Post by Rabbi Neil on Jul 17, 2020 21:56:28 GMT
On September 9th 2016, Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said the following to one of her rallies: “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables… They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic – Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.” I was already worried about her chances to win the election, despite the polls at the time, but when she said that, I immediately knew that she would lose and very publicly shared my opinion at the time. She was giving voice to much of liberal America which had turned from dialogue to dismissal, from interpersonal debate to personality destruction. She didn’t cause Cancel Culture, but she certainly gave voice to it. Unfortunately, since then the term “Cancel Culture” has been misappropriated to the point that in public dialogue it has almost lost any meaning. It is important for us as Jews, though, to explore what Cancel Culture is and how we should respond to it from a Jewish perspective.
The term Cancel Culture has its origins in the right-wing of society. Shock-jocks and comedians were used to saying totally outrageous things in order to get ratings but once in a while they would say something so beyond the pale that their sponsors would leave or their shows would be cancelled. Instead of taking responsibility for what they had said, they then posed as victims of the mob of political correctness, and thus the term “Cancel Culture” was born. In creating the term, these individuals never had to reflect on their own homophobia, racism, anti-semitism or outrageous and hurtful conspiracy theories through which they oppressed other people but could instead claim to hold the moral high ground against the baying irrational mob. Just as the term “political correctness” is a right-wing way of trying to excuse immoral behavior and speech, so the term “cancel culture” started as a right-wing way to blame the social consequences of immoral behavior on anyone other than the perpetrator of that behavior. I think back to some of the offensive British comedians when I was a child – Jim Davidson who used to have a black character called Chalky that we as privileged white people thought was very funny but would be embarrassed to watch now. Bernard Manning made totally inappropriate jokes about race, sex and religion. Both of these comedians slipped from being some of Britain’s top comedians to being comedic pariahs. “It’s the PC Brigade,” their supporters would complain (and, indeed, still do a generation later) but it wasn’t, it was the consequences of social change through which society no longer totally revolved around cis, white men. What we were finally seeing on a national level was that what is humorous to one group of people could be deeply offensive to others. Of course, just because someone might be offended by what we say doesn’t mean that we should limit what we say. It does mean, though, that there might be consequences to us for having been offensive. Liberal British comedian Stephen Fry shares his belief that being offended is just a whine and that being offended gives us no actual rights. That’s true, but it does give us permission to ask others whether or not they realize that what they’re saying is hurtful. We may not have rights from being offended, but we may ask others to uphold the social contract of do no harm unto others. The problem with offensive comedy, though, was highlighted in Britain with the TV show Till Death Do Us Part, which featured a totally objectionable, racist character called Alf Garnett. The idea of the show was to ridicule his racism, which it did very well. However, the actor who played Alf Garnett, Warren Mitchell, found it very troubling that he kept having people come up to him to praise him for giving voice to their views. He would tell them that the point of the show was precisely to mock those repugnant views, but they didn’t understand. By giving voice to racism, even in comedy, he had inadvertently normalized and validated it for some people. The show wasn’t cancelled but it left an interesting and important question about whether or not being offensive not only breaks the social contract but also normalizes offensive speech. Once offensive speech is normalized, offensive actions may not be far behind. That, of course, assumes the worst of people but then the tale of Alf Garnett, and the number of people who didn’t realize it was a pastiche, exactly proves the worst of some people. In a similar way, when Alex Jones started spreading the repugnant conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook shooting was faked and that the people involved were actors, a veritable swarm of right-wing Americans started harassing the victims to the point that some had to move and hide from public view for their own safety. Being offended is often the first stage in being physically attacked, something which the Jewish community knows only too well from thousands of years of anti-semitism. Sermons became pogroms, for example. Turning to the Jewish community and saying, “I see that you’re offended but that gives you no rights” ignores the disturbing human reality of hate speech turning into hate acts. Therefore, there clearly is moral justification in restricting hate speech. That’s not a culture of cancellation, that’s protecting the most vulnerable in our society from the most prejudiced and violent.
