Ein paar bedenkenswerte Kommentare zur Cancel Culture in der NYTimes for ein paar Wochen, z.B.
2. All cultures cancel; the question is for what, how widely and through what means.
There is no human society where you can say or do anything you like and expect to keep your reputation and your job. Reputational cancellation hung over the heads of Edith Wharton’s heroines; professional cancellation shadowed 20th-century figures like Lenny Bruce. Today, almost all critics of cancel culture have some line they draw, some figure — usually a racist or anti-Semite — that they would cancel, too. And social conservatives who criticize cancel culture, especially, have to acknowledge that we’re partly just disagreeing with today’s list of cancellation-worthy sins...
4. The internet has changed the way we cancel, and extended cancellation’s reach.
On the other hand, a skeptic might say that it wasn’t liberalism but space and distance that made America a free country — the fact that you could always escape the tyrannies of local conformism by “lighting out for the territory,” in the old Mark Twain phrase. But under the rule of the internet there’s no leaving the village: Everywhere is the same place, and so is every time. You can be canceled for something you said in a crowd of complete strangers, if one of them uploads the video, or for a joke that came out wrong if you happened to make it on social media, or for something you said or did a long time ago if the internet remembers. And you don’t have to be prominent or political to be publicly shamed and permanently marked: All you need to do is have a particularly bad day, and the consequences could endure as long as Google.…
8. The right and the left both cancel; it’s just that today’s right is too weak to do it effectively.
Is it cancel culture when conservatives try to get college professors disciplined for anti-Americanism, or critics of Israel de-platformed for anti-Semitism? Sure, in a sense. Was it cancel culture when the Dixie Chicks — sorry, the artists formerly known as the Dixie Chicks — were dropped by radio stations and tour venues, or when Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect” was literally canceled, for falling afoul of patriotic correctness? Absolutely.But as the latter examples suggest, the last peak of right-wing cultural power was the patriotically correct climate after Sept. 11, a cultural eon in the past. Today the people with the most to fear from a right-wing cancel culture usually work inside Trump-era professional conservatism. (And even for them there’s often a new life awaiting as a professional NeverTrumper.) Attempted cancellations on the right are mostly battles for control over diminishing terrain, with occasional forays against red-state academics and anti-Trump celebrities. Meanwhile, the left’s cancel warriors imagine themselves conquering the entire non-Fox News map.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/opinion/cancel-culture-.html
Das deckt für mich die ganze Bandbreite recht gut ab (und führt auch den USA-Bezug nochmal vor Augen): die besseren und schlechteren Aspekte, aber auch die Tatsache, dass das letzten Endes kein neues Phänomen ist, dass aber die aktuelle Form online wirklich Auswüchse zeitigt, die überhaupt nicht begrüssenswert sind … und auch, dass es kein Phänomen ist, das nur von der Linken ausgehen würde, auch wenn es momentan den Anschein macht (und das Geschrei darüber verstärkt diesen Eindruck natürlich, umso lieber brüllen die rechtsbürgerlichen oder auch die traditionell-behäbigen liberalen Leitmedien da im Chor und geben sich als die Stimmen der Vernunft und des wahren Liberalismus).
Obendrein fände ich etwas mehr Cancel Culture gegen rechtsextreme Polizisten durchaus begrüssenswert. Aber da klappt das ja in aller Regel weiterhin überhaupt nicht (weswegen steht wohl auch oben bei nicht_vom_forum – aber ich befürchte, ein anderer Grund ist auch, dass die Mehrheitsgesellschaft das alles eben doch weniger übel findet als die paar „Einzelfälle“ – und wer bestimmt da genau nochmal den Diskurs? Eben doch nicht die Linke, oder?).
--
"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #159: Martial Solal (1927–2024) – 21.1., 22:00; #160: 11.2., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba