Milo has changed his tune. (Michael Masters/Getty)
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On July 16, three days after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the founder of the Right-wing X account “Libs of Tiktok” announced she was dedicating “ALL OF LIBS OF TIKTOK’S RESOURCES” toward “EXPOSING the Radical Left fantasizing about killing President Trump”. At issue were social media posts in the aftermath of the shooting in which people said things like “shame he missed” and “a little to the right next time”. Because of her efforts, Raichik boasted, “TEN DERANGED LEFTISTS have already been FIRED from their jobs.” Those targeted included a realtor, a physical therapist, several nurses and schoolteachers, and a Home Depot cashier.
This scorched-earth campaign has met with a mixed reception. Some have made the obvious point that getting random people fired for intemperate posts is what Raichik’s Right-wing milieu has long denounced as “cancel culture”; others were celebratory. Perhaps the most remarkable reversal came from the provocateur Milo Yiannopolous, once an advocate of what he called “cultural libertarianism”, who declared on X: “Shaming, shunning and public humiliation are necessary to maintain a well-ordered and pious society… Cancel culture is good. It is bad that good people don’t do it.”
This declaration may seem at odds with Milo’s “dangerous faggot” antics of the past, but it’s a fair summary of certain long-standing conservative assumptions: that there must be shared norms for society to continue to function, and these norms should be enforced through social stigma. The Right-wing embrace of free-speech absolutism over the past decade or so was always in tension with these assumptions.
The question is not whether such a pivot is hypocritical — which frankly is true of all but a handful of participants in these debates — but whether the mechanisms of cancel culture, as we currently understand it, may serve these conservative ends.
Right-wing supporters of tactics such as Raichik’s don’t seem to agree on what is meant to be achieved by them. While some admit they are mainly interested in revenge, others have claimed a détente could be achieved in the culture war through “mutually assured destruction”. The thinking seems to be that if Leftists fear that culture will come for their own, they will think twice about deploying such tactics against the Right. We might think of this as a pursuit of classically liberal ends — the protection of viewpoint diversity and free speech — by illiberal means. For others, conversely, the objective seems to be to forge a new cultural consensus in which Left-wing views are suppressed through stigma.
Regardless, the assumption appears to be that the Left’s pursuit of cancellation has been effective at enforcing its norms, ergo the Right should follow suit — whether to achieve equilibrium or total cultural dominance. But there remains a question: has cancel culture really been a boon to Left-wing dominance?
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SubscribeThe dissolution of shared norms into competing normative and digital spheres will proceed apace alongside the continued erosion of localised institutional procedures in the face of viral media. Whatever such a society might look like, it won’t be well-ordered or pious.
This statement is an open issue. Things are equally likely to get worse or better; unlike the author, I would not make such bold predictions.
Although, it seems to me, the probability of the collapse of society is quite high. It seems to me that this is due to people’s loss of religiosity. Even on this site, most people pride themselves on believing in the “kingdom of reason,” although history and what is unfolding before our eyes inexorably proves that there is nothing crazier than believing in the rationality of the crowd.
In the recent past there lived Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. They all were building a “reasonable” societies.
Just today, a correspondent is interviewing residents of California and they are all convinced that the attempt on Trump’s life was staged. These same “reasonable” people are sure that a man can become a woman, and a woman a man, since sex, which they call gender, is a product of education and the fact that even the brains of a man and a woman are physically structured differently does not matter.
The mind is prone to narcissism, and the collective mind is prone to total delusions; religion, no matter what you think about it, not only formulates moral maxims, but also unites people and requires them to be modest in assessing themselves.
The assumption that lack of religiosity is due to a reliance on the “kingdom of reason” is, as i’ve previously pointed out, false. It makes naive assumptions about human spirituality, failing to understand the well-springs of why some need an external “meaning” imposed upon them whilst others don’t.
How many times are you going to use the phrase “Human Spirituality” before you define it?
