Right wing cancel culture at it again.

[Batmanisaplaceinturkey]

This really is a scary time for free speech.

Another example right wing hypocrisy when it comes to free speech:

Jimmy Kimmel Live! suspended indefinitely after host’s Charlie Kirk comments https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/sep/18/jimmy-kimmel-live-suspended-indefinitely-after-hosts-charlie-kirk-comments?CMP=share_btn_url

Do you remember when the left, Kimmel included tried to cancel this young man?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/21/new-video-confrontation-kentucky-students-native-american

Zero sympathy to hypocrites

Fair point

Apologies. I should have been clearer! I didn't mean to imply America/all Americans were the problem.

The current administration means immigrants don’t have free speech though, I agree.

i know many young people on F1 visa who have shut all but basic social media down, never comment on current affairs, and make sure they are not on campus if there are any protests etc.

the risk to their visas, scholarships, and actual freedom is too high.

one positive is that even in red states university towns tend to lean less right. it’s an unfunny joke that if any of their US friends need $10k for their tuition they can phone the ICE hotline….

😔
.I think part of the reason why what is happening is so shocking/being talked about so much is precisely because America's constitution is so strong on this. America actually has far more protection of free speech in theory than lots of other countries so it seems worse. Sort of "if it could happen there is could happen anywhere" kind of thing. Although people in the UK are being arrested for projecting images onto buildings so probably shouldn't talk.

No, I do not recall Kimmell trying to cancel Nick Sandmann.

And, even if he had, I certainly don't recall Jimmy Kimmell ever being in government.

I wish the OP hasn't referred to cancel culture in the thread title, because what's happening now is not cancel culture, it's state censorship (I.e. an actual attack on free speech).

I don't get people saying it's karma and 'serves them right'.

Some members of the progressive left have always been up front about shutting down opinions they don't like, because they think they cause harm. Getting people fired from their jobs, banned from places or denied opportunities is par for the course for them. They say 'you have free speech, but free speech is not freedom from consequences'.

While I don't believe in an absolute right to free speech - fraud, libel, bullying etc. should not be tolerated - I was always uncomfortable with cancel culture. Not least because I could have fallen foul of it, as a gender critical person.

The right, on the other hand, made free speech their rallying cry. Their key policy. They were all about free speech. Musk promised to support anyone who got into trouble for their opinions on Twitter.

That's why what they're doing now is so shockingly hypocritical. It's like Christians suddenly converting to atheism because it suits them. The 'karma' argument is nonsense. The right have shown they don't believe what they've been saying all this time, and to be frank they don't deserve to get their credibility back.

The right, on the other hand, made free speech their rallying cry.
It is worth noting, though, that the hypocrisy isn't new.

The left did engage in cancel culture more that the right in the 2010s, but the right definitely engaged in it too. In the US, arguably the highest profile cancellatiation of the decade was the right wing cancelling Colik Kaepernick, for "disrespecting the flag".

Musk is a great example in that censorship on Twitter has significantly increased since he bought it.

The right have never cared about free speech, they've just become very adept at playing the victim.

The left seem to do that last part ‘playing the victim’

Not like the right.

The right were, for decades and decades, the side of the spectrum that restricted free speech. Conservatives supported anti-blasphemy laws, censorship of sexual content, cancelling of people (or criminalizing them) for being gay or supporting "gayness", suppression of Communist speech (particularly in the US), suppression of anti-military protests, etc, etc.

For about 10 years, although conservatives still engaged in "cancel culture", they briefly found themselves being the group more likely to be on the receiving end of social consequences for certain speech. They screamed about how they were being victimized and suddenly professed to care about Free Speech. Of course, that was dishonest too, because cancel culture usually isn't a restriction on free speech (free speech being the right to be free from government censorship, not from backlash from public opinion).

Musk, a so called "Free Speech Absolutionist" then bought Twitter, ramped up the censorship massively (targetting the left), and yet the right still played the victim.

Now, Trump is actually restricting free speech - in a gross and petty way, unparalleled in modern democracies - and the right justify it be their perceived sense of victimhood.

The right have always hated free speech, that they falsely pretended to be the victims of left wing restrictions on free speech was laughable - but, with so much of the media being right-wing owned, they're excellent at peddling lies.

It's noteworthy how few people on the right seem to understand what free speech even is.

Heck, the phrase "cancel culture" wasn't even coined until the right felt they were the victims of it. It was a clever bit of spin by the right wing media - something they are, admittedly, good at.

Musk is a great example in that censorship on Twitter has significantly increased since he bought it.

Does Bluesky censor posts? (Genuine question - I’ve never looked at Bluesky and I haven’t been on twitter for ages).

@Barbadossunset you will be kicked off Bluesky for misgendering someone and asserting that humans can’t change sex etc. As used to the case with Twitter before Elon Musk bought it.

@AzurePanda really? Wow, so Bluesky and Twitter are as bad as each other.
Mumsnet allows most views, but some comments in the D Telegraph wouldn’t last 2 minutes on here.

