Somewhat recently an entire database called Canceled People was launched to document the so-called victims of so-called Cancel Culture - a phenomenon where public (or public-ish) figures are accosted by large, usually online, public bodies calling for their resignation or expulsion from public life. It isn't the first of its kind, but it claims to be bi-partisan and sizable.
The database includes names like Liz Cheney (allegedly canceled for being critical of Donald Trump) and Donald Trump (whose cancellation was manifested as a permanent Twitter ban), but there are also figures on the left like Cenk Uyger of The Young Turks and Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs. We don't need to focus so much on the database, but more that it represents the latest installation of this trend in the discourse that tries to show the Woke Left to be as censorious and destructive to human life as the Right. The argument is that both sides of the political spectrum fail to value divergent opinions and try to silence them rather than engage critically.
This argument is often seen from the center of the political spectrum, but prominent voices on the left (such as Glenn Greenwald) and right (such as Charlie Kirt or Candace Owens) have also made the argument that the woke left is as authoritarian and censorious as certain elements of the right-wing. However, this comparative analysis is very obviously missing any context about institutional power. This doesn't render it wrong necessarily - people are getting fired or demoted after mobs of people demand it - but without such context, it's hard to take the problem as a major priority in preserving free speech and independent thought.
When we look beyond the culture wars, where it might be common to trade a teacher being fired for teaching CRT with one who does or says something racist, it's obvious that the biggest practitioner of the most concerning effects of "cancellation" is the Economic Right. The Economic Right is a group that might actually hold fairly liberal social views (not necessarily), but also holds and practices economic ideals more aligned with the right-wing of the political spectrum. While the culture wars between the left and right as they pertain to social issues probably do reflect a bipartisan, cancel culture that sees people terminated from their jobs or positions in media, the Economic Right is responsible for more heinous crimes against humanity.
Given the enormous amount of institutional power the economic right wields - be it as direct government officials, wealthy elite, corporate executives, or just sitting directly at the helms of the institutions themselves - the effects of such power are devasting. Unbridled capitalism and the pursuit of markets are clearly destroying the planet at the expense of all of humanity. Wars are waged over the ability to privately hold finite resources, every human causality as a result of such a war should concern our moral sympathies and demand our deepest outrage more than the entirety of college professors fired across all of time. If mobs of socially liberal voices expelling a comedian from their public pedestal disturbs us, mobs of economically ring wing figures overthrowing sovereign leaders, retaliating against union organizers, sending police to brutalize environmental activists, and leveraging mass incarceration for cheap labor should chill us to the bone. Yet such things are rarely given the same moral handwringing as "cancel culture" as we traditionally know it.
Even when the Economic Right wing of the political spectrum does participate in the sort of petty grievance style "politics" of the more traditional cancel culture, the institutional power being wielded is far greater and the damage far more devastating. Steven Donziger - who is nowhere to be found in the CancledPeople database - is a demonstrative example. After winning a court case against Chevron on behalf of Ecuadorian people whose water source was poisoned by the oil corporation. As what can only be described as retaliation, Chevron partnered with a US judge who was in their pocket and a legal system beholden to corporate power to bring criminal charges against Donzinger for contempt of court, sent him to jail, put him under house arrest, and effectively ruined his life for over a year. The battle is still ongoing and more can be found out about Donzinger here.
All this is not to say cancel culture isn't real, but to hear the argument that the left and right are equally destructive when wielding power and using their voice is absurd. The economic right, which can be bipartisan in its own right, is far more concerning in its ability to destroy not just oppositional discourse, but oppositional people. If I am expected to concern myself about cancel culture, I am far more worried about institutional power being exercised by corporations and politicians than I am about a large group of people telling a celebrity to "shut up" on Twitter.
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