The term ‘cancelling’ in its current usage refers to the practice of, at one end, withdrawing approval, respect, relations with, or support for an individual, a group, or an institution, through excluding them from opportunities, situations and platforms, to, at the other end, eliminating references to, or representations of them. Such practices and debates about them have become prominent since the 2010s in connection with self-termed ‘social justice’ activism regarding issues of race, sexual identity, culture, history and politics particularly on social media and in academic institutions. Although the expressions ‘cancelling’ and ‘cancel culture’ are new, the practices of shunning, stigmatising and removing are very old and often recur in periods of cultural revolution and ideological activism. Premodern examples include the ancient Athenian practice of ostracism, an annual vote on whether and if so who to punish for ‘social offences’ by banishing them from the city; and the medieval practice of charivari: mocking, shaming, shunning or excluding Jews, lepers, adulterers, the illegitimate and the mentally handicapped. In modern and recent times ‘cancelling’ featured in the reformation period through the decanonisation of parts of scripture, excommunication, and the anathematization of ‘heretics: pronouncing them to be accursed. More recently the Soviet and Maoist counter- and cultural-revolutionary practices of shaming, revoking honours, and removing individuals from positions in education, government, and media, and removing their names and images from official document and photographs are vivid examples of ‘cancel culture’. The current debate around ‘cancelling’ addresses issues of civic responsibility, freedom of speech, privilege and power, reasonable disagreement, and toleration. While cancelling has been criticized from both left and right the main concern about it comes from traditional liberals based on J.S. Mill’s On Liberty (1859).
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— What we talk about when we talk about “cancellation.”
— We must return to the roots of western liberalism if we’re to avoid becoming just a mass of unquestioning conformists
— A Letter on Justice and Open Debate Adjust Share July 7, 2020 The below letter will be appearing in the Letters section of the magazine’s October issue. We welcome responses at [email protected] Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides. The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement. This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us. Elliot Ackerman Saladin Ambar, Rutgers University Martin Amis Anne Applebaum Marie Arana, author Margaret Atwood John Banville Mia Bay, historian Louis Begley, writer Roger Berkowitz, Bard College Paul Berman, writer Sheri Berman, Barnard College Reginald Dwayne Betts, poet Neil Blair, agent David W. Blight, Yale University Jennifer Finney Boylan, author David Bromwich David Brooks, columnist Ian Buruma, Bard College Lea Carpenter Noam Chomsky, MIT (emeritus) Nicholas A. Christakis, Yale University Roger Cohen, writer Ambassador Frances D. Cook, ret. Drucilla Cornell, Founder, uBuntu Project Kamel Daoud Meghan Daum, writer Gerald Early, Washington University-St. Louis Jeffrey Eugenides, writer Dexter Filkins Federico Finchelstein, The New School Caitlin Flanagan Richard T. Ford, Stanford Law School Kmele Foster David Frum, journalist Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University Atul Gawande, Harvard University Todd Gitlin, Columbia University Kim Ghattas Malcolm Gladwell Michelle Goldberg, columnist Rebecca Goldstein, writer Anthony Grafton, Princeton University David Greenberg, Rutgers University Linda Greenhouse Rinne B. Groff, playwright Sarah Haider, activist Jonathan Haidt, NYU-Stern Roya Hakakian, writer Shadi Hamid, Brookings Institution Jeet Heer, The Nation Katie Herzog, podcast host Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College Adam Hochschild, author Arlie Russell Hochschild, author Eva Hoffman, writer Coleman Hughes, writer/Manhattan Institute Hussein Ibish, Arab Gulf States Institute Michael Ignatieff Zaid Jilani, journalist Bill T. Jones, New York Live Arts Wendy Kaminer, writer Matthew Karp, Princeton University Garry Kasparov, Renew Democracy Initiative Daniel Kehlmann, writer Randall Kennedy Khaled Khalifa, writer Parag Khanna, author Laura Kipnis, Northwestern University Frances Kissling, Center for Health, Ethics, Social Policy Enrique Krauze, historian Anthony Kronman, Yale University Joy Ladin, Yeshiva University Nicholas Lemann, Columbia University Mark Lilla, Columbia University Susie Linfield, New York University Damon Linker, writer Dahlia Lithwick, Slate Steven Lukes, New York University John R. MacArthur, publisher, writer Susan Madrak, writer Phoebe Maltz Bovy, writer Greil Marcus Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center Kati Marton, author Debra Mashek, scholar Deirdre McCloskey, University of Illinois at Chicago John McWhorter, Columbia University Uday Mehta, City University of New York Andrew Moravcsik, Princeton University Yascha Mounk, Persuasion Samuel Moyn, Yale University Meera Nanda, writer and teacher Cary Nelson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Olivia Nuzzi, New York Magazine Mark Oppenheimer, Yale University Dael Orlandersmith, writer/performer George Packer Nell Irvin Painter, Princeton University (emerita) Greg Pardlo, Rutgers University – Camden Orlando Patterson, Harvard University Steven Pinker, Harvard University Letty Cottin Pogrebin Katha Pollitt, writer Claire Bond Potter, The New School Taufiq Rahim Zia Haider Rahman, writer Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, University of Wisconsin Jonathan Rauch, Brookings Institution/The Atlantic Neil Roberts, political theorist Melvin Rogers, Brown University Kat Rosenfield, writer Loretta J. Ross, Smith College J.K. Rowling Salman Rushdie, New York University Karim Sadjadpour, Carnegie Endowment Daryl Michael Scott, Howard University Diana Senechal, teacher and writer Jennifer Senior, columnist Judith Shulevitz, writer Jesse Singal, journalist Anne-Marie Slaughter Andrew Solomon, writer Deborah Solomon, critic and biographer Allison Stanger, Middlebury College Paul Starr, American Prospect/Princeton University Wendell Steavenson, writer Gloria Steinem, writer and activist Nadine Strossen, New York Law School Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., Harvard Law School Kian Tajbakhsh, Columbia University Zephyr Teachout, Fordham University Cynthia Tucker, University of South Alabama Adaner Usmani, Harvard University Chloe Valdary Helen Vendler, Harvard University Judy B. Walzer Michael Walzer Eric K. Washington, historian Caroline Weber, historian Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers Bari Weiss Cornel West Sean Wilentz, Princeton University Garry Wills Thomas Chatterton Williams, writer Robert F. Worth, journalist and author Molly Worthen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Matthew Yglesias Emily Yoffe, journalist Cathy Young, journalist Fareed Zakaria Institutions are listed for identification purposes only.