Unfortunately, protection of the most vulnerable in our society has clearly turned into a form of violence itself. As Natalie Wynn, the left-wing trans YouTuber clearly demonstrates in her piece on Cancel Culture, the Twitterverse has allowed condemnation of questionable behavior to turn into attacking specific individuals for any kind of contrary opinion, a problem that Bari Weiss highlighted in her letter of resignation from the New York Times this week. Wynn demonstrates very clearly the process of trashing individuals today. First comes the presumption of guilt, then abstraction, and then essentialism. She demonstrates with key examples from Twitter how criticism of a person’s action becomes abstracted to a criticism of all of their behavior and then ultimately to criticism of their very being. In other words, there is a shift which sometimes happens within only a matter of hours, from someone saying or doing something offensive to the Twitterverse tarring everything they do as offensive to ultimately saying that they are an evil person. So, for example, one Tweet that seems homophobic then almost instantaneously leads to statements that the person is a homophobe. Wynn ties that into the pseudo-moralism and schadenfreude of taking down celebrities that brings pleasure to so many people, and that, in turn, leads to the issue of forgiveness, which is where this topic becomes so relevant for Jews. A celebrity who apologizes for saying or doing something that they realize was offensive to others is assumed to be insincere and only apologizing in order to hold onto their celebrity. Teshuvah – repentance, atonement – is not allowed by the mob. By the time they’ve gone through the first three stages of guilt, abstraction and essentialism, the celebrity in question is irredeemable. This, Wynn points out, is the result of dualism, of a belief in good and bad and nowhere in between. Thus all people deemed bad are not only irredeemable, but are all in the same basket… a basket of deplorables. The murderer and the person who tweets something and then apologizes for it later after they realize their mistake are all held in collective scorn with little distinction in between despite their acts being so profoundly different. Instead of helping people learn from their mistakes, the mob throws anyone who makes an error into public stocks where their guilt is presumed and where anyone who passes by just throws rotten fruit. There is no question that Twitter has created a nameless, faceless mob who mercilessly trash anyone who dares to deviate from their approved social narrative. Back in 1976 feminist Jo Freeman saw this problem already starting to form, and in her book Trashing, the Dark Side of Sisterhood, expressed concern by saying, “It is not disagreement; it is not conflict; it is not opposition. These are perfectly ordinary phenomena which, when engaged in mutually, honestly and not excessively, are necessary to keep an organism or organization healthy and active. Trashing …. is manipulative, and excessive. It is occasionally disguised by the rhetoric of honest conflict, or covered up by denying that any disapproval exists at all. But it is not done to expose disagreements or resolve differences. It is done to disparage and destroy…. Whatever methods are used, trashing involves a violation of one’s integrity, a declaration of one’s worthlessness, and an impugning of one’s motives. In effect, what is attacked is not one’s actions, or one’s ideas, but one’s self.” The sick irony of all this is that the vulnerable often end up becoming the abusers. Through the anonymity and mob mentality which Twitter has helped make real, confronting racists and homophobes became trashing anyone who wasn’t extremely liberal. To quote Jon Ronson in his book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, as he addresses the problem of online mob mentality using deliberately provocative terminology, “The snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche.” And that’s a serious social and moral problem of the modern age for which none of us were prepared. Liberals who were once the epitome of tolerance have themselves often become not just intolerant, but abusive, online. In trying to combat repugnant intolerance and violence of the right, many on the left have also resorted to extreme measures and became similarly repugnant and violent. And I do not use those words lightly, but that much is clear to anyone who watches Twitter thrashing of liberals by other liberals, that even include threats of violence, and that have even resulted in celebrities taking their own lives. This is then also termed Cancel Culture.
