To be clear "canceling" in the sense of "cancel culture" was coined by the cancelers. It's not a conspiracy "to drive a political wedge", but a description using the movement's own jargon.
As far as "it has always existed", I don't think that's true. Certainly campaigns of targeted harassment have always existed (which is to say "canceling" has always existed), but the culture where this kind of behavior is normalized and valued is relatively novel. Like any kind of social ill, if you rewind far enough you can find a time when it was common, but at least in my lifetime it was never normal or valued.
The canonical exception which proves the rule was the Dixie Chicks' cancellation as a result of their criticism of the war, and even then to get that kind of a response, the Dixie Chicks had to say something which offended a supermajority of Americans, while "cancel culture" today is typically about offending a small minority (roughly 10%).
> When your revenue is on the line you don't have a choice in this matter. So, to the parent's point, pretending to take this stance isn't not be apolitical.
Like everything, opposition to cancel culture is political for a sufficiently broad definition of "political". Maybe the more interesting question is whether it's partisan, and I think your anecdote proves that it's not. There are elements of the left and the right for whom "cancel culture" is an apt description. Similarly, there are folks on all sides who oppose cancel culture.