NEW YORK - So you've probably read a lot about "cancel culture." Or know about a new poll that shows a plurality of Americans disapproving of it. Or you may have heard about a letter in Harper's Magazine condemning censorship and intolerance.

But can you say exactly what "cancel culture" is? Some takes:

"It seems like a buzzword that creates more confusion than clarity," says the author and journalist George Packer, who went on to call it "a mechanism where a chorus of voices, amplified on social media, tries to silence a point of view that they find offensive by trying to damage or destroy the reputation of the person who has given offense."

"I don't think it's real. But there are reasonable people who believe in it," says the author, educator and sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom. "From my perspective, accountability has always existed. But some people are being held accountable in ways that are new to them. We didn't talk about 'cancel culture' when someone was charged with a crime and had to stay in jail because they couldn't afford the bail."

"'Cancel culture' tacitly attempts to disable the ability of a person with whom you disagree to ever again be taken seriously as a writer/editor/speaker/activist/intellectual, or in the extreme, to be hired or employed in their field of work," says Letty Cottin Pogrebin, the author, activist and founding editor of Ms. magazine.

"It means different things to different people," says Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

In tweets, online letters, opinion pieces and books, conservatives, centrists and liberals continue to denounce what they call growing intolerance for opposing viewpoints and the needless ruining of lives and careers. A Politico/Morning Consult poll released last week shows 44% of Americans disapprove of it, 32% approve and the remaining 24% had no opinion or didn't know what it was.

For some, "cancel culture" is the coming of the thought police. For others, it contains important chances to be heard that didn't exist before.

Recent examples of unpopular "cancellations" include the owner of a chain of food stores in Minneapolis whose business faced eviction and calls for boycotts because of racist social media posts by his then-teenage daughter, and a data analyst fired by the progressive firm Civis Analytics after he tweeted a study finding that nonviolent protests increase support for Democratic candidates and violent protests decrease it. Civis Analytics has denied he was fired for the tweet.

"These incidents damage the lives of innocent people without achieving any noble purpose," Yascha Mounk wrote in The Atlantic last month. Mounk himself has been criticized for alleging that "an astonishing number of academics and journalists proudly proclaim that it is time to abandon values like due process and free speech."

Debates can be circular and confusing, with those objecting to intolerance sometimes openly uncomfortable with those who don't share their views. A few weeks ago, more than 100 artists and thinkers endorsed a letter co-written by Packer and published by Harper's. It warned against a "new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity."

The letter drew signatories from many backgrounds and political points of view, ranging from the far-left Noam Chomsky to the conservative David Frum, and was a starting point for contradiction.

The writer and trans activist Jennifer Finney Boylan, who signed the letter, quickly disowned it because she "did not know who else" had attached their names. Although endorsers included Salman Rushdie, who in 1989 was forced into hiding over death threats from Iranian Islamic leaders because of his novel "The Satanic Verses," numerous online critics dismissed the letter as a product of elitists who knew nothing about censorship.

One of the organizers of the letter, the writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, later announced on Twitter that he had thrown a guest out of his home over criticisms of letter-supporter Bari Weiss, the New York Times columnist who recently quit over what she called a Twitter-driven culture of political correctness. Another endorser, "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling, threatened legal action against a British news site that suggested she was transphobic after referring to controversial tweets that she has written in recent months.

"The only speech these powerful people seem to care about is their own," the author and feminist Jessica Valenti wrote in response to the Harper's letter. "('Cancel culture' ) is certainly not about free speech: After all, an arrested journalist is never referred to as 'canceled,' nor is a woman who has been frozen out of an industry after complaining about sexual harassment. 'Canceled' is a label we all understand to mean a powerful person who's been held to account."

"Cancel culture" is hard to define, in part because there is nothing confined about it no single cause, no single ideology, no single fate for those allegedly canceled.

Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, convicted sex offenders, are in prison. Former television personality Charlie Rose has been unemployable since allegations of sexual abuse and harassment were published in 2017-18. Oscar winner Kevin Spacey has made no films since he faced allegations of harassment and assault and saw his performance in "All the Money in the World" replaced by Christopher Plummer's.

Others are only partially "canceled." Woody Allen, accused by daughter Dylan Farrow of molesting her when she was 7, was dropped by Amazon, his U.S. film distributor, but continues to release movies overseas. His memoir was canceled by Hachette Book Group, but soon acquired by Skyhorse Publishing, which also has a deal with the previously "canceled" Garrison Keillor. Sirius XM announced last week that the late Michael Jackson, who seemed to face posthumous cancellation after the 2019 documentary "Leaving Neverland" presented extensive allegations that he sexually abused boys, would have a channel dedicated to his music.

Cancellation in one subculture can lead to elevation in others. Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has not played an NFL game since 2016 and has been condemned by President Donald Trump and many others on the right after he began kneeling during the National Anthem to protest "a country that oppresses black people and people of color." But he has appeared in Nike advertisements, been honored by the ACLU and Amnesty International and reached an agreement with the Walt Disney Co. for a series about his life.

"You can say the NFL canceled Colin Kaepernick as a quarterback and that he was resurrected as a cultural hero," says Julius Bailey, an associate professor of philosophy at Wittenberg University who writes about Kaepernick in his book "Racism, Hypocrisy and Bad Faith."

In politics, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, remains in his job 1 1/2 years after acknowledging he appeared in a racist yearbook picture while in college. Sen. Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota, resigned after multiple women alleged he had sexually harassed them, but Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax of Virginia defied orders to quit after two women accused him of sexual assault.

Sometimes even multiple allegations of sexual assault, countless racist remarks and the disparagement of wounded military veterans aren't enough to induce cancellation. Trump, a Republican, has labeled cancel culture "far-left fascism" and "the very definition of totalitarianism" while so far proving immune to it.

"Politicians can ride this out because they were hired by the public. And if the public is willing to go along, then they can sometimes survive things perhaps they shouldn't survive," Packer says.

"I think you can say that Trump's rhetoric has had a boomerang effect on the rest of our society," says PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel, who addresses free expression in her book "Dare to Speak," which comes out next week. "People on the left feel that he can get away with anything, so they do all they can to contain it elsewhere."

Read the original:

Everywhere And Nowhere: The Many Layers of 'Cancel Culture' - Voice of America

After a half year of uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 crisis, Chinas beleaguered movie theaters reopened last week with films that ranged from local patriotic blockbuster Wolf Warrior 2" to Pixars Coco. For Hollywood, the return of the film industrys most important foreign market was cause for cautious optimism.

Where it leads, I dont think anyone knows, said Scott Einbinder, a Los Angeles producer and president of ANA Media, which consults for Chinese companies. But its a relief that theres been some light forming at the end of the tunnel after such a long period of darkness.

Still, any sense of reassurance is clouded by a growing chorus criticizing Hollywoods relationship with China. Trump administration officials and political allies have repeatedly hit the entertainment industry for its efforts to gain access to the lucrative Chinese market by appeasing the government in Beijing.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo swiped at Hollywood on Thursday at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, saying the industry self-censors even the most mildly unfavorable reference to China. This came a day after the State Department ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston over spying accusations. The Pompeo statement echoed a July 16 speech by Atty. Gen. William Barr, calling out studios for backing social justice causes stateside while censoring its movies for China despite its human rights violations.