The problem is that the name Cancel Culture was originally a deliberate attempt by the right to avoid the consequences of offensive speech. It is used, in fact, to hide deliberate abuses of others. So, for example, when a statue of an offensive human being is finally torn down, the right claim that it’s just Cancel Culture. I think it’s no coincidence that the phrase has taken hold right now, when a deeply offensive, morally repugnant President is facing an uphill struggle for re-election. Where Hillary invalidated the issues of vast swathes of conservative voters with her “basket of deplorables” comment, Trump invalidates the issues of vaste swathes of liberal voters by saying they’re just participating in Cancel Culture. In both of those statements, the actual issues that people might have that necessitate dialogue and nuance are ignored. They’re now accused of just participating in trendy whining. Anyone who votes against Trump is, in this mindset, just participating in Cancel Culture, and that’s obviously not the case - they’re voters with a strong sense of communal morality who are repulsed by the President and his immorality. Just as Trump supporters embraced being called Deplorables, so the liberals in this country are proud of being called Social Justice Warriors. Personally, I see one as far more appealing than the other as a term for group identity! Regardless, the problem is that from its beginning Cancel Culture has been a term used to avoid any kind of discussion about why something is problematic, and what can be done to change it. It is a dismissive term. So, when some liberals call to Defund the Police, which is a perfectly sensible call to use less funds on policing and more on social programs that would mean less work for the police, those who accuse liberals of Cancel Culture say that they’re trying to end all policing. Of course, that is what some are saying, but nowhere near the majority. In such an instance, the term is used to avoid dialogue.
What we have, then, are actually two simultaneous uses of the term Cancel Culture. The first is a way of avoiding consequences of offensive actions and speech by blaming the victim’s reaction and accusing them of overreaction. That term, used particularly by Republicans in this country, is used to guard traditional – usually meaning white, cis, male values – against change. It is not a culture at all, it is a defence, and a poor one at that. It is an avoidance of any discussion that may lead to cultural progress. It is a way of resisting change, or of consequences. At the same time, though, there is a culture that has unfortunately become refined on Twitter which has been termed Cancel Culture but is actually far more sinister. It should probably be called Trashing Culture and it is endemic within Twitter, and it is a culture that allows people to sling mud from afar without consequence by virtue of being able to post anonymously without dialogue. Tweets aren’t dialogue, they’re statements, which means that a culture has grown of making declarative statements – such and such a person is a racist, or a homophobe, or a transphobe. The result is not human growth, but the establishment of personal and communal boundaries, and corresponding punishment for variance or daring to question those boundaries. I actually believe that using the phrase Cancel Culture in that instance profoundly plays into the hands of conservatives while ignoring the enormous social issues of Twitter. Twitter brings out the worst in humanity by allowing us to form mobs of like-minded individuals as we have never done before. So, in one instance the term Cancel Culture is used to prohibit change, in the other it is used to describe those who prohibit individual expression.
How to respond as Reform Jews? Well, it is quite clear that some things need to be cancelled in this world so that there can be human progress. Indeed, wasn’t this very country founded on cancelling the unfair treatment of the colonies? It would be ridiculous to imagine people standing at the Boston harbor watching the tea being destroyed and complaining of this being another example of Cancel Culture! Sometimes, we have to stand up against immorality and call for it to end. Sometimes, we have to stand up against the idolization of the past, or against patriarchal norms that ignore the needs of much of the rest of society. In such times, our indignation is praiseworthy and essential for human progress to happen. Those are the times when we behave like Abraham going to war to rescue Lot, because sometimes we need to take a stand against that which is wrong and in order to help those who are oppressed. At the same time, though, we have to be sure that our indignation doesn’t turn into righteous self-satisfying destruction of others. That’s when we become more like God wiping out Nadav and Avihu for offering strange fire in the Tabernacle. Torah teaches us hocheach tochiach et amitecha (Lev. 19:16) – you shall surely rebuke your neighbor. It does not say that we should destroy our neighbor’s reputation. Indeed, in the laws of shmirat halashon, of guarding the tongue, the Chofetz Chaim is very clear what we must do before saying anything negative about another person. That includes talking to them, raising the concern with them, rebuking them if necessary, being sure that what we’re saying is unquestionably true without any elaboration or exaggeration. That’s not what happens on Twitter or other some other social media platforms. Judaism is very clear that teshuvah, atonement, is accessible to us all. It is clear that there are some sins that only God can forgive us for, and sending an offensive tweet definitely is not one of those things. If intolerance is learned, as I believe it is, then it can be unlearned. That means that we have a moral responsibility as Jews to help guide people away from the path of immorality. Jewish law is very clear that public humiliation must only be a last resort in order to help try to convince someone that what they are doing is wrong. Public humiliation is, indeed, seen in Jewish law as being akin to murder.