— The Woke ideology is colonizing Western Civilization. This ideology views the world through a Marxist-inspired lens of "systemic power dynamics" that divides us between the "privileged" and the "oppressed." This colonization has successfully captured many of our noblest and most vital institutions through time-tested strategies and tactics. People from almost every sector of life are concerned about this capture but feel paralyzed and helpless as this ideology activates itself and wields its power. The good news is that Woke tactics are predictable and can be countered. This guide is an invaluable contribution to understanding, recognizing, and ultimately countering "Wokecraft" wherever it appears. While the guide is tailored to the university, its lessons are applicable throughout government, K-12 education, the private sector, churches, and even formal and informal affinity groups. This makes the guide a much-needed contribution as people seek to push back against the destructive Woke ideology. Charles Pincourt is a professor of engineering at a large university. He writes about the Critical Social Justice (CSJ) perspective in universities, how it has become so successful there, and what can be done about it. James Lindsay is the founder and president of New Discourses. He is the author of six books including Cynical Theories, and is a leading expert on the subject of Critical Race Theory.
— PragerU's Amala Ekpunobi is joined by Robert George, Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, to discuss this disturbing news. FOLLOW us! Facebook: 👉 www.facebook.com/prageru Twitter: 👉 www.twitter.com/prageru Instagram: 👉 www.instagram.com/prageru SUBSCRIBE so you never miss a new video! 👉 https://www.prageru.com/join/ Join PragerU's text list to have these videos, free merchandise giveaways, and breaking announcements sent directly to your phone! https://optin.mobiniti.com/prageru Do you shop on Amazon? Click https://smile.amazon.com/ and a percentage of every Amazon purchase will be donated to PragerU. Same great products. Same low price. Shopping made meaningful. SHOP! Love PragerU? Now you can wear PragerU merchandise! Visit our store today! https://shop.prageru.com/
— Many left-of-center professors now realize that they too can be brutally canceled by the mob.
— Live-streamed from an Oxford venue, supported by TORCH. The Institute for Ethics in AI will bring together world-leading philosophers and other experts in the humanities with the technical developers and users of AI in academia, business and government. The ethics and governance of AI is an exceptionally vibrant area of research at Oxford and the Institute is an opportunity to take a bold leap forward from this platform. ** The gap between a state's obligation to respect our expressive rights and a private company's obligation to fulfil those rights has become essential to understand, but our rights discourse currently lacks the resources to navigate its metes and bounds. The conversation around social media content moderation has suffered accordingly. I will seek to offer some analytic clarity around this gap, some normative scepticism of the capacity of traditional legal instruments to constrain platform rules, and some optimism about whether we should simply throw up our hands. Jamal Greene is a constitutional law expert whose scholarship focuses on the structure of legal and constitutional argument. He teaches constitutional law, comparative constitutional law, the law of the political process, First Amendment, and federal courts. Speaker: Professor Jamal Greene is the author of the book, How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession with Rights is Tearing America Apart (HMH, March 2021). He is also the author of numerous law review articles and has written in-depth about the Supreme Court, constitutional rights adjudication, and the constitutional theory of originalism, including “Rights as Trumps?” (Harvard Law Review foreword for the 2017–2018 Supreme Court term), “Rule Originalism” (Columbia Law Review, 2016), and “The Anticanon” (Harvard Law Review, 2011), an examination of Supreme Court cases now considered examples of weak constitutional analysis, such as Dred Scott v. Sandford and Plessy v. Ferguson. Professor Timothy Endicott works on the doctrine and the theory of United Kingdom constitutional and administrative law. He has written about the constitutional law of India, Canada, and the United States, and about human rights law. Professor Endicott also works in general jurisprudence, with particular interests in legal interpretation and in the relation between adjudication and the law. His publications include "The Vagueness of Law" (OUP 2000), and Administrative Law (OUP 2018). Baroness Onora O’Neill combines work in political philosophy and ethics with public activities. She was Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge from 1992-2006, and has been a crossbench member of the House of Lords since 2000. She has served as President of the British Academy, chaired the Nuffield Foundation and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and has served on the Medical Research Council and the Banking Standards Board. She publishes on justice and ethics, accountability and trust, human rights and borders, the future of universities and the ethics of communication. Chaired by John Tasioulas, the inaugural Director for the Institute for Ethics and AI, and Professor of Ethics and Legal Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford.
