A Letter on Justice and Open Debate

[Gary Webb]

Has anyone read Kanye’s interview: 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2020/07/08/kanye-west-says-hes-done-with-trump-opens-up-about-white-house-bid-damaging-biden-and-everything-in-between/#488b548047aa

I kind of missed the whole Kanye thing. Some younger friends are fans, and I’ve read some very esoteric social media discussions about his albums. I probably disagree with about 99 % of what he says, but I admire his spirit. The whole interview kind of reads like Ned Beatty’s The Sellout. 

The birthday party lol... but it would be foolish to underestimate him, in 2016 this would be dismissed as laughable nonsense... in 2020 he gets an interview in Forbes... in 2024? 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 8, 2020, at 7:25 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> It is.
> 
> Like all those political purity tests I read about in the "bad' movements
> of history, LOL.
> 
> 
> 
>> On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 7:15 AM Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> I know that one of the signers taking her name off is a trans advocate,
>> for whom the presence of JKRowling and Jesse Signal probably represent a
>> bridge too far (causing her to demand that her name be removed AND beg her
>> Twitter followers to please forgive her for the incalculable damage that
>> affixing her name to such a diabolical document has no doubt already
>> wrought upon The CommunityTM.
>> 
>> It's all just so ridiculously lunatic.
>> 
>> Jerky
>> 
>>> On Wed, Jul 8, 2020, 7:06 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Agree, Hasty and virtually ad hoc..and FOR intellectuals in the PUBLIC
>>> SPHERE--see Habermas---
>>> and academic sphere mostly. I doubt if he was asked.
>>> 
>>> What is so unexpectedly infuriating is how contentious this has already
>>> become, Matty
>>> Yglesias has been complained to his mannagement about BY A COLLEAGUE....??
>>> 
>>> A couple other "liberals" are now regretting they signed because of some
>>> non-liberals (it seems) who signed, which
>>> is kinda self-refuting, no?
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 6:37 AM Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> i dunno... the list of signatures is actually kind of small, in my
>>>> opinion.
>>>> Small enough that I don't consider the lack of Pynchon's name (or
>>>> Delillo's, or Vollmann's, or Price's, all of whom have actually
>>>> contributed
>>>> pieces to Harper's in recent years) to be particularly noteworthy.
>>>> 
>>>> For what it's worth, I agree with the general sentiment of the letter
>>>> AND I
>>>> wear antifa t-shirts tees (figuratively... I don't actually own any
>>>> sloganwear),
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers!
>>>> yer old pal Jerky
>>>> 
>>>> On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 6:24 AM Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
>>>> lorentzen at hotmail.de>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> So many smart people signed this necessary letter, --- Pynchon didn't.
>>>>> Was he just too lazy? Didn't they ask him? Or does he really wear
>>>>> 'antifa'-t-shirts?
>>>>> 
>>>>> + Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful
>>>>> protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands
>>>>> for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and
>>>>> inclusion across our society, not least in higher education,
>>>> journalism,
>>>>> philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also
>>>>> intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that
>>>>> tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences
>>>> in
>>>>> favor of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development,
>>>> we
>>>>> also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism
>>>> are
>>>>> gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in
>>>> Donald
>>>>> Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must
>>>>> not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which
>>>>> right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion
>>>>> we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant
>>>>> climate that has set in on all sides.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal
>>>>> society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to
>>>>> expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more
>>>>> widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for
>>>>> public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex
>>>>> policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of
>>>>> robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now
>>>>> all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in
>>>>> response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More
>>>>> troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage
>>>>> control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead
>>>>> of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial
>>>>> pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are
>>>>> barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for
>>>>> quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for
>>>>> circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of
>>>>> organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes.
>>>>> Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has
>>>>> been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the
>>>>> threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk
>>>>> aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their
>>>>> livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient
>>>>> zeal in agreement.
>>>>> 
>>>>> This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of
>>>>> our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government
>>>>> or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and
>>>>> makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to
>>>>> defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by
>>>> trying
>>>>> to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between
>>>> justice
>>>>> and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need
>>>> a
>>>>> culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even
>>>>> mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith
>>>> disagreement
>>>>> without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very
>>>>> thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the
>>>>> state to defend it for us. +
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
>>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>> 
>>> 
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l