Thursday, October 31, 2019

Obama Is Right To Criticize Cancel Culture, But The Left Isn’t Listening

Cancel culture is, after all, almost entirely a product of progressive activists seeking to punish anyone who doesn't agree with them, doesn't support their agenda, or holds views they find offensive.

Today, cancel culture and online outrage are the modus operandi of progressive activists on campus and across social media.

In a recent take on cancel culture at the New Republic, Osita Nwanevu put a benign gloss on the whole thing because, after all, these are just tweets we're talking about, it's not like anyone's really getting hurt: "Perhaps we should choose instead to understand cancel culture as something much more mundane: ordinary public disfavor voiced by ordinary people across new platforms." Nwanevu argues that everyone who's been "Canceled" is doing fine.

The larger point here is that, far from being a problem, cancel culture is actually a good and salutary development in public life-a way for the marginalized and powerless to hold the powerful accountable.

At the very least, writes Nwanevu, cancel culture "Cannot really be understood as a response to the advent of an oppressively censorious monoculture," because look, Sean Spicer was on "Dancing With the Stars." Obama Helped Sow the Seeds of Cancel Culture But perhaps the best example of how far to the left progressives have drifted from Obama's way of thinking is the ongoing spectacle of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates trying to out-woke each other.

The seeds of cancel culture and leftist outrage were undoubtedly planted during his tenure in the White House.

So it's all well and good that Obama is concerned about the corrosive effects of cancel culture and militant wokeness.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/31/obama-is-right-to-criticize-cancel-culture-but-the-left-isnt-listening/

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