It's a British classic! It's still really popular even for my age group (early 30s)...maybe it's died a bit for younger people but I don't think some of the comedy in it will ever age. Particularly the relationship between basil and his wife
Cancel Culture
- Thread starter Buchan
- Start date
-
In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) and Imran (@Annihilate Now!) are here to discuss three 1-1 draws.
The first got us knocked out of the FA Cup, the next puts us in a good position in our Round of 16 Europa League game, and the latest was an actual decent performance against Arsenal at Old Trafford.
All hopes for the season now rest on the Europa League - does Amorim have the squad to win it?
It's a British classic! It's still really popular even for my age group (early 30s)...maybe it's died a bit for younger people but I don't think some of the comedy in it will ever age. Particularly the relationship between basil and his wife
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...twood-warn-against-intolerance-in-open-letter
J.K. Rowling, Rushdie and Atwood warn against ‘intolerance’ in open letter
Harper’s letter asserts way to ‘defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion’, but critics accuse authors of censorious mentality
J.K. Rowling, Rushdie and Atwood warn against ‘intolerance’ in open letter
Harper’s letter asserts way to ‘defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion’, but critics accuse authors of censorious mentality
It appears that you can no longer express an opinion that does not conform with the current agreed societal norms without getting rounded upon and beaten until you are forced away. The old fashioned debate is finished as people won't listen to an argument any more because they get triggered instantly at the very notion somebody might not conform to what they view as right. It's quite depressing. I have had an experience of it recently on twitter when I made an anti-Corbyn comment (I think he was an utter disaster for Labour and the country) and was instantly bombarded by Corbyn supporters all jumping on me instantly some of which was quite aggressive and almost all extremely rude and insensitive. How dare I have a different opinion than them on someone. The irony is that if I lived in England I would vote Labour and I detest the Tories but I am also able to think Corbyn was dreadful at the same time. This appears to be lost on these guys.
Which old fashioned debate? People are seemingly reinventing history in the past people would toe the line and not talk much about societal issues and that was within homogenous communities, that's why most social causes took an eternity to get fixed. You think that women were allowed to debate freely and people were listening during the hundreds of years it took them to get equal rights or not be reduced to raising children and cook for their husbands?
What I meant was that it appears you are no longer able to have a discussion with people about an issue that is a bit controversial because you get jumped for even daring to suggest there may be another point of view. It is stifling debate in my view - I'm not afraid of people who disagree with my views and I'm always happy to discuss their views with them respectfully and challenge them if I feel the need to - that appears to be almost impossible in the current climate.
We are more likely to talk about controversial topics today than in the past, in the past you wouldn't even have a platform, Radios and the TV channels would only discuss mainstream vanilla topics. The reason you see more disagreements today is because we have access to large amount of different opinions that are freely expressed on almost all type of platforms. The issue is that the people expressing controversial opinions haven't realized that when they expressed them, a large amount of people will judge these opinions and in most cases controversial opinions are controversial for a good reason and the mass will tell you why.
The problem is that nowadays you can easily express your opinions to a wide audience and that wide audience can easily tell you to wind your neck in. When in the past you couldn't easily access a wide audience and even if you did, that audience had next to no way to express his opinion, it wasn't a debate, it was more often than not a monologue.
I have no problem with people disagreeing with my point of view on a subject - what I have a problem with is people automatically going on the attack and a mob jumping on you in an attempt to dismiss and/or suppress your view without giving you an opportunity to discuss or debate an opinion. The people that do this have no interest in discussing anything at all and instead are black and white in their own views and believe that anybody who disagrees with their particular world view are not only wrong but are evil and should be destroyed (figuratively speaking). Screw those people I say.
Did you see the treatment Corbyn and his supporters were subjected to in the mainstream media? Whatever you think of him, the idea it was opponents of Corbyn who were criticised and silenced, as opposed to handed a platform and their voice amplified, is laughable and completely at odds with reality.