This censorship infects not only versions of movies that are released in China but also many that are shown in American theaters to American audiences, Barr said.

The barrage has extended beyond movies. Earlier this month, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) critiqued the National Basketball Assn. for kowtowing to Beijing while allowing athletes to wear social justice slogans on jerseys. In a letter to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Hawley asked whether players would also be allowed to don slogans supporting Hong Kong protesters, the U.S. military, or police. Adrian Wojnarowski, a journalist for Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN, was suspended after he sent a two-word email response, which included the f-bomb.

Additionally, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro called former Disney streaming chief Kevin Mayer an American puppet after the executive left the Burbank entertainment giant to run social media app TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance. Navarro has accused TikTok and other apps of funneling user data to Beijing. We have never shared TikTok user data with the Chinese government and would not do so if asked, a TikTok spokeswoman said.

The wave of criticism comes at a time when the entertainment industry is already facing uncertainty in China, which has seen massive growth in its film business in the last decade. Since a landmark 2012 agreement that dramatically increased U.S. companies access to Chinas cinemas, studios have wanted to expand their business there.

Studios have long sought a greater box office share in China than the 25% of sales they receive now, compared with about 50% in other nations, as well as better release dates. Theyve also wanted to boost the number of foreign films allowed into the country annually under the revenue-sharing deal from the current quota, loosely set at 34.

Those efforts took a back seat amid the Trump administrations trade war with China. Relations between the U.S. and China have been further strained by the latter countrys provocative moves to expand its military influence in the South China Sea.

Some studio executives and analysts worry that escalating rhetoric could further limit prospects for American movies, particularly for independent studios that get their films into the country through a flat-fee system. Film companies are already struggling at home because of the effects of the coronavirus situation on productions and theaters.

The conversation needs to be focused on gaining legal access to the Chinese market rather than trying to tie producers hands in their efforts to surmount the trade barrier, said Jean Prewitt, president of the Independent Film & Television Alliance.

Censorship is a price of doing business in China, where foreign films endure a rigorous approval process before theyre released.

In 20th Century Foxs 2018 hit Bohemian Rhapsody, references to Queen front man Freddie Mercurys sexuality were cut from the version that screened in China. Last summer, a Twitter user noticed that Tom Cruises bomber jacket in a trailer for Top Gun: Maverick was altered to remove patches representing the flags of Japan and Taiwan, which was interpreted as a move to appease China. Barrs speech cited Marvels 2016 blockbuster Doctor Strange, which changed the origin of the character The Ancient One from a Tibetan monk to a Celtic mystic, played by Tilda Swinton.

Representatives for Disney, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, Paramount, Universal Pictures and the Motion Picture Assn. declined to comment for this story or did not respond to requests for comment.

However, industry analysts and executives said the left-leaning entertainment industry is a convenient punching bag for politicians. That tendency has only increased during an election year when the administration is vulnerable because of its handling of the coronavirus crisis, which Trump has referred to as the China virus. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) this year introduced legislation that would prevent studios from receiving government assistance on productions if they censored films for China, a move that studio executives have shrugged off as political posturing.

It gets headlines and publicity and feeds into the narrative that all of our problems come from the outside or from left-wing radicals, said Stanley Rosen, a political science professor and China expert at the University of Southern California.

Kirk DAmico, president of Los Angeles-based distributor Myriad Pictures, said his business of licensing content to China had been steadily increasing before the trade disputes took hold. Now he says his China sales fell 70% to 80% since 2018. He blames trade tensions and rhetoric over COVID-19.

Its hurt us in our pocketbooks, and its hurt us in terms of actual sales, DAmico said.

Some film industry executives, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Washingtons concern over censorship is overblown, noting that studios trim movies for many countries, including conservative Middle Eastern nations, to avoid offending local sensibilities. Altering movies to appeal to audiences in the worlds most populous nation makes business sense.

Were not compromising values, said one film business insider, who was not authorized to comment.

But some critics argue that Chinas influence has become so great that its preferences affect what kinds of stories are told globally, not just in mainland China.

The Chinese government is not unique in terms of pushing Hollywood to censor or make movies that reflect their own narratives, but its the only one that is able to be this effective to a global extent, said James Tager, deputy director of free expression research and policy at PEN America, which is publishing a report on the subject.

Censorship has tightened in China since the regulatory body that traditionally oversaw its entertainment sector was eliminated in 2018, shifting control to the Communist Partys propaganda department. The move was part of a sweeping campaign under Party Chairman Xi Jinping to tighten control over speech and thought in China, particularly in media and education.

While some recent American pictures have done huge business in China, the government there has lately tended to favor local productions and patriotic films. China has produced an increasing number of patriotic movies following the Partys guidance to implement socialist core values and build Chinese spirit, Chinese values, Chinese power under the important guiding spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping, as Central Propaganda Department director Huang Kunming declared at a Chinese movie awards ceremony last year. That has made the market more challenging for American movies.

Entertainment industry veteran Chris Fenton, author of the upcoming book Feeding the Dragon, about the relationship between U.S. studios and China, said studios should be more careful about how they respond to Chinese restrictions.

Studios need to admit that there is a lot of hypocrisy going on, Fenton said. They need to get out of their bubble and realize that a lot of their constituents are becoming very aware of the issues in China.

Most observers dont expect China to immediately retaliate against the major studios over administration officials statements. Foreign movies including Universals Robert Downey Jr. family film Dolittle and Sonys Vin Diesel action movie Bloodshot were recently approved for release in the country. It remains unclear when Disney will be able to release its live-action Mulan remake there, despite the inclusion of Chinese cultural consultants during the $200-million production.

China still needs big Hollywood movies to fuel the recovery of its massive cinema industry, which has been shuttered since late January. Ultimately, having Hollywood releases in China is as beneficial to China as it is to Hollywood, said Eric Wold, an entertainment industry analyst at B. Riley FBR.

Still, producer Einbinder hopes the politicization of the entertainment industry cools.

Its easy for the Trump administration to pick on Hollywood, he said. But its much more complicated than that. They have to remember, also, that Hollywood creates a lot of jobs around the country.

Times staff writer Alice Su contributed to this report.

Excerpt from:

Hollywood 'kowtowing' to China takes heat. But why now? - Los Angeles Times

This combination photo shows authors J.K. Rowling, left, and Salman Rushdie. Rowling, threatened legal action against a British news site that suggested she was transphobic after referring to controversial tweets she has written in recent months. Rushdie was forced into hiding because of death threats because of his novel The Satanic Verses. (AP Photo)

NEW YORK So youve probably read a lot about cancel culture. Or know about a new poll that shows a plurality of Americans disapproving of it. Or you may have heard about a letter in Harpers Magazine condemning censorship and intolerance.

But can you say exactly what cancel culture is? Some takes:

It seems like a buzzword that creates more confusion than clarity, says the author and journalist George Packer, who went on to call it a mechanism where a chorus of voices, amplified on social media, tries to silence a point of view that they find offensive by trying to damage or destroy the reputation of the person who has given offense.

I dont think its real. But there are reasonable people who believe in it, says the author, educator and sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom. From my perspective, accountability has always existed. But some people are being held accountable in ways that are new to them. We didnt talk about cancel culture when someone was charged with a crime and had to stay in jail because they couldnt afford the bail.

