"... why they steer clear of certain topics, why they avoid discussing anything too sensitive for fear of being mobbed or ostracized or fired without due process.... Many people have told me they want to change this atmosphere, but don’t know how. Some hope to ride it out, to wait for this moral panic to pass, or for an even younger generation to rebel against it.... Anonymous reports and Twitter mobs, not the reasoned judgments of peers, will shape the fate of individuals. Writers and journalists will fear publication. Universities will no longer be dedicated to the creation and dissemination of knowledge but to the promotion of student comfort and the avoidance of social-media attacks.
Worse,
if we drive all of the difficult people, the demanding people, and the eccentric people away from the creative professions where they used to thrive,
we will become a flatter, duller, less interesting society, a place where manuscripts sit in drawers for fear of arbitrary judgments. The arts, the humanities, and the media will become stiff, predictable, and mediocre.... There will be nothing to do but sit back and wait for the Hawthornes of the future to expose us."
Hawthorne = Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of "The Scarlet Letter."
Posts
44 comments:
The way to end this censorship: Challenge the bully to a duel. Make the bully take a punch to defend his uncivil behavior. If the bully really believes that his opinion is the one true opinion, then he should be willing to physically defend it. Otherwise, he's just a poser.
I'm willing to bet that the woke never had their bottoms smacked by their parents when they misbehaved, but were given "time outs" and "poor darlings". Physical pain imparts life lessons that need to be learned. The pain could be as simple as three smacks on the bottom with an open hand.
As a friend of the editor of the student newspaper at my small Baptist affiliated college in the 1980s, I wrote two items my senior year. Both were meant to be satirical. Emphasis on "meant," in retrospect.
My first publication was a movie review of the expurgated, soft porn, bowlderized R-rated version of "Caligula" released in theaters in South Carolina. It was meant to shock the prudes on campus by insisting in print that the film, produced by Penthouse, even existed. In summary, I suggested that it needed more sex scenes. Two of my close friends admitted to having read it, and nothing more was ever said to me about the movie review, by anyone, ever.
My second offering was a letter to the editors, requesting that the campus library be kept open during home football games. The school had just opened a stadium on campus, making home games much more accessible to one and all. My intention of achieving a Swiftian tongue in cheek didn't just fail, it led to the university president noting in print that Librarians liked to go to football games, too. The Library stayed closed for home games.
The idea that anyone, at all, ever, for any reason, would care much or bother responding to my silly opinions never crossed my mind, nor the minds of the editors those decades ago. Attacks or punishment for something submitted and published by a campus news source? As unthinkable as getting in serious trouble for midnight skinny dipping in the campus lake. We all understood the campus paper to be an exercise in resume enhancement for self-interested proto-journalists, and a minute or two of amusement at best for everyone else.
That anyone thinks differently today about campus papers indicates that a strong dose of perspective is required.
Applebaum is pretending to care about the mess she helped create.
It's fucking delicious that all of the censorship, self-censorship, and cancel culture is all coming from the left, while at the same time the left has enthusiastically embraced big government and big business...I guess 'the man' can finally be trusted after all...
"Hawthorne = Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of 'The Scarlet Letter.' "
Yes, of course, but not a compliment to your readers that you felt it necessary to add that note.
Poppycock!! What absolute rubbish. She is just noticing? “Correct” thought and speech codes have been the norm at our universities for over 30 years.
This Marxist behavior has been sanctioned and supported by almost every university in the western world. It is a practiced and very successful tactic brought forth in the 1920s and 30s Apparently no one has read Orwell.
The 3 decades of bullcrap leads to today- where a teacher wants her students to pledge allegiance not to America, but to the gay pride flag and antifa. And she is supported by the teachers union.
ThiS slavish behavior isn’t new. The so called educated class gave birth to this perverted intellectualism and now one of the top members of the intellectual class is upset?
Want to fix most of America’s problems? Burn down the entire education system. From k to university.
The so called liberal arts,and humanities have been and continues to be an absolute failure.
Skeptical about Applebaum as a voice for tolerance when she broke with so many friends over their support for Trump, Brexit, or other politicians and causes and condemned them publicly as abetting tyranny.
Universities will no longer be dedicated to the creation and dissemination of knowledge but to the promotion of student comfort and the avoidance of social-media attacks.
