Transcript: Katherine Brodsky

My interview with the Canadian author and commentator

What does it take to speak out against orthodoxies in an age of outrage? That is something that my guest on this week’s program has spent years contemplating, interviewing people from all walks of life who have managed to stick to their principles in the face of an online mobbing, and not back down.

Katherine Brodsky is a Canadian writer and commentator, and the author of No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in the Age of Outrage — Lessons for the Silenced Majority.

This is an edited transcipt for paid subscribers. You can listen to the interview for free here.

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TH: Your book is written for the silent majority — those who are concerned with the direction that our culture is headed, but have not yet had the courage to speak out about it. You look at case studies of individuals who have been the target of outrage mobs, and ask what lessons can be learned from their stories. I want to start today with your own story. You yourself have been the target of one of these mobs. Tell us about that experience, and how it shaped your thinking for this book.

KB: I've had a little bit of distance now, and I've had some time to reflect on this particular story that happened to me. But at the time it was just so incredibly intense. And for me, it was a process of realizing that there was something a little bit off about the culture — where people were not free to speak as they wish, and we had the stifling of conversations. 

In my own case, I was gradually trying to find my voice. I describe it as a whimper at the time. I ran a group for women writers. It was a job board, and it was an offshoot of another bigger group on Facebook that was dedicated for women writers and providing resources, providing advice. My group was essentially just a job board. We provided some mentorship, some guidance, some resources for women, and it ran pretty smoothly. I think people benefited a lot. The mentorship program that I launched was featured in The New York Times, so everything was going pretty well. Until … “dun, dun, dun,” as they say.

There was a woman who posted a job opportunity at Fox News, and apparently that was sacrilegious to the group. They started to really attack her — very harsh personal attacks — just for posting a job opportunity. 

As somebody who ran the group at the time, I felt like I had a duty to step in and stop the harassment. I posted a very, in my view, neutral post. I said, “Listen, let's refrain from personal attacks. Let's refrain from politics in the group. There's been a lot of coming apart lately. Let's come together.” I thought that that was a fairly neutral post — as I describe it, a little bit kumbaya.

But it seems like a lot of people disagreed with that. So they turned their attention to me. They started calling me a white supremacist, and said that I'd “just as soon let the KKK recruit.” I had a different mind state at the time. I really believed in engaging with all people, and any kind of criticism. So, I did for a while. One of the things that they said to me is, “We can't take politics out of the group, because inherently a group for women is political.”

I said, “Okay, well, I don't want politics in the group, because this is what happens. So, why don't I open it up for everybody? Basically, you can have a month to leave. If you're not interested in staying in the group, you could start your own group.” I tried to be accommodating. But at the same time, I did know that I was taking a certain kind of stand.

The mob really escalated. They started trying to reach out to editors to make sure that I would never work with them again. They tried to dox me. I was getting many, many harassing emails and messages. One of the most memorable was a photo of a mob with tiki torches saying, “We have very long memories.” So, it really escalated. People were down-voting my content. It was a madhouse. Something I'd never expected.

I should say that I'm kind of a people pleaser, in many ways. So to me, it felt particularly intense to have so many people think I'm on the wrong side of things. But also, in that time, I was getting messages from people saying, “I see what's happening to you and it's not right. I feel so ashamed that I cannot speak. I feel too scared to speak up.” People were also sharing their own stories of harassment, cancellation. People who never recovered, people who lost their jobs, people who lost their careers, their tribes — which is very important to individuals. 

I started looking at things a little bit differently. Before, like I said, I was very keen to engage with everyone and I was very keen to consider everyone's position. But I turned it around and I thought, “What if I disagreed with myself intensely? How would I behave? What would I do?” I came to the conclusion that I would never behave in those ways. Those are bullying tactics. That's a mob. It's one thing when somebody sent me criticism, and they phrased it politely and thoughtfully — I would absolutely always consider that. But those people who would come at me wanting to destroy me because they disagreed with something, those are not the voices that I was keen to listen to.

But also, because I was getting all these messages, I realized that people are so scared, and there's so many of them. I think there's a lot more people with common sense and common decency out there, but their voice is missing from the conversation. What's happening is these bullies … and that's what they are. I've been bullied in high school, so I have some familiarity with bullies. They are really not very different from that. It's just that they think that they have some righteous cause … Those bullies are the ones dictating our daily lives. 

That's why I felt the need to start speaking, and using my voice even on behalf of people who might be too afraid right now.

Somehow, I found it within myself to do that. I thought my life might be over. I wrote a piece for Newsweek, which was calling out these particular bullies. I thought, “If I publish that, that's it. I will never work as a writer again.” But it also very much opened up my voice. I felt that I needed to not be one of the silenced voices, and take a stand — even if it did cost me something. I think I got some things in return. Like more authentic relationships, for example.

TH: You bring a unique perspective to this. We're both Canadian citizens, but you were born in the Soviet Union. Tell us about how those early years living under communism shaped your perspective on all of this.

KB: I was born in the Soviet Union, the part that's now Ukraine. I was fairly young when I left, but I grew up in my parents' household. And they, throughout the years, would tell me about their lives under communism — the self-silencing that ran very deep. There was a lot of subversive writing that was going on, because you could tell things were boiling up to the surface. But you couldn't say things openly, or it would cost you. It could even cost you your life, at certain points. But it certainly cost people opportunities. Violence was not unheard of. My family is also Jewish, so that was uniquely not a great experience, being in a country like that at the time.

My parents were starting to warn me about some of the things they were seeing in the culture. For example, the propaganda aspect of certain cultural themes. Collectivism. And the fact that certain speech was starting to get stifled. People could lose their jobs for saying certain things, or get ousted from their tribes. As much as there is censorship, in terms of people potentially losing their jobs from institutions and things like that, I would say the self-silencing is a bigger problem in our society. 

But at the time, I think I dismissed it. I thought, “We are in this Western, very liberal country and there's no way such a thing could happen here.” Unfortunately, as we've been going forward, I've noticed that, in fact, some of the things that were happening in the Soviet Union are indeed happening here. You can look at history — a lot of the revolutions happened because of a small radical group of people who pushed terrible ideas upon society. And people, for the most part, remained silent.

I don't think it's because they agreed with these ideas. They might have even disagreed. But they didn't voice anything.

Even something like the Holocaust, I would say. I think most people were not necessarily keen to genocide people. But they didn't say anything when rights were gradually being taken away from members of their population. They were maybe even seeing some benefits for themselves. That silence — it's really a matter of life and death.

The fact that we think we're safe in this country that's much more liberal and westernized — that can all change in a short span of time. Because, again, if we learn from history, that has been the case throughout history.

TH: You dive into some of the psychological aspects of piles-ons in this book, from many different people's perspectives. I found that really interesting, as someone who has also interviewed people that have gone through this experience. You write, “There's a freedom to be cancelled. You can say or do anything you want.” There is this freedom that people talk about eventually settling over them. But there is also this period of intense fear, crippling depression. And, for many, a lasting feeling of paranoia and an inability to trust other people. I've heard all of this a lot. You said at the beginning of the conversation that you're something of a people pleaser. And you've said on the Triggernometry podcast that you're not a particularly disagreeable person. Neither am I. I do think there's some effects to having gone through a pile-on. What would you say are some of those lasting effects of having gone through that?