When cancel culture was running amok, people were getting fired/reprimanded/harassed for advocating nonviolent protests over riots, for using Chinese words that sound vaguely like an English racial slur, for interviewing Black Americans whose opinions differ slightly from the official narrative about what a Black American ought to think, for throwing a geisha-themed party for your young daughter, for wearing a prom dress inspired by a traditional Chinese aesthetic, etc. None of these are remotely right-wing offenses.
This is the whole problem--the left harms people whose actions/opinions are well within the Overton Window and upon criticism, they retreat to some variation of "we're just opposing objectively horrible people!". This whole game hurts left-wing credibility and it easier for far-right viewpoints to enter the mainstream (is so-and-so an actual Nazi or are they just failing to completely toe the left-wing party line?). It's also just shitty behavior that makes people angry and pushes them rightward, and it does nothing to help left-wing causes.
The backlash has nothing to do with political ideology, however, so not sure why you're bringing it up. If your expectation is that 50% of backlash would be left leaning and 50% would be right leaning, I don't think that's reasonable, but if you think the backlash is because someone is conservative generally, you'd be mistaken.
There are a great many conservatives who can make their ideological arguments comfortably without being offensive. Conservative ideology isn't inherently offensive, but specific human beings say specific things that are reprehensible and when they do, it's called out.
And also when people say not reprehensible things.
> The backlash has nothing to do with political ideology, however, so not sure why you're bringing it up.
Then it's strange that it's been intimately connected with looming war against Russia and China, so many intelligence agencies have so many employees that spend 100% of their time on it, and so many congresspeople are making direct requests for censorship on political lines.
Sure, but we aren't talking about reprehensible things, we're talking about "advocating against political violence" and cultural appreciation.
> The backlash has nothing to do with political ideology, however, so not sure why you're bringing it up
Because it's clearly about punishing deviation from a partisan line.
> If your expectation is that 50% of backlash would be left leaning and 50% would be right leaning, I don't think that's reasonable, but if you think the backlash is because someone is conservative generally, you'd be mistaken.
That's not my expectation, my expectation is that we don't persecute people for moderate beliefs (and no, caricaturing those beliefs to make them sound extreme doesn't count), nor do we tolerate said behavior.
> There are a great many conservatives who can make their ideological arguments comfortably without being offensive. Conservative ideology isn't inherently offensive, but specific human beings say specific things that are reprehensible and when they do, it's called out.
As previously discussed, a lot of people are "calling out" others for utterly innocuous transgressions. For example, my state subreddit is presently arguing that families who homeschool their kids are closet Nazis (that's the very popular opinion on that particular subreddit).
I'm thinking of Kanye, Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes, etc. These people expressed reprehensible viewpoints and were subsequently removed from various platforms as a result. That's not politics; what they said was reprehensible regardless of political ideology. You can find people who expressed similar political thoughts without the hate, but the people I named can't figure out how to do that and therefore have been removed (to some degree or another) from the communal discourse.
Prom dress controversy: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kassycho/keziah-daum-pr...
Geisha party: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/mom-called-apos-racist-apos-...
Professor suspended for using a Chinese word: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/09/08/professor-sus...
Asian fusion restaurant incident: https://www.dailywire.com/news/asian-restaurant-in-nyc-force...
These links are just the first things that came up on Google to help you find what you’re looking for. I’m not claiming these links are the best sources.
Man fired for cracking knuckles: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/502975-cal...
Besides, what do any of these have to do with conservative views being suppressed?
Sorry you feel the need to name-call here, but hope you have a better time elsewhere.
Even James confirmed as much, and this is more to my point of how playing the victim card without acknowledging agreement violations is intentionally misleading. And before someone asks, "DiD u rEaD tHe MeMo?" Yes. Yes I did, it's right there:
> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
> you don't see women in engineering and leadership positions is due to them being biologically incapable.
> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
And having read the full document (or even just the bits I quoted in my comment above), you surely also know that he was very explicitly not imputing population-level averages onto individuals. Damore's critics have been very openly lying about the contents of the document; there's no charitable way to interpret their claims.
To be quite clear, I don't think Damore is a hero (his politics are more conservative than mine and I don't think he handled the fallout particularly well), but he was clearly fired for claims he very explicitly didn't make[^1], and his critics are just doubling-down on what can't be described as anything other than trivially-verifiable lies.
[^1]: Even Google's legal team knew that they couldn't get him on those bases and instead they argued that criticizing Google's hiring practices implied that some of his coworkers weren't the best candidates for the job thus creating a hostile workplace. Of course, criticizing Google's hiring practices was absolutely pedestrian at Google at the time, although the argument was that Google's hiring practices were biased toward whites, men, etc. This is pretty obviously just pretense to fire him for ideological transgressions.
Again, Damore reaped the consequences of his own actions by violating a contract he agreed to. This is intentionally misleading to represent him as a martyr for right-wingers.
Unless, of course, you think the conservative agenda includes promoting that women are biologically incapable of holding teach and leadership positions.
Here it is (again):
> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
An average man is incapable of being in tech. An average woman is incapable of being in tech.
There are men and women at the tail who are capable of being in tech.
Because of the difference in averages, there are fewer women than men who are capable and want to be in tech.
---
Collapsing all that to "women [on average] are biologically incapable of being in tech" is disingenuous. Using words like "incapable" implies binariness, ignoring the continuous nature of distributions.
But then I doubt you care, especially since your account does nothing but astroturf Damore on HN.
Occasionally I learn things in the latter discussions.
It looks more like an algorithmic hiccup that was corrected than a ban for violating TOS. Not the same at all.
So yes, he was banned for violating the TOS.
It's not speech about fiscal conservative policies or smaller government that get's censored. It's people telling their viewers to harass Sandyhook parents, or participate in a violent insurrection, or something similar that gets censored.
Playing the victim card without acknowledging TOS violations is intentionally misleading.