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Her public defiance was an important milestone in what has been called “cancel culture”. This is a glimpse of how it will end.
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Cancel culture, in its modern incarnation, emerged in lockstep with social media. It describes a co-ordinated attack on the reputation of an individual for an attitude or action that the attackers consider unacceptable, with the aim of ostracising the person from society. Justine Sacco is a nobody whose name became internationally associated with “cancellation” when, in 2013, the young PR executive pressed send on a sardonic tweet about AIDS and white privilege. The tweet became the subject of a Twitter furore and Sacco lost her job as a direct result of the pile-on.
Since then, cancel mobs have hunted down the high-profile and the low-profile with equal enthusiasm, revelling in their ability to punish people for crimes real and perceived and to silence discussion on any topic the mob considers taboo. Taboos are often identified by appending the suffix “phobia” to a word.
In recent years, cancelling has chiefly affected people without a great deal of power, who can lose their jobs or livelihoods as a result. In 2018, a graphic designer showed up to a party with an ill-conceived costume including “blackface” (darkening her skin in a way that echoes an offensive American form of cabaret) to mock TV presenter Megan Kelly. She was subsequently outed in The Washington Post and “cancelled”, losing her job.
In Australia, Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming was the subject of cancel culture when neo-Nazis attended her women’s rights march (uninvited). The state Liberal leader suspended her from the party for nine months.
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The fear of cancel culture was also pervasive during the Voice referendum, with many people who had misgivings about the constitutional amendment preferring not to say so in public. Even some senior lawyers refused to be quoted on negative analysis of the amendment out of fear that they would be discriminated against by pro-Voice judges and clients. That obviously didn’t change the result: the secret ballot was invented before the term “cancel culture” was coined, but the (Australian) inventors of that anonymous voting system knew all about bullies who use intimidation and ostracisation to get their way.
Cancel culture works by creating a state of “pluralistic ignorance” in the community. That happens when we all hold different views and perspectives (as is normal) but – because it is only safe to utter one view – most people think they are alone in their dissent. That illusion can only be shattered when brave people begin to say what they think, regardless of the consequences to themselves. It then becomes clear that there is no social consensus, after all.
Alexei Navalny shattered the illusion of support for Russia’s permanent president. By the time he was very literally cancelled (murdered in a Siberian prison), a “noon against Putin” protest had become possible, where Russians showed up to vote in an undemocratic election at the agreed time as a gesture of support for the dead opposition leader.
JK Rowling has had the same liberating effect. She has given voice to people who are concerned that some of the noisiest trans activists are not trying in good faith to find new space for a minority, but instead intent on usurping the identity and spaces of biological women. She has made that last sentence sayable by virtue of it being more frequently said.
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Cancel culture was not cancelled, but this is how it will eventually end. When our pluralistic ignorance is destroyed by courageous people, overcoming the fearful silence that benefits bullies.
Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director strategy and policy at award-winning campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.
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