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Louis C.K. was trending on Twitter because his Madison Square Garden concert was sold out, which some on the left are interpreting to mean that cancel culture is not real, or that it does not hurt people's careers. (link: https://archive.is/ryKrI )
What does it mean to be sufficiently canceled? I think Louis C.K. qualifies as having been sufficiently cancelled. If you look at his Wikipedia page, his sexual misconduct scandal, in 2017, killed off his TV and movie career. His filmography abruptly ends in 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_C.K._filmography
Sure he's still able to sell out, but this reflects individual preferences for his comedy, not the approval of the media establishment, in which he is still damaged goods. Comedians are sorta like contractors in the sense that they have to hustle, not depend on a platform or the backing of a major media establishment. I think this is is what gives comedians an advantage over actors in regard to cancellation, because stand-up comedy can be inexpensively distributed at scale, such as digitally online, without needing the backing of an entire studio or publishing house.
Cancel culture regards the intent and attempt to end one’s career, reputation, and livelihood. Just like we did to the Nazis. It’s very real and very alive. That some Nazis escaped to South America does not change the Allies’ intent and attempt to hold them accountable.
What is risible is for ordinary people to try to give other ordinary people the Nazi treatment. Before social media, CK may have run into some small-time, inside baseball sanctions. Maybe FX and HBO get wind of allegations and fail to renew his hit series. And if the CK infractions are truly egregious and criminal, then maybe there is mainstream media coverage. But I believe the whispers here both started and were amplified by social media before mainstream media ran with it.
I think you have things backwards. What the allies did to the nazis wasn't 'cancel culture'. It was just warfare. The enemy was the nazis and they hunted the enemy down and murdered them. That war was a total war. Not just in the economic sense but in every sense possible. That's why the allies executed Julius Streicher despite him not having fired a weapon or commanded any troops. Same goes for the monuments and art the allies intentionally destroyed due to the connections to nazi ideology.
What I don't understand is why you would say it's risible for 'ordinary people' to try and give other people the nazi treatment. It was always ordinary people who did these things. From the soldier and his rifle to the largest institutions in the world. It's all individual people.
If you don't live in an actual nation with a national ideology then I don't see why you would expect the society you live in to not devolve into a state of warfare.
I'm talking about the de-nazification policies after the war. Not so much the end of war massacres and war crimes tribunals. Nazis got canceled.
I'm talking about social media accounts versus powerful organizations like US government. Twitter accounts that contact Justine Saccho's employer. That's cancel culture rather than realpolitik amongst Great Powers. Which yes, are all composed of individual people.
That's not a relevant distinction. It would still fall under the definition I am giving of it just being warfare. The term 'cancel culture' is obfuscatory and redundant. It's just cultural warfare.
So am I. I still don't understand why you would say that it's risible for 'ordinary people' to engage in warfare when all warfare is enacted by ordinary people.
I guess we'll have to leave this one here. Agree to disagree.
The most charitable I can be here is that this seems facile. Yes, I agree, all organizations are composed of individuals. But those responsible for the greatest losses of human life and dignity in warfare were very much not "ordinary people". Mostly, I mean ordinary people who are not instrumental to a large and powerful organization. I don't imagine this conversation bearing much more fruit, either. Cheers.
Relying on vague terms is obfuscatory to recognizing anything real. Calling something 'cancel culture' diminishes the impulses being acted upon. These are people looking to destroy the enemy. Trying to disassociate that process from normal people by acting as if these impulses are different than when acted upon by people in historically significant contexts only obfuscates the universality of the process and the depth of the cultural divide.
To me, cultural warfare is vague, and cancel culture is much more concrete. They are not identical. I could be convinced that cancel culture is a specific form of cultural warfare. Thus, it has meaning and is useful.
The issue I would have with that is that it decouples the act from context.
When the term 'cancel culture' is allowed to sit as an individual entity it serves to diminish the nature of the act and its gravity. Which serves those who engage in it when they want to excuse it.
As an example, from a material perspective Louis CK getting 'cancelled' is stupid. Caring about it is stupid. The guy isn't going to starve on the street. He's made multiple lifetimes worth of money. And he has fans who actively seek out and pay to hear what he has to say. Same goes for nigh every single high profile example of 'cancel culture'. Often times the people getting 'cancelled' even have huge social media platforms to advertise their 'cancellation' to others. By becoming upset at someone like this being 'cancelled' you are being, at best, hyperbolic. It's completely nonsensical from a material perspective to care about 'cancel culture' in all but the vast minority of cases.
Yet these 'cancellings' still animate people. The reason for that, from my perspective, is obvious. It's a weapon of war being used against 'your side' and being angry that your side was attacked is a natural response. In that context it makes sense to me to get a little perturbed when some conservative talking head can't repeat their talking points to 100 students in some college and has to cry about it to their million followers on twitter.
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