Cancelling the Imaginary

Back in the halcyon days of the late nineties and early 2000's, after 9/11, but before the economic crash, there was a sentiment among many of us then young things that there was a promise of some coming digital utopia. This isn't to say I believed the existence of the internet was going to bring about a utopia, so much as the access to information was going to bring about a better informed populace, which would lead to a more swift progression toward a more equitable society. I also thought the ability to communicate with each other on a scale previously reserved for traditional mass communication, without the gatekeepers which managed them, would teach us things about each other we previously didn't know, and would help engender a greater sense of empathy. 

I can see now how much of this belief was still rooted in American Exceptionalism. I had yet to be fully disabused of the illusion there was something special about the U.S. I certainly had yet to come to a full reckoning with the degree people actively don't want to know anything about a great many different things. I also had yet to clue in to how much cruelty is about nothing but the expression of power or even the illusion of power, and how much life in America really is about power or who can convince others they have it. It's pretty impossible to be raised in this country (especially raised white), and not take on some of these beliefs because they are so much a part of our education, our media etc. 

I can forgive myself what I had yet to learn in my early 20's. There is a bit of this which stings though, even in allowing my younger self to be a bit ignorant and overly optimistic. It's what I had to forget in order to believe all this. I grew up and came to some consciousness of the politics and narratives in the world outside of my small existence and what book I happened to be reading, what movie or musical artist I happened to be obsessed with, right smack in the middle of the Satanic Panic. In order to believe the internet was going to bring about all of these wonderful things, and not see what else it might bring, I had to forget about the Satanic Panic or to at least believe we had "learned our lesson and progressed." There really wasn't any evidence for it. Not least of the evidence to the contrary were the people still sitting in jail based more on the hysterical state of the nation at the time than any evidence against them, and the degree to which we never spent any much time or effort looking at the way a relatively small group of grifters basically caused this national hysteria. 

We were headed into and seeing the earliest results of what we now call late stage capitalism. Wages were falling behind inflation, professionalization and credentialism were being cemented into what they are today, a recession would soon come along, and consumerism been fully integrated into the whole of American life. Conspicuous consumption became an even more potent aspect of the competition for status and power. Even as we now refer to them as the Boomers, the eighties may have gotten something very right as then referring to them as the Me generation. Women had joined the workforce en masse, and as white feminism dominated feminist perspective in media and politics, glass ceilings and the pay gap were revealed as salient realities, central to the conversation about what gender equality meant. What public discussion we had about racism was facile, at best, and patronizing more commonly. 

The national hysteria which was the Satanic Panic touched everything. Every form of art was interrogated under this absurd and delusional criteria, and a few were outright vilified. A preference for heavy metal became a sign the teen who demonstrated it was probably disturbed, and therefore ripe for recruitment into a Satanic cult. Horror films were essentially treated like recruitment propaganda, made by people ensconced in Satanic conspiracies which reached into the highest echelons of power.

So it was our national news coverage became being spit nightly between problems of economics, inequality in a few different forms, The War on Drugs (itself created out of fact averse narratives of a venal, racist political class), and credulous stories related to Satanic Panic. There certainly are parallels between Satanic Panic and Q Anon (which I've written about before), but luckily for all of us, the overwhelming majority of prominent, respected media outlets aren't taking the claims of Q converts as anything other than ludicrous. The seriousness of Q Anon's place as an engine for recruitment into dangerous demonstrably violent far right groups isn't being confronted as forcefully as it should be, but news outlets at least aren't taking the Q grifters claims as being necessary for investigation or much discussion, other than pointing out their absurdity. We should all be thankful local and national news of every content type aren't running pieces where they treat the claims of the Q griftership as if they are legitimate to the degree to be worthy of investigation, as was happening with Satanic Panic. We don't have Q grifters being interviewed as experts, telling bald face lies about having "discovered and broken up" smaller cells in this lunatic conspiracy, which was a feature of the Satanic Panic. It's worth noting though, this particular complex of conspiracy theories has chosen as its savior and hero a man who is plainly evident as a narcissist and grifter, and who has repeatedly referred to this same media as "enemies of the people," so it's not impossible to rule out the self interest inherent in not propagating these delusions, despite what audience and related revenue they might bring in.  

Still though, our national media, the political animals of the world who are desperate for recognition as "legitimate" can't help in reaching for low hanging fruit. They've failed to recognize the similarities between Q Anon, Satanic Panic and the now entrenched, bovinely legitimized grift that is the "cancel culture" debate. Couching arguments as being about "free speech" is tailor made to touch the nerves which activate the lizard brain response of anyone raised on American Exceptionalism and designed to titillate those with any remaining shred of belief in it. The factually unfounded idea that we are the most free country in the world (just one of the pillars of the grander concept of The Greatest Country in the World" or as Reagan infamously put it, "the shining city on a hill") is just too emotionally charged and too well embedded in the American consciousness, making the grift that is the cancel culture debate ground too fruitful to pass up. 

