35. OUGHT WE FEAR A 'CANCEL CULTURE'? - Disentangling Fear From Fact

Online debates are often pointless. Not because the ideas being discussed aren’t interesting or important, but because it is very rare that people look beyond their starting biases and ideological positions and get involved because they are genuinely willing to have their minds changed. In that way online debates mimic school/university debating competitions: you are assigned your side and you bluster and blow until someone rings a bell and tells you the discussion is over. You are not looking for truth, but for victory. When was the last time you actually changed anybody’s mind via a back and forth on social media?

Despite this, I recently waded into a discussion within the UK comedy community where a friend was asking if we should be worried about, what they considered, a creeping authoritarianism within the UK arts scene which was creating a climate of fear for conservative-minded participants in the arts, leading to self-censorship and silencing of non “woke” voices. The concern stemmed from a Daily Mail article about a survey conducted by a website called Arts Professional, which, once all the Mail rhetoric was washed away and the original survey was studied at source, claimed, of the 500+ artists and arts workers surveyed, ‘while about 90% of respondents agreed that “the arts and cultural sector has a responsibility to use its unique talents to speak out about things that matter, regardless of the potential consequences”, more than 80% thought that “workers in the arts and cultural sector who share controversial opinions risk being professionally ostracised”’ with ‘controversial opinions’ defined as ‘viewpoints outside of the dominant norms’; eventually further defined, notably without the same statistical support as the earlier claims, as ‘anything that might be considered “politically incorrect” to the liberal-leaning sector - including expressing support or sympathy for Brexit, the Conservatives or other right-wing political parties’.

I waded in because the claim that a so-called ‘cancel culture’ is gagging free-speech in comedy is a tired trope popping up not only in the arts, but in academia too, and it is one that I am deeply suspicious of. Whilst I am instinctively sympathetic to the idea of free-speech’s importance and strongly against censorship, my suspicion is that this particular free-speech issue is not an issue at all for a very simple reason: if conservative views were being silenced across art, culture and academia, then why do I hear them all the time? Why do we currently live in a country in its tenth year of conservative governance, embarking on a separation from the European Union largely embraced and masterminded by the political right, in a world where conservative politics continue to dominate across both sides of the Atlantic ocean and across Europe. If the conservative viewpoint is being stifled, why is it still so loud?

Empirically there is much evidence that the rise of Donald Trump, the decision to leave the EU, the success of Boris Johnson, and before him, Theresa May and David Cameron, all stem from dominant media narratives perpetuated frequently and consistently, despite their contested and controversial nature, across all forms of information sharing. From Donald Trump’s largely uncontested campaign claims being echoed daily across all media platforms, to the collective use of the outcome-biased term “Brexit” to describe an impending referendum as if the conclusion was foregone, to claims that the UK Labour Party were responsible for a global economic crisis which was known to be caused by American sub-prime mortgages, to the notion that austerity was the only way to deal with that economic crash despite all the evidence suggesting that it was not. The conservative narrative is the dominant cultural assumption of our daily news reporting and the framework within which even liberal media organisations must operate for their stories to make sense to audiences inducted into the norms of that predominant discourse. That this discourse - manufactured and disseminated by a whole industry of conservative think tanks, publishers, and strategists who have worked explicitly and intentionally to make it the dominant discourse since at least the 1970s - is also the view of the ruling political parties within the two specific countries - the UK and America - where worry has arisen about the silencing of conservatives, should be reason alone to be suspicious of the claim that such views are being censored. Furthermore, in the specific area which caused me to get involved in my online discussion - comedy - there are plenty of working comedians, many successful international stars with specials on Netflix and assorted other viewing platforms - who say all kinds of “politically incorrect” things in their acts. In the last twelve months alone I’ve heard highly successful comedians make jokes about race, the Me Too movement, Brexit (for and against), disability, gender, religion and a variety of other free-speech sacred cows. Just as, when the alternative comedy scene exploded into life in the 1980s and threatened the established order with a new way of thinking, the older comics continued peddling their racist, sexist, homophobic acts all around the country and on readily available VHS tapes sold at motorway service-stations from Land’s End to John O’Groats, the beleaguered relics of today’s old guard continue to work - and voice their supposedly ‘censored’ opinions - today.

