Can “cancel culture” go too far?

WOMAN WITH AMERICAN ACCENT: More often than not, the things that we are canceling need to be canceled. They are circumstances or people or behaviors that have been really, really problematic. 

WOMAN WITH BRITISH ACCENT: They were saying that they would slit my throat, that they would track me down and kill me. I got a death threat. I got a card sent to my dog saying that she was [indistinguishable] — serious, really nasty stuff. 

ARCHIVAL AUDIO OF NELUFAR: Thank you, guys. To all of my guests, you have been amazing. I’ve learnt so much. To all of you who are watching online, streaming #DearWorldLive right now, thank you for tuning in. It’s time to say goodbye to our wonderful guests. Say goodbye, everybody. Thank you, guys. Thanks. Thank you. So much. 

ARCHIVAL AUDIO OF NELUFAR’S GUEST: And what I want you know what…

ARCHIVAL AUDIO OF NELUFAR: I want to focus, Simamkele, on this idea that. OK, let me…

MAN WITH BRITISH ACCENT: Social media is almost become like sort of burning of witches in the olden days. 

TIM JOTISCHKY: It’s interesting because quite often the first reaction is to sort of shut down, and sometimes there are occasions when that is the right thing to do. But often I would advise against it because, yeah, it can be seen almost as an admission of guilt.

TIM: You know, my rule is generally it is a good thing to engage on social with people who are criticizing you, as long as they’re prepared to do it in a reasonable way. Once it goes beyond that mark, then I think you’re quite within your rights to stop engaging with them. But I think if you make a genuine attempt to do so in good faith, then people will see that. And being the most reasonable person in the room is not a bad starting point in any conversation. 

WOMAN WITH BRITISH ACCENT: Nothing but total capitulation will do. And even then, it’s not enough. 

WOMAN WITH BRITISH ACCENT: And this shutting down of all kinds of critical thought. And that really, really, really frightens me.

SUZANNE MOORE: When you’re online, especially something like Twitter, every position is polarized and extreme. And when you talk to most people, especially on these issues, most people, I’d say, are broadly liberal. And, of course, we support trans rights. And of course, we think trans people should have the best health care. But when you actually have a more nuanced conversation in real life, about, you know, who can enter women’s spaces, changing rooms and all that sort of thing, everybody goes, oh, hang on a minute. It’s complicated, isn’t it? And that’s what we miss, not that people are good or bad, but that we all of us are more complex than we’re allowed to be online. And we are more fearful of that complexity. 

NELUFAR: Julie, you and I, we can disagree fervently because I’ve created the space in this podcast to do so. I’m not going to, like, cancel you or deplatform you because I vehemently disagree with your opinion or perspectives. And I do think that you crossed the lines a few times. But, you know you have and you know that criticism can be labeled at you. 

JULIE BINDEL: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. I have crossed the line. And I think that, you know, we all crossed the line. If we’re outspoken and if we’re political activists, we get things wrong and we should know when to apologize and when to say “I got that wrong.”

JULIE: When I was a young lesbian in a gay club, I was actually beaten up by a member of Combat 18 that raided the joint, and they started lashing out at the women. And you know, who defended me and with their high heels off and wig and ran after those bastards? That there were crossdressing drag queens who would have called themselves transvestites, who now would be under the trans label, they were our friends. We all recognize that we were marginalized people. We hung out together. We went and had breakfast together at 4 in the morning. They looked out for us, and we looked out for them. And what’s happened now is the absolute trashing of any solidarity that women might have together. 

SUZANNE: I think at the beginning of Twitter, I would say it was possible almost to have a dialogue or even a conversation with people. But now people are already defined and put in boxes, and people are just shouting into this kind of chaos. So people are driven to say more extreme things and think we’re driven to say also to indicate that they are always on the right side. 

NELUFAR: Yes, because it’s about virtue signaling. I find that a lot of this is people who want to be seen to be an ally or who want to be seen to defend the vulnerable because it’s really woke, right. Like, oh, I really care about these niche rights of the oppressed and I’m going to virtual signal away. And so I’m going to cancel. So, Suzanne, would you say that you were canceled? 

SUZANNE: No, never.

NELUFAR: What happened?

