Besides, it's the principle we are looking at. People feeling excluded.
For what it's worth some of the folk I know from the fall-out of that incident have headed towards Your Party or the Greens so no, it wasn't the simplistic Blairites versus the True LeftTM that you seem hell-bent on making it.
When I get time I'll create a new thread on 'both-sides-ism.'
There are things out there we shouldn't see 'both sides' of.
The term “cancel culture” is used most frequently by conservative politicians, right‑leaning media, and public figures who feel targeted by social backlash. These groups frame it as censorship driven by progressive social norms. Some centrist or classical‑liberal writers also use the term to argue that public discourse has become overly punitive. In contrast, marginalized groups and progressive activists rarely use the phrase, viewing social consequences as accountability rather than suppression. Overall, the term is most common among groups who perceive a loss of cultural authority or feel their traditional viewpoints are being challenged.
Whichever way you phrase it, the use of social consequences to force others to conform to your own worldview/social norms is a thing. Calling it “accountability” when done by one set of people and “bullying” when done by another (such as in the OP, for example) is just a way to say it’s fine and dandy to do it against the “wrong” things, but not against the “right” ones.
You just don't get to impose your social norms on other people.
Ironically, the idea that social norms do not apply to all members of a society is itself a social norm that those on the left are trying to impose on all members of their society.
I think if you consider people your enemies simply because they have different preferences and lifestyle to you, then you've got a problem. And that's the issue I was getting at in the OP; forgetting the incident in question and looking at the wider issue, it's about whether, when you encounter people very different to you, your response is "you should be more like me".
But that's exactly what the left does too. It says "you should be more like me" on x,yz.
Not at all. Liberal democracies believe in freedom of speech and religion. At least we used to. The left doesn't seem to anymore.
That, sir, is objectively false.
Not at all. The left has gone too far left.
Under the Biden administration there was government intervention on FB to only allow views they agreed with. Cancel culture is rife (who needs evidence when there is association?). Freedom of speech was curtailed.
Elon Musk backed Trump in the last election precisely for these values. To prevent government censorship, freedom of speech and cancel culture. That's why he bought Twitter.
I think that's how Trump won.
Could you provide some examples?
Biden administration pressure on Mark Zuckerberg springs to mind. He capitulated but wasn't happy about it.
Google is your friend. Or an AI. Plenty of info out there.
The term “cancel culture” is used most frequently by conservative politicians, right‑leaning media, and public figures who feel targeted by social backlash. These groups frame it as censorship driven by progressive social norms. Some centrist or classical‑liberal writers also use the term to argue that public discourse has become overly punitive. In contrast, marginalized groups and progressive activists rarely use the phrase, viewing social consequences as accountability rather than suppression. Overall, the term is most common among groups who perceive a loss of cultural authority or feel their traditional viewpoints are being challenged.
Whichever way you phrase it, the use of social consequences to force others to conform to your own worldview/social norms is a thing. Calling it “accountability” when done by one set of people and “bullying” when done by another (such as in the OP, for example) is just a way to say it’s fine and dandy to do it against the “wrong” things, but not against the “right” ones.
I think if you consider people your enemies simply because they have different preferences and lifestyle to you, then you've got a problem. And that's the issue I was getting at in the OP; forgetting the incident in question and looking at the wider issue, it's about whether, when you encounter people very different to you, your response is "you should be more like me".
But that's exactly what the left does too. It says "you should be more like me" on x,yz.
Ok. One more time on this false equivalency.
Suppose you have a pub. It sells lots of lager, but also some bitter, some wine and some whisky. Most people drink lager.
The conservative "You should be more like me" is "you bitter, wine and whisky drinkers are weird. You should drink lager like everyone else!"
The liberal "You should be more like me" is "why are you so bothered what other people drink? It doesn't affect you. You should be more like me and live and let live".
FWIW and I may get some stick for this, but I think there are threats to civil liberties from both right and left and vigilance is required.
@Gamma Gamaliel you specifically stated that there are threats to civil liberties from the left. It's not being touchy or unreasonable to ask for examples of that, and to not accept examples that don't have anything to do with civil liberties when you were the one who made a statement talking about threats to civil liberties specifically.
