When You Claim Cancel Culture Doesn’t Exist
You’re Telling Us A Lot About You and Nothing About Reality
Everyone knows that cancel culture exists.
Simply type in cancel culture harm and instantly you will be rewarded with dozens and dozens of links giving specific instances of people who have been materially harmed by cancel culture. You will find stories of doxxing, threats, job loss, suicidal ideation and more. It’s very easy to find the actual names of real people who have had their lives ruined by cancel culture.
Cancel Culture is mob rule writ large, and we all know this.
So what’s behind the refusal from some to admit it even exists?
Well, it seems a few different issues are at play. Fear, ignorance, group conformity and compliance, plausible deniability, schadenfreude, and occasionally pedantry, with a dash of cognitive dissonance.
Let’s talk about that.
- Fear. People denying the existence of cancel culture are dog-whistling to the group they perceive as powerful, the group they wish to be accepted by, that they adhere to groupthink. They are ensuring their loyalty is flagged and that there are receipts proving their support, in the hope this will ensure their own safety. They’re well aware, even if it’s subconscious, that they can be caused material harm by the mob. And that the mob is unpredictable. “Others refused to participate in trials or accusations–and paid the price. For example, John Willard, Salem’s deputy constable, developed doubts about the guilt of some of the so-called “witches.” When he expressed those concerns, accusers turned on him instead.”
- Ignorance. Some haven’t bothered to research the issue, so genuinely think it’s not that big a deal. Unfortunately, just because someone is clueless that doesn’t stop them bloviating.
- Group conformity and compliance. Without realising it, we all conform to social pressures. It’s part and parcel of how the human mind works. Standing up to a mob can be terrifying, and it’s not how most of us are wired. If you find yourself enmeshed in the cancel culture apologists groupthink you may also already have invested a lot, so sunk cost fallacy can also come into play.
- Plausible deniability. If you pretend you don’t realise how dangerous and harmful cancel culture is, you can pretend (perhaps even to yourself) to be shocked when someone kills themselves, loses their job or is assaulted as a result of cancel culture. You’re not that person, of course not. How terrible, of course I never wanted that to happen!”
- Schadenfreude — the malicious delight in another’s misfortune. Humans are often arseholes. We enjoy the lamentation of our enemies — or perceived enemies — and destruction of people we dislike. Watching someone you dislike being torn to shreds can be a satisfying experience.
- The pedantic pretender. They are fully aware of what cancel culture is, and how harmful it can be. But they’ll argue backwards and forwards about the definition of the word and its parameters, rather than just admit that mob rule is harmful.
- Cognitive dissonance. The ability to hold two opposing views at the same time. “I don’t agree with mob rule — except when it’s MY mob rule. Because OUR position/stance/belief is different”. By not accepting that your mob is just as unjustified as any other mob, by turning your face away from that reality, you can continue to pretend you have the moral highground.
Inside the mind of the denier
If you’re a Cancel Culture denier and have managed to read this far, you will by now be finding yourself extremely uncomfortable. You’ll probably try to deny or dismiss that discomfort, it might surface as what you imagine is righteous anger or you might feign disgust, disinterest etc.
You’ll almost certainly try to alleviate your discomfort in one of a few ways.
Most unlikely (but always possible) you might alter your view to the rational, truthful one — cancel culture definitely exists, has caused immense harm, and cannot be justified.
More likely, you’ll try to find a way to disbelieve and dismiss the reality. Since it’s not possible to do so rationally and critically, you’ll have to find a reason to dismiss me. You might do this by reading through some of my work to try to find something that you think pinpoints me as unethical, because if you can come up with a reason to find me offensive, you can throw the article out with the bathwater.
One of the pillars of cancel culture is that if you dislike someone, everything they have ever said or ever will say again can be nuked.
So, if you can find an excuse to disregard me as a human, you give yourself an excuse to disregard my work.
If you choose this course, your discomfort will lessen and you will no longer have to consider the reality that cancel culture mobs and their defenders are not, in fact, the white hats.
When someone denies Cancel Culture exists, is harmful and does not serve the purpose they want it to, just remember that we are — all of us — emotional, not logical thinkers. I’ve said elsewhere:
“Never forget that we are all highly emotional naked apes, who one day learned how to think. We make decisions based on feelings, rarely facts, and once we’re persuaded to emotionally bond to a concept or a person, it’s really difficult to shift us. Certainly, logic alone will rarely do it. Confirmation bias and emotional thinking accounts for some of that. We often use emotional reasoning to defend a conclusion that we’ve already reached, based upon our feelings.”
Inside the mind of the apologist
When not actually denying its existence, cancel culture apologists will typically claim people are free to say what they like and accept the consequences.
What they perhaps haven’t realised is that this makes them sound a lot like the sort of men who beat the hell out of their wives and then say “Look what you made me do”.
The claim that people hounded into unemployment, mental breakdown and worse by hateful mobs is a fair and equitable punishment is not a reasonable one.
