Film critic Matt Zoller Seitz:
So: what is the active moral question, here? What is the issue before us that has actual ethical valence? Is it “should there be harassment of people online”? Are there a lot of people who are pro-online harassment? No. Instead, a question of actual moral valence is how to oppose threats and harassment constructively, and how to do so in a way that does not invite ugly unforeseen consequences. For example, the campus Zionist movements in the United States have been very effective in squelching the free speech rights of pro-Palestinian students and activists, using left-wing argumentative strategies about harassment and hate speech to silence perfectly legitimate and fair political expression. Does Seitz have any concerns about that? Does he think that the institutions that he’d set against harassment and threats would be so virtuous and so effective that they would never work to silence controversial political opinions? Does he just not care? Does he see that as a necessary evil, a matter of breaking a few eggs to make an omelet? Does he have some sort of moral calculus in mind, trying to reach the least-bad outcome? I have no idea. All I know is that he thinks harassment is bad. Provocative take, there.
What questions of genuine controversy are being considered, here? No one is being challenged. Nothing is being hashed out. No moral progress can emerge from this kind of interaction. It is utterly inert as an ethical engagement. And yet Seitz has received the requisite digital strokes for it, ensuring that he will repeat the behavior in the future and that other people will emulate him. Meanwhile, the actual work of meaningful political engagement– wrestling with complex questions that are neither practically nor morally simple, by people of equally good faith, recognizing that often all options are suboptimal and the consequences of any action may be ugly — that is not sexy and it is not easy. All we’ve learned here is that Matt Zoller Seitz is more moral than you are, buster. Praise him!
So too with questions of sexual assault. Is “should there be less rape” a question of particular moral difficulty? Are people walking around saying “we probably shouldn’t try to reduce the amount of rapes happening”? No. Nobody is saying that. What some of us are saying is that in a country of hideous over-incarceration, with a ravenous police state and prison industrial complex, where we know the laws are never enforced equally, but are instead deeply unequal along lines of race and class, and where many police departments and prosecutors offices have routinely shown themselves to be racist, corrupt, or incompetent, attacking due process and contributing to the rush to prosecute and imprison is a terrible idea. That’s a debate we can have. That’s a debate with stakes. It’s an active moral question. “Should we reduce rape? Circle ‘Yes’ or ‘No'” is not. So which one do you want to spend your effort on?
I cannot understand smart liberal people who are so enamored with their own good intentions that they seem not to care at all about the potential for unforeseen negative consequences. I cannot understand adults who think that meaningful moral questions have black-and-white, simplistic, right-or-wrong answers. I just will never understand that.