In Defence of Imperfect Heroes
I recently moved to a small coastal town in northern California and have been looking for a volunteer opportunity, not only because I find volunteering incredibly rewarding, but also to…
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Posts by tag
Cancel Culture
24 posts
Why Can’t the Right Be Cancelled?
On 10 February 2021, Gina Carano—a former MMA fighter best known for her role in the Stars Wars spin-off The Mandalorian—was dealt what looked like a death blow to her…
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Conservative Cancel Culture: Paul E. Gottfried et al’s “The Vanishing Tradition: Perspectives on American Conservatism”
It’s been said that when Germany invaded Russia in June 1941, the Soviet military elite had been so hollowed out by Stalin’s purges that the Red Army had trouble mounting…
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The Infrastructure of Deplatforming: Loomer versus Twitter
What can be studied is always a relationship or an infinite regress of relationships. Never a ‘thing.’—Gregory Bateson, 1978 In 1984, sociologists Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker published a paper…
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Brave New Literary World
I recently saw a tweet by writer Thomas Chatterton Williams that said, “We are going to need very brave novelists again.” My first reaction was that he’s right. My second…
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Beyond Postmodern: The Neoliberal Roots of Woke Cancel Culture
Anumber of writers on the left and center-left have recently expressed alarm at cancel culture. In some respects, their concerns match those of conservatives who’ve railed against campus deplatforming, compelled…
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Oppositional Thinking and the Importance of Compassion
The killing of George Floyd brought many systemic problems with police culture to wider consciousness. However, the event also led to a cycle of predictable posturing, online activism and critique.
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On Fighting Monsters
Why are people so afraid of being cancelled? It’s not a social death sentence. You can see plenty of supposedly cancelled individuals rambling about the hot topic of the day…
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Cancel Culture and the Alt-Right: Dark Psychological Profiles in Politics
The dark triad is the term used to describe the constellation of three maladaptive and socially undesirable traits: Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy. Machiavellian individuals are cold and cynical, often using…
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Trader Joe’s, Racism and Cancel Culture
Four weeks ago, California high school senior Briones Bedell targeted grocery chain Trader Joe’s via Change.org, asking the company to remove “racist branding” from its international food products. The petition…
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In Defense of “Hamilton”
This isn’t really about Hamilton. This is about the ideas espoused by left-wing postmodernists and how they lead to the misery of American audiences everywhere for no good reason. The…
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The Real Reason Cancel Culture is Rejecting “Harry Potter”
The obsession of the supporters of cancel culture with J. K. Rowling stems from the fact that they can no longer comprehend—and therefore cannot accept—the darkest elements of the human…
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What Yoram Hazony Gets Wrong About Cancel Culture
The open letter in Harper’s Magazine on the dangers of ideological conformity and the suppression of speech, signed by more than 150 leading writers and intellectuals, has been explosively controversial.…
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Self-Cancel Culture and the Threat of Moderate Wokeness
Liberalism’s defenders usually describe illiberalism as comprised of two distinct threats: the authoritarian right and the culturally totalitarian left. However, this framing misrepresents the situation. The dangers posed by the…
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Possible Conversations
Letter is a public platform for one-on-one letter exchanges. We have recently completed an Impossible Conversations competition, in which the judges—Heather Heying, Russ Roberts, John Wood jr. and our own…
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History and Cancel Culture
Harper’s Magazine sparked major controversy recently by publishing an open letter criticizing cancel culture, signed by hundreds of public figures. The letter was all the more galvanizing since—in addition to…
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What Cancel Culture Is Not
If you have a social media account, you must certainly have come across the phrase cancel culture. It describes the act of collectively unsubscribing from a person, the way you…
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The Problem with the Concept of Cancel Culture
The phrase cancel culture has been all over the internet over the past few weeks. The publication of the Harper’s letter defending free speech and a number of high profile…
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