Not exactly, Bluesky does not even have centralized moderation, and instead its moderation is community driven (on a server-by-server basis). Users can be banned from a specific Bluesky server, but not the platform entirely.

Not my experience, Cathy Devine for example is an active Bluesky poster and has never been censored in any way.

One way to protest Disney (parent of ABC) is to cancel Disney Plus, trips to Disney Land and Disney World and Disney Cruises. I note the stock is only down $1 or so. 🙄
Ohhh the apathy.

In fairness, there are some right wing, free speech, Podcast Bros who are, surprisingly, complaining about this. Along the lines of "we are meant to be about free speech,". Its interesting to see the split. Or maybe they are libertarians and not right wing. I guess they aren't the ones in power anyway. I completely agree with your main point about the hypocrisy.

There is a long list of GC users who have been kicked off Bluesky for trans related infractions as there used to be routinely on Twitter before Elon Musk took it over. Examples include Sall Grover, Billboard Chris, Justin Benson, Charles Weber, Jordan Schachtel together with accounts such as End Wokeness, Libs of Tik Tok and many more. This no longer happens on X.

Actually I think you're on Neptune by now...

It's hypocrisy to complain about left wing cancel culture and then glorify in doing exactly the same. Or to claim moral superiority

Amen.

I don’t believe that for a moment.

@ThatDreamyLemonBiscuit

They screamed about how they were being victimized and suddenly professed to care about Free Speech. Of course, that was dishonest too, because cancel culture usually isn't a restriction on free speech (free speech being the right to be free from government censorship, not from backlash from public opinion).

I think that's a car crash of a paragraph.

FoS isn't limited to freedom from government censorship, unless you are purely talking about the rights granted by a particular law, e.g. the American 1st amendment. It is a broader concept and widely understood. If a concerted bunch of activists seek to destroy any individual who openly says X then that is an attack of freedom of speech

And this idea that the right "screamed" and "suddenly pretended to care" is just pushing the old cliche that no one in history has had principles or believed in freedom of speech for themselves and political opponents. But of course plenty of people left and right actually believed in FOS.

If a concerted bunch of activists seek to destroy any individual who openly says X then that is an attack of freedom of speech.

This. If someone loses their job such as Maya Forstater or the Batley schoolteacher who was forced with his family into hiding despite neither having broken the law then surely they have been victims of censorship.

I disagree. Freedom of speech is a human right, and rights exist as between people and the government. There are only a couple of instances (things like defamation, harrassment, and alike) where a citizen have a recourse against another citizen in a way that limits speech.

You'll get a couple of philosophers that talk about the need for speech to be unrestricted in public discourse (e.g., John Stewart Locke) but I can't think of any point in society when that has actually been in effect - usually, because the right deemed certain speech to be unconscionable ("promotion" of homosexuality, blasphemy, or anything else antithetical to "conservative values").

There was a stretch of about 10 years where "unconscionable" speech did not align with conservative values. At that point, the right (by which I really mean politicians and the media) suddenly declared themselves ardent defenders of free speech (previously more a liberal value). However, even during that period, many of the same folks who presented themselves as free speech champions either engaged in cancel culture or attempted far more radical ways to silence their political opposition.

This being a US thread, the right (and yes, the same outlets of politicians that called themselves free speech defenders:

• led high profile "cancel culture" campaigns - Colin Kaepernick was probably the highest profile cancelation of the 2010s, because he dared kneel during the national anthem to protest racism;

• removed masses of books from libraries;

• published lists of political enemies (e.g., Charlie Kirk's organization published lists of university professors who espoused left wing views, who would then be subject to harrassment and death threats;

• extremists engaged in widespread political violence and murders - if it does prove that Kirk's killer was informed by left wing views (as seems likely), then its one of a tiny minority. 95%+ of political violence and killing being committed by the right (although now, in the wake of Kirk's killing, its suddenly objectionable).

• the big one - they tried to overthrow democracy, to extinguish the most important act of expression in a democracy- the right to vote. Free speech defender Charlie Kirk was part of that.

And, of course, now that they're (back) in power in the US, they're pursuing the most sustained attack on free speech seen in our lifetimes, with many (not all) cheering it on.

So yes, I find it impossible to accept that large segments of the right - particularly those who engaged in cancel culture or supported widespread and sometimes radical attacks against freedom of speech - genuinely and sincerely cared about free speech, even if they loudly and regularly purported to.

Obviously, that doesnt apply to everyone on the right, but it does apply to right wing politicians and media in the US in general.

FoS is a concept that can be understood outside of any legal framework.

The existence of some hypocritical people in US politics doesn't disprove the ideal of freedom of speech that millions of people understand, believe in and attempt to live up to. I find it frustrating when people make the assertion that "no one really believes in FoS for people they disagree with". I think its usually just a confession.

And I think you meant John Stuart Mill, not Locke.