Thank you for sharing your "struggle session." It was a time of righteous indignation and gleeful viciousness. It lingers but seems to be retreating.
I have questions: With the benefits of time and perspective, would you do anything differently? Would you stand your ground from day one? Does the perception of weakness invite attacks from progressive intolerance? If you place yourself back at the start, what would you do?
Hi Demian. Great questions! I’ve asked myself the same many time since the cancellation. With hindsight, I would still take the time to interrogate my choices as a publisher, but if I was convinced I’d made the right decision, I’d absolutely stand my ground, make one brief statement, and log off social media. Acquiescing and apologising is the worst thing you can do — blood in the water! Plus, I regret all the time I spent trying to negotiate with bad faith players. That was time taken away from what’s important in life. On the upside, I learnt a lot!
Brilliant. In my business career, i started several companies from scratch. From nothing. Over time, I found it useful to adopt the mantra of "never apologize, never explain."
Why? It sounds ruthless and cold, but it is actually quite healthy: we go forward from here. It doesn't mean we don't listen. Listening well is key. Learning is key.
But it's about what we do next. No hand wringing. No second guessing. No one wants to hear it. No one. It's a part of leadership.
This is not an example of the "excesses of woke". This is the essence and consequence of woke, DEI, Postmodernism, Progressivism. All are manifest narcissism. The people who fall into this cult are zombies who, as you have experienced, turn on anyone who reveals a shred of humanity.
Sadly you see this mindset being perpetuated and enhanced in things like NaNoWriMo, where you're essentially cast out if you refuse to identify using the correct sequence of letters or have the temerity to write something other than "gender-questioning science fiction or dystopian queer fantasy." It's profoundly depressing to me to see the humanities, who over the years have flourished in a climate of tolerance and acceptance, so soundly rejecting those very principles. That they don't appear to comprehend what they're doing only deepens the depression.
Couldn’t agree more, Steve. Writers and those in the humanities are in the business of ideas, and it’s beyond dispiriting (and rather boring) to have entered a phase when the expression of dissenting ideas is verboten. Let’s bring back robust debate rather than ad hominem attacks!
My sympathy, and my praise for your courage and resilience.
Mentioning Simon Leys, the father of your stalwart friend, took me back. I was involved in the intellectual struggle against Communism on campus as a student. Maoism was chic with revolutionary poseurs, and Leys' book "Chinese Shadows" provided major support for my arguments and polemics.
Leftist academics and pressmen, especially in France, blasted Leys mercilessly at the time of his book. It seems like fortitude runs in the Ryckmans family.
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and recollections, Terry. I passed your message onto my friend Jeanne (Ley’s daughter) and she was extremely touched. Fortitude absolutely runs in that family!
I am so sorry this happened to you. I have experience with cancellation myself, and it is terrible. Please feel free to reach out if you need a friendly pen pal. I am at kindsvatter.aaron@gmail.com. Reading your work reminded me of what I gained as a result of my cancellation and I thank you for reminding me of it.
Hi Aaron. Thank you for your kind message. I’m very sorry to hear of your experiences too. I just read your FAIR article about the impact of CSJ ideology on therapy and about the organisation you’ve founded to combat the deleterious effects on patients — wow! That’s such a powerful and practical solution. I also just did a quick Google search and read briefly about your experience at the University of Vermont. You’ve been through a lot! But I was heartened by this quote you gave in the Washington Times: “You say I’m a racist and my only salvation is to buy into your ideology? … I do not find wisdom there; I find its opposite. Pretending I find wisdom in these authors would cause me a kind of spiritual sickness.” That is exactly how I felt during my cancellation — as painful as it was, to have bought into an ideology that goes against every fibre of my being would have been much more painful, and worse, spiritually poisonous. Thank you so much for reading my article and responding. It feels miraculous to be connecting with others around the world such as yourself. 🙏🏼
The moment they called themselves "FilipinX", they relegated themselves to hopelessly full of crap. FilipinX is as absurd, acceptable and rare amongst those it denotes as LatinX. What hypocrites to accuse you of white supremacy when they've aided and abetted linguistic imperialism. I can guarantee none of them speak Tagalog as a first language.