There has been an ongoing discussion about free speech since before it was enshrined in the Constitution. Part of that discussion has always been about responsibility and accountability, and the majority of it is about what legal standards there are to protect speech and what legal standards can actually prevent speech. These can be substantive discussions, most of them aren't substantive though. Most of these discussions are dominated by empty vanity, which have encouraged a popular misunderstanding and simultaneously make space for and encourage charlatans who will exploit that misunderstanding. 

The entire debate the fascists of our conservative movement are trying to push into political and social life is based on those misunderstandings. It's a grift accomplishing a number of different things simultaneously when outlets like the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, CNN, NPR or other any "legitimate" outlets cover it in their newsrooms, their editorial boards contribute to it or their editors let columnists, pundits or anyone else take up time or space for it as any less ludicrous than Q Anon. There are a few very real, very practical discussions we could be having about free speech. The "cancel culture" debate is not one of them, and part of the strategy of it's purveyors is to undermine the exact thing they propose is the solution to this illusory concept of "cancel culture," more speech. It's also an attempt to prevent of accountability outside of the legal system, which in contrast to their claims, would leave the state as the final and only adjudicator of what form accountability can take or who public speech is accountable to. It's both irresponsible and dangerous to decide the state can and should be the only decision maker about what is and isn't responsible use of speech, what the measures of accountability can look like, and most importantly, who has access to which forms of free speech.

More importantly, this discussion of cancel culture as our fascist conservative movement has shaped it, is about control. It's about being able to control the limits of imagination. When taken in context with the real, genuine threats to free speech which the fascists pushing cancel culture into the public square either refuse to address or treat as de facto "cancel culture", it reveals the picture of public discourse they really want, which is more speech, just from fascists, and no one else. 

The last few decades push to limit access to and usage of public space and/or civic space is a free speech issue. Localities have curtailed the ability to assemble, to organize, and as a result for people who don't already have ready access to power to engage in political speech. These are often in the shape of nuisance laws, proposed at least under the guise if not the genuine intent, of either preventing crime or preventing homeless/houseless individuals from use of public space. The constant refrain about mass movements or protest movements is, "there's a right way and a wrong way to do things," with little knowledge about what we often refer to as nuisance laws have meant for the practical "how" of the right way. Permits are needed to block streets anywhere, generally parade permits, which can be applied for, but which also then require a police presence, which also have to be paid for. When the fee for protesting "the right way" runs into several hundred or thousands of dollars, it changes who this act of speech is available to. In most states and localities, a permit is technically necessary to hold an event of any kind in a public park, again limiting the access to public speech to people who can afford the permits and again the often required police presence, which gets more expensive in relation to the expected crowd size. One of the most common ways these regulations also curb the ability of the public to assemble is through making it illegal to be in public spaces after dark. We think of these things as "nuisance laws," but when taken in combination with our general understanding that the majority of the population is living on a schedule relatively close to 9 to 5, it's a clear limit on the ability to practice political speech on a basis we haven't created legal exceptions for. All of these also leave it at the discretion of local police about how they enforce them, which we should at this point realize, has never been equitable. Let's also be clear, in many places in the country, it's the police who issue  permits for parades or events in other public spaces, as well., which is a concern unto itself, especially in times when it's specifically the actions or activities of police which the public is organizing to oppose, as we saw this summer. 

Taken individually, many of these laws seem innocuous, but their cumulative effect limits the availability of public space for assembly, and as public tolerance for these regulations has grown it's meant more of them. Another little considered piece of this cumulative effect is in what it takes to challenge them. If the cumulative effect of these regulations is the limit of the use of public space, it means people who want to challenge them have to have access to adequate private property, even if it's to organize opposition at the level of a town or city council. If this can be accomplished and the local regulatory body doesn't respond, it leaves the courts. Again, there is a cost, least in filing a petition with the court to have a case heard, and where concerns about free speech come into play, it's a legal morass of such depth and breadth there's an entire legal specialization for it, which means hiring a legal team, just to get it heard in the first place. Cases which reach states high courts can eventually run into a cost of millions of dollars. Cases which reach the U.S. Supreme Court are guaranteed to reach costs in the millions. They also take years and years, and without injunctions to prevent the enforcement of ordinances and laws later found to have been at odds with our free speech principles, it means years during which those laws were curbing the ability of the public to assemble. Generally, it means at least going to a state's high court to challenge just one of these. If five or ten layered together present a serious prevention of assembly by the public, it typically means challenging one at a time. This is why it's not uncommon for these kind of laws and ordinances to be enforced for years or decades before they are challenged in court. 

