New ethics and spirit of capitalism

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If you read this text, then you belong to one of the two groups - you either very much have taken out discussions of the “abolition culture”, “new ethics” and the death of Western civilization, or vice versa, you are convinced that you need to figure out how progressive Zumers in the western countries have received dangerous superpowiality to cancel any celebrity in the click of a finger.

In his column, Alexander Finiarg is understanding why most of the discussions of the culture of cancellation and new ethics are meaningless. Instead of lamenting the public criticism of celebrities, who are actually impossible to “cancel”, he suggests thinking about how the modern culture of discussion is connected with the construction of social networks and why it is so easy for companies to dismiss employees for “wrong” views.

Author
Author
Alexander Finiarg

The new ethics was a hot topic for discussions around the world in the past few years. Barack Obama and Donald Trump criticized this phenomenon, public intellectuals signed panic collective letters against her, well-known directors wrote manifestos , predicting the death of Europe, and the authors of the “cynical theories”-one of the most sensible non-vicacles of the bestseller -over the whole book engaged in its exposure.

All of them complained to the threat of freedom of speech and carried out endless colorful parallels with hunting witch and totalitarian states of the twentieth century, arguing that new ethics is an authoritarian movement, though not managing to indicate who its main ideologist and the leader that does not suffer objection. They even wrote on The Telegraph, an article about how the abolition culture “determined 2021 and about the victims that it left behind”. Twist, Covid, we have more important problems! (Vladimir Putin, by the way, really compared the new ethics with Covid).

In the West, this discussion is mostly concentrated around the “abolition culture”, which usually means the tactics of a public boycott, mainly directed against stars. Unfortunately, in conversations about the abolition of celebrities, how the media environment works. In it, any glory is good, even if it is bad glory. Many stars deliberately generate scandals around them to continue to discuss them, and their recognition increased. For example, Kanye West is known for many scandalous statements that caused a flurry of criticism. After one of those when he put on the cap, Make America Great Again and expressed his support to Donald Trump (who, by the way, called for the boycott of West after his conflict with Taylor Swift), 9 million people unsubscribed from him.

Kanye himself said that he was not worried and he was canceled long before the appearance of the term “cancellation”

The TEELGRAPH article about the victims of the abolition culture in 2021 lists all the stars canceled in the year. This list begins with the SIA singer, which people with autism accused of the fact that the Music film shot by her gives a distorted idea of their life, built on stereotypes, as well as that they took a person without autism for the role of autistic heroine. True, the authors of The Telegraph themselves notice that this did not prevent the film from being nominated for several awards, and the music of the singer herself still successfully receive millions of auditions. Following her is an American producer, playwright and director Lin-Manuel Miranda, who was criticized for the fact that in his musical Hamilton about the founding fathers of the United States, where most roles are performed by non-white actors, nothing is said about the slavery of those times. And again, it is not clear what was the “abolition” with the exception of the simple presence of such criticism if the musical was one of the most successful deliveries of recent years and received dozens of awards. Also on the list is Billy Ailish, Ellen Dedenery, Johnny Depp and Marilyn Manson - they all criticized and continued to build their extremely successful careers as if nothing had happened. It seems that this would have to be an article not about the dangers of the culture of cancellation, but that it does not threaten anyone and nothing.

As Glen Greenwald notes , the signathers of this letter care about the principle of freedom of speech, they are only concerned with the fact that they are now forced to hear criticism in their address. Greenwald is a journalist who at one time published a series of reports based on documents provided by Julian Assange. Ironically, he was not invited to sign the starting point for the discussion about the culture of canceling the letter in Harper's because of his controversial views. He believes that the signatures are worried that they now do not have a monopoly on a public statement and they themselves can now be canceled, while earlier they only possessed the power of cancellation due to the high status and media weight.

The abolition as a tactics of boycott, dismissal or ostracism of people for their views always existed, and they suffered (and still suffer most) from it not stars, but people from marginalized groups of the population or disagreed with state policy

Celebrities, outraged by the fact that they were criticized by their position from the outside of their information bubble, parasitize on this discussion, using it in order to attract even more attention. Because of this, this whole conversation is as if built on a moral panic and distortions, since celebrities are trying to portray that criticism of their views from people from marginalized groups poses a threat to freedom and Western civilization as such.

All this is aggravated by the device of social networks and the media, so it is not surprising that this struggle has worsened when most of our interactions went online because of the pandemic. In his video, about Kanseling, Natalie Vinn (the host of the philosophical Contrapoints YouTube channel) is trying to understand his own cancellation and notes that one of the main properties of Cansel of culture is abstraction or simplification.

