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Cancellation: a complex mix of accountability, power, justice, anger and
societal change

Driving out people can be emotionally satisfying and create a sense of justice.
But is it actually making the world better?

[10] Adam Tinworth

[11]Adam Tinworth

24 Jan 2025 — 8 min read
Cancellation: a complex mix of accountability, power, justice, anger and
societal change

What’s the point of “cancellation”? I don't mean that in the “it's pointless”
sense, but in the “what are you trying to achieve by it” sense. Is it about
justice, or accountability, or community protection, or making the world
better? Or is it about the thrill of the mob? Motivations matter.

If you ask people what the point of cancelling people is, they might deny it
happens. [12]But it clearly does, and sometimes quite justifiably. And then
they might say “accountability” and that seems like a good answer — until you
think about it. Because accountability implies power. And as soon as you
express that you are holding somebody accountable, you are saying that you want
to have, or feel you do have, power over them.

There’s a reason that civilised countries punish through systems and courts,
not through mobs. The rule of law exists to prevent the rule of the mob. And
that’s because the rule of the mob is inherently divisive: it splits groups
into us and them. And sadly, we can see the degree to which the rise of social
media, and its facilitation of accountability through mob, has damaged our
societies, through greater polarisation and the splitting of people into
in-groups and out-groups. That’s worth examining.

Now, I’ve come a long way on this. Long, long ago, I wrote positively about the
power of collective action to [13]bring down a gagging order. And many of us
watched the [14]Arab Spring with awe and delight. Collective action in the face
of unjust laws, structures, systems, and processes can be an incredible thing.

Accountability or power?

But when that power is turned on an individual? That’s a very different thing.
I know, from my own past, that being an individual on the receiving end of
group disapproval for being different is horrible, and psychologically
damaging. We’ve only recently started taking bullying as seriously as we
should. And I still carry the psychological scars of the intense physical,
mental and emotional bullying I endured as a school child in the 1980s.

When that mob justice spreads to societal groups picking on individuals, it can
become very difficult. There’s a reason that we use “witch hunt” and “lynch
mob” as negative terms. They are not societally healthy ways of expressing the
boundaries of acceptable behaviour. When a mob gets going, it too often loses
sight of little things like “evidence” and “compassion”. Mobs tend to be
dehumanising both to their members, as well as to their victims.

So, when you start a targeted move against an individual, when you stoke up
social media outrage against them, questions need to be asked not just about
your target, but about your own motivations. Accountability, in a community,
counts both ways. And the biggest question is: is you wielding that power
actually helping the people you claim to be helping? Because if it’s not, then
you’re just wielding power for your own pleasure.

You’re a bully.

And that’s a problem — and possibly even a counterproductive one. Because the
experience of my life is that you create lasting change by persuading people,
not by wielding power over them. You can’t force me to believe anything. But
you can persuade me that I need to alter my beliefs. And that, person by
person, can create change at a societal scale. When you have enough support at
a societal level, you can affect community (and legislative) change in a way
that lasts.

Changing society by changing people

I came of age during the height of the movement for gay rights. That movement
largely won in the UK by persuading people that being gay wasn’t being “other”,
but something normal. I grew up with literally nobody who was both gay and out
around me. Being gay was very much “other” to me. It’s easy to see why people
stayed firmly in the closet. Anyone who came out in the 1980s in a Scottish
school would have supplanted me as the best person to bully pretty damn
quickly.

But, within a year of coming to London for university, that changed. Friends
came out to me, and I made friends with people who were out before I knew them.
My emotional reaction to gay people quickly aligned with my pre-existing
intellectual response, of wondering what the hell was the point of forcing
people to pretend to be something they aren’t, and deny their selves? But I was
an easy convert. I was already inclined towards that belief.

