In this four-part series, we are exploring the phenomenon known as “cancel culture” in collaboration with Convergence Magazine.
We hope to invite more people into conversations about how we work through tension and conflict in our movements, and to offer viable pathways for recognition, prevention, intervention, and healing. Given the profound political moment we are in–with the unraveling of many democratic rights and freedoms–it feels more important than ever to strengthen the ways in which we come together on the left. Our capacity to mobilize is strengthened by our ability to work through disagreement and come back from conflict. This series is our humble attempt in this direction.
Our second article focuses on how we have seen cancel culture emerge in our movements: the core elements, broad strokes and nuances. Before we move into strategies for how to prevent harm or expand our options for healing (articles 3 and 4), we want to spend some time clarifying what the phenomenon actually looks like in practice. Here we share our understanding of the varied dynamics we are referring to when we use the term, and we also distinguish what we are not talking about throughout this series. Many of these dynamics are so pervasive in our culture we may not even realize when we ourselves are participating in them.
What We Mean and What We Don’t Mean
Without getting into legitimate critiques of the criminal punishment system, it is important to be clear that we are in no way talking about necessary steps taken to restrain people who have caused serious harm, including Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby.
We are also aware of the loaded public discourse around cancel culture, which has largely been co-opted and defined by the right. While we know that these dynamics are occurring across the political spectrum, the right has been effective in weaponizing an over-simplified analysis of what is occurring against progressives. Their narrative –– that the left are too sensitive and will shut down free speech and “cancel” anyone who disagrees with them –– has been effective in the right’s culture war and has been used to delegitimize struggles against injustice and oppression.
What we want to discuss is the intra-movement dynamics that are ripping social justice communities apart, undermining the work of many organizations, and shaming and isolating individuals within the movement. Unfortunately, the broad use of the words “cancel culture” unskillfully flattens a wide and complex series of dynamics happening across our movements and beyond. These dynamics, led by our more punitive instincts, manifest as a culture of disposability and othering. It shows up not only as the call-outs of individuals on social media, it is also the list of demands that gets sent to management, the public shaming that happens within a meeting, and the concerns around cancellation being “right around the corner.” All of these dynamics keep us vigilant and risk-averse.
New terms to expand our thinking
During Because We Need Each Other (BWNEO), the in-person convening that launched this series, we found language to be one of the first barriers we had to face when attempting to understand the nuances of cancel culture. One participant proposed that we use a different term: fractures of belonging. We will be using that phrase at different points in this article, because it better captures the impact that these dynamics can have on any community, movement, and/or organization. More importantly, it reminds us what’s at stake.
We have a few other influences and inspirations as well. Cultural worker Tada Hozumi has written about the concept of accountability abuse –– a dynamic in which a process for accountability in and of itself is not accountable to anyone and can feel like a runaway train of shaming. The podcast Fucking Cancelled refers to the nexus, which they hosts define as the intersections of social media, call-out culture, and identitarianism. Identitarianism is different from identity politics. It views all complex dynamics through the lens of personal/individual identity, reducing complex social and political issues to the individual level (as opposed to mobilizing people based on the needs of a particular group of people with a shared identity).
Despite its flaws and limited descriptiveness, we also recognize that the term “cancel culture” is still a cultural touchstone and has become ubiquitous in contemporary discourse and is therefore unavoidable to reference. Yet, we want to approach it more like a phenomenon we are exploring rather than a fixed entity, so we will do our best to use examples and get specific here.
Fractures of Belonging: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Impact. Below are our descriptions of the core fractures of belonging, the reasons they happen, and the impacts of them on our movements and organizations.
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- Public Statements on Social Media. Conflicts that once remained within trusted communities are now broadcast to the world, often without context and accessible to people who have no relationship to either side. This creates an environment where harm is amplified rather than repaired. Complex stories are reduced to sound bytes, oversimplifying what is often a nuanced issue. Online statements invite people who don’t have a direct stake in preserving the community to weigh in, often in damaging ways. Public shaming creates a rush to judgment and pressure for everyone to pick a side.
