E-Pluribus | April 29, 2022
Cancel culture could use some specificity, the never-ending battle for free speech, and Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter could signal a sea change for Big Disinformation.
A round up of the latest and best writing and musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
Conor Friedersdorf: The Real Reason Cancel Culture Is So Contentious
The definition of “cancel culture” (which we sought to clarify from Pluribus’s start) varies widely from person to person, especially across the left-right divide, and some even question its existence. At The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf says the ambiguity over cancel culture also extends to the question of an alternative: how should inappropriate speech and behavior be addressed and to what end?
Have any of the critics who dismiss cancel-culture concerns made a commensurate attempt to flesh out which punitive social norms are desirable, to define “accountability,” or to specify when it is warranted?
Americans will never achieve consensus about exactly which behaviors are beyond the pale—or what should happen to those who violate accepted norms. But even contested yet clearly understood rules (like the comedian George Carlin’s famous seven words you couldn’t say on TV) are better, if adopted provisionally by institutions or consistently adhered to in public discourse, than an alternative in which taboo lines are so murky that all manner of adjacent speech is chilled and many people refrain from speaking publicly at all for fear of unwittingly transgressing.
In some cases, the standards are kept vague because more specific ones would be indefensible. If you want to know which faction is abusing its relative power in a given sphere of society, ask who sees no problem with opaque taboos versus who is worried that they will unduly stifle speech.
Read the whole thing.
Allen Mendenhall: The Fight for Free Speech Is a Battle That’s Never Over
Early in April, we included in our daily roundup an excerpt (via Heterodox Academy) from Jacob Mchangama’s new book, “Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media.” Now, Allen Mendenhall reviews the book for Discourse Magazine, and says the book seeks to show “how the lessons of the past can help us confront the growing threats to freedom of expression now.”
What is the equivalent of a “heretic” or a “blasphemer” in our secular age? Is it the protesting Canadian trucker or the Parisian demonstrator decrying coronavirus regulations? Or is it an activist denouncing Trump and Trumpism? Is the dissident the one who questions whether transgenderism is scientifically sound, or the one who teaches about nonbinary gender fluidity in the face of social opposition? This may mean that it’s hard to know which dogma most people subscribe to, or that we have competing dogmas as public opinion fractures. Thus, we must be alive to the possibility that even our firmest commitments contain error.
[ . . . ]
What is the equivalent of a “heretic” or a “blasphemer” in our secular age? Is it the protesting Canadian trucker or the Parisian demonstrator decrying coronavirus regulations? Or is it an activist denouncing Trump and Trumpism? Is the dissident the one who questions whether transgenderism is scientifically sound, or the one who teaches about nonbinary gender fluidity in the face of social opposition? This may mean that it’s hard to know which dogma most people subscribe to, or that we have competing dogmas as public opinion fractures. Thus, we must be alive to the possibility that even our firmest commitments contain error.
[ . . . ]
“Perhaps the most striking feature of the free speech recession,” says Mchangama, referring to the setbacks for free speech around the world over the past generation, “was that its onset and acceleration coincided with the triumph of the most revolutionary breakthrough in communications technology since the printing press.” Progress is messy as humans adjust to technological and cultural changes that upend norms and challenge presuppositions. Advances in science, medicine and the arts have proceeded through fits and starts, mistakes and repairs, practices and theories. The bottom-up proliferation of culture and information is always a threat to “the establishment.” But in this era, infractions against norms are no longer chiefly religious except, perhaps, under Islamic regimes.
When Alexis de Tocqueville observed the vigorous character of debate in America during the 19th century, ideas circulated in public squares, civics organizations, clubs, mutual aid societies and schools. You could add to these groups in our day parent-teacher associations, youth sports, tailgate parties and more. But the internet has changed our interaction. Anonymity in multiverses and metaverses has led to vilification, mob psychology, alienation, depersonalization and dehumanization as trolls shriek and squeal, bully and harass, pursuing power and attention rather than insight or agreement. Nameless, faceless avatars appeal online to raw emotion over disciplined reason. Will free speech succeed in this virtual world of simulation, where individuals cannot sit side-by-side, face-to-face?
Read it all here.
Jason Willick: How Musk could burst Obama’s ‘disinformation’ bubble
Former President Barack Obama waded into the disinformation debate this week and the reviews are mixed. (Or, waded back into the issue, since the 2012 Obama campaign famously, or infamously, ran a “Truth Team” as part of its effort to keep the president in office.) Jason Willick of The Washington Post writes that Obama’s take on the issue is a fairly conventional adaptation of the line from the Big Disinformation cottage industry that has sprung up in the past few years that stands the problem on its head.
Big Disinfo’s theory of U.S. politics is upside down. There’s little doubt that new platforms for instantaneous communication have created what media analyst Martin Gurri calls a “crisis of authority.” But the loss of a “shared set of facts” in the United States that Obama lamented in his speech has not primarily taken place among less-engaged voters susceptible to disinformation. Instead, it’s most pronounced among the highly educated and knowledgeable.
A comprehensive 2017 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that “more knowledgeable individuals are more likely to express beliefs consistent with their religious or political identities for issues that have become polarized along those lines.” For example, conservatives with the greatest command of scientific facts are the least concerned about climate change, while liberals with the greatest command of scientific facts are most concerned. Access to good information, as much as bad information, can drive people further apart in a polarized system.
That insight goes back decades. A 1954 University of Chicago Press study of on voting patterns observed that voters who “read and listen more” are “less open to persuasion.” Meanwhile, less-engaged voters (today, we might call them normies) likely “helped to hold the system together and cushioned the shock of disagreement, adjustment, and change.” Far from undermining democracy, these voters, who may well hold more false beliefs about politics, are a moderating counterbalance to elites.
Read it all.
Around Twitter
A few thoughts from Matt Taibbi on the speech police, based on his latest Substack post:
Here’s a short back and forth between The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf and author Laurie Penny on "what happened to free speech”:
And finally, Glenn Greenwald on what he sees as free speech ignorance tells:
