If you cancel instead of engaging with your political and ideological competition, then it is you, not them, that has succumbed to hate.
Sadly for cancel culture, by definition, it can’t learn this lesson, and so self-immolation is inevitable.
Amid staff turnover and clashes at Guardian Australia, journalists in the UK have reportedly been considering a vote of no-confidence in editor-in-chief Katharine Viner, who previously helmed the Australian edition when it launched back in 2013.
Ms Viner – who in 2015 became the 204-year-old newspaper’s first female editor-in-chief and was a popular choice at the time – has been firefighting at the newspaper for several years.
The seminal disputes that have divided the political left, such as the transgender issue and the Israel-Palestine conflict, appear to have been equally, if not more divisive, within the Guardian newsroom.
The Scott Trust, a £1.3 billion ($2.6 billion) philanthropic body, is supposed to protect the newspapers’ ethos and values, including free access to content. Tortoise, though, proposes to put The Observer’s content behind a paywall.
…The editors may find a unifying force, though, in the return of Donald Trump to the White House. His election prompted Ms Viner to offer counselling to her staff – and more recently the paper has decided to quit X, the social media platform owned by vocal Trump backer Elon Musk.
But even more importantly, Mr Trump’s ability to generate outrage translates into higher traffic to websites such as the Guardian. And if the bottom line improves, then Ms Viner’s job – should she keep it – might start to get a lot easier.
You can’t cancel your way to influence, I’m afraid. All it does is piss off the mainstream and drive it to the populists.
Only engagement and debate win the middle. This means thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, not just antithesis.
As universities churn more and more pre-cancelled minds, fake left media is on a high-speed collision course with society, a rising populist right, and its own failing business model.
