaker 1: be really worried that people of color or women are
Speaker 1: the ones who suddenly have the capacity to, as they imagine,
Speaker 1: shut down a certain kind of discourse. And that seemed
Speaker 1: to be making folks very, very nervous in a way
Speaker 1: that it might not have been the case when the
Speaker 1: question of access or who you would listen to was
Speaker 1: more broadly controlled by white elites. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think this is one of the big shifts in cultural
Speaker 1: politics I've been fascinated by over the past simple years.
Speaker 1: You have the people who in the eighties, I guess
Speaker 1: would have been railing against offensive lyrics in hip hop.
Speaker 1: Now rebranding themselves as a movement as the defenders of
Speaker 1: free speech and the defenders of free expression against the
Speaker 1: overlease and sorious twenty something woke people on Twitter, and
Speaker 1: you know, like I don't know that if you go
Speaker 1: through the history of the conservative movements and examine the
Speaker 1: way that the movement responded to certain controversies and the
Speaker 1: way that they respond to speech controversies, now you're going
Speaker 1: to find like a natural sort of intellectual evolution to
Speaker 1: their current position. I think it's kind of a one
Speaker 1: eighty that's happening for pretty obvious reasons. One of the
Speaker 1: things that was mattening to me about the campus political
Speaker 1: controversies that took up so much attention a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago was that there was so much writing about
Speaker 1: people at events, you know, shouting at a professor or
Speaker 1: a speaker, or saying that a speaker shouldn't come to campus,
Speaker 1: and so on. You can have your view on whether
Speaker 1: or not that seat useful or meaningful form of protest.
Speaker 1: There's always no writing at all about Republican state legislatures.
Speaker 1: By law trying to prevent certain people from coming to
Speaker 1: certain campuses, or trying to crack down on certain student movements.
Speaker 1: There was no conversation about that as a threat to
Speaker 1: free speech. You would imagine that actions state government would
Speaker 1: be slightly more concerning actions by five and a half
Speaker 1: liberal arts students in the Northeast. You know, sure, you're
Speaker 1: making a point that I think. First of all, I
Speaker 1: think it's absolutely correct that free speech has only become
Speaker 1: a rallying cry of conservatives in the last decade. And
Speaker 1: historically conservatives were more status, they were more in supportive
Speaker 1: the state when it restricted speech, and they were also
Speaker 1: more committed to what they saw as moral judgment and
Speaker 1: made the argument typically that when a work of art
Speaker 1: or something else violated community more out, it ought to
Speaker 1: be appropriate to suppress it or not to fund it.
Speaker 1: But I would just note the flip, what I call
Speaker 1: the flip, and the political economy of free speech has
Speaker 1: actually taken place on both sides. I mean, it's also
Speaker 1: true that in left of center circles, the knee jerk
Speaker 1: view for most of the twentieth century was more speech
Speaker 1: is good. You know. The American Civil Liberties Union got
Speaker 1: its start as a really very far left organization, deeply
Speaker 1: embedded with socialism and even communism, and it gradually morphed
Speaker 1: into being a more general civil libertarian set of positions.
Speaker 1: But this was an alliance that was driven in part
Speaker 1: by the left sense that the right controlled the institutions
Speaker 1: of the state and was interested in shutting them down.
Speaker 1: And so today, you know, when I teach my students
Speaker 1: and I teach free speech, I teach First Amendment to
Speaker 1: my students. It's noteworthy that many students who see themselves
Speaker 1: as left of center are very skeptical about the power
Speaker 1: of free speech, and many students who are right of
Speaker 1: centers see themselves as deeply committed to free speech. And
Speaker 1: it's nearly one hundred and eighty degree flip, yea, even
Speaker 1: from what it is when I started teaching this, you know,
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago. So I've sort of watched this change
Speaker 1: happening in real time among my students, and I think
Speaker 1: they're reflecting a change it's happening more broadly in the society.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of flipping to go around. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know whether it's hypocritical or not, it's definitely
Speaker 1: a transformation. And how we think about these. So I
Speaker 1: mean there are ways in which I think the left.
