Readers may recall that we noted here at Larry Krauss had reinvented himself as a free speech warrior. Given that he had beem NeToo’d, it is not a cheap shot to say that he had little to lose. But Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne pf “Why Evolution Is True” has started to write about the Cancel Culture’s lobotomy on the life of the mind:
Here are some of the pieces:
– Think “cancel culture” is a fabrication? Think again. “Not only were people’s businesses wrecked and their careers damaged, or they got fired, but I can’t imagine any of this happening 30 years ago. The closest example I can think of in our time is the red-baiting that took place during the McCarthy era. But even that wasn’t comparable because the career-wrecking was mostly done by the government and Congress, not by private citizens … Some of them are truly horrific examples of mob mentality.”
– Welcome to Stalin’s Russia: cancellation demanded for New York professor who fell asleep during an antiracist Zoom meeting “There’s an anecdote I well remember from Solzhenitsyn’s great book The Gulag Archipelago, and one I just verified by a bit of Googling. After a speech either by Stalin or about him, the Russian audience leapt to its feet and began applauding wildly. To not join in was, of course, a serious mistake in those times of Stalinist terror. The problem was that nobody wanted to be the first to stop applauding, as this might be taken as a slur on the Great Leader.” (The guy who did was sentenced to ten years in the gulag.)
– HuffPo denies that “cancel culture” exists “HuffPo, one of the biggest exponents of “cancel culture”, now has published one of its longest articles claiming that such a culture doesn’t exist. The piece is a long and unconvincing response to the letter published last week in Harper’s (and four other international venues).”
If your own job is not at risk from the Raging Mediocrities, you can help out by starting to point out the obvious: People who feel unsafe in the presence of those who disagree with them are not scholars or journalists. They are people with letters after their name and/or a job. And big personal issues.
They deserve censure, though perhaps in some cases pity instead. But in no case respect, as if they were professionals. And listening to anything they have to say is probably a waste of time. Start saying it and act like someone who means it. Defund whatever they have anything to do with, to the extent you can do so privately, and raise the matter with elected officials in cases where you are forced to fund them through your taxes.
After all, if Jerry Coyne feels free to call out Huffpo, well… what are we each doing to drive Cancel Culture back to their scream therapy providers, where they belong?
One wonders who’ll be next to get a clue.
See also: Larry Krauss returns as a free speech champion Readers will remember Larry Krauss, a cosmologist formerly of Arizona State University, known for bashing ID, who got Me Too’d. One wonders if he has learned a few things, given his recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.