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I'm not sure, but I think that the term "cancel culture" was probably invented by people on the political left, not the right, who were concerned about increasing calls from people the left - traditionally strong supporters of free speech - to punish people for saying certain things, especially in cases where little effort was made to determine the speaker's intent or to look at the context.
Oh, so ... you think ... probably?
You mean you've just been winging it?
To the one, we've had occasion in this thread to recall the history of this stuff; to the other, at this point you get around to, "I think that the term 'cancel culture' was probably invented by people on the political left, not the right, who were concerned about increasing calls from people the left".
So who are those people? Is this like
prior questions↑ in this thread about examples? Should we, as then, wonder if maybe the examples don't live up to the description.
Still, here we are: Which "people on the political left, not the right" invented the complaint against cancel culture? Is this like when masculinists tried to blame a Canadian lesbian for incels?
I mean, we can talk, in
this thread↑,
and↗ others↗, about the conservative political connection to the history of arguments lamenting political correctness, thought police, shaming, silencing, driving people to the "intellectual dark web", and cancel culture, and here you are with the point that, while you can't address these aspects, you "think" something else happened or is going on. And since it's not utter crackpottery—(right?)—that means you have a clue what you're referring to. Compared to the record, what you fancy is still merely that.
In July, you
didn't want to dig up specific examples↑ to tell the story of "the kind of cancel culture in which people on the extreme left target try to 'cancel' those on the less-extreme left", and maybe the problem, as mentioned, was your examples. And now you "think that the term 'cancel culture' was probably invented by people on the political left, not the right". It sounds like a fascinating story.
(
Note aside: There was a moment in the Friday
impeachment session↱ worth observing. The question to Trump's lawyers had to do with the timeline of what could be established, compared to President Trump's actions, and inquired whether this showed that he "was tolerant of the intimidation of Vice President Pence". The attorney disputed "the premise" of the asserted facts, questioned the integrity of a Republican U.S. Senator, complained that he had no idea and "nobody from the House has given us any opportunity to have any idea", whatever that means, "But Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence have had a very good relationship for a long time, and I'm sure Mr. Trump very much is concerned and was concerned for the safety and wellbeing of Mr. Pence and everybody else that was there." And it just stands out that
Trump's attorney doesn't have any idea about his client, Trump, because
the House hasn't told him enough, but, hey,
"I'm sure," he tells us, Trump was concerned for Pence's safety. Because Trump is just this client, y'know, so how would a lawyer actually know if the accusers haven't told him enough about his client, but, nonetheless, the attorney will reassure us on the basis of his word that his client very much was concerned, because, apparently, the attorney's word is the only word we available for us to take. The tale of the president's concern for Mr. Pence's condition and circumstance is probably a very fascinating story.)
And while I get that you think there is a story, here, what is it? Consider the question of who tells the tale and what perspective goes into it. I'm watching two high-profile cancel questions play out, at present, because for these few days it's almost impossible to avoid. One of them actually arrived to me as a "one word" argument, which in turn persists, but it was more than one word, though in this case it's more important, in my opinion, to observe that the executive editor of the newspaper has made a complete mess of everything about the episode, though making a mess of things is what this particular exec ed does, and, moreover, that particular executive editorial office has a history of screwing up. Moreover, in an old question of liberal media conspiracy, the newspaper itself is an iconic example of what is wrong with the trope. Inasmuch as a canceling clusterdiddle is in effect, this doesn't really match the
description↑ of "the kind of cancel culture in which people on the extreme left target try to 'cancel' those on the less-extreme left".
(Note aside: As I was refilling my coffee cup, one of Trump's attorneys was complaining about how people have always tried to shame and silence Trump's political voice, but the attorney's framework includes complaining, as such lamentations do, that people disputed and disdained Trump's racist crackpottery. ¡Pobre Donald! He wasn't silenced. And, sure, there is possible argument that raising someone to the presidency is shaming them, but I'd rather hear it from the Trump attorneys.)
I guess, considering an invocation of cancellation about Trump's impeachment trial, that would be three. But the other I referred to is a weird question about being fired or for one's political views, but I don't think that expression of the problem appreciates the nuance. In this case, one of the arguments put forward compares being conservative to being Jewish under the Nazis, but part of what that point referred to involves actual American Nazis, such that the question becomes a comparison of how is rejecting American Nazis any different from what Nazis in Germany did to Jewish people. And let us please be clear: I am not the one who needs that to be part of American conservatism; it isn't some leftist, progressive, or liberal, who needs that to be part of American conservatism. It is
American conservatives who
need that sympathetic, even common ground with American Nazis and other supremacists.
The thing about the complaint against cancel culture is that it tends toward infamous dysfunction. Were it merely an eye for an eye and a view for a view, except it never really is.
Ceteris paribus is not necessarily in effect. That's always been the fallacy, for instance, of comparing #BlackLivesMatter to white nationalist rightism, something that reaches back well before the season of George Floyd, and also echoes in the defense of Donald Trump. Functionally, it's kind of like the Gay Fray and religious supremacism: If the supremacists could not exclude the disdained, then the supremacists were excluded; the underlying logic was always dysfunctional, just like demands about excluding books from public libraries. If we consider, historically, those who would disrupt a private business from selling a musical record, and those who demand the right to decide exclude others from buying a damn cake, the hypocrisy is evident in the traditionalist overlap.
It seems to me that the right is winning the battle to "own" the definition of "cancel culture", probably because the original concept was nuanced, whereas the right's cynical parody version of it is easy to understand.
That seems an indictment of the audience, so to speak. The complaint against cancel culture, in this context, is the voice of what American jurisprudence describes as a suicide pact. It's one thing if idiocy verging on noncompetency is easy to understand, but quite another to sympathize with it or show it cameraderie. It is one thing, for instance, to understand certain ideas of segregationism; I think Christians, and especially white Christians, fail to think through the implications when insisting on segregation, but most segregationists expect to somehow win by segregating. Still, if among American Christianists there are some who are fine with competing bakeries that banish graven images or simply declare themselves religion-free zones including the display of symbols, because the Christianist expects to win some sort of political-economic competition, yes, actually it is easy to understand why they might think that. It's a completely different thing, though, to want to open a bakery just to spite religious people. And, yes, that last might seem obvious to some, but the nature of the complaint againt cancel culture has a strange relationship with censorship, exclusion, and cancellation.