She gives an example to the cancellation of Yetuber James Charles, who, among other things, was accused of transfobia. In an interview, Charles said that he was not quite gay, because he likes a man of man. This opinion, of course, implies that a man’s trance is not men, and it is, in principle, a transphobic position, but it is unlikely that Charles expressed her out of hatred of a trance. Most likely he simply tried to understand his own sexual identity and expressed himself unsuccessfully. However, the abstraction turned this situation first into “James Charles said something transfer”, and then in James Charles Transfob.

Almost every time during the cancellation, the condemnation of a particular action turns into a condemnation of the personality of a person as such

Often this is precisely what many opponents of the culture of cancellation cause resentment and indignation: people do not like it when they are called racists, transfobes, homophobes, etc., because they do not consider themselves so. According to Winn, such frivolous accusations, which are often scattered on the Internet, are used not to correct the situation and rational dialogue, but to incite the conflict. In another video , she notes that accusations of transfobia, racism or homophobia can be called micro -aggression, but in the same way, micro -aggression are racist, transfobic and homophobic remarks themselves.

Sots and the media only encourage aggressive behavior, because it brings them interactions and, as a result, the data and attention of users that can be used for advertising. The merged internal documents of Facebook show that the policy of the platform and its algorithms stimulated the aggression of users and the spread of fake news, and the company ignored the harassment and calls for violence by VIP users. For example, in 2019, football player Neymar posted naked photos of a woman who accused him of rape. Typically, Facebook banks erotic content and especially the one called porn, but the VIP-status of Neymar did not allow moderators to delete publication. The leadership knew about these problems, but did nothing, because it was afraid that the intervention would reduce the number of interactions with the platform and as a result of advertising capabilities. Similarly, the restriction of the number of characters on Twitter stimulates the simplification of the situation and insecure aggressive disputes.

As a result, users of social networks are divided into groups that constantly attack each other, trying to expose the opponent and stuck in the cycle of an endless conflict. For the same reason, many media are forced to bring clickbeat in the headlines that distort the content of articles, because only this is how users can be attracted. So it is not surprising that the most odious articles about the new ethics that came out on Medusa, Colt and in the Novaya Gazeta, and not more restrained analysis from scientists who claimed the comparisons of new ethics with totalitarianism were stretched and premature, were the most noticeable. However, instead of fighting such simplifications and distortions, most opponents of the abolition culture seem to aggravate them, spreading false and provocative statements.

The other side of the conflicts around the cancellation is companies, which are voiced by the requirements to dismiss the employee. The simplest solution for them is to get rid of the employees who caused public indignation. The easiest way happens in the USA. A wide interpretation of the first amendment to the Constitution implies the protection of freedom of speech and prevents almost any of its restrictions on the part of the state (including “speeches of hatred”). At the same time, the resolution of conflict situations, due to the statement, is given to employers, who weak labor legislation allows you to quite easily get rid of objectionable and problematic employees. In many American companies, any statements about politics are simply prohibited to employees to avoid conflict situations.

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As the border between private life and work is erased with the spread of social networks, employers begin to control what their employees say outside of work. You can find dozens of cases when, for example, the state institutions were subjected to dismissions in Russia, on whose pages on social networks the authorities or concerned parents found some kind of content that they did not like: frank photographs (which include, among other things, even just photographs on the beach), opposition opinions, certificates of belonging to the LGBT community, etc.

A similar situation occurred with the political analyst David Shor, who was dismissed from the Civis Analytics campaign, after during the BLM protests, the pogroms could lower the results of democrats in the elections and a peaceful protest in this regard is more politically effective. The tweet collected about 500 retweets, quotations and comments that it was not that a lot for Twitter, and the reaction to it was more mixed than clearly negative, so it is difficult to say that dismissal occurred due to wide public indignation, as most media did. The company refused to comment, and Shor signed a non -disclosure agreement, but the employees told reporters from VOX that the head of Civis Analytics spoke only about tweet and that one of the customers complained about him.

In most European countries, where socialist movements have historically been much stronger than in the United States, on the contrary, there are both legislative prohibitions on inciting hatred and insults based on identity and wide protection of labor rights. A similar incident occurred in the UK, where an employee of the trading hall Brian Lich was fired from the ASDA retail network, after his colleagues complained about the stand -up repost with an insult to Christians and Muslims on his Facebook account, which also indicates his place of work. However, he challenged the company's decision in court and was restored.