“In the recent past there lived Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. They all were building a “reasonable” societies.” –
They most certainly were not. Not even as a pretext … This collection of sociopaths were simply building their own power/ cult of personality (nothing more)…
Yes, they were sociopaths, but in order for sociopaths to gain power, faith must be destroyed.
I don’t think, personally, that cancel culture ever sought to accomplish a coherent set of goals: instead, it appears to be more about scapegoating and the pleasures associated with that (now very online) activity. Pretty much as described by René Girard in “Violence and the Sacred”, really. When considered in that context, its internal inconsistencies become less relevant, i.e. the need for explicit, consistent aims loses its relevance.
Social media has created global outlets for mob behaviour.
Pretty simple really.
Mob behaviour and tribalism are historic human constants, but usually restricted by local norms and restraints, and tribal aversion to conflict escalation.
Internet tech removes local constraints and unleashes these elements of human nature on a global decontextualized scale.
The idiot who wrote this article evidently didn’t bother to verify whether the ten people had *actually* been sacked, or whether the – anonymous, partisan and intemperate – Tiktoker was lying.
I’ll never understand why some people disqualify themselves so easily by senselessly using insults. Just writing “the author” instead would have elevated your comment immeasurably.
Competitive advantage is the lifeblood of business, so why not politics? It is naive and complacent to imagine that your competitors will not 1. Match you or 2. Exceed you. All else is for the birds.
The psychology of cancellation leads to political violence because, for the impressionable young mind, why debate or even influence when you can eliminate (Evil)?
In that the Right should not copy the Democrats and their liberal grad hive-mind. The Left always see politics as a battle to eliminate Evil- education of the ignorant first, then elimination of the perceived extremes.
Like all rights, free speech comes with responsibilities. When you exercise your right to cheer for someone’s murder or to lament that a would-be assassin failed, you have every right to that belief. By the same token, your employer has every right to distance from that belief because wanting one’s opponents killed is a bad look.
Interestingly, when you read Milo’s comment in the light of his new faith (Catholicism), it is not surprising. Catholics in many ways have abdicated their role in the public square for far too long.
Maybe that’s why we have the likes of James Martin, Rupnik, McCarrick, Bugnini, and Bergolio to name but a few.
Exsurge Domine (arise Lord) and may we have the courage and wisdom to do His Will in all realms of society.
All demographic assessments of the political spectrum agree that the left contains a greater proportion of more highly educated people. The same is true for academia itself, for media (journalism and entertainment–to the degree those remain separate things), for art, and for fashion. Generally the Left enjoys the advantage of creativity. It logically follows that the Left would be more adept at pioneering creative political weaponization such as cancel culture. But they do so often without consideration as to the inevitability of the Right eventually also mimetically adopting those weapons. Since the Left considers themselves morally superior to the knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers on the Right (their stereotype, not mine), is that not inherently dangerous to empower an enemy who–they have said–cannot be trusted? The Left is, therefore, analogous to the tragic phenomenon often seen in the U.S. of parents purchasing an automatic weapon to have around the home where they also have a very troubled grown child. They cannot imagine that this child will use the gun in a school shooting or assassination attempt. The Left should be more wary of the weapons they create.
What’s good for the Goose is good for the Gander ….
Perhaps the bottom line of this complex (really circuitous) essay is valuable as it emerges from the morass of the prose. Ultimately, cancel culture is an unacceptable practice for any classical liberal no matter what or to whom. However, not every firing or de-friending is cancel culture. For example, if a Secret Service agent tweeted some joke about an attempted assassination, they should be fired for dereliction of duty. Similarly, if the Catholic Pope declared fealty to Satan on X, he should be deposed. Lastly, if the Marketing Director of PepsiCo posted that Pepsi is swill on their Facebook timeline, out. And if you no longer want to maintain a personal friendship with someone who showed up to softball practice in a Klan robe, you are displaying freedom of association and good judgment. Those are not examples of cancel culture… True cancel culture, as practiced by either the Left or Right, must end…