Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Thursday evening mocked people who are getting “cancelled” as being entitled and unliked.
In a series of tweets, which came in part as a response to an open letter defending “open debate” (below), the Democrat congresswoman attempted to reframe the idea of “cancel culture,” a term primarily associated with left-wing activists attempting to destroy political opponents or squelch support for ideas and causes that they oppose.
“People who are actually ‘cancelled’ don’t get their thoughts published and amplified in major outlets. This has been a public service announcement,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “The term ‘cancel culture’ comes from entitlement – as though the person complaining has the right to a large, captive audience,& one is a victim if people choose to tune them out. Odds are you’re not actually cancelled, you’re just being challenged, held accountable, or unliked.”
The term “cancel culture” comes from entitlement – as though the person complaining has the right to a large, captive audience,& one is a victim if people choose to tune them out.
Odds are you’re not actually cancelled, you’re just being challenged, held accountable, or unliked.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 10, 2020
“I have an entire TV network dedicated to stoking hatred of me. A white supremacist w/ a popular network show regularly distorts me in dangerous ways, & it’s a normal part of my existence to get death threats from their audience. You don’t see me complaining abt ‘cancel culture,'” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “Many of the people actually ‘cancelled’ are those long denied a fair hearing of their ideas to begin w/: Palestinian human rights advocates, Abolitionists, Anticapitalists, Anti-imperialists. Not spicy ‘contrarians’ who want to play devils advocate w/ your basic rights in the NYT.”
Many of the people actually “cancelled” are those long denied a fair hearing of their ideas to begin w/:
Palestinian human rights advocates
Abolitionists
Anticapitalists
Anti-imperialistsNot spicy “contrarians” who want to play devils advocate w/ your basic rights in the NYT
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 10, 2020
Ocasio-Cortez provided no evidence backing up her claim that the term “cancel culture” comes “from entitlement” and that it involves people who have “a large, captive audience.” While the targets of cancel culture have included famous names, many people who get “canceled” are ordinary people whose employers face calls for boycotts if they keep them as an employee.
Ocasio-Cortez appeared to hold herself to a different standard in her tweets as she claimed that people who were “cancelled” were really “just being challenged, held accountable, or unliked.” Ocasio-Cortez then claimed that Fox News, which she did not name directly, was “dedicated to stoking hatred of” her. Like other media outlets, Fox News does frequently report on Ocasio-Cortez, but is often just challenging her ideas, holding her accountable, or reporting that she’s unliked.
Ocasio-Cortez’s tweets were widely criticized online, with some even noting that things that she described made them more, not less, supportive of free speech.
“This is patently false and easily disproved — we also have a government official here advocating for censorship and shutting down a public letter standing up for free speech and open debate,” commentator Sasha Stone tweeted. “That is hard core overreach.”
This is patently false and easily disproved – we also have a government official here advocating for censorship and shutting down a public letter standing up for free speech and open debate. That is hard core overreach. https://t.co/kdoQWGOxfT
— Sasha Stone (@AwardsDaily) July 10, 2020
“People getting their characters smeared for dangling their hand out the window and losing their job, journalists silenced out of fear of getting fired, a research analyst fired for posting a tweet of a study people didn’t like,” Stone continued, later adding, “You’re doing worse than complaining about cancel culture. You are now advocating for it at a government level, which is dangerous…”
People getting their characters smeared for dangling their hand out the window and losing their job, journalists silenced out of fear of getting fired, a research analyst fired for posting a tweet of a study people didn't like. https://t.co/Lbbmp29aKi
— Sasha Stone (@AwardsDaily) July 10, 2020
You're doing worse than complaining about cancel culture. You are now advocating for it at a government level, which is dangerous… https://t.co/uIXsYUFOKf
— Sasha Stone (@AwardsDaily) July 10, 2020
Ocasio-Cortez’s comments also come after scores of left-leaning figures signed a letter from Harper’s Magazine on “Justice and Open Debate.” The letter states:
Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.
The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.
This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.