As such, I believe that there is an authentic Jewish response to Cancel Culture. For those who use the term to restrict social progress, to try to dismiss the concerns of others, especially those who are finally getting a voice after an eternity of oppression, I think we have a duty to confront the term Cancel Culture and to call it out for the tool of social stagnation or even regression that it is. On the other hand, for those who use the term to draw attention to online bullying of anyone who expresses variant opinions or who makes a genuine mistake, I think we have to rename it to recognize it for what it is – Cultural Mob Abuse that can cost the livelihood, and even the lives, of people who express their individuality, usually without ever intending to cause harm to others. With Cultural Mob Abuse, we must move beyond dehumanization and back into dialogue, especially with those with whom we disagree.
The difference, ultimately, is intention. Some seek to offend and then cry Cancel Culture when they are called out. Others, though, seek to honestly express themselves in public and then cry Cancel Culture when their very being is torn apart in public and they are forever branded as being bad people. Ignorance is not the same as hatred. We should cancel hatred, we should change ignorance.
This week, then, may we do what we can to cancel deliberate intolerance, verbal and physical violence against others. May we give those who have genuinely made mistakes the opportunity to learn from us, to dialogue with us, to grow with us. May we not have our concerns about immorality ignored but let us also not express those concerns in hateful, polarizing ways. Let us be wary of those who have let themselves down in the past, but let us give them the opportunity to atone and to learn. Let us show them the consequences of harm to others from their words and let us give them the opportunity to change. For if we do not give them that opportunity, how could we expect it of ourselves in the forthcoming High Holy Day season? May we not try to cancel the humanity of others, but cancel their errors through gentle rebuke and education. And may we be open to such rebuke ourselves for the mistakes that we have made. May such be God’s will, and let us say, Amen.
The term Cancel Culture has its origins in the right-wing of society. Shock-jocks and comedians were used to saying totally outrageous things in order to get ratings but once in a while they would say something so beyond the pale that their sponsors would leave or their shows would be cancelled. Instead of taking responsibility for what they had said, they then posed as victims of the mob of political correctness, and thus the term “Cancel Culture” was born. In creating the term, these individuals never had to reflect on their own homophobia, racism, anti-semitism or outrageous and hurtful conspiracy theories through which they oppressed other people but could instead claim to hold the moral high ground against the baying irrational mob. Just as the term “political correctness” is a right-wing way of trying to excuse immoral behavior and speech, so the term “cancel culture” started as a right-wing way to blame the social consequences of immoral behavior on anyone other than the perpetrator of that behavior. I think back to some of the offensive British comedians when I was a child – Jim Davidson who used to have a black character called Chalky that we as privileged white people thought was very funny but would be embarrassed to watch now. Bernard Manning made totally inappropriate jokes about race, sex and religion. Both of these comedians slipped from being some of Britain’s top comedians to being comedic pariahs. “It’s the PC Brigade,” their supporters would complain (and, indeed, still do a generation later) but it wasn’t, it was the consequences of social change through which society no longer totally revolved around cis, white men. What we were finally seeing on a national level was that what is humorous to one group of people could be deeply offensive to others. Of course, just because someone might be offended by what we say doesn’t mean that we should limit what we say. It does mean, though, that there might be consequences to us for having been offensive. Liberal British comedian Stephen Fry shares his belief that being offended is just a whine and that being offended gives us no actual rights. That’s true, but it does give us permission to ask others whether or not they realize that what they’re saying is hurtful. We may not have rights from being offended, but we may ask others to uphold the social contract of do no harm unto others. The problem with offensive comedy, though, was highlighted in Britain with the TV show Till Death Do Us Part, which featured a totally objectionable, racist character called Alf Garnett. The idea of the show was to ridicule his racism, which it did very well. However, the actor who played Alf Garnett, Warren Mitchell, found it very troubling that he kept having people come up to him to