Imagine a society, sometime in a distant and undetermined past, where the stretches of modern memory fail to reach, buried in archaeology and hidden in antiquity. Imagine being transported to that time—to a prehistoric village. As you walk down the market square, you find a procession of people, there is so much noise, you move closer to investigate the source of the ruckus.
The crowd that caught your attention is making a procession, and at the head of this procession is a man and his wife with two children, weary-looking and frightful. They have the attention of the accompanying crowd who hurl insults and scathing remarks at them.
Others physically torment the family of four throwing rancid food at them, dumping dust on the woman’s hair and shoving the man to move his feet faster, while tearing the clothing off his body. They were careful though to not inflict serious bodily harm.
Another group—a group of women accompany the crowd, sing and clap their hands sometimes at the faces of the family of four. They danced stylishly to the beat of the song—though unaccompanied by musical instruments was not wanting in melody and rhythm—they must have done this a dozen times before.
The family is escorted to the edge of the village and the elder leading the crowd announces to the family that they are never to return to the village. The crowd hails the verdict with celebration and threw more dirt on them one last time for good measure.
You are surprised by this occurrence, it is bizarre to your twenty-first-century mind, curiously, you pull aside a bystander and ask them to explain to you what is happening, they tell you that the family has been banished from the village never to return on pain of death because they had committed an abominable act and this was their punishment, the punishment not only serving to chastise the erring family but to appease the gods who may otherwise unleash their anger on the village for the abomination done.
The villagers by doing this, have not only saved themselves from a possible calamity but also dished out punishment to the family for flouting social norms. The nature of the family’s offence was not criminal to warrant death or imprisonment, but severe enough to have the social consequence of ostracization.
Congratulations, you have just witnessed a prehistoric event of cancel culture, of de-platforming. You have seen this event through the eyes of an extinct dinosaur because this event is just as old.
Even though this scenario was completely made up and fictional, the probability that such an event or a close approximation of such an event happened is significant and probably true. There are numerous examples from cultures all over the world to support that claim.
Human beings have been engaged in ostracizing and banishing erring members of their tribe for as long as civilization has existed, which makes the current climate of cancel culture nothing novel or original.
There are records throughout human history of such banishments happening and one doesn’t have to go as far as the imaginary scenario painted at the beginning of this write up to find such examples.
During England’s colonial past banishment and transportation were forms of punishment for criminals, involving the relocation of criminals to other colonies (1).
In colonial America, Englishmen who married African or native women were banished from their colonies (1).
As late as the 1980’s, California banished a parolee giving him a one-way bus ticket to Florida. The US Constitution does not prohibit banishment as long as the punishment meet the substantive and procedural requirements of due process.
Many African tribes practised banishment in the past and some may very well still do today. It wasn’t just the act of expelling a person from a community but the shame being associated with the process of banishment which usually carries more weight as it is an embarrassment to the person and their families.
You may ask what business does this outmoded practice have to do with cancel culture? Well, it’s the same thing, it’s only wearing a different garb and going by a different name today. We humans haven’t changed in our basic nature, we just have more gadgets, and deep within each of us is a soul that is old as the first man that walked the earth.
His idiosyncrasies still course through our veins and though we may claim to be more civilized than our caveman ancestors, we are very much the same as he was. Shorn of our modern technology we are indistinguishable from our forebears.
Because the world has become digital and more connected, we are more or less living in a global village connected by the internet serving as well paved giant highways. People share their lives on social media and others can remotely be a part of it.
The internet has created a virtual community that rivals an actual community in validity and even surpasses it in size and influence, such that a person from one side of the globe can be just as connected with another person on the opposite side as though they were neighbours living in the same physical community.
Communities by their nature have rules, sometimes unwritten that their members are supposed to abide by and that fact is no less true for an online community. Breaches against these rules are dealt with swiftly sharply and mercilessly. Cancel culture is the modern-day equivalent of banishment or ostracization of the past.
However, there are a few significant differences between the cancel culture of today and the banishment or ostracization of the past.
The first difference noted is that the gods that need appeasing have been replaced by the god of outrage that now resides potentially within every individual with a smartphone or keyboard and being worshipped by the cult of the “woke” on the cathedrals of Twitter, Facebook and the likes.
This bloodthirsty god demands frequent sacrifices to satiate his humongous appetite and his adherents with fervour serve up their victim’s still-beating heart—Inca style to this outraged god.
Another notable difference is that people are being cancelled at times not for what they’ve done, but for what they’ve said, for holding a certain idea or voicing a controversial opinion. While people in the past have had the option of moving to another village and possibly starting a new life, today because of the interconnectedness of the world powered by the internet, the cancellation follows you everywhere you go and there is no place to hide.
While cancel culture has been instrumental in holding to account truly bad people like Harvey Weinstein and R Kelly, it has done damage in unwarranted situations as was the case of Johnny Depp cancelled for alleged wife battery—while the actual jury is still out, cancel culture had pronounced a verdict and dished out its punishment to Depp whose career may never recover from the assault.
The most notable difference, however, is that the cancelling of today is being done by a vocal minority without the consent of the larger society—the larger society being forced into an oath of silence as this vocal minority hold the culture hostage.
A prime example is the ongoing cancellation of Dave Chappelle. Even though Dave Chappelle’s primary audience loved his work, and the society in general and I dare say everyday trans people seem to have no issues with the supposed offensive jokes, these activists have deemed it fit that their right to be offended trumps every other person’s right to be entertained.
Cancel culture isn’t a new phenomenon and it isn’t going anywhere either, in a hundred years we may have another name for it, but it’s still going to be the same thing, and would still be driven by similar motivations. Cancel culture is always going to be with us.