An Analysis of Cancel Culture

In several previous Zeroth Position articles, I have argued that social media platforms, payment processors, and other technology companies should be prevented from denying service to people who are not engaging in illegal behavior on the grounds that their form of business organization cannot exist without the coerced support of the masses, and that the proper way to rein in this behavior is to revoke their incorporation and right to do business as a legal entity separate from the individual persons involved in the company as punishment for denying service.[1–6] These arguments have received no rebuttal for the many months since I began publishing them, and there is little else to say on these subjects that has not been covered already in the six articles referenced. Meanwhile, no significant policy action has been taken against the technology companies, and their efforts to suppress dissidents, especially those of a rightist persuasion, have only escalated, presumably in an effort to tilt the outcome of the 2020 United States presidential election in a progressive liberal direction.

Another previous topic addressed in this publication is the practice of doxxing, which is the public revelation of clandestine personal information for the purpose of making that person a target of violence, threats, harassment, fraud, and other criminal conduct. I argued that given the level of harm done and the lack of proper judicial punishment for the offense, it is no more immoral to hunt down and kill doxxers than it was to hang cattle rustlers and horse thieves in times past. In fact, the particulars of those crimes bear far more resemblance than one might expect, as do the desired outcomes by those performing the extrajudicial killings (namely, an end to the crimes, imposition of a social norm against them, and the introduction of effective intrajudicial punishment as deterrence against future crimes).[7]

Still another problem that has not received specialized treatment in this publication as of yet is the physical deplatforming of controversial public speakers, especially at university venues. The beginning of the practice dates to the 1940s in the United States[8] and the 1970s in the United Kingdom[9] as a means of countering American communists and British fascists, respectively. In the former case, a rule of the University of California system stated that “the University assumed the right to prevent exploitation of its prestige by unqualified persons or by those who would use it as a platform for propaganda.”[8] In the 21st century, deplatforming became much more common, with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education documenting 438 attempts between the year 2000 and the time of this writing to disrupt guest speakers or get them disinvited to campus, with 205 successful and 233 unsuccessful. Of these, according to FIRE, 265 attempts were made by people to the political left of the targeted speaker, 125 attempts were made by people to the political right of the targeted speaker, and 48 were not classified in this manner.[10] Commencement speakers in particular have been targeted for deplatforming by student groups on campus[11–13], presumably for their relatively high profile and lack of support structure on campus.

All three of these issues have a common link in the form of “cancel culture,” which is the public shaming, denouncing, and ostracizing of individuals (and sometimes the groups adjacent to them) who voice unpopular opinions[14], which in practice usually means anything that is insufficiently compliant with the progressive Left. This may include doxxing, content reporting raids, physical and/or digital deplatforming, economic boycotts, defaming, cyberbullying, and other methods. Though these phenomena and the psychological mechanisms behind them are nothing new, it is important to delve deeper to examine both sides of an act of ostracism as well as what is different now compared to times past.

1. The Political and Intellectual Frameworks

Let us begin with the Jouvenelian model of social order, for there is very little grassroots activism that occurs without some level of elite backing. As C.A. Bond explains,

“At times, it is [the central societal] Power which aligns with the periphery as a means to strengthen itself and weaken the subsidiary power centres; at other times, it is the subsidiary power centres which engage with the periphery to undermine and overtake the primary Power. Whatever section is aligning with this periphery, it should be noted that without this alliance between a power centre and the periphery, the periphery is itself basically irrelevant. Without the assistance of a centre of power, any action by the periphery is, by virtue of lacking institutional embodiment and political protection, at best sporadic and ineffective. A popular protest, rebellion, or any other form of dissenting action by the periphery, if it has no support from an element in the power structure, will quickly fade into irrelevance; if it does have this support, it will find itself supplied with resources, exposure, protection, and institutional embodiment.”[15]

In the Jouvenelian model, commoners who move to ostracize someone are acting on behalf of elites who want that person or institution to be excluded from the societal mainstream, whether or not they realize that they are so acting. Put another way, malcontents on social media would be irrelevant if social media platforms, payment processors, and other institutions did not care to ally with them and governments did not at least tolerate them. Their complaints would fall on deaf ears and their lack of real power would prevent any attempts at direct action from being successful if it were the case that no central Power or subsidiary power wished to work with them.