And even if you could make an argument that those who cancel culture fixates on deserve their punishment, you cannot be unaware that this teaches nothing but terrified compliance.
Terrified compliance only works while you are there to enforce it.
No lesson learned
Being hounded, abused and harassed for speaking words, making a movie, or otherwise putting something into the world that others don’t agree with doesn’t actually teach anyone anything except to be sneakier and more deceitful the next time they wish to share an opinion.
Those who might have agreed with you may now perceive the group as a bully.
By chasing Frankenstein’s monster through the town with pitchforks and torches, you make him appear sympathetic and strengthen his position. Although, in the short term you will have the undeniable satisfaction of causing harm to the monster, in the longer term this does not help your cause.
You Can Never Be Woke Enough
You cannot bully, nag or force people to agree with you, to paraphrase Dave Chapelle. Along with JK Rowling, Chapelle is in the fortunate position of being too wealthy and having too many adoring fans for the cancelites to cause appreciable harm. But they certainly tried, and doubtless will keep trying. Unfortunately for most of the victims of cancel culture, they’re generally not millionaires or billionaires who can afford protection and remove themselves from dangerous situations when required.
This is an interesting article, worth a read, discussing how aggressive tactics won’t improve matters for those who want to defeat racism.
Cancel culture deniers seem to think that they’ll be spared the mob.
They couldn’t be more wrong.
Remember the Salem Witch Trials? When you encourage mob hysteria you cannot control which way it turns.
You’re not safe from the same practices that you’re applauding.
You can never be woke enough to consider yourself safe. Allowing the mob hysteria of cancel culture to become the dominant paradigm eventually ends in 1984 being played out in real life.
The Straw Men Are Burning
You needn’t worry, there are already existing laws for hateful behaviour. Strengthening those laws, instead of trying to circumvent them, is the way to go.
So, no need to falsely claim that I am trying to defend instigators of violence or hatred, or that I wish the isms and phobias you are so keen to label others with to go unchecked.
We do not need any further shackles on free speech. You can say “I hate (insert group)”. Ugly, but perfectly legal. You cannot say “Attack (insert group). It’s absolutely fine to feel offended over the first sentence. So fucking what? It’s when they start encouraging the second sentence we need to worry.
You already know the difference.
Just like you know the difference between boycotting and cancel culture. I don’t watch comedians who are misogynistic or regularly sexist because they’re dreary and lazy and offensive to me. So I click on another channel. Boycotting requires a strategy and objective and is bottom up. But cancel culture just requires a twat with a keyboard taking a pop at someone and trying to cause them personal harm.
Thus, what I don’t do when I am offended (which is daily on this site) is start rallying the troops to try to cause the person harm, because I’m a reasonable human being who understands that being offended won’t kill me. But a mob attack might damage the life, health or livelihood of anyone targeted and cause him or her unreasonable harm for the act of saying words I don’t like.
Overwhelmingly, cancelites are attacking those who have broken no laws. They simply have an opinion the mob disagrees with. If you consider this acceptable you must also consider it acceptable when others turn on and cause you harm because they disagree with you.
Nobody is saying people have to be allowed to say and do whatever they want without consequence, no need to pretend otherwise. But cancel culture does not offer, or seek, reasonable consequences.
And if you were honest, you would admit that if we were all taken to task for everything we’ve ever done or said, not one single person would be spared the howling hordes. Including you.
Hear, hear
In conclusion: here’s what we all hear when you say “Cancel Culture doesn’t exist”.
“I dislike that person and their views so I’m fine with any treatment they suffer up to and including being harassed, hounded, harmed, doxxed, driven to suicide, losing their job or otherwise having their entire life upended and made a misery”
And yes, that actually makes you sound worse than the person you disagree with.
Remember Voltaire?
Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote of Voltaire’s attitude:
‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,’
Every single one of us should be aiming for that.
We need a lot more defenders of free speech and much less of the pretence that howling hatefulness will make the world a better place.
If you are one who enjoys cancel culture and its poisoned fruits, and actually think it’s making the world a better place, I guarantee that when The Party turns on you, you’ll be just as exposed and just as defenceless as the people you were helping to stone.
‘The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power — pure power.’ — Orwell
You don’t have to care about cancel culture. You don’t have to do anything about it. You don’t have to speak up when you see a mob slavering and spittle lipped hunting down someone you dislike.
But you do have to stop saying cancel culture doesn’t exist. Unless you want us all to know just how much you’re enjoying the show.
Addendum: you’d love to believe I was right wing, wouldn’t you? Manichean thinking and cancel culture approval go hand in hand. Here I am talking about Trump:
And here I am talking about Biden:
Uh-oh. In a surprise twist, it turns out you can have a nuanced opinion and dislike both sides of the coin equally. Bet you didn’t see that coming.
Alison Tennent, Queensland, Australia, July 2021 Copyright Alison Tennent 2021, all rights reserved. Scottish by birth, upbringing and bloodline, Australian by citizenship. If you’re reading this anywhere but The Garrulous Glaswegian, Vocal+ or Medium, this work may have been plagiarized.
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