Cancel culture tacitly attempts to disable the ability of a person with whom you disagree to ever again be taken seriously as a writer/editor/speaker/activist/intellectual, or in the extreme, to be hired or employed in their field of work, says Letty Cottin Pogrebin, the author, activist and founding editor of Ms. magazine.

It means different things to different people, says Ben Wizner, director of the ACLUs Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

In tweets, online letters, opinion pieces and books, conservatives, centrists and liberals continue to denounce what they call growing intolerance for opposing viewpoints and the needless ruining of lives and careers. A Politico/Morning Consult poll released last week shows 44% of Americans disapprove of it, 32% approve and the remaining 24% had no opinion or didnt know what it was.

For some, cancel culture is the coming of the thought police. For others, it contains important chances to be heard that didnt exist before.

Recent examples of unpopular cancellations include the owner of a chain of food stores in Minneapolis whose business faced eviction and calls for boycotts because of racist social media posts by his then-teenage daughter, and a data analyst fired by the progressive firm Civis Analytics after he tweeted a study finding that nonviolent protests increase support for Democratic candidates and violent protests decrease it. Civis Analytics has denied he was fired for the tweet.

These incidents damage the lives of innocent people without achieving any noble purpose, Yascha Mounk wrote in The Atlantic last month. Mounk himself has been criticized for alleging that an astonishing number of academics and journalists proudly proclaim that it is time to abandon values like due process and free speech.

Debates can be circular and confusing, with those objecting to intolerance sometimes openly uncomfortable with those who dont share their views. A few weeks ago, more than 100 artists and thinkers endorsed a letter co-written by Packer and published by Harpers. It warned against a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity.

The letter drew signatories from many backgrounds and political points of view, ranging from the far-left Noam Chomsky to the conservative David Frum, and was a starting point for contradiction.

The writer and trans activist Jennifer Finney Boylan, who signed the letter, quickly disowned it because she did not know who else had attached their names. Although endorsers included Salman Rushdie, who in 1989 was forced into hiding over death threats from Iranian Islamic leaders because of his novel The Satanic Verses, numerous online critics dismissed the letter as a product of elitists who knew nothing about censorship.

One of the organizers of the letter, the writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, later announced on Twitter that he had thrown a guest out of his home over criticisms of letter-supporter Bari Weiss, the New York Times columnist who recently quit over what she called a Twitter-driven culture of political correctness. Another endorser, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, threatened legal action against a British news site that suggested she was transphobic after referring to controversial tweets that she has written in recent months.

The only speech these powerful people seem to care about is their own, the author and feminist Jessica Valenti wrote in response to the Harpers letter. (Cancel culture ) is certainly not about free speech: After all, an arrested journalist is never referred to as canceled, nor is a woman who has been frozen out of an industry after complaining about sexual harassment. Canceled is a label we all understand to mean a powerful person whos been held to account.

Cancel culture is hard to define, in part because there is nothing confined about it no single cause, no single ideology, no single fate for those allegedly canceled.

Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, convicted sex offenders, are in prison. Former television personality Charlie Rose has been unemployable since allegations of sexual abuse and harassment were published in 2017-18. Oscar winner Kevin Spacey has made no films since he faced allegations of harassment and assault and saw his performance in All the Money in the World replaced by Christopher Plummers.

Others are only partially canceled. Woody Allen, accused by daughter Dylan Farrow of molesting her when she was 7, was dropped by Amazon, his U.S. film distributor, but continues to release movies overseas. His memoir was canceled by Hachette Book Group, but soon acquired by Skyhorse Publishing, which also has a deal with the previously canceled Garrison Keillor. Sirius XM announced last week that the late Michael Jackson, who seemed to face posthumous cancellation after the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland presented extensive allegations that he sexually abused boys, would have a channel dedicated to his music.

Cancellation in one subculture can lead to elevation in others. Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has not played an NFL game since 2016 and has been condemned by President Donald Trump and many others on the right after he began kneeling during the National Anthem to protest a country that oppresses black people and people of color. But he has appeared in Nike advertisements, been honored by the ACLU and Amnesty International and reached an agreement with the Walt Disney Co. for a series about his life.

You can say the NFL canceled Colin Kaepernick as a quarterback and that he was resurrected as a cultural hero, says Julius Bailey, an associate professor of philosophy at Wittenberg University who writes about Kaepernick in his book Racism, Hypocrisy and Bad Faith.

In politics, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, remains in his job 1 1/2 years after acknowledging he appeared in a racist yearbook picture while in college. Sen. Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota, resigned after multiple women alleged he had sexually harassed them, but Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax of Virginia defied orders to quit after two women accused him of sexual assault.

Sometimes even multiple allegations of sexual assault, countless racist remarks and the disparagement of wounded military veterans arent enough to induce cancellation. Trump, a Republican, has labeled cancel culture far-left fascism and the very definition of totalitarianism while so far proving immune to it.

Politicians can ride this out because they were hired by the public. And if the public is willing to go along, then they can sometimes survive things perhaps they shouldnt survive, Packer says.

I think you can say that Trumps rhetoric has had a boomerang effect on the rest of our society, says PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel, who addresses free expression in her book Dare to Speak, which comes out next week. People on the left feel that he can get away with anything, so they do all they can to contain it elsewhere.

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Everywhere and nowhere: The many layers of 'cancel culture' - The Daily Times

So you've probably read a lot about cancel culture. Or know about a new poll that shows a plurality of Americans disapproving of it. Or you may have heard about a letter in Harper's Magazine condemning censorship and intolerance.

But can you say exactly what cancel culture is? Some takes:

It seems like a buzzword that creates more confusion than clarity, says the author and journalist George Packer, who went on to call it a mechanism where a chorus of voices, amplified on social media, tries to silence a point of view that they find offensive by trying to damage or destroy the reputation of the person who has given offense.

The latest news from around North Texas.

I dont think its real. But there are reasonable people who believe in it, says the author, educator and sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom. From my perspective, accountability has always existed. But some people are being held accountable in ways that are new to them. We didnt talk about cancel culture when someone was charged with a crime and had to stay in jail because they couldnt afford the bail.

"'Cancel culture' tacitly attempts to disable the ability of a person with whom you disagree to ever again be taken seriously as a writer/editor/speaker/activist/intellectual, or in the extreme, to be hired or employed in their field of work," says Letty Cottin Pogrebin, the author, activist and founding editor of Ms. magazine.

It means different things to different people, says Ben Wizner, director of the ACLUs Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

In tweets, online letters, opinion pieces and books, conservatives, centrists and liberals continue to denounce what they call growing intolerance for opposing viewpoints and the needless ruining of lives and careers. A Politico/Morning Consult poll released last week shows 44% of Americans disapprove of it, 32% approve and the remaining 24% had no opinion or didn't know what it was.

For some, cancel culture is the coming of the thought police. For others, it contains important chances to be heard that didn't exist before.

Recent examples of unpopular cancellations include the owner of a chain of food stores in Minneapolis whose business faced eviction and calls for boycotts because of racist social media posts by his then-teenage daughter, and a data analyst fired by the progressive firm Civis Analytics after he tweeted a study finding that nonviolent protests increase support for Democratic candidates and violent protests decrease it. Civis Analytics has denied he was fired for the tweet.

