I derived “The Commandments of Cancel Culture” from this video.  The video is long and it may appear to be nothing more than the ramblings of a drunken outcast, but I highly recommend listening to it.  Go put on your headphones and go about your business.  Listen to the whole thing!

For those of you in the furry community, you will probably recognize these words as the rule, not the exception.  This is the standard practice for our community now.  This is the environment we live in.  You experience it first hand every day.  If you have avoided anyone in this fandom for fear of being canceled, then you are fully aware of this culture of hate, and you are actively trying to avoid it.

I am going to use some ugly language in this article.  I used it, because it is the best real-world description of Cancel Culture and of those of you who are actively involved.  I would suggest that the more it bothers you to hear it, the more important it will be for you to make certain that you are not a part of this culture of hate.  I do have faith in you.  You can change, just as much as I can.  I believe that with all my heart.

It is equally probable that you are actively combating this culture of hate by being an example.  You are a loyal friend.  You may not see that as an act of heroism.  You will not behave any different than on any other day.  I genuinely hope that you are one of those friends who remains loyal to your friends, not in spite of their errors, but because you genuinely love your friends and neighbors and you want to see them get better.  You can inspire others to follow in your footsteps.  Your actions will inspire people who have done wrong to mend their ways.

Evil Ideas Vs Good Ideas

In the great movements of the past, the focus was always on the government, or extraordinarily large entities.  Those movements were designed to equalize the strength of the individual against the enormous, unchallenged strength of the powerful. That was how you could tell the movement was good.  The purpose was always to empower the individual.  The focus was always about “Who can we protect?”

Today’s movement focuses on the use of force by large groups against the individual.  Instead of protesting the government, or huge corporations, they focus all of their attention on one person. Cancel Culture mentality says, “Who can we destroy?”  In the past, good movements wanted to build and to protect, even if they accidentally protected a bad character.  That was an acceptable risk. Cancel Culture seeks to isolate and destroy. This culture of hate sees no one as innocent and no risk of protecting anyone by accident is acceptable, so no one is safe.  The mentality now is “If an innocent person is destroyed, that is the price of getting all of the bad people.”

Great movements of the past focused on non-violent protection of the individual and the building of coalitions among dissimilar groups.  Cancel Culture divides, isolates, threatens, and ruins any individual whom they have deemed unclean, and anyone who associates with them, even in the most trivial of ways.  If violence must be used to further this agenda, then violence is deemed not only acceptable, but necessary.  In the great movements of the past, violence was NEVER acceptable, even in self defense.  It takes a special kind of bravery to return good for evil – to return peace for violence.  I want to be the kind of person who is strong enough to do things like that.

The Commandments of Cancel Culture

Here are the principles of Cancel Culture.  These are the commandments of a culture of hate.

• Presumption of Guilt
• Abstraction
• Essentialism
• Pseudo-moralism & Pseudo-intellectualism
• No Forgiveness
• The Transitive Property of Cancellation
• Dualism

 

Presumption of Guilt

Guilty until proven innocent is a vital component to Cancel Culture.  You cannot justify the horrific treatment of other people without a 100% just cause for doing so.  Therefore, no one who calls for the cancellation of another will say, “Hey, guys, this person may have made a mistake, so we should do everything we can to ruin their reputation.”  The charge will always be 100% guilt with 0% chance of innocence.

Being involved in this type of lynching is evil.  You may not like the word that I used, but it conjures the image that it was meant to create.  You are involved in the same destructive, hateful activity that is embodied within that term.  That is you!  You are doing that!  Put yourself in that same environment.  You are one of those people in that crowd doing that thing.  If that bothers you, then you should reconsider any involvement in canceling another person, with or without evidence, and even before they have had the opportunity to defend or to clarify themselves.

“Evidence” given by Twitter or other social media platforms is notoriously unreliable.  Has anyone ever accused you of something that was completely false?  Your ability to read minds is as unreliable as their ability to read yours.  Social media creates false accusations from “evidence” that is completely unreliable.  You know this. You always have.  Assuming the guilt of a stranger on the premise that the internet gave you “proof” is a lie that despicable people tell themselves and others.