This explains how cancel culture is happening at a political level, but not why. In the Jouvenelian model, ideas arise spontaneously but are then subject to selection by power centers which may or may not find a particular idea to be useful for its purposes. If the elites in charge of a society and/or the subsidiary institutions would benefit from an idea becoming popular, then they will use their power to advance that idea. Otherwise, the idea will be ignored or suppressed, depending on how much perceived harm the established elites anticipate could come their way should said idea become popular. This is quite similar to the Darwinian process of natural selection of random genetic mutations by non-random means, except that the selection mechanism is intelligent in this case.

As such, we are looking for an idea at the root of cancel culture that has been selected by Power to aid in its growth while appealing to some peripheral group. This intellectual backing for suppression of dissenting views by the progressive left takes its most direct inspiration from the work of Herbert Marcuse. In his 1965 essay “Repressive Tolerance,” Marcuse writes,

“Surely, no government can be expected to foster its own subversion, but in a democracy such a right is vested in the people (i.e. in the majority of the people). This means that the ways should not be blocked on which a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blocked by organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc. Moreover, the restoration of freedom of thought may necessitate new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices in the educational institutions which, by their very methods and concepts, serve to enclose the mind within the established universe of discourse and behavior--thereby precluding a priori a rational evaluation of the alternatives. And to the degree to which freedom of thought involves the struggle against inhumanity, restoration of such freedom would also imply intolerance toward scientific research in the interest of deadly 'deterrents', of abnormal human endurance under inhuman conditions, etc.”[16]

In other words, Marcuse advocates that opponents of the expansion of Power in the name of protecting disadvantaged minorities should have their liberties curtailed. His notion of freedom is par for the course for a Marxist; you are “free” to think as they do and do as they say, for it is he and his ilk who will decide what the “new and rigid restrictions” are. Marcuse then describes the methodology that is currently at work in cancel culture:

“While the reversal of the trend in the educational enterprise at least could conceivably be enforced by the students and teachers themselves, and thus be self-imposed, the systematic withdrawal of tolerance toward regressive and repressive opinions and movements could only be envisaged as results of large-scale pressure which would amount to an upheaval. In other words, it would presuppose that which is still to be accomplished: the reversal of the trend. However, resistance at particular occasions, boycott, non-participation at the local and small-group level may perhaps prepare the ground. The subversive character of the restoration of freedom appears most clearly in that dimension of society where false tolerance and free enterprise do perhaps the most serious and lasting damage, namely in business and publicity.”[16]

Following this blueprint almost to the letter, university students and faculty organize to deny a platform to wrong-thinkers while large-scale pressure is exerted against free enterprise and public figures to impose a new view of tolerance that is “militantly intolerant” of those who oppose the leftward march. This is the self-imposed cordon sanitaire around the ivory tower as well as its means of projecting influence through the rest of society. While Marcuse makes this seem like a benevolent effort to redress historical and current injustices, the result in practice is the victimization of innocent people and net curtailment of liberty as centralized Power expands to dominate subsidiary institutions.

Marcuse was not the first member of the leftist vanguard to seek to thumb the scale of public opinion by institutional means. Edward Alsworth Ross is found doing so as early as 1901:

“The better adaptation of animals to one another appears to be brought about by accumulated changes in body and brain. The better adaptation of men to one another is brought about, not only in this way, but also by the improvement of the instruments that constitute the apparatus of social control. In the same way that the improvement of optical instruments checks the evolution of the eye, and the improvement of tools checks the evolution of the hand, the improvement of instruments of control checks the evolution of the social instincts. The goal of social development is not, as some imagine, a Perfect Love, or a Perfect Conscience, but better adaptation; and the more this adaptation is artificial, the less need it be natural.”[17, emphasis in original]

Ross shows some skepticism about the long-term effectiveness of such efforts in the pages following this quotation, as well as some scientific racism and eugenic thought that ensures his work is forgotten by the Left today. Even so, the seed of authoritarian social control was planted at least this long ago.

Read the entire article at ZerothPosition.com

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