Accountability culture. The argument that "these people came up during the 60's! they're hip!" holds zero sway with me.
I would recommend the author (or folks who agree with him) read responses to the Harper's letter. [1] [2]
[1] https://gen.medium.com/cancel-culture-is-how-the-powerful-pl...
[2] https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/1280924457884884994
"A bizarre echo of North Korea’s “three generations of punishment” doctrine could be seen in the boycotts of Holy Land grocery, a well-known hummus maker in Minneapolis. In recent weeks it’s been abandoned by clients and seen its lease pulled because of racist tweets made by the CEO’s 14 year-old daughter eight years ago."
I don't totally disagree. My sympathies are generally stronger with those on the "left" of this issue than their detractors, and "came up during the 60s" doesn't mean a lot to me either.
I do have to ask though: what real substantive victory is being won here?
Is taking Rosanne off the air for tweeting some asinine racist comment actually helping anyone from a marginalized community earn better wages or gain more social acceptance? Or is it an empty symbolic victory whose only real effect is to serve as an opiate for the marginalized and a rallying cry for the forces of political reaction?
From where I'm sitting here on the sidelines the impression I get is that these "cancels" do more to inflame reactionary forces in society than they do to improve things for anyone marginalized.
Marginalizing racism and misogyny won't make it go away. It will just submerge it and make it stealthier and harder to recognize and directly address. Instead of cancelling those who say such things, engage them in debate. Make them look like fools instead of martyrs.
I used to believe this was correct 100% of the time, but I think it's been demonstrated over the past ~5-10 years that it's possible for a brand of these folks to emerge that practically thrives on looking like fools, in a twisted sort of underdog way that goes hand-in-hand with the culture of trolling.
It's too early to call it decisively but it really seems like Pepe the Frog was a one hit wonder and that this isn't going to work nearly as well a second time around. That movement has committed the cardinal sin of defining itself and letting itself be identified with concrete ideas, things, and personalities.
I watched that wave build in the early 20-teens, crest around 2016, and recede. I never went for it and always saw it as mindless and ugly, but I have to admit it did have a certain shimmer of novelty to it. That's gone now. I can recognize 4chan /pol instantly now, and since it has no actual substance the fact that it can be recognized at all renders it inherently banal and un-interesting.
A huge fraction of the popular wing of that meme-complex has also been pulled into the absurd tar pit of the Qanon cult, a brain virus from which I doubt they will recover. They're in the process of becoming right-wing new-agers, which is just hilarious.
Between the never-showered CHUD odor of 4chan /pol and the asinine LARP that is Q, it's now possible to instantly recognize and write off virtually anything even tangentially connected to the meme-complex that helped meme Trump into office. That effectively cleanses the cultural fringe, making way for something genuinely new.
Meta: The forces of enlightenment had to learn how to debate and engage in discourse in the eras of print, radio, and television. Now we have to do it in the era of social media. Canceling didn't even work back then. It definitely won't work now that anyone with a credit card can stand up an alternative forum.