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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   42035 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

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In the days following Charlie Kirk's murder, has seen a wave of employers being contacted regarding off-color remarks made by employees on social media about his passing. The debate is, does this constitute cancel culture, but by the right instead of the typical left? Some have argued that it is not the same thing, due to the disparaging comments being immediate, vs old comments dredged up in an attempt to cancel someone. There is a big difference between someone desecrating Charlie Kirk in an overt manner right after his passing, compared to a social media post made 10+ years ago against living targets that could be deemed as racist only under the most uncharitable light.

My take is, contacting an employer with the intent of getting someone fired for something not work-related or fired in the public interest as a 'concerned citizen', by definition, is cancel culture. Sure, one can argue that this is a different degree of cancelation, but it's the same principle. Someone posting a vile comment on his social media celebrating someone's death doesn’t necessarily affect his ability to do his job, like making sandwiches or whatever. Sure, if said individual confessed on social media to spitting in customers' sandwiches or making disparaging remarks about customers, go ahead and get his ass fired to protect the customers if no one else. But this is not like that. Consumers and other employees are not negatively affected by an employee holding a grudge against a dead podcaster.

To turn the tables, imagine if George Soros died and many of those same people wrote "good riddance" on their social media accounts, should this be grounds for cancelation? By the above logic, yes if you want to be morally consistent.

relevant tweet https://x.com/politicalmath/status/1967066826590028174

The debate is, does this constitute cancel culture, but by the right instead of the typical left?

Yes it does. And it is wrong. But before armistice is offered, the right is entitled to extract it's pound of flesh.

Didn't they already do that by getting that Home Depot cashier fired after the Trump shooting? How many pounds of flesh will it take before we're back to even and can start behaving in a civilized way?

  • -11

There's this great asymmetry that few seem to notice. The right gets to cancel in the immediate aftermath of one of theirs eating a bullet. The left gets to cancel all the time for a great many reasons. Personally, I'm happy that general norms of polite society still blanch at literally celebrating our murders in front of our families. For now.

I know these things are uncoordinated. But if you were the left, why the hell would you declare an armistice when this is the state of play? The only rule you have to abide is to not celebrate immediately after a righty is killed. And even then, many are morally too far gone to even follow that one rule.

But if you were the left, why the hell would you declare an armistice

Because the 2028 election will probably be determined by which side acts less obnoxiously hysterical in the next 3 years. If the republicans spend that time shrieking about transgenderism and canceling people, the democrats have a good chance at recapturing the normie vote. The 2024 election proved to anyone paying attention that any flavor of smug wokeness is not good politics. So we can either have a continual orgy of vengeance in which each side takes power, alienates the normies and then loses in 4 years, or both sides can decide to actually try winning.

Right. Men in particular of the Joe Rogan sort liken cancelling to HR ladies OR church ladies. Indeed HR ladies are the next generation of church ladies to them. (Though in the age of Trump perhaps it could be described as HR Ladies vs. DR Ladies.) There's something in fact un-manly about cancellations. Something un-manly about being a pink slip sniper, of being a clipboard-carrying, list-compiling hall monitor.

Actually a good example of why, assuming your theory is correct, like I discussed a week or two ago here, the correct game theory approach of relevance is usually “tit for tat… with occasional forgiveness” and not outright tit for tat. It is, of course, hard to tell when forgiveness is appropriate and in what ratio, but it does need to happen occasionally.

I'm not sure that both sides' actions are comparable. The left cancelled people for relatively mundane political opinions and for making edgy jokes. Normies felt like you had to walk on eggshells under ascendant leftism. The right is cancelling people who say really tasteless things about someone who just got murdered in front a large crowd that included his wife and kids. They are also bashing trans people, but I think the vast majority of normies have mixed feelings about trans at best. The right is not going to cancel you if you make an edgy joke about women or blacks or if you express support for Gavin Newsom or whatever. I don't think most normies feel threatened by the right in the same way.

The left cancelled people for relatively mundane political opinions and for making edgy jokes

And for having your hand hanging out of the window of your truck.

I mean it's quite clear at this point that keeping lefty cancel culture and transgenderism in the public eye is very good for republican electoral prospects. Republicans just need to make it look like they're responding to left wing overreach(like they do when it's celebrating murder) so they don't seem like they're pulling shit out of their ass.

I think focusing on transgenderism was good for their electoral prospects in 2024. But if republicans make it their main culture war wedge issue in 2028, I think it could wear out its welcome. It's a safe-edgy position that everyone on the right can sort of get behind - it unites evangelicals, fundamentalist Jews, wignats, groypers, IDW debate bros, and even some feminists. But most people haven't met a trans person in real life, I think there is a limit to the amount of vitriol that can be stirred up. The constant drumbeat of trans bad will just sound like bullying the longer it goes on, especially when it takes the form of the same old misandry that young white males have been dealing with their whole lives. If the right doesn't embrace white identity, I think there's a good chance they won't be able to unite behind anything after Trump is gone.

