Cancel culture is real. And it’s conservative.





Osita Enwanevu has a rather baffling piece up The New Republic that’s garnering a lot of responses. Titled “The Cancel Culture Con,” the essay makes a few points:

1. Cancel culture doesn’t seem to accomplish anything, since all the higher-profile instances of cancellation haven’t led to anyone’s career actually being ruined.

2. Cancel culture should be understood simply as newly empowered groups seeking to express their righteous anger.

3. Conservatives do cancel culture-isms all the time, even though they’re not commonly regarded as such (Berri Weiss’ work demonizing BDS is held up as a fitting example).

4. The only people who complain about cancel culture is just jealous hypocrites and therefore Dave Chappelle is the same as Berri Weiss. (Also even though Dave Chappelle is making tons of money and beloved by millions he is actually unfunny and no longer relevant.)

5. In spite of not being a big deal, cancel culture is good because marginalized groups still suffer in today’s America (to prove this point, he ends with a graphic description of the beating of Muhlaysia Booker, a transwoman whose assault was livestreamed by rednecks and who was later found murdered).

Now what makes this baffling is the pace of Enwanevu’s self-contradictions. As others have pointed out repeatedly, this argument just doesn’t make sense. If cancelling really doesn’t work–which its advocates proudly insist is the case–and if cancel culture is actually so bad at what it’s purported to do that cancelled people seem to benefit from cancellation, then why bother defending it? Is this defeatism, or something more sinister?

Enwanevu gets to the verge of admitting that something more sinister is afoot, but he pulls back before coming to grips with such a realization. This comes with his criticism of the contemptible Berri Weiss. Berri’s a whiner and an idiot, and, notably, a huge fucking hypocrite. She’ll oink sadly about celebrity cancellation, but then demand punitive censorship against those who dare support actions protesting Israel’s apartheid.

The point here–obvious, but somehow unacknowledged–is that cancel culture actually does hurt people and censor thoughts, but such harm is inflicted almost entirely upon leftists or others who seek to materially disrupt the status quo. Efforts are underway to formally criminalize participation in BDS. The Obama administration viciously prosecuted drone pilots who attempted to whistleblow US war crimes, going so far as to freeze their bank accounts to prevent them access to legal defense. That is literal, direct government censorship. And, no surprise, it was initiated by a putatively woke politician, the sort of cool liberal who would never use bad words in public.

The widespread embrace of cancel culture is the natural result of the rightward slide of mainstream liberalism. It provides catharsis for its purveyors, a sense of doing something, anything in the face of abject of hopelessness (or, more cynically, gaining momentary satisfaction by censuring someone you don’t like, larger goals be damned). It’s been allowed to thrive precisely because the powerful are insulated from its effects. And it’s come with the added bonus of providing the powers that be a new means of selectively silencing anyone who gets a little too close to actually changing stuff.

Consider three examples: Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump. Trump was subjected to the process of cancellation approximately forty five thousand times during the 2016 campaign. He suffered nothing. Even if he had lost, he’d still be a billionaire, still exist above the rule of law, and still be regular fixture in American media. Hillary Clinton had an appalling civil rights record and repeatedly worked to cover up sexual assaults committed by her husband–precisely the sort of once-tolerated behaviors cancellers claim to seek to de-normalize. But outside of a few hard-left attempts that gained zero mainstream traction, no efforts were made to cancel Clinton. Indeed, those who attempted to bring up her shameful past were themselves subject to cancellation. Sanders, meanwhile, has about the best civil rights record imaginable for an American man in his 70’s. He and his supporters are nonetheless popularly compared to Trump–cancelled via the transitive property of wokeness–not because of anything Sanders has done or said, but because of his tone and posture.

This is how things work because it’s how the system is designed to work. This is why cancel culture has become so pervasive so quickly: because it is conservative.

We can argue as to whether cancel culture is reactionary or simply nihilistic. (I think it can be both, depending on its particular iteration). The effect, however, is always the same: an abandonment of left-material goals in favor of a superficial “politics” which views language policing as a means and an end. This is why Enwanevu can blithely dismiss criticisms of the ineffectiveness of cancelling, even as his essay is centered upon delineating examples of such ineffectiveness: he is simply unconcerned with the actual effects of cancelling. He therefore sees fit to end his piece with a description of the brutal beating of a trans woman–not because he wishes to advocate for policies that would make such violence occur less frequently, but to appropriate the woman’s pain and eventual death to serve as a backdrop validating the righteous anger of those who seek to cancel others. It’s not about effects. It’s not about winning. It’s about feeling right. And when the only option liberals have for political engagement is to join a movement based upon the embrace of defeat… well, that’s conservatism.