The grass-roots campaign enjoys a certain legitimacy. We have an idyllic image of like-minded individuals coming together to pursue the things they see as right. This is organic, wholesome collective action in the best liberal tradition: everyone is entitled to participate or not participate as they wish.

This peaceful narrative is disrupted when the group decides that something offensive must be cancelled. Participation in cancel culture is not by consent. It is imposed upon an often unwilling populace. Hence there is a contradiction between the ideal of democratic community action and the coercive elements of that same campaign.

Routinely challenged on this front, the community campaigner has mastered their response. They say that grass-roots action is not coercion. They are not passing repressive laws. They are not forcing anyone to do anything. Rather, community cancellation is about individual choice. It is about a voluntary decision to distance ourselves from the offensive person and from anyone who facilitates their message. Understood this way, community cancel culture is simply the exercise of free will. We have a fundamental right to do business and associate with whom we please. By corollary, that means the right to refuse business and disassociate from whom we please.

Of course, the consequences of this disassociation inevitably make their mark. The offensive person finds themselves isolated. Their reputation is damaged. Their livelihood is in jeopardy. They have little choice but to fall into line. This is coercion in all but name.

But the real point is that such coercion is present in any free society. Freedom of choice creates winners and losers: the loser must mend their ways or accept their fate. This coercion is the normal operation of market forces. It is the normal operation of democracy.

In this way, cancel culture can be reconciled with the ideal of grassroots community action.

However, the community campaigner is selective in their reliance on this ideal: popular will is only legitimate to the extent that it behaves in the expected manner.  Imagine a free market of ideas where we buy and sell as we wish. A homophobic person has entered our market, extolling the virtues of hetero-normality. The majority decline to associate with this individual. A minority support this person, allowing them to continue their work and broadcast their views.

Would our campaigner accept that result? Would they say that the minority is entitled to do what they please? No they would not: they would say that homophobia has no place in the market at all. To the extent that there is appetite for such speech, the market is wrong. To the extent that anyone seeks to meet that appetite, the market is wrong. Here, cancellation is not a manifestation of market forces. It is an intervention to prevent those forces from operating.

Alternatively, our campaigner might argue that cancellation reflects democratic will. If the majority of people proscribe homophobia, the views of the fringe are irrelevant. The cancellation still enjoys the legitimacy of popular support.

But again, the campaigner is not really interested in what people think. Imagine that the offensive person cultivates a less aggressive form of homophobia, promoted as comedy rather than ideology. This new offering proves popular with the audience: the majority do not see any problem.  Would the campaigner accept that result? Would they say that democracy has spoken? No they would not: they would say that such speech is objectively cancelleable, regardless of whether the audience realises this or not. As is often the case, our concern for democracy only extends to the mandate which aligns with our own views.  

Organic cancel culture is not analogous to the free market and democracy, however defined. We do not envisage a place ruled by supply and demand. We do not envisage a place ruled by the participants. We envisage a place where the choices are already made for them. We cannot allude to popular will or market forces as though we intend to allow these to reign, when we clearly do not. We have no intention of allowing dangerous ideas anywhere near vulnerable ears.

This is not an argument against community-led cancel culture. Rather, we should cease to

rely on the myth of the grass roots campaign as a democratic, market-driven mechanism. Cancel culture exists to sanction a particular idea of wrong, irrespective of whether that idea is widely embraced or not. While cancel culture often rides the wave of popular opinion, it is equally capable of working against it.

 And so the campaigner must be honest about their intentions. They wish to lead the populace, not listen to it. No doubt such a stance is occasionally necessary.  But if we embark on this path, we must abandon the confused appeal to freedom and democracy.

We cannot overrule popular opinion while purporting to act in its name.

_{Isamu Drayya, October 2022}

NEXT: How cancel culture and virtue signalling work together.

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