Cancel culture was always around.

in cancel •  3 years ago 

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Obviously, this is dumb. Just think about the logic of this. Was there never gaslighting before we started using the term?

I actually do have an issue with the use of the term "cancel culture" in that implies that it's something abnormal. No, it's possibly the oldest thing on earth.

It was cancel culture when we were blacklisting suspected communists in Hollywood. It was cancel culture when the tabloid Gay News was banned from Oxford for being offensive. It was cancel culture when Shelly wrote the pamphlet The Necessity of atheism which immediately resulted in a massive book burning. The reason why Milton's Areopagitica was so ground breaking was that cancel culture was so engrained that few people thought to challenge it.

It's also wrong to say that this is only about taking down the powerful and the abusers. Apologists for cancel culture focus on that because it makes the culture seem a little less disgusting. They'll never talk about your average Joes and Jills who got photographed at the wrong second, who attended the wrong party or wore the wrong Halloween costume a few years ago, or said an unfashionable thing on social media who don't have millions of dollars in the bank and don't have a loyal fan base and actually do have to worry about money.

Cancel culture has always been with it. People of conscience have just finally given this infantile, authoritarian, evil phenomenon a name so we know what to call it when we finally manage to kill it.

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