This is what irks about me about this hysteria about ‘cancel culture’. The people and institutions which actually wield power are virtually all right-wing. Think back to McCarthyism - now that’s really ‘cancelling’ people. Imagine being an open socialist or communist and trying to get a high-profile role in the media or politics. It’s been virtually unthinkable and it’s only in recent years that Corbynism and Sanders have managed to even slightly shift debate. Whereas talentless right-wing grifters can forge lucrative careers out of causing outrage and actually thrive on the basis of antagonising this all-powerful ‘cancel culture’ that remarkably fails to cancel them. Laurence Fox is an obvious example. Cried about how he is silenced - while on a mainstream BBC platform - and now I can’t go a day on social media without being reminded of his existence and his incessant laments of how he is persecuted and cancelled at every turn.
He’s symptomatic of this strange phenomenon whereby the people who share the prevailing ideologies and values of those in power like to perceive of themselves as victims and on the fringes of society - with ‘cancel culture’ at the forefront of their attempts to forge this identity of victimhood.
But not everything is debatable or at least worth debating, not every subject should be fully debated everytime someone expresses an opinion that has been already discussed profusely. There is a reason you specifically mentioned controversial subjects, these subjects didn't become controversial without debates and thinking, they are controversial because a thought process occurred and when you express that controversial opinion while knowing that it's controversial you are supposed to be aware of the thought process that led to this conclusion.
To me it reads like you are demanding that people indulge controversial opinions that are expressed without care for the overall intellectual context. That every topic and its conclusions should be rebooted everytime someone decides to open his mouth without giving a deep thinking about the subject they are talking about.
To me that's the fastest way to an idiocracy.
I'm talking about my own experience. I'm centre-left in my views and generally support Labour but because I didn't think Corbyn was up to much I get rounded upon as if I were Maggie Thatcher reincarnated.
I didn't specifically mention controversial subjects - the example I gave was my own view that Corbyn was a total disaster and the experience I had with his supporters after I expressed that view - I'd hardly call that controversial since he lost 2 elections.
Well I’m talking about the much more substantial sphere of real life and the media and politics, not a few mean comments you might get on a football forum. What impact did that have on your life and your career?
I totally see where you’re coming from with this post mate
It was on twitter and the only impact it had was some irritation. However it is an example of what happens when you get a mob willing to throw themselves onto anybody who they disagree with in a pretty aggressive and rude way - I can't imagine what it would be like to be a celeb or somebody with influence these days as it would be a bloody mine field out there with you fearing for your career every time you make any sort of view known.
But this has nothing to do with cancel culture, you simply had people disagreeing with your view. And you did mention controversial issues when I asked about what kind of old fashioned debate.
Millions of people have expressed negative opinions about Corbyn, the press has been doing it for as long as I have been following british politics, if anything it's controversial to have something positive to say about him.
So you expressed a political opinion, people disagreed with it and you were upset at some of the comments. I mean is this supposed to be an unprecedented development? I fail to see what is significant here.
Just opened my eyes a bit that's all - I got pure hatred instantly from a large group of people who all went on the attack. I'm not trying to make you think it's a significant thing for anybody other than myself but just telling you about my own experience. Maybe I just need to stay off twitter. It put me off posting anything remotely controversial in the future which I guess is the point I'm trying to make.
Is this girl not really a cat a though even though she identifies as one?
Great post, but this part particularly? Inject it in my veins.
Remember the Colin Kaepernick shitstorm? I'm sure most people taking part in that were not left wingers.
That's a LOT of people who were almost certainly not left wingers.
This is just Pinker's career. The Blank Slate is probably one of the worst books ever written, because of all the contemporary people he rails at for being blank slatists, none of them are. They don't exist. He called John Watson and B.F. Skinner blank slatists, that's so stupid that he just has to be lying, it's almost impressive how he gets away with it.
You didn't mention if, but from the petition the way he tried to whitewash Bernhard Goetz is probably the most disgusting example of all the times he downplays racism. Maybe not the most consequential one, since it's just a single case instead of racism generally, but it's just so visceral and blatant.
And to just make fun of Pinker a bit. Cancel culture happens online, so is there any issues with it? That is, after all, how Pinker defended Epstein when he was accused of soliciting a minor. Sure, he might not have known that it was Epstein, but he knew that he was defending a child rapist when he helped his friend Alan Dershowitz who is credibly accused of the same crime. When lawyers defend horrible people to the best of their ability, even if that includes doing disgusting things, the rationale is that lawyers have a duty to do so because of ideals and justice. Linguists have no such duty, Pinker did this because he wanted to.
Or, maybe we could tell Pinker that cancel culture is like sexual harassment, that way he won't care.