My parents’ generation? Much harder. Nevertheless, I saw my parents change
their views. They were what I would describe as culturally homophobic because
the culture at the time was homophobic. And then they met my gay friends, and
the “otherness” disappeared. By the time they retired and moved south, they
were friends with the gay couple who lived in the folly behind their house.
Indeed, one of that couple would go on to be the organist that played in the
church for both of my parents' funerals. They would have been touched by that.
Both of them expressed bafflement that the church was having such an issue with
gay people at the time. Change.

And this was just part of a much wider move in society through the 90s and the
2000s. It says something of the success of the gay rights movement in the UK
that it was our [15]mainstream right-wing party that granted marriage equality.

If I’d cancelled my parents over that earlier views, would they have been as
much a part of that shift as they were?

Normalisation is a powerful tool of change

The more we cancel people, the more we hinder the process of normalisation. And
that process I see profoundly changing the world around me. My daughters have
grown up with a gay couple living a few doors down; they studied in a school
where one of their fellow pupils has two dads. They attend a church where they
regularly chat with an elderly lesbian couple and their delightful dog, and
where they’re welcomed by a trans woman. One of the eldest’s school friends has
a trans woman parent. The reality of the world around them makes many
homophobic and transphobic views look utterly ridiculous to them.

Now, how does that function online?

There’s a very specific community I’m alluding to here because a member of that
community is currently under attack. Why? A combination of things. He’s shown
enthusiasm for a certain individual’s automative and astronautics endeavours
which others feel are too tainted by his politics, and also for some statements
that, I think, were certainly ill-judged, and could easily be viewed as
discriminatory. I’m certainly not comfortable with them, and would be
re-evaluating my position if they recur.

However, that community which he has been part of building is, in my
perception, largely LGBTQIA+ friendly. Many of the people I follow and interact
with fit into that spectrum. It’s… normal there. This is a community where
LGBTQIA+ acceptance is normal, and the statements he made are considered
abnormal. That’s healthy. Now, the question is: should he be driven from that
community?

Accountability in action

We can’t escape the fact that he has said things that make some of those people
uncomfortable. Nor should we. That’s clearly an issue. And somebody external to
that community is demanding that he be held accountable, that the community
owner makes very specific statements, and that the individual is removed from
paid employment in the community and, by extension, the community itself.

This is, in my mind, very much about power, even if expressed through the
language of accountability and allyship. Some of the phraseology the individual
uses makes that apparent. Here’s just one example:

    I get that you might not experience bigotry the same way that others do,
    and maybe this affects your ability to recognize when harm has been done.
    That’s for you to work on.

That would have been a more useful statement without that last sentence. It’s
very hard not to read that one in a way that’s both patronising and superior.
He’s literally telling somebody else what they’re experiencing and what they
should do. There’s a tone of moral authority to it that lacks humility. And
he’s also, in other postings, demanding very specific things from the community
owner — statements, answers to questions, removal of a staff member — and will
continue to trash his business online if he doesn’t get it. And all of that
from a competitor.

It’s difficult to see a clear moral high ground here.

Let’s, as a thought experiment, think about what that means if it comes to
pass.

The impact of exclusion

First of all, that individual is removed from a community where certain ideas
that maybe he’s uncomfortable with are normalised. It’s likely that the places
he’ll find welcoming are going to share much more extreme versions of those
views. How does it help the LGBTQIA+ community to drive people away into the
arms of those people? It just takes someone and forges them into an enemy. My
God, now of all times, the LGBTQIA+ community do NOT need more enemies.

But if we allow the normal social process of “mate, that’s out of order.
Apologise, and let’s move on” happen, the process of normalisation can
continue, as it did for my parents years ago. They can see that these people
and their allies aren’t the enemy, but just people with different ways of
being, desires and life choices. They’re not a threat. Fundamentally, they’re
just people who happen to be LGBTQIA+.

🙏
One of the things I like about the Christian idea of forgiveness, once I
engaged with it seriously, is that it’s not about the person being forgiven;
it’s about the person doing the forgiving. It’s about the damage one does to
oneself by carrying hatred and anger in your heart.