SUZANNE: Well I will tell you. But I just want to say that campaigning and doing political activism is something that you do every day. And it’s really, really boring and dull. And you get up and you do it. And that is just so different. The experience, of just, pressing a “like” on Twitter and saying, “Hey, I’m an ally of all people.” 

But now as being canceled — no, I’ve never claimed to be canceled. I never said I was canceled, but I read constantly on social media every time I write something, right, “Oh, my God, that [EXPLETIVE BLEEPED], I mean, she keeps going on about being canceled, but here she is again.”

Well, my words were enough to make someone feel unsafe, apparently. Now all words — actual violence — are words themselves harmful? To me, that’s a really very, very dangerous position. If words are equated with actual violence, you know, it’s like an old friend of mine who is actually trans said to me, you know, “This is book burning, but you just do it word by word.” And I thought, well, that’s so true. 

JULIE: That’s a really good point. And actually, if words were violence, I think you and I would be black, blue and dead. I mean, I’m not a free speech campaigner. I’m not one of those posh white blokes that go on about, you know, wanting to be able to be racist and sexist without being challenged. All of those that get shoved down their throat whenever we say that we have been prevented from speaking out. And then, of course, what gets thrown back at us is, “Oh, these women, here we go again. They say that they’ve been canceled and they’re writing about it once again in The Spectator and in The Telegraph and in The World” Well, do you know what? First of all, we are doing this because we can. Suzanne and I both have a platform. We’re lucky. If we don’t do it, then who is going to speak out about this? Because the younger women who don’t have a platform and who aren’t privileged as we are can’t do it. So, of course, we’re going to do that. We have a moral and political obligation to speak out because we can. 

NELUFAR: Do you think that men and women get deplatformed or canceled differently, and how so? 

JULIE: Well, first of all, men don’t get canceled and deplatformed hardly at all. 

NELUFAR: Well, well, well, that there’s — well, there are examples. For example, Milo Yiannopoulos got deep platformed for some of the stuff that he was saying, quite scary things that he was saying and talking about. There are, there are various people who would write for Breitbart magazine, quite a far-right magazine. So there are instances of people being taken off of platforms when they, you know, of men being taken off of platforms.

JULIE: You’re right. You’re right. I suppose I wasn’t thinking of those kinds of extreme right-wing lune-balls, but you’re absolutely right to point that out. If you think about progressive men, because both Suzanne and I are progressives, both on the left with both actually good people. I just want to say that because you often forget about that, we actually try to do good things in the world. We’re flawed like everyone, but we’re good. 

And in fact, when Ayaan Hirsi Ali and I did an Intelligence Squared debate with two blokes recently about cancel culture. Both of us were saying this is something that happens to women, it happens to poor women, it happens to black women. It happens to women who’ve lost their places at university, who’ve been kicked out of their friendship groups, who have been monstered and bullied. And you don’t get to hear about them. You just get to hear about those with a profile like Suzanne and I. But what about all of these women?

And all these two blokes could do was talk about the right-wing white privileged men like David Starkey, like Yiannopoulos. They’re the only examples that they could give about how there’s no such thing as cancel culture. All it is, is progressives’ finally having a voice to shut the fascists and the bigots up. Well where are Suzanne and I in that? Because we’re not powerful white blokes who are homophobic, racist and misogynistic. We’re largely speaking to the decent people. Why are we being no-platform, deplatformed, canceled, whatever you want to call it, alongside these men that yes, you would cross the road to avoid?

SUZANNE: Yeah, I mean, things happened. It was really extremely hurtful. But you cannot take away my thousands of years of experience. You cannot take away my thought, you know, I mean, it’s you know, it’s a bit Orwellian, isn’t it? But you can’t actually make me think differently, and you cannot deny my experience. 

JULIE: I’m actually hoping that we can somehow inspire and encourage women, young women, young men to stand up and be counted, knowing that we’ve got their backs as well, because then those that come behind you and those with less privilege can also look to us for inspiration. And that’s what I would love. It would all have been worthwhile, all the hell over the past 16, 17 years on this particular issue, would be worth it. If there’s a group of women who could say, because of you, because of Suzanne, because of the other women that speak out, I’m going to do the same and know that we’ve all got each other’s backs. That’s politics. That’s feminism. 