These incidents damage the lives of innocent people without achieving any noble purpose, Yascha Mounk wrote in The Atlantic last month. Mounk himself has been criticized for alleging that an astonishing number of academics and journalists proudly proclaim that it is time to abandon values like due process and free speech."

Debates can be circular and confusing, with those objecting to intolerance sometimes openly uncomfortable with those who don't share their views. A few weeks ago, more than 100 artists and thinkers endorsed a letter co-written by Packer and published by Harper's. It warned against a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity."

The letter drew signatories from many backgrounds and political points of view, ranging from the far-left Noam Chomsky to the conservative David Frum, and was a starting point for contradiction.

The writer and trans activist Jennifer Finney Boylan, who signed the letter, quickly disowned it because she did not know who else" had attached their names. Although endorsers included Salman Rushdie, who in 1989 was forced into hiding over death threats from Iranian Islamic leaders because of his novel The Satanic Verses, numerous online critics dismissed the letter as a product of elitists who knew nothing about censorship.

One of the organizers of the letter, the writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, later announced on Twitter that he had thrown a guest out of his home over criticisms of letter-supporter Bari Weiss, the New York Times columnist who recently quit over what she called a Twitter-driven culture of political correctness. Another endorser, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, threatened legal action against a British news site that suggested she was transphobic after referring to controversial tweets that she has written in recent months.

The only speech these powerful people seem to care about is their own," the author and feminist Jessica Valenti wrote in response to the Harper's letter. ('Cancel culture' ) is certainly not about free speech: After all, an arrested journalist is never referred to as canceled, nor is a woman who has been frozen out of an industry after complaining about sexual harassment. Canceled is a label we all understand to mean a powerful person whos been held to account."

Cancel culture is hard to define, in part because there is nothing confined about it no single cause, no single ideology, no single fate for those allegedly canceled.

Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, convicted sex offenders, are in prison. Former television personality Charlie Rose has been unemployable since allegations of sexual abuse and harassment were published in 2017-18. Oscar winner Kevin Spacey has made no films since he faced allegations of harassment and assault and saw his performance in All the Money in the World replaced by Christopher Plummer's.

Others are only partially canceled. Woody Allen, accused by daughter Dylan Farrow of molesting her when she was 7, was dropped by Amazon, his U.S. film distributor, but continues to release movies overseas. His memoir was canceled by Hachette Book Group, but soon acquired by Skyhorse Publishing, which also has a deal with the previously canceled Garrison Keillor. Sirius XM announced last week that the late Michael Jackson, who seemed to face posthumous cancellation after the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland presented extensive allegations that he sexually abused boys, would have a channel dedicated to his music.

Cancellation in one subculture can lead to elevation in others. Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has not played an NFL game since 2016 and has been condemned by President Donald Trump and many others on the right after he began kneeling during the National Anthem to protest a country that oppresses black people and people of color." But he has appeared in Nike advertisements, been honored by the ACLU and Amnesty International and reached an agreement with the Walt Disney Co. for a series about his life.

You can say the NFL canceled Colin Kaepernick as a quarterback and that he was resurrected as a cultural hero, says Julius Bailey, an associate professor of philosophy at Wittenberg University who writes about Kaepernick in his book Racism, Hypocrisy and Bad Faith.

In politics, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, remains in his job 1 1/2 years after acknowledging he appeared in a racist yearbook picture while in college. Sen. Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota, resigned after multiple women alleged he had sexually harassed them, but Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax of Virginia defied orders to quit after two women accused him of sexual assault.

Sometimes even multiple allegations of sexual assault, countless racist remarks and the disparagement of wounded military veterans aren't enough to induce cancellation. Trump, a Republican, has labeled cancel culture far-left fascism and the very definition of totalitarianism while so far proving immune to it.

Politicians can ride this out because they were hired by the public. And if the public is willing to go along, then they can sometimes survive things perhaps they shouldn't survive, Packer says.

I think you can say that Trump's rhetoric has had a boomerang effect on the rest of our society, says PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel, who addresses free expression in her book Dare to Speak, which comes out next week. People on the left feel that he can get away with anything, so they do all they can to contain it elsewhere.

See the rest here:

Everywhere and Nowhere: the Many Layers of Cancel Culture' - NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

For a while, it seemed that TikTok might dodge the techlash. After all, what could be problematic about a short-form video app featuring a bunch of teenagers and 20-somethings doing choreographed dances, roller skating, hanging out in influencer mansions and cutting into photorealistic cakes?

The answer turns out to be: Plenty.

In the past year, as it has become one of the most popular apps in the world, TikTok has accumulated many of the same problems that other large-scale social networks have. In addition to all the harmless Gen Z fun, there are TikTok conspiracy theories, TikTok misinformation and TikTok extremism. There are even activists using TikTok to influence our elections, including a network of teenagers and K-pop fans who claimed they used the app to sabotage President Trumps rally in Tulsa, Okla., last month by registering for tickets under false identities.

All of this might have been overlooked or forgiven, except for one fact. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, one of the largest tech companies in China.

TikToks Chinese ownership has become a subject of intense scrutiny by lawmakers, regulators and privacy activists in recent weeks. Mr. Trump is considering taking steps to ban the app in the United States. Companies including Wells Fargo, and government agencies including the Transportation Security Administration, have instructed their employees to delete TikTok from their work phones because of concerns that it could be used for surveillance or espionage.

In response to the mounting pressures, TikTok is wrapping itself in the American flag. The company has hired a small army of lobbyists in Washington, has brought in an American chief executive (the former Disney executive Kevin Mayer) and is reportedly exploring selling a majority stake in the company to American investors.

Jamie Favazza, a TikTok spokeswoman, said in a statement that in addition to the chief executive, the social network had an American as its chief information security officer and another as its head of safety.

Weve tripled the number of employees in the U.S. since the start of 2020, she said, with plans to hire 10,000 more people over the next three years in places like Texas, New York and Florida.

There are legitimate concerns about a Chinese-owned company capturing the attention and data of millions of Americans especially one like ByteDance, which has a history of bending the knee to the countrys ruling regime. Like all Chinese tech companies, ByteDance is required to abide by Chinese censorship laws, and it could be forced to give user data to the Chinese government under the countrys national security law. Lawmakers have also raised concerns that TikTok could be used to promote pro-China propaganda to young Americans, or censor politically sensitive content.

Ms. Favazza said TikTok stored American user data in Virginia and Singapore. She added that the companys content moderation efforts were led by U.S.-based teams and not influenced by any foreign government, and that TikTok had not and would not give data to the Chinese government.

There are also reasons to be skeptical of the motives of TikToks biggest critics. Many conservative politicians, including Mr. Trump, appear to care more about appearing tough on China than preventing potential harm to TikTok users. And Silicon Valley tech companies like Facebook, whose executives have warned of the dangers of a Chinese tech takeover, would surely like to see regulators kneecap one of their major competitors.

Ill be honest: I dont buy the argument that TikTok is an urgent threat to Americas national security. Or, to put it more precisely, I am not convinced that TikTok is inherently more threatening to Americans than any other Chinese-owned app that collects data from Americans. If TikTok is a threat, so are WeChat, Alibaba and League of Legends, the popular video game, whose maker, Riot Games, is owned by Chinas Tencent.