praise him for giving voice to their views. He would tell them that the point of the show was precisely to mock those repugnant views, but they didn’t understand. By giving voice to racism, even in comedy, he had inadvertently normalized and validated it for some people. The show wasn’t cancelled but it left an interesting and important question about whether or not being offensive not only breaks the social contract but also normalizes offensive speech. Once offensive speech is normalized, offensive actions may not be far behind. That, of course, assumes the worst of people but then the tale of Alf Garnett, and the number of people who didn’t realize it was a pastiche, exactly proves the worst of some people. In a similar way, when Alex Jones started spreading the repugnant conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook shooting was faked and that the people involved were actors, a veritable swarm of right-wing Americans started harassing the victims to the point that some had to move and hide from public view for their own safety. Being offended is often the first stage in being physically attacked, something which the Jewish community knows only too well from thousands of years of anti-semitism. Sermons became pogroms, for example. Turning to the Jewish community and saying, “I see that you’re offended but that gives you no rights” ignores the disturbing human reality of hate speech turning into hate acts. Therefore, there clearly is moral justification in restricting hate speech. That’s not a culture of cancellation, that’s protecting the most vulnerable in our society from the most prejudiced and violent.
Unfortunately, protection of the most vulnerable in our society has clearly turned into a form of violence itself. As Natalie Wynn, the left-wing trans YouTuber clearly demonstrates in her piece on Cancel Culture, the Twitterverse has allowed condemnation of questionable behavior to turn into attacking specific individuals for any kind of contrary opinion, a problem that Bari Weiss highlighted in her letter of resignation from the New York Times this week. Wynn demonstrates very clearly the process of trashing individuals today. First comes the presumption of guilt, then abstraction, and then essentialism. She demonstrates with key examples from Twitter how criticism of a person’s action becomes abstracted to a criticism of all of their behavior and then ultimately to criticism of their very being. In other words, there is a shift which sometimes happens within only a matter of hours, from someone saying or doing something offensive to the Twitterverse tarring everything they do as offensive to ultimately saying that they are an evil person. So, for example, one Tweet that seems homophobic then almost instantaneously leads to statements that the person is a homophobe. Wynn ties that into the pseudo-moralism and schadenfreude of taking down celebrities that brings pleasure to so many people, and that, in turn, leads to the issue of forgiveness, which is where this topic becomes so relevant for Jews. A celebrity who apologizes for saying or doing something that they realize was offensive to others is assumed to be insincere and only apologizing in order to hold onto their celebrity. Teshuvah – repentance, atonement – is not allowed by the mob. By the time they’ve gone through the first three stages of guilt, abstraction and essentialism, the celebrity in question is irredeemable. This, Wynn points out, is the result of dualism, of a belief in good and bad and nowhere in between. Thus all people deemed bad are not only irredeemable, but are all in the same basket… a basket of deplorables. The murderer and the person who tweets something and then apologizes for it later after they realize their mistake are all held in collective scorn with little distinction in between despite their acts being so profoundly different. Instead of helping people learn from their mistakes, the mob throws anyone who makes an error into public stocks where their guilt is presumed and where anyone who passes by just throws rotten fruit. There is no question that Twitter has created a nameless, faceless mob who mercilessly trash anyone who dares to deviate from their approved social narrative. Back in 1976 feminist Jo Freeman saw this problem already starting to form, and in her book Trashing, the Dark Side of Sisterhood, expressed concern by saying, “It is not disagreement; it is not conflict; it is not opposition. These are perfectly ordinary phenomena which, when engaged in mutually, honestly and not excessively, are necessary to keep an organism or organization healthy and active. Trashing …. is manipulative, and excessive. It is occasionally disguised by the rhetoric of honest conflict, or covered up by denying that any disapproval exists at all. But it is not done to expose disagreements or resolve differences. It is done to disparage and destroy…. Whatever methods are used, trashing involves a violation of one’s integrity, a declaration of one’s worthlessness, and