— Today, a growing, malignant disease undermines liberal democracy. It has permeated every crevice of our society and is destroying free …
— Menu Sign In 0 items ($0.00) Search Home News & Opinion Arts & Letters Authors Magazine Store Subscribe Donate About Us Advertise Submissions Contact Subscribe Starting at $88.00 a year Education The Implacable Rise of Cancel Culture 9th September 2021 Comments (12) Kevin Donnelly Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. — WB Yeats. The Second Coming. In the mid-90s I first warned about the danger of political correctness after attending a conservative think-tank conference in America and buying a copy of The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Guide. The dictionary signalled the way cultural-left activists were weaponizing language and enforcing groupthink in their long march to overthrow what they condemned as a Eurocentric, patriarchal, capitalist society riven with structural racism, sexism and inequality. Examples include DWEMs for dead, white, European males; speciesism for killing and eating animals and “womyn” instead of women. At the same time, as had been foretold by Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind, student radicals were attacking and undermining a liberal view of education associated with what TS Eliot describes as the “the preservation of learning, for the pursuit of truth, and in so far as men are capable of it, the attainment of wisdom”. Fast forward to more recent times and it’s obvious political correctness has become even more virulent and widespread. As a result of the culture wars and cancel culture Western nations like Australia are facing an existential threat where what should be most acknowledged and valued is either ignored or condemned as obsolete and oppressive. Proven by the hundreds of academics opposing the establishment of Ramsay Centres for Western civilisation, the Australian national curriculum placing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies centre stage or the Safe Schools program advocating gender fluidity to primary school pupils, the reality is the barbarians are no longer at the gates. They have taken the citadel. Such has been the success of the cultural-left in infecting the academy that the sinologist Pierre Ryckmans in his 1996 ABC Boyer lectures argued, The main problem is not so much that the University as Western civilisation knew it, is now dead, but that it’s death has hardly registered in the consciousness of the public, and even the majority of academics. Merv Bendle, formerly an academic at James Cook University and a Quadrant contributor, also decries the destructive impact of cultural-left ideology; an ideology that enforces a “treasonous, self-lacerating, and nihilistic worldview” that is “institutionalized throughout Western academia”. How has it come to this? The first thing to note, while political correctness and cancel culture are new the reality, as noted by Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies, is that totalitarian forms of domination and control are “just as old or just as young as civilisation itself”. Since time immemorial people have been subject to coercion and oppression and the reality is democratic, liberal forms of government, relatively speaking, are a recent historical phenomenon. It should also be remembered that while billions around the world live under oppressive, dictatorial regimes those fortunate enough to live in the West experience an unheralded degree of liberty and freedom. Even at a time when governments impose draconian, unfair measures as a result of COVID-19 there is still an underlying bedrock of rights and liberties citizens can call on when governments overreach. When tracing the origins of the culture wars the British conservative politician Michael Gove in Celsius 7/7 identifies the Frankfurt School established in Germany during the 1920s. Gove writes “In the place of traditional social democracy and conventional communism a variety of new trends drove leftist-thinking. The thinkers of the Frankfurt School revived Marxism as primarily a cultural rather than an economic movement”. The Melbourne-based academic Gary Marks in Cancel Culture and the Left’s Long March draws the same conclusion when arguing, “The Left’s march through the institutions originated with the Frankfurt School”. In addition to the academics associated with the Frankfurt School being disillusioned with what was occurring in the Soviet Union they also realised classical Marxism would never lead to a revolution in the West. Among those academics and revolutionary thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School over a number of years are Max Horkhiemer, Theodor Adorno, Eric Fromm, Wilhelm Reich, Jürgen Habermas and Herbert Marcuse. In fields as varied as sociology, politics, psychology, education, sexuality and gender studies, literature and mass culture neo-Marxist ideology and its offshoots infiltrated and now dominate universities across Europe, America, the United Kingdom and Australia. Associated with the Frankfurt School is the emergence of critical theory – an empowering and liberating ideology dedicated to overthrowing Western, capitalist societies. As argued by Wanda Skowronska in a paper titled ‘1960s psychologists: beguiling ideologues and smiling assassins’, “Critical theory did not aim to tear down the economic base of western society… It aimed rather at tearing down the cultural superstructure which supposedly reflected the powerful controllers of the economic system and this would enable the collapse of Western civilisation”. One example of critical theory, espoused by Wilhelm Reich in his book The Sexual Revolution, is as capitalist societies reproduce themselves by enforcing a moralistic, repressive view of sexuality there must be a sexual revolution if people are to be fully liberated and empowered. As noted by the Italian political philosopher Augusto Del Noce in his essay ‘The Ascendence of Erotism’, especially targeted as oppressive and outdated is “the traditional monogamous family” and a heterosexual view of sexuality. Contemporary radical gender and