[We might grasp cancel culture as an expression of punitive
thinking within our own social movements, whereby the purge of
individuals symbolically substitutes for the collective structural and
cultural transformations that liberation requires.]
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21 FALLACIES FEEDING ‘CANCEL CULTURE’ AND HOLDING BACK THE
CONTEMPORARY U.S. LEFT  
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Red Goat Collective
May 13, 2022
CounterPunch
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_ We might grasp cancel culture as an expression of punitive thinking
within our own social movements, whereby the purge of individuals
symbolically substitutes for the collective structural and cultural
transformations that liberation requires. _

,

 

Does the US Left have a “cancel culture” problem? Or is ‘cancel
culture’ just a cynical right-wing bogeyman aimed at disparaging
leftists, Millennials, and academia?

Perhaps cancel culture is mostly mirage: the social media shadow of
American celebrity obsession, distracting us from the overall healthy
left culture on the ground?

Maybe left-wing cancel culture is real, but marginal. Just a crazy
niche of fringe folks—better to ignore?

Or is there a genuine ‘_there’_ there—a problem with
significant reach and influence—and if so, what does it consist of?

While we’re by no means settled on the term “cancel culture” and
remain open to other possible names for ‘it,’[1]
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and investigation over the past decade have led us to the conclusion
that, yes, indeed, there is a ‘there’ there: whatever we call it,
‘cancel culture’ indexes a real problem on the Left. And it is no
minor matter, of interest only to the ‘cancelled’; it hinders
whole sectors of the organized and movement Left—intellectually,
socially, morally, and politically.[2]
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How might we define this left cancel culture?  It is undoubtedly a
tall task, and we do not mean to offer here a monolithic or final
definition.  Nonetheless, for now, we offer this: that cancel culture
on the left can be understood as a bundle of distinct yet interlocking
methods that _mishandle_ _problems among regular and working people,
as if some regular people are—or are always on the verge of
becoming—the enemy _(_and others, their fragile and helpless
victims_).[3]
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This blunt projection of demonization (and blanket victimhood) leads
to treating differences, complexities, and conflicts that could and
should be approached through reasoned discussion and principled
struggle instead as melodramatic antagonisms that demand one or
another form of coercion—whether by relying on existing
institutional power, or the moral panic of ‘mob rule’.

We might grasp cancel culture here as an expression of punitive (or
carceral) thinking within our own social movements, whereby the
punishment and purge of individuals comes to symbolically substitute
for the collective structural and cultural transformations that
liberation ultimately requires.  In this sense, cancel culture
represents a seeping of ruling class methods of punishment and
‘divide and rule’ into the emancipatory movement, but without
access to the resources of the ruling apparatus—a fact which makes
cancel culture’s maneuverings in some respects even cruder, more
erratic, and less discerning than the more sophisticated attacks of
established state power. However genuine the concerns that may animate
it, cancel culture remains a grossly inadequate salve for real world
injuries and actual domination.

Let us be clear, we are not here making a ‘liberal’ argument: We
concede that there _are_ antagonisms in the current
capitalist-imperialist world system that are so deeply entrenched that
they may indeed require the use of force to overcome and transform
them. This is, in other words, _not _a ‘defense’ of the economic
and political Bosses who are positioned to force underlings to endure
indignity, exploitation, and abuse—and then to deny them access to
institutional recourse. But cancel culture trains us to see
virtually _all _social conflicts, even those among our own comrades,
allies, and regular people, through this harshly antagonistic lens.
And that’s a problem. Leaping to treat even what may be fleeting (or
unsubstantiated) offenses as unquestionable mortal injuries, cancel
culture can quarantine and ostracize, but can it understand, let alone
heal or transform, the underlying problems to which it responds? Can
it attract and sustain the kind of broad mass involvement we need if
we are ever to win the deep social transformation our times demand?

The list of fallacies below is an attempt to clarify and compile some
of the false assumptions and wrong methods—sometimes held
consciously, often unconsciously embedded in existing practices and
organizations—that enable ‘cancel culture’ (hereafter CC) and
more generally perpetuate the marginalization, divisiveness, and even
self-destruction of the contemporary Left.  While we’ve tried to
represent the operative notions here in a way that shows their serious
problems—and with a hefty dose of sarcasm—we’ve also tried to do
so in good faith, using language not too far from what perpetuators
and participants of CC might recognize as their own, even as the
ideological undercurrents we bring out for each are seldom brought to
the surface so explicitly.

One last note: It could be pointed out that many of the problematic
ideas and practices below are themselves _symptoms_ of deeper
issues—from the logistical limitations of contemporary left
organizations, to the weakening of the labor movement and other forms
of progressive politics based in democratic accountability, to the
distortions of corporate social media algorithms, to a sense of
despair and suspicion that pervades society generally in this age of
compound crises, when an emancipatory path forward may seem in
doubt.[4]
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Nonetheless, though the notions enumerated below can indeed be seen as
the symptomatic effects of more fundamental causes, we believe that
ideas and methods that take hold of the minds of millions can become
causes in their own right—and that many of these fallacies have
taken on a life of their own.[5]
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And so, we present: 21 Fallacies that Fuel Cancel Culture.

1) OPTICS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN SUBSTANCE. 

