The first concept that the term "cancel culture" brings to mind is being an outcast of social or professional circles because you express thoughts and ideas contrary to the mainstream. This ostracism can occur online or in person. However, Glenn Greenwald argues that "cancel culture" has no precise and consistent meaning. In many ways, it is like other terms that don't have a precise definition and then are used frequently in our dialogue, such as terrorism, hate speech, and fake news. These terms define and shape our discourse, and because they don't have any definable meaning, it's always right to abuse them, especially by those who wield the greatest power. Pointing out the power dynamic, he criticizes how the term is used and argues that cancel culture does not mean that powerful people with prominent positions are criticized more aggressively and vociferously than they're accustomed to being criticized. It implies that powerless people are being sanctioned and punished to the point of destroying their reputations, and their jobs are taken away for transgressing in a minor way. I strongly agree with him as we all have witnessed people who have a platform, like celebrities, politicians, and bloggers, on social media not cancelable. Whatever they say and behave, their followers are there, prepared to cancel those against them.
One example of these people is Tataloo, who is an Iranian singer-songwriter and rapper. He is a very controversial figure in Iran. When he lived in Iran, he supported the Iranian government through his songs, then he went abroad and started to criticize the government, so it is evident that the government tried to cancel him. But it is not the end of the story. Many people reported his Instagram account, who found his songs and speech like hated speech, and Instagram shot down him. After a while, he returned to Instagram and acquired 4.4 million followers on his account. His live posts in 2020 broke the Instagram record of live viewers, with more than 640,000 people viewing the post[1]. On the stage, he encouraged young people to use drugs in his concerts out of Iran.
Moreover, in some stories on his Instagram account, he called for underage girls (between 15 and 20) to join his harem and contact him for sex. Many people _ including parents, social activists, and elites, inside and outside of the country_ established a campaign to report his account on Instagram, and they succeeded as Instagram shot down his account for the second time. However, his followers were still with him, and they followed his YouTube channel and started spreading his songs and speeches on other social media platforms. It resulted in a vast crowd gathering for his Istanbul concert though going abroad was expensive for people.
Moreover, as we discussed in class, there are debates that former president Trump is another victim of cancel culture while coming back for the next election. I searched about him, and I found that he has insisted in a statement that "Cancel Culture" is why he has been unable to find anyone to debate him on false claims of massive fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
"This was a publicly stated challenge—I have been called a 'rating machine,' and therefore would be good for television economics—which has not been doing so well lately," Trump said in the statement. "With all the bravado out there, I have not had one credible person willing to stand up and debate me in order to defend the CROOKED election."
"This is Cancel Culture," he added. "They think they got away with the Crime of the Century, and they don't want it to be talked about or discussed. Look at what has happened to our Country, and what a shame it is!" (Newsweek)
So, as we can see, he uses this term, and he puts himself in a category of all people in history who have really been canceled. I used people in history because though the term cancel culture seems brand new in modern discourse, canceling individuals and ideas is not a recent phenomenon and has a long and painful history. In the chapter "Socrates, Spinoza, and Other Cancelled Thinkers," Mordechai Gordon selects these four individuals from diverse parts of the world and different historical periods.
The first one is Socrates, a Greek philosopher from Athens credited as the founder of Western philosophy. He attracted significant interest from the Athenian public and especially the Athenian youth, as in his dialogue, he helped them better understand concepts like love and justice. Socrates died in Athens in 399 BC after a trial for impiety and the corruption of the young. The second one is Spinoza, born in 1632 in a Jewish family in Amsterdam, who grew up with the influence of both Judaism and Christianity. A scholar, Yovel, points out that once Spinoza had decided to detach himself from Judaism, nothing could stop him. "He ceased attending services at the synagogue, broke the orders of the Torah, and began to reveal his doubts to those of people he felt he could trust" […]. The author continues that the community evidently viewed Spinoza as an evil and dangerous heretic since they slapped him with a ban of exceptional harshness. The order forbade all personal contact with Spinoza and outlawed reading anything composed by him. (P: 31).
Delmira Agustini is the third case. She is a modernist Uruguayan poet from the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. In her era, Women were essentially excluded from the opportunities open to men. They were generally made to feel unwelcome in literary circles, publishing houses, and journals controlled by men. . . . And even when given a chance to write and publish, many women were ultimately silenced through a systematic omission from literary histories. Agustini challenged the unequal treatment of women writers, such as the belief that they could not write erotic poetry. She wrote and published her work, and then she faced the wrath of the critics who held women to completely different standards than men in many cases. Agustini's case embodies a female poet's struggle to cultivate her unique voice while simultaneously resisting the efforts to exclude and silence her. (p:35)
Luxemburg, the fourth case, is known as a political theorist, revolutionary, and activist that played a crucial role in the founding of the Polish Social Democratic Party and later the Spartacus League, which grew into the Communist Party of Germany. The German government felt so threatened by the efforts of the socialist activists who were demonstrating, calling for mass strikes, and opposing the war efforts, that they felt the need to intimidate and confine Luxemburg's movement. So, she suffered from her continuous arrests in Germany between 1914 and 1918 (World War I).
After investigating these four cases, Gordon argues the consequences suffered by Socrates, Spinoza, Agustini, and Luxemburg—who were condemned, exiled, banned, or even murdered—were much more severe than the examples of canceling that we are witnessing today (P: 39). Then she points out examples of individuals who fired from their jobs (e.g., Lou Dobbs), convicted for using offensive language (e.g., Roseanne Barr), and suspended or deprived of some other types of privileges (e.g., Colin Kaepernick).
To sum up, although cancel culture has a painful history, I affirm that it is a term whose meaning depends on the person's uses and the social context. As Greenwald argues, it has no precise and consistent meaning. Although it seems that voices can be shot down through cancel culture oppression, in social reality, the victims are only regular people like academia and journalists who don't have a big platform. Folks like Tataloo (on a small scale) and Donald Trump (on a large scale) are not cancelable; they just categorize themselves as victims of cancel culture to make another propaganda and attract more attention.
Sources:
[1] https://en.radiofarda.com/a/iranian-rapper-calling-for-underage-girls-to-join-his-harem-kicked-out-of-instagram/30576509.html
Gordon, Mordechai. “Socrates, Spinoza, and Other Cancelled Thinkers,” in Education in a Cultural War Era: Thinking Philosophically about the Practice of Canceling, Published by Taylor and Francis Group, 2022.
Greenwald, Glenn. “Elites are Distorting the “Cancel Culture” Crisis,” System Update,
Published on July 17, 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXDPPkuRimQ&t=225s
I really liked that you emphasized the history of "cancel culture". People tend to paint this as if it's a new phenomenon, but in reality it's just more frequent and publicized. Also, emphasizing that this an umbrella term that is thrown around without any sort of agreed definition or grounding and it's for this very reason that they are so intensely abused. I loved the wide variety of figures you used as case studies that show the various extremes of what we loosely call "cancel culture".
Marzi, your presentation of the concept of Cancel Culture is to the point. The way in which your examples reflect the different histories of the cancellation and bring other contemporary examples put into perspective that it has not been something new but the level of reach that has been given to the internet and social networks. And that's true what you said about how powerful people victimize themselves even though they know they've really offended or use their power to move their disrespectful ways. And those who pay the price are normal people. Amazing work, Marzi!
Marzi, I thought your analysis of cancel culture its ramifications was great. I think it's important to look at multiple case studies from history and currently to piece together a proper understanding of what cancel culture does to an individual and a community. I thought your use of historical figures and prominent current figures was a good way to compare the similarities between time periods and how media has changed the way cancel culture disseminates through a populous.