These censorious wokesters are probably the same lefties who are screaming bloody murder over the "censorship of LGBTQ+" publications in schools and the children's section of public libraries. A mere book title can send a sensitivity reader to the fainting couch, but on a better day she would probably be demanding that minors have access to the disturbingly explicit and age-inappropriate picture book "Gender Queer" and other works that normalize the scientifically baseless tenets of gender identity ideology.
How did hypocrisy come to characterize the debate about free speech? How did the left capture the moral high ground?
Yes, these are the kind of questions I wish Persuasion would dig into systematically. This is a great article, but I don't understand why deeper questions like yours are, it seems, systematically ignored. Thanks for this comment.
As a recovered academic of 34 years (a required prelude to any discussion today), I think I can help answer your last two questions. “Get them while they’re young and you have them for life.” When you ask “How many years does academia have the heats and minds of our children?” You get the answers to many questions about how and why.
That's a good start, but you'll need to peel a few more layers off that onion. Yascha does that in Identity Trap. But even that analysis leaves much that is crucial unexplained. That is why we need Persuasion to dig deeper and make this a community.
The story is obviously deeply ironic. It portrays and condemns both racism and white privilege without resorting to calling them out explicitly. I'm happy it's out there in the world and will finally be read, as it deserves to be read. Shame on CRAB CREEK REVIEW for lacking the courage to publish this, or presumably anything else with the potential to be even remotely controversial. They should have more respect for their readers.
It does those things certainly, but it does so much more. What a gift that it escaped being stiffled. The authors of the article have a good eye, and Crab Creek Review is worse off for firing them.
I have an essay, which I've never submitted, called "My First Writing Class." Maybe I'll fix it up. I started writing Creative Nonfiction a few years back, partly motivated by my desire to tell my story as a (former, I guess) progressive, whose POV was broadened by my personal experience of being a mother of Seattle police officer during the summer of 2020. In that first writing class, I was advised to write about something else, even though another student wrote about her exhilaration at watching Minneapolis burn. I've written several other essays which have been published in journals less prestigious than Crab Creek Review on other subjects, but have still not cracked the code on getting my more political work published. And getting published is hard and competitive. I don't want to be whiny because I've gotten a lot done in a few years. But when my memoir, tentatively entitled From Weatherman to Cop Mom is finished, getting it published will be interesting.
I wish you the best of luck. If all else fails, you can publish free on Amazon, Kindle and paper (printed on demand). Maybe ask Yascha how to crack the code, he's done it. And let us know when you publish.
As Orwell instructed, democracy's can do censorship as well as dictatorships can, the only major difference is democracy's do it voluntarily.
The answer is not only brave people like these writers speaking truth, but the development of culture organizations with better, fuller, more honest aesthetic criteria. The good art that will follow will take care of the rest.
Reading this essay, one is struck with the catalogue of instances where writers have been refused publication by editors, which is only explained as a list of reasons why this happens without any reference to the "Identity Synthesis" that Yascha Mounk, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Persuasion Author, The Identity Trap, explains as a less controversial term than the use of the word "Woke" to describe why much of this "censorship" has come about.
The "cancellation" culture that we in the Western democracies are experiencing, has its roots in this Woke ideology, laid out in their post-modernist dogma of Critical Theories that includes race, gender social justice, intersectionality, and victimology.
One gets the feeling that this author cannot blame this censorship on, nor use the term "Woke" in any writings, for fear that she herself might be "cancelled" and her essays, short stories, and articles, be black listed by these publishing outlets.
We the reading public have come to understand the power of the Woke ideology to silence all dissent, and opposition, as the wrecking ball of such an odious ideology is still marching through our institutions sowing havoc and uncertainty of such dogmas as DEI, identity politics, equality over equity and the demise of meritocracy in our schools and universities.
One feels for all writers of all stripes who know why their writing are not being published but until the majority of them say "we are not going to take this anymore," censorship by silence, ommision and cancellation will continue as a plague in western culture.
Expose the vile, nil-sum Woke ideology for what it is. Call it by whatever name you want, but there has to be a grass roots ground swell amongst the intelligentsia exposing and denouncing what is happening to our western culture - expressed in this article - before these culture wars can end.
Those writers and essayists who are affected the most must be the ones to have the courage to stand up to this Woke cult before there is even a chance to rid our present-day western culture of all this Wokery.
Your point that understanding this as woke, identity politics, is absolutely central, and something Persuasion ignores all too often, even though it's the best place to read about that (thank's to Yascha). I hope you keep reminding them.
I also wish we, as a community, could brainstorm and perhaps eventually do something to help those being cancelled. It's hard for the majority of authors to organize and say "not going to take this anymore." A substack like this could provide them a safe harbor for organizing.
