The word “cancelled” has acquired a new and all-too-familiar meaning. One writer says it started as a joking reference to breaking off a dating relationship. Now it’s about seeking to abolish some person, thing, or organization from public life. Its aim is public shaming and silencing, or when taken to its extreme, total reputation demolition. How strange that something so destructive would have grown to become a “culture.”

Cancel Culture is Mob Justice

Cancellation submits to no courts, no deliberative body, no authorities. Its verdicts are both pronounced and executed in social media, by the power of mob-think. It’s no wonder its verdicts and punishments are so sudden, so haphazard and so irrational.

Therein lies its chief problem: Mob justice is notoriously and ironically unjust. Innocent people hang, guilty ones go free. The list of victims is long and tragic. So I propose a simple moral appeal, made upon a simple basis, one that is supposed to be of central importance to those who fuel the culture of cancellation — namely, equality.

Unequal Justice is Injustice

Is cancellation applied equally? The easy and obvious answer is no. Consider some of those convicted, compared to some who got off with a warning.

There was the case of Chinese-American Professor Bright Sheng, at the University of Michigan. In a seminar analyzing the works of Shakespeare, he showed the 1965 version of Othello, starring Lawrence Olivier in blackface. This was in keeping with British stage practice going back four centuries. There was an outcry; a stunned Sheng wrote a letter of apology. But they called for his head. He was removed from the course, and disciplined by the university.

Emmanuel Cafferty was fired unjustly from his job with San Diego Gas & Electric after driving near a BLM rally, where apparently he was involved in a confrontation with someone there. That individual followed him as he drove away, and took a photo of Cafferty with his arm hanging out of his truck window, cracking his knuckles. The photo was sent to his employer with the claim that it was a secret “white power” sign. Cafferty was stunned and confused when he learned he had been terminated.

Grant Napear had a popular drive-time sports radio show and was the long-time play-by-play voice of the Sacramento Kings. One tweet changed all that. In response to a prompt about BLM, Napear tweeted “All lives matter … Every single one.” Twitter mobs came after him. He was swiftly fired from his radio gig, and suspended from his job with the Kings. After enough pressure he finally resigned from that job as well.

Around that same time, USC Professor Greg Patton was teaching a Zoom class on the topic of cross-cultural communication, when he said something deemed worthy of cancellation. It was not even something in English. Having lived in China, Patton was explaining that they use filler words similar to the English words like “uh” or “um.” But the Chinese word he used sounded to some students like a racial slur in English. And that was all it took. Patton was removed from that course and placed on suspension.

I could go on for days with examples like these.

Contrast that with former Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D). While he was in office a photo surfaced from Northam’s days in medical school, in which he appeared as one of two persons (he could not or would not say which). He was either (a) the one in blackface, or (b) the one dressed as a Klansman.

Naturally Northam apologized, people all over social media condemned the photo. Unlike so many others, though, Ralph Northam escaped cancellation. He remained in office as if it had never happened.

Joe Biden’s wayward son Hunter also proved immune to cancellation after text messages showed him making repeated use of the “n-word.” Like many of his father’s gaffes on issues of race, that which would have ruined others’ careers has had only the mildest repercussions for him.

It’s the same in Hollywood, where many an actor’s career has been canceled on the flimsiest of grounds. By contrast, actor Matt Damon himself says he only stopped using gay slurs last year. It appears not to have affected either his box office status or his film opportunities.

The singular attribute that these lucky, privileged few have in common is their very public political views and alliances. Which leads me to a similar observation about cancellations of historical persons and groups.

Selective Cancellation of History

When the mobs of 2020 turned their attention to historical figures, notably in the physical form of statutes, they ended up defacing or toppling representations of nearly everyone. The framers, the early presidents, founders of the historic universities, namesakes of business and industry — none was safe. Even U.S. Grant, who won the war for the anti-slavery side, was defaced. Lincoln the emancipator couldn’t escape it. For crying out loud, even Frederick Douglass’ statue was torn down.

Yet there is one prominent, powerful, enduring political organization that remains uncancelled despite a more racist history than any other. I’m talking about the Democrat Party.

Knowing as we do how easily persons and organizations — then and now — can be cancelled for the slightest missteps, ask yourself how a major political party has remained impervious to cancellation with a resume like this one:

• Defended slavery to the death, and willing to go to war for it.
• Gave the terrible Dred Scott decision (thanks to the 7 Democrat-appointed justices).
• Despised Lincoln (later murdered by a Democrat activist) for emancipation.
• Opposed the 13th, 14th, & 15th Amendments on behalf of freed blacks.
• Opposed and undermined Reconstruction and integration.
• Founded the Ku Klux Klan.
• Initiated lynchings, poll taxes, black codes and Jim Crow.
• Opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• Promoted eugenics-minded abortion campaigns targeting black populations.
• Degraded black families and communities by creating the welfare state.
• Continue miseducating black school kids with cultural Marxist nonsense.

If ever the cancel mobs were looking for a specific organization to “hold accountable” for the egregious sins of their history, I can’t think of one more deserving.

Yet I am not saying the Democrat Party should be “cancelled” on this account. It’s wrong no matter who suffers it. I am simply wondering why those who so fervently do believe in cancellation would be so unjust in their application of it.

Why this inequality? Why give some people’s careers and reputations the social or vocational death penalty for politically incorrect misdemeanors, while giving the most vile offender in American history your full allegiance, support, money and votes?

Thankfully America is bigger than the Democrat party, and there were enough “good guys” to keep that party from finally having its way during all these episodes.

If there were no other reason to call out the cancel culture industry as an irrational and immoral insult to our national intelligence, this true injustice alone would suffice.

Clint Roberts is an adjunct professor at the University of Oklahoma and Southern Nazarene University. He teaches courses in philosophy, ethics and religion.