Seven Myths About Cancel Culture, Starting With the One That Says It Isn't Real

My favourite thing about the claim that cancel culture does not exist is how many articles have been written about it, by how many people, with how much passion, in how many of the very institutions that are said not to be doing it. If a phenomenon is imaginary, it is remarkably good at getting op-ed pages to hold meetings.

Folks, I enjoy a good myth, and I enjoy it even more when the people spreading it are certain they are the sensible adults in the room. So let us walk through seven of the most popular claims, test each against the public record, and hand down a verdict. A word on method. I will use cases that are documented and about public figures or public institutions, and I will not guess at motives I cannot see. Where I am describing what the record shows, I will say so. Where I am giving an opinion, I will say that too.

Myth one: "Cancel culture doesn't exist"

The claim. There is no such thing. People are simply facing consequences, and the phrase is a way for the powerful to complain about being criticised.

The record. Start with what is not in dispute. In March 2014, Brendan Eich was named chief executive of Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox browser. Within days a public campaign focused on the fact that in 2008 he had donated one thousand dollars to the campaign supporting California's Proposition 8, the ballot measure that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. The measure had passed with a majority of California voters. He resigned in early April 2014. He did not resign over anything he did as an executive, and nobody alleged that he had treated any colleague unfairly. He resigned over a lawful political donation made six years before.

Now the other direction. In June 2020 the New York Times published an opinion article by a sitting United States senator, arguing for the use of federal troops to restore order in American cities during unrest. The paper's own staff protested, the paper said the piece fell short of its standards, and the editor in charge of the opinion section, James Bennet, resigned days later. Whatever you think of the senator's argument, the essay was written by an elected official on a live public question. The result was that a newspaper decided its own readers should not have been offered it, and the editor lost his job over the decision to print it.

And the example from the cultural side: the actress who played a leading role in the revived sitcom Roseanne sent a post in May 2018 that was widely condemned as offensive, and the network cancelled the show within hours, ending the jobs of the cast and crew who had said nothing at all. That one was a cancellation in the literal sense of the word.

Verdict. False. The phenomenon exists, it has a long documented history, and it has cost people careers on every part of the political spectrum. The honest debate is about how often and how fairly, not whether it happens.

Myth two: "Only the powerful get cancelled, and they land on their feet"

The claim. The people who complain are rich and famous, they get book deals afterwards, and so there is nothing to worry about.

The record. There are two problems here. The first is selection. The famous cases are the ones that reach the newspapers. The ordinary cases, a nurse, a teacher, a mid-level manager, a small-business owner, a graduate student, do not generate headlines, so they do not generate a record, and then a commentator points at the record and says it is all rich people. The invisibility of the cost is the cost.

The second is that even among the famous, "landing on their feet" is not the same as "no penalty". An editor loses a position he held for years. A software engineer is fired. A chief executive loses the job he was just appointed to. Some did indeed recover; recovery does not undo the injury, and the lesson that everyone else takes from watching is the one the campaign wants: stay quiet.

That lesson is the point. The most important effect of a public shaming is not on its target. It is on the thousands of people who watch and conclude that the safest policy is silence. Economists call this a deterrent effect. Our word for it is chilling.

Verdict. Misleading. The powerful are over-represented in the coverage, not necessarily in the casualties, and the harm to those who learn to keep their opinions to themselves is real even though it cannot be counted.

Myth three: "It's just consequences"

The claim. Free speech means freedom from government censorship, not freedom from consequences. If you say something people dislike, expect a reaction.

The record. The first half is correct, and it is the most important sentence in the whole debate. The First Amendment restrains the government. A private employer, a private platform and a private customer are not bound by it. I agree with that completely, and I would defend a business's right to hire and fire as it likes within the law.

But the sentence is used as if it settled the question, and it does not. The question was never "is it legal?" The question is "is it good?" A great many legal things are not good. And the word "consequences" has a sneaky meaning built into it. A consequence is something that follows naturally from an act: if you insult a friend, he stops calling. A penalty is something imposed. When a campaign phones an employer, contacts advertisers, and demands a dismissal, that is not a natural consequence. It is an organised attempt to impose a penalty, with the penalty's size chosen by the people imposing it. They are entitled to try. We are entitled to call it what it is.

Verdict. Half true, and the true half is not the half doing the work. Legal is not the same as wise, and consequence is not the same as punishment. See Cancel Culture Has No Judge, No Jury and No Statute of Limitations for why procedure matters here.

Myth four: "It's only a right-wing complaint, and the right does it too"

The claim, in two parts. Only conservatives complain about it; and conservatives do it themselves, so they are hypocrites.

The record, part one. The complaint is not confined to the right. In July 2020, Harper's Magazine published an open letter on justice and open debate, signed by about 150 writers and thinkers from across the political spectrum, warning of a growing intolerance of opposing views and a vogue for public shaming. Some of the signatories were figures of the left. The letter was not a conservative document.

The record, part two. And here the critics have a point, and I will concede it plainly. In March 2003, during a concert in London, a member of the country group the Dixie Chicks said she was ashamed that the President was from Texas, shortly before the invasion of Iraq. Some radio stations pulled the group's music, and there were organised protests and boycotts. Many of the people applauding at the time were conservatives. Conservative pundits, too, have been guilty of demanding that people be fired for remarks. When we do it, it is just as wrong, and for the same reasons.