This is one of the genuine issues related to free speech today, for which there are genuine arguments to be made, considered and for some variety of understanding and consensus to be reached by the general public. It's not an argument these cranks who are braying about "cancel culture" are interested in though. We don't imagine these ordinances and laws as being related to free speech, because this is only in the rarest instances the way they are considered and they primarily affect the ability of the poorest or most marginalized to assemble, organize and practice what for everyone else, is protected speech. The narrow, superficial discourse we've had about the cumulative effect of these regulations has shaped what parameters we imagine them within. Fascists understand this and it is central to the way they engage with public discourse. 

The other, and much more publicly recognized argument about free speech right now, is police response to protest. What we've seen in the last decade is a tide of decisions by state courts, along with settlements paid by cities due to First Amendment claims, paying protesters following police response. Cities across the country have paid protesters for violations stemming from police behavior ranging false arrest to brutality to violations of basic due process. A pattern has emerged. A series of protests take place. Pressure mounts for local government and police to do something, often made more acute by exactly the same grifters pushing the cancel culture con with their specious claims about the motivation or intent of protesters and any number of outright lies and conspiracy theories. Police respond violently and basically arrest anyone and everyone they can get their hands on, including journalists. Lawsuits are brought against the department and whatever local government the police represent. Months or years later, state courts find in favor of protesters, issuing damages or the local government looking at the evidence realizes they can't win the case or that the evidence isn't compelling enough to mean a quick trial or a dismissal of the case altogether and chooses to settle. 

Looking at this pattern, it's easy to make the suggestion "the system worked/works." What this doesn't take into account is the degree to which this pattern has basically set up the payment of settlements as the accepted cost of violating the rights of people engaged in political speech. It also doesn't take into account the chilling effect on the willingness of the public to engage in political speech when this is a recognized pattern or what chilling effect things like false arrests have on people who have engaged in political speech. Understand, to even have charges thrown out at arraignment or at a hearing for a motion to dismiss after arraignment, often means multiple interruptions to someone's work schedule etc, and again, even as there are often legal entities like the ACLU to take up these cases, it's not guaranteed, so the possibility of legal costs exists. It leaves what is supposed to be a right to engage in political speech to the ability to access charity, essentially. All of that is before the regular tactic of police to taking nearly as long as they legally are allowed before releasing people who've been charged with minor misdemeanor, which can mean lost wages, additional child care costs, medical costs and so on. Anyone who has seen even a small percentage of the footage of police response to protests this past summer is going to have this inform their consideration to join a protest, probably for years to come. Protest is one of the last varieties of collective power we have popular faith in, and something like a popular understanding of (and even that, in reality, is severely limited due to the history most educational institutions provide on the subject of mass movements).

This is also excluding the cases where prosecutors stretch the intent or meaning of law to levy the heaviest possible charges, as the Justice Department has done with protesters from this past summer. This Reveal News piece which addresses the DOJ's actions is enlightening and terrifying. 

These are genuine free speech issues. Taken separately, they are threats to the ability of all of the residents of the United States access to the ability to freely practice political speech, and are particular threats to people who for any number of different reasons are facing issues they may feel are necessarily addressed through the assembly of collective power and expression of political speech.  The realities of systemic discrimination from social, political and economic institutions makes these even more pressing, because these limitations don't fall flatly across the society as a whole as a result. All of this together makes up a practical reality which is in contradiction with what we generally consider the "spirit" of the principle of free speech and with the established case law, much less the more regularly discussed issues of policing as an institution.  

These aren't subjects of interest to the fascists and their collaborators who are collecting checks based on their ability to signal shared outrage at the delusional concept of cancel culture, because they're fascists, and freedom of speech is in direct opposition to fascism. Freedom of speech is in direct opposition to fascism because it inevitably leads to a more expansive public imagination. There is a giant, gaping abyss in American discourse on the practicalities of engaging in what is supposed to be Constitutionally protected speech, and this tells us how seriously our contemporary social, political and economic powers take the legal violations of even the speciously defined "right way" to engage in political speech, which itself doesn't quite square with the "spirit" of the principle. The result ends up being a focus on the repercussions to exercising our rights to political speech, without much imagination of what this exercise can do or how we might employ it more creatively to reach our goals. 

This is before we even get to questions of whether the big tech companies should be allowed to be the pre-eminent powers shaping the parameters of what is free speech, accountability and responsibility as we now have a new digital commons. 