Abstraction

The accusation will always become something vague.  This is driven by the inability (or unwillingness) to ask questions when you hear something bad.  Rather than saying, “This doesn’t sound right”, the statement becomes, “That sounds terrible, and it must be stopped!”  This lack of critical thinking feeds the dumbing down of specific accusations to more generic ones.

The generic accusation is particularly potent, because it allows the listener to imagine their own definition of just how bad this person must be in order to fit the accusation being presented.  That makes the next step all the easier.

Essentialism

Once you have been accused, the narrative becomes a statement of your being.  You did not just say something wrong, or make a mistake.  The error is the very definition of you.  You are a racist, bigot, Nazi, etc.  Your mistake “proves” that you were always this terrible person.

The point here is to hate the sinner, not the sin.  The goal is to attack an individual for who and what they ARE, even if what they ARE was fabricated from a single error.  And, of course, all errors are important, because there is no such thing as a mistake in Cancel Culture. Here, mistakes define you.  Nothing you have ever done before now has anything to do with the fact that you ARE your accusation.  This is how you will be defined so that belittling and demeaning you until you commit suicide can be seen as an act of justice.

The reality of being a human being is that you are a collection of everything you do and say.  Your life is filled with many decisions that will lead you in a direction.  Some things are good and some things are bad. No one decision will cast your soul into a mold that cannot be broken.  You are defined by your actions over an extended period of time.  You already know this.  This concept is not new to you.  And if anyone ever accused you of being a bad person, merely because you made a mistake, or had a bad moment, you would never accept that judgment.  You know there is more to who you are than “that one time”.  You are not defined by your mistakes.

If you are happily forcing this unreasonable standard onto others, you are part of the problem.  You are part of the destruction of your own community.  You are also building up a strong weapon against yourself.  You will suffer at the hands of this weapon some day, just like the other people you did this to.  He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.  Your time will come.  Are you going to say it is unfair?

Pseudo-moralism & Pseudo-intellectualism

“Call-outs” are the precursor to cancellation.  The argument will always be couched in something moral or intellectual.  No one will ever admit that their motives are less than angelic.  The goal here has nothing to do with forgiveness and reconciliation or the return to peace among friends.  The goal is to destroy and to hate. It may not feel that way at first, but once you realize that this is the only logical end to this method of confrontation, to continue using it is an admission that you really do not care if the outcome has any real moral value.  And we have all seen this method fail to produce positive results again and again.

Brave and moral people will confront others in a personal way.  This type of “confrontation” does not mean shouting and fighting, but refers to the somewhat uncomfortable environment of addressing your concerns one-on-one in a respectful and dignified way.  This method has the highest rate of return.  A personal confrontation will more often result in a sincere apology or an honest explanation.  If you have a real problem with someone, go talk to them.  If you need to, bring a mediator, or another friend who can be moral support.  This is not a mob!  This is two or three friends hashing out their differences in the hopes that they will find a path to reconciliation.  The goal here is forgiveness and the return to friendship.  There is nothing more Godly and Righteous than that.

Brave, honest, sincere people who care about helping others will always take this road.  Mobsters and lynch parties use “call-outs” and public shaming to drive the mob to character assassination, hate, and violence.

That was never you, and it should never be you.  You should be far away from anything that looks or feels like this behavior.  And you should never allow yourself to encourage this behavior by capitulating to the demands of the people and persons who do this.  Martin Luther King Jr. specifically mentions that anyone who participates in this behavior by giving in to these demands are just as culpable as the ones who throw bricks, commit violence, and call out demeaning words against their targets.

There is no moral or intellectual way to openly call for the perpetuation of toxic behavior.

No Forgiveness

It should come as no surprise that the previously defined tactics should be followed by the desire to see the “enemy” shunned and exiled, with no path to reconciliation. No apology, no good deed, will ever make the sin go away. Once you are unclean, you must remain unclean.

If you are wondering why Christianity is still so popular, look no further.  Cancel Culture will drive you to the Cross like nothing else.  The Gospel clearly defines sin as “forgivable”!  God says all have sinned, and claims that sin is a serious issue.  He then goes on to state in no uncertain terms that sin can AND WILL be forgiven.  He goes through great pains to illustrate just how willing He is to forgive sin.  God does not have an ideological purity test.  God saves, because God forgives.