The “non-PC”, the “un-woke”, the “controversial” - never truly gets silenced. It does, however, get judged, and I believe this is where the myth of conservative censorship might stem from. For there is a difference between free speech and free speech without consequence, and as culture evolves and changes, those consequences, and what might provoke them, changes. Today, the conservative narrative is being confronted with questions it has never been asked before. The result, in some cases, is that it has no acceptable answers to those questions and is exposed as indefensible.

Consider the consequences of my offering to buy another human being. Today, the consequence (rightly) might be jail, or at least a visit from the police for my attempt at doing something we have collectively decided should never be done. Yet at the time of slavery, that same offer would have a very different consequence. In both time periods I am completely free to state my offer, but as times change, and views change, the consequences also change. So a comedian with a particular worldview might have comfortably earned a living touring the country and sharing that view for years, only to discover in recent times that that view - still freely expressed - is now met with a different reaction. No longer innocent laughs. Uncomfortable silence instead. Boos. Perhaps questions posed on Twitter or heckled towards the stage? Their freedom of speech has not changed; but the consequences of their speech have. That these new consequences are bad, and that the chilling effect they may have on the repetition of such views (and thus their freedom of speech), are problematic is based on the assumption that the reaction to the speech is unjustified, or that free-speech exists in a bubble where we are no longer morally responsible for what that speech entails, both of which require some significant supporting evidence. It is also based on the idea that this chilling effect suppresses free-speech rather than it being a self-chosen reflective decision, freely chosen based on new information.

In my own life there have been ideas I have held, words I have used and things I have said which, at the time, I didn’t realise were hurtful or upsetting, but which, once I learnt that they were I freely chose to stop using. I wasn’t censored; I decided that the harm my speech might cause was more important than whatever personal gains I might have got from saying them. And, importantly, once I know that my words have power, and that they are upsetting or triggering to some people, I remain free to use them but must accept the consequences should I choose to do so.

Take, for example, the word “dead”. Having suffered the loss of many family members in my life, I am familiar with grief and bereavement and know many people prefer to say their loved one has “passed away” rather than died. My personal view is “passed away” is a form of denial; a way of pretending something gentler has happened than the reality. I made the decision to always say people who had died were “dead” rather than that they “passed away”, but I know that for some people my bluntness is jarring. Sometimes my using the term can upset them. I have made the decision that that risk is worth taking for my own ability to come to terms with death, but if I see others bristle at my bluntness, I will adapt my language temporarily so that they can come to terms with it in their own way. My need to say the word “dead” instead of “passed away” doesn’t trump my moral responsibility as a human being to be considerate of others’ feelings.

You can replace the word “dead” with any more offensive term - racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, etc. - and the same argument applies. No one is stopping you from using those terms; but there will be consequences. You have to weigh up how important saying those things are compared to the harm they might cause and your moral responsibility as a human being to be considerate of the feelings of other people.

Now take that speech example and add to it the idea that you are not simply saying the word, or even a whole idea, to an individual or group of individuals you know, but that you are incorporating it into an act you expect people to pay money to come out and see in order to be entertained. You now have to make the decision not only about the word/idea’s importance to you compared to the harm/upset it might cause to a known audience, but to an audience of strangers. Strangers specifically there to have a good time. Again - you can choose to include it, but you cannot include it free of consequence. You are not censored, but you, again, have a moral responsibility as a human being to be considerate of the feelings of other people. Just as your audience is free to walk out if they don’t want to hear what you are saying.

But the claims of the Arts Professional survey were not that people were unable to say obviously offensive things, but merely hold and articulate politically conservative ideas. Differences of opinion that, through merely stating agreement with them, would cause no harm to anyone.

Except that is not what the survey actually said. It said people felt unable to say such things to the people who funded them, for fear of upsetting them and not receiving funding.

