10 Comments

Hi Greg, thank you so much for the book you have written. The in-depth research, case studies and non-biased approach is really appreciated. I am learning a lot from this book. Thank you!

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Cancel culture is not talked about enough ! Thank you for this !

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Keep hammering away. One of the brilliant successes of Mel Brooks was his effective ridicule of the whole Nazi shtick. How about a rerun on woke shtick?

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founding

Dear Greg - and Rikki!

Thank you for your recent lecture in San Francisco and a couple of nice signatures in my book, which I have now read.

I think your work is the reference summary of present woes and a model of rigorous non-partisanship.

You bring out every point so well and with the best possible evidence at your fingertips.

What stands out for me is that there is one particular dynamic within the large scale social phenomenon you describe that creates the ultimate fortress:

An ideology shaped language system has taken shape, whatever its history or influences (and we all know what it sounds like by now). It is easily download into susceptible brains, and does at least three things:

1) speaking from within that system provides proof of membership and “having done the work”

2) provides the speaker with a ‘feeling of understanding’ of any phenomena that can be framed within that system or seen through that filter.

and 3) provides dogmatic cover for every single cognitive distortion you have discerned - every one of them!

So these distortions are now features, requirements for seeing reality, not bugs or shortcuts to winning arguments or simple manifestations of tribalism.

- Black vs. white/ good vs evil (combined into one for convenience).

- Emotional thinking (enshrined in viewpoint epistemology)

- Catastrophic thinking/fragility (maximal catastrophic force can be delivered by minimal means invisible to the uninitiated)

- Projection (safety if it is us, violence if it is you)

- Mind-reading (if you disagree you have internalized whiteness - without knowing it)

and so on…

It is really amazing to behold.

Thank you for your tireless effort!

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I love you man.

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Looking forward to the delivery of your book. Is there a chapter on Bari Weiss? Many consider her the architect of cancellation blueprint that leftists have adopted.

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Big fan of the new book. Excellently researched!

Question: Is there a line you would draw for cancel culture? Would you be ok with canceling, say, known Nazis?

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See National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie. Free speech is free speech.

That said, I wouldn't hire anyone who took part. Accountability is a thing, too. See the current bruhaha with law firms and pro-Hamas law students. I'm on the law firm side: You're free to support whomever you'd like, but we don't want you working here. Is that "cancelling"?

I respect FIRE a lot, but their mission is somewhere between Sisyphean and Quixotic.

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Greg, do you calculate the prevalence of cancellation incidents in the book?

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author

There is a TON of data in the book

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