Cancel culture has ruined a lot of lives. It’s brought down major figures in the media, politics and American culture.
You say one word wrong or express a non-politically-correct opinion? You’re gone.
It’s one of the biggest reasons President Trump won in 2016. Americans already saw that the threat from woke progressives was no joke. They understood that cancel culture would eventually result in physical violence and tyranny.
And it already is.
The only upside for some people is that they’re making a lot of money off cancel culture.
Introducing Cancel Culture Consultants
One growing industry is cancel culture consultants, people like Eric Dezenhall who help those who’ve been “cancelled.”
“We deal with cancellations based on #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, environmental issues, so it’s been quite a minefield the past few years,” Dezenhall said, adding that the current situation where you can lose your job and be in physical danger over things you say or political positions is a gold mine for his team.
“There’s always been, historically, that fine line between holding people to account and cancel culture, but it’s never been anything like this, where it is Alice In Wonderland’s ‘sentence first, verdict after…Earlier in my career — nearly 40 years — there was some degree of deliberations. Today, allegation equals cancellation, immediately,” Dezenhall pointed out.
Cancel culture needs to be cancelled. Bring back forgiveness, grace, and understanding.
— kristen (@kristenhutch) February 9, 2021
When Did Cancel Culture Really ‘Kick In’?
According to Dezenhall, it’s hard to exactly say when cancel culture went from being a sort of rumor to an obvious reality. Things like #MeToo and the Michael Brown shooting were definite points of drama where saying the wrong thing began to do more than just make you unpopular and potentially led to loss of employment or banning from social networks.
Dezenhall admits that one of the tricky things about cancel culture is that it uses real issues but often masks itself in them in order to go after people who don’t deserve it. The problem is that sometimes people do deserve to be cancelled. So how do you distinguish?
“There is racism, there is sexual abuse. One of the things to keep in mind is you can be a horrible person and have your character assassinated. Harvey Weinstein, in my opinion, deserved it,” Dezenhall points out.
What’s the Cancel Culture Business Model?
Dezenhall’s business services don’t come cheap, and although he occasionally has helped out for free, in general it’s for people who come from rich families or organizations.
“I have done things pro bono, but for the most part you would have no way of knowing I exist if your father wasn’t a client of a blue-chip law firm. What people in my business would love you to believe is, ‘oh, you hire me, you just watch me work my magic.’ The reality is the best we can often do is turn a mountain of horse manure into a mere pile of horse manure,” Dezenhall explained.
He can help turn full-blown hysteria into a slightly calmed down situation, but he can’t erase the social media posts and anger that wells up during a “cancel moment.” Those will often stick around to haunt someone for years.
In other cases people are sneaking behind people’s backs to “cancel” them from opportunities and using cancel culture to trash talk their competitors.
“I’m seeing cases where somebody doesn’t want somebody else’s kid to get into a prep school and sends a private letter saying, you know, Johnny Smith is a Proud Boy and attends race rallies. You would never know about that. But it’s working,” Dezenhall said.
It’s clear that cancel culture has gone way too far when someone can build an entire business off it. So the next time a progressive tells you cancel culture is a myth ask them why people would pay good money to try to get away from it.
