Your example was absurd and unrealistic, like Tom Friedman calling people the n word and saying he hates the blacks or whatever. Yeah he’s going to get fired for that if there is a boycott or not, and it’s never happening. So in practice I would never support someone losing his job for expressing a view.
And as others have pointed out, this is not true and far far less destructive than the organized attempt to remove this mechanism, that helped promote metoo and BLM.
The only argument I’ve read so far is “Chomsky is good, hence letter is good, but that doesn’t apply to bad people who signed same letter”. There are endless examples of people who only faced consequences for their actions due to online “shaming”. There are endless examples of people who attempt to stop this from happening again by referring to “Cancel Culture”, but you, MB and Clovis are really emphasizing the “but actually” part.
Even the quoted part, you don’t even attempt to prove this extreme claim. Can you quantify it? Can you tell me how many appropriate cancellation has occurred and how many were twitter mobs? At what ratio does this become a culture?
So your current claim is that no one has ever expressed a blatantly racist view, but if someone, one day, expresses one you think it’s fine to fire him?
That is not my current claim.
So explain it to me, if possible.
A lot of people, who work a lot of jobs, express very blatantly racist view everyday.
Those people have jobs. Some might be correlated with the subject they expressed their racist view on, some might not.
Do you agree such people exist?
You said:
A) you would never support a person losing his job for expressing a view.
B) it is okay to fire someone who expressed a racist view.
I see a problem with these two arguments, unless you disagree that “in practice” there are people who express racist views.
I said that I would never advocate for someone losing their job for expressing a view and I think that mobs of people demanding someone’s firing because they expressed a controversial view is wrong. It’s wrong because it is disproportionate, lacks all nuance, and ends the conversation about that topic. And ends it in a way that is stifling to speech and debate.
But that is very different from people getting fired for racism. Like if Tom Friedman calls his coworker the N word yeah man, he’s getting fired. He’d get fired twenty years ago for that too.
Sorry, i’m stupid, still don’t understand that part.
Do you think racism isn’t a view?
Do you think people are not expressing racism?
Do you think racism is only saying the N word?
I’m lost here.
Do you really not see how your two claims contradict each other?
They don’t contradict each other at all. I don’t think opinion writers should be fired or boycotted for having views that are controversial or terrible or whatever. The bad ideas should be responded to.
The fact that people can justifiably be fired for egregious racist conduct isn’t in conflict with that position as far as I can see.
Wait, your position is just about opinion writers? You have stated over and over that “no one should lose his job over expressing a view”. Can a teacher be fired for expressing a racist view? Can a police officer?
Where does the business’s responsibility come into play? They can always be like no we’re not going to fire that person.
We were talking about opinion writers? And how firing a take-haver for having a controversial opinion stifles debate.
I’m certainly not a fan of firing anyone for having controversial views if its not interfering with their work and would never advocate for that sort of thing. Someone losing his job is a big deal and it’s increasingly treated as casual bloodsport.
That’s one of the biggest issues, the utter and complete spinelessness of companies. If it could cause a tiny bit of bad publicity, boom, hit the bricks.
So is being blatantly racist, which is also increasing being treated is ‘controversial view’.
once again your post is very confusing, cause you just return to the same logical fail point where it’s okay to fire someone for being racist but also not okay to fire someone for being racist. And you emphasized that it’s not just about opinion writers, so I’m all out of ideas on how to settle this.
I said that if someone engages in egregious racist behavior it can be reasonable to fire him. Just like it can be reasonable to fire someone for other egregious behavior like sexual harassment or bullying at work.
But if someone posts all lives matter on their Facebook page, or a woman’s place is in the kitchen, or some other garbage take then of course they shouldn’t be fired.
There’s nothing casual about it.
but that line doesn’t exist irl. ‘egregious’ isn’t an agreed upon term. it appears that what you consider egregious is vastly different from what those you are criticizing here consider to be egregious.
which is back to what goofy said 500 posts ago, that you already agreed that some racist views are fire-worthy, it’s only a matter of deciding which.
Glad we circled back to this agreement and i’m sure you’ll forget about it until the next round.
Some racist workplace conduct is obviously fireable. Holding a racist view in the absence of that egregious conduct ought not to be.
I think I cheered them getting fired as it happened, and I’m sure I cheered Spencer getting punched. But I think I’m now against both. If you’re not free to both make a living and express a political belief, are you really free to express that belief? If you’re not free to express a political belief and not get punched or beaten or killed, are you free to express it? If the Ayatollah downgrades his fatwa against Rushdie to punching only it’s still wrong, and the difference between Rushdie and Spencer getting punched for their writing is that Spencer has shitty views. But it doesn’t matter if Satanic Verses is good or not, the fatwa is wrong.
As far as who is to blame, both the company and the people demanding their heads, including myself.
But you would fire him if he expressed those view at the work place?
Like if he walked around yelling with a lit tiki torch? Probably. Seems disruptive.