At BWNEO, we unpacked the heavy impacts of a public statement on social media. People may lose their organization as well as their social network. It scares all of us on some level because it touches one of our core wounds: the need for belonging within so many communities, online and in-person. In a strange way, it simultaneously illuminates and destroys our interdependence.
Publishing a public statement on social media fractures belonging not only for the individuals involved but the collective web as well. It ripples across part of a movement ecosystem, striking fear into people who might respond with, “It wasn’t my place to intervene” or, “I would never do whatever the person being accused of is doing.” There is little social motivation for bystanders and witnesses to jump in to slow down or stop a public statement on social media. Instead, it’s ignored or amplified; or people freeze, unable to notice nuance or do something different. Meanwhile, other leaders who had nothing to do with the cancellation get the message to take fewer risks in their own sphere; and in this political moment we feel we need to be taking more risks, like disagreeing on strategy, giving feedback, or feeling the raw despair of this polycrisis.
Often, these statements include a list of demands that, if enacted, would amount more to punishment than to repair. The demands are rarely co-created with input from all parties, as would be the case in a restorative approach. They may have no clear prescription for how to carry the demands out, or how meeting the demands would lead to resolution. Other times, the demands may seem disproportionate to the accusation. Recent work by adrienne maree brown, Sarah Schulman, and others has elucidated the way people may be collapsing different types of injury, specifically the conflation of the terms “conflict,” “harm,” and “abuse.” Conflicts can be the meeting point of two or more different perspectives. Harm has a negative impact on one or more parties. Abuse is when someone wields power to cause harm. More precision around what is happening could help us figure out a right-sized response vs. putting out an unwieldy or unrealistic set of demands. - Lack of Process. Once an accusation is made public people may treat it as fact rather than a perspective. This doesn’t allow for meaningful dialogue to tease out differing understandings, and it erases our capacity to discover nuance and complexity. When someone is “canceled,” the accusation is rarely doubted. Unfortunately, sometimes even asking questions about the cancellation is perceived as offensive.
We recognize that sometimes a cancellation happens only after someone hasn’t been heard, and they may have given up on the idea of process. This lack of process to register complaints then gets refracted in the public sphere. However, conflicts are typically complex; one way we see adapting to these high stakes callouts is learning to believe that more than one thing can be true at the same time. That’s what’s powerful, for example, about speculative fiction or visionary politics: to believe another world is possible while living under an administrative coup. For a conflict to be generative, all sides need to be at the table, and everyone’s story needs to matter. - The Accused Fold. With the public shaming and the lack of process, many who are accused fold quickly, instead of self-advocating for a different approach, such as taking responsibility for the accusation, acknowledging impact and then sharing intent, and offering more context for complexifying the public narrative. At BWNEO, we talked about how, if you’re accused, “you can’t say no, so you fall on your sword.” Once someone is cancelled, the rules of engagement are a minefield of assumptions and unspoken whispers down DMs and private chats. Even public apologies are often torn down for not being authentic or being perceived as defensive. When the only option is to completely acquiesce to the call-out, step down from one’s role, and seclude to an isolated corner, our movements suffer with the loss of leadership and relationships. We don’t learn and grow, and therefore are bound to repeat the same challenges over and over.
- The Pile-On. A single accusation can quickly snowball into an all-out attack. The satisfaction of liking or sharing a post makes it too easy for others to pile on. At times, it may feel like not signing on could be perceived as taking the side of the accused. This group-think demonstrates a lack of discernment and can be dangerous. It perpetuates homogeneity through hostile social norms that expect compliance with a certain way of viewing the conflict. Pile-ons can feel emblematic of mob mentality and then don’t seem so different from fascist actions.