That said, I can empathize with you as someone who works in the film industry. My right leaning politics have had me cancelled from a once promising cinematography career. So I get it. But please, whatever you do in the future, and you may realize this by now after your ordeal, apologizing when you've done no wrong to those suffering from Post Modern madness syndrome, always backfires. The apology does nothing to fulfill their sense of justice. It's but an unsatisfactory tribute to be paid at their behest for eternity or until they find a new oppressor du jour. Also, an apology in your case is taken as an admission of guilt - punishment at the discretion of your accuser.
But unfortunately, you set the table for this fracas. By purposefully catering to "marginalized" voices as opposed to just relying on the merit of the work, author's demographics be damned, lets the cats into the hen house. The moment anyone prefaces their argument, position or art with "as a ...(fill in the blank with any marginalized or intersectional profile)", that whatever comes next is built on shaky grounds.
Maybe in Verity Las resurrected form, how about publish the works of blind submissions like the way great symphonies and opera houses audition behind a curtain? I have to believe there will be donors willing to fund an artistic endeavor based on the work and nothing but the work.
Wise words! I’ve come to the same conclusions after my experience. I’m sorry you’ve had to as well. It’s so against everything I ever wanted or expected from being involved in the arts. On the upside, Verity La is now slowly rising from her ashes as Verity La La, and we will indeed be auditioning from behind the curtain! Thank you.
I'll look out for hit. I'm sure you'll rise as a stronger and better publication. And who knows, it may break out to a wider audience. As the success of many a heterodox platform shows, there's a hunger for arts and discourse forged outside a bubble. Ask Joe Rogan.
Unfortunately , this has been the case everywhere. The so-called "progressive" and so called "left" have built the scaffolding for censorship and oppression. I used to call myself left and progressive. I'm still a lefty, but in an older lefty sense. Not so much identitarian, but class conscious (you know, let's help the poor and disadvantaged, deal with housing, homelessness, etc., rather than having identity fights among the intellectual and political elite). These extreme, self-serving ideologues are okay with censorship and authoritarian politics, as long as it's coming from them. Very sorry that you had to go through such a brutal social pillory.
I’m with you, Alex! I also feel as if old-school lefties need to unite and reassert a middle way. I’m Gen X and its feels like my generation has ducked our heads, not wanting to get too political or too involved. It’s the job of the young to revolt, and the job of the older generations to hold the reins steady. I wish more of us would step up. Thanks so much for your thoughtful response and kind words.
I'm also Gen X, and I don't feel we ducked our heads as much as we gave up after not being heard in discussions. Boomers pretty much ignored us from birth, and once the "Wonder Generation" of Millennials showed up we were simply outnumbered. You saw Xers make major impacts in things like tech and the like, but politics simply didn't appeal to many (plus it was the preserve of the Boomers). By the time they started clamoring for "fresh voices" they were looking more at Millennials (Boomers trying relive their '60s life through them, perhaps). I do wish more of us would step up, but I'm not sure they'd like what we have to say.
As an aside on the authoritarian thing, as I've commented before too many seem to forget the roots of much of this identitarian stuff lie firmly in the National Socialist Party. Immutable characteristics defined by a concept (race) that doesn't have serious scientific validity, using color labels, pushing people out who disagree and happen to have the wrong background. It's also frequently overlooked that intellectuals also bought into that movement. National Socialist sentiment was strong in the German university system (even if some of it was the precursor Volkish movement), and many leaders within the SS and SD came from academic backgrounds (doctors, lawyers, professors, and so on). Public shaming (cancellation these days) was also a common tactic used by the National Socialist Party.
Thanks, Steve. I wrote an essay exploring the origins of "woke" and authoritarianism on the left (unfortunately I think they've now put it behind a paywall: https://www.wetheblacksheep.com/p/griftivism-how-activists-profit-off), however, I hadn't considered the National Socialistic Party. Interesting!
