>The problem with the debate on "cancel culture" is a lack of specificity. The fact is that there are certain occasions where "canceling" seems fine, and others, where it does not. And I think a problem with the progressive argument is the refusal to acknowledge that there can ever be any excesses.
Actually, many progressives do acknowledge that. Plenty of people on the left feel that cancel culture sometimes goes too far, including marginalized groups who feel it appropriates their struggle and does more harm than good, primarily serving as a way for outsiders to virtue signal allyship in ways that don't really threaten their privilege, or require skin in the game as it were.
On the other hand, given a corrupt system which often protects and insulates powerful people from the consequences of their vile actions, cancel culture is sometimes the only lever people have to effect progressive change in that system. I mean, cancellation, protest and collective action are the only reason certain issues are even part of the greater cultural conversation at all.
Although that depends on what you mean by "successfully" cancelled.
Plenty of politicians and celebrities have been cancelled for racist, sexist and otherwise abusive behavior, but I don't know what your line for "genuinely" powerful is, either.
Trump was banned from twitter after he already lost the presidency, and banning from a mediocre low-IQ forum is not how most cancel culture opponents define it, the dominant conception has an essential material aspect to it, such as firing from a job, harassment or extra-legal violence.
>Plenty of politicians and celebrities have been cancelled for racist, sexist and otherwise abusive behavior, but I don't know what your line for "genuinely powerful" is, either
Not OP, but I suspect his\her line for "genuinely powerful being cancelled" is that the cancellation is not planned and catalysed by a "more powerful" entity. When and if "cancelling" is ever used against a powerful person, there are often extremely obvious marks of an equal or superior in power person(s) behind it. When this doesn't happen, the cancellation attempt fails (e.g. Sexual allegations against Joe Biden failing).
>Trump was banned from twitter after he already lost the presidency, and banning from a mediocre low-IQ forum is not how most cancel culture opponents define it, the dominant conception has an essential material aspect to it, such as firing from a job, harassment or extra-legal violence.
Opponents of cancel culture absolutely considered Donald Trump to be a victim of it. They still hold him up as an example of cancel culture being more powerful than the sovereignty of states, arbitrarily able to remove the political power of even a sitting President at a whim, because they also argue that social media companies hold monopoly control over the majority of human communication, so being banned from them is equivalent to being erased from modern society.
>Opponents of cancel culture absolutely considered Donald Trump to be a victim of it.
I have no doubt you can find some opponents of cancel culture who believe that to be true, the point is whether this is a meaningful or influential subset next to the vast majority that believes that it's the material harm of mob action that makes the practice barbaric and harmful.
>they also argue that social media companies hold monopoly control over the majority of human communication
This is an objective fact by all reasonable measures of the words "monopoly" and "majority". Are you saying this to support their argument or to contradict it?
>being banned from them is equivalent to being erased from modern society.
"Erased" is a bit of a strong word, being banned from social media is probably for the better interests of the banned person's mental health and IQ. But it does amount to silencing, the oft-repeated example here is how telephony companies and mobile providers can't censor or degrade the service according to the content that users share across their networks. I have never seen a convincing argument for why social media is any different than mobile phones such that this doesn't hold.
Thank you for either 1. being humor-deficient or 2. intentionally misinterpreting what I stated for your own self-righteous indignation performance opportunity.
Even if you removed my snark, if one looks at his prosecution as a byproduct of the change in the cultural climate, a powerful entity being actually sent to prison for behavior they historically got away with is in a way, a 'cancellation' of their impunity, which is fundamentally a good thing, and (hopefully) precedent-setting.
Actually, many progressives do acknowledge that. Plenty of people on the left feel that cancel culture sometimes goes too far, including marginalized groups who feel it appropriates their struggle and does more harm than good, primarily serving as a way for outsiders to virtue signal allyship in ways that don't really threaten their privilege, or require skin in the game as it were.
On the other hand, given a corrupt system which often protects and insulates powerful people from the consequences of their vile actions, cancel culture is sometimes the only lever people have to effect progressive change in that system. I mean, cancellation, protest and collective action are the only reason certain issues are even part of the greater cultural conversation at all.