Speaker 1: I guess the campus left now is a little bit
Speaker 1: frankly better on speech than the previous iteration of the
Speaker 1: campus left back in the eighties and nineties, when you
Speaker 1: had the first sort of way of political practice controversies. No,
Speaker 1: I say this because I'm interesting hearing your perspective on it.
Speaker 1: During that first wave, a lot of campuses were actively
Speaker 1: going about imposing speech codes. There were actual statutory efforts
Speaker 1: to prohibit people from saying certain things that were deemed
Speaker 1: offensive that ultimately ended up in a lot of court battles. Now,
Speaker 1: I think the way that this discourse happens is almost
Speaker 1: exclusively within social circle. Students will say among themselves, these
Speaker 1: are the kinds of values that we want to uphold.
Speaker 1: This is the kind of speech that we don't think
Speaker 1: is okay. And it's much more informal debate. Whatever norms
Speaker 1: are being enforced now or not being enforced by dictadd's
Speaker 1: being enforced by social dynamics, in some cases group pressure.
Speaker 1: But it's not about somebody laying down the law administratively. Now,
Speaker 1: is it possible that that's because of the First Amendment?
Speaker 1: Jurisprudence that emerge out of that first wave. Maybe I
Speaker 1: have a competing theory about why. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: I think it's a super astute observation and really really
Speaker 1: resonates with my own experiences, for sure. And I was
Speaker 1: a student in the very late eighties and early nineties
Speaker 1: on a campus, and I remember all of the intense
Speaker 1: debates about that, and you're totally right that those were
Speaker 1: about formal codification and now it's about the informal. But
Speaker 1: my instinctive reaction to that change, and to be blunt,
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought of it before. I think it's a
Speaker 1: great point that you're making, is that it's because of
Speaker 1: the rise of social media, much in the way that
Speaker 1: the question of where free expression lives used to be
Speaker 1: very much about the state and the private individual, and
Speaker 1: or maybe by extension, the university, which might be private
Speaker 1: but still functions as the state when you go to one.
Speaker 1: Now the big topic in free expression is really social
Speaker 1: media and what it means to have pre expression in
Speaker 1: an era where all of the platforms have terms of
Speaker 1: service that include community standards that regulate what you can say.
Speaker 1: And so since today's students are genuine digital natives whose
Speaker 1: entire adolescent and post adolescent lives have been completely structured
Speaker 1: around the idea that where the important expression happens is
Speaker 1: on social media. So I think it follows from that
Speaker 1: that they accept non state oriented modes of sanction and
Speaker 1: they accept, you know, let's all do it together on
Speaker 1: social media forms of sanction. And that may also be
Speaker 1: one of the things that scares the daylights out of
Speaker 1: an older generation of conservatives, who say, oh, my goodness,
Speaker 1: this phenomenon of collective judgment is itself the thing that's
Speaker 1: scary because it's not in the hands of the state.
Speaker 1: It's not in the hands of the people who run
Speaker 1: the inslution, it's not in the hands of the quote
Speaker 1: unquote grown ups or the traditional actors who exercise power.
Speaker 1: It's democratized, it's spread out, it's decentralized, and it has
Speaker 1: this social feature to it that grows out of social media.
