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I consider both the left and the right to be equally despicable, so the idea of the right wielding cancel culture annoys me as much as the idea of the left wielding cancel culture. At the end of the day, getting some retail worker fired because she verbally supports killing a politician, but is obviously not actually planning an assassination attempt or anything close to it, is just as bad as getting some retail worker fired because he said an ethnic slur or made a joke about trans people but is not actually doing anything harmful to anyone.
No matter which side does it, there is an ugliness to it. One can see that the canceller is motivated by anger, bloodlust, and sadism, not by any beautiful or noble feelings.
If every American who has ever wished death on a political opponent were to be be fired, I suspect that the economy would collapse. If every person on The Motte who has ever wished death on a political opponent were to stop posting, this place would likely be desolate.
Cancel culture does not reliably work on the rich and powerful. There is a level of fame and wealth which makes a person impossible to cancel for speech alone. Cancel culture that targets people's speech only works on the economically vulnerable. The principle is similar to how a lightly armed insurgent might decide to target a big gathering of the other tribe's ordinary civilians instead of attacking their military bases or the mansions of their rich, which are protected by private security. It is most effective against the people who have the least political power. It bounces off the truly powerful, the only exception being when elites borrow elements from the commoners' cancel culture to use as weapons in their intra-elite fighting - but even when that happens, it is the elites who win. Trump almost certainly isn't going to give you a bag of gold for cancelling somebody who called for his assassination. Jay-Z almost certainly isn't going to sign you to his label for cancelling somebody who used a racial slur. When you wake up the next morning, you'll still have the same house and the same job, unless you are one of the few who can turn being a culture warrior into a steady income - but even that occupation is precarious unless you are one of the very few who make it to true prominence in the attention economy.
Ordinary, economically vulnerable people using cancel culture against each other is like hobos fighting over a can of beans while rich people drive by in fancy cars.
I do not believe this is a charitable take at all. While some people as you describe “ anger, bloodlust, and sadism, not by any beautiful or noble feelings.”
I consider it a viable political strategy. It’s downstream of how states have always been made. You forcefeed your state’s founding memes on school children in your public schools. You force people to learn a common tongue. You promote families by slut shaming and in the past removing from the rest of society the young girls who got pregnant.
Enforcing cultural norms is basic civilization building.
I think some on the left did canceling for fun, but I do think many of them thought what they were doing was for the good of society. I think it’s obvious the right canceling corporations has had a positive effect on society.
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