I think if you consider people your enemies simply because they have different preferences and lifestyle to you, then you've got a problem. And that's the issue I was getting at in the OP; forgetting the incident in question and looking at the wider issue, it's about whether, when you encounter people very different to you, your response is "you should be more like me".
But that's exactly what the left does too. It says "you should be more like me" on x,yz.
Not at all. Liberal democracies believe in freedom of speech and religion. At least we used to. The left doesn't seem to anymore.
That, sir, is objectively false.
Not at all. The left has gone too far left.
Under the Biden administration there was government intervention on FB to only allow views they agreed with. Cancel culture is rife (who needs evidence when there is association?). Freedom of speech was curtailed.
Elon Musk backed Trump in the last election precisely for these values. To prevent government censorship, freedom of speech and cancel culture. That's why he bought Twitter.
I think that's how Trump won.
Could you provide some examples?
Biden administration pressure on Mark Zuckerberg springs to mind. He capitulated but wasn't happy about it.
Google is your friend. Or an AI. Plenty of info out there.
AI hallucinates information. Since when was that a source? It's not unreasonable to ask for you to back your arguments up with facts.
Legal consequences for legal wrongdoing is not cancel culture.
Besides, it's the principle we are looking at. People feeling excluded.
For what it's worth some of the folk I know from the fall-out of that incident have headed towards Your Party or the Greens so no, it wasn't the simplistic Blairites versus the True LeftTM that you seem hell-bent on making it.
When I get time I'll create a new thread on 'both-sides-ism.'
There are things out there we shouldn't see 'both sides' of.
Other things where we can.
I'm confused by your comments here, why wouldn't people involved in Your Party or the Greens be part of whatever you mean by the "True Left™️"?
People merely feeling excluded by local politics isn't the same as being systematically excluded by society.
The term “cancel culture” is used most frequently by conservative politicians, right‑leaning media, and public figures who feel targeted by social backlash. These groups frame it as censorship driven by progressive social norms. Some centrist or classical‑liberal writers also use the term to argue that public discourse has become overly punitive. In contrast, marginalized groups and progressive activists rarely use the phrase, viewing social consequences as accountability rather than suppression. Overall, the term is most common among groups who perceive a loss of cultural authority or feel their traditional viewpoints are being challenged.
Whichever way you phrase it, the use of social consequences to force others to conform to your own worldview/social norms is a thing. Calling it “accountability” when done by one set of people and “bullying” when done by another (such as in the OP, for example) is just a way to say it’s fine and dandy to do it against the “wrong” things, but not against the “right” ones.
Traditional viewpoints have to be challenged.
But progressive ones don’t?
But why does a teenage boy need to be held accountable for wearing a dress to his prom? "Accountability" suggests wrongdoing. Nobody has been harmed by someone wearing a dress.
A physically powerful person jumps a vulnerable person who is minding their own business. Bystanders weigh in and reverse the odds. That doesn't make the bystanders bullies, though they are now the more powerful through weight of numbers. Defending the powerless is not bullying but the opposite - preventing bullying.
Many people find attacks from the powerful against vulnerable relatively powerless groups just for existing normally as they are appalling and evil.
Some people would like making their attacks on relatively powerless groups to be a protected characteristic of its own and they falsely claim victimhood and vulnerability when they receive social rejection or check for in fact being being obvious bullies or persecutors or wannabe bullies.
It reminds me of the saying "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression" - people accustomed to systemic advantages and deference for belonging to groups which historically did the punching down from a position of power on those they saw as 'deviants' may perceive the loss of their punching power and being told off for it as a terrible affront and frightful persecution.
The thing is those people are telling on themselves.
Other people can recognise this and know they are dealing with bullying however it is dressed up in 'freedom of speech' and speeches about traditional values. It's hardly ever traditional values about feeding the poor and helping your neighbours and being frugal and personally keeping the Sabbath and respecting learning. It's generally the bully stuff - can we be threatening to someone wearing a dress who we dont register as a cis woman? Can we come into public spaces where Black people are and be openly racist to them and in front of them? Can we force disabled people into situations which harm them and refuse them support because it's cheaper and more convenient for us? Can we mock them? Can we say the R and the N word? Freedom of speech!
