Obviously, The Letter would be profoundly disappointing on any day, but to do this in the midst of a pandemic, just three days after Trump gave an apocalyptically fascist speech inveighing against "cancel culture," makes it impossible to regard as anything other than malicious.
Like all of that content-free bullshit, it does not even try to grapple with how it calls for the censoring of critical speech. In the ideal world envisioned by the signatories, the forthright critiques they fear simply wouldn't exist. How is that a pro-speech view?
"Whatever the arguments around each particular incident" is such a staggeringly damning phrase. They call for the *collapse* of context, the very thing that they would otherwise regard as a Get Out of Jail Free card from any and all criticism.
The concept of "political correctness" is a content-free vagary that allows anyone to project their anxieties onto it. Similarly, the letter's vagueness likely enticed people to sign on to it, filling in its blanks with their own ideological concerns.
Thus Jeet Heer claiming it was about his concern for the (very real) silencing of pro-Palestinian discourse, or Jennifer Finney Boylan's views on the letter changing once she (presumably) saw she'd signed on with several noted transphobes.
The thing is, any text that equates angry Twitter leftists with militarised fascism in control of governments *is* a dog whistle to specific interests, none of which serve marginalised communities. And these people should've recognised it a mile away.
All this said, I feel personal responsibility here. As a scholar of online harassment, as a leftist who's critiqued call-outs within social justice activist communities, someone who's critiqued "shaming" amidst the pandemic... have I given cover to the Letter's perspective?
That's something I'm still processing but it is something I hope to discuss in more detail publicly soon, as it's an overdue conversation.
There were a couple of signatories whose presence was a bodyblow, and I feel made a fool of.
There were a couple of signatories whose presence was a bodyblow, and I feel made a fool of.
