Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
Comparing what you choose to see as "cancel culture" to book burning/banning is quite laughable to me.
|
What happens, is you end up with posts like the following, which can be damaging to people, without being a "book burning/banning":
Quote:
|
OTOH, do you feel comfortable posting the image of a page and reading books by an author accused by her children and others of child sexual abuse and rape? Who knew of and did not report her husband's sexual abuse of children?
|
This is clearly an attempt to publicly shame someone. Despite the fact that a followup post said it wasn't shaming, it surely was. What other possible point would there be to say something like that, if it wasn't to disparage someone? If you have to defend the innocence of a question, it probably wasn't so innocent in the first place.
This is evident by it being an impossible question to answer without alluding to having done something wrong. Similar to "Do you enjoy beating your wife?" Yes means you enjoy beating your wife, no means you beat your wife, but do not enjoy it. You are being entrapped, and not given a reasonable exit without implying you have done something wrong. I do consider this a form of shaming, because the desire is to hold a club over someones head, even if that objective is thinly veiled.
All that being said, this particular example of "shaming" is very minor IMHO, and falls more or less into the definition of reasonable discussion. For normal people, something like this would just bounce right off and cause no issues or hard feelings. It was just a slightly cutting bite in a conversation. We all do it all the time. But with today's triggered snowflakes, it might become front page news, get the shamed party fired from their job, and result in protesters chanting outside their house. I am only being half-satirical in that comment. This is what cancel culture is. Taking something to a ridiculous extreme in an attempt to denigrate someone else while elevating the shamer's own status.
Should people be shamed for reading Mein Kampf? Should it be banned? I would emphatically say "no", but I realize there are people who would just as emphatically say "yes". I do not agree with them, but wish them no harm for their differing viewpoint. I may personally have zero desire to read it, and that is my choice. But it shouldn't be for others to choose for me. Or to denigrate me if I did choose to read it.