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August 17, 2023

Cancel Culture (CC) is a cultural phenomenon best exemplified by fanatical concern over pictures in Dr. Seuss books. However, its true meaning is often obscured when invoked to describe a less controversial social reaction to overt criminal behavior. Advocates of Enlightenment values have a responsibility to untangle the web spun by social-justice activism and clarify the real concerns this culture represents. Consider the following questions:

  1. What is the most appropriate way to employ the term CC within a consistent conceptual framework?
  2. What is the basis for CC morality and its effect?
  3. How can one combat the spread of irrational CC behavior?

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Understanding CC

While the phrase “cancel culture” had popped up now and then over the past decade on social media platforms, it seemed to gain significant traction during the 2017 Me Too movement and is now ubiquitous.

However, in understanding CC, there is a need to separate lawbreakers from the discussion. For example, Harvey Weinstein was not “canceled”; he was found guilty of criminal behavior. Hence, it is necessary to use CC in a proper context to prevent it masquerading as rational social response and accepted as a societal norm.

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Appropriate use of the reference is especially necessary when people who are “canceled” while exercising their First Amendment rights are lumped together with felons. To be clear, the divide between a convicted rapist and an alleged racist is significant. On the one hand, you have proven illegal, violent behavior; on the other, you have an unproven accusation that is not criminal even if true. Therefore, given a well-established context and definition, let us consider the nature of this type of culture and the consequential collateral damage it generates.

The Morality of CC

CC is a manifestation of wokeism, which I define as a progressive hypersensitive state of extreme awareness or hysterical alertness about imagined injustice from omnipresent oppression and is malleable such that it accommodates almost any inequity claim by seeking remedial action to grievances while wielding an ever-expanding weaponized political toolset in the name of social justice. Hence, wokeism and its CC afterbirth operates like a religious cult, beckoning comparison to Early Modern witchhunt mobs.

In general, religion features dogma or authoritative principles considered incontrovertibly true. Such gives rise to sin lists, as can be found in Christian writings. For example, the Apostle Paul wrote letters to early churches to single out offenses for which people had to repent else they would not inherit the Kingdom of God. One does not need to defend this morality to grasp that, at least in the Christian context, there is an offer of redemption for transgressions. Thus, after compiling the list of sins found in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, the Apostle concludes with the words: “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

Likewise, modern woke CC demands confessions from rule-breakers, yet the transcendent value of Christian redemption does not necessarily follow. The postmodernist roots of CC lend no support for any parallels to Christian forgiveness. Moreover, those who go to extraordinary lengths by sacrificing any self-esteem or integrity they might have cannot appease the woke mob. On the contrary, the CC crowd often responds to these open confessions and public, slobbering, social media apologies with scorn and rejection.

Today’s CC emerges from mob mentality that invents heresies on the fly, whereby indiscreet comments one made as a teenager are wielded as the Sword of Damocles. Consider the March 2021 firing of the editor of Teen Vogue for comments she made a decade earlier as a teenager of just seventeen years of age. A self-righteous Tweet from a CC cult follower condemning her actions read as follows: “The fact of @TeenVogue hired this racist at a time when Asian American hate crimes are on the rise speaks volumes to their lack of respect for the community.”