sexuality theory underpinning the Safe Schools program and the same-sex marriage and transgender movements owes much to critical theory and the pioneering work of Reich. It should not surprise one of the designers of the Safe Schools program, Roz Ward, argues it is not an anti-bullying program. Instead, when justifying the program Ward argues “only Marxism provides the theory and practice of genuine human liberation” and “it will only be through a revitalized class struggle and revolutionary change that we can hope for the liberation of LGBTI people”. Marcuse’s argument that in order to win the revolution activists had to ignore free speech, impartiality and tolerance represents a second example of critical theory. A noted by Jennifer Oriel in her chapter in Cancel Culture and the Left’s Long March, in his essay ‘Repressive Tolerance’ Marcuse “justified a new form of inequality that would be made manifest by censoring right-of-centre freethinkers”. Examples include no-platforming speakers such as Bettina Arndt and Germaine Greer, the ABC failing to employ conservative voices and ensuring peer reviewed journals and university appointments are only open to the chosen. Oriel goes on to argue Marcuse argued for a new form of inequality won by censoring dissent. He wrote that a subversive majority could be established by undemocratic means including the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups that dissented from left-wing politics. Such is the pervasive and dominating influence of political correctness and cancel culture the American non-binary feminist Camille Paglia writes, “We are plunged once again into an ethical chaos where intolerance masquerades as tolerance and where individual liberty is crushed by the tyranny of the group”. While not involved with the Frankfurt School the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, the author of Selections From The Prison Notebooks, is also a significant figure in the culture wars. Gramsci was general-secretary of the Italian Communist Party and imprisoned by Mussolini during the Second World War. Central to Gramsci’s writings is the concept of cultural hegemony. Capitalist societies reproduce themselves by conditioning citizens, even though they are victims of oppression, to believe all is well and they are not disadvantaged. Hence, the cultural-left’s necessity to infiltrate and take control of institutions like schools, universities, the church, media, intermediary organisations and the family. Similar to cultural hegemony is the French Marxist Louis Althusser’s concept of the ideological state apparatus. Capitalist states maintain control and reproduce themselves by employing violence and physical force, what is termed the repressive state apparatus, and also by ensuring citizens accept as sensible and natural what is inherently unjust and inequitable. Once again, schools and universities are targeted as institutions guilty of enforcing capitalist ideology. A belief in meritocracy, competitive examinations and the traditional academic curriculum is seen as inherently unjust as only already privileged and materially well-off students achieve success. Two American Marxist academics, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, also argue the way schools are structured and how the curriculum is selected ensure “surplus value” is generated for the owners of the modes and means of production. In Schooling in Capitalist America they write education “serves to perpetuate the social, political and economic conditions through which a portion of the product of labor (sic) is expropriated in the form of profits”. Those committed to a neo-Marxist view of education believe working-class and migrant students living in low socio-economic status (SES) communities are always disadvantaged and in need of positive discrimination. Such explains the Gonski school funding model championed by Julia Gillard when education minister that involves additional billions being wasted in a fruitless attempt to overcome perceived educational disadvantage. Ignored is the research proving the impact of SES on a student’s performance ranges from 10 to 18 per cent and more important factors include student ability and motivation, the quality of the curriculum, teacher expertise and overall classroom and school environment. In addition to cultural hegemony and the ideological state apparatus those committed to neo-Marxist critical theory also argue citizens who are happy living in Western, capitalist societies like Australia and who fail to demonstrate the required level of radical fervour are victims of false consciousness. Such is the dominance and power of capitalism that people, if they only knew it, have been indoctrinated to accept and even enjoy their situation in life. Women who are happily married and content with their role as wives and mothers are duped by a patriarchal system that denies them true freedom. Similarly, those small business people and entrepreneurs who believe they have the right to enjoy the benefits of hard work and risk- taking are guilty of participating in and endorsing an oppressive and inequitable economic and financial system. As significant as the Frankfurt School when detailing the origins of PC and cancel culture is the impact of the late 60s and early 70s cultural revolution. A time of Vietnam moratoriums, hippies and the youth counter-culture movement, the music festival Woodstock and student rebellion epitomised by students from the Sorbonne taking to streets in 1968. This was also a time when critical theory morphed into a rainbow alliance of cultural-left ideologies and movements, including postmodernism, deconstructionism and radical feminist, gender, queer and post-colonial theories. While such ideologies and theories are often in disagreement what they have in common is a deep-seated and radical critique of Western civilisation, Judeo-Christianity and capitalism. This period of radical change, as noted by Roger Kimball in The Long March, is best epitomised by the phrase ‘the long march through the institutions’ attributed to the German Marxist Rudi Dutschke. If the revolution was to succeed