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I certainly agree with your line "American history is full of examples of vicious forms of social censorship, and a lot of it was and is from the right." I'm aware of those examples. And it was wrong. McCarthyism was a deep historical injustice. The religious right has often been deeply intolerant and totalitarian in the past. That's why it's worrying that so many on left today seem to deny that cancel culture even is a thing. About Trump tweeting, calling NFL players to be fired because they disrespect the flag. It's not entirely comparable. Let me explain. The problem with cancel culture is that you tend to attack a person in the hardest way possible, disproportionately. Often in indirect ways. A prime example being a college professors perhaps tweets something or writes something that offends some people, but the punishment is that he loses his job. Even though he never did anything wrong at his job. With the NFL players it's about their performance at their job. If there was a rule that said you cannot kneel, and yet some players kneeled, it wouldn't be wrong to call for some consequences, reasonable reprimands. Now firing them for it would be too severe and disproportionate, and second, I don't think there even exists a clear rule that players must stand up for the flag and national anthem. So I do not support Trump's call to fire them. But more typical for cancel culture would be if Trump urged people, his supporters and masses of activists to attack the NFL players in indirect ways in order to punish them. Let's say there were activists who would contact the private sponsors of NFL players and demand they drop their sponsorship contracts with kneeling players, or that they would pressure celebrities, parties and PR events that these players mingled with, and demand that they disinvite the NFL players in question. Or that the mob would pressure and shame all the other NFL players who don't kneel and force them and shame them to dissociate themselves from the kneeling players. That's the form of really nasty cancel culture. So I do not support what Trump is doing, but it's not a good example of modern cancel culture. |
There is absolutely no rule that players have to stand for the national anthem. Which you know... so I don't know why you even entertained the possibility. Such a rule would be a clear violation of the first amendment.
So, players exercise speech a person doesn't approve of. They call for them to be fired, regardless of how well they perform their actual job, which you admit is severe and disproportionate. Yet this is not an example of cancel culture?
By that definition can any individual be a part of cancel culture on their own? If so, give an example.
