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:
What does the U.S. look like in five or ten years?
I was asked to reflect on this question, alongside other scholars. In a stable democracy, the range of plausible outcomes is narrow. But for America, it now includes complete democratic breakdown.
There should not have been any doubt about the intention of the Trumpists. They desire to erect a form of plebiscitary autocracy, constantly invoking the true “will of the people” while aggressively narrowing the boundaries of who gets to belong and whose rights are recognized.
At every turn, the response to the rise of Trumpism has been hampered by a lack of political imagination – a lingering sense that “It cannot happen here” (or not anymore), fueled by a deep-seated mythology of exceptionalism, progress gospel, and willful historical ignorance.
I wrote about why even critical observers underestimated the speed and scope of the Trumpist assault, why they overestimated democratic resilience – about what America is now, and what comes next?
New piece (link below)
I take stock of where we are after two months of Trumpist rule, explore that space between (no longer) democracy and full-scale autocracy where America exists now, reflect on what competitive authoritarianism means in theory and practice, and recalibrate my expectations.
I revisit “The Path to Authoritarianism,” a crucial essay Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way published in Foreign Affairs in early February. It captured their expectations at the outset of the Trumpist regime – a powerful warning that has nevertheless been overtaken by events already.
People who claim Zelensky was at fault yesterday and should have been more “diplomatic” or “respectful” are either deliberately propagating the Trumpist attack line – or they fundamentally misunderstand what the Trumpist project is and who is now in power in the United States.
There is this pervasive idea that Trump doesn’t really mean it, has no real position, and can therefore be steered and manipulated by tactical and diplomatic finesse; or maybe he’s just a businessman looking for a great deal. But that’s all irrelevant here.
Trump himself has been very consistent about his preference for foreign autocrats, especially Putin, and his (at best) disinterest and siding with Ukraine and (actually) explicit antagonism towards not only Zelensky, but Europe’s democracies more generally.
MAGA, the German Far Right, and the Transnational Assault on Democracy
A reflection on the German far right, Musk’s interference in the German election, and why the MAGA-AfD alliance isn’t nearly as irresistible as they want us to believe.
Some thoughts (and link below):
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The results of the German election are in. On the one hand: About three quarters of the voting public stuck with democratic parties. On the other: The AfD got 20.8 percent of the vote - by far the strongest result the far right has achieved in Germany since 1945.
After it was founded in 2013, the AfD quickly evolved from what was initially mainstream-rightwing-to-reactionary territory into a far-right party that fully rejects liberal democracy and is undoubtedly the political home of Germany’s rightwing extremists.
I wrote a long profile of him: He’s one of the architects of Project 2025, an avowed Christian nationalist, and a radical ideologue of the “post-constitutional” Right
Vought is at war with pluralistic democracy (link below):
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Vought will be singularly focused on bending the entire government machine to Trump’s will. He believes that any check on the power of Donald Trump, who Vought literally describes as a “gift of God,” is illegitimate. There is no line he doesn’t feel justified to cross.
Key to understanding Vought’s worldview is the idea that the constitutional order - and with it the “natural” order itself - has been destroyed: The revolution has already happened, “the Left” won. Therefore, conservatives err when they try to preserve what is no more.
Russell Vought will be a key figure in the regime, as competent as he is radical. He’s one of the architects of Project 2025, an avowed Christian nationalist, an ideologue of the “post-constitutional” Right.
Key to Vought’s worldview is the idea that the constitutional order - and with it the “natural” order itself - has been destroyed: The revolution has already happened, “the Left” won. Therefore, conservatives categorically err when they try to preserve what is no more.
Power now lies with a “permanent ruling class” of leftist elites who control all major institutions of life and especially the “woke and weaponized” agencies of the state. In order to defeat them, conservatives must become “radical constitutionalists” - and take radical action.