I predict that the constant drumbeat of "trans bad" will continue to work until parents feel secure that government force is not going to shut them out of medical decisions relating to their children.

It’s certainly possible that anti-trans could become a difficult position to defend in the minds of the public; but the more likely scenario is a salacious hate crime- of the sort which the trans lobby, for all its claims, hasn’t been able to produce yet. Rhetoric does not tend to radicalize people in favor of already unpopular groups, rather the opposite.

It’s also possible that bringing up trans is bad for whatever party is perceived as putting it in the spotlight; that’s certainly a very reasonable interpretation of recent political trends. But at the moment, democrat’s own public statements are what keeps getting them in hot water over the trans issue- yes republicans amplify them but that’s normal politics.

It's a safe-edgy position

It's only a testament to how far we've come that liberals are describing it as "safe-edgy".

The constant drumbeat of trans bad will just sound like bullying the longer it goes on

We don't need to rely on "trans bad" and bullying. We can go after the doctor Mengeles that pushed the practice on unsuspecting parents of vulnerable children, we can go after corrupt academics, we can go after healthcare providers that cynically used this fad to extract money. We can keep hammering this issue longer than you can imagine, outflanking you from the left as we're doing so.

The true depth of this scandal is yet to hit the mainatream, and if it does, you will be looking at the innocent days of the year of Our Lord 2025 with wistful nostalgia.

We can go after the doctor Mengeles that pushed the practice on unsuspecting parents of vulnerable children

We can always just counter by pointing out how many of the same people opposing trans kids have also defended circumcision. Personally I think chopping off a baby's genitals with a meat cleaver is a little worse than letting them dress in opposite-sex clothes. An unwoke democratic party would be able to take the gloves off and make arguments like this without worrying about being called anti-semitic.

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The right can and has canceled people all the time, no assassinations required. A cursory inspection of FIRE's databases on campus speech will reveal no lack of incidents coming from the right (830 of 1760 incidents), and that is purely focused on campus speaking events.

The major asymmetry is that there are a significant number of people on the left who oppose cancellation as a matter of principle; their counterparts on the right are either fewer in number or vastly more passive. Right-wing opposition to cancellation is overwhelmingly centered on right-wingers getting canceled.

This surprised me, so I looked into the data a bit. The results are muddy but mildly interesting. THIS IS EXCLUSIVELY AN ANALYSIS OF FREE SPEECH INCIDENTS AT UNIVERSITIES, not firings etc. and not in the workplace or media.

  1. you're right, there's a pretty even split. Left 848, Right 830.
  2. a lot of these incidents are attempts. I thought that the left would be much more successful at actually cancelling people, which would be what we hear about, so I filtered out cancellation / disruption attempts and kept invitation revocations, event cancellations, etc. The results are tilted towards the left, but less so that I would expect: Left 434 to Right 319.
  3. the Left is much more likely to disrupt or attempt to disrupt events: Left 321: Right 40.
  4. filtering out disruption attempts and keeping only cancellation attempts gives you Left 217, Right 500. The right is about twice as likely to make a failed attempt at cancelling an event through the official system. This accounts for the majority of right-wing activity.
  5. FIRE's database contains various different type of events. The right is three times as likely to attempt to cancel an artwork, cinema showing or performance (Left 107, Right 335). To some extent this may be cofounding the results, as FIRE counts the cancellation of six different artworks in the same show as 6 cancellation attempts, equally for multi-film cinema performances. The left is twice as likely to cancel a speech (Left 602, 277).
  6. During peak woke years 2016-2024, the left was only responsible for about twice as many cancellations (Left 599, Right 305).

Broadly I would say that the number of attempts since 2000 are broadly equal. The manner is somewhat different: the Left are much more prone to disrupting events where the right tries to cancel through official channels. The left are more likely to cancel speech, the right are more likely to cancel art. The left tends to succeed more often, and has attempted to cancel more in the last decade, but not overwhelmingly so, which surprises me.

Caveat: I don't like the way that some of the data is gathered: counting the cancellation of Abortion Film Pts. 1, 2 and 3 as three separate cancellations seems dubious to me.

Where have these 'significant number of people' been in the last decade?

Maybe the cancellations aren't to their principled liking, but if they didn't like it, they didn't make a fuss about it. Certainly not to change policy, or have any material impact on what actually happened. Actions speak louder than words, and by the inaction of these supposedly principled liberals their revealed preferences are known. Indeed, they did so little, it amounts to the same if they didn't exist at all.