an impugning of one’s motives. In effect, what is attacked is not one’s actions, or one’s ideas, but one’s self.” The sick irony of all this is that the vulnerable often end up becoming the abusers. Through the anonymity and mob mentality which Twitter has helped make real, confronting racists and homophobes became trashing anyone who wasn’t extremely liberal. To quote Jon Ronson in his book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, as he addresses the problem of online mob mentality using deliberately provocative terminology, “The snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche.” And that’s a serious social and moral problem of the modern age for which none of us were prepared. Liberals who were once the epitome of tolerance have themselves often become not just intolerant, but abusive, online. In trying to combat repugnant intolerance and violence of the right, many on the left have also resorted to extreme measures and became similarly repugnant and violent. And I do not use those words lightly, but that much is clear to anyone who watches Twitter thrashing of liberals by other liberals, that even include threats of violence, and that have even resulted in celebrities taking their own lives. This is then also termed Cancel Culture.
The problem is that the name Cancel Culture was originally a deliberate attempt by the right to avoid the consequences of offensive speech. It is used, in fact, to hide deliberate abuses of others. So, for example, when a statue of an offensive human being is finally torn down, the right claim that it’s just Cancel Culture. I think it’s no coincidence that the phrase has taken hold right now, when a deeply offensive, morally repugnant President is facing an uphill struggle for re-election. Where Hillary invalidated the issues of vast swathes of conservative voters with her “basket of deplorables” comment, Trump invalidates the issues of vaste swathes of liberal voters by saying they’re just participating in Cancel Culture. In both of those statements, the actual issues that people might have that necessitate dialogue and nuance are ignored. They’re now accused of just participating in trendy whining. Anyone who votes against Trump is, in this mindset, just participating in Cancel Culture, and that’s obviously not the case - they’re voters with a strong sense of communal morality who are repulsed by the President and his immorality. Just as Trump supporters embraced being called Deplorables, so the liberals in this country are proud of being called Social Justice Warriors. Personally, I see one as far more appealing than the other as a term for group identity! Regardless, the problem is that from its beginning Cancel Culture has been a term used to avoid any kind of discussion about why something is problematic, and what can be done to change it. It is a dismissive term. So, when some liberals call to Defund the Police, which is a perfectly sensible call to use less funds on policing and more on social programs that would mean less work for the police, those who accuse liberals of Cancel Culture say that they’re trying to end all policing. Of course, that is what some are saying, but nowhere near the majority. In such an instance, the term is used to avoid dialogue.
What we have, then, are actually two simultaneous uses of the term Cancel Culture. The first is a way of avoiding consequences of offensive actions and speech by blaming the victim’s reaction and accusing them of overreaction. That term, used particularly by Republicans in this country, is used to guard traditional – usually meaning white, cis, male values – against change. It is not a culture at all, it is a defence, and a poor one at that. It is an avoidance of any discussion that may lead to cultural progress. It is a way of resisting change, or of consequences. At the same time, though, there is a culture that has unfortunately become refined on Twitter which has been termed Cancel Culture but is actually far more sinister. It should probably be called Trashing Culture and it is endemic within Twitter, and it is a culture that allows people to sling mud from afar without consequence by virtue of being able to post anonymously without dialogue. Tweets aren’t dialogue, they’re statements, which means that a culture has grown of making declarative statements – such and such a person is a racist, or a homophobe, or a transphobe. The result is not human growth, but the establishment of personal and communal boundaries, and corresponding punishment for variance or daring to question those boundaries. I actually believe that using the phrase Cancel Culture in that instance profoundly plays into the hands of conservatives while ignoring the enormous social issues of Twitter. Twitter brings out the worst in humanity by allowing us to form mobs of like-minded individuals as we have never done before. So, in one instance the term Cancel Culture is used to prohibit change, in the other it is used to describe those who prohibit individual expression.
