Cancel culture, it seems, is alive and well on the right.
A Bruce Springsteen cover band called No Surrender was slated to play at Riv’s Toms River Hub on May 30, but the bar owner got cold feet after Springsteen himself criticized Trump during the Boss’ European tour. As the owner told No Surrender, it was “too risky at the moment” for the band to play their planned gig. Why? Because his conservative audience would have a problem with anything to do with Springsteen. As the owner wrote: “Whenever the national anthem plays, my bar stands and is in total silence, that’s our clientele. Toms River is red and won’t stand for his [Springsteen’s] bull—.”
And so the bar owner canceled the planned gig, not because of anything that No Surrender themselves said (which would have been bad enough), but because someone the band was covering said something that his red audience wouldn’t like.
Across the aisle, Sarah Silverman shows that cancel culture is still alive and well on the left as well. Speaking to fellow comedians, Silverman mocked the idea that “we can’t even say what we want anymore” and retorted that the only difference now is that comedians face “consequences” for saying the wrong things. This reframing of “cancel culture” as merely “consequence culture” has been pervasive on the left for years.
The twenty-first century has seen repeated swings, as first one major party and then the other claimed to support the idea of free speech. In 2003, it was the left who valorized speaking your mind, as the right tried to cancel the Dixie Chicks over their criticism of then-president George W. Bush. During the Great Awokening (roughly, 2014-2024), it was the left who tried to get people fired for speech, while polls and studies showed that the right was more supportive of free speech than the left was. Today, players in both major parties are willing to support cancel culture.
I think the deeper lesson is that neither side is any more philosophically opposed to cancel culture than the other side. As Lord Acton famously wrote, “Power tends to corrupt.” Let me explain.
In 2003, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and with the country newly at war in Iraq, the right was ascendant; and so they were the ones who tried to get their political opponents canceled, while the embattled left proclaimed the virtues of free speech. During the Great Awokening (and, especially, before Elon Musk bought X), the left had cultural and institutional power. And so it was right-wing professors who were fired or investigated, and people who expressed right-wing views were mobbed on social media. Now, with cultural power returning to the right, the right has rediscovered the virtues of cancel culture.
At the same time, comedy is still a very left-wing environment, which might give us a hint as to why Silverman is defending cancel culture in that environment. It’s possible that she’s simply a principled opponent of free speech, but it’s also possible that she would be singing a different tune if her audience was full of conservatives who were trying to cancel her for disrespecting President Trump.
When “our team” is the one that’s being stepped on, we all wish the boot didn’t exist. But as soon as our team gets power, we start to think of all the beautiful things we could do with the boot. That’s why whichever group is out of power supports free speech, only to turn around and support cancel culture as soon as they’re back in power.
So how can we actually beat cancel culture? As the examples above show, I don’t think it’s as simple as trying to vote for the ‘right’ political party. Instead, I think we need to cultivate real cultural change.
For one thing, we need to cultivate a culture of courage. When a social media mob comes for us, we should stand our ground instead of issuing the kinds of groveling apologies that only seem to encourage the mob. When our livelihood is threatened for something we said (or, even sillier in the case of No Surrender, something that someone whom others associate with us said), we should make a fuss. We should contact news outlets, as we would if we were the victims of any other kind of discrimination, and rally supporters to our cause. That’s what worked for No Surrender: once the story went viral, the owner of Riv’s Toms River Hub backed off and said that they could still play on May 30.
Cancel culture thrives on fear and groupthink, and when we act with courage, we throw a wrench into the whole censorious machine.
I also think we need to cultivate a culture of grace. Too many of us want to wear the boot because we remember what it was like to be stepped on ourselves. We feel hurt by our political opponents, and so when we get power, we want to hurt them back. Turnaround, as the saying goes, is fair play.
But while this kind of retribution might feel justified, when we all pursue vengeance, we do real harm—to ourselves and our country. When both parties use their power to support cancel culture, they chip away at the robust culture of free speech and expression that is so quintessentially American. And, because culture is upstream of politics, this chipping away might lead to a similar chipping away at the legal protections of the First Amendment. If we value our own right to speak up, then we need to stop trying to punish our political opponents for exercising that same right.
Instead of seeking retribution, we should cultivate a culture of grace for each other. Jesus of Nazareth told his disciples to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Buddhism encourages its followers to “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.” Hinduism has a similar saying: “One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one’s own self.”
Following the wisdom of these spiritual traditions is not easy. It is much easier, when we have been hurt, to try to hurt the other person in turn than it is to turn the other cheek. But while turning the other cheek may not be as emotionally satisfying in the short-term, in the long-term it is the best way to rebuild a robust culture of free speech and expression.
We all need to rediscover the virtue of letting our political opponents speak before it is too late for any of us to speak.