...On 'Cancel' Culture

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Re: ...On 'Cancel' Culture

Postby Spiro C. Thiery » Mon Dec 28, 2020 5:14 am

Come on. Cancel culture is not a thing. At least it's not one thing. As illustrated by that oh-so anti-woke piece on RT, and any other number of them, the reactionary takes on both "woke" and "cancel culture" have become the the thing apparently criticized. It's reminiscent of the alleged "war on Christmas", whereby anybody who dares wish someone Happy Holidays is some kind of destroyer of our way of life.

It's where the critic becomes the poseur. Equating any support of social justice with expedient virtue signalling is at least as big a detriment to positive change as is the virtual signalling itself.

Not that I'm the first to point out the irony that the vast majority of things posted on this forum come from the cesspool of propaganda and PR spin factory production, and that too much of it is presented here without any apparent awareness of that irony. Of course, there's not really much else off-forum to post available otherwise; we are so gamed. Every alternative news machine that's sprung up in response to mainstream bullshit is just more bullshit.

Back to cancel culture: Someone up thread actually lamented, in anti-litmus test righteousness, 'you canceled his "platform" with you.' If that doesn't smack of thought policing, I don't know what does.
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Re: ...On 'Cancel' Culture

Postby brainpanhandler » Mon Dec 28, 2020 11:14 am

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King Jr.
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Re: ...On 'Cancel' Culture

Postby norton ash » Mon Dec 28, 2020 12:20 pm

And so the members of the RT woke-list are harmful to anyone? I mean, they might be ridiculous, but you'd prefer a return to bullshit white Christian values? This is war-on-Christmas level shite. Anti-progressive, pro-racist shite.
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Re: ...On 'Cancel' Culture

Postby norton ash » Mon Dec 28, 2020 12:23 pm

6. Richard Brody, film critic at the New Yorker

Brody turned the virtue signaling up to 11 this year by being inappropriately amorous with the pedophile starter kit known as Cuties and by ranking Spike Lee’s abysmal and amateurish Da 5 Bloods as #2 on his ‘Best of the Year’ list. Apparently, Brody doesn’t care if people think he’s a pedophile, but he REALLY doesn’t want people to think he’s racist… now that’s some quality virtue signaling!


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Re: ...On 'Cancel' Culture

Postby Cordelia » Mon Dec 28, 2020 1:36 pm

Spiro C. Thiery » Mon Dec 28, 2020 4:14 am wrote:

Back to cancel culture: Someone up thread actually lamented, in anti-litmus test righteousness, 'you canceled his "platform" with you.' If that doesn't smack of thought policing, I don't know what does.


I assumed 'they' was/were being ironic. :wink
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Re: ...On 'Cancel' Culture

Postby dada » Mon Dec 28, 2020 3:13 pm

"To paraphrase Schindler’s List, the Oscars’ new diversity and inclusion initiative isn’t just some good old-fashioned hating of straight, able-bodied white men…it’s official policy now."

This is what virtue signaling is really all about. Hollywood Jews with their radical ideas are threatening the purity of the white mind.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: ...On 'Cancel' Culture

Postby DrEvil » Mon Dec 28, 2020 4:49 pm

mentalgongfu2 » Mon Dec 28, 2020 11:05 am wrote:What is virtue signaling?


It's the alt-right's (and assholes in general) favorite new insult, accusing people of supporting causes to look good and not because they actually care. Also known as projection. The alt-right is not in favor of "woke" causes, like gender equality, anti-racism, etc., so obviously no one else is either, they're just pretending, aka virtue-signaling, to score brownie points.
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Re: ...On 'Cancel' Culture

Postby conniption » Mon Dec 28, 2020 5:27 pm

My apologies. I thought it was funny.
I'll just go ahead and ban myself for the next however-long since Elvis isn't around to punish my lack of whatever-the-hell.

Till then...
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Re: ...On 'Cancel' Culture

Postby norton ash » Mon Dec 28, 2020 5:54 pm

Oh, don't cancel yourself, ffs. It's part of the dialogue.
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Re: ...On 'Cancel' Culture

Postby mentalgongfu2 » Mon Dec 28, 2020 9:29 pm

My apologies. I thought it was funny.


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Re: ...On 'Cancel' Culture

Postby Spiro C. Thiery » Tue Dec 29, 2020 6:48 am

norton ash » Yesterday, 23:54 wrote:Oh, don't cancel yourself, ffs. It's part of the dialogue.


Indeed. I should not have lumped my complaint about the sources that get posted at RI as part of my response to that particular source material's take, and rather just critiqued the source.
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Meanwhile, in actual censorship...