The other significant tell in this grift is demonizing the concept of being aware of, being willing to learn about and being willing to address systemic inequalities. Turning "woke" into an insult is a direct benefit to anyone who wants to preserve attitudes and social norms shaped white supremacy, patriarchy and colonialism. It's a backdoor, subtextual way to help insure the kind of abusive, traumatic treatment of people whose lives exist outside of the privilege of the increasingly narrow definition of the fascist "in group" are still considered the consequences "responsible" parties should expect when engaging in political speech which is counter to fascist identity politics which have long been normalized in all of American life. Today, there's a fascist campaign attacking journalists who are women, because they have expressed support for journalist Taylor Lorenz, who expressed frustration with constantly being targeted with violent, misogynistic treatment by men on the internet. Glenn Greenwald and Tucker Carlson have been whipping up their audiences by spending what is now three days focusing on Lorenz, for just basically saying, "I'm so tired of rape threats and being told to get back in the kitchen," which is apparently cancel culture, and absurd because she happens to also have a good job and a few thousand followers on Twitter. Of course, they're claiming the thing that needs to change here is that Lorenz needs to "toughen up" and "grow a thicker skin." 

Another good example of what the surface obsession with cancel culture boils down to is people who fascists, previously costumed as conservatives, have spent 40 years calling "welfare queens" can now answer those insulting them with this label, and they can do so by the millions, while also drawing support from other millions of other people. The internet hasn't brought about the kind of utopian ideals some of us were hoping for, but it has made it easier for people who have some level of talent or practice at effective self expression to reach audiences who wouldn't have been exposed to them when the system of gatekeepers in our cultural and social institutions still had even more power to keep them further to the margins than they do now. As an example, if 300 Black women have social media audiences, a number we wouldn't even consider very significant (a few thousand followers each for the sake of argument), they're quite possibly reaching a few million people, collectively, and when some politician trots out the "welfare queens" variety of racist trope, chances of a lot of overlap in their expressions of displeasure and calling attention to the racist nature of the characterization are high. That response, amplified by a few million people, is something people with any level of power and prominence have not had to deal with before. It's the result of more speech and it's inherently democratic. 

This is an accountability people with any kind of power have never had to face before, from people they have never had to be responsible to or held accountable by. At its center, this is why the phrase cancel culture needed to become a war cry for fascists. For fascists, they are only accountable to people with more power than themselves, who have signaled solidarity with these fascist values. 

This is one of the purposes of the entire cancel culture debate, to prevent any changes to what we accept as social, economic or political norms from being shaped or formed outside of the lenses of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism and imperialism, which have been the primary forces in shaping those norms to this point. This is the more speech cancel culture grifters say is the solution to cancel culture. The point of demonizing the concept of being woke, and de facto demonizing anyone recognizing social, political or economic inequality of any kind is insure the continuance of the norm where recognizing and pointing to racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination is considered more of a social/political risk to the person recognizing it than the speech or act of discrimination itself is. Everyone who doesn't appreciate the reality of being targeted with racist, sexist, homophobic threats/insults and the like is weak, a snowflake, a cry baby, and the people engaging in these behaviors are the victims of having the reality of their behavior recognized and identified. Everyone wants to seem responsible when they talk about the state of public debate, but very few want to genuinely consider how much the state of this debate is due to a minority, and not an insignificant minority, has traumatized the majority into a defensive stance, because a horrid and often downright disturbed and disturbing response is what we've become accustomed to receiving. You can't set fascists loose in your collective discourse, without a hardening of that discourse being the natural result. We've spent more than a decade with every conceivable insult being hurled into the middle of what would be relatively innocuous conversations. Is it really all that unusual that we've all gotten more defensive and prickly as a result. Be clear as well, for some of us, insults are the best of it. Threats and stalking aren't as unusual for minorities, especially women. 

Yes, the conversations around racism, sexism, ableism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and systemic oppression have grown exponentially, but it's not because they haven't been recognized by the people whose lives they negatively impact for a very long time. What's different is the ability for all people with access to the internet to communicate with each other, and with people who may not be negatively impacted by the same form of discrimination, is slowly producing a greater awareness of the state of reality for others. The degree to which these things shape all of American life is mind numbing and heart stopping, certainly, and the difference between today and 40 years ago is the amount we are unable to continue ignoring American life can't exist without the cruelty and violence and in the ways the American public refuses to attempt to consider what existence without that cruelty and violence would be.

One of the other purposes of trying to legitimize and expand the reach of the grift of cancel culture disinformation is its power as a distraction. Half a million people have died from an infectious disease which was largely preventable, but wasn't prevented, because the narcissistic figure the conservative fascist movement chose as its figurehead did nothing in terms of prevention or response. Where they are governors or fascists have enough power in legislatures, they're trying to end mask mandates, and reopen their states or cities, while the pandemic is still raging. Members of this movement attempted a coup, by attacking the federal legislature to prevent the consummation of a democratic election. Various factions of the movement have been responsible for all manner of violence, and even more deadly and devastating planned attacks have been prevented. We still have what amounts to a pandemic of overdose deaths from opioid addiction, which has been overshadowed by COVID. Infrastructure is failing, resulting in death and severe medical emergencies, as well as long term health problems. We have the highest rate of incarceration in the world, along with the highest number of people incarcerated in any wealthy country, democracy or "Western" country. An eviction epidemic is nearly guaranteed. The economic theology this fascist movement adheres to has produced inequality of such disparity, it's worse than that of France directly before their revolution. The political arm of this movement, the Republican Party, just presented a unified front in attempting to prevent any relief being provided for the economic consequences of doing nothing about the pandemic. They've made it central to their dogma over the last 40 years to attack any and every institution which didn't immediate bend to their every whim, through every available means, and as a result, all of our major political, social and economic institutions are failing in major ways. 

