The politics of cancellation

Brian YS Wong August 07, 2024 21:57

To “call out” injustice – the explicit, unabashed, and vigorous confrontation of injustice, underpinned by the conviction of speaking truth to power – is a practice that first gained considerable conceptual traction in the early 21st century. Whilst behaviours resembling or reflecting the underlying ethos had long existed across societies and human civilisation, it was only through the advent of social media, the democratisation of mass communications, and the precipitous surge in person-centric, identity politics, that Western publics have come to harness the discourse of “call-out” as a tool of social activism and contentious politics.

The past few years have seen an off-shoot of call out culture – the curious emergence of a tendency on the part of vociferous campaigners and champions of social justice, to “socially annihilate” their opponents by demonising those with whom they disagree, to advocate the denial and stripping of platforms and spaces in which they could speak. Those who are viewed as contravening their code of conduct, desired or prescribed behaviours, and boundaries of acceptable judgments and worldviews, are thus portrayed as unequivocally evil, abominable, and pathetic subjects of no moral worth. A euphemistic way of terming this nascent norm would be “cancellation” – ergo “cancel culture”.

Let me preface my views by conceding that cancellation can, under certain circumstances, be marginally helpful and normatively warranted. Consider a public figure who leans heavily into their popularity as a source of their social capital; suppose this individual turns out – in fact – to be a closet psychopath, bent on harnessing the trust and credibility placed by the public in them, to disseminate subconscious thoughts of collective suicide. It is evident that this celebrity is actively wielding their social standing, popularity, and extensive reach as a tool to harm the interests of many innocent civilians. Those who can leverage cancellation to undermine their public presence and image, then, are most justified in attempting to cancel them – though the extent to which they would succeed is a wholly separate matter. More on that later.

Furthermore, we should also note that cancellation is by no means an exclusive preoccupation of progressives and emancipatory activists alone. Conservatives – especially far-right zealots who peddle distortionary, asinine narratives about minorities and tropes about disempowered groups – also turn frequently to “cancellation” as a means of silencing and shunning voices deemed too radical and “out-of-line” in relation to the power structures and hierarchies that they are bent on preserving. Indeed, authoritarian states and leaders stir up public sentiments to target those deemed to be persona non grata in their eyes – they, too, subscribe to “cancellation”.

Yet there are three reasons why I find the extant manifestation of cancellation fundamentally unwarranted, morally perturbing, and downright dangerous. These reasons include both the pragmatic, in that cancellation does not work, and the normative, in that cancellation is rarely proportionately applied, and often disproportionately harms those who lack the capacity to present themselves as morally worthy and of upright character.

First, cancellation is rarely proportionately applied. There are some who believe that cancellation is a means of holding to account those who behave with impropriety and impunity. Yet the prerequisite for sound accountability mechanisms is that the penalties and punishments they dish out must in fact be proportionate to the nature of the violation. Those who “cancel” do not do so with an accurate understanding of, or an intention to deliver, the morally appropriate punishment. Instead, discourses of cancellation frequently feature ubiquitous virtue signalling and bandwagoning, as members of the horde seek to one-up one another in demonstrating their fidelity to the so-called cause, their commitment to their own “integrity”, and their ostensible moral worth.

There is a reason for this: some of the most fervent champions in cancellation are frustrated, aggrieved, and vindictive – they feel structurally excluded and alienated from conventional channels of communication and expression of discontents, and thus view the act of cancellation as a purportedly empowering act, one that takes seriously and embodies their ability to reclaim control amidst significant constraints on their freedom. The disproportionality here both chills constructive debate that should be held, as well as inflicting undue suffering upon those who do not deserve or warrant such treatment.

Second, in other instances, cancellation ends up harming groups that lack the social, cultural, and linguistic-discursive capital to “weather” vitriolic, vociferous public debates. Note that privileged, powerful groups, too, have turned increasingly to “cancellation” as a tool – and invoking it as a consciousness-raising frame, even whilst decrying it nominally – to target working-class, pro-LGBTQIA+, and pro-feminist voices. In the US, schools and teachers are castigated and “cancelled” for teaching their students that there exist more than two genders; in the UK, Muslim community leaders are “cancelled” for their alleged links with radical groups – even where no evidence exists for such connections.

Aspiring Hollywood celebrities are “cancelled” for harbouring progressive views construed as affirmative of evidence of a “liberal” and “woke” conspiracy. Terms such as “liberal” and “woke” are empty signifiers, in that they ultimately mean very little in virtue of the contentiousness and arbitrariness with which they are wielded. Yet such terms carry significant political weight and stigma and are indeed weaponised to tarnish the reputations of those who can’t defend themselves against such public pressures. The powerful, the mighty, and those with sufficient wherewithal, on the other hand, can always resort to their sheer wealth and connections to mass media and spin agencies, to counteract the scathing criticisms levied towards them by unsympathetic critics.
The end result? More skewing of an already uneven and unequal playing field, with disempowered groups bearing the brunt of the mob who is all too eager to cast stones at anyone bar themselves.

Third, cancellation rarely works in correcting the problematic behaviours of celebrities, in that it fails to convince them to change their minds or act differently Indeed, whether it be gender-critical feminists or white, conservative, alt-right billionaires, the “cancellation” they have experienced have only emboldened them, propelling them to double down on their actions – as a way of defying their embittered critics. Cancellation raises the personal stakes involved in public debates – by rendering everything a matter of personal honour, and by tying the social credibility and worth of the individual subject to the basis for their “cancellation” – it encourages individuals to dig in their heels and double down on their pre-existing stances.

The “Streisand Effect” has a new, contemporary counterpart in the “Jordan Peterson Effect” – indeed, what propelled the questionable “psychologist” to fame was most probably the righteous backlash he received subsequent to his interview with Cathy Newman on BBC, as well as the perception that he was subjected to irrational, poorly crafted interrogation by the latter. Those who harbour bigoted beliefs will not change their minds sheerly because they are antagonistically and abrasively targeted; if anything, cancellation would drive them to see it as matter of obligation, of standing up for themselves, of confronting the “Goliath” of mob opinion and the kangaroo court of public judgment. The bigotry will not stop under cancellation: it only gets worse.

The politics of cancellation is murky, complex, and fundamentally far less clear-cut and cleanly delineable than some of its most vocal advocates would like to have us believe.

Brian YS Wong

Assistant Professor, HKU