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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30625 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 22, 2025

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Why defend someone's speech?

  1. I might agree with the speech, think the speech was necessary and true, and that people should hear it.
  2. I might disagree with the speech, but think it close enough to something that I could say that I want it defended so that I don't want people overly punished for things said in the heat of the moment
  3. I might strongly disagree with the speech, it was something I would never say, I think the speech makes the world a worse place, but I am doing my part to defend a general culture of free speech, which is important because only by maintaining a general culture of free speech can we get a full hearing of arguments in order to decide on what is true and how we should run our society.

With the case of Kimmel getting canceled, 1 and 2 do not apply, so only 3 applies. But we do not have that general culture of free speech, and so there is no general principle to defend. Gina Carano never got rehired, the NY Times never apologized to Razib Khan and rehired him, Middlebury never apologized to Charles Murray and never brought him back, etc. etc. Like, if the right had said, "you should not cancel people" and then the Left had said, "You are right, we were wrong, we will rehire those people and stop canceling rightists" and then the right got into power and started canceling leftists ... ok that would be reneging on a deal and hypocritical. But that is not what happened. So what we are left with is that I am happy Kimmel got suspended because what he said was bad. Maybe it wasn't firing worthy, but he should apologize. Lot's of comedians have apologized over the years fro crossing the line. And last I heard the reason for the suspension was that he wanted to double-down instead of apologizing.

So essentially your argument has to come down to that for the right, a strategy of pacifism is better than tit-for-tat; that sticking to the cooperation corner even after the left has defected is ultimately going to be more successful. I don't think that would have worked, but I don't think tit-for-tat is going to work either. I expect things to continue to get worse.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that with the woke cancellations it was mostly twitter mobs pressuring private companies. By contrast, with Kimmel it was directly the head of the FCC applying the pressure, not MAGAs cancelling their Disney+ to make them fire Kimmel.

So this is not tit-for-tat, but (tit+1)-for-tat. Expect the next D president to apply an FCC commissioner who will try to revoke the license of Fox News at the slightest provocation, and spend tons of public funds to ruin them in the legal system if they do not comply.

More generally, moral constraints, refraining to go tit-for-tat for some things, can serve as a foundation of a positive identity. If the other tribe puts your tribes kids on the BBQ whenever they catch them, but your tribe holds a principled objection against cannibalism even if it puts them at a disadvantage, that would cause me to like your tribe.

Whenever Trump does something bad, like being corrupt af, cancelling people and so on, the main response I get from his defenders here is that this is just tit-for-tat for the evils of the other side. It is about as convincing as hearing someone loudly complain about the child-eating monsters of the other tribe while munching a baby's leg.

By contrast, with Kimmel it was directly the head of the FCC applying the pressure, not MAGAs cancelling their Disney+ to make them fire Kimmel.

I think it was actually mainly a twitter mob here as well. At 9-10am on wednesday there were already angry re-posts of the prior night's kimmel monologue, signal boosted by Elon to millions of views. So Kimmel was basically already the target of the day, for people who had been having a lot of success against their targets over the previous few days. That's why Benny Johnson had the FCC chair Carr on and why they were discussing Kimmel, which got posted that afternoon right before the affiliates announced they were cutting Kimmel.

Everyone who has told a more simplistic story about it being obviously due to a gangster FCC chair threatening ABC, or Nexstar having ulterior motives trying to butter up the administration, seems to ignore this part of the story that the outrage was already well under way on wednesday. (unless I got the timeline wrong myself)

edit: I think I did get part of the timeline wrong, and the monologue was apparently from monday night? Still, it was getting heat on wednesday morning from Elon & twitter.

Attacks on free speech have been coming from both sides for some time here: the Biden administration leaned on Facebook and others to censor user posts about COVID vaccines. Biden also nominated Gigi Sohn to the FCC, who had previously tweeted strong negative opinions about Fox News (the Senate did not confirm the nomination). We also had the short-lived "Disinformation Governance Board."

Separately: Is Fox News even broadcast OTA anywhere? They don't need an FCC license to exist on cable networks. I know Kimmel is/was, and the "official" statement said gave OTA channels pulling the broadcast as the cause.

Yep exactly, the regular broadcast Fox stations just do regular down-the-middle local news like ABC/NBC. Fox News channel is completely different & separate, set up as a cable channel for exactly this reason (avoiding FCC regulation).

with the woke cancellations it was mostly twitter mobs pressuring private companies

But beyond that, it was governments pressuring banks. Like, Operation Chokepoint was a thing, and arguably it continues to be a thing with the credit card companies still being pressured by plausibly-deniable paragovernmental organizations (that whole porn ban thing).

I don’t think it changes much that it’s blatantly public, though it certainly does for others who are not aware that their pressure wasn’t just the people power they think it was.

How would, or would you at all, add a differentiation between the state and private organizations pursuing the above?

I would suggest including the practice of jaw boning as an action that is considered done by the state, where a threat from the state suffices. Examples: (1) the Biden administration motivating multiple social media companies — ostensibly competitors — into all suspending the New York Post’s accounts on their platforms within short order of one another, in response to the Post publishing the Hunter Biden laptop story, and (2) the Trump Administration motivating the owners of large numbers of ABC broadcast affiliate stations to pressure the network to bring Kimmel to heel.

Jawboning is 100% fine per Murthy v. Missouri, Jimmy Kimmel will never again face firing over his reaction to specifically Charlie Kirk's death, so he has no standing to complain. :bland smile:

(1) the Biden administration motivating multiple social media companies — ostensibly competitors — into all suspending the New York Post’s accounts on their platforms within short order of one another, in response to the Post publishing the Hunter Biden laptop story

Who was president when the NYP broke the Hunter Biden laptop story? Who was president when the accounts in question were suspended?

That’s fair and I should have specified potentially incoming.

https://judiciary.house.gov/media/in-the-news/facebook-execs-suppressed-hunter-biden-laptop-scandal-curry-favor-biden-harris

Relevancy? The government did it. The problem — if you believe in democracy — is that the government did it clearly against the wishes of its elected leader.

Well UnopenedEnvilope specified it was the "Biden administration" that did it so I'd appreciate some clarification on what that refers to, given the "Biden administration", as the term is colloquially understood, didn't exist for another 3 months.

At this point, I think any corporation that has employees with the job of "compliance" is de facto an arm of the state. There are always a million ways for the state to get you. After Elon bought Twitter and turned it into a haven for "right-wing misinformation and hate" suddenly his companies were under a half-dozen different dubious investigations. And don't forget the CIvil Rights Act, which has been twisted in a way that it basically mandates every corporation with more 50 employees police the speech of its employees! Was James Damore fired because Google was under pressure from various sex discrimination lawsuits? Impossible to know for sure, but it has to play a role.

I don't think we really have worked out how the First Amendment is supposed to work in a world where every significant organization with a "printing press" also has a compliance department. And really, the parties are simply too far part at this point to negotiate a truce over a new set of norms and boundaries about free speech.

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