Thread by @tzimmer_history

Why does the “cancel culture” idea play such an outsized role in liberal / mainstream media coverage?

We need to look at both ideological and structural factors: a confluence of reactionary centrism and a system that incentivizes #BothSides “balance” above all else.

https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/1503044972915875846

Reactionary centrism is the ideology that animates many of the people who shape media coverage. A disproportionate percentage of those people are white men, and the fact that elite white men face a little more scrutiny today than in the past has caused quite a bit of anxiety.

#metoo is another excellent example of this dynamic: As soon as traditionally marginalized groups gain enough power and enough of a platform to make their demands for respect and accountability heard, certain white people (predominantly men) start bemoaning “persecution.”

The anxieties underlying these reactionary moral panics are shared not just among conservatives. Quite a few centrist / liberal journalists and pundits – predominantly white men – are dedicated to fighting back against these supposed dangers from the “Left.”

You can see why elite figures with a big public platform from across the political spectrum see “persecution” where I see progress: If you believe you are entitled to say and do whatever you want without legal or cultural sanction, then “leftist” activism really is a threat.

“Political correctness,” “cancel culture,” “wokeism”: What these debates are actually about is power, status, and respect (who gets/deserves it, and who doesn’t). And in the eyes of reactionary centrists, the undermining of the traditional power structure has gone too far.

Reactionary centrists want to turn the clock back, to a time before what they see as the current excesses of radical leftism / wokeism - to when the privileged position of wealthy white elites was a little more secure, to a time before they were in danger of being “canceled.”

In this way, the never-ending stream of “cancel culture” pieces in mainstream media outlets reflects the outsized importance the supposed threat from the “illiberal Left” has in the imagination of those who get to decide what to publish, what to platform, what to push.

But the “cancel culture” narrative not only benefits from the reactionary centrist ideological inclinations of white elites, but also from mainstream journalism’s eternal quest for “neutrality” and “balanced” coverage, its overwhelming desire to signal “nonpartisanship.”

Mainstream outlets like the NYT and The Atlantic are pushing the idea that a leftwing “cancel culture” is an acute threat just as Republicans are escalating their assault on public speech, public education, and civil rights protections. That’s not a coincidence.

The accelerating anti-democratic radicalization of the Right in general and the Republican Party in particular presents a tricky problem for political journalists who are following an ethos of “neutrality,” which they define as keeping equidistance from both sides.

Empirically speaking, there is no equivalent on the Left to the Right’s increasingly open embrace of authoritarianism, nothing the Democratic Party is doing equals the GOP’s commitment to mobilize the state against any deviance from reactionary white Christian rule.

But if journalists cover, describe, assess, and interpret this situation as objectively, accurately, and adequately as possible (which they should!), they will be seen as “partisan” – there it is, that typical liberal media bias! – and risk losing credibility and access.

The solution is not necessarily to ignore or downplay what’s happening on the Right: It’s not like the NYT or The Atlantic aren’t covering the state-level GOP assault on public education and civil rights (although they often use language that obscures rather than clarifies).

The “solution” is to create “balance” by dedicating a lot of resources and attention to covering left-wing threats: Anti-democratic radicalization on the Right – illiberal cancel culture on the Left. And the media right in the middle, neutral, nonpartisan. There you have it.

Combine the reactionary centrism that animates many of those in positions of power and the dogma of “neutrality” journalism and you get a political and cultural discourse that remains obsessed with “cancel culture” – even as democracy is being abolished in about half the states.