Thread by @jonst0kes

As a thought experiment, I wonder what would happen if we took all the arguments around how "cancel culture doesn't exist" or that "concerns over it a moral panic because nobody lost their job," & applied them to the media climate of the post-9/11 run-up to the Iraq war?

It's widely agreed that the media was in the grip of war fever & pro-war groupthink, & that this was ruthlessly enforced somehow. But did any media anti-war voices lose their jobs? Couldn't we say the efforts to shut down anti-war voices were just a few isolated incidents?

How many people in the media or elsewhere really suffered lasting career damage for opposing the war? Isn't the absolute number of incidents here quite small? Why does anyone care about that, then? Why not say there was no groupthink or pressure?

Ward Churchill is probably the poster child for being canceled for being anti-war, and yet he retained his job! By the logic of "cancel culture isn't real," Churchill had nothing to complain about & pro-war mania wasn't real, no?

I'm pretty sure you can take any argument that cancel culture isn't real, and use it without modification to argue that there was no uniformly pro-war groupthink post-9/11. Maybe not. I am spitballing here. There could be some angle I haven't thought of.

Yes! Why, clearly the Dixie Chicks were not subject to unfair, censorious treatment, since they are all still rich & successful & have won many awards since then. Obviously they were not canceled by country radio.

https://twitter.com/dylanllyr/status/1451565808669413384

Going by "cancel culture isn't real" logic, this article lays out a few isolated incidents. Just a bare handful of low-stakes anecdotes. Why should anyone care what happened to Donahue's show? He is but one old guy.

https://twitter.com/meraklikoylu/status/1451565962206064641

Donahue was an old white guy who has no right to be on TV. His (anti-war) speech was not silenced. He has no right to a platform on network TV. He retired very wealthy. Why would anyone look at this incident & think there was a pro-war groupthink crisis? 🤡

.@NGrossman81 what say you? Was there a real pro-war groupthink crisis in the media post-9/11, or was this just a handful of low-stakes anecdotes about a few isolated job losses & some silly protests (i.e. agains the Dixie Chicks), & not much else?

So to drop the bit for a moment, I was in media during that time, & yes there was a pro-war groupthink crisis & I was in "hysterics" about it. I have faced all these arguments before. Not my 1st rodeo with, "there's no groupthink here... everyone is free to say whatever."

People claiming that there was some kind of post-9/11 patriotic fervor chilling effect on media & academic discourse were told they were imagining things & overreacting.