the cultural-left needed to infiltrate and take control of the organisations and institutions responsible for maintaining and reproducing the capitalist state. Those committed to postmodernism argue there are no absolute truths or objective reality as how we perceive and understand ourselves and the world in which we live is subjective and relative. Richard Tarnas in The Passion of the Western Mind describes this as the belief “The critical search for truth is constrained to be tolerant of ambiguity and pluralism, and its outcome will necessarily be knowledge that is relative and fallible rather than absolute or certain”. Radical gender activists deny the inherent biological nature of sexuality and condemn Western societies and the nuclear family as heteronormative, homophobic and transphobic. Post-colonial theorists argue there is nothing inherently worthwhile or beneficial about Western civilisation and that universities must be purged of ‘whiteness’ and ‘Eurocentric supremacy’. Academics at the University of Sheffield goes as far as telling students European science identified with the Enlightenment is guilty of being “inherently white” and a “fundamental contributor to European imperialism and a major beneficiary of its injustices”. Schools are a primary focus of cultural-left activists and fellow travellers in the fight to reshape society in their utopian image and the revised Australian national curriculum released earlier this year illustrates how successful they have been. The curriculum adopts what Geoffrey Blainey describes as a black-armband view of Australian history where the arrival of the First Fleet is described as an invasion leading to genocide. Students at Year 9 are told to analyse the “impact of invasion, colonisation and dispossession of lands by Europeans on the First Nations Peoples of Australia such as frontier warfare, genocide, removal from land, relocation to ‘protectorates’, reserves and missions”. The body responsible also prioritises Aboriginal history, culture and spirituality over the significance and debt owed to Judeo-Christianity and describes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social organisation systems, protocols, kinship structures, economies and enterprises as “sophisticated”. The curriculum writers go as far as arguing schools should teach Aboriginal algebra and science. No doubt Bruce Pascoe’s Black Emu will be set for compulsory study. When mandating what schools should teach the Civics and Citizenship curriculum also reveals evidence of cultural-left thinking by adopting a postmodern, subjective view of citizenship. Students are told Australia is a “multicultural, multi-faith society” where “citizens’ identity transcends geography or political borders and people have the right and responsibilities at the global level”. Diversity and difference reign supreme and instead of valuing what makes Australia unique students are presented with a subjective view of citizenship, one where “A person’s sense of who they are, and conception and expression of their individuality or association with a group culture or to a state or nation, a region or the world regardless of one’s citizenship status” takes priority. So much for nation building at a time totalitarian China is seeking domination and control over the South China sea. The national curriculum is only one example of how successful the cultural-left has been in its long march through the education system. Whether redefining the purpose of education, the relationship between schools and society more broadly or transforming teacher training and what happens in the classroom education has been radically overhauled. As argued by one-time Victorian education minister and premier Joan Kirner at a Fabian Society meeting in Melbourne in 1985, activists argue education has to be reshaped as “part of the socialist struggle for equality, participation and social change, rather than an instrument of the capitalist system”. The teacher training textbook Making the Difference published in 1982 also argues schools must become centres for political activism. Australian society is described as “disfigured by class exploitation, sexual and racial oppression, and in chronic danger of war and environmental destruction”. The authors argue “conservative hegemony” is the target and “the only education worth the name is one that forms people capable of taking part in their own liberation”. Such is the all-important and strategic nature of the battle the authors write “Teachers too have to decide whose side they are on”. The concept of a liberal education involving what Mathew Arnold in Culture and Anarchy describes as “a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world” gives way to cultural-left ideology, language control and group think. Teacher professional bodies and associations including the Victorian Secondary Teachers Association (VSTA), the Australian Education Union (AEU), the Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE) and the Australian Curriculum Studies Association (ACSA) are also committed to schools and the curriculum being used as vehicles to overthrow the status quo. The Australian Education Union argues Australian society is riven with inequality and disadvantage and that the education system needs a radical overhaul. The teacher union argues Catholic and independent schools should not be funded by governments, it is wrong to compare and rank students in terms of academic performance and the curriculum must prioritise man-made global warming, LGBTIQ+ and peace studies, multiculturalism and Aboriginal history, culture and spirituality. Not surprisingly, the AEU’s 2003 ‘Policy on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender People’ states “Homophobia and Heterosexism must be included in the content of pre-service training for all teachers”. In relation to the curriculum an argument is also put “Homosexuality and bisexuality need to be normalised and materials need to be developed which will help combat homophobia”. In relation to controversial issues like Australia’s involvement in the Iraqi war and global warming, instead of teachers being