Motivating these blacklists is a powerful dose of generational resentment, which is understandable, if deplorable. People graduating with MFAs do not routinely look to publish in the old "established" venues because they're viewed as frankly retrograde (often), tetchy (yep), and inbred (but what's not in the creative writing world?). Btw: whoever publishes any one of these blacklists would do the culture a huge favor. Not just idle curiosity in these days when it's too easy to cast a lengthy digital shadow without knowing it.
Thank you for this. Thanks to Persuasion for publishing it, and the story. And as I commented on the story, "What a wonderful story. In addition, it prosecutes and proves the case against cancel culture in one short, perfect work of art."
Congratulations on this article, which clearly spells out the calamitous state of affairs in literary publishing today. Heresy Press was conceived to push back against this situation. Consider our mission statement: "Heresy Press (an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.) specializes in unfettered, frank, artistically superior literary fiction. With our robust commitment to creative freedom, we promote honesty, openness, dissent, and real diversity in all of its manifestations. Heresy Press opposes authorial self-censorship, it doesn’t blink at alleged acts of cultural appropriation, and it won’t pander to the presumed sensitivities of hypothetical readers. Instead of propagating ideological agendas or engaging in virtue signaling, Heresy Press values intrinsic artistic criteria and enduring literary values, including originality, relevance, courage, humor, stylistic brilliance, and narrative skill."
Yes. A significant part of problem, I think, is that the incentive structures motivates editors like the one in question to censor. If they publish something folks are angry about, they get the blame for it, but if there isn't an issue no one pays any attention. So the safe decision, if you're worried about your job or reputation, becomes not to publish. It would be a better ecosystem if the reputational risks were there either way.
It's hard for me to see how the incentive structures can be adjusted in a cultural system that has been so completely taken over by the identitarians. It's analogous for me to the situation of the Republican Party, which has been so completely taken over by illiberal authoritarians that it's beyond any practical reform and must be sidelined and replaced.
Perhaps the answer is to generate alternative cultural ecosystems that aren't so completely imprisoned in ideological straitjackets. The right wing was able to create an entire parallel news ecosystem, after all, so it shouldn't be impossible. I realize even as I write this how unlikely it is, in a world where
"Perhaps the answer is to generate alternative cultural ecosystems..."
I think this could be the way as the current ecosystem is not only corrupt and cowardly, but it is not meeting the aesthetic demands of our society. Art (including literary art) that does should find itself rewarded in the ways that matter (money, recognition, influence, etc.).
It's not censorship unless those in charge can come at you with guns and jail sentences. The EiC (an awful abbreviation that a good editor would have clarified) exercised the judgment available to any free person in a liberal society. It may have been lousy judgment, but free people have to be free to make lousy judgments. What's the alternative? Laws that outlaw editors in chief? In this case, the writers are free to take their article elsewhere, or to publish it themselves. They are free, too, to complain about the lousy judgment, which they've now done. They shouldn't, however, confound censorship and editing. That's sloppy thinking and writing that's particularly perplexing in a forum dedicated to the ideals that Persuasion claims to foster.
You might want to check out Alexis de Tocqueville on the tyranny of the majority and how norms can stifle dissent and limit freedom of thought. Also, John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty," advocating that individuals should be free to express themselves without fear of social ostracism. Culture matters, we should be concerned with improving it, and speaking against cancel culture is a good place to start.
Piffle. A group of editors sharing a secret list of authors who they wish to block from being published is certainly censorship. The authors, having no idea they are on the list or why they, have no means of correcting the record. Editors can put an author on the shared "solidarity" list for any reason, from "She has the deplorable politics" to "He has an annoying voice." It is relational aggression in a literary context. A shared "solidarity" blacklist is a coercive mechanism for editors who participate: the literary equivalent of "She's not allowed to play with us, and anyone who plays with her isn't allowed to play with us either!" It may not censorship when a single editor keeps a list of authors they don't want to publish. It is censorship when a cartel of publishers maintain a secret blacklist of people no one in the cartel will publish regardless of the content or quality of their work.
One has neither to endorse nor condemn the range of actions subsumed under the rubric “cancel culture” to assert that one should not call it “censorship” unless it entails a threat against life or liberty. The distinction matters, and may matter greatly if the American authoritarians take power next year.
While I get that real issue here is censorship, coincidentally Ross Barkan has a great post today talking about all the advantages of writers self-publishing in Substack versus periodicals like the Crab Creek Review (https://rosselliotbarkan.com/p/at-the-center-of-things), and it didn't even include concerns over censorship.
These censorious wokesters are probably the same lefties who are screaming bloody murder over the "censorship of LGBTQ+" publications in schools and the children's section of public libraries. A mere book title can send a sensitivity reader to the fainting couch, but on a better day she would probably be demanding that minors have access to the disturbingly explicit and age-inappropriate picture book "Gender Queer" and other works that normalize the scientifically baseless tenets of gender identity ideology.
