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This is just a reverse application of “When I am Weaker Than You, I ask you for Freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am Stronger than you, I take away your Freedom Because that is according to my principles.
First there was cancel culture, with people of all walks of life getting canceled for going against the party narrative (remember the scientist who got canceled for his shirt). Then (interestingly seems to have starred around the time Elon took over twitter) a denial that there is such a thing as cancel culture, and it is just a right wing boogeyman (eg how can cancel culture exist if Shane Gillis is more popular now than when he was canceled from snl) . Now, we’re at the stage when the right is using cancel culture and the left is angry it exists.
The left is very good at progressing by disavowing it’s failures (eg eugenics) and only remembering its successes.
Hopefully cancel culture will be one of those failures, but I think it is too much a part of human nature to ever go away.
I think you have your timeline wrong, I vividly remember having an argument with a girl in 2021 in which she insisted that cancel culture didn't exist and it was just a right-wing phantom.
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Huh? I am not very good at recalling exact dates, but I seem to remember "Cancel culture does not exist" being a thing at the tail end of the BLM2 riots, but before Biden got elected. I know time is going fast nowadays, but that's at least few years before Elon started talking about buying Twitter, isn't it?
There have been plenty of writers advocating that position, but I'm not sure it's really distinct from the classic "it doesn't exist, but it's good actually" argument. It would amuse my internal memeplex if it started getting quoted back to the the cancelled who were previously cancellers, but I'm not sure that includes the lady from Home Depot.
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You’re probably right. I’ve been hearing it more and more frequently lately and associated it with twitter being a more free place and cancellation not working as well as it once did.
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