Stop with the cancel-culture in infosec

The only sane position is neutrality

Some people think those with wrong-think should be banned from conferences. This cancel-culture is evil and a pox on the community. As a community, we should be tolerant that people will have radically different opinions.

The Associated Press has written a style guide telling its journalists how to cover the Israel-Hams war. As you would expect from a news organization, it seeks a balanced, neutral view. It says:

When approaching the 75-year Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is important to understand the deep wells of anger, hurt, bitterness and grievance built up over generations among Israelis and Palestinians who have lived with insecurity and conflict their whole lives, and who have seen many attempts at negotiation and mediation fail.

In some ways, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the world's most intractable problem.

We shouldn’t think of this as a style guide for journalists but as a guide for any rational person. When people debate this conflict on social-media, they all pretend it’s simple, one-sided, ignoring the grievances of the other side. It’s maddening, can’t you people empathize with opposing points of view?

For example, in a recent tweet, somebody said “Moral clarity is not up for debate”. Since they had an Israeli flag 🇮🇱 in their profile, obviously they are talking about the Oct 7 atrocities of murdering babies, raping women, and taking hostages.

But of course, if they had a crescent ☪️ in their profile, then what they would be talking about is whichever side kills the fewest children. Israel’s defense forces have killed thousands in their bombing campaigns in the last two weeks.

I’m not taking sides here (though I’m more on Israel’s side). I’m not saying there’s an answer. I am not even saying that our atrocities are somehow equivalent to their atrocities.

I’m instead reinforcing what the AP style book says above about the “deep wells of anger, hurt, and bitterness” on both sides.

On my timeline, I’m seeing calls for conferences like Black Hat to remove anybody on the Palestine side of the debate.

I can understand this, given the “anger, hurt, and bitterness” from the atrocities of Oct 7 committed against innocent Israelis.

But at the same time, it’s cancel-culture. The target in question isn’t actually “antisemitic” as claimed. They are instead somebody expressing the “anger, hurt, and bitterness” of the other side. The list the offending tweets misrepresents what was said, to fuel anger and Righteous Censorship.

There are reasonable people on both sides of this conflict who disagree. They are angry and hurt. That’s the state of things.

As a community, we should be sympathetic to this. Of course, anybody displaying swastikas or saying “Jews need to be killed” is evil and can safely be rejected. On the other hand, I keep seeing people saying equivalent things about Palestinians, that would be considered offensively antisemitic if you replaced Palestine, Arab, or Muslim with Israeli or Jew. For example, in my timeline is a tweet “I'm saying that the religion is what makes them do and believe radically stupid things”. Imagine how that’d be read differently if they were referring to Jews or Muslims.

Our goal should be to treat any comment as favorably and generously as we can. For example, in that tweet at the end of the paragraph above, there’s a lot of context. It’s pretty bad in any context, but not as bad as it appears out of context.

I support Israel partly because of history (the Holocaust), but mostly because they are a liberal democracy. They are one of “us”, by which I mean the community of liberal democracies from Korea/Japan to North America to Europe. But in exactly the same way I oppose done strikes on civilians in our 20 year War on Terror, I’m uncertain about Israel’s bombing of Gaza. I have no clue as to how to resolve any of this, so I can’t say that I necessarily oppose Israel’s actions, but I certainly empathize with the “anger, hurt, and bitterness” felt by the bombed.

As a community of hackers and professionals, our guide should be the same as expressed by the Associated Press above. It’s an intractable conflict with pain on both sides. We should resist the righteous anger fueling demands for censorship and canceling. We should recognize that while we have disagreements, emotional disagreements, that we should still stick to basic principles of empathy and humanity, instead of twisting what “they” say into something that deserves hate and intolerance. When people call for censorship and canceling, we should shout them down — even when they are on our own political side.