Worry more about how things look from the _outside_, and less about
what’s happening on the _inside_—be it a meeting, an
organization, an event, a relationship, or an artwork.  External
appearances are not even ‘external’ anymore, since such optics,
with the help of social media, quickly become internal factors as
well.  A tweet from a private meeting can start a public firestorm
that will consume an organization even before said meeting is
completed.  Whereas it might have once been possible to explore the
nuances of complex matters internally, admitting rough edges and
testing unorthodox interpretations in private before deciding on
public positions or precise language for broader consumption, this
line between ‘public’ and ‘private’ has collapsed.  Anyone
attending a meeting might shave a sharp splinter from the draft party
platform and send it flying as a deadly public blow dart in an
instant. Therefore, we must now hold every ‘private’
gathering—every meeting or seminar, every moment, each sentence—to
the same public optical standard we would use for an official press
conference.  No word, phrase, or idea that can be decontextualized or
excerpted—tik tok-ed or tweeted—to imply something ‘offensive’
or ‘problematic’ should be allowed, even in private. The enforced
loss of spontaneity (and honesty) is a small price to play for making
sure we aren’t made to look like fools or bigots.  Better to
strangle internal discussion than to take a public dart in the neck.

2)  ENGAGEMENT EQUALS ENDORSEMENT; ASSOCIATION IS COMPLICITY.

To engage someone in public conversation means you are endorsing all
their (potentially problematic) ideas or associations, or at least
making light of them—even those ideas that are not part of whatever
conversation occurs.  Thus, an interlocutor must be deemed ‘safe’
of compromising statements or associations _prior_ to such
engagement.  If you or your organization don’t have the time or
resources to research all the ideas and statements of a potentially
‘controversial’ person ahead of time, well, then maybe you should
just not bother engaging them at all. After all, merely being
associated (even privately) with a person deemed problematic is enough
to compromise you.  It is thus better to cut ties with problem people
than to sustain contact with them, since the influence of association
can only pull in one direction: the ‘bad’ one.  The idea that
your engagement might encourage positive change in the person deemed
problematic, or at least help keep that person from further sliding in
the problematic direction, is naïve, at best. Worse, the idea that
such association might help the rest of us better understand the
context or incorrect ideas that gave rise to the problem in the first
place insultingly implies we don’t already know enough to pass
judgment. In short: it’s just not possible to do something good with
someone bad. Cut ‘em loose.

3) CONVERSATIONS CAN’T CHANGE PROBLEMATIC PEOPLE; POLITICAL
OPPONENTS CAN’T BE WON OVER. 

If a person opposes us now, they’ll most likely oppose us forever. 
It’s not possible that discussion with ‘problematic’ figures
might give the person in question a chance to clarify, correct,
contextualize, qualify, or walk back troubling ideas. Bad ideas
can’t be deflated or improved through engagement or ideological
struggle; they must be de-platformed.  It’s not possible—or not
worth taking seriously as possibility—that such people could have,
even at one and the same time, multiple views, values, interests,
priorities, associations, or commitments that conflict with one
another, with some pointing towards a better way forward, others
holding such progress back, or with some ideas being residual remnants
reflecting that person’s history, but not necessarily their
future.  People don’t change.  They are static and
self-identical.  Disregard that dialectical bullshit about people as
constantly BECOMING relative to what they HAVE BEEN and what they
MIGHT BE.  People just are what they ARE.  Those the enemy has
persuaded are lost to us forevermore.  Say goodbye to your Trumpy
uncle.

4)  PROBLEMATIC VIEWS AND ACTS FLOW FROM MALICE OR MONSTROSITY, NOT
MERE ERROR. 

Why give a person the benefit of the doubt when you can cast them as
your conscious and mortal enemy, a living embodiment of all you seek
to oppose and destroy?  Forget that quaint notion that we should
“Never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance.” 
It’s best to assume that the do-er of a problematic thing was, at
the time of said offense, in possession of all relevant information,
the full range of opinion, and had their senses about them, and yet
still—even after all of that—pursued this bad idea or act as the
one that they still wanted or needed to take.  Circumstances don’t
mitigate wrongdoing.  In the off chance that an offending person was
not in sound mind or body at the time of an act in question, well,
that’s tough shit: they should have known better than to put
themselves in a position where they would be likely to fuck up.  If
their sources of information, opinion, or logic are flawed, well,
that’s their fault too.  There is no need to factor where someone
has come from into our judgment of them today.  Good People don’t
make Bad Mistakes, therefore, making an error deemed Bad is proof of
being a Bad Person. Talk of mitigation is liberal bullshit that
upholds an oppressive order of privilege.

5) PEOPLE CAN BE REDUCED TO THEIR WORST ACTION OR IDEA, WITHOUT DOING
THEM AN INJUSTICE.

Why assume that something bad someone has said or done was an outlying
mistake when it can be seen instead as the expression of their
essential being?  People’s worst moments express their truest
selves.  (Indeed, for every shitty thing they’ve done that we’re
aware of, there are probably a dozen shittier things still unknown to
us—we need to factor in these ‘unknown knowns’ as well.)
Further, to call attention to the good work that people have done (or
might do in the future) as a matter of contextualizing a misstep is to
make light of their shittiness.  The aftermath of harm is not a time
for ‘balance’ or ‘perspective’—and, let’s face it, these
days we are always in the aftermath of harm.  The only thing that
ought to be discussed once a wrong is reported _is that wrong_; any
other element of a person’s work, character, or history is at best
irrelevant. Worse, mentioning the ‘other side’ is insulting and
insensitive to those who feel they have been harmed and understandably
want ‘justice’. It is fine and just to essentialize those you
oppose.