It's not just the nakedly political hacks who are getting their piece of this grift either. Of course the Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, Marjorie Taylor Greene variety of blustering asshole is doing their best to draw attention away from what they are and aren't doing, while also raising money off of it. This path was laid by the various members of the seemingly bottomless, long overlooked grift which comes in the form the conservative columnist and pundit who expertly exploits the intellectual vanity of the leadership of major publications and other media outlets who still cling to outdated (and now proven empirically false) concept which believes journalistic objectivity is somehow related to providing "both sides" of the argument. The Conor Freidsdorf's, David Brooks', Ross Douthat's, Brett Stephens', of the world are responsible for some sense of legitimacy being conveyed to this cancel culture disinformation campaign. 

One instructive fact is found in one of the earliest purveyors of this nonsense, Bari Weiss, having been separated from the NYT for printing false claims. Weiss came to prominence amongst conservatives during the heat of the War on Terror, by targeting Muslim educators with false claims about their beliefs and what they were teaching, including false claims about anti-Semitism. Having gained notoriety among conservatives for the combination of outrageous claims and confrontational style, she was just too much catnip for the NYT to pass up. She spent her tenure at the NYT pasting over the overt anti-Semitism, racism and sexism in the conservative movement as it became overtly fascist, by claiming persecution of conservatives. She did also once or twice identify genuine anti-Semitism on the left (which is real, despite what some of the more pie eyed leftists would like to believe), so as to provide some cover for her otherwise clearly false claims about conservatives being the targets of some society wide desire to turn them all into gay or trans, Nikki Minaj loving devotees in their own homes. Somehow, the NYT believed, as so many moderates were desperate to believe of Trump and the presidency, that with Weiss being given such a prominent position she would come to be somewhat more considered in her approach. It was Weiss who created the concept of the "Intellectual Dark Web" a group of conservative "intellectuals" (a term to be applied to this group in the most charitable and loosest sense) who had been rightly identified as deeply misogynist and racist. One of them has been cited by a number of "incel" inspired murderers as a direct motivator. She was among the most prominent of the conservative grifters to start using "cancel culture" as a term of derision, though woke being an insult had begun in the recesses of the web where far right adherents identifying themselves as "alt-right" (shockingly, a term coined by a white nationalist as a cover for the fact that they were... wait for it... white nationalists) gathered and identified targets for harassment. 

It's also instructive to remember this is the exact same crowd who were pushing the "both sides" fallacy after Unite the Right in Charlottesville. Is it any wonder then, that after the attack on the Capitol in January, by fascist adherents and sympathizers they would immediately turn to claims that "antifa" was the real cause? 

What fascists in the United States are attempting to forestall is the full impact of movements like #MeToo and BLM, which is still yet to come. The first BLM marches were in 2013. Last summer, millions of people participated in what is possibly the largest sustained protest movement in U.S. history. When a Black/Desi woman is on the ballot for Vice President, and one of the most consistent, salient criticisms is of her history as a prosecutor, something has changed. When it's not an immediate benefit to have spent one's life in the service of an institution which has been among the most brutal and destructive to Black Americans specifically, and all marginalized people generally, it's a change in how we see things. An early career as a prosecutor was previously one of the more staid and reliable paths to a later career in state and federal politics, which is one small part of how that system continues to be so brutal and destructive. Is it enough? Not even close. It's also a sign of a change in what questions we're asking, and what we'll allow ourselves to consider, collectively. 

#MeToo has sparked a definite change in who is behind the camera in television and film, from a number of women using what influence and wealth they'd already built to start production companies, to a new effort to focus on and promote the women who were already working in capacities behind the camera. These things do make a difference. The number of projects making it to the screen which just wouldn't have five years ago is hard to account for, but the shift can be seen in looking at the overall environment. The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University confirmed that more women have directed films in 2020 than ever before. This banner high is still only 16%, but it's a shift which is part of a larger trend beginning in 2018, where only it was only 8%. Is parity coming fast enough? Not at all and we shouldn't start patting ourselves on our backs, but the other part of this equation is that between the monetary success many of these films have enjoyed and a year where women are receiving a record number of awards nominations, the incentives are there to put even more women behind the camera than this. "No one will go and see that," doesn't hold up anymore, at all. Our dominant paradigm has been one of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism. Starting to present narratives counter to this doesn't necessarily directly undermine the systems which are still based in and support these narratives, but it certainly starts to open up our imaginations to seeing the world through other lenses. One of the problems underlying so much of what is happening and our inability to effectively respond to it is a lack of imagination. When it comes to controlling the parameters our imaginations have, nothing is more important than the stories we tell, as a culture. 