What's the point of prognosticating about insecure stable doors when the horses have already bolted, wandered onto the nearby highway, and rendered into dog food by oncoming multi-ton trucks?
Another chance to mention Hawthorne's prophetic "Earth's Holocaust."
When I retired in '15, it was clear that certain topics and opinions were not to be aired on campus, and it has only gotten worse.
Tweet by the author @anneapplebaum · 4h
"Also, if you have views about "cancel culture" or "wokeism" express them elsewhere, because this article is about neither one"
You can listen to the entire article via the Atlantic linked by our hostess.
As much as it saddens me, one of my children with a degree in human biology is very woke. All conversations are guarded and minimal with this child. So, sorry to say, the wokeness has spread far beyond academia, journalism, philosophy or gender studies. It is firmly entrenched in the sciences.
The intellectual justifications for the suppression of free speech are developed in our universities, from where the justifications are exported to the larger society.
The justifications have been developed because the universities have enrolled too many people who cannot and will not read at the university level. In order to explain away the subsequent academic failures, the administrations argue that the failures (not all colored students, but disproportionately so) happen because colored students are traumatized by all the racism that they experience on the campuses.
Therefore, any remark, symbol, statue, rock, sombrero that might be interpreted as racist must be energetically exposed and suppressed.
"Many people have told me they want to change this atmosphere, but don’t know how."
They do know how, but being progressive is more important to them than being brave.
"we will become a flatter, duller, less interesting society"
And that's exactly the way the left likes it. A proper Gleichschaltung.
"Social codes are changing, in many ways for the better."
See, that illustrates the problem. Lefties are so un-selfaware.
"But for those whose behavior doesn’t adapt fast enough to the new norms, judgment can be swift—and merciless"
Mercy is a bourgeois/Christian concept, so who cares? It's nicely impersonal, isn't it?, this "judgment." She doesn't even dare explain who the self-appointed judges are. She's adapting before our eyes.
"Goody Applebaum should check xir privilege," quoth Young Wokeman Brown.
Worse, if we drive all of the difficult people, the demanding people, and the eccentric people away from the creative professions where they used to thrive, we will become a flatter, duller, less interesting society, a place where manuscripts sit in drawers for fear of arbitrary judgments. The arts, the humanities, and the media will become stiff, predictable, and mediocre....
Is that really what's going on? Isn't it more the sane, responsible people who are driven out of academia and the arts? Or maybe it's just people who aren't pre-programmed. Those who remain in the universities and the arts can be very difficult, demanding, and eccentric, so long as they have politically correct opinions. Big media is expected to be more conventional and down to earth, but there are plenty of eccentrics who write lifestyle pieces for The Times or political articles for The Atlantic. They just have to be eccentrics with the correct political opinions.
As to making the world duller, more predictable, and more mediocre, that relates to the John Stuart Mill question. Mill supported eccentrics and experimenters who challenged conventional thinking. Dissidents and non-conformists tried new ideas and new lifestyles that could lead to progress. In Mill's day, secular liberals and progressives like Mill were a minority. Most people were traditional, religious, conformist, and didn't challenge traditional orthodoxies. What happens when secular liberals and progressives become a more powerful force in society? Do they still tolerate and encourage opinions that disagree with their own, or do they use their power to suppress the unenlightened because they are sure that their own views and values make for progress?
No, the Post-Marxists are much worse than the Puritans, who are much maligned & misunderstood.
Were they a tough community on sexual non-comformists? Yes, but most religious communities of the times, including even the Quakers were also (Quaker sexual conservatism is conveniently forgotten by its modern Sidwell Friends social justice practioners). Even Hawthorne's novel paints a story of spiritual & social redemption within the Puritan community. It is Rev. Dimmesdale's recognition of daughter Pearl** before the crowd that redeems him of his sin. Hester Prynne stays in the community to become an honored elder & Pearl comes into a large inheritance in England, both indicative under Puritan theology of their assurance of God's favor.
The Puritans in New England were in the forefront of not only opening up institutes of higher learning (e.g. Harvard), but they were also among the earliest disseminators of the new science out of Europe, such as Newton's physics, in the colonies. For them, the pursuit of the sciences was the study of one more aspect of the Ways of God to Man --- "The heavens are telling the glory of God and the firmament proclaims his handiwork." (Ps 19).
What, so far, have the post-Marxists produced?
** Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls:
Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it. (Matt. 13:45-46)
I am embarrassed to admit that after first visiting this site and trying to return, I thought your name was Anne Applebaum. When I googled her, I knew that couldn't be right because a devoted leftist like her wouldn't allow such conservative "bad thoughts" to propagate on her blog.
It seems to me that The Atlantic and others of its ilk cheered this kind of thing when it was directed against others (notably: Trump). When the firehose of vituperation suddenly is directed your way -- and it always will end up thus -- it's not quite so nice, is it, Ms. Applebaum?
Tweet by the author @anneapplebaum · 4h
"Also, if you have views about "cancel culture" or "wokeism" express them elsewhere, because this article is about neither one"
Note to Anne Applebaum: Always, always, always read over what you wrote before you submit it so we don't have problems like this.
When Amos n Andy, Blazing Saddles and jokes that begin "A Jew, a Catholic, and a homosexual walk into a bar" become acceptable, maybe, just maybe, the storm has passed.
Yet another example of "if only Koba knew". Or as the American expression goes " a day late and a dollar short".
An essay that introduced me to a new word: unforgivingness. Victims are 'marooned in a world of unforgivingness.' Great phrase. I don't buy Applebaum's assertion, though, that this comes equally from the right and from the left. The engine is Twitter, and the left dominates Twitter, not the right. Applebaum is a liberal pushing back against excesses of the left.
She loses me with "for those who don't adapt fast enough to the new norms". She reveals herself there as either not understanding her own point or lacking the courage to state it flatly.
It's not "failing to adapt to the new norms" that's the problem. It's the very existence of those norms, or more precisely the weird hunger for ever more new norms and the viciousness with they are applied - by an industry dedicated to cranking these norms out and forcing people to obey.
'"Hawthorne = Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of 'The Scarlet Letter.' "'
This relates to a huge pet peeve of mine regarding movies and setting scenes...
Lights down. Movie starts. A sweeping view of a large city that zooms in to show the Eiffel Tower.
Text comes up on the screen: 'Paris, France.'
Or it could be the Coliseum: 'Rome, Italy.'
The fact that they have to specify the city is hilarious. That they have to identify the country is borderline insulting : )
Another Amy Chua sob-story? What injuries has Ms Chua sufferered? Nobody's silenced her. She's still collecting a salary, I think. She can still write books. Still posing for bizarre photos.
There are any number of public forums for Professors to flaunt eccentricities and peddle weirdness. Substack, Reddit, Twitter--it's hard to make the argument that University Professors don't have a voice, even if they have to exercise that voice anonymously.
Reminder: Yale warned Ms. Chua several times to stop partying with students in her home. She refused to stop. That's not academic freedom. It's called insubordination.
How much of this is a perhaps predictable result of co-education, females being generally more emotional and less rational than males. I recall that when the Harvard faculty voted to remove Larry Summers from his Harvard presidency for making some perfectly rational observations on why there are fewer women faculty members than men in the Harvard physics department, it was a female faculty member (Hopkins?) who sparked the revolt by getting up and running out of the room in disgust.
@Young Hegelian:such as Newton's physics
Himself a Puritan, though in later life a heretical one.
Not the New Puritans. They're the New Inquisitors.
The end of this bullshit is near.
Instead of "generally" I should have written "stereotypically" with the understanding that many stereotypes have more than a kernel of truth.
So they have helped create a fascist society and now they don't like it much.
“Applebaum is pretending to care about the mess she helped create.”
Yes. Hence the “in many ways for the better” qualification. Odd that defeat is always preferable to an admission of fault for these clowns.
"in many ways for the better"
Sure.
I have a friend who married a short woman.
I told my friend, your son is gonna grow up to be short, so you oughta move to a place like LA where there are lots of short young women, so your son will not be at a disadvantage.
People adapt to the fact that they are not as loved as they would like to be. They develop a "rebel vibe" if they have to, and, although they usually grow into cantankerous old people with too many stories of how rebellious they were, they don't suffer too much because there are so many people who appreciate a rebel vibe in almost all times and all places.
I mean, my friend laughed at what I said about moving to LA and probably disregarded it, but I am sure he knew I was saying it in a good hearted and caring way. And yes, some day years from now when he is blissfully thinking about his grandkids, who he loves so much, he may remember the good advice I gave him. He probably won't, but trust me, for me, all the reward I wanted was in saying the right thing at the right time.
we will become a flatter, duller, less interesting society
Let’s not go thinking this is some worst-case outcome.