In any case, I hope millionaire Harvard professor and best selling author Steven Pinker will survive the horrible consequences of cancel culture, which might possibly get him removed from a list nobody had even heard of a week ago. Truly a pressing issue of our time.
If this is cancel culture, what is the reaction, outrage porn?
Last edited:
I can't help but feel that J.K. Rowling isn't helping herself with irritating and sarcastic responses like this (tweeted to someone who now regrets signing the 'cancel culture' letter):
J.K. Rowling said:
Right-wing politics, and increasingly centrist politics, is characterised by a bizarre victim complex where people whose views are dominant in almost every sphere of public life (including politics) believe that they are an embattled minority because they occasionally come across someone who disagrees with them or points out that their rhetoric is dangerous, harmful or inaccurate (usually a left-leaning celebrity or strangers on twitter).
Not sure if serious, but the gender issue stems from the fact that people see gender as a social construct rather than a scientific fact.
Calling species a social construct is a bit of a stretch (at least for now).
I think the main issue is that people such as yourself (and millions of others) want to have these debates or make these points using a medium that is not designed for it. Social media means you're not just speaking with your friends and family who have some background information on what you are like as a person and what your values are. You are instead talking to masses of people who do not know anything about you other than the contents of your posts, and who feel free to be reactionary in a way which they would not do in a face-to-face environment. The word limits also do not allow for nuanced debate.
I know I've decried social media for serving up billions of useless images of people's lunch, but it's much more cut out for that sort of content than it is for rational discourses and exchanges of ideas.
Not really serious.
Yeah you are spot on with that.
She isn't helping herself. I don't think her views are invalid but her victim mentality on this is really not helping.
Thanks for sharing that, I’m not particularly familiar with Pinker’s work aside from a few controversies I’ve heard about. Reminds me of Jordan Peterson (one of the most insufferable right-wing poster boys out there) and his constant railing against ‘postmodern Neo-Marxists’. Zizek pulled him up on this during a debate, asking him what does he mean and who are these supposed postmodern Neo-Marxists. As you’d expect, Peterson rambled without really answering it as he knows he’s a fraud and he couldn’t blag his way out of it against an expert. There’s a trend for these right-wing academics to use words that sound intellectual to give them credibility but under scrutiny from anyone clued up about it it just collapses as the meaningless bluster that is.
The caf and discussion forums are social medias, the issue is mainly with what you say not the people answering. If you make throwaway comments, you will most likely receive throwaway answers whether you are on a social media or face to face. If you elaborate and try to actually instigate a debate, people will generally try to debate with some exceptions.
Pardon my ignorance but I always thought all of this contention wasn't an issue of Gender but an issue of Sex. Gender is definitely a social construct I think most would agree with that, But is the idea of what "scientifically" is a man vs what is a woman also a social construct or is that still a stretch to be called a social construct ? (for now)
Is Jordan Peterson even right-wing? I am not talking about the caricature of Jordan Peterson given on leftist media, but more on what he really says. Any time I heard him speak (I admit, not that many times), he looked very centristic to me. In fact, I don't even think that what he said is particularly deep or analyzed well, a lot of things were simply common sense (and a lot of other things, especially when he does out of his field of research were quite wrong).
I think only in the current climate of 'if you are not fully with us, you are the enemy', Peterson can be considered right-wing poster boy.
Why?
Gender/sex was considered a scientific fact until very recently too. Why shouldn't also species be considered as so?
Yes, I am playing the devil's advocate, but deep down, where is the difference except that one has been popular for the last 10 years or so while the other not cause there are only a few people in the world who are identified as cats etc. If there are more many, would this transform the definition of species from a scientific fact to a social construct?
Yes, Peterson is 100% right-wing. There’s no room for doubt there. What ‘leftist’ media are you speaking of?
I'd say your sex is scientific yeah. Im not at all an expert though.
Gender and sex arent the same thing I think. Gender is the social thing and sex the biological part.
Dunno how I become the spokesperson of this, I know feck all about the subject
Exactly.
Gender and sex arent the same thing I think. Gender is the social thing and sex the biological part.
Dunno how I become the spokesperson of this, I know feck all about the subject
I agree. In the last 5 years, it has been so.
Race or ethnicities? What makes a race a social construct?