# There's no such thing as cancel culture **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 19, 2021, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259 "2021-03-19T19:44:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/1 "2021-03-19T19:44:00Z")
It’s a boogeyman created by the same conservatives who cheered when Colin Kaepernick got blacklisted. Just like boasts of non-political correctness it’s an attempt to deny responsibility and escape consequences for acting like a fool in public. It’s a declaration of the “right” to be racist, misogynist, homophobic, etc., and then whining when called out on it. It’s an attempt to divert attention from their own actions to the _re_actions of others. To the extent that it’s an outcry against the possible professional and financial damage that might be part of the fallout, it’s pure capitalism. To suggest that such an adjustment in the marketplace should be prevented or managed is pure socialism. So fundamentally, the wails decrying cancel culture are just another example of conservative hypocrisy. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/2 "2021-03-19T19:49:58Z")
No, there **is** most definitely indeed cancel culture. It’s a very real thing on both sides. It’s just that conservatives only complain when it goes against them. For many years, Christian conservatives were perfectly happy to call for boycotts when someone promoted LGBT. The Dixie Chicks were “canceled” for criticizing George W. Bush. People called for boycotts of Ford, Disney, etc. People began boycotting singer Lauren Daigle when she said “I can’t say because I’m not God” when asked about her view of homosexuality. When Trump was president, all sorts of formerly respected Republicans such as McCain, Romney, Bolton, Sasse, Pence, etc. were vilified because they refused to join, or stepped off of, the Trump train. I’ve even read of a fundamentalist family that walked out of a concert merely because the performing violinist began to play some jazzy bluegrass music, which the family disapproved of. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/3 "2021-03-19T19:50:25Z")
I think we can debate the nomenclature and the definition of ‘cancel culture’ until we’re blue in the face. I definitely think there’s a mob mentality when it comes to viral outrage that is unhealthy and unfair, and I’ve felt that way since long before Carano and McCammond got ensnared in controversy. I wish we could evolve to a point where we could not immediately put people on the defensive and let them apologize and grow from the experience without fear of losing a job, losing an income, losing friends and associates, and whatever else comes with cyber-shaming. I don’t care if it’s a “business decision”; I’d like to see businesses have values beyond just their brand, speaking as a social capitalist. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/4 "2021-03-19T19:57:27Z")
@asahi When I said, on the other thread, that they (social conservatives) are “not reading our pamphlets …” What they are doing is: - Packing local governments and school boards - Engineering redesign of our K-12 curriculum - Filling the air waves with their agenda - Filling the houses of worship with their agenda (within or outside of IRS laws) - Packing the courts at every single level They have mechanisms, machinery, and money to impose _their_ agenda on the rest of us. And the rest of us have always been on defense. As I said elsewhere, trying to regain masses of lost ground is still defense. If it can’t be made unpopular, a bit painful, and have a cost to it, what motivation is there to change repugnant, insidious, and invidious behavior ? Logical, rational arguments ? The pure Marketplace of Ideas ? This just ain’t that cohort or we wouldn’t still be fighting the same battles that we’ve been fighting since our nation’s founding. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/5 "2021-03-19T20:12:51Z")
> **[Obama on Call-Out Culture: ‘That’s Not Activism’ (Published 2019)](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/obama-woke-cancel-culture.html)** > > The former president challenged young activists for being judgmental. “You should get over that quickly,” he said. I suppose arch-conservative Obama never got that memo. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/6 "2021-03-19T20:15:29Z")
Seems not. So what? ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/7 "2021-03-19T20:17:55Z")
You read the OP? ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/8 "2021-03-19T20:22:21Z")
Just reread it - didn’t see a thing in there about Obama being a reliable source of information about every subject in existence. It’s charming when you make an argument from authority based on somebody that _you_ don’t consider an authority, but expect us to venerate like a deity. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/9 "2021-03-19T20:22:54Z")
I think it never occurs to conservatives that liberals can disagree with Obama because they, conservatives, literally cannot imagine disagreeing with Republican leaders. That kind of blind, unthinking loyalty is largely what got us into the mess we’re in today. “But Obama” is never a good faith argument. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/10 "2021-03-19T20:24:25Z")
> [@lissener](#): > > “But Obama” is never a good faith argument. - I don’t think that was an attempt at a good faith argument. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/11 "2021-03-19T20:29:02Z")
It’s an _obvious_ rebuttal to the claim that cancel culture is nothing more than a creation of the right. ---
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/12 "2021-03-19T20:39:30Z")
I suppose Noam Chomsky is also a right wing shill, because he cosigned (along with 150 other people) " [A Letter on Justice and Open Debate](https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/)", an open letter published in Harper’s magazine denouncing cancel culture. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/13 "2021-03-19T20:41:44Z")
When conservatives, and the so-called patriots who believe waving a flag makes them patriots, refused to hear or understand what Kaepernick’s harmless protest was about, or the above mentioned Dixie Chicks episode, they were all in favor of what they would later decry as “cancel culture”. Their selfish hypocrisy is as obvious as… something really obvious. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/14 "2021-03-19T20:56:31Z")