NAOMI BARON: I want to give a context you’re not expecting, and that is something written by Lewis Carroll in 1865 called Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And there was a character called the Red Queen. And whenever there was something she didn’t like, she would simply say, “Off with their heads.” And I think that’s the best description of cancel culture as it’s practiced in the hyperbolic sense today. But this notion of “get at someone without even thinking through, without even giving a fair trial,” as we would say, goes way back in history.

SONYA: I am not an “off with their heads” person, but I am a person who says, if people are in power and power is relational and contextual and can leverage that power to manipulate or harm me, can leverage that power to hold unconscious bias that they are unwilling to look at that consequently impacts my life, it is important to hold to account. So calling out is the space that we’re talking about right now. And then there is calling in, which is privately reaching out to someone, sharing what it is that they did, sharing why it was harmful. But the challenge with calling in is oftentimes the person who was harmed then is responsible for all of the emotional labor of carrying the person who harmed them to enlightenment. And I think that that is a replication of many of the ways in which we put the responsibility for healing, the problems that other people caused, on the people who were most impacted by those problems. 

ISOBELLE CLARK: Twitter is based on following and following is non-reciprocal. So just because I follow someone doesn’t mean that they have to follow me back. And as a result of this, the size of a follower list, it’s often taken as a sign of status and importance. 

NELUFAR: Oh, my God, that’s me. When I go on Twitter, it’s because I want to feel validated because I’m like, oh, I’ve got 100 more followers. 

ISOBELLE: If you cancel someone, if you’re the first person to notice someone and cancel them, then you also gain attention. You’ll know that one person that’s called them out, then, and also you’re the one that’s opposing them. You’re showing opposition to them, which also gains attention. 

NAOMI: Here’s one of the dangers that I’m seeing. Once one has said, gee, I can cancel this politician and what I put online, you can engage in the same linguistic behavior by canceling somebody, let’s say, within your — I’ll talk about a university community. Because that’s what I’ve been hearing a lot about where what’s happening in my own university community is people are canceling individuals, I mean, really without a trial. And what’s happening is it’s not just I’m saying “I will never speak to you again because I don’t like your values or what you said.” You’re telling all these hundreds or thousands of other people how you feel about that person. And then through mob behavior, they’re saying, “Oh, I didn’t know this was such a terrible person. OK, let’s all cancel him or her.” And this poor individual may be treated wrongly, and you don’t know. 

SONYA: Part of the reason we’re seeing this mob behavior, this sort of thing, is because what we’re doing is we’re raising to the surface a different level of what we decided is acceptable and not acceptable in society anymore. And I think that raising awareness is necessary. I think the problem is that along with raising that, we haven’t changed the way in which we deal with certain kinds of grievances. We haven’t changed. We deal with people’s problematic behaviors, and so we treat everything with the same sort of punitive, carceral way in which we deal with all issues in society. 

ISOBELLE: I feel like canceling someone should often be sort of this last resort that we do. And I think we’re all entitled to make mistakes and make errors and say the wrong things. But as long as we are aware of those wrong things and we’re given an opportunity to learn from them, this whole idea of canceling, it sometimes takes it to a point where we’re not given a chance to learn. We just suddenly canceled. 

NELUFAR: I feel like we burn things to ashes, including people. We treat people with the most basic of the characteristics, with the simplest of mistakes or errors they have made, a crime. How quickly things happen in cancel culture. I really want to get you guys’ opinion on that. 

NAOMI: Take the phrase “rush to judgment,” which within the law suggests maybe you haven’t looked at all the evidence. So the notion of speeding things up, even long before there was the internet already was in our consciousness. What the internet has done, as you have correctly depicted, is said, “You have to have an answer to the questions right this minute,” rather than saying, “Here’s a problem. Now, let’s think about it. Let’s see if there’s a case to be made.” 

ISOBELLE: Yeah, and consequently, that means that there’s an assumption of guilt. Well, you wouldn’t like — rather than hearing from both sides of the story and allowing some would sort of justify what they’re saying or amend what they’re saying, it’s just, “You’re guilty and we’re not going to forgive you for it.”

NAOMI: But just one thing to add here. You look at some of the issues of cancel culture having to do with sexual inappropriateness of people in positions of power. So the Harvey Weinstein case. People were really upset and rightly so, but that went to a court, and the court got to decide whether there was evidence or not.