If you go back to the 1920s and 1930s, many of the tactics used by the authoritarian left are strikingly similar to those used by the NSDAP during and after their rise to power. Switch a few words around, and many of the slogans and talking points used by the authoritarian Left could easily come from Goebbles. These are essentially movements founded in identity politics, and both identify specific groups (based entirely on their origins) as being evil or somehow debased and a menace to their idea of society.
Frankly, like Alex, I think class is a much more valuable basis for discussion, since poor is poor regardless of what identity label you want to slap on people who are poor.
If you can ever access an article by George Packard in the Atlantic (I can't remember the name of it right now) in which he translates a paragraph or two from a novel about an poor Indian family into DEI language. It's hilarious, depressing, and accurate. Poor people know they are poor, whatever you choose to call it.
I’m so sorry for all the horrible behavior of your colleagues and “friends” and how they treated you, Michelle! They almost took your whole life away from you and got your journal shut down all because they didn’t like some unspecified thing you wrote they saw as racist and sexist. It’s sad how far the arts have fallen in the Western world! Art is about expressing yourself and universal moral messages we all as human beings can relate to. Not pushing political agendas or playing identity politics! The way you and your staff was treated was simply shocking and vile! Ironically, these radical leftist nutcases were hurting some of the very people of color they claimed to care so much about. I also don’t see how an interracial romance between a white Australian and a Filipino woman could be racist or offensive. In that case, wouldn’t the person being offended be the racist? Woke logic for you!
Thank you, Noah! I really appreciate your response. I didn’t actually even write the story, just published it — but that was apparently enough. The whole woke thing is so bad for the arts. I hope the tide is turning!
Read Rene Girard if you haven’t already….scapegoating to the max. So sorry this happened to you, but these people are catastrophic and they wanted to demonstrate that they had the power to destroy you and your success….and they look in the mirror and proclaim their virtue…such is their truly meaningless narcissistic life.
Hi Janice. Thanks so much, I’ll definitely look up Girard. Yep, it took me a long time to realise that what happened was just a narcissist take-down cloaked in virtue signalling. A lesson hard learnt!
Welcome to the party. This too will pass and you will emerge rejuvenated while they will remain bitter, angry and delusional.
If I may take the opportunity, I would like to add some food for thought: there is no such thing as "marginalized," and there is no such thing as a power imbalance in a relationship, at least not in the woke sense. Western democracies are the least "marginalizing" the world has ever known, and power does not emanate from one's immutable characteristics, nor is it at play as often as neomarxists like to claim and certainly not in the manner they claim.
Thanks, Gerald — very happy to join the party! The crowd here is much nicer and much more fun. And your ‘food for thought’ is palatable and born of wisdom. Much appreciated.
I’m so sorry this happened to you too. How very unjust. I am gobsmacked by the poets and writers who don’t see how cult like the “narrative” and their behavior are. But there were roots in the 70’s in the literary community, though there was still fairness. (I got my MFA despite how difficult the program was, the focus wasn’t just craft but vision.)
Thanks so much, Katie. I feel really lucky to have gone to uni in the late 80s when the free exchange of ideas was encouraged — it was really exciting! I’d love to help bring that back for young people.
I hear you. As a composition teacher at a university I worked at teaching them to think and question. Godspeed with your work helping young people with that. Thanks for subscribing too.
What is happening in Australia is a mirror image - but with some different cultural roots - to what has been happening in Scotland's poetry - and wider literary - world. Many thanks for publishing Michele's account. There is an extremely high human cost to being on the receiving end of this type of behaviour and it is high-time that writers who value freedom of expression, nuance, and - heck - getting things 'wrong' sometimes (!) make a firm decision not to be part of any of it.
Thank you for sharing your "struggle session." It was a time of righteous indignation and gleeful viciousness. It lingers but seems to be retreating.
I have questions: With the benefits of time and perspective, would you do anything differently? Would you stand your ground from day one? Does the perception of weakness invite attacks from progressive intolerance? If you place yourself back at the start, what would you do?
