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Comment by wnevets | Hacker News Reader

It's hard not to laugh whenever people talk about "cancel culture" being a new phenomenon. The amount of hate she received for merely bringing up the horrible actions the catholic church committed was absurd.

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Who is calling it a new phenomenon? The only thing new about it is the name.

Virtually everyone who complains about it. The complains are almost always about how sensitive people are today, how blazing saddles couldn't be made today or whatever non-sense they use to rage farm. Its almost always framed as a today problem.

The problem they have, of course, is not that cancel culture exists. It's that the center of force of "cancellation" went from the right to the left. The thing they used to great effect against queer people, anti-religious people, etc, is now being directed at them. It sucks being on the other side.

I personally think that things are too "hot" right now, but nobody should pretend this is a modern problem.

I think the real complaint is over who has the power to "cancel" someone, and being upset at how that has shifted.

100%

When you look at historic examples of cancel culture its almost absurd at how tame their offenses were. Dixie Chicks are another example that come to mind where critical but not controversial statements are made and it ruined people's careers.

Robert J. Oppenheimer

McCarthyism, the Red Scare, and the Hollywood Blacklist of the 1950s.

Untold Black American artists, authors, and creatives who fled to Europe: Nina Simone, James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, Paul Robeson, Augusta Savage, Romare Bearden, Jessie Fauset, and Richard Wright just off the top of my head.

Simply put, republicans.

Are you listing the parties without fundamental policy problems?

Fwiw I think of cancel culture as a concern when it happens to the everyday professor, presenter and so on. But you are correct, product and celebrity protests for cultural statements are nothing new.

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