Is cancel culture silencing open debate? The perils of shutting down disagreeable opinions and arguments – ABC News

Last week, 150 high-profile authors, commentators, and academics signed an open letter in Harpers magazine claiming that open debate and toleration of differences are under attack. Signatories included J.K. Rowling, Margaret Atwood, Stephen Pinker, Gloria Steinem, and Noam Chomsky.

While prefacing their comments with support for current racial and social justice movements, the signatories argue there has been a weakening of the norms of open debate in favour of dogma, coercion, and ideological conformity. They state, an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.

Rowlings own participation comes in the wake of widespread backlash against her controversial comments on transgender issues and womanhood. Actor Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter himself) joined the chorus of disapproval over her comments, arguing they erased the identity and dignity of transgender people. Employees at Rowlings publisher subsequently refused to work on her forthcoming book.

The Harpers letter invokes similar cases of what it sees as punitive overreactions to unpopular views, suggesting they formed part of a larger trend:

Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes.

The reference to editors being fired is perhaps the most well-known recent incident. Last month, the New York Times published an opinion piece by Republican Senator Tom Cotton calling for the military to provide an overwhelming show of force to restore order in US cities during the protests over the killing of George Floyd. The pieces publication attracted immediate criticism for promoting hate and putting black journalists in danger.

In response, the editorial page editor emphasised the newspapers longstanding commitment to open debate and argued the public would be better equipped to push back against the senators policy if it heard his view. This defence failed, and within days he resigned.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the Harpers letter has received spirited critique. Some commentators noted past cases where the signatories had themselves been censorious. Others argued that any perceived threat was overblown. Indeed, the link the open letter draws between a repressive government and an intolerant society may seem a long bow to draw. There is a world of difference between the legal prohibition of speech and a wave of collective outrage on Twitter.

Yet, it is nevertheless worth considering whether important ethical goods including those commonly invoked in free speech arguments are threatened in a culture of outrage, de-platforming, and cancelling.

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Almost everyone would agree some types of speech are beyond the pale. Racial slurs dont deserve careful listening and consideration. They require calling out, social censure, and efforts at minimising harm.

Rather than objecting to outrage per se, the Harpers letter asserts there is a broadening in the scope of views that attract punitive responses. This seems plausible. In recent scholarly work on the tensions between censorship and academic freedom on university campuses, both sides of the dispute acknowledge that in the current environment virtually all utterances offend someone.

And yet, perhaps there are good reasons for this broadening of scope. In each of the cases raised in the letter, there were seemingly sensible reasons for applying social sanctions. These included judgements that:

For someone who is genuinely concerned that speech is wrong in these ways, it will seem not just morally permissible to take action against the speaker. It will feel obligatory. But several concerns arise when we attach punitive consequences to peoples speech based on its perceived moral wrongfulness (as opposed to simply arguing it is mistaken or false):

If we think a persons view is wrong and immoral, we might suppose there is no great loss about a debate being derailed and the person sanctioned. But there are genuine ethical concerns here.

First, even if we think harmful or offensive speech deserves punishment or silencing, we still need to make sure the punishment fits the crime. For example, in a given case, calling out speech as intolerant, tone deaf or racist, and withdrawing ones support for a person, might be clearly justified. But stronger consequences like personal abuse, continued hounding, doxing, enforcing social ostracism, refusing to work with the speaker (if they are a colleague), demanding their removal from their position, or issuing threats may be quite inappropriate and even wrongfully harmful themselves.

Similarly, once we start moving to the harsher types of punishment, what we might call rule of law considerations become increasingly relevant. These require that norms be clear and proscriptive, and that the process of guilt finding is done impartially and with procedural safeguards. Without attention to such matters, abuse of power can occur, and a chilling and anxiety-ridden climate can ensue. One of the core ethical attractions of cancel culture lies in its ability to create consequences and accountability for wrongdoers. But as we all know, those wielding coercive power and issuing punishments to ensure accountability must themselves be accountable in how they use that power. Otherwise fears of mob rule, arbitrary power, and bullying arise.

Second, public deliberation is itself a critical source of legitimacy. The fact that different views are widely heard and inclusively considered provides a reason for accepting collective decisions. This can happen in a local way, where a family, group or team discusses a matter. Even if they dont resolve their disagreements, a constructive deliberation where everyones views are considered may still help the group move forward consensually. But inclusive deliberation is also important for maintaining the legitimacy of larger institutions. Democracy itself assumes citizens can hear different arguments, evidence, and perspectives. If significant parts of the political spectrum are no longer tolerated in public discourse, then social institutions lose this important type of legitimacy.

Third, listening to others with different opinions, and engaging with them, can help us understand their views and develop more informed versions of our own positions. On the flipside, being consistently outraged by opposing viewpoints provides a ready reason not to consider them. Indeed, we currently have a surfeit of challenges that we can level at a view we dislike by saying it is offensive, harmful, unhelpful, dog-whistling, said in bad faith, driven by ulterior motives, punching down, drowning out other voices or suffers guilt by association. Use of these easily available options can entirely remove the hard work of trying to understand and then to interrogate and perhaps refute our opponents arguments. When used in a pervasive and widespread fashion, such challenges feed directly into major concerns with political tribalism, confirmation bias, group-think, and group polarisation effects.

Fourth, shaming people can cause a persuasive boomerang to occur. When people feel others are trying to control them, they can become even more attached to the view others are trying to combat. Perversely, our actions can encourage the very belief we are trying to eliminate.

None of these concerns categorically rule out attaching punishing consequences to hateful or harmful speech. But they do imply the open letter has a point worth serious attention. Seeing mistaken views as intolerable speech carries genuine ethical costs.

Hugh Breakey is a Senior Research Fellow in moral philosophy at Griffith Universitys Institute for Ethics, Governance and Law. Since 2013, he has served as President of the Australian Association of Professional and Applied Ethics. An abbreviated version of this piece appeared in The Conversation.

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Is cancel culture silencing open debate? The perils of shutting down disagreeable opinions and arguments - ABC News