6) THE PASSAGE OF TIME IS IRRELEVANT. 

A wrong committed decades ago is just as relevant as one that happened
last week.  There is no reason to assume that someone who did
something shitty years back (be it donning an insensitive Halloween
costume or acting like an asshole at a party) has taken time to think
about it, or to improve their conduct or philosophy in the interim. 
Certainly, there is no obligation to investigate whether someone has
made steps to improve since those events years ago; it’s perfectly
ok to treat them now as if they are the person they were then—or
that someone _told_ you they were then, since maybe you weren’t
around when whatever went down went down.  Since our movement seldom
seeks to put people in actual prison—that would mean cooperating
with the police state—formal sentencing never occurs…but also must
never end. People can and should be banished and branded for life,
regardless of what they have done to improve themselves or address the
relevant issues.  We must assume the worst if we are to keep our
spaces safe. People don’t change, so there’s no need to give them
a chance to.  Debts to victims or to society can never be repaid. But
a culture of permanent excommunication will prevent harmful future
behavior and help past victims heal.

7) A THREAT TO IDEOLOGICAL COMFORT IS A THREAT TO SAFETY.

Being subjected to challenging, provocative, offensive, or incorrect
ideas puts the person hearing them in jeopardy.  Intellectual
discomfort causes harm.  Therefore, it is ok—even imperative—to
exert prior restraint, up to and including prohibition and exclusion
of discomfiting ideas or words (or the people seen as likely to
express them).  People have a right not to be offended—not just a
right to respond reasonably to what offends.  Moments of intellectual
provocation are not ‘teachable moments’; they are triggers for
trauma. Making people think too hard about difficult subjects becomes
a kind of violence.  In particular, people’s ideas about their own
perceived identity or oppression must not be challenged. People from
historically oppressed groups especially cannot and ought not be
subjected to arguments or debates about such topics, in print or
in-person, regardless of the merit or content of the criticism
expressed.  Ideas that people have grown attached to should be viewed
as parts of their physical or spiritual being.  For someone to
abstract and criticize said ideas—even for purposes of temporary
analysis—amounts to a kind of ‘attack.’  Therefore, it is the
job of good ‘allies’ to protect oppressed or traumatized people,
not only from clear and present physical or institutional attacks, but
from intellectual or ‘existential’ ones as well, like, say,
someone asking a critical question about a concept or term with which
they presently identify.  Most certainly, it’s not possible for
someone outside of this social group to offer helpful insight on
matters pertaining to that group’s current situation, no matter how
much genuine study or listening on the topic they’ve done. Immediate
experience trumps outside knowledge, period. (Never mind that what
counts as ‘experience’ may be at least in part the product of the
ideological lenses through which a person has been taught to look.) A
corollary: oppressed groups are monolithic, without significant
ideological, intellectual, political, or methodological
conflicts _within_ their own ranks.  So, it’s ok for one
spokesperson of said group to give voice to the entire group’s will
or interest.  Anyone who contradicts such a spokesperson—especially
if they do not personally belong to the category in question—is
disrespecting or harming the group and needs to shut the fuck up.

8) COMPLICATED THINGS (AND PEOPLE) ARE COMPROMISED AND NOT WORTH
ENGAGING.

How can we learn from people or things (including artworks) that are
themselves ‘problematic’? Why not just move on and replace the
shitty with something safer?  Sure, there may be artworks (or people)
that now stand for something offensive but have been deemed
‘brilliant’ in the past.  But what does it say about you if you
overlook the offensiveness in favor of the brilliance by promoting
such content?  Are you saying that aesthetic beauty or intellectual
rigor or historical influence is more important than keeping our
spaces safe and inclusive? How can we reduce the influence of
problematic works or people if we keep giving them airtime?  If
someone is seen to be seriously wrong on 1 out of 10 issues, then
their insight on the other 9 things is compromised, if not altogether
invalidated by their hypocrisy.  Hearing them out on those other 9
issues would only be providing cover for the problematic 10th. You
can’t just bracket off the bad parts; they bleed into everything. 
The bad gobbles up the good. It’s thus not conceivable that a person
or group with 9 incorrect ideas might nonetheless have something
crucial to teach us regarding the 10th. Wokeness comes in batches—no
sense distinguishing all these different aspects. As a corollary,
wherever possible, people should declare themselves with clear and
easy-to-read labels and signs.  If the expressions of such a person
appears to be complicated, or not immediately ‘clear’ and on the
‘correct’ side in a way that can fit into, say, a series of
rapid-fire tweets, then that person bears the responsibility for any
confusion that results. The responsibility certainly does not fall on
the viewer or reader to investigate such complexities.  Who has time
to do close readings these days?

9) TO ENTERTAIN A ‘PROBLEMATIC’ JOKE OR CULTURAL PRODUCT IS NEVER
INNOCENT.

Laugh at impure humor and you open your belly to the abyss. To listen
to a comedian or other cultural content creator who is pushing values
deemed bad is to risk being influenced by that content—how can one
be exposed to bad content and not be marked?  Even worse, it is to
give the impression to those who have already made up their mind about
the comedian or cultural producer that you have _not_ made
up _your_ mind.  Such indecisiveness on your part throws the
settled judgements of the offended into doubt—an existential
insult.  After all, if you trusted and believed in them properly then
why couldn’t you take their word for it? Why did you need to go and
explore it for yourself?  What, do you think that you’re smarter
than the rest of us?  That your curiosity or ‘complicated’
enjoyment is more important than other people’s right to have their
grief-laden verdicts accepted without question? The death of comedy
and entertainment is a small price to pay to make sure nobody gets
their feelings hurt.

