Let’s dive deep into the #CancelCulture moral panic, what it can tell us about U.S. society, culture, and politics, and how it has spread across the “West.” There is no one better equipped to help us do that than @adriandaub. 2/
The “cancel culture” narrative diagnoses a national emergency: an acutely dangerous situation in which radical “woke” leftists are undermining free speech by imposing an ever-more restrictive culture of censoriousness on the country, threatening anyone who dares to speak up. 3/
But there is no actual cancel culture. Our argument is *not* that no one has ever had to face unfair consequences for what they said publicly – but that the evidence for such a worsening national emergency caused by “wokeism” running amok is simply not there. 4/
If we don’t accept the pervasive “cancel culture” discourse as a mere representation of an objectively existing free speech crisis, then how do we explain and interpret its omnipresence and the fact that so many people are fully committed to it at this exact moment? 5/
We talk about why the college campus is playing such a crucial role in the “cancel culture” discourse, and in the elite imagination more broadly, and discuss how our own experience as college professors relates to these debates. 6/
We grapple with why all this is happening now, with the genealogy of the moral panic, how to situate it in the long tradition of reactionary moral panics, and how it began to crystallize as a distinct phenomenon in the mid-2010s. 7/
Then we turn to Germany as a case study of how the moral panic has spread internationally. German reactionaries are obsessed with the idea of “woke cancel culture” spilling over from the U.S. - and leading conservatives are advocating for a GOP-style culture wars politics. 8/
Reactionaries have found willing allies among self-proclaimed moderates and liberals who have propagated the idea that “cancel culture” constitutes an acute threat. Across the “West,” the moral panic is, to a significant degree, a creation of the “respectable” center. 9/
What can we learn from the German “cancel culture” fixation about the role of the U.S. in the imaginary of Germany’s political and cultural elite? How does the transfer of “cancel culture” anecdotes and anxieties across the Atlantic work in practice? 10/
Across the “West,” the self-proclaimed defenders of “free speech” get into trouble as soon as they present their plans of how to counter “cancel culture”: Those always turn out to be blatantly illiberal and authoritarian, and they uniformly fail to attract majority support. 11/
This is by far the longest episode we have ever released. And I promise it’s the deepest dive into the “cancel culture” discourse you could possibly hope for.
Addendum: If you want a short introduction into what the “wokeism/cancel culture” moral panic looks like in Germany, and how it’s obsessed with what is supposedly happening in and “spilling over” from the U.S., I wrote about it below:
The Modern Conservative Tradition and the Origins of Trumpism
Today’s Trumpist radicals are not (small-c) conservatives – but they stand in the continuity of Modern Conservatism’s defining political project.
New piece (link in bio):
What should we call the pro-Trump forces that are dominating the American Right today? Conservatives? Reactionaries? Something else? The terminology really matters because it reflects and shapes how we think about the nature of Trumpism and how to situate it in U.S. history.
We need to distinguish between colloquial or abstract philosophical notions of what it means to be (small-c) “conservative” - and the political project that referred to itself (and was widely referred to) as the Conservative Movement in post-1950s America.
Meet the Ideologue of the “Post-Constitutional” Right
Russell Vought, one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution – and to burn down the system.
Some thoughts from my new piece (link in bio):
🧵1/
I wrote about Russel Vought’s ideology of “radical constitutionalism” that captures the defining sensibility on the Trumpist Right: The Left has command of America, all that is noble has been destroyed, nothing short of a radical “counter-revolution” can now save the nation. 2/
Vought’s case is emblematic of the Right’s trajectory more broadly: From, at least rhetorically, claiming “small government” principles and “constitutional conservatism” to an ever more aggressive desire to mobilize the coercive powers of the state against the “enemy within.” 3/
Meet the Ideologue of the “Post-Constitutional” Right
Russell Vought, one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution – and to burn down the system.
New piece (link in bio):
I wrote about Russel Vought’s ideology of “radical constitutionalism” that captures the defining sensibility on the Trumpist Right: The Left has command of America, all that is noble has been destroyed, nothing short of a radical “counter-revolution” can now save the nation.
Vought’s case is emblematic of the Right’s trajectory more broadly: From – at least rhetorically – claiming “small government” principles and “constitutional conservatism” to an ever more aggressive desire to mobilize the coercive powers of the state against the “enemy within.”
Why the Stakes in this Election Are So Enormously High
Democracy itself is on the ballot. If Trump wins, the extreme Right will be in a much better position than ever before to abolish it.
Some thoughts from my new piece - while we all nervously wait (link in bio):
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Consider this my closing argument: As of right now, only one of the two major parties in the United States, the Democratic Party, for all its many flaws, is a (small-d) democratic party. The other one is firmly in the hands of a radicalizing ethno-nationalist movement. 2/
The fault lines in the struggle over whether or not the democratic experiment should be continued map exactly onto the fault lines of the struggle between the two parties. Democracy is now a partisan issue. Therefore, in every election, democracy itself is on the ballot. 3/
Combine the myth of American exceptionalism, (willful) historical ignorance, and a lack of political imagination and the result is a situation in which a lot of people refuse to take the Trumpist threat seriously.
There is a pervasive idea that in a country like the United States, with a supposedly centuries-long tradition of stable, consolidated democracy, authoritarianism simply has no realistic chance to succeed, that “We” have never experienced authoritarianism.
But the political system that was stable for most of U.S. history was a white man’s democracy, or racial caste democracy. There is absolutely nothing old or consolidated about *multiracial, pluralistic democracy* in America. It only started less than 60 years ago.
Many Americans struggle to accept that democracy is young, fragile, and could actually collapse – a lack of imagination that dangerously blunts the response to the Trumpist Right.
Some thoughts from my new piece (link in bio):
🧵1/
I wrote about the mix of a deep-seated mythology of American exceptionalism, progress gospel, lack of political understanding, and (willful) historical ignorance that has created a situation in which a lot of people simple refuse to take the Trumpist threat seriously. 2/
There is a lot of evidence that this election may be decided by a sizable group of people who strongly dislike Trump and his plans, but simply cannot imagine he would actually dare / manage to implement any of his promises and therefore aren’t mobilizing to vote. 3/