Thread by @tzimmer_history

Oh look, the current leader of Germany’s major conservative party CDU, Friedrich Merz, has figured out what the “biggest threat to free speech” is: #CancelCulture! He says it’s “now spilling over to Europe” from U.S. universities. Of course. A few thoughts: 1/

Republicans are banning and censoring everything that deviates from their white reactionary vision, they are united behind a wannabe-authoritarian, and fascistic militants are threatening the pillars of democratic society. But sure, “cancel culture” is the problem in America. 2/

It’s not worth taking this seriously as an empirical claim about what’s happening on either side of the Atlantic. It’s a purely ideological statement. And as such, it is an interesting reminder that these reactionary moral panics are transnational in nature. 3/

These rightwing moral panics – over “cancel culture,” “wokeism,” “critical race theory” – don’t always or necessarily originate in America. But the situation in the U.S. certainly plays an enormous role in the reactionary political and cultural imaginary across the “West.” 4/

That’s not really surprising, considering what is actually behind these moral panic crusades. We need to start by acknowledging that public speech is never *not* regulated, there are always boundaries to what is considered acceptable and what is not. 5/

And everyone agrees that certain transgressions should be met with shaming or shunning. The real question is: Where is the line, and who gets to draw it? Traditionally, this was the prerogative of a predominantly white, predominantly male elite. 6/

This prerogative has come under fire as traditionally marginalized groups have gained enough influence and have acquired the technological means to influence the political debate, to make their demands heard, to extract a political cost for certain discriminatory behavior. 7/

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.” That’s a historical pattern if there ever was one. 8/

Conservatives don’t like the fact that their prerogative to define speech norms is now contested. The “cancel culture” lament is an attempt to delegitimize those claims by traditionally marginalized groups, to push back against those changing norms and sensibilities. 9/

In a narrow sense, these reactionary crusades stem from the fact that white people - particularly white men - face a little more scrutiny today than in the past. This is causing a lot of anxieties, and well beyond just the Right, almost across the political spectrum. 10/

This is how the “cancel culture” campaign ties into the broader political conflict. It happens in the context of social, cultural, and demographic developments that have generally resulted in white Christian patriarchal dominance coming under pressure. 11/

As part of a broader reactionary counter-mobilization against those changes, conservatives have extended the “cancel culture” complaint to basically any progressive or supposedly “leftwing” idea, demand, and policy they don’t like. 12/

Anything that might threaten not just the prerogative of a traditional elite to set the boundaries of acceptable expression, but white Christian patriarchal dominance in general is derided as being part of an insidious, leftist “cancel culture.” 13/

That’s how the removal of Confederate statues in the U.S. becomes “cancel culture” in the established parlance and imaginary of the Right – and, quite frankly, if you knew nothing else about the “cancel culture” discourse, this alone should give you pause. 14/

At its core, the wokeness-cancel culture discourse is the latest iteration of the conservative / elite struggle to stave off and discredit certain long-term political, social, and cultural developments and changes that they perceive as threatening. 15/

There was no talk of a “free speech crisis” as long as those in power got to define the boundaries of acceptable speech. What rightwingers and reactionary centrists deride as “cancel culture” is better understood as a much-needed conversation about changing speech norms. 16/

This process of re-negotiating the boundaries of acceptable speech is conflictual and can be messy. But it’s necessary because traditionally marginalized groups are finally part of that conversation. As such, it constitutes not decline, crisis, or carnage - but progress. 17/

Conservative and reactionary forces across the “West” obviously don’t see it that way. And they look anxiously at the situation in America. Why the focus on the U.S.? Because the changes underlying the “cancel culture” panic have been most pronounced here. 18/

The level of social, cultural, and demographic change the U.S. has experienced over the past few decades far exceeds what most European societies – and certainly countries like Germany – have been dealing with. 19/

In this sense, reactionaries across the “West” see the current conflict in America as a window into a future they don’t like, in which the forces of multiracial pluralism – roundly derided as “radical leftism” and “wokeism” – have been allowed to advance way too far already. 20/

And so what Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s conservative party, is actually saying here is that it bothers him greatly that over there, in America, people who look like him are now (supposedly!) facing way too much scrutiny. He really doesn’t like that. 21/

He shares that feeling with his reactionary brethren across the “West”: They perceive the traditional culture of elite impunity to have come under threat, and they are desperately trying to delegitimize the forces they believe are responsible for such outrageous subversion. /end