I know that the whole idea of “cancel culture” is pretty much bullshit, but I tire of people complaining about “cancel culture of woke mobs” and talking about, for example, the owners of the Dr. Seuss books voluntarily stopping the publication of a couple of less popular books.
So, I’m hoping to gather some examples from the other side of the political divide. I’m hoping for things from the last few years (so, nothing about the whole Hollywood blacklist or the Smothers Brothers cancellation. Even the banning of the Dixie Chicks from country stations is too far back for me).
Of the top of my head:
Trump calling for a boycott of Coke (while being seen soon after with a Diet Coke in front of him)
The removal of Liz Cheney from her leadership position in the House for telling the truth about the election
The effort to ban certain books from school libraries (paywalled, unless you know the magic of incognito browsing)
Calls to boycott the MLB for moving their All-Star game from Atlanta
Calls to boycott Citigroup and Delta for speaking out against the Georgia voting law
Is this cancel culture? The Tennessee legislature blocked a resolution honoring a gay country star for the sin of being gay. Seems like an edge case, since he still has his music career, but I guess righties complained about the non-firing of a professor who may have said the N word, so maybe?
The big ones for me are in the realm of academia. In my state, an academic center headed by an outspoken opponent of the Republican-led legislature was shut down by the Republican-appointed Board of Governors, under flimsy excuses. A bank offered funding to public universities as long as they agreed to teach Ayn Rand. Our Lieutenant Governor has added a form on his official government website where you can report on teachers if you think they’re violating political right-think. Our state superintendent may have given all our addresses to a Republican-led effort to undermine our educator union, because (in the words of their founder in a letter to the superintendent, paraphrased because I can’t find the link right now) the union was too helpful to Democrats in certain key elections and Republicans need to fight back.
Academic freedom is definitely under attack. The thread doesn’t come from undergraduates, though: it comes from wealthy, powerful people.
Right! That also reminds me of the Nike boycotts (and merchandise burning) after Nike picked up Kaepernick for branding.
Agreed – I should have mentioned all the anti-1619 bills. It’s frustrating – I’m a fan of Steven Pinker but he’s always mentioning situations where students are protesting some racist coming to campus, worrying about academic freedom, but I’ve never seen him mention these other situations, which will have much more impact.
That one just seems whackjob to me, not really right or left (even though I understand the owners of that school are Trump supporters).
I’m hoping to get more specific incidents. Cutting funding for Planned Parenthood doesn’t really qualify, since it’s not a culture war thing, more of an anti-abortion thing. I think of cancel culture as more of a culture war thing.
Yeah, over the years I’ve fallen out of love with Pinker over this and other things. He seems to be drifting slowly into Jordan Peterson territory, valuing himself as a maverick rather than looking at things with rigor. (Not saying he’s in full Lobster Responsibility territory yet, just slowly moving in that direction).
I don’t think of cancel culture as properly extending to corporations or products. That would just be a boycott. I mean, it makes sense but seems awkward to use it that way. You cancel a person (from your life and dealings), just like an executive cancels a television show (from his/her network). But I don’t really use the term, myself.
Aside from Mr. Kaepernick, President Trump &co attempted to cancel Arnon Mishkin, who called Arizona for Biden on Fox. They successfully cancelled Lt. Cn. Vindman who testified before Congress on the Ukraine scandal.
I agree with your first one (Arnon Mishkin), but I think Vindman just got fired by his boss, essentially. I wouldn’t call that cancel culture.
On your first point, people on this very board were bemoaning the cancel culture that led to the Seuss books getting pulled, so I think products and corporations work.
In my experience, incognito browsing isn’t enough to get around NYT’s paywall. They seem to use other ways of tracking and/or find ways to detect that you are in incognito mode. They don’t seem to use the “porous paywall” model.
@Max_S I would agree with your definition of cancel culture if it weren’t for the fact that boycotts and companies being too PC are the exact things that the right calls “cancel culture.” If they were talking about, say, abuse and harassment, I wouldn’t object to much to the term.
The right-wing project Professor Watchlist is probably a comparatively minor example, but it nonetheless results in harassment and death threats for professors on its list.