10)  EVERY “MICRO”-AGGRESSION IS JUST THE TOXIC TIP OF A
MACRO-ICEBERG. 

There are no innocent errors, just instances that have yet to be
analyzed and traced down to the deeper danger beneath.  The
difference between ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ aggressions is a
microscope; little annoyances or snubs are made of the same stuff as
life-threatening mortal violations. It is thus correct to react to a
minor offense as if it were a major one—especially if
a _pattern_ of minor problems has been alleged. In the latter case,
one need not give the offender a chance to correct their behavior
before bringing out the big guns: they already have a ‘history of
misbehavior,’ after all, and must be condemned for it. Their chance
for rectification and improvement has passed (even if this is the
first time we’ve communicated our concerns to them). The fact that
existing law makes qualitative distinctions between different
categories of acts—and that the alleged behavior may not have
crossed any legal line—is yet more proof that the Law is a relic of
an oppressive order that doesn’t take oppressed people’s wounds
seriously. By amplifying and harshly punishing examples of even
low-level alleged misbehavior, we amplify the safety of our special
spaces (at least for all who have not been flayed alive for past
missteps). Fuck fine distinctions and fuck due process.

11) THE MORAL IMPERATIVE IS TO ELIMINATE (WHAT MIGHT BE) EVIL, EVEN
IF IT MEANS WRECKING GOOD WORK.

Political progress is to be understood not as a complex positive
project of building something Good from the mixed materials that now
exist, but rather, negatively, as the elimination or exposure of those
elements deemed Evil.  Better a pure Nothing than a compromised
Something. Radical political intervention is best understood as a
solvent to burn away the bad rather than as an adhesive or mixing
agent that holds things together so that the better can be built.
Isn’t it best to purify oneself and others of sympathy for the devil
rather than to burden one’s brain or one’s organization with the
messiness of sifting through more mixed elements? Tear that shit
down. We’ll worry about _building_ things later (maybe).

12)  IF WE DEPRIVE BADNESS OF A PLATFORM, IT WILL LOSE ITS PLATFORM
ELSEWHERE, TOO. 

If we can prevent bad or backward ideas from getting a hearing in
‘progressive’ or ‘left’ platforms, this will prevent their
circulation elsewhere.  We can meaningfully reduce the circulation
and impact of ideas in the ‘mainstream’ by denying them the
‘legitimacy’ provided by left spaces and engagement, however small
and isolated the Left may be at present. The possibility that such an
approach might rather enable the Left’s own blindness and
disconnection from the actual state of ‘controversial’ debates,
and thus perpetuate or expand our isolation from people who are
already influenced by that ‘mainstream,’ is a secondary or
tertiary concern.  The further possibility that spending time with
someone or something deemed objectionable might actually _help_ us
better relate to our neighbor or coworker or family member who has
also been exposed to that person or thing, is swallowed up by the
danger that such exposure will merely drag us into being ‘like
them,’ or else give comfort to the enemy.  The related likelihood,
that I can only criticize something accurately if I know the object of
critique intimately, is eclipsed by the danger that, in giving stuff
deemed bad such close attention, you impart the impression that you
secretly or not-so-secretly actually _like_ that garbage.  Can’t
have that. Sure, right now the millions of people watching
so-and-so’s podcast or cable show may not be waiting for our
permission to do so—or even know that we exist!—but unless we
model what a principled refusal to look or listen looks like, how will
said millions ever learn to do likewise?  If enough of us just close
our eyes and block our ears really tight then it will almost be like
the big bad wolf outside the door isn’t there anymore.

13)  WE CAN WIN SOCIAL CHANGE WITHOUT WINNING OVER THE MILLIONS WHO
CURRENTLY DISAGREE WITH US.

After all, isn’t righteousness on our side?  Aren’t we fighting
for the good of the entire planet?  Who needs to win over the
conservative hicks (or centrist fence-sitters) in a backward country
like this one?  Or heck, even in our own households, communities, or
classrooms?  It’s not like revolutions require super-majorities, do
they?  Can’t a militant minority do the job?  It’s not like
radical change means you need to win masses of people over.  Those
who disagree with us are probably stupid and hopeless. 
(The _masses,_ alas, turned out to be _asses_.) Best to protect our
spaces from such “deplorables.” Wouldn’t building an expanded
base end up watering down the purity of our correct politics anyway?
Why take the risk that our ever-so-precious conversation or community
could be mired with their mess?

14) ‘DIGGING IN’ IN THE FACE OF CC CRITIQUE IS PROOF OF PRIVILEGED
ARROGANCE AND DOMINATION.

