Beating Back Cancel Culture
Are you or your community under attack by SJWs? Be sure to review the Social Justice Attack Survival Guide, and remember: never apologize to SJWs.
Some high points from a successful virtual beat-down of SJWs:
Know what to expect. The cancel crowd has its own bullet-point playbook. And theyâll respond aggressively to any symbolic act that threatens their status, or erodes the impression that they are the ones calling the shots. Remember that behind the social-justice veneer lies the brutal logic of power and ego.
To maximize the pain you feel, theyâll tag activist groups on social media to inflate their numbers and reach.
Theyâll bombard every organization youâre part of with demands to censure, discipline, disown, fire, or expel youâoften phrasing their appeals in the passive aggressive guise of âconcernâ and âdisappointment.â
At other times, they will insult, taunt, and, threaten you in a manner resembling middle-school children having a recess meltdown.
In my case, the ringleader called me âa full on misogynist and racist,â âshameful bigot,â âhypocrite,â âclueless,â âtone-deaf,â âsnowflake,â and âsoulless troll.â
She assailed my âprivilege and patriarchy,â âlack of basic empathy and ethics,â and âzero self-awareness.â
She also questioned whether Iâm really a human, and called on NeurIPS to ban me, and for my department to expunge me.
Her goal, in short, was to ruin my life.
The cancelers will dig up anything they can from your past. And if they canât find any, theyâll make it up.
This will all seem terrifying, but much less so if you realize that youâre just the latest victim in what is basically a mechanical and dehumanizing process. Insofar as you donât actually get fired from your job or suffer some other equivalent setback, these are all just words, and they donât define who you are.
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Donât back down. Donât apologize. Donât make clarifications, and donât try to appease the mob. All of these will only be taken as concessions, and embolden the mob to demand more. The real Achillesâs Heel of the cancel crowd is its short attention span. Once they bully someone into submission, they move on to the next victim. Itâs a system designed for quick wins. If you donât back down, theyâll raise the pitch as far as they canâbut eventually theyâll be at a loss for what to do next, and all but the most fanatical will lose interest. The few that remain, now bereft of their backup, are just what you need to teach all of them a lesson, as we did in my case.
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Turn their weapons against them. You may find this to be the most controversial principle, but itâs also arguably the most crucialâas the cancelers wonât stop until they fear that theyâll endure the same consequences that they seek to impose on others. In my case, I watched as investors and customers leaned on the ringleaderâs company to rein her in. Even companies that posture heavily in the area of social justice donât actually want to be stained by the disgraceful behavior of mob leaders. Indeed, I have no doubt that it was an ultimatum from her employer that finally led the ringleader to stop her Twitter outbursts and apologize publicly to her victims, for all to see. Some will say that once we resort to this step, we become as bad as the cancelers. But thatâs a false equivalence. The cancel crowd tries to ban people because of their views. We try to stop bullyingâbehavior that is reprehensible regardless of ideology.
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See also the Social Justice Attack Survivial Guide.