Here is the point I would make to my own side: if the argument is that this practice is unfair, then it is unfair when it is aimed at the people we dislike. A principle that applies only to our team is not a principle. It is a tactic, and our opponents know the difference.

Verdict. The first half is false, the second half is partly true, and the lesson is not that the complaint is invalid but that the standard must be applied evenly. The conservative who wants to be taken seriously has to protect speech he finds repellent.

Myth five: "The First Amendment protects you"

The claim. The reverse myth, held by many on our own side, is that if you are fired for your speech, your constitutional rights were violated.

The record. The text says: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech." The Fourteenth Amendment extended that restriction to the states. The amendment binds government. A private employer is not a government. If your employer is a city or a state school, the analysis changes, and the Court has set out a balancing test for public employees in Pickering v. Board of Education (1968). For private employment, protection comes from state statutes (a few states protect lawful off-duty conduct or political activity), from union contracts, and from the employment agreement. Our guide, Can Your Boss Fire You for Your Politics? Answers State by State, goes through the specifics.

I put this myth on the list because the person who believes it is the person least prepared when the call from human resources comes. If you think your rights are protected when they are not, you will make the wrong first move.

Verdict. False, with one exception: government employers are different. Learn which kind of employer you have, and learn your state's law before you need it.

Myth six: "An apology ends it"

The claim. If the person simply apologises sincerely, the matter will pass.

The record. The pattern in many of the documented cases is that apologies do not end the campaign, and sometimes feed it. The reason is built into the structure. A campaign is sustained by attention, and an apology is a new piece of content to be examined, parsed, and found wanting. A late apology is evasive; an early apology is insincere; a long apology is excuse-making; a short one is dismissive. This is not an argument against apologising when you are wrong. If you have done something wrong, apologise, and mean it. It is an argument that the process offers no path from apology to restoration, which is precisely what a fair process is supposed to provide.

There is also a strategic reality. The pressure to apologise quickly means a person often apologises before he knows the facts, and the apology becomes evidence. For the practical sequence of steps a person should take, which is not the panicked apology, see What to Do When an Online Mob Comes for Your Job, Step by Step.

Verdict. Not reliable. An apology is the right thing when you are in the wrong, but it is not a ticket out.

Myth seven: "Law can fix it" (and its twin, "nothing can be done")

The claim. Either we need a statute to stop it, or the whole thing is unstoppable, so give up.

The record. Law has a modest role. It can protect government employees, it can keep defamation available for false accusations, and states can protect lawful off-duty political activity from private employers, as a few do. What law cannot do is create the habit of tolerance. The Founders knew this. Jefferson's first inaugural address, in 1801, after one of the nastiest elections in the country's history, said that if there are any among us who would wish to dissolve the Union or to change its republican form, "let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." That is a statement about culture: a confidence that bad ideas lose in open argument and need not be hunted.

The other twin, "nothing can be done," is also false. The Eich episode is remembered in part because of the reaction against it. Institutions have written free-expression policies, among them the principles associated with the University of Chicago, which set out a commitment to open inquiry on campus. Individuals can decline to join a pile-on. Employers can adopt clear policies about off-duty speech. Every one of those is a choice, and choices add up.

Verdict. Both versions are wrong. Law does a little, culture does the rest, and culture is a thing we make daily by what we share, what we ignore and what we are willing to defend.

The numbered argument: why this matters to the Republic

Let me gather the threads into a short argument.

1. A free society depends on people being willing to say unpopular things. Every reform, from abolition to the civil rights movement, began as an unpopular opinion held by a minority.
2. Punishment that is quick, public and disproportionate teaches people to stay quiet. The most important cost is not the target's, it is the silence of everyone watching.
3. A population that has learned to stay quiet loses the ability to correct its own mistakes. Error is cured by dissent. Remove the dissent and the error lasts longer.
4. Therefore the willingness to tolerate lawful, even offensive, speech is a civic virtue and not only a legal right. A culture of tolerance is part of the Constitution's working machinery, even though it is not in the text.

If you want to see what the alternative looks like when the pressure comes from a state, the history of the blacklist is the best case study, and it is a sobering one. The Hollywood Blacklist Was Wrong, and Conservatives Should Say So Plainly tells it plainly. And if you want the courtroom side of how Americans have defended speech they hated, Snyder v. Phelps and the Hardest Free Speech Case Conservatives Ever Defended is the hardest example.

The case in brief

1. Cancel culture exists, is documented across the spectrum, and the honest argument is about how often and how fairly it operates.
2. The famous cases are not the whole picture, and the chilling effect on everyone who watches is the largest cost.
3. "Just consequences" is true about law and misleading about ethics, because a campaign to impose a penalty is not a natural consequence.
4. The standard must be applied evenly, and conservatives must protect speech they dislike, or the complaint is only tribal.
5. The First Amendment does not reach private employers, law does only a little, and a culture of tolerance does the rest.

What you can do: Learn your own state's rules on employee speech through your state legislature's website, and the next time a clip is circulating with a demand for someone's job, ask for the full context before you share it.