Hi Demian. Great questions! I’ve asked myself the same many time since the cancellation. With hindsight, I would still take the time to interrogate my choices as a publisher, but if I was convinced I’d made the right decision, I’d absolutely stand my ground, make one brief statement, and log off social media. Acquiescing and apologising is the worst thing you can do — blood in the water! Plus, I regret all the time I spent trying to negotiate with bad faith players. That was time taken away from what’s important in life. On the upside, I learnt a lot!
Brilliant. In my business career, i started several companies from scratch. From nothing. Over time, I found it useful to adopt the mantra of "never apologize, never explain."
Why? It sounds ruthless and cold, but it is actually quite healthy: we go forward from here. It doesn't mean we don't listen. Listening well is key. Learning is key.
But it's about what we do next. No hand wringing. No second guessing. No one wants to hear it. No one. It's a part of leadership.
I like that, Demian. As a lifelong ruminator, I'm now endeavouring to do the same!
This is not an example of the "excesses of woke". This is the essence and consequence of woke, DEI, Postmodernism, Progressivism. All are manifest narcissism. The people who fall into this cult are zombies who, as you have experienced, turn on anyone who reveals a shred of humanity.
Oof. Touché, Tim. Spot on.
Sadly you see this mindset being perpetuated and enhanced in things like NaNoWriMo, where you're essentially cast out if you refuse to identify using the correct sequence of letters or have the temerity to write something other than "gender-questioning science fiction or dystopian queer fantasy." It's profoundly depressing to me to see the humanities, who over the years have flourished in a climate of tolerance and acceptance, so soundly rejecting those very principles. That they don't appear to comprehend what they're doing only deepens the depression.
Couldn’t agree more, Steve. Writers and those in the humanities are in the business of ideas, and it’s beyond dispiriting (and rather boring) to have entered a phase when the expression of dissenting ideas is verboten. Let’s bring back robust debate rather than ad hominem attacks!
Thank you for speaking out.
Thank you so much for reading.
My sympathy, and my praise for your courage and resilience.
Mentioning Simon Leys, the father of your stalwart friend, took me back. I was involved in the intellectual struggle against Communism on campus as a student. Maoism was chic with revolutionary poseurs, and Leys' book "Chinese Shadows" provided major support for my arguments and polemics.
Leftist academics and pressmen, especially in France, blasted Leys mercilessly at the time of his book. It seems like fortitude runs in the Ryckmans family.
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and recollections, Terry. I passed your message onto my friend Jeanne (Ley’s daughter) and she was extremely touched. Fortitude absolutely runs in that family!
I am so sorry this happened to you. I have experience with cancellation myself, and it is terrible. Please feel free to reach out if you need a friendly pen pal. I am at kindsvatter.aaron@gmail.com. Reading your work reminded me of what I gained as a result of my cancellation and I thank you for reminding me of it.
Hi Aaron. Thank you for your kind message. I’m very sorry to hear of your experiences too. I just read your FAIR article about the impact of CSJ ideology on therapy and about the organisation you’ve founded to combat the deleterious effects on patients — wow! That’s such a powerful and practical solution. I also just did a quick Google search and read briefly about your experience at the University of Vermont. You’ve been through a lot! But I was heartened by this quote you gave in the Washington Times: “You say I’m a racist and my only salvation is to buy into your ideology? … I do not find wisdom there; I find its opposite. Pretending I find wisdom in these authors would cause me a kind of spiritual sickness.” That is exactly how I felt during my cancellation — as painful as it was, to have bought into an ideology that goes against every fibre of my being would have been much more painful, and worse, spiritually poisonous. Thank you so much for reading my article and responding. It feels miraculous to be connecting with others around the world such as yourself. 🙏🏼
Sounds like you have your own story to tell. And that you’re very generous.
The moment they called themselves "FilipinX", they relegated themselves to hopelessly full of crap. FilipinX is as absurd, acceptable and rare amongst those it denotes as LatinX. What hypocrites to accuse you of white supremacy when they've aided and abetted linguistic imperialism. I can guarantee none of them speak Tagalog as a first language.
