Cancel Culture Club

One for the teenagers, that reference.

Yes, seems like everybody these days is getting cancelled, which is to say, getting massively piled on on the internet to the extent that it effects their ability to function, and lots of people are angry about it. Though precisely what it is they're angry about is, as yet, ill-defined and hazy. You may have seen that rather self-satisfied and vague letter that a bunch of people sent to Harper's Bazaar (Mic Wright does a rather excellent deconstruction of it here). Then things kicked off yet further when it turned out that JK Rowling was a signatory, and a bunch of people are upset with her due to her views on trans rights. Then people got upset with the people who got upset, and lots of people whose very job is to be paid to say things complained that you can't say anything any more, despite them actually saying things.

I started to tune out slightly at this point, to be honest.

I've long been a big fan of the robust exchange of views, I've long figured that the more we talk to each other, the more we understand. I am, I am prepared to admit, probably massively wrong about this. But it seems to me that each extreme of the cancel culture debate is effectively arguing for the same thing: shutting down debate.

The proponents of cancelling would argue that people need to be called out when they express unpleasant views. It's difficult to argue against this, but it's a path fraught with potential pitfalls. The biggest obstacle is that there are few issues which are entirely cut and dried, and the question then becomes one of degrees. Who decides what's wrong or right? I've had fun and games over the last day or so after I defended this article by Helen Pidd. Some people took issue with me, in some cases it was reasoned argument, in other cases it was childish abuse. I'm not particularly arsed either way, being old enough and ugly enough to not really give a monkey's what somebody on the internet thinks about me. But it was an object lesson in how these things can happen, noticing the likes piling up of the tweets abusing me, it's easy to see how someone would be cowed from interacting with issues in this way. It was interesting to note that one person in particular started their argument from a completely false premise, the rush to condemn had over-ridden their critical faculties, making it clear that they hadn't even read the article they were so excited to criticise me for defending. This is where we have a problem, the febrile nature of social media whips a storm up in no time, often wildly out of proportion to the original crime, or perception thereof.

I can understand why people get frustrated with people who do this, it's difficult to argue with someone who is 100% convinced of the purity of their cause, binary world-views and simplified arguments don't lend themselves to nuanced debate in a world full of greys. Plus, they tend to hunt in packs. The writer Laurie Penny posted an innocuous tweet about her fondness for TV comedy Brooklyn 99. There was an almost immediate avalanche of respondents accusing her of glorifying police violence, of not being an ally. I thought this seemed over the top, and when I mentioned it received a torrent of abuse calling me everything from fascist to murderer. But the way I see it, that's what the mute button's for.

(The problem here is that, as ever, the left is its own worst enemy, and spends more time arguing with itself than it does with the right. Over the course of the last week I've been accused of every shade of red from Communism to *checks notes* Centrist Blairite scum, I've blogged before about the problems inherent in being leftier-than-thou here)

Those who deplore cancel culture, however, seem to me to be even more culpable in wanting to shut debate down. Why shouldn't a racist be called out for being a racist? Why shouldn't we have a debate? They take a position as defenders of free speech, well, that's what free speech is, the right to reply to to those we disagree with. And with the advent of social media, that particular genie is very much out of the bottle, and not going to be going back in. They also suffer from a credibility issue, it seems to me to be extremely difficult to complain about being silenced when you've got a column in a national newspaper.

This isn't simply a left versus right issue, either. Whilst it's easy to categorise the cancellers as being broadly left-wing (and it does seem to be the case) that is often because the most emotive fights on the internet are ones about social justice, identity politics and causes which are traditionally more dear to the hearts of the left. But the right have their own versions. In the case of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, it is often simply to declare the matter closed and move on. He did this with Cummings, he did it with Jenrick, he'll do it the next time he fucks something up. Never explain. Never apologise. It is his own method of cancelling. When the Government do screw up, any attempt to point this out is met with a barrage of accusations accusing people of "politicising" the issue. To which the only reasonable answer is well, yes, it's political. But that's not how it's phrased, it becomes "playing politics" as if scrutiny were somehow a trivial matter, an impertinence, a game.

So ultimately the question becomes one of whether or not you believe in free speech, and whether or not you believe in scrutiny. Because if you truly do, then you have to take the rough with the smooth. Cancel culture is here to stay, and while I hope that some of its more trigger-happy adherents will mellow a little as they age it seems to me to be a price worth paying for looking afresh at debates. As we look to effect genuine societal change we need these debates, we need these arguments, it does you good to have your world-view challenged. And while I do abhor an internet pile-on, and would prefer not to indulge in them myself, I'm confident enough in my beliefs to respond when they're challenged, and I'd like to think, elastic of thought enough to change my mind if I'm wrong.