Things like white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism have been so thoroughly woven into our entire understanding of life, we can't imagine other ways to live. The arts are important for this, and film,  television and music are the most expansively embraced art forms we have. This is the why fascists have so long focused on painting Hollywood as some kind of den of leftist machinations, when it's clearly dominated by capitalist profit motive, which in turn leads to a bias in favor of patriarchal white supremacy, because white men have historically had the most expendable income for things like going to the movies. Fascists don't want this feedback loop broken, and they use bullshit like pretending cancel culture exists to further harden and expand those feedback loops. Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing would have been a completely different affair had #MeToo not come before. They would still have the institutional power to have pushed it through, but on the cultural end, the cravenness of their disdain for people who patriarchal norms have harmed was recognized in a way it certainly hasn't been before. Fascists have always demanded any victim identifying men who have sexually assaulted, abused or raped them be perfect victims within the standards of this paradigm, and within those standards, Christine Blasey Ford was as close to a perfect victim as could possibly be found, but still not enough. This is impossible to miss, unless questioning white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism and imperialism is just "woke garbage from SJW's." 

One of the other purposes of the cancel culture grift is to work in the same way the accusation of paid protesters or of sexual assault survivors coming forward are doing it for attention or some imagined payday works. #MeToo and BLM have started to have an effect in the culture because they are collective movements. Power has had to respond to them, and the incentives of our politics are such that there are people in power who are at least attempting to present themselves as having a desire to represent the needs of #MeToo and BLM supporters, but they are collective movements, and their power to shift the culture comes from this. The only gain for women coming forward to identify men of prominence or power who have sexually assaulted or harassed them is gaining a sense of their personhood having value. It's absolutely clear to anyone willing to look at the reality, and imagine what the cost of the kinds of virtual, verbal and social abuse they suffer in doing so, this is goal. Even those of us who have no prominence, are not women, and are willing to or drawn to engage in topics which are all controversial, the virtual abuse alone has a cost. If you've never been subject to an implicit threat of being shot, much less an explicit threat, you're probably not engaging in many controversial topics with the general public today. All of this is true of BLM, while also being subject to the cost of political speech in the form of protest, the violence from police, the false arrests, and all the rest of it. Add to the experience of death threats, what dynamic it takes on when the person making the treat is a cop. (I can tell you from experience, it's not fun). 

Cancel culture as a concept, like claims about women "looking for attention" or "getting paid" by identifying prominent sexual predators (or sexual predators at all really) or BLM being "paid protesters" is about putting a stop gap into the space before people start imagining what it must cost to stay silent as the victim of a sexual predator or what it must cost to stay silent about systemic racism in criminal punishment. It's also about identifying the willingness to do so as being "other" and not part of the in group of fascists that is American conservatism, hence "woke" being used as an insult. To imagine either of these things, to understand their scope within our culture and what that means for millions of people living in this country, is to create a schism at the center of the belief in American Exceptionalism, which is at the center of fascist ideology and mythology. 

The majority of Americans have a limited attention they are able or willing to devote to things like news and current events. The fascists now parading around as conservatives (it can be argued conservatives have, at the least, been crypto fascist for a long time) understand their devoted adherents are going to swallow whatever they are handed. The also know the numbers aren't in their favor and the devoted aren't quite enough, and they understand the intellectual insecurity of the elite class of editors, show producers, and content managers who are desperate their product or outlets be perceived as moderate, better than these editors, show producers, and content managers do. They grasp how much of their current existence is anathema in many ways. They know they have the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol hanging around their necks like an albatross, as well as the movements continued backing of Trump, and all the rest of the truly ridiculous and undemocratic positions they're taking are beyond the capacity of even the most desperate "moderate" to defend. They understand this animates those insecurities in the "non-partisan" press of being perceived as partisan. It's the belief that being perceived as against everything the "conservative" ideology is attempting to push, means it's going to be easy for conservatives to say they're partisan, but if they have a few pro conservative pieces to show, they can still at least retain some appearance of non-partisanship. This is where the entire crowd of "moderate Republican" columnists, commentators and pundits come in, and where the combination of American Exceptionalism and the biases of Western education work hand in hand. When these "legitimate conservative thinkers" present cancel culture as a discussion about free speech, it's both the answer to the question of how to be non-partisan when one party is fundamentally undemocratic, while also activating the intellectual vanity and biases of the Western educated mind. 