And since banning every Chinese-owned tech company from operating in America wouldnt be possible without erecting our own version of Chinas Great Wall a drastic step that would raise concerns about censorship and authoritarian control we need to figure out a way for Chinese apps and American democracy to coexist.

Heres an idea: Instead of banning TikTok, or forcing ByteDance to sell it to Americans, why not make an example of it by turning it into the most transparent, privacy-protecting, ethically governed tech platform in existence?

As a foreign-owned app, TikTok is, in some ways, easier to regulate than an American tech platform would be. (One way of regulating it, a national security review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States of ByteDances 2017 acquisition of Musical.ly, TikToks predecessor app, is already reportedly underway.) And there is plenty more the U.S. government could do to ensure that TikTok plays a responsible role in our information ecosystem without getting rid of it altogether. It could require the company to open-source key parts of its software, including the machine-learning algorithms that determine which posts users are shown. It could pressure TikTok to submit to regular audits of its data-collection practices, and open up its internal content moderation guidelines for public comment. As Kevin Xu, the author of Interconnected, a blog about United States-China relations, points out, ByteDance could impose strict internal controls to prevent its Chinese employees from accessing any of TikToks systems, and open-source those controls so that outsiders could verify the separation.

Samm Sacks, a cyberpolicy fellow at the centrist think tank New America, told me that some of the solutions being proposed for TikTok such as selling itself to American investors wouldnt address the core problems. An American-owned TikTok could still legally sell data to third-party data brokers, for example, which could then feed it back to the Chinese authorities.

Instead, Ms. Sacks said, the American government should enact a strong federal privacy law that could protect TikTok users data without banning the app altogether.

Lets solve for the problems at hand, she said. If the concern is data security, the best way to secure the data is to put TikTok under the microscope, and put in place really robust and enforceable rules about how theyre using and retaining data.

Forcing TikTok to operate in a radically transparent way would go a long way toward assuaging Americans fears. And it could become a test case for a new model of tech regulation that could improve the accountability and responsibility of not just Chinese-owned tech companies but American ones, too.

At its core, a lot of the TikTok fear factor comes down to a lack of information. In March, TikTok announced that it would open transparency centers where independent auditors could examine its content moderation practices. The company has also begun releasing transparency reports, similar to those issued by Facebook and Twitter, outlining the various takedown requests it gets from governments around the world.

But we still dont know how TikToks algorithms are programmed, or why theyre showing which videos to which users. We dont know how its using the data its collecting, or how it makes and enforces its rules. We should know these things not just about TikTok, but about American social media apps, too.

After all, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Snapchat are playing a huge role in the lives of millions of Americans, and for years, they have operated with a degree of secrecy that few other companies of their importance have been allowed. What little we understand about these platforms inner workings is often learned years after the fact, gleaned from insider leaks or repentant former employees.

Some experts see TikToks current predicament as a chance to change that.

I think TikTok is a bit of a red herring, Alex Stamos, Facebooks former chief security officer and a professor at Stanford University, told me in an interview. Ultimately, Mr. Stamos said, the question of what to do about TikTok is secondary to the question of how multinational tech giants in general should be treated.

This is a chance to come up with a thoughtful model of how to regulate companies that operate in both the U.S. and China, no matter their ownership, he said.

The debate over TikToks fate, in other words, should really be a debate about how all of the big tech companies that entertain, inform and influence billions of people should operate, and what should be required of them, whether theyre based in China or Copenhagen or California.

If we can figure out how to handle TikTok an app with a genuinely creative culture, and millions of American young people who love it well have done a lot more than preserving a world-class time-waster. Well have figured out a model for getting big tech platforms under control, after years of letting them run amok.

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Dont Ban TikTok. Make an Example of It. - The New York Times

Saturday night, Fox News primetime host Jesse Wattersinterviewed President Donald Trumps son, Eric Trump, andhad some noteworthy words of praise for the QAnon conspiracy theory movement.

The interview included a discussion aboutbig tech censoring and news that broke earlier this week about Twitter banning 7,000 QAnon accounts for pushing misinformation and harassing other users.

Watters introduced the topic as censorship and some funny business now regarding Q, I guess this conspiracy deal on the internet.

Twitter has basically cracked down and eliminated about 7,000 accounts, said Watters, and another 100,000 accounts are now in the cross-hairs.

Do you think this is an attempt to interfere in an election? he asked Trump. Because you know, Q can do some crazy stuff with the pizza stuff and the Wayfair stuff but they also uncovered a lot of great stuff when it comes to Epstein and the deep state.

I never saw Q as dangerous as Antifa. But Antifa gets to run wild on the internet, what do you think is going on there? the Fox News host asked.

Guess what, Adam Schiff does a lot of crazy things, Jerry Nadler, and Eric Swalwell, they also do a lot of crazy stuff, Trump fired back.

Heres the fundamental problem, Jesse, that I have with it, Trump continued. You have some little dweeb in Silicon Valley, whos 22 years old, hes a tech savant.Hes running Twitter or one of these companies. And he literally has his finger on the power of a presidential election.

Trump continued, criticizing the radical, radical left Silicon Valley tech executives who wield enormous influence because they curate the information that we get on our mobile phones.

They are literally putting their finger on the scales of a U.S. election, said Trump.

Fox News reported in June thatQAnon is a conspiracy theory centered on the baseless belief that President Trump is waging a secret campaign against enemies in the deep state and a child sex trafficking ring run by satanic pedophiles and cannibals.

The Daily Beasts Will Sommer,who is a leading reporter in covering QAnon, went on in the Fox News article to describe the real-world violence, the online movement has grown to become.

Back in late June of 2020, Eric Trump was caught promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory on his Instagram page ahead of a rally, before pulling the image after public outcry.

Watch above, via Fox News.

UPDATE July 26, 2020: Fox News provided Mediaite with a statement from Watters retracting these comments, calling QAnon a fringe platform that he did not support or believe in.

Have a tip we should know? [emailprotected]

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WATCH: Jesse Watters Interviews Eric Trump About Twitter Censorship, Praises QAnon: They Uncovered A Lot of Great Stuff - Mediaite

WASHINGTON When the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism released screenshots of Twitter locking several accounts that displayed the Star of David which could be unlocked if users removed the hateful imagery Twitter admitted it had made a mistake.

We categorically do not consider the Star of David as a hateful symbol or hateful image, the social media giant tweeted on July 22.

In two tweets that followed news reports, Twitter explained, We have for some time seen the yellow star or yellow badge being used by those seeking to target Jewish people. While the majority of cases were correctly actioned, some accounts highlighted recently were mistakes and have now been restored.

Meanwhile, in Henderson, Parler, a start-up platform pronounced like the word for a sitting room in a bygone era, acted on the truism that when one door closes, another opens.

Aware that critics allege Twitter exercises a heavy hand censoring Jewish users, which Twitter denies, Parler sent out a news release with links to stories about the locked accounts under the heading, Anti-Semitism at Twitter?

The release included a statement by Parler strategic investor Jeffrey Wernick, who said that for him, as a Jew, the Star of David symbolizes my love for Judaism, which does not conflict in any way with my love for my nation and my love for humanity. To designate it, if the allegations are true, as a hateful image, is not only an act of hate, but also likely libelous and slanderous.

