Cancel Culture: Democracy’s Silencing Evil

In the digital age, speech is more often penalized by online audiences than by the courts. The prevalence of social media has globalized public forums, voicing an overwhelming abundance of opinion and broadening the opportunity for civil discourse engagement. However, the risks posed by “cancellation” produce a coerced silence that is enforced, not by governmental power, but through fear of public condemnation. Controversial speech, once reprimanded by a physical audience alone, gains fiery opposition from the masses who condemn the speaker conjointly. Through “cancel culture,” netizens act as a decentralized censoring body. With disagreement treated as though it were a crime, the masses pass judgment and enforce retribution against a speaker labelled the instigator of dissent by virtue of stating an unpopular opinion.Although cancel culture does not violate the First Amendment, Justice Brandeis’s dictum in Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927) reveals that socially-coerced censorship can undermine democratic self-government by replacing free discourse with fear. Brandeis’s principle not only applies to the law’s protection of free speech against the chilling effect but also to democracy’s protection from an unstable civic environment that cowers when challenged. 

Brandeis’s concurrence argues that speech is necessary for truth and that willful free expression is what forms the basis of democratic legitimacy. He writes, “Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.” [1] Here, Brandeis emphasizes how societal progress occurs when norms are challenged, which is only made likely when free citizens are unafraid to authentically contribute their opinions to society. However, this progress is only achievable when the ability to speak without the threat of harm or ostracization is widely respected. Cancel culture has seen significant reputational damages dealt that can be a detriment to one’s career and social status. Even though the state is not an active oppressor, silence is still socially enforced and indirectly undermines personal liberties. Hence, the fear that drives cancel culture may establish a “social order” where risk of offense or falsehood is averted, but which may come at the cost of wholly free expression. 

The true danger of cancel culture is not just that it uses fear to repress but that it lacks the informal structure of due process, allowing the most feared corruptions of the law to unofficially manifest in the social sphere. Brandeis warns that, “...order cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government.” Cancel culture all but assumes the infallibility of majority opinion and justifies the inducement of fear to protect what is popularly accepted at a given time.  The lives of its targets—their career, reputation, livelihood—can be irreversibly damaged to an extent that is disproportionate to the alleged offense of their speech. [2] Cancel culture risks replicating the injustices that legal due process was designed to prevent. There have been several historical examples that show this danger. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution senior Communist Party Leader Peng Dehuai was removed from office, publicly humiliated, and abused in prison for privately criticizing the Great Leap Forward in a letter to Mao Zedong. [3] His speech outraged the public and was treated as moral betrayal. He was punished without fair trial or procedural checks like being represented by legal counsel, much like the victims of online cancel culture. [4] Additionally, during the Second Red Scare, Charlie Chaplin was accused of being a communist and was effectively exiled from the United States with the revoking of his reentry permit after several of his films contained, what some viewed, as anti-capitalist themes. [5] Chaplin was rebuked for an unsubstantiated ideological affiliation which produced no reasonable or present danger, much like suggestive speech that can be taken out of context online without due consideration. Both cases illustrate what Brandeis forewarned on the federal legal scale: punishment of speech without imminent danger is unjustifiable. Brandeis asserts that, “Discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine.” Repression of speech provokes limited expression, which creates societal divisions that contribute to resentment, polarization, and civic disharmony. Protecting free speech from fear is just as important in society as it is in the law. 

Some may argue that cancel culture can be an effective mechanism for holding others accountable, particularly those whose speech exhibits racism, sexism, or other hateful doctrines. However, “fear of serious injury”—possible offense or emotional triggering—cannot justify free speech and assembly. Brandeis contends, “..advocacy of violation, however reprehensible morally, is not a justification for denying free speech where the advocacy falls short of incitement and there is nothing to indicate that the advocacy would be immediately acted on.” Suppression of speech is only justified if there is “reasonable ground” to believe that a danger or emergency is “imminent.” Therefore, even some deeply offensive speech may still fall under Brandeis’s protective framework. Cancel culture’s affinity to incite fear rather than simply correct speech shows how suppressing immoral expression can be more damaging than the offense it tries to rectify. The instant reputational damage caused by social shaming can cause participants to question moral speech, and prevent it as a result. Brandeis attests that speech’s function is “to free men from the bondage of irrational fears”, the kind that compelled such conduct as in the Salem Witch Trials. If fear is perpetuated through censorship, then even allowable speech  may be indirectly silenced out of the fear of possibly being received as condemnable.

Thus, cancel culture when considered with regard to Brandeis’s democratic principle of a plurality of speech over coerced silence, finds itself at risk of hindering free expression and inducing a chilling effect against all opinionated speech. Brandeis expresses the important duty of every citizen to encourage free and open discourse. He claims that the solution to irrational fear and damaging ideas is more speech, not subduement. Brandeis states, “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” Only by embracing all speech, especially that which one might despise, can democratic principles truly be upheld. A citizen who silences others loses the ability to resist when he himself is silenced. In a constitutional republic, citizens have the privilege of self-governance without the law. Cancel culture risks becoming an abuse of that privilege and if it continues, it may remain a cultural threat to liberty that the law alone cannot defeat. 

Edited by Sophia Berg

Endnotes

[1] Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927).

[2] Dershowitz, Alan. Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020.

[3] Brown, Clayton D. "China's Great Leap Forward." Education About Asia 17, no. 3 (Winter 

2012), 29-34. https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/.

[4] Teiwes, Frederick C. Review of Peng Dehuai and Mao Zedong, by Zheng Longpu and Jurgen Domes. The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no. 16 (1986): 81–98. https://doi.org/10.2307/2158776.

[5] Homer, Aaron. "The Real Reason Charlie Chaplin Was Once Exiled From The US." Grunge. Last modified June 20, 2022. https://www.grunge.com/901027/the-real-reason-charlie-chaplin-was-once-exiled-from-the-us/.