That Harpers Open Letter

[Guest]

As to the letter itself, my belief is it's real intention was to show companies and other institutions that the outrage on Twitter and the like doesn't represent everyone.

Wow. It's like Rorschach test for you. Interestingly, of the people I've read who signed the letter and wanted to explain themselves, not a single one thought that's what they were endorsing.

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: 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. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a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. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.

So, that's a no on Blake Neff then?...
Do you have some blinding moral certainty regarding Blake Neff that is making you feel uncomfortable here?

As is typical, the fault you find is in the letter not being exactly the thing you would do or say.

Yeah, that's not the fault I'm finding here.

[_EAllusion]

I can read the letter and think, "Yeah man. Sometimes those leftist mobs go too far. I've seen that stifling atmosphere up close and in person. Gotta chill and allow some room for disagreement. Awfully banal and vague, though." Then I notice who the endorsers are and go "Oh. This ain't gonna be effective."

You read it and go, "This is talking about my personal opinions about Twitter. Good stuff man. Who can disagree with me? Probably the malevolent forces of Twitter?"

[_honorentheos]

I can read the letter and think, "Yeah man. Sometimes those leftist mobs go too far. I've seen that stifling atmosphere up close and in person. Gotta chill and allow some room for disagreement.

Hey, check that out. Up to here we agree.

Awfully banal and vague, though." Then I notice who the endorsers are and go "Oh. This ain't gonna be effective."

And here we don't. Such is life.

But what's this?

You read it and go, "This is talking about my personal opinions about Twitter. Good stuff man. Who can disagree with me? Probably the malevolent forces of Twitter?"

You end your own characterization of the letter as failing because you don't like some people who signed it, and then project on me a version of your view that the value comes down to how well it mirrors my thinking and positions.

You're hilarious. Genuinely hilarious.

[_EAllusion]

Do you believe it is a problem that Blake Neff was fired or not? That quote is about situations like Blake Neff's, but it is sufficiently coy about what the argument is supposed to be applied to - and the entire argument is in reference to things that are purported to be happening in the real world - that we don't know.

I think you can't answer something that's a simple yes or no because you do have lines in your mind where this argument breaks down. Then a little "blinding moral certainty" is fine. But saying that undermines just about everything else you said.

I fault the letter for being vague here because while it's about warning about social consequences for supposed disreputable speech in the real world we should be thinking about, it only makes vague references to examples while not giving any specifics. It doesn't tell us much more than that. This probably helped it get lots of signatures from people who would say this applies or doesn't apply to examples that come to mind. And if we reduce it down into "Sometimes people can go too far" then "Lol, yeah." Then when you see who signed it, the natural and probable takeaway people are going to have about supposed free speech defense isn't gonna be that, and now we're besmirching the idea of free speech defense in their minds. And we already had a problem with free speech being what hypocritical jerks say when they want to justify behaving badly free of consequence.

[_honorentheos]

Do you believe it is a problem that Blake Neff was fired or not? That quote is about situations like Blake Neff's, but it is sufficiently coy about what the argument is supposed to be applied to - and the entire argument is in reference to things that are purported to be happening in the real world - that we don't know.

I think you can't answer something that's a simple yes or no because you do have lines in your mind where this argument breaks down. Then a little "blinding moral certainty" is fine. But saying that undermines just about everything else you said.

As an economic argument I don't view my opinion of what a business should or shouldn't do as absolutely what they should or shouldn't do. A point of departure from the more extreme ends of the progressive spectrum is that belief in markets. And, in the marketplace of ideas I may have opinions about the views of someone like Blake Neff but I'm not going to weigh in on what Fox should or shouldn't have done. I don't consume Fox News and I have my views about their content that I've expressed and feel free to express. And if he chose to leave Tucker Carlson's show due to internal pressure to resign, that's between him and Fox. Is the world going to be a better place for it? Don't know. Maybe it matters and maybe it doesn't. Maybe it sets off concern internal to Fox about systemic racial biases and maybe it triggers bad blowback in some other way. Maybe the world forgets about it by Monday. Don't know.

I fault the letter for being vague here because while it's about warning about social consequences for supposed disreputable speech in the real world we should be thinking about, it only makes vague references to examples while not giving any specifics. It doesn't tell us much more than that.

It doesn't warn about disreputable speech. It warns about intolerance.and the consequences of rushing to judgement rather than engaging in debate to counter speech with speech rather than seeking to damage a persons life because an online mob demanded it. I just quoted it so it should be fresh in your mind if you'd stop overlaying everything with your version of reality.