Alternative to Twitter

Parler, with its nearly 3 million users signing on since its start in 2018, offers an outside-Silicon Valley alternative for conservatives and activists who feel targeted by Twitter policies to check hate speech and inaccuracies.

Its a suspicion shared by President Donald Trump, who this year found himself on the receiving end of Twitter warnings and fact-checking.

On its homepage, Parler bills itself as an unbiased social platform focused on open dialogue and user engagement. We allow free speech and do not censor ideas, political parties or ideologies. When a reporter created an account, Parler displayed the accounts of famous customers, including a Trump son, GOP members of Congress and Fox News personalities.

Ubiquitous Fox News figure Dan Bongino not only joined Parler, he took an ownership stake in the platform, which he dubs the hottest social media alternative in the market right now. Bongino frequently pops up on where else? Twitter to tell followers to ditch the tech tyrants and sign up with Parler.

Roger Stone, the one-time Trump whisperer, convicted felon and presidential commutation recipient, has an account. Ditto Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas and second son Eric Trump.

Parler CEO John Matze recently told C-SPAN that the platforms requirement that users submit a phone number and limits the number of bot accounts and restricts users to one handle, which should cut down on social-media mischief. In an apparent homage to Twitter CEO Jack Dorseys Twitter handle, @Jack, Matze signs on as @John.

Matze says his platform welcomes users from all political persuasions. Some liberals have complained that they tried to join Parler, if only to spar with Trump voters, only to find themselves kicked off. Matze told C-SPAN that his platform has blocked users who posted pornography or images of fecal matter.

Otherwise, Matze said, Parler tries to stay out of ideological pursuits. Weve had these censorship platforms for ten years now, he told C-SPAN, and Id say the countrys only gotten more divided.

Wernick said that he invested in Parler because, I felt that we were going to lose free speech rights in the country. As for Parlers conservative bent, he observed, I like to say, its not a conservative platform by design. Its a conservative platform by consequence.

Anti-Semitism or no?

Wernick told the Review-Journal he did not know for certain that Twitter showed bad faith in locking the Star of David accounts reported by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, but he said he is sure Twitter has a double standard that shortchanges Jewish expression.

Campaign Against anti-Semitism Director of Investigations Stephen Silverman didnt buy Twitters explanation. Only one of the accounts locked featured a yellow star, and it very clearly did so as a means of reclaiming the yellow stars used by the Nazis, Silverman said. This is precisely the kind of inept response to anti-Semitism that we have come to expect from Twitter, which just last week tried to convince us that the viral anti-Semitic #JewishPrivilege hashtag was legitimate.

Silverman was referring to an anti-Semitic hashtag campaign which some Jewish users slyly turned into an opportunity to discuss hardships their families had endured.

It seems that Twitter prefers to go after Jewish users who proudly display their identity but not after anti-Semitic users who unabashedly promote anti-Jewish vitriol, Silverman concluded.

In 2018, the Anti-Defamation League found an estimated 4.2 million tweets with anti-Semitic expressions, stereotypes, code words, symbols and conspiracy theories within the previous year.

Boston University Professor Marshall Van Alstyne, who specializes in communications markets, laid out a scenario where Twitter, which claims 330 million active users, could have made an honest mistake made by a programmer that did not anticipate the consequences of picking up patterns.

Purveyors of hate speech might have exhibited a pattern of sharing this content independent of honest, noble and caring citizens also sharing this content, Van Alstyne explained. One was bad, the other was good, and the machine that flagged it wasnt smart enough to distinguish the two. By contrast, if a human made the decision to flag it, then I would be seriously concerned.

Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, sees a pattern of Twitter accounts that remain active despite a history of anti-Semitic remarks, including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and Rep. Ilhan Omar, who tweeted that congressional support for Israel was all about the Benjamins.

Cancel culture fight

The fact that they find that people who want to showcase the Star of David in terms of their Jewish heritage and pride as hate speech is ridiculous and its really a crystal ball into the future where if this cancel culture and political correctness run amok is allowed to continue, Brooks said.

For that reason, Brooks added, 2020 will be a contest that pits the right against the progressive left who want to cancel everything and take down the Star of David and take down statues of (George) Washington and Mount Rushmore.

Brooks has been a key player in Trumps effort to increase his share of the Jewish vote which was 24 percent in 2016 even though Jewish support for Republicans fell to 17 percent in 2018.

Will Parler be an influencer in November? Van Alstyne thinks not. For one thing, Parler is just too small with less than four months to go.

And he wonders if Parler eventually could fall into the same trap that ensnared Twitter, which once considered itself the free speech wing of the free speech party.

Its not clear Parler can yet draw the line for less censorship that doesnt cross the line for no censorship when Twitter already tried that. In the future, maybe theyll find a way but in time for the current election, I dont think so.

The Review-Journal is owned by the family of Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson. Adelson is on the board of directors of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Contact Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com or 202-662-7391. Follow @DebraJSaunders on Twitter.

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Conservative alternative to Twitter based in Henderson - Las Vegas Review-Journal

AFP via Getty Images

The relentless pressure on TikTok ramped up further this week, with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo again claiming user data is sent to to China. Its not possible to have your personal information flow across a Chinese server, he warned during a British media interview, suggesting that data would end up in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party, which he characterized as an evil empire. TikTok is firmly in the sights of the Trump administration, and theyre not letting up.

But now, as TikTok continues to deny U.S. accusations of data mishandling, of it bowing to pressure from Beijing, a new report from the cyber experts at ProtonMail has called those denials into question. Beware, it warns, the social media giant not only collects troves of personal data on you, but also cooperates with the CCP, extending Chinas surveillance and censorship reach beyond its borders.

TikToks world is now dominated by speculation as to whether the U.S. will find some way to ban the app, cutting access to tens of millions of American users and calling a halt to TikToks soaraway growth. The week had started with confirmation of a ban on federal employees installing the app on government-issued devices, seen by many as a precursor to some form of wider action by the Trump administration. We also now know how such a ban would operateTikTok would be added to a Commerce Department entity list, in the same way Huawei has been sanctioned.

With every week that goes by, it is becoming ever more critical to remind ourselves of what we know and what we dont know. Yes, TikTok is a potential threat to the west, in as much as it is a Chinese-owned app now installed on hundreds of millions of devices. In a world where Facebook data has allegedly facilitated so much damage to political processes, so much manipulation and disinformation, to assume that TikTok doesnt carry any serious threat is woefully naive.

But, that said, allegations of data exfiltration and spying are technical, they are binary, they can be proven one way or the other. And this is where the rhetoric meets a reality test. For all the talk, there is no solid proof that TikTok sends any data to China, there is no solid proof that any information is pulled from users devices over and above the prying data grabs typical of all social media platforms.

When TikTok is asked about claims to the contrary, it stands by the lack of proof, the missing smoking gun. Theres no evidence, it says, its a political campaign steeped in the standoff between Washington and Beijing. There's a lot of misinformation about TikTok out there, the company tells me, pointing to its U.S. CEO and its CISO with decades of U.S. military and law enforcement experience, and a U.S. team that works diligently to develop a best-in-class security infrastructure. The company also reassures that U.S. data never travels to China.