Now, I’m not denying that there are people whose views are so abhorrent and who
are so unrepentant that yes, community exclusion is the only path for the good
of the community. Any community is defined by its rules and its norms, but
those are only real if enforced. Community management is a skill, and a vital
one. And that means knowing when exclusion is for the good of the community.

But when people try to force out people who have yet to prove that they can’t
clear that bar, it looks more like an exercise of power. Currently, my position
is that, if the individual proves unrepentant and continues down this path,
then yes, community exclusion would be the best outcome. But I don’t, yet, see
that signs that it is necessary.

🇺🇸
It’s also worth noting that, as so often happens online, all this is being
filtered through the lens of US politics. The individual in question does not
live in the US; he lives in Eastern Europe. Different country, different
culture, different social norms. Not an excuse — but relevant context.

The acquisition of power

And that brings me to the second consequence of my thought experiment: if it
all happens as the external person wishes, they are now effectively in charge
of the community. They police what is and isn’t acceptable within the
community, not the owner, and not the members. That’s not about allyship, or
accountability. That’s about power, pure and simple. And when that person owns
a direct competitor, well, there are some questions to be asked about
motivation.

That would, for me, be the end of that community. Because this particular space
is both a business and a community, and this is where community management
comes into play. The business owner can do whatever he likes, but the space and
the community are not the same thing: one hosts the other. And that community
will, and should, make its own decision about the situation.

I’m always open to persuasion, but I’m never happy to be told what I should
think. As a member of the community, I’m happy to have potential problems
pointed out, and will evaluate the evidence and the behaviour of the person in
question, exactly as I do and have in the physical, proximate communities I’m
part of. But, collectively, we as community members make the decision — or
judge the community host on how he handles it.

Justice is slow and deliberate. And that’s a lesson from history.

What I will not put up with is a style of political witch-hunting and language
emerging in a community that I joined specifically to avoid that. Enough of my
life has been tainted by bullies. I won’t grant them my attention, and that
includes well-meaning bullies, who think they are on the side of the angels.

There is a tension between real-world processes of justice, which grind slowly
and with deliberation for good reasons, and the adrenaline and anger fuelled
quest for justice in social media. I know which I prefer.

We need to bring the lessons of history into our new social spaces. And we need
to do more work to untangle the complicated threads of accountability, power,
activism and societal change that underlie that loaded word “cancellation”.

Read more

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References:

[1] https://www.coffeeandcomplexity.com/
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[5] http://www.onemanandhisblog.com/
[7] https://www.coffeeandcomplexity.com/cancellation-a-complex-mix-of-accountability-power-justice-anger-and-societal-change/#/portal/signin
[8] https://www.coffeeandcomplexity.com/cancellation-a-complex-mix-of-accountability-power-justice-anger-and-societal-change/#/portal/signup
[9] https://www.coffeeandcomplexity.com/tag/politics/
[10] https://www.coffeeandcomplexity.com/author/adders/
[11] https://www.coffeeandcomplexity.com/author/adders/
[12] https://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/tv/john-barrowman-says-only-holly-30821456?ref=coffeeandcomplexity.com
[13] https://onemanandhisblog.com/2009/10/the_day_twitter_destroyed_a_gagging_orde/?ref=coffeeandcomplexity.com
[14] https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2021/jan/25/how-the-arab-spring-unfolded-a-visualisation?ref=coffeeandcomplexity.com
[15] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/david-cameron-on-the-first-uk-same-sex-marriages?ref=coffeeandcomplexity.com
[16] https://www.coffeeandcomplexity.com/walking-the-narrow-path-between-tech-utopianism-and-digital-cynicism/
[17] https://www.coffeeandcomplexity.com/beach-walk-and-transitory-art/
[18] https://www.coffeeandcomplexity.com/walking-at-wwt-arundel/
[19] https://www.coffeeandcomplexity.com/random-slices-of-other-peoples-lives/
[20] https://ghost.org/