How to respond as Reform Jews? Well, it is quite clear that some things need to be cancelled in this world so that there can be human progress. Indeed, wasn’t this very country founded on cancelling the unfair treatment of the colonies? It would be ridiculous to imagine people standing at the Boston harbor watching the tea being destroyed and complaining of this being another example of Cancel Culture! Sometimes, we have to stand up against immorality and call for it to end. Sometimes, we have to stand up against the idolization of the past, or against patriarchal norms that ignore the needs of much of the rest of society. In such times, our indignation is praiseworthy and essential for human progress to happen. Those are the times when we behave like Abraham going to war to rescue Lot, because sometimes we need to take a stand against that which is wrong and in order to help those who are oppressed. At the same time, though, we have to be sure that our indignation doesn’t turn into righteous self-satisfying destruction of others. That’s when we become more like God wiping out Nadav and Avihu for offering strange fire in the Tabernacle. Torah teaches us hocheach tochiach et amitecha (Lev. 19:16) – you shall surely rebuke your neighbor. It does not say that we should destroy our neighbor’s reputation. Indeed, in the laws of shmirat halashon, of guarding the tongue, the Chofetz Chaim is very clear what we must do before saying anything negative about another person. That includes talking to them, raising the concern with them, rebuking them if necessary, being sure that what we’re saying is unquestionably true without any elaboration or exaggeration. That’s not what happens on Twitter or other some other social media platforms. Judaism is very clear that teshuvah, atonement, is accessible to us all. It is clear that there are some sins that only God can forgive us for, and sending an offensive tweet definitely is not one of those things. If intolerance is learned, as I believe it is, then it can be unlearned. That means that we have a moral responsibility as Jews to help guide people away from the path of immorality. Jewish law is very clear that public humiliation must only be a last resort in order to help try to convince someone that what they are doing is wrong. Public humiliation is, indeed, seen in Jewish law as being akin to murder.
As such, I believe that there is an authentic Jewish response to Cancel Culture. For those who use the term to restrict social progress, to try to dismiss the concerns of others, especially those who are finally getting a voice after an eternity of oppression, I think we have a duty to confront the term Cancel Culture and to call it out for the tool of social stagnation or even regression that it is. On the other hand, for those who use the term to draw attention to online bullying of anyone who expresses variant opinions or who makes a genuine mistake, I think we have to rename it to recognize it for what it is – Cultural Mob Abuse that can cost the livelihood, and even the lives, of people who express their individuality, usually without ever intending to cause harm to others. With Cultural Mob Abuse, we must move beyond dehumanization and back into dialogue, especially with those with whom we disagree.
The difference, ultimately, is intention. Some seek to offend and then cry Cancel Culture when they are called out. Others, though, seek to honestly express themselves in public and then cry Cancel Culture when their very being is torn apart in public and they are forever branded as being bad people. Ignorance is not the same as hatred. We should cancel hatred, we should change ignorance.
This week, then, may we do what we can to cancel deliberate intolerance, verbal and physical violence against others. May we give those who have genuinely made mistakes the opportunity to learn from us, to dialogue with us, to grow with us. May we not have our concerns about immorality ignored but let us also not express those concerns in hateful, polarizing ways. Let us be wary of those who have let themselves down in the past, but let us give them the opportunity to atone and to learn. Let us show them the consequences of harm to others from their words and let us give them the opportunity to change. For if we do not give them that opportunity, how could we expect it of ourselves in the forthcoming High Holy Day season? May we not try to cancel the humanity of others, but cancel their errors through gentle rebuke and education. And may we be open to such rebuke ourselves for the mistakes that we have made. May such be God’s will, and let us say, Amen.