How did hypocrisy come to characterize the debate about free speech? How did the left capture the moral high ground?
Yes, these are the kind of questions I wish Persuasion would dig into systematically. This is a great article, but I don't understand why deeper questions like yours are, it seems, systematically ignored. Thanks for this comment.
As a recovered academic of 34 years (a required prelude to any discussion today), I think I can help answer your last two questions. “Get them while they’re young and you have them for life.” When you ask “How many years does academia have the heats and minds of our children?” You get the answers to many questions about how and why.
That's a good start, but you'll need to peel a few more layers off that onion. Yascha does that in Identity Trap. But even that analysis leaves much that is crucial unexplained. That is why we need Persuasion to dig deeper and make this a community.
The story is obviously deeply ironic. It portrays and condemns both racism and white privilege without resorting to calling them out explicitly. I'm happy it's out there in the world and will finally be read, as it deserves to be read. Shame on CRAB CREEK REVIEW for lacking the courage to publish this, or presumably anything else with the potential to be even remotely controversial. They should have more respect for their readers.
It does those things certainly, but it does so much more. What a gift that it escaped being stiffled. The authors of the article have a good eye, and Crab Creek Review is worse off for firing them.
I have an essay, which I've never submitted, called "My First Writing Class." Maybe I'll fix it up. I started writing Creative Nonfiction a few years back, partly motivated by my desire to tell my story as a (former, I guess) progressive, whose POV was broadened by my personal experience of being a mother of Seattle police officer during the summer of 2020. In that first writing class, I was advised to write about something else, even though another student wrote about her exhilaration at watching Minneapolis burn. I've written several other essays which have been published in journals less prestigious than Crab Creek Review on other subjects, but have still not cracked the code on getting my more political work published. And getting published is hard and competitive. I don't want to be whiny because I've gotten a lot done in a few years. But when my memoir, tentatively entitled From Weatherman to Cop Mom is finished, getting it published will be interesting.
I wish you the best of luck. If all else fails, you can publish free on Amazon, Kindle and paper (printed on demand). Maybe ask Yascha how to crack the code, he's done it. And let us know when you publish.
I love that you published the story. Do more of this!! Creativity is one of the answers to everything. 😊
Illuminating, persuasive and brave piece!
As Orwell instructed, democracy's can do censorship as well as dictatorships can, the only major difference is democracy's do it voluntarily.
The answer is not only brave people like these writers speaking truth, but the development of culture organizations with better, fuller, more honest aesthetic criteria. The good art that will follow will take care of the rest.
Good article.
Reading this essay, one is struck with the catalogue of instances where writers have been refused publication by editors, which is only explained as a list of reasons why this happens without any reference to the "Identity Synthesis" that Yascha Mounk, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Persuasion Author, The Identity Trap, explains as a less controversial term than the use of the word "Woke" to describe why much of this "censorship" has come about.
The "cancellation" culture that we in the Western democracies are experiencing, has its roots in this Woke ideology, laid out in their post-modernist dogma of Critical Theories that includes race, gender social justice, intersectionality, and victimology.
One gets the feeling that this author cannot blame this censorship on, nor use the term "Woke" in any writings, for fear that she herself might be "cancelled" and her essays, short stories, and articles, be black listed by these publishing outlets.
We the reading public have come to understand the power of the Woke ideology to silence all dissent, and opposition, as the wrecking ball of such an odious ideology is still marching through our institutions sowing havoc and uncertainty of such dogmas as DEI, identity politics, equality over equity and the demise of meritocracy in our schools and universities.
One feels for all writers of all stripes who know why their writing are not being published but until the majority of them say "we are not going to take this anymore," censorship by silence, ommision and cancellation will continue as a plague in western culture.
Expose the vile, nil-sum Woke ideology for what it is. Call it by whatever name you want, but there has to be a grass roots ground swell amongst the intelligentsia exposing and denouncing what is happening to our western culture - expressed in this article - before these culture wars can end.
Those writers and essayists who are affected the most must be the ones to have the courage to stand up to this Woke cult before there is even a chance to rid our present-day western culture of all this Wokery.
Your point that understanding this as woke, identity politics, is absolutely central, and something Persuasion ignores all too often, even though it's the best place to read about that (thank's to Yascha). I hope you keep reminding them.
I also wish we, as a community, could brainstorm and perhaps eventually do something to help those being cancelled. It's hard for the majority of authors to organize and say "not going to take this anymore." A substack like this could provide them a safe harbor for organizing.
