The Cancel Culture

Joseph Nye in his work Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (Public Affairs: 2005) presented a proposition that instead of military warfare, the countries can conquer others through a variety of instruments coming under the ambit of soft power. These include cultural exports. As Rob Henderson would put in his writings, America exported Cocoa Cola, music and television shows among others. Nye pointed out that through seduction, persuasion and pop culture would be the means to conquer the other countries in the paradigm shift towards soft power invasions. In the post second world war, the American exports in the soft power were perhaps best manifest in Austria where jeans and Coke ruled in contrast to the British cricket or Soviet ideology. In fact, as one peruses the great power histories, following the path of the military conquests were there soft power offerings. Soviet failure to dominate was perhaps linked to its inability to carry its soft power to the others. Yet today, there is a new American power that is emerging. The power that is emergent is of an export of a commodity that perhaps creates more than a cynosure in the eye  but potentially like every precedent before it, will swallow itself. There was a French Revolution, yet what followed was the rule of Jacobins resulting the power of guillotine superseding everything else.  Today, if one were to draw parallels to the same, it is the American export of cancel culture.

The rot seems to be spreading to different places. There is an interesting piece published quite a few months back on this. The author’s interview was taken down in the Netherlands apparently because it seemed to sympathetic to those targeted by cancel culture. While the Dutch celebrated free speech and ideas when all around them in Europe, Inquisition spread its tentacles, today they seem to be taking a lead in a new Inquisition. Cancel culture is defined as the tendency at least in social terms to holding individuals to account for violating what is termed as moral norms defined by woke cultural proponents. It seeks to end their career or prominence on grounds of gross misdemeanour, if one were to put it by holding views that are not politically correct. It is not just for those living in the present world but encompasses those who have lived in the past, some of them might have attained immortality. Holding the past to the standards of the presents and seeking to bring the social status is something Nassim Nicholas Taleb has referred to as retrospective bigottering. This tendency is fast picking pace across the world once it began as a resistance to the new Alt-Right associated with President Trump. The cancel culture did exist for ages just that it lay on the fringes. What one has observed over the last couple of years in particular is the mainstreaming of fringe thought. Any counter is on the other hand deemed to be racist, bigoterring and what not.

The objective seems to altering the power equations in the social circles. The cancel culture is seemingly all about bringing down the status of an individual rather than uplifting the status of others. It is a typical socialist dream. If one cannot uplift, bring the others down, reasons are merely the pretext. The invention of pretext has perhaps emerged as the single largest innovation in the cancel culture era. Any individual is hardly perfect and history would have to be judged by the standards prevailing in the past. The left has a morbid fascination for hating the historical roots, disparaging the family past thus creating grounds for indoctrination of Marxism and its variants into the susceptible population. Once the hatred for the past, not just the disowning emerges, it is just matter of time, the Marxists have found their converts. They seem to follow the time tested logic of early Christian expansion, with the Islamic rule too following suit. In domains likes politics and business, the opportunities are perhaps too attractive to destroy the careers and legacies of the adversaries.

In seeking to reject an individual or idea, the pursuit would entail an attack on reputation, credibility and employment. People look towards celebrities for multiple purposes and the objective of the cancel culture is develop a friction in this relationship. As individuals seek social conformance, something they find holding the views the celebrities do, this makes it difficult for an individual to express their views in public something that is termed politically correct. As someone pointed out, it is perhaps fashionable among those people who might have indulged in terrible things but want to escape accountability for the same. By raising the voice, creating a noise, they are manufacturing a narrative which would engulf others but make it costly for the opponents to raise fingers at them. The adversaries are sought to be put in a position where they are damned if they react, damned if they don’t.

It is just not US but across Europe and the rest of the world, too the cancel culture is spreading its wings. Somewhere it is linked to hate speech. Yet it has been a one way street. The rise of Trump made the American Democrats build a coalition to defeat him. The coalition mandated the co-option of the fringe left which hitherto had been on the sidelines in the US. The fringe left could make the most noise and capture enough attention on the social media. The noise in itself would make it sheer impossible for the others to react or defend those targets of cancel culture. Furthermore, associating with those targets of cancel culture would have its own costs, thus people tending to prefer safety first and thus be politically correct in public sphere.

Like all revolutionary fads, this too would bring to itself the diminishing returns. Like the French revolution fire ended with the guillotine leading to the arrival of Naoplean, this would have its own end. These movements are not just supporters of combustion but with passage of time they turn manifest combustible properties thus burning themselves off. Yet, the way they have manifested has virtually made the contestation of ideas in a civil manner impossible. It is more of my way or a highway. The proponents of cancel culture are apparently fond of corner solutions and they are in pursuit of one. To the corporates in the meanwhile, these cancel culture advocates are maybe useful idiots. It might be the other way round too.  What definitely might emerge is a battle between the Big Tech platforms and the cancel culture something that would determine the future trajectory. In the current however, it is a cycle that seems to be bursting all cylinders in pursuit of power conquest not merely political but maybe economic, social, cultural also.