The Cancel Culture Panic: How an American Obsession Went Global

Cancel culture doesn’t really exist, but the moral panic over it does and has real consequences, according to this perceptive account from Daub (What Tech Calls Thinking), cohost of the podcast In Bed with the Right. Aiming to analyze cancel culture panic’s global reach—how did Putin end up bemoaning J.K. Rowling being “canceled” in a political speech?—Daub begins by examining its 1990s predecessor, “political correctness,” which saw an explosion of media coverage in an era unsettled by the rise of feminism and increased workplace diversity. Pivoting to the present day, Daub argues that narratives about cancel culture have gained steam due to an online colliding of worlds: in 2016, when #MeToo changed the way the internet was being used—drawing on a “callout culture” inculcated on Tumblr as well as the discursive practices of “Black Twitter”—it suddenly seemed to many observers as though the internet had gained a strong, censorious power; at the same time, neoconservatives drew on a long-standing practice of fearmongering about American universities as sites of social contagion to deliver punchy, melodramatic essays aimed at generating a backlash. The two modes of communication contributed to a spiral of emotionally driven content that garnered headline-grabbing attention in the U.S. and abroad, where, as Daub shows, claims of canceling have become a potent right-wing political tool. It’s a rigorous, clear-eyed investigation of a divisive modern phenomenon. (Aug.)