impartial and disinterested, the union argues teachers should encourage students to become “agents of change” and “take direct action”. Since the mid-to-late 60s academics responsible for teacher training and professional associations including the Australian Curriculum Studies Association (ACSA) have also been instrumental in championing cultural-left ideology. In its publication Going Public ACSA argues schools must embrace “social democratic values” on the basis society is characterised by “deep-seated prejudices, hatreds and fears that obviously lurk beneath the cosmopolitan veneer of Australian society”. One chapter, instead of agreeing there is a literacy crisis and detailing what must be done to raise standards, argues media reports are “alarmist and negative” and that governments magnify concerns about literacy standards as a smokescreen to “deflect attention away from material problems such as youth poverty and unemployment”. The chapter concludes by arguing for a new and radical definition of literacy on the basis “what is required in this postmodern, postcolonial globalised context is not a ‘dumbing down’ of the construction of literacy, but an enhancement and rethinking of its very construction”. Underpinning a cultural-left approach to education is the belief knowledge is a social construct employed by those in control to enforce their dominance. The ‘ACSA Policy Statement’ published in 1996 describes the curriculum as “a social, historical and material construction which typically serves the interest of particular groups at the expense of others”. Teachers are urged to identify and critique “the ideology embedded in all curriculum practice, discourse and organisation” and to “act locally, think globally” as well as endorsing “sustainable global citizenship”. The AATE is yet another professional body steeped in cultural-left ideology. Associated with the concept of critical theory is an approach to teaching English that champions critical literacy. Drawing on the work of the Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire, who’s book Pedagogy of the Oppressed was widely set for teacher training courses during the 70s and 80s, the argument is learning to read and write is an intensely political act. Freire, drawing on Marx, Gramsci and Hegel, argues students must be empowered to perceive themselves in “dialectical relationship with their social reality (and) to assume an increasingly critical attitude toward the world and so to transform it”. The AATE has long championed critical literacy arguing the focus of the subject must be on teaching students to deconstruct and critique language and literature (now known as texts) in terms of power relationships involving gender, ethnicity, race and class. Proven by the way senior school English courses are developed and taught it’s clear critical literacy is the new orthodoxy. A Western Australia senior school English course argues “The concept of the literary is socially and historically constructed, rather than objective or self-evident. Constructions of the literary are embedded in social contexts, reflecting particular knowledge, values, assumptions and power relationships”. So much for the enduring moral and aesthetic value of good literature and the belief worthwhile literature has something enduring and profound to say about human nature and what DH Lawrence describes as “the relation between man and his circumambient universe at the living moment”. Children’s fairy tales like Cinderella and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs are criticised for favouring heterosexual love, classic novels like Moby Dick for killing whales and To Kill a Mockingbird for being written by a white women. Not to be outdone, according to a Queensland senior school course, students are asked to deconstruct Macbeth as an example of “patriarchal concerns with order and gender” and to undertake “an eco-critical reading of a selection of the poetry of either Wordsworth or Les Murray”. In an issue of the AATE’s journal titled Love in English the argument is put the literary works chosen for years 11 and 12 are guilty of prioritising “heterosexual and cisgender identities as the norms against which to define the other”. The solution is for English teachers to embrace a “queer-inclusive curriculum, one that celebrates “diverse sexualities”. The AATE also tells teachers they should stop teaching pronouns like ‘she’ and ‘he’ in the classroom and instead ensure “Their, they, them are used as alternatives to gendered pronouns”. In ‘The Second Coming’ WB Yeats writes “The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity”. While such a description aptly describes what is a bleak and depressing situation there are positive signs not all is lost. Such is the destructive and unjust nature of cancel culture increasing numbers of those identified as centre-left are going public in their condemnation. The journalist Bari Weiss resigned from the New York Times arguing the paper failed to uphold the values of independent journalism, 152 writers and academics, many considered progressive, signed an open letter arguing cancel culture was enforcing “ideological conformity” and feminists including Germaine Greer oppose radical gender theory arguing men cannot be women. President Obama has also criticised political correctness for often being too “judgemental” and cautioned activists for “throwing stones” instead of engaging in constructive activism. The popularity of the Canadian based academic Jordan Peterson, whose YouTube videos have millions of hits, the work of British academics including the Douglas Murray and late Roger Scruton and popularity of Greg Sheridan’s books on Christianity also suggest opposition to cancel culture is alive and well. Based on the ABC’s Australia Talks 2019 survey 68% of those surveyed agreed “Political correctness has gone too far in Australia” and one of the factors explaining Scott Morrison’s electoral success in 2019 was because many voters preferred a conservative agenda to Bill Shorten’s centre-left policies on climate change, freedom of speech and LGBTIQ+ policies. The growth of Sydney’s