If someone refuses to give in to criticism and public pressure to
retract or apologize, no matter how small the issue was to begin with,
their resistance to recanting itself reveals a bigger issue, which may
require more extreme response.  In particular, for a person
associated with a historically dominant group to refuse to admit the
validity of criticisms coming from someone associated with a
historically dominated group is to engage in an arrogant abuse of
privilege, regardless of the merits of the criticism expressed. Such
resistance suggests that the refuser disrespects not just their
immediate critic, but the group that critic is speaking for and the
entire historical experience of collective oppression that has led up
to this point.  Someone who refuses to give in to group pressure
could not possibly be a person committed to the facts as they
understand them, nor could they be expressing honest concerns out of
their love for the cause; they are merely providing new evidence of
how insensitive and domineering they are, a fact which then in turn
pretty much settles the question of whether or not they were actually
guilty of the precipitating offense in the first place (as if it were
in doubt!).  Although there may not have been clear evidence for that
first catalyzing event (ok, now we’ll admit it!), the evidence we
gather from the accused’s resistance itself is retroactive, since
resistance to the group itself proves that the person is the type to
commit those other egregious errors as well. (Never mind that the
extreme group response itself may be what pushed the targeted person
to double-down in self-defense in the first place.) Corollary: Even a
false accusation can be of use; it helps us see who is willing to go
along with the group, and who is not. If someone ‘digs in’ and
disputes the nature a ‘minor’ offense, they are merely revealing
that the problem goes deeper, as we predicted. A micro-violator who is
stubborn about their problematic millimeter might as well be demanding
our most precious mile.

15) THE OPEN EXCHANGE OF IDEAS IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED.

“Free speech” is an oppressive concept, a chimera that elides the
actual-existing power dynamics that rule our world.  Face it: beneath
every invocation of “freedom” is the reality of power. Considering
the compromised nature of discourse, then, it’s preferable to use
force to shut down purveyors of bad ideas, if we can, rather than to
use reason, argument, or evidence to refute the ideas themselves. Why
debate when you can de-platform! The fewer people are exposed to those
bad ideas, the better. Let’s be honest: We don’t trust people to
sort truth from lies, even with our help. And if we’re really being
honest, we’re not sure _we_ can unpack and criticize the specific
ideas of our enemies effectively anymore, anyway, since we’ve pretty
much limited our intake of them to second-hand snippets and soundbites
for years. (Not everyone has the luxury of spending endless hours in
the library, dude.) Therefore, we’re justified shutting down
misleaders in advance to protect the herd.  Why initiate or allow
complex debate and discussion that is just likely to confuse people?
Or even worse, to lead our group to lose its clarity, unity, and
focus? If our organization admitted that it didn’t yet have a clear,
single, united view on something important, well, wouldn’t that make
us seem indecisive and weak? How can we be the vanguard of the
revolution if we admit we’re still thinking things
through?  Airing important differences aloud impairs our movement.

16) OPINION AND RUMOR ABOUT CERTAIN THINGS MUST BE ACCEPTED AS FACT.

The statement of a strongly held feeling about another’s
wretchedness, even if lacking substantiation, can be enough to decide
the truth of a matter—at least for now.  And since there is no
obligation on the rest of us to investigate said ‘truth of the
matter’ –since we’re all busy and life is hard, and
investigations are difficult, and our activist organizations don’t
have the resources of the state to call upon—it’s fine to let such
strongly stated assertions stand as accepted truth…pretty much
indefinitely. Furthermore, it’s improper to point out that a
second-hand (or third- or fourth-hand) account is not a first-hand
one. This is not the time to distinguish between hearsay and solid
evidence!  Similarly, it’s not ok to ask for evidence or
substantiation in the wake of an unproven claim on a sensitive
topic.  What’s _wrong_ with you, do you not believe_ INSERT
SPECIAL CATEGORY OF PERSON HERE_?  It’s better to uncritically
accept and quickly act upon serious but unsubstantiated rumor than to
subject oneself or one’s organization to the messiness, discomfort,
uncertainty, or complexity of pursuing an actual investigation.

17)  ACCUSERS (EVEN THIRD-PARTY ONES) ARE ALWAYS RELIABLE—SO DUE
PROCESS NEED NOT APPLY.

It’s not necessary to hear ‘both sides;’ when we’re dealing
with an iteration of systemic oppression, one side is more than
enough. Aggrieved people don’t lie, dissemble, or exaggerate.  In
fact, the experience of being aggrieved necessarily improves moral
character.  All that violence and systemic injustice and desperation
a person may have been exposed to doesn’t leave any compromising
psychic wounds.  Aggrievement and oppression, however, _do_ make
people more vulnerable to harm, especially _when others doubt or
question_ their honesty or reliability. Thus, denying aggrieved
people the fullness of human complexity, including the potential to be
dishonest or just confused, is less bad than making it seem like you
don’t take their every word for gospel. It follows that accusers or
allegers need not—indeed, _should_ not—be made to go on the
record in detail.  (We must ‘believe survivors,’ yes, but without
requiring them to be specific about what exactly we’re being asked
to believe.) It goes without saying that the accused need not have the
right to confront their accusers, or even to know the specifics
of what they are being accused of.  (Habeas corpus is so
20th century and so ‘bourgeois state-y’—forget that liberal
crap about it being a product of historical struggles against state
repression.)  It’s more important to protect the anonymity of
accusers, and even 3rd or 4th hand _rumor-ists_ and _gossips_,
than it is to provide the accused a fair chance to address what’s
been said about them. Transparency just doesn’t apply to those who
circulate charges—that would put them at risk, since, after all, we
must assume that all who have been alleged to have caused harm in the
past are out to perpetrate even greater harm in the future.  The
sheer possibility of retaliation, which can never be fully ruled out,
means that we must not demand accountability from accusers, or from
those who speak in their name. Thus, it’s perfectly ok to weaponize
defamatory gossip behind the back of the accused, to work to exclude
them from spaces (including online ones), or even to go after their
livelihoods, rather than to try and clear things up through more
direct two-way communication. Further, since we cannot expect the
actual victim to take on the burden of speaking up, anyone speaking in
their name or on their unconfirmed behalf must be treated with all the
deference owed to the actual alleged victim.  The fact that some who
speak in the victim’s name may not be authorized to do so and may
even be weaponizing the situation for their own ends is outweighed by
our belief that Excommunicating Perpetrators objectively helps Victims
In General to heal and feel safe. Forget the lessons of the
‘telephone game’ we learned in kindergarten; second- or third- or
fourth-hand allegers should be treated as if they are giving reliable
first-hand accounts. There are no misunderstandings, only survivors
and perpetrators: Which side are _you_ on?

