“Canceling” people who disagree with you over ordinary political issues is bad for civil society. Ruining someone’s life because he wore a MAGA cap or tweeted something stupid or supported the wrong initiative creates an oppressive environment for open discourse.
“Canceling” people who sign petitions and hold up signs that openly celebrate or justify the targeted, brutal murders of women and babies, on the other hand, is good for civil society. Stopping malevolent ideas from being normalized is good. Exercising your First Amendment right to free speech and free association to shun and call out people who spread odious ideas in public life is a moral imperative.
Because people who walk around ripping down posters of kidnapped children and women aren’t pondering the future of a “two-state solution” or the Gazan refugee situation, they are moral degenerates. In the same way you wouldn’t hire the guy who stands in front of Disney World waving around a swastika flag, you shouldn’t hire someone who marches with a sign that reads “from the river to the sea.” Both convey the same sentiment. The ethical line is bright and obvious. If you don’t see it, something is broken in you.
Yet, a bunch of Hamas apologists are calling out conservatives for their alleged hypocrisy on “cancel culture” when it comes to “pro-Palestinian” advocates.
Though I’m not a fan of mobs, I’ve never been a big critic of cancel culture, either. Looking back, I could find only one piece I’ve written on the topic — and it concerned itself with double standards. It’s a slippery term. And there is a facet to the debate that’s often overlooked. Americans have no obligation to associate with those who attack their deep-seated values. To hire someone who signs a pro-Hamas petition can be an endorsement of that outlook. Your company is not an open social media platform that exists as a forum for debate; it has a reputation and customers. (Not that I believe the state should be able to compel social media companies to host opinions, either.)
And it’s not as if you asked these people to give you their opinion on genocide. They did so by their own volition. The Harvard petitions blaming Jews for their own murders were signed and released for public consumption. They were released before Israel had even counted the dead, much less invaded Gaza. If law students were celebrating 9/11 on 9/12, would New York firms have a responsibility to provide them with gainful employment? No, they would be rejected in the real world and compelled to get jobs in academia, where such views are welcome.
Of course, the contention that “pro-Palestinian” advocates, or even those who talk about Israel as if it was some authoritarian proto-Nazi state, are being mass canceled is a myth, anyway. They fill the op-ed pages of major newspapers and cable news. They dominate campuses. They aren’t canceled. They are rewarded. When someone like “porn star” Mia Khalifa was “canceled,” it is because she was quite literally rejoicing in the murder of innocent people in real time.
Ibrahim Bharmal, who one suspects is dumber than the average internet prostitute, is the editor of the Harvard Law Review, not some rando trying to wind people up on the internet. He is out there physically and verbally abusing a Jewish student during a pro-Hamas rally on campus like some kind of brownshirt. Does Harvard have a responsibility to have him on campus? Why should a firm with Jewish partners — or any decent people — hire him?
Harvard, by the way, has assembled a special task force to help students who signed pro-Hamas statements deal with the blowback. Apparently, some people are under the impression they’re the only ones allowed to speak.
The notion that anti-Israel pundits are concerned about double standards, by the way, is risible. You might recall that Harvard rescinded its offer to pro-Second Amendment Parkland kid Kyle Kashuv, ostensibly over things he tweeted as a 16-year-old. No one cared. Today, Georgetown thinks it’s fine to cancel Ilya Shapiro for a single inarticulate tweet, but it will not cancel a professor who complains online about “Zio bitches.” The New York Times cancels an editor for running a column from a sitting senator but hires a writer who praises Hitler. (He’s on the Israel beat. True story.)
I’m a free-speech absolutist. The state should do absolutely nothing to inhibit or censor pro-Hamas Americans from expressing their opinions. Free speech isn’t contingent on your position. Hate speech is free speech. The government has no business prodding or even suggesting limitations on our rhetorical interactions. Even outside state intervention, we should be upholding the values that promote free expression. We can peacefully coexist with colleagues, neighbors and friends who hold contradictory opinions within the normal parameters of political debate.
Likewise, Americans have a right to use their freedom to call out and disassociate themselves from people who take the side with nihilistic murder cults.
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David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books — the most recent, “Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent.” His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on Twitter @davidharsanyi.
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“The state should do absolutely nothing to inhibit or censor pro-Hamas Americans from expressing their opinions.”,,,but they do have an obligation to take out the trash and clean our streets and universities of production blocking street protests by masked people of unaccountability, too cowardly to let THE PEOPLE see their identities, which unmasked just might serve to restrict the level of the violence they perpetrate upon innocent others. In times of war, and we are at war, you never allow the enemy a platform that promotes your own national destruction. Other people’s freedom stops where your nose begins, unless you are a mindless masochist who enjoys his own pain and self-destruction. Let the offenders be the ones whose noses bleed, not the peaceful people who just follow the laws who just want to be left alone to live their own lives as they see fit, not politically pressed on all sides.
THESE terrorist lovers, shouldn’t just be cancelled, BUT BE EXILED from america.
Unless I’m misunderstanding article he says just call out / disassociate from murder cults & supporters?
He must not have noticed that without govt &/or responsible authorities forceful intervention it is impossible for citizens to ignore, call out or disassociate from large mobs hounding, berating & physically threatening them on public streets & school campuses for whatever cause or reason they choose to get insanely belligerent & angry about.
What we have been subjected to in recent years is unlawful speech & protests that incite people to form mobs to intimidate & inflict fear, terror & property destruction on the general public.
Authorities don’t have to permit or tolerate unauthorized mobs taking over the streets & disrupting commerce & free movement rights of the public at large They may not be able to arrest all of them but they can & should use high powered water cannons & other means to disperse them as needed.
Colleges don’t have to tolerate students or faculty who are uncivil, disruptive or obstruct the ability of anyone to learn without fear or intimidation, which is the sole purpose of a school. They can & should expel students & fire faculty who engage in such conduct.
WHat ever happened to folks needing to get PERMITS to protest??? OR are things like that no longer required?
Those people in this country on visas do not enjoy the same freedoms as citizens. The law clearly states that if these people engage in certain activities, including violent protests, their visas are to be cancelled and deported. Not all the monkeys are in a zoo
ASSUMING we had folks in the govt, willing to ENFORCE the laws…
Unfortunately they only seem to want to do that, when its CONSERVATIVES breaking the law.
Also, the other year, when those truckers in Canada were out protesting, and folks HERE financed them, THEY GOT SET UP ON BY banks, sites and the like, for DARING TO do so?
SO WHERE are the same folks, going after these domestic terrorist FINANCERS!???