Motivating these blacklists is a powerful dose of generational resentment, which is understandable, if deplorable. People graduating with MFAs do not routinely look to publish in the old "established" venues because they're viewed as frankly retrograde (often), tetchy (yep), and inbred (but what's not in the creative writing world?). Btw: whoever publishes any one of these blacklists would do the culture a huge favor. Not just idle curiosity in these days when it's too easy to cast a lengthy digital shadow without knowing it.
Thank you for this. Thanks to Persuasion for publishing it, and the story. And as I commented on the story, "What a wonderful story. In addition, it prosecutes and proves the case against cancel culture in one short, perfect work of art."
There’s a place for good writing to go where censorship doesn’t rule the day. It’s called Substack.
What an important piece at a troubling time! Great job!
Congratulations on this article, which clearly spells out the calamitous state of affairs in literary publishing today. Heresy Press was conceived to push back against this situation. Consider our mission statement: "Heresy Press (an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.) specializes in unfettered, frank, artistically superior literary fiction. With our robust commitment to creative freedom, we promote honesty, openness, dissent, and real diversity in all of its manifestations. Heresy Press opposes authorial self-censorship, it doesn’t blink at alleged acts of cultural appropriation, and it won’t pander to the presumed sensitivities of hypothetical readers. Instead of propagating ideological agendas or engaging in virtue signaling, Heresy Press values intrinsic artistic criteria and enduring literary values, including originality, relevance, courage, humor, stylistic brilliance, and narrative skill."
Why not name the Editor in Chief in question? Part of turning this situation around is forcing people to defend their decisions to censor publicly.
Or at least to own their decisions publicly, whether they choose to defend them or not. It's the anonymity that breeds and sustains the corruption.
Yes. A significant part of problem, I think, is that the incentive structures motivates editors like the one in question to censor. If they publish something folks are angry about, they get the blame for it, but if there isn't an issue no one pays any attention. So the safe decision, if you're worried about your job or reputation, becomes not to publish. It would be a better ecosystem if the reputational risks were there either way.
It's hard for me to see how the incentive structures can be adjusted in a cultural system that has been so completely taken over by the identitarians. It's analogous for me to the situation of the Republican Party, which has been so completely taken over by illiberal authoritarians that it's beyond any practical reform and must be sidelined and replaced.
Perhaps the answer is to generate alternative cultural ecosystems that aren't so completely imprisoned in ideological straitjackets. The right wing was able to create an entire parallel news ecosystem, after all, so it shouldn't be impossible. I realize even as I write this how unlikely it is, in a world where
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
But we have to keep hope alive.
"Perhaps the answer is to generate alternative cultural ecosystems..."
I think this could be the way as the current ecosystem is not only corrupt and cowardly, but it is not meeting the aesthetic demands of our society. Art (including literary art) that does should find itself rewarded in the ways that matter (money, recognition, influence, etc.).
It's not censorship unless those in charge can come at you with guns and jail sentences. The EiC (an awful abbreviation that a good editor would have clarified) exercised the judgment available to any free person in a liberal society. It may have been lousy judgment, but free people have to be free to make lousy judgments. What's the alternative? Laws that outlaw editors in chief? In this case, the writers are free to take their article elsewhere, or to publish it themselves. They are free, too, to complain about the lousy judgment, which they've now done. They shouldn't, however, confound censorship and editing. That's sloppy thinking and writing that's particularly perplexing in a forum dedicated to the ideals that Persuasion claims to foster.
You might want to check out Alexis de Tocqueville on the tyranny of the majority and how norms can stifle dissent and limit freedom of thought. Also, John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty," advocating that individuals should be free to express themselves without fear of social ostracism. Culture matters, we should be concerned with improving it, and speaking against cancel culture is a good place to start.
Piffle. A group of editors sharing a secret list of authors who they wish to block from being published is certainly censorship. The authors, having no idea they are on the list or why they, have no means of correcting the record. Editors can put an author on the shared "solidarity" list for any reason, from "She has the deplorable politics" to "He has an annoying voice." It is relational aggression in a literary context. A shared "solidarity" blacklist is a coercive mechanism for editors who participate: the literary equivalent of "She's not allowed to play with us, and anyone who plays with her isn't allowed to play with us either!" It may not censorship when a single editor keeps a list of authors they don't want to publish. It is censorship when a cartel of publishers maintain a secret blacklist of people no one in the cartel will publish regardless of the content or quality of their work.
One has neither to endorse nor condemn the range of actions subsumed under the rubric “cancel culture” to assert that one should not call it “censorship” unless it entails a threat against life or liberty. The distinction matters, and may matter greatly if the American authoritarians take power next year.
While I get that real issue here is censorship, coincidentally Ross Barkan has a great post today talking about all the advantages of writers self-publishing in Substack versus periodicals like the Crab Creek Review (https://rosselliotbarkan.com/p/at-the-center-of-things), and it didn't even include concerns over censorship.