Postby JackRiddler » Tue Dec 29, 2020 2:05 pm

.

As we saw in Britain, for years an entire leftist party somehow withstood the worst dished out by the establishment and corporate media, and by a determined right-wing faction inside the party who held most of the parliamentary seats. But it was destroyed once its enemies deployed the anti-Semitism smear, which proved to be a kind of magic weapon. Corbyn himself became a willing lamb for the slaughter.

Things are a bit different in the United States. For one thing, there is a large and diverse and contentious Jewish community, the members of which would laugh at the idea of having a single "Chief Rabbi" or publication act as "their" spokespersons, as happened in Britain. Most Jewish Americans are moving away from rigid identification with the Israeli state. For obvious reasons, attempts to smear Sanders in the same way it was done to Corbyn were short-lived flops.

But clearly, massive headway has been made.

The cutting edge and most powerful thrust of censorship in the U.S. remains in the not-so-bizarre alliance of state-corporate elements with the extreme right wing and with ultra-Zionists (majority Christian) to raise a flexible slander of "anti-Semitism" coupled with "terrorism," "racism," etc., so as to defame and criminalize BDS, the broader socialist politics often associated with it, any failure to support Israel (whether mild or radical), leftists within the Muslim community, and the fictional specter of a single Antifa organization. In recent years this has been proven as one of the most reliable means to get large numbers of social media accounts closed, organizations defunded, professors fired, media careers ruined, anti-speech legislation and loyalty oaths passed, corporate-media hysterias whipped up, groups split and reduced, and liberals and a lot of leftists transformed into obedient scared cattle. Despite its prevalence and success, this front has also managed to evade scrutiny as the notion is still sustained that "cancel culture" has taken over society and it is the right wing and the "center" who suffer from the hegemonic terror of "political correctness," the "liberal media," "wokeness," etc.

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the- ... atbi-smith

taibbi.substack.com
Meet the Censored: Olivia Katbi-Smith
Matt Taibbi
12-15 minutes

Olivia Katbi-Smith, a prominent activist in Portland, Oregon, lives at the intersection of two major pressure points for censorship in the United States. One is due to her involvement in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which targets the Israeli government over its treatment of the Palestinian population, and has been the subject of dozens of laws attempting to ban or criminalize BDS content.

The other her status since 2018 as the co-chair of the Portland Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Although the group is not formally associated with Bernie Sanders, the Sanders presidential campaigns inspired significant growth in its membership, and well-known members Rashida Tlaib and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez occupy high-profile roles in congress. The DSA is not only one of the most prominent political groups in America to advocate for Palestinian causes, it has a strong presence in street activism about a variety of issues. This regularly puts it in the middle of publicized fights with right-wing groups, which is where potential problems begin.

As co-head of the DSA in a city that saw protracted street clashes this summer and fall, Katbi-Smith has been in the middle of some of the fiercest arguments between protesters this country has seen in a while. Katbi-Smith is often quoted defending aggressive street tactics.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTRbiBrXhWA

“The right is not going to give up power unless they feel threatened,” she told the Washington Post in late October, adding that “people are opening up to the idea that rioting is the language of the unheard. Property destruction is not violence.”

Last year, in a Playboy article about Antifa, Katbi-Smith praised the black bloc, a masked group of activists Playboy described sympathetically, but also as a “messy” outfit whose “sometimes aggressive presence at rallies are [sic] a magnet for media attention.” After they reportedly interceded to prevent right-wing Patriot Prayer activists from interrupting a DSA meeting, Katbi-Smith, who wasn’t there that night, said, “People still wonder why we need the black bloc out there. That’s exactly why. They put their bodies on the line for us.”

Katbi-Smith’s prominent role during the protests won her a lot of attention from right-wing groups, which is probably where her problems with platforms like Twitter began.

While Internet firms rely upon Artificial Intelligence to flag troublesome content, AI has limits. Human complaints matter, too, and many people bounced from platforms like Facebook and Twitter are subjects of them. The problem is that such bans are often doled out in the middle of long, complicated arguments, on a first-come, first-serve basis.

In “mass reporting campaigns,” antagonists may accuse each other of hate speech, doxing, or other offenses, or one side may do it to another. The only thing that’s certain in these cases is that suspensions and deletions rarely take into account the entire history of disputes. In Katbi-Smith’s case, her problems seem to have started when she filed a lawsuit this fall against a reported member of the Proud Boys for invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress, in connection with an alleged doxing incident.

