"Shut Up Or I'll Make You"

On Deplatforming and Abuse

There have been several major attempted “cancellations” of academics and performers in the last few weeks. The targets range from gender-critical figures to those questioning the prioritization of race over academic performance in evaluations.

Others likely have more time and interest in discussing each of these situations, but what is most interesting to me is that there appears finally to be a bit of pushback from administrators, other professors, and also from the general populations itself.

I suspect we’re reaching a point where people are starting to tire of these outbursts and the constant policing of variant thought.

In all these cases, the general tactic was the same. Someone with perceived authority—derived not from anything inherent to the person, but rather their “platform” as an academic or performer—spoke in a way that challenged a growing but still fragile orthodoxy. In response to that challenge, a group arose not to respond to their actual words but rather to take from them the “platform” from which their authority or influence was derived.

A Brief History of Deplatforming

This tactic is called deplatforming or no-platforming. While usually seen as starting first in UK universities during the 1970’s as an attempt to stop fascist speakers, it has an older history in universities in the United States as a weapon against communism.

Starting in the 1940’s, student groups and administrators collaborated together to prevent communist academics from teaching classes and to ban communist speakers from having any public platform on university grounds. This happened of course in tandem with the rise of McCarthyism, the House UnAmerican Activities hearings, and the general political fear of a communist takeover of the United States, which led also to the deplatforming and blacklisting of musicians, actors, and comedians from films and television, as well as from performance venues.

In most discussions about this period, two particular things are often missed. First of all, the Red Scare and McCarthyism were not just governmental policy, but rather also populist movements. There was a significant groundswell of support for deplatforming rogue thinkers, and students themselves were often involved in identifying and reporting their professors for ideological heresy.

What is also significant and rarely noticed is that communism represented an actual threat to capitalists in the United States during that time. Support for communism had grown significantly during the Great Depression and continued even after the war. Many of the professors and performers actually were communist or “fellow travelers.” Allowing such people to continue speaking and to have platforms of influence would likely have only increased the spread of communist ideas within the United States.

So within the internal logic of deplatforming, it actually made quite a lot of sense to shut such people up, otherwise communism might have been seen as a valid political ideology.

In more recent history, deplatforming or no-platforming became the official policy of the National Union of Students in the United Kingdom, this time directed first against ultranationalist political parties and then later against Muslim groups and gender critical professors. This is usually where Antifa and the Woke point to as the birth of this tactic, conveniently ignoring the much older use of silencing against the far left in the United States.

Now, of course, deplatforming is the primary tool of Antifa and The Woke, both in the United States and the United Kingdom. ¹ Though used primarily against targets they identify as ‘fascist,’ communist professors such as Adolph Reed (a black Marxist) have also been targets of deplatforming for their class-based analysis of racial issues.

Shut Up Or I’ll Make You

Again, the primary goal of deplatforming is to remove from the person the “platform” from which they speak. This is a slightly more mature kind of cancellation than the social media smearing and attacks on people by The Woke, which are really more just mob actions without political goals.

To put it another way, while the usual mobbing of a person online is meant to discipline and punish, deplatforming is an attack on the influence of the target. In the former sort, the hoped-for outcome is that the person changes their behavior and apologizes, while in the latter the goal is that the victim cannot reach an audience any longer.

What hides under the surface of a deplatforming attempt is an admission that the target cannot be successfully argued against. Typically, when someone has an idea we disagree with, we employ reason to show them how we believe they are wrong. That is, we try to present a better argument to counter theirs in order to convince them. And just as often as we might successfully convince them, they might also successfully convince us, or we might in the end “agree to disagree” and leave the matter there.

Of course there are other ways to “win” arguments you cannot otherwise win. My abusive ex-husband usually just punched me when he realised his other attempts at manipulation were not working, just as a toddler will bite or hit another child who won’t give over a toy.

In fact, what awakened me to the insanity of The Woke was exactly that relationship. For more than a year and a half, I’d found myself relentlessly worried about offending someone, guarding my words, making sure I was doing everything “right,” all to avoid sudden explosions of rage. After several months of missteps resulting in rather terrifying moments of threats and psychological abuse, I learned quickly that shutting myself up was a lot less painful than letting him do it.

Let me be clear here: deplatforming is an abuse tactic, regardless the apparent justifications. My abusive ex believed I was doing all manner of things that justified him forcing me to be silent, “causing harm”² to him in countless way, and he became angriest and most violent when I offered evidence that none of those things were actually happening.

Deplatforming operates the same way, only on a larger scale. The Woke can provide all manner of arguments as to why someone must be silenced, but they cannot actually argue with the ideas the person presents. The Woke cannot actually argue with the ideas of Adolph Reed or other black Marxists, nor can they present a cogent argument as to why Anglo-American ideas of gender should fully supplant historic understandings of sexual difference. Worse than this, they cannot coherently explain why identity should trump material conditions, nor create a political platform that could channel lower-class resentment away from racism and misogyny into something that could even slightly threaten the imperialist system in the US.

Thus, when an academic or a performer offers a coherent worldview which competes against theirs, the only tactic remaining for The Woke is to shut that person up. They can only get them fired, kicked off of social media, “canceled” from venues and media platforms because they have no better argument.

Of course this tactic works, as the deplatforming of communist organizers, academics, and performers in the United States during the 40’s and 50’s shows quite well. Preventing such people from speaking and gaining influence is actually a lot easier than convincing people you’re right and they are wrong, especially if you can get part of the upper class, the corporations, and some politicians on your side.

Which is where we are at now, or almost. Though as I mentioned above, there is now a growing pushback against this, both from the institutions which own the platforms where the victims speak and also from collegues and the public. I suspect more people are beginning to understand the mechanisms of abuse occurring in these demands for cancellation, just as eventually the public tired of the Red Scare.

I don’t think this is over, however, nor will it actually end without the iteration of a coherent political ideology that guides people out of constant ressentiment and infantile tantrums. Capitalism itself is in another self-manufactured crisis state, both from extreme climate disruption and from the social and cultural disruption that it relies upon to keep expanding markets. An ideology that coherently addresses these two crises—whether from the left or from the right—seems inevitable to rise.

Unfortunately, unless the left abandons any allegiance to The Woke and their constant abuse tactics, they’ll be stuck in the same position in which any abuse victim eventually finds themselves: constant self-policing, keeping silent to avoid confrontation, and eventually becoming so full of self-doubt that they cannot speak or act.

Once you do leave, however, all that sense of self comes back again. You learn to speak without fear, to pursue your own thoughts again rather than letting someone else define what is possible and what is not. It’s not an easy thing, and of course the abusive threats continue even after you’re out of the range of a swinging fist, but eventually they no longer matter anymore.

1. The Anglo-American nature of Woke Ideology is something I’ll explore in a later essay. Still, it’s worth noting that this is a primary feature of the Woke, just as capitalism was also born from Anglo-American particularities.

2. Such as hanging out with my best female friend once a week, leaving the house to buy groceries without telling him precisely where I was going, joining a gym, and asking for occasional alone time to focus on my writing.