Well, no; if you actually read the article about Obama’s speech, you see that what he’s decrying is the idea that merely “calling out” other people’s errors, and feeling smug about one’s “wokeness”, counts as “activism”. He’s not saying that people shouldn’t be calling out and criticizing errors, which is what today’s right wing seems to be saying in its laments about “cancel culture”. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/15 "2021-03-19T20:57:06Z")
No it’s not. Unless you’re saying Obama invented it. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/16 "2021-03-19T21:00:44Z")
He’s talking about Call-Out culture. Yes, he mentions cancel culture, but he’s really talking about how progressives police other progressives. Here’s my favorite article about it. I had the good fortune to attend a seminar by this person called Compassionate Responses to Call-Out Culture. Really fascinating stuff. > **[Excommunicate Me from the Church of Social Justice](https://www.autostraddle.com/kin-aesthetics-excommunicate-me-from-the-church-of-social-justice-386640/)** > > "I’ve had countless hushed conversations with friends about this anxiety, and how it has led us to refrain from participation in activist events, conversations, and spaces because we feel inadequately radical." ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/17 "2021-03-19T21:14:59Z")
Another appeal to blind loyalty. I read this letter when it was first published and it reminded me then that even old Noam isn’t right all the time. Its flaw is its inconsistency. On the one hand it encourages free speech, even if it’s disagreeable: “We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters.” The authors seem not to grasp that their remedy to protect free speech is effectively to stifle speech that disagrees. To point out bad behavior is speech. To lament the consequences of that exposure is a separate issue and has nothing to do with the marketplace of ideas, but rather everything to do with the “marketplace” of capitalist iconography. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/18 "2021-03-19T21:35:50Z")
> [@Blalron](#): > > " [A Letter on Justice and Open Debate](https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/)", an open letter published in Harper’s magazine denouncing cancel culture. Eh, that letter’s pretty weaksauce, though. It makes some nice if vague general points about supporting open debate and freedom of speech (which, absolutely, go civil liberties!), and I don’t in any way fault Chomsky or anyone else for endorsing that. But the letter doesn’t actually identify any specific act that it claims is wrong, or why. The closest it seems to get to a defining principle is this: > [@](#): > > […] the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists […] This has been analyzed already in more and better detail than I could provide, in the subsequent [More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate](https://www.objectivejournalism.org/p/a-more-specific-letter-on-justice) in the Objective: > [@](#): > > They write, in the pages of a prominent magazine that’s infamous for being [anti-union](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2011/01/whats_the_matter_with_harpers.html), [not paying its interns](https://harpers.org/about/internships/), and firing editors over editorial disagreements with the publisher: “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.” […] > > Some of the problems they bring up are real and concerning — for example, they seem to be referencing a researcher being [fired for sharing a study on Twitter](https://twitter.com/adamserwer/status/1271087995383427073?lang=en). But they are not trends — at least not in the way that the signatories suggest. In reality, their argument alludes to but does not clearly lay out specific examples, and undermines the very cause they have appointed themselves to uphold. In truth, Black, brown, and LGBTQ+ people — particularly Black and trans people — can now critique elites publicly and hold them accountable socially; this seems to be the letter’s greatest concern. […] > > The letter reads as a caustic reaction to a diversifying industry — one that’s starting to challenge institutional norms that have protected bigotry. Yeah. The Harper’s letter seems to be less about real issues of freedom of expression and more about a lazy desire to maintain a comfortably privileged position where one never has to worry about a possible “threat of reprisal”. ? “Threat” of what kind of “reprisal”? I am of course totally in solidarity with the principle that nobody should have to face a threat of violence or physical intimidation or unconstitutional censorship because of what they write. But why, in a free marketplace of ideas maintained by commercial journalism, should anybody expect the default to be that anything they write will be protected from any kind of “reprisal” at all? ---
**Author:** ![Kyomara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8edcca/32.png) [@Kyomara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyomara)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/19 "2021-03-19T22:47:41Z")
“Cancel Culture” does not exist in the sense that right-wing media is currently peddling, i.e. a creeping scourge that is effectively stifling free speech and posing a threat to society. The vast majority of things and people that get “canceled” are still widely available if you care to look for them. People and ideas may get de-platformed from the largest means of dissemination (Twitter, etc.), but these platforms are privately-owned and have the right to decide who can use their services, and for what purpose. Things get “canceled” when most people don’t like them anymore. It is one of the most capitalist phenomenon we have. I will agree that there is such a thing as “outrage culture” or “call-out culture,” and it can be annoying and stressful, though I also think that it is kind of the dark side of people trying to make the world a more inclusive place, and the negative experiences it can create do not outweigh the overall good of people trying to be kinder and more inclusive. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259/20 "2021-03-19T22:52:34Z")
Try mentally substituting “accountability culture” or “natural consequence culture” every time you hear “cancel culture” and see what that does for your viewpoint. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-such-thing-as-cancel-culture/938259.md?page=2)