A lawsuit, at least, requires a public presentation of evidence. Internet bans, not so much. In the interview below, Kabti-Smith explains she was shortly after removed from Twitter multiple times, seemingly on the strength of complaints from people who were scanning her posting history, looking for potential technical violations.

The DSA’s public declaration of solidarity with Palestine and the BDS movement adds to the picture. Most of the higher-profile actions taken by Internet platforms have involved right-wing voices like Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos, or papers like the New York Post, leading to a widespread impression that “content moderation” only targets the right.

The reality is that the most advanced censorship campaigns that exist in America tend to involve BDS, which has been the subject of numerous laws and legislative proposals. The campaign to cut off boycotts and other actions against Israel often employs the same technique shrilly denounced by conservatives, i.e. using defamatory claims of bigotry (in this case, antisemitism) to cut off debate on campuses, in workplaces, and in government offices. Such campaigns have succeeded in getting professors fired, students disciplined, and institutions cut off from government funding if they participate in or allow BDS campaigns.

In one of the more notable instances, Steven Salaita lost a job at the University of Illinois to what was essentially a mass-reporting campaign, after students collected 1,300 signatures in protest of Tweets like the following:

Steven Salaita wrote:This is not a conflict between #Israel and "Hamas."

It's a struggle by an Indigenous people against a colonial power.


#Gaza #FreePalestine
July 17th 2014

87 Retweets 50 Likes


Occasional temporary suspensions from private platforms may not seem like a big deal, but they’re important to note, as evidence that the new willingness to ban or delete content has influenced the thinking of activist groups. In the “content moderation” age, the biggest platforms will be tempted in heated political disputes toward one of two courses of action, neither great. Either they will take sides, or they’ll play Whac-a-Mole in superficial attempts to placate rival demographics.

The latter strategy, already in evidence, often results in bursts of quick suspensions and reinstatements as groups fink on each other, which in turn incentivizes political antagonists to ever-escalating patterns of mass reporting. This is one of the most predictable angles to the new corporate anti-speech movement: many of the groups protesting the loudest about censorship openly endorse such tactics, when it comes to political foes. The game becomes about who gets whom kicked off first, and/or keeps them off the longest.

As efforts to de-platform groups like the Proud Boys escalate, don’t be surprised if the definition of “Antifa” expands — Facebook this summer removed “980 groups, 520 pages, and 160 ads” as part of a sweep that included some groups connected with the nebulously-defined organization* — as Internet platforms work to convince customers of an even-handed approach. Although the idea that the “slippery slope” is a fallacy is increasingly popular on the left especially, it’s already been shown that with content moderation, bans in any one direction tend rather quickly to result in bans in more directions, as more and more groups learn how to trigger deletion mechanisms. Instead of encouraging a better argument, we’re encouraging better muffling strategies.

TK asked Katbi-Smith about all of this. It should be noted that in the time since she answered these questions, she was suspended and reinstated two more times:

TK: You filed a lawsuit against a North Carolina man, reportedly for doxing. Do you feel that is connected to recent suspensions from Twitter?

OK-S: Yes. I was doxxed by a Proud Boy [in November], who claimed that I’m a central leader and funder of Antifa, and my information was circulated all over 4chan and other disgusting right-wing corners of the Internet. This has led to a whole lot of death threats and unwanted attention from the far right, and that attention is something Zionists picked up on recently when @StopAntisemites named me the “antisemite of the week”, citing my work for Palestinian rights and my involvement in DSA. I believe this account and its supporters are behind a mass reporting effort that resulted in my suspension. Stopantisemitism.org is funded by Adam Milstein, who also funds Turning Point USA and Project Veritas, and is connected with similar efforts such as Canary Mission. These kinds of mass reporting efforts are their bread and butter. I actually saw in replies people were asking if I had Instagram, so it was clear they were hoping to move this campaign to other platforms as well.

TK: What's the chronology of your suspensions from Twitter? Did they provide explanations?

OK-S: I was suspended on Monday, [November] 23rd, one day after the @StopAntisemites smear, with no warning, no notification, and no explanation. I only realized I was suspended when I went to DM a tweet to someone and it said that the action was forbidden. After lots of people tweeted at Twitter support and others tried to reach out to internal contacts at Twitter, my account was reinstated about 24 hours later, only to be suspended again 5 hours after that, again with no notification or explanation. My account was reinstated again this past Sunday the 22nd, with an email from Twitter that essentially said “it looks like everything is fine”. No acknowledgment, no explanation, nothing.

TK: Had you had any warnings? Did they give you a process for appealing?

