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The best way I've seen it put is that the Right isn't actually against cancelling those outside the Overton Window, they were just protesting the arbitrary narrowing of the window by a handful of powerful state and corporate actors. In that frame, the recent cancellations make sense and look less hypocritical.
That's... not what they were saying back during Peak Woke. The Right often made explicit appeals to free speech in their critiques of cancellations. And if we are just talking about "narrowing the Overton Window", then how is the Right's behavior any different in this case? It's not like they were being particularly scrupulous and only going after people who were inciting violence. They used terms like "celebrating the death" that were highly ambiguous and thus expansive to almost anyone who said anything bad about Kirk.
The right isn't routinely engaged in terrorism or advocacy thereof from its side. The left is.
True tit for tat would be for the right to stop suppressing their paramilitaries and let them start assassinating people, praise them when they do and get them off in the courts and land them cushy university jobs afterwards.
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I think there are many diverse opinions on the Right, some who are Libertarian free-speechers. But there were some who have been honest from the start.
Tim Pool told Jack Dorsey that he was introducing a bias against conservatives through Twitter's policies. Ironically I think Pool is more Libertarian, but the point he makes is specifically that the "neutral" policies mostly harmed normal, ordinary conservatives. Not that there shouldn't be moderation at all.
Kevin Dolan was up front about supporting cancellation over a year ago: It's different when we do it
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I would agree with that description of what they are doing, and agree that some truly detestable opinions should maybe be cancel-able. But I think the most common form of hypocrisy is not saying what you mean. That is, when you declare a pretty unambiguous rule (don't cancel people for their personal opinions), and then when it comes time to actually test it you suddenly declare an exception. Because the obvious assumption is the outgroup is simply going to continue to declare exceptions until fair rules become "my rules."
I am generally against cancellations. But even during the height of the woke cancellations I feel like I remember some careful Republican criticisms of "its insane to cancel people for saying something that half the country believes". So I don't feel like their stance was ever fully principled free speech.
I do have one exception for cancellation: if you've cancelled others then you yourself become fair game. Jimmy Kimmel was fair game. Roseanne Barr, and apparently some band that was on the show were both things he was happy to cancel.
Yeah, progressive cancellations would occur over issues where the population was 80-20 against. What would that even look like on the right? I guess if they started cancelling people for saying that global warming is real or something.
You don't even need to guess. Cancel culture is all about the views one finds morally offensive and thinking others should not be able to express those ideas publicly. That is, actively punishing people for their views on LGBT, Israel/Palestine, or criticism of the right.
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