It’s probably the least damaging we can reasonably conceive.
"Yes, of course, but not a compliment to your readers that you felt it necessary to add that note."
The full name was nowhere in my post, and the reader doesn't know what was in the rest of the article, so it's no insult to think of the reader as wondering if there was someone else named Hawthorne who'd been quoted in the article. I specified the one book because it's discussed at length in the article, so the article-writer is really referring to one book, not Hawthorne more generally.
The broad political left is always two ideologies disguised as one: (1) true radicals and anarchists who rebel against established order at all times, and (2) those with conservative ideas they seek to impose on the rest of society, but which are different from establishment conservative standards (e.g., those now held by Republicans and Christians). The dominant left branch fluctuates with the political atmosphere, and Trump's personality facilitated growth with #1 and displaced the dominant Clintonite #2 left.
Future options include either complete control by left #1 (e.g., USSR or North Korea), or #2 splits away and starts either voting with conservatives or as a third party. The USA is much more prone to splitting, as totalitarianism is strongly opposed by many and as there are loads of weapons in private hands.
For the last major round of broad, voluntary censorship see the pre WW2 Hollywood Hays code and how it limited creative expression:
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-the-hays-code-1934/
This was followed by similar right-wing anti-Communist censorship in the 1950s per McCarthyism, resulting in the rise of left #1 in the 1960s and a strong free speech anti-censorship leftist movement (i.e., X rated films, sex, drugs, and rock & roll, etc.):
https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1061/mccarthyism
The political pendulum always swings, but rarely creates something truly new.
The mention of Nathaniel Hawthorne brought to mind the prologue to The Scarlet Letter
"The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison."
'I told my friend, your son is gonna grow up to be short, so you oughta move to a place like LA where there are lots of short young women, so your son will not be at a disadvantage.'
But the kid will have a leg up if he becomes a small businessman.
Not a fan of LA culture, but every hot woman in the world seems to end up there, so overall not such terrible advice.
Unless the son turns out to be gay, but the same goes for the guys in LA too, so...
Christian Rod Dreher also discusses Anne Applebaum (I thought once Althouse was that Anne, too , but like Ann much, much better). https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/persecution-propaganda-princeton-joshua-katz-racism/
He likes it and agrees with a lot, but also claims, as I and other commenters, that it is now far more a Left/ Democrat thing. He's also banging on against the soft totalitarianism.
"this is not “hard totalitarianism,” but rather soft totalitarianism. It is still totalitarianism! And of course the persecutors are doing it because they believe they are improving their institutions by removing wicked people from their midst. Doesn’t Applebaum grasp that the Soviet persecutors — the true believers, not the cynics — believed they were doing the same thing? And yes, one distinct aspect of this soft totalitarianism is that it does not depend on the state to work its evil. It depends on radicalism in power within non-governmental institutions.
Most US migrants from ex-commie countries see this terrible stuff, and want more to follow Rod's last book: Live Not By Lies
.
The BIGGEST part on how to stop it is - NOT VOTE DEMOCRAT. Every Dem vote is a vote for more intolerance.
Isn’t Atlantic the magazine that fired Kevin Williamson thanks to our new Puritan mob? Someone ought to let the author of the piece know that “the calls are coming from inside the house” so to speak.
>Hawthorne = Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of "The Scarlet Letter."<
Good God. I guess we're all illiterate.
we will become a flatter, duller, less interesting society
Become? We're already there.
if we drive all of the difficult people, the demanding people, and the eccentric people away from the creative professions where they used to thrive
Well, Cancel Culture is thriving. What have the difficult, demanding, eccentric people contributed--other than Cancel Culture??
But why change a thing?
Now everything is far more obvious than ever before, and no-one needs to make the effort of pointing it out --- it all points itself out and the lies are now obvious: if you do not dare to talk/think about something, you know the truth. If there is someone you're afraid of because they now have the tools to bully you, now you finally accept they are your enemy.
Before, we didn't think in a suspicious and careful way. Now we do.
So, as the old Soviets found out: the less you dare to say, the more you know!
(for extra fun: google for 'soviet jokes' or 'Radio Eriwan jokes'.)
Post a Comment