OK-S: There were no warnings given and no specific tweet or violation of the Twitter rules cited, and no appeal or other recourse options mentioned. I went on the Twitter site and found a form to submit an appeal that way, which I did both times. About a day before my first suspension, I got a notification that my account was locked because a tweet had violated the rules. The tweet in question was a photo of my dad, and the violation was that “an individual pictured is from a country with privacy laws.” Obviously, someone was scrolling through my Twitter looking for things to report, and that should have been a red flag for me. [Eds note: Katbi-Smith was recently suspended again for this “country with privacy laws” reason, after posting a selfie. It was not explained to her which country was at issue, or whose privacy was violated].

TK: Has the DSA had any other issues that you're aware of with content moderation? Do you know anyone else connected with Portland protests who had issues on that front?

OK-S: I know this has happened to so many Palestine activists, who get put on Canary Mission’s racist blacklist and then who have their lives ruined — they might lose their jobs, and they definitely become the target on these online campaigns — and I know many who were never able to get their accounts back.

One of my main alleged offenses of antisemitism was being involved in DSA. So for DSA, I think Palestine will be the main issue used to attack us - just like they did with the Labour Party and Corbyn. Because of this, I think we’ll see more open collaboration to take down DSA between the far-right and Zionists who might have otherwise been pretending to be liberal. We already saw the Democrats in power in the New York State Assembly proposed banning NYC DSA from the state legislature, alleging that they’re antisemitic because they asked a question about boycotting Israel on their candidate questionnaire. We have to put a stop to these smears before they start, and never, ever, give them an inch, unless we want to have the same fate as Labour.

TK: How do you see this issue? Is it a censorship problem, or corporate overreach, or do you view it in some other light?

OK-S: This was clearly a result of the targeted harassment and smear campaign I’ve been facing for my activism, coordinated between far-right actors—actual antisemites—and Zionists. I think we will only see more of these kinds of cases, especially for activists that focus on Palestine, as institutions and companies are now being heavily pressured to adopt the IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition of antisemitism, which classifies criticism of Israel as antisemitic. The proposed laws in France to ban people from publishing photos of police officers is another example. I think we’re seeing an increased push for policies that will be used to harm grassroots activists but that will be presented with this sort of “banning hate speech” language.

Speaking out against an apartheid state is hate speech, identifying cops is hate speech, etc. Meanwhile, the actual victims of hate speech and death threats, those who aren’t in any position of power, like myself, will be the ones punished with no recourse. Unless this trajectory is halted in some way, antisemitism will be weaponized to crush all progressive, grassroots activism, and actual antisemites and their little forums and militias will continue to spread their violent rhetoric, violent ideas, and inspire actual acts of violence.

*An original version of this article incorrectly identified all 980 of the groups removed by Facebook as being connected to Antifa.

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Re: ...On 'Cancel' Culture

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Tue Dec 29, 2020 8:05 pm

That Tabbibi piece is good to throw at the people spouting all that "virute signalling SJWs are all cancel culture nazis working for antifa" crowd.
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Re: ...On 'Cancel' Culture

Postby Spiro C. Thiery » Wed Dec 30, 2020 8:41 am

JackRiddler » Yesterday, 20:05 wrote:Re: Meanwhile, in actual censorship...

I was thinking along the same lines with people who have actually been canceled for speech, either soft cancellation like Finkelstein or the ultimately harder variety like Webb.

JackRiddler » Yesterday, 20:05 wrote:Despite its prevalence and success, this front has also managed to evade scrutiny as the notion is still sustained that "cancel culture" has taken over society and it is the right wing and the "center" who suffer from the hegemonic terror of "political correctness," the "liberal media," "wokeness," etc.

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Re: ...On 'Cancel' Culture

Postby Belligerent Savant » Fri Jan 01, 2021 4:57 pm

.

Joe Hillshoist » Tue Dec 29, 2020 7:05 pm wrote:That Tabbibi piece is good to throw at the people spouting all that "virute signalling SJWs are all cancel culture nazis working for antifa" crowd.


Indeed. Virtue signaling is not tied exclusively to a single demo/party affiliation/deluded mindset. Cancel culture remains a phenomenon, however, influenced in part by online/news media sentiment.

'Cancel culture' -- yet another wedge topic, fueled in large part by an increasingly online, social-media infected world.

Elements of an argument's [or movement's] merit are often clouded, or largely drowned out, by influencers in the Establishment, or otherwise via naive helpers fully subscribed to notions of society presented to them with minimal discernment, if any.
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