Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

“Cancel culture” is scary. It can destroy reputations, bankrupt businesses, stifle dissent, and ruin lives. 

At least, that’s what conservatives tell me.

And they’re not wrong.

Cancel culture—the use of social pressure to limit the power and reach of political ideology and effect change—is quite capable of doing all that. Cancel culture has done all that. It’s done all that for years. Longer, in fact. Much longer.

The term “cancel culture” is merely a new label slapped on an old technique or, more accurately, a whole host of old techniques. Boycotts, protests, grass-roots activism, letters to editors, soapbox punditry, pamphleteering, sanctions, book bans, marches, political cartoons, even boos and hisses and the throwing of rotten tomatoes, these are all methods of cancel culture, though they’ve never before been lumped together, much less under such a catchy moniker.

In the past, cancel culture (unlabeled as such) has brought about tremendous change. When I was young, we used it to save dolphins from tuna nets, demand more rights for migrant farm workers, put seat belts in cars, and remove toxins from our environment. Cancel culture has made consumables safer, water cleaner, air more breathable. It has even been used to end wars (Vietnam), bring down presidents (Nixon), and, on a global scale, topple governments (apartheid South Africa).

So let’s call cancel culture what it really is: empowerment.

“Cancel culture,” as a term of derision, is what those in power blame when faced with the rising political might of those who are not in power. It is the new bogeyman, the catch-all phrase used by fearful right-wing ideologues as they see the widening cracks in their control, cracks created by the hands of the oppressed. It is used indiscriminately to denigrate any socially progressive or inclusive change.

But those who today decry its use, have in the past used these methods themselves.

For centuries, these methods were used to keep a knee on the neck of Black America. They were used to separate Irish immigrants into slums, Italians in to ghettos, and Japanese citizens into internment camps. They kept Jews and people of color from white neighborhoods, white schools, and white businesses. They classified women as chattel, and are still used to deprive them of personal sovereignty. They are being used right now to limit access to the polls. In short, the methods of today’s cancel culture have been used throughout our history to control and marginalize one disempowered minority after another.

So, yes, cancel culture has indeed destroyed reputations, bankrupted businesses, stifled dissent, and ruined lives. However, when used to promote beneficial, progressive change, such destruction is not necessarily a bad thing. Some institutions need to be toppled. Some reputations demand a taking-down. 

In fairness, cancel culture can be used overzealously and inappropriately. It can harm those undeserving of ill-treatment. This is true of any tool of political or social change. Protests get out of hand. Reputations are destroyed by falsehoods. Youthful mistakes, made and atoned for, are dredged up to cause real damage to valuable lives and livelihoods.

These are the risks, and we must be cognizant of them and work assiduously to avoid them, because turnabout is not always fair play, not when moral foundations are a priority.

Today, there are plenty of social ills that cry out for cancellation—too many to name here—but all one has to do is look at the course of history to find it littered with many such cancellations. And to be sure, there are more coming in the times ahead; count on that.

In the meantime, cancel away, and fear not the wailing of those who see only their shrinking power.

T’was ever thus.

k