What is characteristic, in Russia, developed labor legislation, which has been obtained from Soviet times, sometimes protects employees from such politically motivated dismissals

The metro officers dismissed after their names were discovered in the merged base of the supporters of Alexei Navalny, managed to challenge the dismissal decisions and return to work. The distribution of temporary labor contracts, on the contrary, makes employees more vulnerable to such arbitrariness. So, the Higher School of Economics was able to easily terminate the contract with her employee Anna Vellikok, who was sent to a special receptionist for a rally in support of the same Navalny, under the pretext that, due to the arrest, she will not be able to fulfill her labor duties. On the other hand, the Russian authorities are quite widely and arbitrarily interpreted by the laws on inciting hatred for certain groups, using them for political repressions: they use and introduce new laws about insulting judges and officials and at the same time ignore the calls to “burn the hearts of gays”.

In Norway, which has been in first place in the world in the democracy index, since the 1980s there has been a rather severe punishment for the hat. There you can get up to three years in prison for it. However, in most cases, the court awards imprisonment within a month and a fine in the region of 15,000 kroons, plus 3,000 kroons for legal costs (in total it turns out about 150,000 rubles). This happened , for example, when a man called a transgender woman on Facebook “an old man with strange fantasies” and a “perverted pig”. The same thing happened to a man who spat in a store in a woman in a hijab, saying that "all Muslims should be killed." In both cases, the accused tried to appeal to the fact that the Constitution of Norway protects freedom of speech, and this argument often pops up in discussions of the laws on the Heppic, especially in Norway. However, the court in its decision referred to the fact that the law protects the free exchange of opinions, and not the freedom of expression of hatred and contempt. At the same time, Norwegian legislation makes dismissal for views and at the request of the public a very difficult procedure.

Missing situations with dismissal are more often found where market relations are less regulated by the state and therefore the principle of “client is always right” comes to the forefront for companies, and not the rationality, rights or interests of the employee

This is most manifested in the field of higher education, which fighters with new ethics also constantly complain, because American students complain and strike for any reason. And this is not surprising, because the education in America is extremely expensive, the general quediation for it is second only to closing a mortgage, and the entire further career of students depends on the outcome of training. So it is natural that students require the creation of the most comfortable conditions for them from the teachers, and the internal rules of the universities are the most bureaucratic and endless commissions in them, carrying out even the most ridiculous complaint, focusing in their decisions more on the scale of indignation than on the seriousness of the accusations.

Despite endless complaints of hypersensitive students, studies show that training at the university on the contrary increases tolerance to other people's eyes and this trend is only intensifying over the years. Most students oppose strict university regulations limiting the possibilities of teachers to express offensive views. People with higher education are more likely to allow racists to teach and conduct public lectures than people without it.

Last year students more support freedom of speech than recently received, and the left -wing ones are more tolerant of other people's views than conservatives

Largely due to the spread of social networks, the world has become more transparent. However, for many people, this transparency means that they have to deal with discontent that they had not heard or did not want to hear before. Everyone becomes known about their unethical behavior, and this bad reputation cannot be escaped anywhere else. As Ekaterina Shulman notes , this situation really resembles the Middle Ages in many ways, but not in the sense of dark centuries and obscurantism, but in the sense that everyone again lives in sight, they know everything about each other and communicate, relying on this knowledge.

This transparency is actually good for democracy, because it makes existing conflicts more obvious and allows you to solve them with non-violent methods. She makes more obvious the fact that without restrictions and rules of public behavior, these conflicts can develop into unproductive forms. So, due to gamergate, during which gamers poisoned and drained the addresses of feminists-journalists who wrote about sexism in the industry, the United States was forced to tighten responsibility for threats on the Internet.

The discussion about the culture of cancellation could become productive if there was a discussion of the vulnerability of employees in its center before the arbitrariness of employers, dependent on the opinions of customers and the public, or a conversation about the construction of social networks that contribute to inciting conflicts for benefit

However, the stars parasitizing on it, which earn in their position the messengers of the sunset of Western civilization, social capital, move all attention to criticism and disagreement, which they are apparently not able to tolerate. Therefore, instead of developing decisions on how to arrange a public space so that it is comfortable for a safe exchange of views, they turned the discourse on the culture of canceling into a conservative beup and a tool to plug opponents.

This is especially noticeable in the Russian part of the discussion, in which the old -Soviet liberals originating from the dissident environment dominate. As the associate professor of the University of New York, Rosen Dzhagalov, the late Soviet and post-Soviet intelligentsia, unlike the intellectual tradition that preceded it, in its fight against socialism began to contrast themselves with the people and all oppressed groups. In a paradoxically, this forced her to oppose the values for which she spoke in words, including against democratic ones. As a result, the liberals suddenly turned out to be on one side of the barricades with a “gender ideology” for long -fighting conservative statesmen, who also create problems, because, unlike television, it is more difficult to control them. As a result, they see a threat of freedom of speech not in state repressions and the persecution of conservative extremist groups, but in “multicultural gender-neutral features”, feminists and LGBT bundles of these repressions undergoing.