We know that petitions and adding the weight of our voice to an injustice are important tactics for social change. Our power is in our numbers. Yet, when we pile-on, we treat someone who we could build with as the enemy. The totality of who they are gets flattened, and they are considered the sum of their mistakes. Moreover, starting or joining a pile-on doesn’t usually lead to accountability. Instead, it surrounds and entrenches the person so that they have to grip harder. While it’s true that we might not be able to build some things with certain people because of the things they’ve done, we also need to remember that organizing is about people being supported to find the right role in the particular moment to lead to a positive outcome. Piling-on misses this and only leads to the option of not belonging at all. - Lines Drawn Across Identity. Often, conflict follows identity lines, with those perceived as more marginalized given the benefit of the doubt. This serves the important goal of shifting power structures, given how marginalized communities are often ignored or dismissed and how widespread the impacts of structural oppression continue to be. At the same time, when lines are drawn across identity it can flatten and dehumanize individuals in conflicts. Personalizing systemic issues onto one individual prevents us from tackling deeper systemic causes. Sometimes, even under an anti-oppressive framework, marginalization gets elevated and denies the chance for growth to everyone.
It felt powerful and taboo to have this conversation in a multi-racial cross sectoral group at BWNEO. Both restorative justice practitioners and social justice facilitators were similarly frustrated about this dynamic showing up in their workspaces. The shared experience increased our curiosity and willingness to talk about the dangers of flattening an individual to their identity. We named how Moe Mitchell’s article expanded the left’s ability to get into nuance. Cautiously, some of us reflected: “Identity is anemic; it doesn’t capture wholeness, nor the relationship between us,” and “Identity is a tool, not a weapon. Do we know how to use it?”
- Public Statements on Social Media. Conflicts that once remained within trusted communities are now broadcast to the world, often without context and accessible to people who have no relationship to either side. This creates an environment where harm is amplified rather than repaired. Complex stories are reduced to sound bytes, oversimplifying what is often a nuanced issue. Online statements invite people who don’t have a direct stake in preserving the community to weigh in, often in damaging ways. Public shaming creates a rush to judgment and pressure for everyone to pick a side.
- The Threat of Exile. Many cancellations demand that everyone choose a side and then, ultimately, exile the accused. Many movement spaces adopt this logic and assume that removing someone creates safety. Unfortunately, exile does not resolve conflict; it only temporarily suspends it and pushes it into the shadow. While it can be useful to get some space or to set a boundary, exile prevents healing and often leads to deep fractures in communities, rather than fostering long-term transformation.
So, while it may make sense for the two (or more) directly involved people to not talk anymore, what about the others in the wider web? Can those relationships be honored? Because of the pressure during public cancellations to side with the accuser, and because social annihilation from your peers is a heavy fear, maintaining relationships and/or helping to negotiate the conflict itself can feel impossible and exhausting. Many people have lost their entire community due to cancellations, and the impact of that on a person’s emotional health cannot be understated. This is one reason why so many leaders are burning out. If we can agree to hold people accountable and find a way to relate to them that doesn’t cause exile, our collective fear of this dynamic might go down. It might make movement work feel a bit less all-or-nothing and, therefore, safer to participate in.
The Fractures Within the Fractures
Often, we see these fractures of belonging appearing and escalating because of underlying personal and collective trauma. The narratives under these traumas are used to justify punitive measures rather than fostering real healing. And we understand how this makes sense. When we are acting out of trauma, the world becomes binary and the person/group perceived to be hurting us becomes the enemy. This is the micro and the macro happening at the same time.
Yet when a person is acting out of personal and/or collective trauma, what they need is space, love, and support, not for us to automatically agree with everything they say or to do everything they ask without question. We want to support them without appeasing them or becoming echo chambers of their trauma responses. As we continue this series, we will explore prevention and deeper interventions for healing and addressing harm in a way that aligns with our values and builds stronger, more resilient movements. We know that conflict does not have to destroy us. In fact, paraphrasing the work of indigenous Burkinabe teacher Sobonfu Somé, “conflict is the spirit of the relationship asking itself to deepen.”
Please share your stories, reflections, and questions with us at contact.weneedeachother@gmail.com. We hope to deepen the dialogue with you.