But the warning this week from the cyber security analysts at ProtonMail isnt political point scoringthese are ex-CERN security engineers. TikToks zealous data collection, the company warns, its use of Chinese infrastructure, and its parent companys close ties to the Chinese Communist Party make it a perfect tool for massive surveillance and data collection by the Chinese government.

ProtonMail says that it reviewed TikToks data collection policies, lawsuits, cybersecurity white papers, past security vulnerabilities, and its privacy policy, and concluded that we find TikTok to be a grave privacy threat that likely shares data with the Chinese government.We recommend everyone approach TikTok with great caution, especially if your threat model includes the questionable use of your personal data or Chinese government surveillance.

ProtonMail also cites a white paper published by Penetrum earlier this year, which warned that 37.70% of the known IP addresses linked to TikTok are Chinese, and which described the excessive amount of data harvesting, vulnerabilities in TikToks code, as well as a few things that may make you feel pretty uncomfortable.

TikTok stands by its defense, telling me millions of American families use TikTok for entertainment and creative expression, which we recognize is not what federal government devices are for. Our American CEO, our CISO... our entire and growing U.S. teamwhich has tripled since the start of the yearhave no higher priority than promoting a safe app experience that protects our users' privacy. That's our focus.

ProtonMails conclusion on TikTok is pretty stark: The fact that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, one that has explicitly said it would deepen its cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party, makes this excessive data collection even more concerning. The Chinese government has a history of strong-arming and co-opting Chinese tech companies into sharing their data and then using this data to intimidate, threaten, censor, or engage in human rights abuses.

The Swiss-based company goes on to warn TikTok users that from a security and privacy standpoint,TikTok is an extremely dangerous social media platform. Its potential for mass collection of data from hundreds of millions of adults, teenagers, and children poses a grave risk to privacy. And its advice to those users is to proceed with great caution... and and if this concerns you, you should strongly considerdeleting TikTokand its associated data.

And so another week ends, and TikTok remains caught in this maelstrom of security controversy and Sino-American politics. A ban or sanctions of some sort seem ever more likely with each passing week, and the U.S. rhetoric has found an audience with other hawkish politicians around the world. As things stand, TikTok owner ByeDance has gone from topping the social media world to contemplating a sale of its prize asset to U.S. investors in just a few short weeks.

The real issue for TikTok, though, is that there doesnt need to be a smoking security gun for the U.S. and its allies to have a credible excuse to sanction and restrict the platform. China is an adversarial state to the U.S., the U.K. and their allies. There are reasons to believe Beijing could exert influence over TikTok parent ByteDance. That should be reason enough to actand its looking ever more likely it will be.

See the article here:

Yes, TikTok Really Is Spying On You For ChinaNew Report - Forbes

Bill Pullmans speech, in part from Independence Day:

Mankind. That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom. Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution but from annihilation. We're fighting for our right to live. To exist.

It was a good day. Bright and shiny, like a dime. Joan and I got to play music for two hours outside, fully masked, with our friends Russ and Ali. Then, it was time to go home. All of the supermarkets we usually go to where closed. Joan offered to make me a special meal and I went upstairs to write.

And, I started thinking about Independence Day. This year. 2020. A guy that works at a local deli told me it would be the last one we would celebrate and that, after this year, there would be a new world order. I was pretty sure he wasnt referring to an 80s band. He was referring to a different New World Order.

Its always easier to blame the state of the world on outside forces and things beyond our control. Im always amazed at how willing we are to cede over our responsibilities to ourselves and others to some mystical power or cabal. Every human interaction we have changes the world in sometimes infinitesimal ways.

A couple of years ago, Joan and I walked over to Front Street to view the fireworks. There was limited space and we couldnt really see anything because Urby, which had been recently erected, blocked a vast amount of the skyline. I usually like fireworks, but this year, Im not feeling it. That, plus the fact that weve heard them every night since June, took the polish off the apple.

The President had an event at Mount Rushmore the day before. Hundreds of people crammed together without masks, proclaiming their freedom, while putting themselves and their loved ones at risk for contracting a virus. A lot of folks stayed home and watched Hamilton after forking over $12.99 for the Disney+ channel.

Joan and I watched TV. We binged Cougar Town and Bobs Burgers, because thats just how we roll now. We watch documentaries and comedies. We try to stay away from the news because its just too dammed depressing. As Paul Simon once sang : I gather all the news I need from the weather report.

Im thinking about kids who were separated from their parents, still in cages, still not receiving proper care. Im thinking about inmates in prisons, a perfect storm for CV19 contagion. Im thinking about Elijah McClain, a young man who loved playing violin, who was placed in a chokehold and eventually died. Im thinking about an entire race of people that leave their houses every day and dont know whether theyre going to return.

David Bowie sings in my head: This is not America/ This is not/ Sha-nah-nah-nah-nah. This year, Im having a really difficult time reconciling explosions in the sky that sound like bombs and John Wayne and Mount Rushmore and Native American land and willful ignorance and any reason to celebrate.

Id like to. Id like to believe that we are one nation, indivisible, where all people are created equal and all of us share equal access to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Im just not sure that that is, indeed, the case. And so, I ask the question again: What are we celebrating today? Is it the dream? Is it the reality? Because they are definitely not in synch with each other.

Lets start with the idea of civil rights. Lets go back to that idea of life, liberty and happiness as a right, not a privilege. Dont we all deserve that?

Then, why dont we all have it? And who gets to decide who gets to participate in the American dream and who doesnt?

I got into an ongoing argument online with some friends who want certain films and songs to be expunged from the face of the Earth because they find them offensive and give a very skewered picture of life, usually from a male perspective.

My problem is this: censorship in any form, for whatever the reason, good or bad is still censorship. Somebody is not going to see or read or hear something because somebody else decided it might be bad for them. Remember when you were told not to read A Catcher In The Rye because the lead character was amoral, or listen to I Want To Hold Your Hand because of that and when I touch you line or view The Last Temptation Of Christ because it was going to destroy your faith? How did that make you feel? Were all grown-ups here. We get to pick and choose what we want to read and watch and listen to, otherwise we wind up becoming those other folks that were not too fond of.

So, again, what are we celebrating? Maybe its enough that were a little more than halfway through one of the worst years this country has ever experienced. Its like every bad thing that ever happened to us happening all at once.

But, I have hope. I have to. Its the only way out of this darkness. And though my candle is small and will not last the night, its light can get me a little further down the road and towards the greater light beyond.

Hope your fourth was safe and happy. Hold those grey heads up!

Comments on this and all my columns may be submitted to Talk To The Old Guy on Facebook. Like and follow. Peace!

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The Old Guy: On America, and celebrating, in 2020 - SILive.com

In the weeks since Beijing passed the Hong Kong national security law, political titles have been pulled from public library shelves, a protest slogan has been banned and students have been prohibited from political activities in schools. With lawyers, academics, and journalists expressing concern over the laws vague wording, the future of free speech and expression in the city is uncertain.

Booksellers, like the citys librarians and publishers, fear stricter regulations on the titles they are allowed to offer, creating a chilling effect among institutions which traditionally uphold and safeguard the free flow of ideas, information, and narratives.

