{"id":3793,"date":"2020-09-03T17:19:23","date_gmt":"2020-09-03T23:19:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/publicsquaremag.org\/?p=3793"},"modified":"2023-08-10T14:35:13","modified_gmt":"2023-08-10T20:35:13","slug":"dont-underestimate-cancel-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/publicsquaremag.org\/dialogue\/dont-underestimate-cancel-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Underestimate Cancel Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, Harper\u2019s published an anti-cancel culture statement: <\/span>A Letter on Justice and Open Debate<\/span><\/a>. The letter was signed by a wide variety of writers and intellectuals, ranging from Noam Chomsky to J. K. Rowling. It was a kind of radical centrist manifesto, including major names like Jonathan Haidt and John McWhorter (two of my favorite writers) and also crossing lines to pick up folks like Matthew Yglesias (not one of my favorite writers, but I give him respect for putting his name to this letter).<\/span><\/p>\n

The letter kicked up a storm of controversy from the left, which basically boiled down to two major contentions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. There is no such thing as cancel culture.<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Everyone has limits on what speech they will tolerate, so there\u2019s no difference between the social justice left and the liberal left other than where to draw the lines.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The \u201cProfound Consequences\u201d of Cancel Culture<\/b><\/h2>\n

    The first contention was represented in pieces like this one from the Huffington Post: <\/span>Don\u2019t Fall For The \u2018Cancel Culture\u2019 Scam<\/span><\/a>. In the piece, Michael Hobbes writes:<\/span><\/p>\n

    While the letter itself, published by the magazine Harper\u2019s, doesn\u2019t use the term, the statement represents a bleak apogee in the yearslong, increasingly contentious debate over \u201ccancel culture.\u201d The American left, we are told, is imposing an Orwellian set of restrictions on which views can be expressed in public. Institutions at every level are supposedly gripped by fears of social media mobs and dire professional consequences if their members express so much as a single statement of wrongthink.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

    This is false. Every statement of fact in the Harper\u2019s letter is either wildly exaggerated or plainly untrue. More broadly, the controversy over \u201ccancel culture\u201d is a straightforward moral panic. While there are indeed real cases of ordinary Americans plucked from obscurity and harassed into unemployment, this rare, isolated phenomenon is being blown up far beyond its importance.<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    There is a kernel of truth to what Hobbes is saying, but it is only a kernel. Not <\/span>that<\/span><\/i> many ordinary Americans are getting \u201ccanceled,\u201d and some of those who are canceled are not entirely expunged from public life. They don\u2019t all lose their jobs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    But then, they don\u2019t all <\/span>have<\/span><\/i> to lose their jobs for the rest of us to get the message, do they?<\/span><\/p>\n

    The basic analytical framework here is wrong. Hobbes assumes that the \u201cprofound consequences\u201d of cancel culture have yet to be manifest. \u201cAgain and again,\u201d he writes, \u201cthe decriers of \u2018cancel culture\u2019 intimate that if left unchecked, the left\u2019s increasing intolerance for dissent will result in profound consequences.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

    The reason he can talk about hypothetical future consequences is that he\u2019s thinking about the wrong consequences. Hobbes appears to think that the purpose of cancel culture is to cancel lots and lots of people. If we don\u2019t see hordes<\/span>\u2014<\/span>thousands, maybe tens of thousands<\/span>\u2014<\/span>of people canceled then there aren\u2019t any \u201cprofound consequences.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

    The \u201cprofound consequences\u201d are the people\u2014not thousands or tens of thousands but\u00a0millions<\/i>\u2014who hide their beliefs and stop speaking their minds because they\u2019re afraid.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n