This is in great contrast to Cancel Culture.  In Cancel Culture, there is no forgiveness of sins.  Once a Nazi, always a Nazi, and to become a Nazi, you only need to make one mistake.  There is, of course, a “mountain” of “evidence” to illustrate that you have made more than one mistake, but one is enough.

The Transitive Property of Cancellation

The one mistake that you make to become a Nazi is very easy to make.  You only need to not hate someone who has been declared a Nazi.  If you support, or even if you are not openly hating, someone who has been declared a Nazi, you, are also a Nazi.  Once you are the enemy, there is no going back.  All of the previous principles of Cancel Culture and mob hatred will now be applied to you, because you did not pass the purity exam.

This principle can touch anyone. If you are a friend of a friend of an enemy, you, are also the enemy.  The six degrees applies to Cancel Culture, so you had better hope that you cannot be tied to anyone who has been canceled.  If you are, the mob will find you, and they will hate you as vigorously as anyone you are required to hate.  This is how the world works in a culture of hate.

This says nothing for the actual association with anyone who has been canceled.  Any feeling that you have allowed a Nazi to be in the same room with you will be seen as your public admission of guilt.  You will be declared an enemy, no different than the enemy who was with you.  If you associate in any way with someone who has ever done anything wrong, you are admitting that you agree with every evil thing they have ever said or done.  You are implicitly stating that you love Nazis and no apology or attempt to reconcile yourself will ever be accepted in any way except as, “damage control”, or “just doing it to save face”.

Dualism

There are no gray areas in Cancel Culture.  The culture of hate knows that if you are not with them, then you are the enemy.  You are a Nazi sympathizer, or an enabler.  If you are not willing to openly express your undying devotion to the hate mob, then you are no better than the one they hate, and they will hate you.  YOU are next on the chopping block.

What Will Be Your Story?

Anyone who has actively joined the mob in openly hating a friend is particularly despicable.  Be honest with yourself.  If this is you, then you were NEVER their friend.  There is no such thing as a fair weather friend.  Friends are friends by virtue of the fact that they will stand by you and support you when you need them the most. If your “friends” avoid you, or worse, join in with the lynch mob to libel and defame you, then they were never your friends.  You were just a convenient form of entertainment to them, until you weren’t.

If you have ever done this to one of your “friends”, I hope you take a genuine look at who you are.  If you find any form of satisfaction in the public shaming and discarding of someone you once called a friend, then you are not a good person.  Admitting that can hurt, but if you can see it, you are already well on your way to becoming a better person.  Seeing your own flaws can be hard, but not impossible.

One day this culture of hate will die.  That day is already on its way.  There are signs everywhere that Cancel Culture is nearing its end-of-life.  When that day comes, will you be remembered as one of “those people” who participated?  Will you be remembered as someone who avoided your friends, just to protect yourself?  Will you be remembered as a good friend who took the hits so that your friend would not have to stand alone?  Which of those stories would inspire you to become a stronger, better person?

Your Challenge

I am not going to assume that you are a terrible person.  As I have written at the beginning of this article, it is equally probable that you are one those awesome people who are inspiring others to do better.  God bless you for that!

If, however, you are one of those people who are actively seeking to ruin others by encouraging others to distance themselves and to participate in the cancellation of another person based on something you heard on the internet, then you have some work to do.  You are useless now, but you can turn that around in an instant.  You will have to be brave, but if you really want to change, you can.

I dare you to go back over the people you have canceled and undo what you have said.  Yes, you will get dog-piled.  You will face the very thing you have forced onto others.  However, the respect you gain from everyone who sees it is immeasurable.  Your story of genuine repentance will instantly gain forgiveness from the best parts of this community.  Those are the opinions you should care about the most.  God would be among them.

You can be anything you want to be.  The decision is up to you, and previous decisions can be undone by turning a new way and making new decisions.  If you are a bad person, you do not have to be.  You can be anything you want to be.

~Sisyphus