Campion Liberal/Arts College and the work of centre-right think-tanks like the IPA and the Sydney Institute also suggest the battle of ideas is not yet over. Dr Kevin Donnelly is a Melbourne-based conservative author and commentator. His website is kevindonnelly.com.au and he is the editor of Cancel Culture and the Left’s Long March Show your support Donate Now 12 thoughts on “The Implacable Rise of Cancel Culture” ChrisPer says: 9th September 2021 at 4:24 pm The ‘battle of ideas is not yet over’? When perversions get priority over families, when the most productive and energetic demographics are taught to compete only on stupid subservience to the agendas of the ruling class leftism; when boys are thrown on the scrap heap by the education system, it might be over. When centre-right Governments compete for votes with the dregs of leftist environmental platforms, it might be over. When the evil ideologies of the academic left are all that can be legitimately taught, it might be over. When the only organisations that teach values worth having are corrupted by superficial, political agendas, it might be over. Who is left fighting on the cultural front? A few septuagenarians muttering at each other over their lattes. Log in to Reply tim1 says: 9th September 2021 at 4:30 pm As a cultural conservative but economically radical – we exist, just – I sometimes think Conservative writers who don’t come from a Left background don’t appreciate the extent to which the death of the Communist Party in the West is a factor in the rise of the crazy ultra left. The Cold War certainly made society more serious and less prone to post-Modernism crap. But the existence of the Soviet Myth and the survival of its ageing supporters in the CPs of the West played a disciplining role on the Left. I worked for a teachers’ union in which the old CP guys worked with we right wing Labour people(in the UK) to keep the nutters and Trots from taking over the union. When that CP culture died, the nutters emerged to win cultural power. The death of ‘the Party’ had a big impact on Left wing culture: discuss! Log in to Reply GG says: 9th September 2021 at 6:01 pm What must be understood is that this is no longer an academic debate. It is a war, and conservative forces need to apply the blowtorch much harder than their adversaries if it’s to be won. I know of cancel culture activists from the Left who have been utterly obliterated by conservatives, using the full power of language, connections, knowledge of how government works, where fear lies and the likely responses. More than one has had a career terminated, and to this moment in time they have no idea why or how it happened. It’s kept below the radar, as Leftists never admit their defeat publicly, but it’s incredibly effective. It’s time to take off the gloves, and fight. What’s at stake is Western civilisation, and everything that decent people value. Log in to Reply J. Vernau says: 9th September 2021 at 6:54 pm ChrisPer * Yes, and with reproduction at less than replacement rate, in a surprisingly short time everything will be over for the West. Log in to Reply Stephen Due says: 9th September 2021 at 9:25 pm We are certainly engaged in a war, and ideas certainly matter. My daughters used to attend the Adelaide Festival of Ideas, causing me to remind them that “not all ideas are good ideas”. Similarly it is useful to remember that everyone has an argument to contribute at the dinner table, but not all arguments are good ones. Therefore I think we need to look deeper to understand what is going on. What we see in the debate around the pandemic, for example, is a chaotic interplay of ideas and arguments that resolves nothing. Many observers are noting that there are multiple political and personal agendas, often undisclosed, driving the public presentation of ideas and arguments. These agendas are not resolved in public debate, but continue to exert their influence unchecked. The politician bested in debate does not typically act accordingly but continues his course as before. To me, the hypothesis that most clearly explains this apparently chaotic ebb and flow of assertion and counter assertion, which continues while agendas are pursued irrespective of debate, is that of a spiritual battle. It is the soul of the West, not just ideas and values, that is at stake. An example is the debate over Covid vaccine adverse effects. Traditionally, experimental vaccines, if shown in trials to cause (say) fifty deaths, would immediately be withdrawn. These are medical interventions that we do not normally evaluate using a utilitarian calculus i.e. we do not balance the vaccine deaths against the lives saved by the vaccines. Rather we follow the ancient Greek principle of medical ethics ‘First do no harm’, and/or the Judeo-Christian principle ‘Thou shalt not kill’. These are not intuitive judgements. They are spiritual stop signs. The fact that they are now being ignored is a clear indication of spiritual warfare. Log in to Reply ianl says: 9th September 2021 at 9:58 pm @GG >” … More than one [cancel culture activist] has had a career terminated, and to this moment in time they have no idea why or how it happened” Can you supply a detailed example with only the names omitted ? This is to bolster actual optimism … Log in to Reply Stephen Due says: 9th September 2021 at 11:00 pm The ultimate in cancel culture, as embraced by Daniel Andrews and Brett Sutton, is the imprisonment of Monica Smit for inciting people to defy the orders of the Chief Medical Officer by helping to organise a protest. Further proof of the well-known adage that ideas have consequences. As it happens this crime is exactly the one referred to in yesterday’s proclamation by new government of Afghanistan: “The Taliban on Sept. 8 announced a ban on all slogans, demonstrations, and protests that do not have their official approval in yet another signal that the Islamist group is taking a hardline and repressive approach to government.” Log in to Reply Ian MacKenzie says: 10th September 2021 at 12:19 am Saw this quote yesterday from Carl Sagan’s book: . I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. . Written 