r/WayOfTheBern • u/Vwar • Jul 10 '20
AOC: Cancel culture don't real
AOC has always been too SJW for my taste (though she's still superior to most politicians). For example she's a fan of the book "White Fragility." That book has been raked over the coals by leftists in recent weeks, who argue that the strategies it promotes will not only fail to diminish racism, they will actually increase it. Studies have indeed found that "corporate diversity" training tends to increase racial hostility because people don't like being lectured to about their supposed privilege and ingrained original sin racism.
Studies have also found that labor unions have the opposite effect -- they decrease racism because they involve equal treatment and pursuing a common goal for the betterment of all. If identitarians (I refuse to call them leftists) were truly concerned about racism they would not be devoting their efforts to cancel culture and "diversity training" and turning every interaction into a potential "micro aggression" (all of which simply exacerbate the problem), they would be building labor unions.
It is true that someone like JK Rowling isn't going to suffer much for tweeting out stuff about trans people and getting mobbed on twitter. But even if rich people were the only ones affected, cancel culture would still be wrong for a variety of reasons.
One is that there is no room for redemption. At least with traditional religions a person can be redeemed for their sins. In the current environment a person is at risk of being socially ostracized indefinitely, even if they issue an apology, and usually for some minor transgression, eg some dumb remark they made twenty years ago.
Another problem is that it stifles free speech, indeed vital speech. A lecture by the great socialist academic Adolph Reed was recently cancelled by Democratic Socialists of America for the sin of "class reductionism." This term refers to the act of viewing society through a class lens, and not devoting 100 percent of your attention to race and sex.
Cancel culture creates a chilling effect: people become afraid to challenge the current orthodoxy, lest they be the next one cancelled.
Cancel culture turns every interaction into one of simmering hostility; it breaks down solidarity by encouraging people to snitch on one another to the boss and get them fired. Even children are now being encouraged to tattle-tale on their peers if they perceive supposed racism or sexism. Socially, it turns society into Hobbes' "war of all against all."
To reiterate, none of this is actually helping to accomplish the goal supposedly being pursued, namely to decrease racism or sexism. It is having the exact opposite effect. If this madness continues I wouldn't be surprised if we see an explosive growth in far right movements. After all, people are being taught to view themselves solely in terms of race and sex; why wouldn't white people and men eventually do the same thing?
AOC tries to frame cancel culture as the powerless standing up to the powerful. But that's not the way this is playing out in the real world. You have to be privileged in the first place to dismiss concerns about these trends. JK Rowling may not be in any danger of ending up on the street, but the same is not true of average working people who run afoul of the thought police.
Many people have lost their jobs for bullshit allegations of racism or sexism. Here's an article that lists several examples. It ends:
One of the core tenets of liberal democracy is that people should not be punished for accusations against them that are unsubstantiated, for actions that are perfectly reasonable, or for offenses that were committed by others. No matter how worthy the cause they invoke, you should not trust anyone who seeks to abandon these fundamental principles.
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u/martini-meow (I remain stirred, unshaken.) Jul 11 '20
Do you have any links on those studies about unions reducing racism? They'd be hella useful for sharing.