Is cancel culture good or bad?
Dan Gough,
16th Aug 2020
Tags:
Life
Blog
Culture
People's opinions
Social Media
In the last few years, there has been a growing trend across social media called: Cancel culture.
Shaming individuals or companies online.
It is a form of online shaming individuals or companies for comments that they have made on social media. It can be accusations of spreading violence, hate speech, or being politically incorrect.
There will be those that push for the cancelled person to be silenced. Meaning there is a possibility of them losing their job in the process, or being de-platformed from mainstream channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
This modern wave of cancel culture seems to be rooted in identity politics, and it has been on the increase since Donald Trump won the election in 2016.
Alex Jones and Info Wars lost their channels.
The most notable case was In 2018 when Alex Jones and Info Wars lost their channels on platforms like Facebook and YouTube.
Cancel culture has slowly been increasing over the recent years, and it has been magnified in 2020 during the Covid-19 crisis and Blak Lives Matter protests.
An example is with J.K Rowling. She posted some tweets about women and gender, which drew attention from people around the world, and numerous articles were written about it.
Trump himself indulged in cancel culture.
However, this case went further than just targeting J.K Rowling. An author was also affected and lost her deal with her publishers because she liked one of the tweets. Even Trump himself indulged in this when he withdrew America’s WHO membership.
Cancel culture can be used at either side of the political spectrum, and it can be pushed so far that any bridge between them is burnt.
The question is though, is it right? Do you keep pushing till the bridge is burnt, without mercy?
Christianity by its nature has an objection to cancel culture. It follows the teachings of Jesus, and he tells us that we should love our neighbours as ourselves.
It's rooted in the idea of mercy, grace, and forgiveness because human nature is inherently broken and sinful.
Jesus gives us grace and mercy.
When we accept Jesus into our lives he gives us grace and mercy, and we are forgiven of all past sins; those times you have gossiped about someone or lied to your parents.
Therefore, when people hurt us, we should choose to love our neighbour and do our best to forgive them and show them mercy, just as Jesus has done to us.
If we loved our neighbours as Jesus loves us, we wouldn't want to attack them, assault them in public, or seek to destroy their reputations in character assassinations. Instead, we would build or repair the bridge between us.
We should strive towards what Jesus said: loving our neighbour.
In the end, if we keep pushing against everybody that disagrees with us, we will end up in a segregated society. Instead, we should strive towards what Jesus said: loving our neighbour and forgiving them, even when they harm us.
