During the 2020 national Republican convention, Republican leaders repeatedly denounced what it called “cancel culture.” In March, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee exhorted the committee to hold a public hearing on this “dangerous trend’ that is ‘silencing and censoring certain political speech.”
But what is this alleged menace of the cancel culture? It is understandable if readers are somewhat unclear, or even confused, about it since it is applied by Trumpian conservatives to very different types of situations and they engage in the very “cancel culture” that they reject. What is clear is that the concept is ultimately a conservative political weapon or strategy to deflect legitimate criticism and dismiss moral accountability rather than a concept that accurately corresponds to any reality.