The Root of Cancel Culture

Cancel culture has become a fiercely debated topic. Opinions run the gamut from cancel culture threatens liberal civilization to cancel culture isn’t real and is a distraction from the issues that matter. A piece published in Harper’s Magazine, by prominent figures like Noam Chomsky and J. K. Rowling, swings towards the more concerned end, viewing cancel culture as an existential threat to society. However, like many cancel culture takes, it errs in a too simplistic treatment of the issue. Cancel culture is not a disconnected phenomenon, but one that has risen directly out of our deeply divided moment. Any opinion on cancel culture should reckon with this reality.

For clarity, let’s establish some ground rules about my use of cancel culture as the term is rather amorphous. Here, cancel culture encompasses attempts to ruin an individual’s career, a company’s existence, or somebody’s life through things like doxing because of opinions that are deemed unacceptable. Despite the term’s newness, it is not a new phenomenon. Society has always censured opinions that it deemed unacceptable. In the McCarthy era, communism was vigorously suppressed. Indeed, a piece responding to the Harper’s letter in The Objective notes that “marginalized voices have been silenced for generations in journalism, academia, and publishing.” Picture a Venn diagram, with circles of different ideologies all intersecting in the middle. Everything in the middle is acceptable, with fringe opinions lying outside of this center. This dynamic has always been at the center of human society.