A glaring omission: the views and positions that paulg is (obliquely) referring to just aren't orthodox. He's upset that a small, vocal minority[1] is challenging a set of orthodox social norms that continue to enrich and empower him.
The average American is doesn't read Twitter daily, and is somewhere between a moderate liberal and a moderate conservative[2]. These people represent orthodox privilege.
[1]: Case in point: they continue to lose primary elections within their own (ostensible) party.
[2]: On the American political scale, which is uniformly further "right" than European left-right divides.
It's frustrating because he is so close to really getting it.
"Cancel culture" is not a thing, in my opinion, because the things that people cry are "cancelled" are almost universally orthodox!
- Gender critical feminism: the orthodox view that trans men are not men and trans women are not women
- Rape, sexual assault, harassment: the orthodox view that women are the property of men (if you don't think this is orthodox, you should really study the history of laws around women)
- Racism: the orthodox view that those of European decent deserve more and better (orthodox since Europe spent most of the last 500 years conquering and exploiting the rest of the planet)
Because all of these things are orthodox and hurt others, it is a privilege you have to defend them. If you write a national NTY editorial that is explicitly and disgustingly racist, you will be fine! Racism is orthodox! Racists are in power everywhere! The president is racist! His friends are racists! Being "cancelled" is not a thing in this context!
Meanwhile, if you speak out against violence against black bodies (which we know still happens because it never stopped happening!), the government will actively spy on and harass you, and in some cases there is evidence they will even kill you (https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-ferguson-acti...).
"Orthodox" isn't global. Orthodox is only orthodox within a set of people.
Gender critical feminism: the view that trans men are not men and trans women are not women is orthodox, if you look at all of history. It's orthodox in many parts of the US today. It's heresy in progressive circles.
Women as property: that may have been orthodox historically. In almost all circles in the US, it's heresy today.
Racism: it was orthodox historically. I would guess that in the majority of the US, it's heresy today - but it's orthodox in more circles than it should be.
You seem to be mostly using historical examples. That's not particularly relevant - we don't live there now. What's relevant to our lives now is that, within a given circle of people we interact with now, there is an orthodoxy for that circle.
I use the historical perspective to illuminate how far back the orthodoxy goes; we can‘t undo that orthodoxy within two or three generations. Women are raped, stalked, harassed, and murdered because men feel they are property, and they feel that way because of lingering orthodoxy. Black people are cut out of spaces and disallowed the same dignity as others because people feel they are uneducated or dangerous, and they feel that way because of lingering orthodoxy.
Yes, the orthodoxy of one’s immediate circle is important, but human society is interwoven across many levels. Some orthodoxies result in uncomfortable Twitter arguments. Other orthodoxies lead to the election of a sociopathic dimwit who has led a completely failed pandemic response that has left 140,000 dead and triggered the greatest economic crisis of the last century (if not more).
To say that a progressive orthodoxy is a threat at this time is to claim that a fire ant is a threat in a wildfire.
I am not from the US, so Trump does not really affect my directly that much and yet, when he got elected, I donated to the ACLU, I have been in numerous heated arguments about why I think he's cancerous to society and I would vote for Biden and would have voted for Hillary if I was American. Similarly, I've cut off contact with an uncle after it became clear he was supporting the homophobic backlash in Poland, I have unfriended people over non-stop blaming refugees for everything, I am in deep horror of gays being rounded up and killed in Chechnya and Uyghurs being interned in China, and so on.
And yet, I am at the same time still perfectly capable to lament a deterioration of political discourse not only on the right, but on the left as well.
You seem to assume that because people criticise "cancel culture", they think racism or sexual violence or homophobia are not also bad, and yes, also worse and more dangerous. But that is nothing more than a strawman. I've been strawmanned like this before and I find it just really tiring.
I think Trump is worse than even the worst excesses of cancel culture. But that doesn't mean I can't still worry about the latter. And crucially, I do also believe that "cancel culture" only serves to drive more moderate right-wingers further and further into the fold of the far right. In some respects, I think Trump is a monster of the left's own creation.
Luckily, where I live, politics is not yet as polarised as I perceive the US to be. But it's changing, I feel, and I partially blame US cultural influence for it.
He doesn't refer to that when he writes orthodoxy. He is referring the spiral of purity some topics are subjected to. And to related rules for behavior and expression that actually leads to people getting canceled. Not everyone of those is innocent, but some certainly are.
Just to be clear, canceling people because of social transgressions is not a new phenomenon and people most prominently executing it today are not the first to do so.
The things I listed all involve supposed purity (whites are pure, virgin women are pure, gender nonconformism is sexual deviancy which is impure), rules for expression and behavior, and negative consequences for not following said rules.
In Applesauce Town, you are required to eat only applesauce. To a person who wants to eat ham with his applesauce, the fact that the larger American society that envelops Applesauce Town permits all kinds of food matters little to him, because his boss, his wife, and all of his friends vigorously enforce Applesauce Culture.
To be clear: are you claiming that paulg, whose net worth is (probably) somewhere in the hundreds of millions of dollars[1] and who runs the company that manages this extremely popular forum, is somehow required to live in "Applesauce Town"?
paulg is the boss in this analogy. He wields more material power than almost anybody who can possibility be mean to him on the Internet.
