E-Pluribus | Apr. 16, 2021
Here is a round up of the latest and best writing and musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
Roger Kimball: Censorship Competition Heats Up
As it turns out, some of the alternatives to Amazon, the world’s largest bookseller, are turning into smaller versions of the online giant. Roger Kimball writes at The Wall Street Journal that Bookshop.com is adopting some of the same hypersentive tendencies towards controversial titles that Amazon has in recent days.
When Bookshop made its debut in January 2020, the company wrapped itself in a mantle of public virtue. It was out to revitalize the corner bookstore, shore up local communities, enlighten young minds and old. “We believe that bookstores are essential to a healthy culture,” a statement on its website informs us. “They’re where authors can connect with readers, where we discover new writers, where children get hooked on the thrill of reading that can last a lifetime. They’re also anchors for our downtowns and communities.”
[…]
Underdogs make for good copy, so it was no surprise that Bookshop was hailed as a brave upstart, a feisty David to the Goliath of Amazon. “Bookshop.org hopes to play Rebel Alliance to Amazon’s Empire,” ran the headline of a valentine in the Chicago Tribune.
Bookshop turns out to be little more than another minion for the Emperor of Wokeness. For the past couple of weeks, the first item advertised on its home page is that bible of antiwhite woke sermonizing, “How to Be an Anti-Racist.” Many readers, I’d wager, would have “complaints and concerns” about that screed. But that doesn’t mean that Bookshop should stop selling it. Nor would it, regardless of how many complained.
Read it all here.
Christopher J. Ferguson: Discourse Victimology
A new study on victimhood as a personality trait may help shed light on how the alleged trauma to victims of purported offenses (typically on social media) play out. Christopher Ferguson at Arc Digital writes that while not all victimhood is contrived, sometimes crying “victim” is simply a way to short-circuit an actual resolution in favor of one that unfairly condemns the accused.
The researchers found that victimhood was associated with a history of anxious attachment to others, namely a fear of abandonment and mistrust of others. Victimhood was associated with revenge motivations, and sense of entitlement to engage in immoral behavior (essentially those perceived as victimizers deserve whatever they get), and low inclinations toward forgiveness (which, if trait victimhood is pervasive, could explain why internet apologies rarely soothe tensions). These individuals were also more likely to engage in revenge behaviors toward others in an experimental setting. So, individuals high in victimhood are quicker to take offense and quicker to lash out against the perceived offense-givers, hoping to punish them severely.
Trait victimhood can’t fully explain the amorphous phenomenon some refer to as “cancel culture,” but it can go some distance toward illuminating its sources. The readiness to take offense, not just from outright hateful speech but from good-faith disagreement, inconvenient data, jokes and satire, and more, is at least partly explainable by a personality trait governed by a view of one’s own righteousness as pure and people with opposing views as offensively immoral.
Of course, morality isn’t really the driving force. The point is revenge.
Read the whole thing.
Alyssa Rosenberg: The ‘cancel culture’ wars are exhausting and useless. Here are five proposals for a truce.
In a column in The Washington Post, Alyssa Rosenberg posits five ways that “cancel culture” could be laid to rest. While there’s little fodder in her proposals for regulation or legislation to resolve the flashpoints that precipitate these conflicts, Rosenberg’s ideas encompass basic principles of empathy, compromise and redemption that, while dependent on individuals rather than institutions, are more likely to be more effective in the long run.
Social media pile-ons and professional death sentences become the easy default, but accomplish little. Conservatives get nothing of material value out of a libertarian think tank staffer losing his job over a dumb tweet. It’s not clear what the staff at Teen Vogue won for themselves in not having McCammond as their boss.
It’s just too easy for employers to cut ties with inconvenient workers — or even, in the case of a White professor who masqueraded as Black, for offenders to declare themselves “canceled” in elaborate displays of self-flagellation. And the truth is that punishing individual offenders often is a gesture of resignation, not triumph. Getting one person fired or leaving them disgraced generally does little to address the dynamics behind their behavior. We should instead think more deeply about what we really want when someone behaves badly, and what repairing the damage might look like.
Read it all here.
Around Twitter
Robert Tracinski’s new publication Symposium kicks off its podcast with George Will and Steven Pinker discussing “liberalism” in all its aspects:
Here’s the full video here:
Update on Russian dissident Alexei Navalny:
One man’s “freedom fighter” is another man’s…
A policy platform from the America First Caucus:
Where to draw the line on free speech:
