I think a distinction needs to be made between “cancel
culture” and “public morality”. I judge that they are both real and observable
things, and they can be distinguished. However, in my experience, they are regularly
confused. Someone says “us wanting this person deplatformed isn’t cancel
culture; it’s just ordinary morality”. Another says “this person shouldn’t be
sacked for their views – that’s cancel culture”. Yet often those phrases –
“[public] morality”, “cancel culture” – don’t seem apposite.
So how can we distinguish the two?
Public morality is that set of publicly available and
acknowledged set of taboos and mores which guides and guards social behaviour
both within and beyond the limits of the law. For our purposes, I really mean
that component beyond the strict limits of criminal law.
If a neighbour’s child is nasty, you don’t let your children
play with them; if you hear a shopkeeper is cruel to his employees, you shop
elsewhere; if you employ someone who repeatedly airs vile views in the
workplace, you are entitled to discipline and dismiss them. Even free speech
absolutists tend to agree with those sorts of penalties for corrosive
behaviour. (I invite any to tell me that they send their 5-year-old to the
local drug den to hear all views on the subject, of course.)
Whatever public morality ought to contain – where the
theonomist says “God’s Law” and the utilitarian says “the greater good” and the
historicist says “the stable mix of current mores” – it has clear, definable
features. It is predictable, known, and enforceable. We all basically know what
is and is not acceptable; the situations in which such moral perils may arise
are clear to all; and the likely range of consequences is explicit. There are
also usually known forms of restoring someone to “neighbourness”, even if that
has included, at some places and times, the use of the gallows to put someone
back within the social pale.
“Cancel culture” does not share these features. Though it is
chiefly a feature of the cultural left, it can influence though from any
segment of society, so it has no specific moral content – it not simply the
taboos of one sect or another. Any view or behaviour that is controversial
amongst a subset can be punishable by it. But that is one aspect – “cancel
culture” very often operates upon contestable views or behaviour, not on the
universally abhorred. Only the subset disapproves. These are not public and
known taboos, on the whole.
Think of Nicholas and Erica Christakis, whose crime was that
they consistently defeated free speech and expression at Yale – by defending
both satire of the institution and its wealthiest attendees by
minority-background students, and arguing against regulation of Halloween
costumes. Fairly innocuous views, both – but both controversial to subgroups,
and the latter a cause celebré that
signalled the rise of “cancel culture”, as students campaigned for the
Christakises to be disciplined.
The contented nature of sins which excite “cancel culture”
is only one feature. Another is the endlessly shifting nature of what
constitutes crimes and what is considered appropriate punishment. Public
morality is not just generally agreed, but also public and explicit, even if it
may transmogrify over time – it is a slow and fairly reliable process, whether
or not one likes any given feature of it. Cancel culture invents crimes on the
spot. The New York Times parted
company with respected reporter Donald McNeil for using the N-word some two
years prior – but not as a slur. McNeil was, by his own account, responding to
a student’s question about their own historic (when 12 years old!) use of the
slur, and so asked something like “Have you ever used [the N-word] in other
contexts?” This was no sort of “knowable sin” even in 2019; it was on a private
retreat; it was in the context of advising a vulnerable high school student
about whether their old (frankly very minor) sin might have a long shadow. This
exercise of grace on McNeil’s part led to an internal letter of 150 NYT
employees demanding his apology, and led to his sacking.
It is not just the punishment that does not fit here – as
absurd and wicked as it obviously is – but the crime does not, either. The
accusation against McNeil is one of racism, but no one really claims he used
the word as a slur. His greater sin, which caused the internal letter campaign,
seems to have been that he off-handedly dismissed the accusation by telling the
Washington Post “Don’t believe
everything you read”. What crime was McNeil punished for? Like a character in
Dostoyevsky or Kafka, nothing in the trial is open to rational enquiry: neither
the alleged crime, nor the process of arrest and investigation, nor the final
punishment.
A last feature of “cancel culture” contrasted to public
morality can be seen through the examples of Christakis and McNeil. An
inordinate focus of “cancel culture” is on two things: the need for ideological
self-abasement by the wicked, and their employment status.
Public morality, when acting outside of criminal law,
usually limits itself to social relations, unless there is a specific
problematic behaviour in the workplace. Cancel culture invariably seeks
alteration to employment relations – disciplinary procedures, reorganizations,
firings. (Indeed, insomuch as it is a culture much more prevalent on the
cultural left, a connection can be drawn – employment is connected to “equity”,
and so the wicked do not deserve their jobs. Justice is a raw mathematical
exercise, and it relates as much to your skin colour or gender as to your
actual sins.)
Similarly, social restitution in public morality does not
require swearing public adherence to the ideology of subgroups without any
connection to the activity undertaken. That is, to remain in your Model Railway
Club after some contretemps, you may need to say you care about Model Railways;
the connection between being a education researcher like Eric Christakis and
needing to support the control of Halloween costumes seems much more tenebrous.
We need to learn to distinguish between public morality and
cancel culture so that we can defend ordinary social relations, freedom of
association, and the rest, whilst being able to meaningfully critique the – ah
– structurally unjust machinations of cancel culture. So let me conclude by
offering practical “examples” of each.
The people of Trendia have always eaten babies. An emerging
consensus, however, stands against eating babies; the law changes to remove the
VAT exemption on edible babies. It becomes less acceptable to partake. Those
relative few who continue experience social consequences, in time, from those
who find it an obnoxious habit. They are not invited to dinner by Abstainers as
often. A workplace which has a rule banning eating babies on the property disciplines
the Baby-Eater for repeatedly consuming them at work, in open defiance of the
clear rule. The Baby-Eater may continue eating babies, socialising chiefly with
other Baby-Eaters, but accepting limitations in public spaces – or they may
join the Abstainers. Perhaps this time public morality is wrong – but in time
it may shift again, by slow but clear processes.
In neighbouring Fadland, the people also eat babies. Well,
actually, now they don’t, as of yesterday. Or at least, some of them don’t
(quite rich, influential figures with platforms). But you know what I just
heard? A philosophy professor defended eating babies five years ago in a
debate. Yes, he was just taking a side for the purpose of the debate, but can’t
he see how much harm he was doing? Yes, I was eating babies at the time, so
what? I couldn’t help it; I have many extenuating circumstances; but the
Professor was powerful and should have known better. He needs to be sacked now.
Can I have his job, please?
