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The right is enjoying its two minutes of hate.
Nine days ago, conservatives got a minimum wage Home Depot worker fired for saying mean things about Trump on Facebook. (“To [sic] bad they weren’t a better shooter!!!!”—“He is the definition of corrupt and evil”). The campaign against the worker—spearheaded by
, a right-wing ‘watchdog’/depraved, perfidious wretch—is part of an ongoing cancellation spree. In the wake of Trump’s assassination, some conservatives are hell-bent on cancelling anyone who wishes death on the former president (in the real sense of ‘cancelling’, where the edgy ‘Make Aiming Great Again’ people are made to lose their jobs, etc.)(to throw my hat in the ring on the ‘wishing Trump dead’ controversy, I don’t think it’s objectionable in principle to wish Trump had been killed that day. In a sense, to wish Trump had been killed is merely to judge that a world where Trump is shot is better than a world where Trump carries on doing his thing, and then to appropriately sync up one’s emotions to that judgement. Importantly, wishing Trump had been shot doesn’t strictly imply condonement of the shooting (though I’m sure most of those wishing death on the former president would probably also condone shooting him). You can prefer a world where Trump is shot while simultaneously thinking the shooting was impermissible, just as you can prefer a world where a doctor kills one patient to save ten while thinking the killing was impermissible. Sometimes—as in the case of killing one to save ten—it’s wrong to take an action that makes the world a better place (assuming ten deaths are worse than one). It’s entirely consistent to condemn such actions while also recognising that they improve the world. So, in a sense, whether you should wish that Trump had been killed—just as whether you should wish Stalin had been smothered as a baby—is a function of whether you think the relevant act of murder would’ve made the world a better place.)
Anyway, the situation is that conservatives are embroiled in a catfight about whether—now that they’re enjoying a nation-wide vibe-shift, and it looks like Trump will soon take power—it’s a good idea to embark on a campaign of reverse cancel-culture, exacting revenge on members of “the left” by using their own weapon against them.
As usual, moral mayhem abounds.
In a thought-provoking long-read, Scott Alexander argues that if the aim of reverse cancel culture is to teach “the left” a lesson, the futility of this strategy is shown by the very fact that conservatives are now engaged in a cancellation campaign:
The right-wingers admit that they have suffered terribly at the hands of cancellation mobs. Okay, check. They admit it’s made them so mad that they want a bloodbath of cancelling liberals harder than anyone has ever been cancelled before. Okay, check.
And now they say . . . that lefties must suffer terribly at the hands of cancellation mobs, because it will teach them that cancellation is wrong?
If being on the receiving end could teach people cancellation was bad, it would have taught you that. It obviously hasn’t, so try a different strategy.
I agree with Scott that reverse cancel culture won’t ‘teach’ progressives that it was wrong to cancel conservatives. But this isn’t shown by the fact that conservatives are now cancelling progressives.
Consider Scott’s claim again:
If being on the receiving end could teach people cancellation was bad, it would have taught you that. It obviously hasn’t, so try a different strategy.
Now ask: what does “teach people that cancellation was bad” mean in this context?
One interpretation is: it means cancellation is intrinsically wrong—bad full stop, wrong with no exceptions. If that’s what you’d need to learn to learn that cancellation is bad, I agree with Scott that the fact that conservatives are now reverse-cancelling progressives is evidence that a political faction being on the receiving end of cancel culture will fail to ‘teach’ that faction that cancellation is intrinsically wrong.
But I doubt the
people are wanting to teach the lesson that cancellation is always and everywhere wrong. The lesson they want to teach—the claim they endorse—is that cancellation was wrong in the cases where you did it to us.Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
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