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, I think I'm just saying your
Speaker 1: theory back to you to try to explain the phenomenon
Speaker 1: that you described, So I describe the theory to you,
Speaker 1: not to me. Sure, I mean, I think it's anybody
Speaker 1: can be a gatekeeper of sorts now the power to
Speaker 1: sort of align yourself with a particular constituency and define
Speaker 1: values amongst yourselves and enforce those values. It's no longer
Speaker 1: just in the hands of people who belong to mainstream
Speaker 1: political constituencies or people who are within the existing racial
Speaker 1: or cultural religious majority. Anybody can sort of develop a
Speaker 1: set of beliefs and values that they sort of, you
Speaker 1: can't really say, impose on the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: but they can take jobs at people of prominence on
Speaker 1: the basis of those values in the way that they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been able to ten twenty thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: as you said, as a consequence of social media. And
Speaker 1: you know, if you are a conservative or not just
Speaker 1: a conservative, but if you're frankly a centrist liberal with
Speaker 1: a lot of respect for lead institutions, it is very
Speaker 1: understandable why you'd find that frightening. But I think that
Speaker 1: we should be clear and understanding what the actual risks
Speaker 1: of this kind of new discourse actually are. If we
Speaker 1: go around saying to ourselves what's happening now can be
Speaker 1: half metaphorically half not connected to Stalinism and the Gulag
Speaker 1: and witch hunts. I think that we lose our sense
Speaker 1: of perspective when we draw those comparisons. If there's something
Speaker 1: to be critiqued about this new discourse, I think that
Speaker 1: we don't do ourselves any favors in understanding those things
Speaker 1: if we're constantly reaching for something else that is obviously
Speaker 1: so dramatically different but has this i don't know, like
Speaker 1: rhetorical or emotional resonance when you reach for it. You know,
Speaker 1: you might not like being criticized on Twitter, but if
Speaker 1: you're comparing the situation to Nazi Germany, like you're not,
Speaker 1: you're not bringing any clarity to what's actually happening. See.
Speaker 1: I just want to really thank you because to me,
Speaker 1: your cultural critical analysis here is terribly powerful because you're
Speaker 1: not responding to the critique by just saying, well, that's
Speaker 1: a right wing critique and the left is better. Nor
Speaker 1: are you saying that the right is entirely tilting at
Speaker 1: a windmill. Instead, you're stepping outside of it and evaluating
Speaker 1: the phenomenon that's actually in play and asking us to
Speaker 1: think about how that phenomenon is actually cashed out in
Speaker 1: terms of who has the capacity to do what, and
Speaker 1: how power is handed out, and how communication actually happens,
Speaker 1: and that to me is tremendously clarifying. And I just
Speaker 1: want to say thank you, and I hope we can
Speaker 1: talk again in the future as you continue to unpack
Speaker 1: and explain other kinds of cultural phenomenon. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to look out for your stuff and I'm really grateful
Speaker 1: to you. Well, thank you so much. This is truly wonderful.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Vocita raised some really important questions around the
Speaker 1: social mechanism that's driving what is known as cancel culture.
Speaker 1: He points out that in almost every situation, those calling
Speaker 1: for the cancelation of a person or a figure or
Speaker 1: an idea are doing so themselves, not through the exercise
Speaker 1: of official governmental power, or indeed through attempts to create
Speaker 1: an institutionalized mechanism of censorship, but rather in their own
Speaker 1: expression of their own beliefs and ideas. True, it may
Speaker 1: happen that institutions respond in individual cases, so it's not
Speaker 1: as though the movement is disconnected from institutional reality. But
Speaker 1: the calls themselves are not calls for a fundamental set
Speaker 1: of institutional changes. In most instances, that has major implications
Speaker 1: when we try to puzzle out exactly what free speech
Speaker 1: principles should tell us about calls for cancelation or the
Speaker 1: phenomenon of cancelation itself, assuming that phenomenon even exists. As
Speaker 1: Zosita reminds us, our Freedom of Speech series will continue
Speaker 1: next week. Until then, be careful, be safe, and be well.
Speaker 1: Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our
Speaker 1: producer is Lydia gene Coott, with mastering by Jason Gambrell
Speaker 1: and Martin Gonzalez. Our showrunner is Sophie mckibbon. Our theme
Speaker 1: music is composed by Luis GERA special thanks to the
Speaker 1: Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg, and Mia Lobel. I'm
Speaker 1: Noah Feldman. I also write a regular column for Bloomberg Opinion,
Speaker 1: which you can find at Bloomberg dot com slash Feldman.
Speaker 1: To discover Bloomberg's original slate of podcasts, go to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com slash Podcasts. And one last thing. I just
Speaker 1: wrote a book called The Arab Winter, a Tragedy. I
Speaker 1: would be delighted if you checked it out. If you
Speaker 1: liked what you've heard today, please write a review or
Speaker 1: tell a friend. You can always let me know what
Speaker 1: you think on Twitter my handle is Noah Our felt.
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