What would happen if it became easy to remove anyone you choose by using ad-hominem attacks with weak and subjective evidence?
I imagine most of us could think of some compelling examples from history, that we would not want to emulate.
The previous post was about a group trying to remove a speaker at a public health conference who had a wrong opinion on relaxing Covid restrictions. The letter deploys various accusations of wrong-thinking against its target, including those of being “ableist” and “fatphobic”.
Isn’t this bound to happen, if it works?
It certainly seems to have worked in ejecting one of the most senior managers at the Levi-Strauss jeans company. Jennifer Sey had to leave Levi’s when she campaigned against San Francisco public school closures:
Early on in the pandemic, I publicly questioned whether schools had to be shut down. This didn’t seem at all controversial to me. I felt—and still do—that the draconian policies would cause the most harm to those least at risk, and the burden would fall heaviest on disadvantaged kids in public schools, who need the safety and routine of school the most.
This wasn’t the accepted view of the employees in her company, and in due course, it turned out that this was just one example of her wrong-thinking. She was also anti-science, anti-fat, anti-trans, and racist:
National media picked up on our story, and I was asked to go on Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News. That appearance was the last straw. The comments from Levi’s employees picked up—about me being anti-science; about me being anti-fat (I’d retweeted a study showing a correlation between obesity and poor health outcomes); about me being anti-trans (I’d tweeted that we shouldn’t ditch Mother’s Day for Birthing People’s Day because it left out adoptive and step moms); and about me being racist, because San Francisco’s public school system was filled with black and brown kids, and, apparently, I didn’t care if they died. …
…
Meantime, the Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the company asked that I do an “apology tour.” I was told that the main complaint against me was that “I was not a friend of the Black community at Levi’s.” I was told to say that “I am an imperfect ally.” (I refused.)
…
In the last month, the CEO told me that it was “untenable” for me to stay. I was offered a $1 million severance package, but I knew I’d have to sign a nondisclosure agreement about why I’d been pushed out. The money would be very nice. But I just can’t do it.
Sorry, Levi’s.