    This is absurd. The mob doesn\u2019t break kneecaps for the sake of breaking kneecaps. They break kneecaps to send a message to everyone <\/span>else<\/span><\/i> to pay up without resisting. Intimidation campaigns do not exist to make examples out of everyone. They make examples out of (a few) people in order to intimidate many more.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    Cancel culture is just such an intimidation campaign, and so the \u201cprofound consequences\u201d aren\u2019t the people who are canceled. The \u201cprofound consequences\u201d are the people<\/span>\u2014<\/span>not thousands or tens of thousands but <\/span>millions<\/span><\/i>\u2014<\/span>who hide their beliefs and stop speaking their minds because they\u2019re afraid.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    And yes, I mean <\/span>millions<\/span><\/i>. Cato does polls on that topic, and they found that 58% of Americans had \u201cpolitical views they\u2019re afraid to share\u201d <\/span>in 2017<\/span><\/a> and, as of <\/span>just a month ago<\/span><\/a>, that number has climbed to 62%.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    Gee, nearly two-thirds of Americans are afraid to speak their minds. How\u2019s that for \u201cprofound consequences\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n

    Obviously Cato has a viewpoint here, but other studies are finding similar results. Politico did their own poll, and while it didn\u2019t ask about self-censoring, it did ask what Americans think about cancel culture. According to <\/span>the poll<\/span><\/a>, 46% think it has gone \u201ctoo far\u201d while only 10% think it has gone \u201cnot far enough.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    Moreover, these polls also reinforce something obvious: cancel culture is not just some general climate of acrimony. According to both the Cato and Politico polls, Republicans are much more likely to self-censor as a result of cancel culture (77% vs 52%)\u00a0 and Democrats are much more likely to participate in the silencing (~50% of Democrats \u201chave voiced their displeasure with a public figure on social media\u201d vs. ~30% of Republicans).<\/span><\/p>\n

    Contrast these poll results with what Hobbes calls the \u201cpitiful stakes\u201d of cancel culture. He mocks low-grade intimidation like \u201cNew York Magazine <\/span>published a panicked story<\/span><\/a> about <\/span>a guy being removed from a group email list.<\/span><\/i>\u201d Meanwhile, more than three-quarters of Republicans are afraid to be honest about their own political beliefs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    We don\u2019t need to worry about hypothetical future profound consequences. They\u2019re already here.<\/span><\/p>\n

    What Makes Cancel Culture Different<\/b><\/h2>\n

    The second contention<\/span>\u2014<\/span>which is that <\/span>everyone<\/span><\/i> has at least some speech they\u2019d enthusiastically support canceling<\/span>\u2014<\/span>is a more serious objection. After all: it\u2019s true. All but the very most radical of free speech defenders will draw the line <\/span>somewhere<\/span><\/i>. If this is correct, then isn\u2019t cancel culture just a redrawing of boundaries that have always been present?<\/span><\/p>\n

    To that, I answer: no. There really <\/span>is<\/span><\/i> something new and different about cancel culture, and it\u2019s not just the speed or ferocity of its adherents.<\/span><\/p>\n

    The difference goes back to a post I wrote a few months ago about the idea of an <\/span>ideological demilitarized zone<\/span><\/a>. A normal, healthy person will draw a distinction between opinions they disagree with and actively oppose and opinions they disagree with that merit toleration or even consideration. That\u2019s what I call the \u201cdemilitarized zone\u201d: the collection of opinions that you think are <\/span>wrong<\/span><\/i> but also <\/span>reasonable and defensible<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    Cancel culture has no DMZ.<\/b><\/h2>\n

    Think I\u2019m exaggerating? This is a post from a Facebook friend (someone I know IRL) just yesterday:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/picture><\/p>\n

    You can read the opinion of J. K. Rowling for yourself <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>. Agree or disagree, it is very, very hard for any reasonable person to come away thinking that Rowling has anything approaching personal animus towards anyone who is transgender for being transgender. (The kind of animus that might justify calling someone a \u201ctransphobic piece of s_ _ _\u201d and trying to retcon her out of reality.) In the piece, she writes with empathy and compassion of the transgender community and states emphatically that, \u201cI know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people,\u201d adding that:<\/span><\/p>\n

    Again and again I\u2019ve been told to \u2018just meet some trans people.\u2019 I have: in addition to a few younger people, who were all adorable, I happen to know a self-described transsexual woman who\u2019s older than I am and wonderful.<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    So here\u2019s the difference between cancel culture and basically every other viewpoint on the political spectrum: in the case of the latter, people can acknowledge shades of grey and areas where reasonable people can see things differently, cancel culture <\/span>can\u2019t<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>won\u2019t<\/span><\/i>. Cancel culture is binary (ironically). You\u2019re either 100% in conformity with the ideology or you\u2019re \u201ca \u2014\u2013phobic piece of s_ _ _\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

