The Illiberal Idiocy of Cancel Culture
Why We Should Not Hide the Past or Hide from It
Whenever I praised a Charlie Chaplin movie in a discussion, my friends would smirk as an indication of boredom, and they had their reasons: The sped-up gait, the cheesiness of the silent jokes, the cliche-ridden, slap-stick kind of comedy that we are kind of fed up with — in 2021. Indeed, so many had copied Chaplin over and over again while his face has been in so many TV sets and on numerous products, that even the most nostalgic of us might find his simplicity to be somewhat sour. The man who famously said that all he needed to make comedy was “a park, a policeman, and a pretty girl” had become so out-of-date just like his quote. It is, hence, so difficult for the lazy minded among us to appreciate his genius and pioneering efforts, when ones eyes are constantly accustomed to 3D imagery and dynamic cinematography. Yet, no matter how even more banal Chaplin may seem to the coming generations, his legacy must be preserved, if only for one important reason: knowledge.
History, as the knowledge of the past, has a strong tendency towards obscurity. People die, books get burned, buildings crumble, not to mention the evaporative nature of the all new digital media. And while archaeologists literally dig for knowledge in the past, most of knowledge is accumulating through preserving history for the future. Chaplin may be an easy candidate for such preservation given his neutral character, which, as far as I know, stood away from controversy. But what about someone who was not so politically correct? How can we preserve his legacy without reviving his ideals? And should we?
A child coming out of age these days may stumble upon one of Chaplin’s most popular videos on social media. In it, Chaplin is addressing the viewer with a long articulate speech allegorical to a dictator who is committing heinous crimes. The child may get interested to know more about this and he decides to visit one of the most prominent Nazi buildings in Nurenberg, the city which oversaw Hitler’s skyrocketing rise to power. He might be amazed by the grandiosity of the building, he might even wonder about how a man of modest origins rose so quickly to be one of the most notorious in the world. He will probably be shocked to learn that a woman was the main person behind portraying him as a god during the Nazi propaganda events. He will probably cringe at the sight of scared and obedient men around him. He would definitely feel sympathetic with all the victims of his later heinous crimes during the Holocaust. He would certainly be relieved to learn that he died like a rat, hiding in his bunker.
This lesson in one of the most awful chapters of humanity is only possible because the awful legacy of Hitler is preserved in the right context. Imagine if mentioning him was a taboo and we, as a progressive culture who strives for liberty and justice, decided that the mere indulgence in this chapter of history might encourage others to follow the same notorious path or at least open our children eyes to the bad side of humanity! What would remain of knowledge about those events? Just like anything that is forced out of the mainstream, it would go to the underground.
The so called Dark Web is full of manifestos and propaganda books glorifying all various kind of crimes. Those products were understandably and rightfully cancelled from the mainstream culture for direct incitement of violence. However, because we pretend they don’t exist, they found a refuge in the society’s shadows in all their rawness, getting easily in the hands of those who feel like outcasts and are prune to develop anti-social behavior, yet far from the hands of those who can expose the hollowness of their messages. The lack of a society-level discourse about their contents means that we are handicapped from putting them in their right context as a product of a deranged minds that must be confronted. Instead, they flow freely under the surface, attracting those who don’t feel as a part of the society through the luster of the forbidden. An anti-social, lone-wolf would feel special acquiring such knowledge; embracing those beliefs to the point of action only comes next.
Hence, it is important for a liberal society’s mainstream to be wide enough to allow the bad currents of opinion to surface as well as the good ones, given room to the sailors to handle the social ship towards the calm waters while studying the effect of the turbulent torrents and limiting there impact. The other option would be, of course, letting them thrive in the dark until the waves get too high to ignore and adjustment becomes impossible, which is not in the common interest nor is in the essence of liberalism.
Mind you, liberalism as an idea came to light in order to allow peace to thrive on the basis of diversity and inclusion. Regression to tyranny and exclusion should only be confined to the tiny spots where the societal fabric is under direct threat — with emphasis on the words direct and tyranny. It is more like treating cancer: the doctor would cut the least necessary part of the body around the infected area to allow the whole to thrive. No one would desire a doctor who would go on a cutting frenzy to limit a potential comeback of the tumor. The rest of the body is protected through treatment, not with exclusion. Similarly, in a society where the direct dangers are rightly excluded, the indirect ones must be contained. This, in the true spirit of liberalism, would keep the fabric well-connected while exposing any potential weak link early on.
In that sense, a direct incitement of violence should be banned and punished, while a contextual and historical treatment of a direct incitement of violence should be allowed as long as its dangers towards society are exposed as such. A racist relic from the past shouldn’t be cut-off or destroyed, but rather displayed in the right context of rudimentary and animalistic behavior of those who used to call themselves masters in the past, and to appreciate the recent social progress of humanity through liberalism and its inclusive force of all colors and backgrounds. A dictator’s or a colonialist’s statue shouldn't be brought down crumbling in the streets by angry mobs in a momentarily symbolism of freedom, but should be recontextualized inside the museums of Human Hubris as a permanent symbol of human evolution through the irony of exhibiting an idealized stature of the past as an object of ridicule in the present.