18)  EXAGGERATION IN THE CAUSE OF SOCIAL JUSTICE IS NECESSARY.

Emotional amplification, public dramatization, or even deliberate
exaggeration is justified in cases where someone is speaking out
against injustice or alleged wrongdoing. Feelings of aggrievement are
to be validated, not questioned or fact checked.  The more passionate
someone is in denunciation, the more trustworthy they become.  No
Investigation?  No Problem!  Amplifying what might have occurred is
more important than figuring out what actually did. (Never mind that
mounting evidence shows that mental health problems in this country
are at an all-time high.  And never mind that COINTELPRO in the 60s
and 70s routinely organized campaigns of false accusation to wreck
radical organizations and defame left leaders.) Let’s face it: in
these crazy media days, one needs a bullhorn to break through the
noise, a sledgehammer to knock down the wall of indifference. 
Nuanced accounts of complex interactions won’t cut it.  We need to
Go Big to grab people’s attention and make things stick. 
Therefore, rounding up the rhetoric regarding particulars is not only
permissible; it is necessary.  We must cherry-pick the statistics and
images that best fit our worldview, even if they bestow a misleading
picture of the whole: how else to dramatize the essence of evil and
get people caring about a system of oppression whose effects are often
diffuse, subtle, and uneven?  Sure, our exaggerations may lead to the
proliferation of factual inaccuracies in the short term—maybe even a
simplistic sense of the overall situation—but, in the long term, the
heat and attention created by our maximalist presentation will lead to
more people getting involved, therefore illuminating other abuses
elsewhere.  (Those who burn out on the melodramatic framing weren’t
really committed to the cause in the first place.) Whatever harm is
done to people who are tarnished, indeed slandered and defamed, by
broadcast falsehoods in the process, is not our concern. It will be
worth it in the long run.  Can the harm done to an accused wrong-doer
ever really be compared to that of the harm-sufferer, even if the harm
in question remains unsubstantiated?  In contrast to the longstanding
judicial principle that “Better 10 guilty men go free than one
innocent be convicted,” we affirm that “Better 10 men ruined by
false accusations than one victim be doubted.”  (No men in this
society are “innocent,” anyway.)

19)  VENGEANCE ARCS TOWARD JUSTICE.

Sure, we might be a little rough or excessive sometimes, but the arc
of retaliation bends towards righteousness.  (Or at least towards
what _feels_ righteous.)  When in history have regular people’s
urge to vengeance led them astray?  It’s wrong to tell those who
are feeling the need to strike back or destroy that they should
channel that rage in a more constructive, reasonable, strategic, or
fair manner.  That’s tone-policing.  Better to encourage righteous
rage and fan the flames, wherever they lead.  Tailing spontaneity and
immediate emotion is the way of the future: as evidenced by what goes
viral on our corporate-owned social media feeds. In times of big
changes and sweeping historical crisis, it’s bourgeois and
oppressive to be worried about the fate of just one individual (or
other individuals who happen to be connected personally to that one
individual).  If we need to go a bit overboard in punishing a
particular person in order to send a message to others and make our
group’s militant morality absolutely clear, so be it.  We were
never going to win over everyone anyways.  And you can’t make an
omelet without breaking some eggs. Individuals are disposable.

20) HYPER-SENSITIZING INDIVIDUALS WILL LEAD TO COLLECTIVE LIBERATION.

In the struggle to radically uproot vast systems of oppression, we
prioritize tenderizing individuals, one by one.  If some people must
be broken like eggs, others must be taught to think of themselves as
fragile _eggshells_. Our goal is to make as many people as we can as
sensitive as possible to the myriad offenses that exist in the world
today—especially those ‘small’ offenses they experience
directly, at the hands of other regular individuals on a day-to-day
basis or on social media.  As ‘micro’ offenses rather than macro-
ones—papercuts not limb loss, bad word choices more than cluster
bombs—such offenses may not be immediately obvious. Training people
to see how small affronts and slights are _actually_ BIG ones is
thus crucial work, much more important than training people to work
through the smaller stuff charitably, in light of the truly humongous
threats all poor and working people now face. Similarly, training
people to focus primarily on the offenses that affect
them _personally_ is more important than encouraging them to
struggle in solidarity against the oppression of _others_, let alone
spending time studying more abstract things like History or Social
Theory that may take them away from their immediate self-interests. 
Focusing on other people’s oppression leads to ‘savior’
complexes, but teaching people to amplify all the many small slights
they _themselves_ experience personally: that’s the road to
liberation.  Each molehill, when inspected properly, reveals a
mountain. Who is to say that the Big Crises we all share are more
important than the millions of tiny ones that divide us and make us
unique?