Fears for the independent bookselling arena in Hong Kong first arose in 2015, when five staff members of Causeway Bay Books which sold political gossip titles disappeared. Then, in mid-2018, it was revealed that the China Liaison Office in Hong Kong owned the company controlling Sino United Publishing (SUP), which in turn controlled more than half the citys bookstores.

But there are still booksellers in Hong Kong who continue to safeguard against Chinese influence. Albert Wan of Bleak House Books, a local English-language bookstore at the heart of a tight-knit reading community, is committed to resisting any changes in how he runs his business. This includes continuing to stock sensitive political titles that could potentially contravene the law: [These titles] mostly would be books that are not published by large presses. Books that relate specifically to Hong Kong and the law, the Umbrella Movement, or protests from last summer these are obviously the most sensitive books, he told HKFP.

He now wonders whether previously unproblematic titles will become contraband: Under the new law, and based on what we know happens in mainland China, would it be a problem to stock 1984, Animal Farm, or On Tyranny? [What about] general theory-based books [or] academic texts about revolutionary movements that have taken place in China in the past? Who knows?

As a former US lawyer before running his own bookshop, Wan is sceptical about the legal validity of recent government-issued statements about what may or may not be acceptable: Its hard to tell where the red-lines are. Everyones saying it, but its true. It doesnt help when the government willy-nilly comes out and makes statements about the law or how people might be violating it. Theres no official interpretation. What the government says, at least in my understanding of how things work their statements are not the law, he said.

Wan is not the only independent bookstore owner frustrated by the legislation. May Fung of ACO Book a local bookstore specialising in arts and culture also expressed concern: Every publication on any subject is now subject to this national security law. I think it is dangerous and I am somewhat worried, she told HKFP.

If we still lived in a society with rule of law and a legal system we can trust, we can go to court and the court will fairly decide whether or not a certain title contravenes the law. But this new national security agency is outside of the government, so thats not necessarily the case now; we dont know whether or not they will be fair.

However, Fung, like Wan, is committed to business as usual, unless forced to do otherwise. I wont stop operations because [the government] may or may not ban certain titles. We will keep doing what we are doing until we are forced into a corner, she said.

Since the anti-extradition law protests started last June, Wan and his store have taken a clear stance in support of the pro-democracy movement. He says that, especially for indie bookstores like Bleak House, it is difficult to stay apolitical.

I dont think theres anything wrong with being apolitical, its really up to the person who runs the bookshop. I think its a problem to not have a stance personally, but it doesnt necessarily have to translate into what you do for work, he said. [But] its a little hard to do that when youre selling books the books you stock reflect the perspectives and the ideologies of the person or people running the bookshop its harder for smaller bookshops to be in the middle and not take a side.

When asked whether he will obey orders to pull books off his shelves for the sake of national security, Wan gave a tentative answer: We would not go and start pulling books off our shelves just because we receive [an order to do so]. It depends on the nature of the order and what itll look like.

We are very hesitant to go down the path of any kind of censorship, whether its self-imposed or whether its imposed from outside because if we go down that road theres really no turning back.

Fung echoed the sentiment: I dont want to go to prison but I will not self-censor until I absolutely have no other choice, she said.

Despite their commitment to resisting self-censorship, both Wan and Fung said they have to weigh the risks to their livelihoods and the safety of those around them.

My initial reaction will be to tell them to f-off, but I also have a bookstore to run I have responsibilities as a husband and father, Wan said. Its a matter of how muchI feel like I can keep doing [what Im doing] and not be a burden and compromise the safety of my family.

If they do come and tell us certain books can no longer be sold like we saw with Causeway Books, then I will have to stop selling the titles to protect my colleagues from being arrested, Fung said.

Elsewhere in the city, international bookstores are adopting a more cautious approach under the new law. The manager of a bookstore selling books by a German publisher, who requested to remain anonymous, told HKFP their brand has had to self-censor for the sake of business.

Following the passing of the national security law, we do feel that the freedom that once existed has been curtailed. he said. For example, we used to be very carefree and bold in our displays in art fairs in the city, we even put on display a book about Tibet in recent years.

This year, however, the new law has forced them to rein in their displays. We sell lots of books on very diverse subjects. But there is definitely more self-censorship now. At the end of the day, we are a business entity, he said.

This doesnt necessarily mean the international brand will steer clear of every potentially problematic title in Hong Kong: In our shop, we are still selling books by Ai Wei Wei. Its just for higher-profile events, we now have to be less bold.

Under the security law, the company is approaching bookselling in Hong Kong with lessons learnt from its operations on the mainland. While we have healthy business relations on the mainland, we have been careful about the types of books we sell in the mainland Chinese market. For example, we stay away from selling more sensitive books such as those depicting maps or dealing with religion. the manager said.

Beyond preemptive self-censorship, international bookshops in the city may encounter direct censorship as the laws implementation unfolds. If told to remove certain titles from their catalogue, the brand would have to comply: We are a business in Hong Kong and have no choice but to follow the law.

This, however, is a marked change from the companys original intentions when setting up operations in the city more than ten years ago: Its not necessarily what we want since we set up our regional office in Hong Kong as it was a free city and one of Asias capitals with the freedom of publication, the manager added.

We can still run a healthy business even with the tighter controls and with more titles becoming more sensitive. However, we will have to see how the new law unfolds to see if we will further expand in the city.

HKFP also approached other large book chains in the city, including Swindon Books, Bookazine, and HKMoAs TheBookshop, but did not receive any response.

In spite of the rapidly changing political landscape, booklovers are still carrying on as before. Commenting on whether he has seen a change in his bookstores community, Wan was surprised at the lack of immediate change: We thought that people were going to change their book-buying habits after they passed the law because we have books and literature at the bookshop that some people might deem problematic, he said. But people are still buying the same books they were buying before the law was passed.

The manager for the German-based retailer suggested that customers themselves still had the agency to resist censorship and the curtailing of freedoms through their spending: Our customers are using their purchasing power in the same way, they are buying the same titles they did before.

Likewise, despite the pressures, Wan said he believes bookstores too must continue to play their quiet yet crucial rolein facilitating access to knowledge: [Our] duty is just to keep the flow of information going. To keep it as open and as wide and as free as possible. Theres nothing special they have to do. Its not like they have to fight back or say anything thats especially incendiary or provocative, he said.

He said he has this hope for other bookstores: Just [keep] doing business the way they used to before the law was passed. Just maintaining that sense of freedom that is a trademark of Hong Kong society. This is what sets it apart from the mainland. To maintain that atmosphere and that culture is important.

For Fung, keeping her store open and uncensored is a question of keeping knowledge accessible for all.

I think bookstores play an important role in providing access to knowledge in the community. Not everybody has access to an official education so its vital to keep providing a channel of knowledge to society, she said. This is important for me, and I think lots of people also believe in this.

And the future for Hong Kong bookstores? The fate of bookstores is sort of tied to [Hong Kong] as a society thats rooted in law and free expression and transparency. You cannot run a bookstore without those core principles in place, Wan said.

The way Hong Kong goes, bookshops will go. Right now it doesnt look good, but who knows? We just have to stay hopeful and keep doing what were doing.

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I will continue until I have no other choice: The art of bookselling under Hong Kongs national security law - Hong Kong Free Press