    This is not incidental, by the way. Liberal traditions trace their roots back to the Enlightenment and include an assumption that truth exists as an objective category. As long as that\u2019s the case<\/span>\u2014<\/span>as long as there\u2019s an objective reality <\/span>out there<\/span><\/i>\u2014<\/span>then there is a basis for discussion about it. There\u2019s also room for mistaken beliefs about it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    Cancel culture traces its roots back to critical theory, which rejects notions of reason and objective truth and sees instead only power. It\u2019s not the case that people are disagreeing about a mutually accessible, external reality. Instead, all we have are subjective truth claims which can be maintained<\/span>\u2014<\/span>not by appeal to evidence or logic<\/span>\u2014<\/span>but only through the exercise of raw <\/span>power<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Liberal traditions<\/span>\u2014<\/span>be they on the left or on the right\u2013view conflict through a lens that is philosophically compatible with humility, correction, cooperation, and compromise. That\u2019s not to say that liberal traditions actually inhabit some kind of pluralist Utopia where no one plays dirty to win. It\u2019s not like American politics (or politics anywhere) existed in some kind of genteel Garden of Eden until critical theory showed up. But no matter how acrimonious or dirty politics got before cancel culture, there was also the <\/span>potential<\/span><\/i> for cross-ideological discussion. Cancel culture doesn\u2019t even have that.<\/span><\/p>\n

    This means that, while it\u2019s possible for other viewpoints to coexist in a pluralist society, it is not possible for cancel culture to do the same. It isn\u2019t a different variety of the same kind of thing. It\u2019s a new kind of thing, a totalitarian ideology that has no self-limiting principle and views any and all dissent as an existential threat because its own truth claims are rooted solely in an appeal to <\/span>power<\/span><\/i>. For cancel culture, being right and winning are the same thing, and every single debate is a facet of the same existential struggle<\/span><\/p>\n

    So yes, all ideologies want to cancel <\/span>something <\/span><\/i>else. But only cancel culture wants to cancel <\/span>everything <\/span><\/i>else.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Last Thoughts<\/b><\/h2>\n

    Lots of responders to the Harper\u2019s letter pointed out that the signers were generally well-off elites. It seemed silly, if not outright hypocritical, for folks like that to whine about cancel culture, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

    My perspective is rather different. As someone who\u2019s just an average Joe with no book deals, no massive social media following, no tenure, nor anything like that: I deeply appreciate someone with J. K. Rowling\u2019s stature trading some of her vast hoard of social capital to keep the horizons of public discourse from narrowing ever farther.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    And that\u2019s exactly why the social justice left hates her so much. They understand power, and they know how crippling it is to their cause to have someone like her demure from their rigid orthodoxy. Their concern isn\u2019t alleviated because her dissent is gentle and reasonable. It\u2019s <\/span>worsened<\/span><\/i> because it makes it even harder to cancel her and underscores just how toxic their totalitarian ideology really is.<\/span><\/p>\n

    I believe in objective reality. I believe in truth. But I\u2019m pragmatic enough to understand that power is real, too. And when someone like J. K. Rowling uses some of her power in defense of liberalism and intellectual diversity, I feel nothing but gratitude for the help.<\/span><\/p>\n

    We who want to defend the ideals of classical liberalism know just how much we could use it.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Those critiquing J.K. Rowling and other luminaries for signing off on a letter about open debate don\u2019t seem to appreciate the extent to which threats on a few have rippled out to influence the self-censoring and fearful silence of millions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[472,501],"tags":[566,147,25,113,105,109],"coauthors":[301],"class_list":["post-3793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dialogue","category-social-justice","tag-cancel-culture","tag-culture","tag-dialogue","tag-disagreement","tag-lgbt","tag-national-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDon\u2019t Underestimate Cancel Culture - Public Square Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Threats on a few\u2014including J.K. 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