What remains between the amusing and the abominable from history is the mix of them. If an old work of literature has an overall good message, yet, given the context it came from, had some elements which we would consider racist and vulgar these days, how should we treat it? Should we cancel it entirely? Should we edit out the bad elements? Or shall we put it in its context, exposing the hypocrisies and prejudices, while still appreciating the good elements it has to offer? I am of the latter opinion. Think of it like cigarettes: if we ban them, we all know that people will get them from the underground market with higher risk and for higher, untaxable prices. Same happened with alcohol during the age of prohibition. Moreover, when a movie or a video game has some excessive sex or violence scenes that serve a purpose in the plot, we spread caution at the beginning of the movie rather the banning the movie altogether, knowing that an adult would be able to discern fantasy from reality.
The present is full of offensive materials that are well condoned by the society, which begs the question: why are we so hypersensitive when it comes to the past? Can’t we think of women of the past as active contributors to their societies in their own context? Can't we admire The Pianist while being convinced that Roman Polanski is a terrible character? Can’t we look at the statue of Columbus as reminder of how a man who practiced ethnic cleansing was so admired in the recent past and yet still think that the sculptor who did the statue did a good job? — granted, such a statue should be in a museum and not public squares.More generally, can’t we just develop a critical eye rather than fearful one?
Recently, it was announced that the enterprises of the famous children books writer and illustrator, Dr. Seuss, has decided to cancel some of his books from publication, most notably of them, If I Ran the Zoo, for racial caricatures and undertones — which are indeed tasteless and racist. The decision was loaded by liberals in many newspapers and websites, yet no one of them to my knowledge seem to have read what’s between the lines. Why would the beneficiaries hurt themselves by limiting their sales? Except that they are not. In the world of marketing, trends are the most important indicators for a sales strategy. If the trend is towards hyper-sensitive political correctness, then so be it, with the additional perk of preserving the man in a purer image for the future generations. So not many people in the future would know the flows of Dr. Seuss, which means more potential sales in the long run. It’s basically a matter of brand preservation.
It’s true that things get tricky when addressing children. After all, they may not fully grasp the words of caution or the context surrounding a certain picture or word, but if we don’t allow them to develop a critical sense of the past early on, we might find many of them repeating the same things we tried to hide from them in the future. A recent controversy about censoring the word “nigger” from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn arose since the book is regarded as largely anti-racist. The proponents rightfully said the word is so offensive, those against censorship rightfully said that the book should be understood as a whole and in its original state. Perhaps for the case of Dr. Seuss it’s more difficult to defend the original work since it’s obviously racist. However, I would imagine that adding a note in the new treatments of the books indicating the prejudices in the images and why Dr. Seuss used racist elements and why it is wrong would be far more beneficial than hiding the fact that he used them; first, because knowledge shouldn’t be hidden; second, because by that we would prevent idealizing a character that shouldn’t be idealized. Instead of removing his controversial books from school libraries, they should be the center of discussions about racism and colonialism.
Unlike Chaplin’s movies, life is no black-or-white and so our judgments shouldn’t be. It’s a sign of intelligence of an individual to judge objectively without generalization. Similarly, for a society, it’s a sign of political progress to make contradicting ideas serve the same purpose, which should be common prosperity. At the same time, someone can be bad yet channeled into a good cause, and something can be wrong yet repurposed for something right. It’s a brave new world without idols, without ideals.
That being said, it’s important to state that liberty of some should never compromise the security of others, and if a material is witnessed to be too threatening to the life of one individual, it shouldn’t be allowed to circulate. It is the responsibility of the society to protect all participants in the Social Contract. Only a truly liberal framework would allow dynamic laws to adjust accordingly to such needs based on contextual information and temporal evidence.
Some may argue that liberalism is all about living in harmony without even indirectly offending others. Ironically, that’s exactly what conservatives say, and they are the ones more consistent with themselves in this matter. If you think that for harmony to persist, one must ban knowledge and police opinions, then you are a conservative who is afraid of change and not a liberal who is embracing it. It doesn’t matter in that case if you hold the most socially progressive ideas, because if you don’t allow them to be tested and even negated, you are not positioned for further progress. Liberalism is not the opposite of conservatism; in fact, it is the umbrella under which conservatism, progressiveness, and all other political ideas can survive in harmony while negating each others. Ideally, facts would emerge from such a societal discourse.
Liberty comes with uncertainty as the price. If we are afraid of regression to the past, we will never be able to make it to the future.