SONYA: So here’s the problem. I think that we are assuming that the systems that are in place to handle these things are impartial and have generally worked in favor of the people who are most harmed by the systems. And I disagree with that wholeheartedly. There is nothing, as me as a black woman, there is very little reason that I have to trust the courts to render opinions that actually honor me, in in cases of sexual assault, in cases of race, that there’s not a history, that I will be treated fairly. 

NAOMI: Amen, amen. I’m not questioning that principle. 

SONYA: But secondly, this person who has been accused of significant harm still gets to hold power while that mechanism rolls. 

NELUFAR: I totally get that. But like power is the key to cancel culture. Cancel culture should only apply with relation to how powerful the people we want to cancel are. When you’re trying to cancel old Steve from, like, the English faculty, who is just like maybe a little creepy or whatever, but he’s not actually a bad guy. Should we be canceling normal people the same way we cancel celebrities, should there not be a different system? 

SONYA: Power is relational. Power, so power only exists in the context of relation. So old Steve, the faculty member at the university, absolutely has power, and “creepy” is a vague word that we use to talk about “harmful.” It is important to hold Steve to account, and “account” doesn’t necessarily mean “cancellation.” And I think that’s the piece that we have got to wrestle with. 

NAOMI: You probably need more characters than you have in an average tweet. A big part of the problem with a lot of our online communication is it’s too short to explain what the issues are. So one of the things I think we really need to ask is, to the extent we want to have social interaction and judgment done in online space, what is a civil conversation with another person? If you’re going to accuse me of something, tell me why. What’s your evidence? Not just: “I accuse,” but, “I accused you because I think you did such and such.” And that takes far more work than most of us have been willing to put forth. 

NELUFAR: Naomi, Isobelle, Sonya, I want to know your concluding thoughts on cancel culture. Is it a performance of shaming people or is it the last resort of the too-often oppressed? I want to come to you first, Naomi. 

NAOMI: I’ll give you two answers. If we’re talking about a social ill that has to be reexamined writ large or a very public figure who holds power not just as popular and makes money, but who holds power, then I think cancel culture has a real function. 

However, when it comes to individuals, I would like to remind us that nobody is telling us we have to have a Twitter account, we have to have a Facebook account, or we have to use our smartphones. We have become a totally neurotic society by saying we have to package ourselves to impress other people, to get lots of likes and to get lots of followers. What kind of human beings are we becoming? And I think one of the main things that cancel culture has done in terms of targeting private individuals is giving us an opportunity to rethink who we want to be as human beings, who we want to be as social creatures. We do not have to be online for our whole lives to either put out or take in negative commentary. 

NELUFAR: Isobelle, let me come to you. 

ISOBELLE: So I think it can be quite problematic to view all instances of cancel culture or public shaming as sort of one-size-fits-all. I mean, by and large, if the powerless are becoming powerful, through canceling, I think that’s a really good step towards just like social progress. But if canceling is largely for this whole gaining of attention, then really it’s used for the wrong instances. 

NELUFAR: Let me come to you now, Sonya. Is it just the latest form of pieing someone in the face or is it a bastion of the uprising of the often oppressed?

SONYA: I think even your question speaks to the challenge that we face, which is that we are so easily persuaded to organize things in the binary. Either it is this or it is that. And I would offer that it is all of the above, and that we are all of the above, the systems and structures that get called to task inside of what we’re calling cancel culture. Our systems, the structures that for decades, centuries, have needed to be called to task. And those systems and structures reside in us. And so the same ways in which we see harm being perpetuated at the systemic level, we see harm being perpetuated at the individual level, both by what people do to us and how we choose to be with others. And so I really think this is an opportunity for us to say where are these systems? How do they cause harm? How am I showing up as a replication of that system in this interaction right now? And what do I need to do to change that? 

ARCHIVAL AUDIO OF JIM JORDAN: They canceled the host of The Bachelor. They canceled the start of Mandalorian. They’re coming after Fox News, Newsmax, One America News. You see, last week they tried to cancel Kermit the Frog and Mr. Potato Head. You see that? They backed off Mr. Potato Head. I think he told them his preferred pronouns were he/his/him, right? I mean, this is scary where the left wants to go.