Juno News - Cancel culture is a threat to society

00:00:00.000 if you don't know what cancel culture is then you better pay attention because you need to know that

00:00:12.320 it is ultimately a threat to civilized society cancel culture as it has been dubbed is where

00:00:18.420 someone or something is canceled for saying or doing something that is hurtful offensive or

00:00:24.240 racist now they're often deplatformed thrown off of facebook or twitter the event or whatever it is

00:00:30.400 is shut down sometimes these people will lose their jobs or have other real life serious consequences

00:00:35.480 happen to them because of something that they said or did and this could be in the past it doesn't

00:00:39.920 even have to be something that is very recent as we've seen with a number of people except for

00:00:43.980 obviously the prime minister now what i want to make clear is that this isn't about the actions

00:00:49.700 what they might have said or done might very well be offensive or hurtful or even racist this is

00:00:57.120 about what happens to society and the very cause itself so for example combating racism this is

00:01:02.180 what happens to society and to that cause when you try and cancel people people cancel culture is a

00:01:08.780 threat to society because it ultimately shuts down conversation it places such a high error a high cost

00:01:15.820 on making errors whether intentional or not that it prevents people from speaking about sensitive

00:01:21.280 topics and therefore learning from any mistakes now as someone who worked in this field i want to give

00:01:26.960 you an example of something that i dealt with personally and how cancel culture could have ultimately ruined

00:01:32.880 what was accomplished and that is nazi analogies now a lot of people tend to make nazi analogies and i

00:01:39.480 think that's because it's easy the nazis are sort of go-to bad guys they're bad everyone knows that

00:01:44.800 they're bad you don't even have to know much about world history to think that nazis are bad and that

00:01:49.880 when you call someone a nazi it's sort of the the worst thing that you can call someone but that is

00:01:54.700 hurtful and offensive because if you compare what is happening here so for example you you know you

00:02:00.380 say that the government hiding or obfuscating some you know scandal that that's nazi like that's 0.78

00:02:06.300 pretty common political behavior now that's bad political behavior obviously but that's pretty common

00:02:11.280 bad political behavior compared to for example forced sterilizations or slave camps or genocide

00:02:17.560 so when you compare those things if everyone is a nazi if everyone is hitler then nobody is a nazi

00:02:24.740 nobody's hitler and so that is hurtful and offensive the problem is that when someone says something like

00:02:31.800 this and again the nazi analogy is definitely hurtful and offensive especially to the people who might

00:02:37.480 have been directly victims of the nazi regime and there are some of them that are still alive today

00:02:41.720 when someone makes these offensive or hurtful statements and you shut them down you cancel them

00:02:48.320 there's no opportunity for them to learn there's no conversation that follows and they will never get

00:02:54.200 to understand why that thing is hurtful or offensive they will never get to make a connection with another

00:03:00.360 person and understand that person's point of view i really believe that most people are not

00:03:05.320 they're not out there to just fight with the entire world and you know create waves and just be

00:03:10.820 just be provocateurs that are only interested in getting a ruse out of people they sometimes need

00:03:18.100 to know why what they said was truly offensive and most of the time they'll be interested to learn a new

00:03:23.320 fact and learn about someone else's point of view and what their life is like why they feel a different

00:03:29.580 way about this particular thing especially if it is done in a rational manner and that is one of the

00:03:34.500 reasons i was so disturbed by this cancel canada day hashtag now as someone who's been studying

00:03:40.780 canadian history especially lately in order to really give uh you know the best possible perspective

00:03:45.820 i can on these videos i i looked into this cancel canada canada day hashtag and i see the point people

00:03:52.900 on you know some of the the more rational people at least among these people were saying that canada is

00:04:00.000 canada day is offensive because of you know the bad things that happened or have happened you know

00:04:05.680 continue to happen in this country the only problem again if you think there's a serious problem if you

00:04:11.460 think that canada is doing something bad and i think there are terrible bad you know plenty of terrible

00:04:15.840 things that happen in this country right no country is perfect there's crime there's corruption

00:04:21.280 there's things in every country that does not mean that canada is not a great country and canada

00:04:26.080 is a great country just because we have issues does not mean you should call for canada day

00:04:32.860 or for a conversation or something to be shut down because ultimately people will not talk about these

00:04:38.320 issues and people will not learn anything now one of the things that i tend to talk about on these

00:04:43.400 videos and one of the issues that i have been advocating for lately is the issue of clean water on

00:04:49.260 first nations reserves now that was one of the arguments that was brought up the treatment of

00:04:55.040 first nations people of indians as they're called legally and often colloquially the treatment of

00:05:00.860 these people is a reason why you should cancel canada day it doesn't represent them it's you know

00:05:05.200 it's bad etc etc etc but how many people knew that there are reserves that have not had clean drinking

00:05:13.320 water for 10 years and again forget the reasons forget you know corruption or forget government

00:05:18.820 problems how many people knew that i didn't know that i grew up in the greater toronto area i my

00:05:26.500 education on first nations and native american issues in general in north america was pretty pretty

00:05:33.740 limited to a couple of things i did not know that when you live on a reserve because of the indian act

00:05:41.360 if you want to start a business you cannot put your house for collateral someone might not give

00:05:46.520 you a loan for a car because if they would like to repossess their car you you can't go to the

00:05:52.500 reserve and take the car back because that is reserve land i didn't know that there are all these

00:05:57.520 complicated things i didn't know that there was something called an indian act that basically

00:06:01.480 dictates a lot of the ways that someone who's a status indian is getting treated and this is not just

00:06:08.440 about the indian act or first nations issues there are a lot of issues that you might say

00:06:13.100 canada has but the way to promote the resolution of these issues or to get people to understand why

00:06:19.620 you're concerned about these issues is not to shut people down it's not to take someone who did

00:06:25.140 something because they were young and dumb or they said something like they used a term i remember

00:06:30.300 specifically a case that i dealt with where someone said that they were gonna you know they were

00:06:34.880 gonna jew someone down right a lot of people use that saying that they're gonna they got jewed down

00:06:40.320 they're gonna jew someone down not because they necessarily hate jewish people they just don't

00:06:45.460 think about it it's just a term that they use not everyone is a rabid anti-semite that needs to be

00:06:51.000 shut down oftentimes you can tell someone hey by the way did you know that that's a really offensive

00:06:56.260 term did you know that that is very hurtful and painful when you say something like that and that

00:07:01.900 would be like you know maybe give another example explain to them why that's a conversation starter

00:07:06.400 that's a learning opportunity that's a teachable moment that's an opportunity to connect with

00:07:11.340 another human being explain to them my point of view but that's never going to get done if we

00:07:16.820 resort to cancel culture if we resort to anger and not dialogue and that's why again it is ultimately

00:07:22.720 a threat to a civilized society because if you cannot have conversations if you cannot talk about

00:07:27.960 things that are difficult if you cannot try and connect with another human being and explain to

00:07:32.360 them your point of view in a rational manner then society itself is under serious threat and that is

00:07:38.720 what i think is important that is why it is important for all canadians who would like to have

00:07:43.000 the best country in the world and i think we do live in the best country in the world if if you are

00:07:47.100 one of those people who thinks that canada needs to improve let's have more conversations not less

00:07:52.380 let's have more dialogue not less so let's cancel cancel culture and make sure that we're having

00:07:58.260 the real conversations the important conversations and talk about the things that people are afraid to

00:08:02.540 talk about for true north i'm sam ashkenazi and thank you for watching

Juno News - July 04, 2020

Cancel culture is a threat to society

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript