Re:Huawei phones automatically deleting videos of the protests
by cthalupa on Wednesday November 30, 2022 @06:16PM
(#33809420)
I would agree that the US today is far less equipped to deal with rigorous debate of ideology. I don't agree that cancellation was not part of how the KKK was defeated, or that it is not an appropriate tool to have in the toolbox.
Rigorous intellectual debate has it's place. You have to definitively disprove something at the start. But at a certain point in time, giving them any more spotlight does more harm than good. There is a certain portion of the population that will be swayed into ridiculous viewpoints no matter how thoroughly they have been destroyed in a debate, no matter how much evidence has been piled in front of them. Rigorous debate of flat earthers rarely convinces the flat earthers they are wrong, and doing so in a public setting provides them more opportunity to spread their misinformation. We would gain nothing of import by putting a bunch of flat earther's on national television and debating them.
Nor would you gain anything by platforming a KKK member and debating them on stage today. There's no advantage to be earned by doing so. But, at the time, when they were at the height of their power and had many people believing in them? Certainly. They had a way to preach their message regardless, the reach to spread the information to a large audience. Being able to argue against them and destroy their message was important.
The American Unity League in particular spent a large amount of time and effort organizing boycotts and other methods of cancelling the KKK. It was important and it was effective.
Rigorous intellectual debate has it's place. You have to definitively disprove something at the start. But at a certain point in time, giving them any more spotlight does more harm than good. There is a certain portion of the population that will be swayed into ridiculous viewpoints no matter how thoroughly they have been destroyed in a debate, no matter how much evidence has been piled in front of them. Rigorous debate of flat earthers rarely convinces the flat earthers they are wrong, and doing so in a public setting provides them more opportunity to spread their misinformation. We would gain nothing of import by putting a bunch of flat earther's on national television and debating them.
Nor would you gain anything by platforming a KKK member and debating them on stage today. There's no advantage to be earned by doing so. But, at the time, when they were at the height of their power and had many people believing in them? Certainly. They had a way to preach their message regardless, the reach to spread the information to a large audience. Being able to argue against them and destroy their message was important.
But cancelling them was also part of the process. Boycotts were a SIGNIFICANT part of the effort in defeating the clan. You can find many, many, many historical references to them. Here's a small sample: https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=TCT19221207-01.2.6... https://www.jstor.org/stable/27502105 https://academic.oup.com/chicago-scholarship-online/book/214... https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
The American Unity League in particular spent a large amount of time and effort organizing boycotts and other methods of cancelling the KKK. It was important and it was effective.