In the real world, it doesn't matter how highbrow and principled you are if you do nothing for them. If you sacrifice nothing for them. You're just a coward. And the beliefs of cowards can be casually dismissed without argument.

Where have these 'significant number of people' been in the last decade?

Providing basically all of the intellectual defense of free speech as a principle. Organization like FIRE, for instance, provide legal backing in First Amendment cases on a broad, non-ideological front despite being founded and run by liberals. The vast majority of signatories on the famous Harper's Letter are liberals or leftists. Few are conservative, and virtually none are associated with the populist Right that dominates the Republican establishment.

By contrast, right wing "free speech" defenders have mostly been massive hypocrites, e.g. Musk making a habit of suing critics or anti-BDS laws in Red states. Likewise, there are no real conservative equivalents to organizations like FIRE (or even the ACLU, despite its serious institutional decay) that make a point of standing up for free speech regardless of who the speaker is.

In the real world, it doesn't matter how highbrow and principled you are if you do nothing for them. If you sacrifice nothing for them. You're just a coward.

Can you be specific as to what you're expecting? If speaking out and providing legal support doesn't amount to anything, I'm not really sure what would count.

  • -13

The vast majority of signatories on the famous Harper's Letter are liberals or leftists. Few are conservative, and virtually none are associated with the populist Right that dominates the Republican establishment.

No conservatives signing a letter that includes a denouncement of the current leader of the conservatives doesn't tell you conservatives don't care about free speech. It tells you conservatives have kicked at that football one too many times, Lucy.

And now FIRE is progressive! I'm sure Greg Lukianoff will be surprised, considering the many attacks they have suffered from the left, being branded a front for conservative ideology because the only people they could source funding from were conservative.

And while I'm at it, the original FIRE database you link lists deplatforming attempts, which you call cancelling, but that is like calling attempted murder murder. Attempted cancellations are bad, yes, but of the successful attempts the left clearly dominates.

No conservatives signing a letter that includes a denouncement of the current leader of the conservatives doesn't tell you conservatives don't care about free speech

Not alone, no, though given that Donald Trump is consistently anti-free speech, you would think principled conservative defenders would be willing to speak out against him on that front. Combined with other factors, it's pretty suggestive that conservatives are not pro-free speech, just pro-conservative. In particular, they never extend the same sufferance or support they demand from others. You say the football has been yanked too many times, but there's no history of betrayed reciprocity here. Cancel Culture has always been a thing, but it didn't become a Thing until right-wingers started complaining about it.

And now FIRE is progressive!

I didn't say FIRE was progressive. One of the peculiar aspects of Free Speech discourse is that is primarily an intra-left debate between liberals and progressives, with the right contributing little beyond parroting liberal arguments and complaining that progressives are rude to them.

Greg Lukanioff, however, is openly and unambiguously a liberal, and more broadly, virtually every non-partisan civil liberties organization is staffed and supported by liberals. There's not really any conservative equivalent to FIRE or the EFF or ACLU.

but of the successful attempts the left clearly dominates.

If by 'clearly dominates' you mean a 50% vs 40% success rate, that would seem like an indictment of the theory of left-wing supremacy, given that this is supposed to be their home turf, where they enjoy material and institutional superiority.

Actually policing its side of the political spectrum and ostracizing its perpetuators. You know, action.

I don't care about 'intellectual defenses', and honestly the only people who do are the cowards I speak of. What did the universities do to curb cancel culture? They institutionalized it. Title IX. The entirety of the media sphere. Hate speech laws. One feeble organization championing free speech does not cancel out an entire NGO complex of censors and sensitivity readers, the indoctrination of judges and legislatures, the complete takeover of psychology and medicine and every field of science...

Indeed, their wickedness is so wide-encompassing and total that it beggars the imagination to speak of it all.

Everything you're talking about is a fig leaf of virtue on the unashamed and naked grasp for power. The people you think so highly of have worthless principles, and when their opposition was being brushed aside by illiberalism they stayed silent because the people that were doing it were their friends and colleagues and family. Their appeals to quokka principles landed on deaf ears: and they did not change their stance or escalate their action. They merely continued to make their impotent appeals to virtue while Rome burned.

Why then, should their appeals to my party have any moral weight or consequence, if it did not stir the hearts of the previous regime?

If this is the culture war, then they were the quislings and the collaborators of the other side, and I do not hesitate to condemn them alongside their masters. Only after they and their fellow travelers are driven from the field will I consider any action to form a truce to be a correct one. Until then, I will gladly use the master's tools to destroy the master's house.

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