Cancel Culture: What Exactly Is This Thing?
https://newrepublic.com/article/155141/cancel-culture-con-dave-chappelle-shane-gillisWhat is cancel culture, and is it improving society or making it worse?
The answer to those questions largely depends on who you ask. Some people, particularly those who consider themselves targets or victims of cancelation campaigns, argue that it is a dangerous trend in American culture, one that is actively stifling art, media, science, education, and free thought. Others argue that cancel culture is just another term for accountability, and that invoking the spectre of cancel culture is just a way of dodging responsibility for one’s actions.
But what is cancelation, exactly? There’s no one answer to this—the definition, it turns out, is largely in the eye of the beholder—but I think of it as a form of social and cultural boycott. The goal isn’t restoration or even analysis; it’s excommunication.
Long read, but worth reading. Cancel culture is like Maoist China, Soviet Union, Nazis Germany, Taliban Afghanistan, etc. It is puritanism.