Again, remember these are exactly the people who were responsible for the "both sides" discussions following Unite the Right, and this "both sides" framing took the country from utter and complete dismayed, shocked and outraged motivation to despair, hopelessness and confusion within a six or eight weeks. In the days following Unite the Right, there was an appetite for action to be taken. Remember, within weeks of Unite the Right, the same group of fascist organizers had another rally planned in Boston. Bostonians turned out to the tune of between 10,000 and 20,000 (estimates vary), which essentially caused the fascists to call the whole thing off. A few dozen stood in a park, protested by police, for an hour or two and then skittered out of town, with a police escort to protect them. Given the opportunity to muddy the waters, this clown show of "moderates" succeeded in dissipating this sense of motivation, and if you don't think there is a connection between this, the lack of serious attempts to start to address this movement as fascist, the constantly "after a disaster" response of big tech companies and the spread of this ideology further through previously more traditional conservative environments, and all of that leading to the attack on the Capitol... You're deluding yourself. The charitable reading is to say, "this has never been the intent of these moderate Republicans," and maybe you're right. It is the cumulative effect of their work, without question. 

The way we're taught about free speech in most of Western culture is related to the free exchange of ideas, and the belief the best ideas will rise to the top, through reasoned debate and discussion. This is not at all how public speech and public discourse work though. It's not a high school or college debate class. Public discourse doesn't have a moderator, forcing participants to be rigorous in their reason. It doesn't have a teacher or professor to point out the use of logical fallacy etc. Considering how well fact checking is both exercised and how well it's received, it's not as if a large portion of the country would listen anyway. Also, without these, it's easy for participants to rely on the individual ignorance of the audience and worse, the collective ignorance of the audience. We've seen the major social media companies amplify these affects through their bottomless desire for profit and influence. Many of our large, prominent, respected outlets believe themselves to be the "moderators" essentially, and are wilfully ignoring the way they are being gamed and manipulated at the same time. Fascists know this. They also know the intellectual vanity, combined with the effects of American Exceptionalism on the perspective of liberals and moderates can't possibly let go of the appeal to tradition they are making. It doesn't at all hurt the fascists attempts to do this that most of the people making editorial decisions have come from the variety of educational institutions where this conception of free speech has taken on near religious connotations. 

There is nothing rigorous about the cancel culture debate or any of their claims. Nothing. Yet it's the same people making them who are making the appeal to tradition as one of the foundations of their claims. "Why can't we have a reasonable debate and let the best ideas win?" 40% of the country currently believes a complex network of completely batshit conspiracy theories, because that is obviously not a realistic understanding of how public speech actually works in the practical sense, so fascists keep referring the near religious consideration given to the theoretical framework. If this supposition were true, we wouldn't see hate crimes still rising, and specifically, anti-Asian hate crimes skyrocketing since Trump and this same movement decided to embrace lying about the nature of the pandemic. 

On the other hand, currently, the fascists caterwauling about cancel culture are quite upset the Dr. Seuss Foundation's has stopped printing a number of his books due to lack of sales, a desire to protect his legacy, and we can all hope, some sense of civic responsibility. In this delusion, it's not the Dr. Seuss Foundation's decision to have done this. It's the terror of cancel culture which has forced these Dr. Seuss volumes, complete with the breathtakingly racist imagery they contain, off the shelves. These haven't been reprinted for a number of years, yet suddenly, because fascists have decided to take up this cause, it has to be cancel culture. They could attempt to try to make a deal with the Dr. Seuss Foundation and whoever their publishing house is, in order to get the right to print and sell those books which are currently unavailable. It's not the point of the books being out of print, and it's certainly not the principle of free speech at issue though. The point is ludicrous distraction and the politics of white grievance, because the reality is, American society would be fundamentally reshaped by private entities and individuals deciding independently to no longer participate in or disseminate racist speech, and fascists aren't interested in seeing American society reshaped in this fashion. They're interested in quite the opposite. 

Gina Carano made repeated anti-Semitic remarks and shared anti-Semitic imagery, and her employer, Disney, gave her the boot. This is a fundamental example of "at will employment" and had to have been part of the contract she signed. At will employment, which conservatives have for decades sold as "right to work," is fundamentally at odds with the protections afforded by unions, but now, it's not the employers right to decide who works for them and under what circumstances as a necessary defense of capitalism, it's cancel culture. The chances are also high Carano is a member of an actors union, and either signed a contract which waived those rights (which isn't completely uncommon where big, high profile projects are concerned and again, no way they're supporting the break up of Disney and it's megalithic influence on culture and the businesses of "cultural products") or the contract has a clause specific to termination for demonstrated behavior outlined in her union as being outside of their willingness or ability to defend. Suddenly, none of this matters to the cancel culture cranks though. Carano's previous willingness to signal solidarity with this fascist movement is all that matters, and that her anti-Semitic speech and anti-trans speech were matters the collective voices who oppose these forms of bigotry had been persistent about, is everything they want silenced. 