That said, I can empathize with you as someone who works in the film industry. My right leaning politics have had me cancelled from a once promising cinematography career. So I get it. But please, whatever you do in the future, and you may realize this by now after your ordeal, apologizing when you've done no wrong to those suffering from Post Modern madness syndrome, always backfires. The apology does nothing to fulfill their sense of justice. It's but an unsatisfactory tribute to be paid at their behest for eternity or until they find a new oppressor du jour. Also, an apology in your case is taken as an admission of guilt - punishment at the discretion of your accuser.
But unfortunately, you set the table for this fracas. By purposefully catering to "marginalized" voices as opposed to just relying on the merit of the work, author's demographics be damned, lets the cats into the hen house. The moment anyone prefaces their argument, position or art with "as a ...(fill in the blank with any marginalized or intersectional profile)", that whatever comes next is built on shaky grounds.
Maybe in Verity Las resurrected form, how about publish the works of blind submissions like the way great symphonies and opera houses audition behind a curtain? I have to believe there will be donors willing to fund an artistic endeavor based on the work and nothing but the work.
All the best.
Wise words! I’ve come to the same conclusions after my experience. I’m sorry you’ve had to as well. It’s so against everything I ever wanted or expected from being involved in the arts. On the upside, Verity La is now slowly rising from her ashes as Verity La La, and we will indeed be auditioning from behind the curtain! Thank you.
I'll look out for hit. I'm sure you'll rise as a stronger and better publication. And who knows, it may break out to a wider audience. As the success of many a heterodox platform shows, there's a hunger for arts and discourse forged outside a bubble. Ask Joe Rogan.
Unfortunately , this has been the case everywhere. The so-called "progressive" and so called "left" have built the scaffolding for censorship and oppression. I used to call myself left and progressive. I'm still a lefty, but in an older lefty sense. Not so much identitarian, but class conscious (you know, let's help the poor and disadvantaged, deal with housing, homelessness, etc., rather than having identity fights among the intellectual and political elite). These extreme, self-serving ideologues are okay with censorship and authoritarian politics, as long as it's coming from them. Very sorry that you had to go through such a brutal social pillory.
I’m with you, Alex! I also feel as if old-school lefties need to unite and reassert a middle way. I’m Gen X and its feels like my generation has ducked our heads, not wanting to get too political or too involved. It’s the job of the young to revolt, and the job of the older generations to hold the reins steady. I wish more of us would step up. Thanks so much for your thoughtful response and kind words.
I'm also Gen X, and I don't feel we ducked our heads as much as we gave up after not being heard in discussions. Boomers pretty much ignored us from birth, and once the "Wonder Generation" of Millennials showed up we were simply outnumbered. You saw Xers make major impacts in things like tech and the like, but politics simply didn't appeal to many (plus it was the preserve of the Boomers). By the time they started clamoring for "fresh voices" they were looking more at Millennials (Boomers trying relive their '60s life through them, perhaps). I do wish more of us would step up, but I'm not sure they'd like what we have to say.
As an aside on the authoritarian thing, as I've commented before too many seem to forget the roots of much of this identitarian stuff lie firmly in the National Socialist Party. Immutable characteristics defined by a concept (race) that doesn't have serious scientific validity, using color labels, pushing people out who disagree and happen to have the wrong background. It's also frequently overlooked that intellectuals also bought into that movement. National Socialist sentiment was strong in the German university system (even if some of it was the precursor Volkish movement), and many leaders within the SS and SD came from academic backgrounds (doctors, lawyers, professors, and so on). Public shaming (cancellation these days) was also a common tactic used by the National Socialist Party.
Thanks, Steve. I wrote an essay exploring the origins of "woke" and authoritarianism on the left (unfortunately I think they've now put it behind a paywall: https://www.wetheblacksheep.com/p/griftivism-how-activists-profit-off), however, I hadn't considered the National Socialistic Party. Interesting!