Which reminds me of the old Upton Sinclair saw 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'
'It's difficult to get a happily privileged person to admit they understand something when their privilege depends on adamantly refusing to understand it'
People who dont want to relinquish privilege or who are blind to it can produce the most amazing verbal gymnastics as to how they are really the victims of the people they want to go on persecuting. They have disproportionately powerful and well funded propaganda tools backing them - so they have recently succeeded in getting a lot of people to vote for the leopards to eat their and other people's faces.
However most of us in the principal leopard food groups can still recognise the call of the loud roary spotty pointy-fanged things that like eating faces, even when artfully packaged as the mewings of poor wee bedraggled put-upon orphaned kittens.
I think so much of how you build mutual trust in society in general - which shouldn't be a party-political issue - is about things like access to publicly-owned third spaces, public ownership of civil institutions, and infrastructure. These are all things which can't function properly if you just outsource every element of them to the cheapest third-party provider. Even a lot of what seems like public space in England at least - I know Scotland is different, don't know enough about public space laws in Wales or NI to comment - is actually privately owned, such as outside spaces around shopping precincts. Everyone has a vested interest in their town's facilities and the land they're built on being owned by the town rather than a private company often not even based in the UK.
First, to the question: do progressive ideals need to be challenged? Of course. I have previously named a couple of progressive ideals that can be challenged by Christians.
But last night, I saw a report that fits the pegs vs square typology to a T. Has anyone seen the reports of Punch, the baby Macaque that was rejected by its mother shortly after birth? Punch's mother was a first-time mother, so it is not unusual for an inexperienced mother to abandon a newborn.
Zookeepers kept the baby alive. They eventually gave it a toy Orangutang stuffed animal which Punch attached itself too.
Punch would drag that stuffed animal everywhere. Anytime it felt the need for attachment it would cling to the stuffed animal.
Since Punch had been rejected by its mother, it was also rejected by the rest of the troop. The thought is Punch was not able to pick up on the social cues of the troop. Its mother had not taught Punch some of the cues.
Every time Punch tried to integrate with the troop, it would get into fights and would flee back to the stuffed animal. However, as time as gone on, Punch has begun to learn some of the social cues, and the troop has become more accepting of it.
Punch's use of the toy Orangutang has diminished. Zookeepers think Punch's need for the Orangutang will extinguish itself in time.
This is a classic Peg vs Square story. What is interesting is, for Punch it accepted the stuffed Orangutang as a surrogate mother in spite of the obvious cross species differences--either Punch did not see the difference, or it just needed something to survive.
Punch has learned to become more of a square in order to fit in. But I wonder if the troop also had to change for Punch too. In other words, both have had to harmonize for each other.
Comments
For what it's worth some of the folk I know from the fall-out of that incident have headed towards Your Party or the Greens so no, it wasn't the simplistic Blairites versus the True LeftTM that you seem hell-bent on making it.
When I get time I'll create a new thread on 'both-sides-ism.'
There are things out there we shouldn't see 'both sides' of.
Other things where we can.
Whichever way you phrase it, the use of social consequences to force others to conform to your own worldview/social norms is a thing. Calling it “accountability” when done by one set of people and “bullying” when done by another (such as in the OP, for example) is just a way to say it’s fine and dandy to do it against the “wrong” things, but not against the “right” ones.
But progressive ones don’t?
Ironically, the idea that social norms do not apply to all members of a society is itself a social norm that those on the left are trying to impose on all members of their society.
But that's exactly what the left does too. It says "you should be more like me" on x,yz.
Biden administration pressure on Mark Zuckerberg springs to mind. He capitulated but wasn't happy about it.
Google is your friend. Or an AI. Plenty of info out there.
Yeah, I'm simply not going to take such arguments seriously.
Yup
Ok. One more time on this false equivalency.
Suppose you have a pub. It sells lots of lager, but also some bitter, some wine and some whisky. Most people drink lager.
The conservative "You should be more like me" is "you bitter, wine and whisky drinkers are weird. You should drink lager like everyone else!"