But these are the ludicrous examples they want us all bogged down in, because they are ludicrous. The claims having no basis in anything other than the grievances of white supremacy, patriarchy and power, not even in what just a few years ago was conservative dogma, is even the point, and have nothing to do with the real strategy of employing this cancel culture discussion, which is why they make such ridiculous claims. They're calling the tune, and far too many of the people who should no better, are dancing. 

At every turn, what they are attempting to do is undermine the growth of influence of communities of people who have been historically marginalized, persecuted and oppressed. Communities to which they have never had to be accountable for their irresponsible use of political and public speech. All while using this as a smokescreen to distract from their responsibility in backing and supporting the do nothing narcissist who is responsible for hundreds of thousands of American deaths, while being purveyors of or participants in the circumstances which have given us this half a million dead. And outlets we have given prominence in the necessary role of being press the public can trust to be adjudicators of what is and isn't responsible speech are broadcasting and publishing this, months after fascists attempted to prevent the consummation of a democratic election, and whose figureheads have not only shown no remorse for their role in encouraging this attempted coup, they've doubled down. 

Meanwhile, Republican representative Paul Gosar gave a speech to a white nationalist conference, and this doesn't seem to be an issue getting any traction. Given the lack of attention given this, why shouldn't he tweet a meme with the slogan from a white nationalist group not even CPAC would allow in? 

The collective failure of those who've been given the unenviable, and still incredibly important positions of preventing exactly this reality from coming to be, be they politicians, publishers, program directors, etc. is astonishing to contemplate. Worse, those parties given some of the most important positions and whose responsibility is largest, are showing no sign of having even broached the outermost limits of possible changes in perspective. 

None of this buffoonery is about protecting or expanding free speech. It's not even just about limiting free speech. It's more insidious. It's about preventing people with power and prominence from being held accountable by people affected by their use of that power. It's about limiting the parameters of the collective imagination of the American people. It's about the followers of this fascist movement being allowed to continue to enforce those parameters through abuse, harassment and the violence which inevitably follows. It's about there never being a genuine accounting for how they have treated the lives of their fellow Americans as utterly disposable. 

As easy as it is to dismiss the entire conversation about cancel culture, and certainly the ludicrous claims being made related to it, it is supremely dangerous to the continuance or advancement of anything like a democratic society and anything we conceive of as a free society to underestimate the seriousness of what the cancel culture conversation is doing, and the place it is taking in our public discourse. This control of the public imagination, and the grinding, crushing horror of constant abuse and harassment which is central to it, are central factors used by all authoritarian governments and movements. The coarseness of the discourse is part of the point. "People are people, and people don't change," we tell ourselves, often and understandably in response to the rampant abuse and harassment. There's also truth to this. There is an element here we don't know though. This element is what people are like when they haven't spent their lives being shaped and formed by a colonial white supremacist patriarchal capitalist society. What are the people like who are able to have some discourse about that without constant torrents of threats and abuse? 

What if a free exchange of ideas isn't about "which idea wins," but which idea is fulfilling on a human level, and which idea brings us a better ability to live with each other? What if competition isn't the point, but the labor to be the best version of ourselves, in community with each other is the point? What if genuine peace is the point instead of the constant tension of conflicts unfaced and unresolved? What if security and resilience are the point, not profit? These may not be the right questions, but we do need new questions, as much as we need to fight this fascist movement and its ascendance. Questions spur curiosity and curiosity spurs the imagination, and from the imagination grows hope. This is the ultimate importance of controlling the imagination, as far as fascists are concerned. All of us have been grown and raised in the insanity which is a society going through what we are right now, and not knowing how to stop doing the things which are getting us these results. Part of being grown and raised in this, the white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism has been the understanding of maturity defined as a narrowing of the parameters of our imaginations. Trying to look at ourselves, our lives and our society through the parameters we have narrowed them to, which has produced this inability to address our material reality, isn't going to help us find the right questions or even better questions, and in so doing, does the fascists work for them. 

Part of what we need to come to understand is the only thing we can individually do or say which is going to stop fascists from wanting to abuse, harass and violate us, is to do or say nothing. The only thing they will welcome is the silence of acceptance and the passivity of complicity. Nothing else is going to satisfy them. Anything else will activate their insecurities. They are attacking the idea of a collective solidarity against anything which undermines the social order they want to impose, specifically because it is the best tool to undermine the fascist movement itself. It's not just standing against fascists, which is necessary out of practicality, it's also working against fascist attempts to narrow public imagination when we expand it. We're running out of time to address this, and this is the final purpose of the cancel culture strategy, along with so much of what fascists do in public space, to run out the clock as they consolidate their organization, motivate their base and change the state of play enough to insure they can assume power.