Is PG necessarily defending himself, personally? What he's saying applies to everyone who might want to say something online, from Google executives to janitors. Furthermore, no matter how much you have it's still possible for someone to harm you unfairly. "PG is a billionaire" doesn't automatically mean that it's impossible to do something morally wrong that results in him being worse off. Rich people deserve all of the same standards of fairness that anyone else does.
paulg is a good rhetorician: he doesn't actually defend either himself or others in this post.
What he does defend is an orthodoxy that presently enriches and empowers him, and that ensures brutal consequences for those less powerful than him. A prevailing (and legitimate!) complaint against social media justice is that it leaves vulnerable people (like your janitor) unemployed and outcast; this simply isn't possible in a society that has strong employment protections. But this constrains the power of companies to arbitrarily fire people, and paulg's material wealth is substantially dependent on that never happening.
I feel like arguing over "no, your beliefs are the orthodoxy!" is counterproductive when the point is something we can all agree on, which is that everyone's ideas should be tolerated, orthodoxy or not.
It absolutely is counterproductive! It's also a form of gaslighting: we have a problem in this country (assuming that you're also American) with extrajudicial murder of black and brown people. Instead of talking about that and how we've gotten to this point, we have to to rehash the feelings of an extremely powerful man who is anxious about feeling vulnerable on the Blue Bird Site for his opinions. It's perfectly fine to talk about that; I wish we wouldn't do it under the pretense (and abuse) of terminology like "privilege."
> when the point is something we can all agree on, which is that everyone's ideas should be tolerated, orthodoxy or not.
Except that we don't agree on this: I do not believe that everyone's ideas should be tolerated. I think there are ideas that are analytically incompatible with my existence, and that something roughly resembling the paradox of tolerance[1] applies to them. I've written up a more constructive summary of my opinions here[2][3].
Graham's acknowledgement of cancel culture does not imply that he believes he himself is at risk of being fired, swatted, harassed, or required to apologize. But it seems hard for him to pretend it isn't happening to others.
I'm surprised how frequently this line of argument is used. Someone complains about intolerance for their contrarian views, and the response is "boo-hoo, this (male, white) powerful senior editor of this prestigious publication (or whatever) is complaining being censored, but he never gave a shit about (certain oppressed group) being silenced and living in fear — he's just upset some little power is being taken from him".
I mean, sure, people care more about what affects them directly. Maybe they have their own contradictions. But the point they make should prevail or fail on its own merits.
Plus, I find the whole framing of the issue in terms of power very reductionist. It's a powerful tool, but if we merely want to redistribute power in a more just fashion, then the most efficient way would be to send some people to the guillotine. The means through which we attempt to redistribute the power matter and we should strive to have a more tolerant, liberal society, not the other way around.
It’s useful to contrast “orthodox privilege” with what I like to call “privilege privilege,” which is a condition where one is so fully ensconced in a variety of privileges that they think an opposing minority opinion actually reaching their ears is a sign of a someone else having privilege.
>The average American doesn't read Twitter daily, and is somewhere between a moderate liberal and a moderate conservative[2]. These people represent orthodox privilege.
Orthodoxy is not just a numbers game---you also have to factor in reach and institutional support (but I repeat myself).
> Orthodoxy is not just a numbers game---you also have to factor in reach and institutional support (but I repeat myself).
Reach, sure. That's the nature of social media. Can you name an institution that includes "cancel culture" among its principles? I don't think any (American) institution, public or private, practices what paulg is complaining about.
I can think of plenty of institutions that encourage boycotting and isolation as political tactics; labeling these as "cancel culture" is, well, telling.
Boycotting and isolation of people for their concrete actions is one thing. But if you boycott and isolate people for merely expressing opinions, isn't it fair to characterize that as cancel culture?
Yes. Orthodox privilege is a thing, and it changes in different spheres, but having people on twitter "cancel" you for a hot take doesn't really add up against the real material orthodox privilege paulg receives from the system we live in.
It's perfectly possible for people to have privilege and hold power in one setting but not in others. I am relatively left-wing myself, but I do find it jarring how little much of the media, academia and certain people I meet question that "of course, being left-wing must be the one true conviction, and we actually have science on our side". Even when I agree with them generally, I find the complete lack of appreciation for the other side of the argument baffling.
In elections, of course, you end up asking a lot of people for their opinion, and not just the intellectual, wealthy elite, and I think this is why we are so often surprised by electoral results after having been in this academic bubble where "of course everyone supports migrants and trans people" (which I do, for the record).
But since in most countries, people don't vote on issues directly but through their representatives, which generally align with political parties, I think what is happening is that very vocal, very extremist minorities lead to an increasing radicalisation of certain parties (in different directions; of course the extreme right wing is totally out of control in many countries nowadays), and "moderate" voters, while being moderate, don't really find an outlet for their opinions anymore and just have to settle for the side they find the least bad.
The average American is doesn't read Twitter daily, and is somewhere between a moderate liberal and a moderate conservative[2]. These people represent orthodox privilege.
[1]: Case in point: they continue to lose primary elections within their own (ostensible) party.
[2]: On the American political scale, which is uniformly further "right" than European left-right divides.