26 years ago, so last century, it’s amazing how clearly what we are seeing now was evident to him back then. Log in to Reply pgang says: 10th September 2021 at 9:49 am Can we please start calling it by its correct name – socialism. It’s not about ‘ideas’ or ‘culture’. Socialism doesn’t care about ideas or logic or even ideology. It just wants to kill everyone. Log in to Reply Biggles says: 10th September 2021 at 1:18 pm Give every teenager/early twenties person you know a copy of Marx’s ‘Communist Manifesto’. Ask them to just read Marx’s ten points starting with’ No ownership of property in land’ and ask them if they want to live under these strictures. When they say ‘No’, ask them what they are doing to prevent it happening in their State and in Australia. Go on moneybags; you can afford it. Amazon sells the Penguin paperback for $9.99 delivered. Log in to Reply brandee says: 12th September 2021 at 2:47 pm Its always a benefit to read conservative author and commentator Kevin Donnelly. Here is my question: How is it that when our culture is under attack from socialists we have have a PM who has said that he will not engage in the culture wars? Seems we have a pacifist PM leading a country under attack. We remember that PM Scot Morrison was the preferred choice of Malcolm Turnbull when MT was voted down in the Party room. MT and his wet Liberals were adamant that Peter Dutton should not get the top position. Australia needs that overturned. Log in to Reply whitelaughter says: 13th September 2021 at 11:12 am tim1 “don’t appreciate the extent to which the death of the Communist Party in the West is a factor in the rise of the crazy ultra left. ” This. It was a double whammy; sane people relaxed because the enemy seemed to have been defeated, but the loons were merely unshackled to run wild. Log in to Reply Leave a Reply Cancel reply You must be logged in to post a comment. Related Articles Education Why Teachers Get Away with Preaching Green Rubbish Tony Thomas 8th April 2022 Comments (6) Education The Implacable Rise of Cancel Culture Kevin Donnelly 9th September 2021 Comments (12) Education Big Chalk and the Shrinking of Young Minds Andrew Gutmann 1st May 2021 Comments (9) × Sign In Username or email address * Password * Log in Remember me Lost your password? Subscribe Read Quadrant online or as a printed magazine Starting at $88.00 a year Learn more
— Arming Americans to defend the truth from today's war on facts“In what could be the timeliest book of the year, Rauch aims to arm his readers to engage with reason in an age of illiberalism.”—NewsweekA New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceDisinformation. Trolling. Conspiracies. Social media pile-ons. Campus intolerance. On the surface, these recent additions to our daily vocabulary appear to have little in common. But together, they are driving an epistemic crisis: a multi-front challenge to America's ability to distinguish fact from fiction and elevate truth above falsehood.In 2016 Russian trolls and bots nearly drowned the truth in a flood of fake news and conspiracy theories, and Donald Trump and his troll armies continued to do the same. Social media companies struggled to keep up with a flood of falsehoods, and too often didn't even seem to try. Experts and some public officials began wondering if society was losing its grip on truth itself. Meanwhile, another new phenomenon appeared: “cancel culture.” At the push of a button, those armed with a cellphone could gang up by the thousands on anyone who ran afoul of their sanctimony.In this pathbreaking book, Jonathan Rauch reaches back to the parallel eighteenth-century developments of liberal democracy and science to explain what he calls the “Constitution of Knowledge”—our social system for turning disagreement into truth.By explicating the Constitution of Knowledge and probing the war on reality, Rauch arms defenders of truth with a clearer understanding of what they must protect, why they must do—and how they can do it. His book is a sweeping and readable description of how every American can help defend objective truth and free inquiry from threats as far away as Russia and as close as the cellphone.
The term ‘cancelling’ in its current usage refers to the practice of, at one end, withdrawing approval, respect, relations with, or support for an individual, a group, or an institution, through excluding them from opportunities, situations and platforms, to, at the other end, eliminating references to, or representations of them. Such practices and debates about them have become prominent since the 2010s in connection with self-termed ‘social justice’ activism regarding issues of race, sexual identity, culture, history and politics particularly on social media and in academic institutions. Although the expressions ‘cancelling’ and ‘cancel culture’ are new, the practices of shunning, stigmatising and removing are very old and often recur in periods of cultural revolution and ideological activism. Premodern examples include the ancient Athenian practice of ostracism, an annual vote on whether and if so who to punish for ‘social offences’ by banishing them from the city; and the medieval practice of charivari: mocking, shaming, shunning or excluding Jews, lepers, adulterers, the illegitimate and the mentally handicapped. In modern and recent times ‘cancelling’ featured in the reformation period through the decanonisation of parts of scripture, excommunication, and the anathematization of ‘heretics: pronouncing them to be accursed. More recently the Soviet and Maoist counter- and cultural-revolutionary practices of shaming, revoking honours, and removing individuals from positions in education, government, and media, and removing their names and images from official document and photographs are vivid examples of ‘cancel culture’. The current debate around ‘cancelling’ addresses issues of civic responsibility, freedom of speech, privilege and power, reasonable disagreement, and toleration. While cancelling has been criticized from both left and right the main concern about it comes from traditional liberals based on J.S. Mill’s On Liberty (1859).