Thread by @JuliusGoat

Again, Republicans are a genocide party, and they very much believe in "cancel culture."

https://twitter.com/B52Malmet/status/1379494625929523204

Republicans believe in "cancel culture." What they object to is "criticism culture."

They don't want scrutiny. They want silence.
They don't want dialogue. They want obedience.
They don't want democracy. They want authority.

They'll use every tool available to them to get it.

Whenever Republicans talk about "cancel culture," they never mean the violence committed against a man, pushed out of a park for the color of his skin.

They always mean the social consequences that might befall the racist supremacist doing the pushing.

https://twitter.com/AttorneyCrump/status/1290464781615464450?s=20

People who say and do hateful harmful things will get a reaction, which will include them being understood as the sort of people who say and do such things—which isn't chilling or orwellian, it's appropriate.

What's chilling and orwellian is trying to control such reactions.

Republicans don't just want to expound and expand bigotry on every level — they want to control what the reaction to it can be.

They want to do it without having to pay the greatest penalty they seem able to imagine — which is accurate criticism.

Less speech. Not more.

Most people have never known what it’s like to speak without concern of consequence.

If speaking without concern for consequence used to be the case for you, you lived in an era when those people were afraid to speak.

It was an era with *less* free speech, not more.

Perhaps this is increasingly an era where, if you do something hurtful, you can be confident you’ll hear about it from the hurt party.

Which gives you the chance to become a less hurtful person—if hurt wasn’t your intent, that is.

So, you see, we actually can discern intent.

This would also mean an era where, if you intend to say something insightful or kind or true, and you *don’t* hear criticism, it’s much more likely that what you said IS insightful or kind or true, because you know lack of critique does not mean fear to speak up.

Better, right?

Republicans now fear being fired for what they say and do, it seems. I notice they never mention what they wish to say or do, but don't.

Yet for marginalized people, getting fired—not just for what you say, but simply for who you are—is nothing new, and only one of many dangers.

Republicans actually do believe people should be fired for speech and action. Everybody believes that. Some speech and some actions do warrant it.

What Republicans are objecting to is a shift in what is and isn't acceptable.

That is changing. They don't want it to.

Example: you should get fired for suggesting your employee sexually pleasure you.

That didn't used to be the belief.

It changed.

When it changed, some people complained "you have to be so careful these days!"

Oh. *Do* you.

Some complaints are confessions.

And you shouldn't be fired for complaining about improper advances. That also didn't used to be the belief (and we know that in many halls of power and executive boardrooms, it still isn't the belief).

What changed is the idea of what is acceptable.

I imagine when that belief changed, sexually abusive bosses may have felt that for the first time the workplace was perilous; that "suddenly you have to be so careful of what you say."

But for women, the idea of having to take care would not have been a new idea.

It changed for the better.

It's so interesting, this complaint of how *careful* everyone has to be these days.

Really? Everyone? Hmm.

Some people have ALWAYS had to be careful.

But for those complaining against "cancel culture," it's a new experience. Hmm. Interesting.

ARE people losing jobs "just for expressing their views" about (say) trans people? How often? Under what circumstances?

Is it hard? Scary? Hm.

Trans people have to defend their right to exist every day.

Before the Supreme Court last year.

For their very lives in Arkansas.

ARE people losing jobs "just for expressing their views" about issues of race? How often? What views, exactly?

Is it hard? Scary? Hm.

Black people are in the street right now protesting just to not be occupied and hunted and murdered by a militarized police force.

What usually happens if somebody says something harmful is: bigots praise them and the targets of that harm criticize them and everybody else says nothing.

Saying nothing joins with the bigotry.

Bigots appreciate your cheers. All they want is your silence.

What Republicans want is an ultimate cancel culture, with space left over only for them.

A space where only they don't need to be careful, ever, for any reason, or even hear why they should.

A space where everyone else needs to be very VERY careful.

Genocide party.

For those of good intent, who mean no harm, criticism is nothing to fear. It's a chance to do better. It's not an attack, it's salvation.

So we can clearly see the bad intent of those who want to hear no criticism, treating each correction as an attack.

They mean harm.

The way we oppose this is by not giving them the silence they crave, but rather publicly giving them the accurate criticism they fear.

And we can tell they know that, too, by how vociferously they attack it.

It hurts them, because that opposition is how things change.

I think what makes it change is this:

When some of the vast silent majority joins with the marginalized targets of harm, it amplifies those voice, which makes those voices audible for the first time to many—particularly to those who wish not to hear.

Which forces a choice.

The choice is the same as it always has been, which is:

Do you listen, or do you not?

The difference is that now, because of the amplification, it's much harder to deny that you heard. And so your decision to listen or not will clearly expose your true intent.

So, more listen.

Which forces another choice, the same one it always has been, which is this:

Are you going to do something about it, or not?

The difference is that now, because of the amplification, it's much harder to deny that you know you bear responsibility.

So, people begin to change.

Things change. People stop saying slurs that start with "r" or "f" ... you know the words, right? We don't say them anymore.

Those words said, "the people I'm signifying are so beneath my notice I don't have to be careful what I say about them.

Things changed.

And, when things change, the people who had to hear casual markers every day about how little they meant in the world, now had a bit more space to speak freely.

Paradoxically, by removing those words from what is considered acceptable, we made MORE speech.

More, not less.

Things change. We used to have a hilarious skit comedy character named It's Pat! The joke was that you couldn't tell their gender. That was the whole joke. The joke was that such a figure is OBVIOUSLY a hilarious joke, just by existing.

Now we put our pronouns in our bios. Why?

Because when we put our pronouns in our bios, we are saying: "there are nonbinary people in this world, and people who exist all over the spectrum of gender, and we recognize them and honor them."

It makes space for them to exist.

People of bad intent HATE this, by the way.

People of bad intent hate it because they know that this is how we change what is and isn't acceptable.

And what we're doing is making a space where we are careful of each other.

And they hate—HATE—the idea that they should have to be careful.

Genocide parties are like that.

Republicans can't say specifically "the things you just can't do or say anymore."

It's not that they *can't* say them.

It's that they know how it will sound. It'll sound like a boss complaining he can't sexually harass their employee anymore.

Because things have changed.

So participate, please, in criticism culture. Notice those who fight it.

They'll call it "cancel culture," because they can't actually say what it is they want to say, which is that being careful is for other people.

Let's make a world where we are careful of each other.

This is what a genocide party does.

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1379787472473837581