21) FUCK IT, LET’S BE HONEST: RADICAL CHANGE AIN’T HAPPENING IN
THE USA (UNLESS BUILT UPON ITS SMOLDERING ASHES).

Contrary to our at times ‘revolutionary’ rhetoric, we don’t
really feel it is possible to change this country in a deep or
transformative way.  So, let’s just enjoy our moral superiority,
our exclusive ‘movement’ spaces, and our curated media feed until
the ship goes down or the smoke of the last forest fire consumes us. 
In the meantime, the best we can probably do is kneecap every
‘privileged’ or ‘problematic’ person, project, or institution
we can reach.  Sadly, the real big oppressors—the _Dick
Cheneys_ of the world—are generally protected behind bunkers of
money and armed security: the best we can do is to take aim at
whatever dick we can reach.  All we’re really good for, here and
now, is to fuck this bad shit up, while keeping enclaves of
righteousness alive—maybe for after the fires burn out and we
re-emerge from this cave.  Most Americans are so complicit (settler
colonialism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, etc.) that they
can’t really be part of any positive solution, anyways.  So, if we
end up tearing down our former comrades and driving away potential
recruits or allies…No. Big. Deal.  (Never mind the fact that
capitalism is increasingly wrecking their lives and futures, too.)
Let’s be clear: We didn’t start this fire.  So, is it really fair
to expect us to take responsibility for putting it out?  Such a
responsibility is a burden that oppressed and aggrieved people
especially should not have to bear (even if there is no one else to
bear it).  _Who the fuck are you to suggest otherwise?_

IN CONCLUSION

‘Cancel culture’ teaches its adherents to focus on weaknesses of
people in order to tear down their strengths, rather than uniting with
people’s strengths to overcome those weaknesses, in light of the
common threats we all face.  It trains people in suspicion, fear,
hyper-sensitivity, and overreaction, and thrives on
decontextualization and sensationalism.  It teaches people to
weaponize vulnerabilities and to instrumentalize others as means to an
end, rather than treating them as human ends in themselves.  It
traffics in moral posturing more than political strategy, expressing a
burning impatience with wrongdoing in the world—this is its positive
aspect—but too-often directing that impatience against regular
people, against comrades, and often against intellectual discussion or
due process itself:_ all things we need if we are to change the world
for the better._ Unable to strike meaningfully at the heights of the
system, CC tends towards ‘horizontal violence,’ with callous
disregard for those it harms or the work it wrecks.

To be sure, cancel culture did not come out of nowhere. It is
inseparable from the habits encouraged and enabled by corporate social
media: Hasty generalization, reduction of complexity, public virtue
signaling, echo chambers discouraging dissent, the fear of false
‘friends,’ and the rapid dissemination of unreliable information
are all key features of its function.  It takes advantage of the
impunity of the online troll and the connectivity of social networks
to pursue all-spectrum bullying.  At the same time, CC reflects the
sad sobering reality that in the contemporary USA, the ‘muck of the
ages,’ the impurities and damage of capitalism, empire,
male-domination, racism, narrow individualism, etc. have indeed marked
us all, in one way or another.  But rather than finding in this
common state of imperfection a basis for humility, compassion, and
mutual improvement, CC seizes upon the faults of others as if those
who have strayed thereby become irredeemable monsters—infiltrators
to be purged, punished, or eliminated from pristine existing spaces. 
Faced with a complex world of developing human beings, always
operating in conditions not entirely of their own choosing, cancel
culture insists on Angels and Demons. It thereby discourages genuine
openness, intimacy, trust, friendship and understanding, while
silencing those who don’t abide its wild swings of judgment.

As we’ve seen above, cancel culture traffics in guilt by
association, expresses cynicism about people & their potential to
change, and embodies an anti-intellectualism mired in narrow
identitarianism, as well as deeply problematic notions of evidence &
epistemology.  It also evinces a profound lack of strategy, for which
it substitutes performative moral panic and self-righteousness.  At
times, to be sure, cancel culture is instrumentalized deliberately to
forward individual careers, or to deliberately destroy
movement-organizations, whether by those with personal vendettas or in
the employ of the enemy state (see COINTELPRO).  Such deliberately
destructive actors, however, could not succeed without the help of
many well-intentioned people, who, nonetheless, tacitly enable cancel
culture’s destructive practices. Even as, on some level, they may
know better.

By helping to surface left cancel culture’s fallacious methods here,
we hope to contribute to an increasingly conscious and collective
process of thinking through and beyond the present impasse.  Together
we can and must develop the theory, the practice, and the sustaining
infrastructure that can move beyond cancel culture, re-ground left
movements and organizations, and thereby give us a fighting chance to
build the culture of respect, debate, and comradeship we will surely
need for the struggles to come.  We need movements that can build
effective resistance to the current unjust and unsustainable world
system, that can shepherd broad popular forces capable of defeating
the ruling-class agenda, that can help people to grasp the world’s
problems in their genuine complexity, and that can nurture into
existence a new world that will be more reasonable, just, and free
than the one we have now.

In that spirit, the Red Goat Collective welcomes all manner of
thoughtful responses to this polemic, at the email address below (or
elsewhere). We also welcome stories of how ‘cancel culture’ has
played out in readers’ own circles, as well as resources and
reflections to help our movements and organizations develop
alternative methods for dealing with the challenges we face. Thank you
for reading. And for continuing the discussion.