The liberal "You should be more like me" is "why are you so bothered what other people drink? It doesn't affect you. You should be more like me and live and let live".
There is a qualitative difference there.
@Gamma Gamaliel you specifically stated that there are threats to civil liberties from the left. It's not being touchy or unreasonable to ask for examples of that, and to not accept examples that don't have anything to do with civil liberties when you were the one who made a statement talking about threats to civil liberties specifically.
AI hallucinates information. Since when was that a source? It's not unreasonable to ask for you to back your arguments up with facts.
Legal consequences for legal wrongdoing is not cancel culture.
I'm confused by your comments here, why wouldn't people involved in Your Party or the Greens be part of whatever you mean by the "True Left™️"?
People merely feeling excluded by local politics isn't the same as being systematically excluded by society.
But why does a teenage boy need to be held accountable for wearing a dress to his prom? "Accountability" suggests wrongdoing. Nobody has been harmed by someone wearing a dress.
Many people find attacks from the powerful against vulnerable relatively powerless groups just for existing normally as they are appalling and evil.
Some people would like making their attacks on relatively powerless groups to be a protected characteristic of its own and they falsely claim victimhood and vulnerability when they receive social rejection or check for in fact being being obvious bullies or persecutors or wannabe bullies.
It reminds me of the saying "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression" - people accustomed to systemic advantages and deference for belonging to groups which historically did the punching down from a position of power on those they saw as 'deviants' may perceive the loss of their punching power and being told off for it as a terrible affront and frightful persecution.
The thing is those people are telling on themselves.
Other people can recognise this and know they are dealing with bullying however it is dressed up in 'freedom of speech' and speeches about traditional values. It's hardly ever traditional values about feeding the poor and helping your neighbours and being frugal and personally keeping the Sabbath and respecting learning. It's generally the bully stuff - can we be threatening to someone wearing a dress who we dont register as a cis woman? Can we come into public spaces where Black people are and be openly racist to them and in front of them? Can we force disabled people into situations which harm them and refuse them support because it's cheaper and more convenient for us? Can we mock them? Can we say the R and the N word? Freedom of speech!
Which reminds me of the old Upton Sinclair saw 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'
'It's difficult to get a happily privileged person to admit they understand something when their privilege depends on adamantly refusing to understand it'
People who dont want to relinquish privilege or who are blind to it can produce the most amazing verbal gymnastics as to how they are really the victims of the people they want to go on persecuting. They have disproportionately powerful and well funded propaganda tools backing them - so they have recently succeeded in getting a lot of people to vote for the leopards to eat their and other people's faces.
However most of us in the principal leopard food groups can still recognise the call of the loud roary spotty pointy-fanged things that like eating faces, even when artfully packaged as the mewings of poor wee bedraggled put-upon orphaned kittens.
But last night, I saw a report that fits the pegs vs square typology to a T. Has anyone seen the reports of Punch, the baby Macaque that was rejected by its mother shortly after birth? Punch's mother was a first-time mother, so it is not unusual for an inexperienced mother to abandon a newborn.
Zookeepers kept the baby alive. They eventually gave it a toy Orangutang stuffed animal which Punch attached itself too.
Punch would drag that stuffed animal everywhere. Anytime it felt the need for attachment it would cling to the stuffed animal.
Since Punch had been rejected by its mother, it was also rejected by the rest of the troop. The thought is Punch was not able to pick up on the social cues of the troop. Its mother had not taught Punch some of the cues.
Every time Punch tried to integrate with the troop, it would get into fights and would flee back to the stuffed animal. However, as time as gone on, Punch has begun to learn some of the social cues, and the troop has become more accepting of it.
Punch's use of the toy Orangutang has diminished. Zookeepers think Punch's need for the Orangutang will extinguish itself in time.
This is a classic Peg vs Square story. What is interesting is, for Punch it accepted the stuffed Orangutang as a surrogate mother in spite of the obvious cross species differences--either Punch did not see the difference, or it just needed something to survive.
Punch has learned to become more of a square in order to fit in. But I wonder if the troop also had to change for Punch too. In other words, both have had to harmonize for each other.
More about the story here.