If you go back to the 1920s and 1930s, many of the tactics used by the authoritarian left are strikingly similar to those used by the NSDAP during and after their rise to power. Switch a few words around, and many of the slogans and talking points used by the authoritarian Left could easily come from Goebbles. These are essentially movements founded in identity politics, and both identify specific groups (based entirely on their origins) as being evil or somehow debased and a menace to their idea of society.
Frankly, like Alex, I think class is a much more valuable basis for discussion, since poor is poor regardless of what identity label you want to slap on people who are poor.
Thanks, Steve. Really informative. Yes, on class, I totally agree.
Agreed.
If you can ever access an article by George Packard in the Atlantic (I can't remember the name of it right now) in which he translates a paragraph or two from a novel about an poor Indian family into DEI language. It's hilarious, depressing, and accurate. Poor people know they are poor, whatever you choose to call it.
You are one brave soul!
Thank you so much 🙏🏼.
I’m so sorry for all the horrible behavior of your colleagues and “friends” and how they treated you, Michelle! They almost took your whole life away from you and got your journal shut down all because they didn’t like some unspecified thing you wrote they saw as racist and sexist. It’s sad how far the arts have fallen in the Western world! Art is about expressing yourself and universal moral messages we all as human beings can relate to. Not pushing political agendas or playing identity politics! The way you and your staff was treated was simply shocking and vile! Ironically, these radical leftist nutcases were hurting some of the very people of color they claimed to care so much about. I also don’t see how an interracial romance between a white Australian and a Filipino woman could be racist or offensive. In that case, wouldn’t the person being offended be the racist? Woke logic for you!
Thank you, Noah! I really appreciate your response. I didn’t actually even write the story, just published it — but that was apparently enough. The whole woke thing is so bad for the arts. I hope the tide is turning!
They inadvertently did you a favor. Stay canceled. You are better off. A lie is a lie.
Ha! So true. I’m actually extremely grateful for the experience.
Girls are mean.
Social media has definitely facilitated a toxic feminine mode of engagement!
Read Rene Girard if you haven’t already….scapegoating to the max. So sorry this happened to you, but these people are catastrophic and they wanted to demonstrate that they had the power to destroy you and your success….and they look in the mirror and proclaim their virtue…such is their truly meaningless narcissistic life.
Hi Janice. Thanks so much, I’ll definitely look up Girard. Yep, it took me a long time to realise that what happened was just a narcissist take-down cloaked in virtue signalling. A lesson hard learnt!
Welcome to the party. This too will pass and you will emerge rejuvenated while they will remain bitter, angry and delusional.
If I may take the opportunity, I would like to add some food for thought: there is no such thing as "marginalized," and there is no such thing as a power imbalance in a relationship, at least not in the woke sense. Western democracies are the least "marginalizing" the world has ever known, and power does not emanate from one's immutable characteristics, nor is it at play as often as neomarxists like to claim and certainly not in the manner they claim.
Thanks, Gerald — very happy to join the party! The crowd here is much nicer and much more fun. And your ‘food for thought’ is palatable and born of wisdom. Much appreciated.
I love the word play with palatable 🙂
I’m so sorry this happened to you too. How very unjust. I am gobsmacked by the poets and writers who don’t see how cult like the “narrative” and their behavior are. But there were roots in the 70’s in the literary community, though there was still fairness. (I got my MFA despite how difficult the program was, the focus wasn’t just craft but vision.)
Thanks so much, Katie. I feel really lucky to have gone to uni in the late 80s when the free exchange of ideas was encouraged — it was really exciting! I’d love to help bring that back for young people.
I hear you. As a composition teacher at a university I worked at teaching them to think and question. Godspeed with your work helping young people with that. Thanks for subscribing too.
What is happening in Australia is a mirror image - but with some different cultural roots - to what has been happening in Scotland's poetry - and wider literary - world. Many thanks for publishing Michele's account. There is an extremely high human cost to being on the receiving end of this type of behaviour and it is high-time that writers who value freedom of expression, nuance, and - heck - getting things 'wrong' sometimes (!) make a firm decision not to be part of any of it.