NOTES.

1) Other candidates include: culture of disposability, culture of
excommunication, carceral culture, leftist purge culture, call-out
culture, the neoliberal personalization of politics, left
authoritarianism, cannibal leftism, culture of shame or disgrace,
culture of suspicion, sectarianism, “woke” mob rule, moral panic,
culture of escalation, de-platform culture, the proverbial “circular
firing squad,” and good ol’ fashioned Calvinist Puritanism.

It also should be said that many of the ideas examined below can be
found in some form on the Right (or the Liberal-Center) as well. (See
for instance the current reactionary campaigns to keep children
‘safe’ from “Critical Race Theory,” as well as the bipartisan
Cold War history of anti-communist blacklisting.) To those who would
dismiss our critique here as being ‘one-sided’ for bypassing the
’real threat’ from the Right, we point out the following: while
some (but not all) the ideas criticized below may be found on the
Right (or in the Center), those bad ideas are largely compatible with
the Right and Center goals of maintaining or deepening the current
unjust social order. Such ideas clash, however, with the Left’s
historic mission of universal emancipation and global human
flourishing; we thus direct our critique where prevalent ideas and
practices stand in the way of our ostensible goals. We would further
add that such obsessive fears of the Right, however understandable, at
times work to suppress critical discussion on the Left about some of
the fallacious methods we examine below—as if to engage in serious
self-critique within our movements would be to give quarter or
credence to right-wing attacks, rather than a way of inoculating
against them. ↑
[[link removed]]

2) Socialist feminist Liza Featherstone forcefully frames some of the
problem in terms of the hegemony of neoliberal individualism and
consumerism, in her February 2022 _Jacobin_ essay, “The Political
is Not
Personal”: [link removed] .
Black linguist and conservative social critic John McWhorter frames
part of problem in religious terms of the “Woke Elect” in his 2021
best-seller _Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black
America__. _Katha Pollitt’s May 2022 column in
the _Nation_ magazine, “Cancel Culture Exists” documents several
specific instances of unjust cancellation, while arguing that many
more such cases remain publicly
unknown: [link removed] .
See also Ben Burgis’ 2021 book _Cancelling Comedians While the
World Burns: A Critique of the Contemporary
Left, _https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/05/canceling-comedians-while-the-world-burns-cancel-culture-moralism-social-media,
and Ngoc Loan Tran’s 2013 essay, “Calling IN: A Less Disposable
Way of Holding Each Other
Accountable,” [link removed] ,
as well as Bill Fletcher Jr’s Feb. 13, 2019 article in _The
Nation_, “Rethinking Ralph
Northam”: [link removed].
This recent piece in _The_ _Intercept_ by Ryan Grim details how a
‘cancel culture’ dynamic can interrupt and undermine even an
honest democratic socialist attempt at transformative
justice: [link removed]. ↑
[[link removed]]

3) We should note here at the outset that we are
thus _not_ primarily concerned with the ‘cancelling’ of those
who truly do sit atop oppressive hierarchies, and who use the power
and privilege of their position to take abusive advantage of those who
have no choice but to suffer their domination. We are instead mainly
concerned with the way in which methods that might be appropriate to
conditions of truly systemic oppression and desperation—where people
have next to no other options, where the stakes of inaction are high,
and where the structurally exploitative commitments of the offenders
are unapologetic and clear—have been taken up against our fellow
working-class people, middle-class comrades, movement leaders and
allies. Taken up: as if the things that divide _us_, despite our
roughly common class position, are just as incommensurable and beyond
reasoned resolution as those that stand between us and
imperialist-capitalist class elites. Taken up: as if we could ever
have a chance of overthrowing our true ruling-class enemies and
transforming current oppressive social conditions, without learning
somehow to live, grow, work, and struggle alongside other roughly
regular people, people with whom we will undoubtedly have all manner
of disagreements—some of them serious—but whose common interests
and concerns nonetheless remain our best leverage for realizing
serious social change of this world. ↑
[[link removed]]

4) Arguably, the entire phenomenon is shaped (albeit unconsciously in
some cases) by the verdict that universal liberation, popular
transformation, and social revolution beyond capitalism and its
structuring inequalities are no longer possible. With the horizon of
revolutionary abundance thus ruled out, all that remains for such a
‘Left’ are fights for small reforms, coupled with rhetorically
inflated yet imaginatively impoverished, often inward-looking,
competitive clashes over the scarce discursive space and social
resources still allowed us by our capitalist overlords. ↑
[[link removed]]

5) Readers seeking a straightforward set of “alternative” methods
or substitute approaches to the problems that ‘cancel culture’
mishandles will not find such a positive guidebook here, though we
believe that better ways of handling genuine movement challenges are
embedded throughout the critique. We certainly welcome the process of
creating such alternative and improved methods in the days to come. In
the meantime, we believe that clearly identifying, exploring, and
establishing the validity of criticizing these problematic ideas and
practices publicly and forcefully can be a key step in building the
intellectual and social space within which new and better
organizational and cultural approaches can incubate. The process of
developing new methods of work must, in the end, be a collective and
inclusive endeavor. (One such archive of methods is the work of
Mariame Kaba, compiled in her 2021 book _We Do This ‘Til We Free
Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming
Justice_, [link removed]). ↑
[[link removed]]

_The Red Goat Collective can be reached
at : [email protected]  _

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_This article was also posted on
Znet:  [link removed]

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