[_EAllusion]

It doesn't warn about disreputable speech. It warns about consequences for speech people find to be disreputable. But social consequences for disreputable speech are often fine, so how helpful is this warning here? The trick here is that saying, "some leftist groups are going too far" is very innocuous because near everyone thinks that, but then you got a bunch of people signing who signal that this may be about situations where their idea of "going too far" is iffy to flat bogus. Jenn Kamp Rowling isn't a victim of a witchhunt and Jenn Kamp Rowling doesn't respect free speech herself. And there's a bunch of Jenn Kamp Rowlings on this list of signatories. Jenn Kamp Rowling being a presenter of the argument might make someone think we're talking about Jenn Kamp Rowling here much in the way that if Blake Neff signed it we might be led to think that we're talking about Blake here. And if so, screw that.

Describing this letter as like a Rorschach test is clever, but points out a central fault.

[_EAllusion]

Also, I regret to inform you that Twitter has effectively rebutted the argument:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EcqiTCPWAAA ... ame=medium

[Guest]

I fault the letter for being vague here because while it's about warning about social consequences for supposed disreputable speech in the real world we should be thinking about, it only makes vague references to examples while not giving any specifics. It doesn't tell us much more than that.

It doesn't warn about disreputable speech. It warns about intolerance.and the consequences of rushing to judgement rather than engaging in debate to counter speech with speech rather than seeking to damage a persons life because an online mob demanded it. I just quoted it so it should be fresh in your mind if you'd stop overlaying everything with your version of reality.

It doesn't warn about disreputable speech. It warns about consequences for speech people find to be disreputable. But social consequences for disreputable speech are often fine, so how helpful is this warning here?

We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms.
The warning includes cautioning against rushes to judgment and the consequences of giving way to mob mentality. You're shifting the discussion in assigning qualities to speech and wanting examples to illustrate good and bad speech that I don't think falls outside the scope of the letter so much as contradicts the point.

Angry Twitter wants it to specify whose speech is good and whose isn't, using the discussion of the signatories to fill in that void because that's the fuel feeding Angry Twitter. It demands judgment.

But there's no need to do so if the point isn't to control speech itself so much as to interrupt the mobs rush to judgment and allow reflection. Let companies make their choices but ensure they know the mob isn't the only voices out there. And what could be more democratic and respectful of the 1A than that?

[_EAllusion]

And, in the marketplace of ideas I may have opinions about the views of someone like Blake Neff but I'm not going to weigh in on what Fox should or shouldn't have done.

That makes you very radical and at odds with a whole bunch of people who think they're agreeing with that letter, including people who signed it. The marketplace of ideas normally includes your right to be critical of other people's speech and association decisions. The solution to bad speech is more speech, right? But more oddly, the letter itself is weighing in on what Fox should or should not have done. Not this situation specifically, but it is saying that situations like it are bad. The letter is saying that people should not be pressured into job loss, or have that threat hanging over them, just for expressing controversial views. Or, rather, that sometimes this should not happen.

Neff was fired from his job in media because he was found to be privately saying things people find offensive. This act of terminating him displayed intolerance for the range of acceptable opinion through social consequence just like it did when James Bennet lost his job for publishing a editorial saying fascist crackdowns are good. Because what Neff was caught saying in private is mostly only different than what the show he writes for says in public in terms of vulgarity and straightforwardness, this is almost certainly Fox making a decision about retaining advertisers. And what that's about is fear of people boycotting a product because people with more liberal sensibilities don't like the views it expresses and may disassociate from them.

Matthew Yglesias isn't interesting in saying that Neff should be allowed to keep his job to strike a blow for tolerance. He might comment on the hypocrisy of it all, but I'm reasonably confident he's not going to bat for Neff's job unless he goes into one of his performative sarcasm binges. The kind of stifling of speech he's referring to differs. This is true of any number of people on the list. But that's makes the whole project unhelpful.

My guess is most people wouldn't read the letter as a defense of Neff because he's more socially out of bounds, but they might read it as a defense of someone like Jesse Signal, for example, when they see his name right there. And this is how you get people who think that the letter is saying that racism and misogyny is out of bounds, but give transphobia a chance. Once you understand that, then maybe that mob doesn't appear so irrational as it is reacting to a muddled message.

[_honorentheos]

That's a lot of reading into there that, again, feeds Angry Twitter tropes but hardly demands the letter itself be expanded. The signatory list is diverse. As you are now fond of saying, who one focuses on and why seems to be a bit of a Rorschach Test.