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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
My opinion, already expressed on this thread, is that celebration of assassination is something we should have a bipartisan "cancel culture" about, because it's a load-bearing taboo that allows the rest of freedom of speech to function. This is similar to how Lee Kwan Yew banned the communist party in Singapore at a time when SE Asian countries were falling to communist revolutions. A 99% commitment to liberal norms is more durable than one that commits to 100% with obvious loopholes for bad actors to end the liberal system.
Cancel culture for other things are bad, since it cordons off plausibly true ideas from public discussion. You shouldn't be cancelled for "misgendering", or stating FBI crime statistics, or making the okay sign, or having once made racist jokes, or donating to a conservative cause, or saying riots are bad.
The effect of cancel culture over support for assassination is to preserve liberalism. The effect of cancel culture for slight deviations from the Left platform is to end liberalism. This isn't hard.
https://www.themotte.org/post/3128/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/365663?context=8#context
What is the justification in your eyes under this paradigm for a line between assassination support and riot support?
Riot support is closer to the line than many leftists probably would like it to be. Financial support for riots/ers is a crime after all
It is?
In the case of something like January 6th, assume for the sake of argument it was an attempt at a coup (in my view it of course wasn't). An almost direct but legally implied right to overthrow a tyrannical government is built into the 2nd amendment of the Constitution. Why wouldn't any of the rioters get off on that defense? Because that one isn't entirely clear to me.
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