This is an entirely different beast. Self-censorship, yes, but the same self-censorship that students use when choosing not to tell their teachers to f*** off when given too much homework, or that we all use when our bosses ask us to do something unreasonable yet again and still we want to keep our jobs. The structures of authority within society are hierarchical and unfair, but while they exist it stands to reason that we tread carefully with those holding the power to determine our futures. That the arts and culture sector fear conservative politics may lose them patrons speaks not to a silencing of conservative views within the sector, but merely to a lack of conservative arts patronage. Certainly within academia, well-funded right-wing think-tanks are eager to throw money at ideas which will counteract liberalism. That such funding is missing from the arts means only that those with the wealth to provide it have found better ways of having such speech be heard. Perhaps the sorts of people who come out as audiences for the arts are not those likely to be convinced? There is no right to an audience. Perhaps empty theatres are the fear that prevents certain forms of speech in the sector? Those who hold the purse-strings tend to want a return on their investment. We tend to seek refuge from the real world in art. When the conservative worldview is the real world, what refuge do conservatives need in art?

I am not denying that there are instances where vocal activists, usually on Twitter, bombard targets with calls for them to be ‘cancelled’ because of grievances real or imagined. Jon Ronson’s excellent book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, gives some harrowing accounts of lives ruined by overreactions to minor acts of offence, and, despite the abuse allegations, as a long-time fan I would have been interested to read Woody Allen’s recently cancelled memoir were I to find some way of justifying giving the guy my money again. But the few acts of overreach or questionable judgment don’t undermine the basic idea of what has been called ‘cancel culture’ but used to be known simply as boycotting. No-one has a right to our money, time or attention. If we think what they are saying is not merely disagreeable or different than our own worldview but actively harmful or damaging to us or to other groups, it is entirely reasonable - dare I say, it is our free speech - to say why we think it is harmful or damaging. And if that speech leads to others agreeing and joining the boycott, to the point that there is no longer a market for that kind of idea and the publishers, producers, sellers of that thing no longer want to be complicit in perpetuating such views, then perhaps we have simply evolved as a civilisation? After all, certain chemicals deemed poisonous for human consumption have been ‘cancelled’ following protests; as has the buying and selling of human beings as slaves; the building of gas chambers; the discrimination of people based on race, gender or sexuality; in most civilised countries, the death penalty has been ‘cancelled’, along with corporal punishment and torture. All of these things can still be spoken about, even attempted, but as our culture has changed, so have the consequences for doing so. And we are all the better for it!

Ironically, it is the free-market that we are actually talking about here: that sacred cow of conservativism. The idea that I can do what I want with my money and the market will regulate itself. If wealthy liberal arts patrons want to fund liberal arts projects, so the conservative argument goes, they should be allowed to without interference. If wealthy conservative arts patrons want to fund conservative projects, they should be allowed to do so too. And if audiences want to support one sort of work with their hard-earned money and not another, they too should be allowed to support whichever sort of art they want.

On a free-market conservative reading, if there is any silencing of conservative views in the arts and culture then this is surely because the market is speaking and saying it is not interested in hearing that point of view. Freedom of speech does not entail equal hearing. You are still free to say what you want, but you are not free to force me to pay and hear it. I’ll spend my money elsewhere.

But it is perhaps more ideologically useful to claim conservative arts projects failed because of a leftist conspiracy to silence them rather than to concede that the project simply failed to find an audience. After all, the claim that your view has been silenced actually helps to amplify it as people repeat the claims. We know from where genuine censorship happens two important things:

1) We wouldn’t know anything about the genuinely censored. If we’re talking about it, the attempt at censorship failed.

2) Once uncovered, the taboo nature of an idea makes it irresistible. No idea is more compelling than an idea you weren’t supposed to hear.

So creating a narrative whereby standard, mainstream, consensus discourse (currently the conservativism of a white, western, heterosexual male) becomes perceived as taboo and rebellious is actually ideologically useful for ensuring the continued dominance of that view. In an act of subversive brilliance it actually uses the very logic of the opposition view it is trying to discredit: drowning out the voices of genuinely oppressed minorities fighting to be heard by making a false claim to minority status in order to strengthen its dominance. And where do we hear about this supposed censorship? In the news-media which has consistently been complicit in perpetuating a conservative worldview through uncritical repetition of conservative talking-points, such as the supposed censoring of illiberal views in academia and the arts.

Needless to say, my contributions to the debate on social media changed no-one’s mind. The pseudo-discussion about this pseudo-problem, in its vacuum, rages on; the participants free to use their speech in whatever way they want until the issue is cancelled.

Author: D.McKee