Dear Carolynn

Author: Mark Bolton. Images: ChatGPT

Dear Carolynn. I have a confession to make. I’m confused. Not the kind of confused like why people loved Disco music. No, I mean the kind of confused where you watch people argue about something for years yet I still can’t figure out what the hell the fight is actually about.

The thing that’s got me spinning is ‘cancel culture.’ Not just the ‘cancel culture’ but also the cancel-the-cancel-culture culture.

Here’s where I’m coming from. If someone wants to identify as a tree, I truly do not care. And if a whole group of people want to identify as trees, then I’m happy to refer to the collective as the forest. It seems simple to me—live and let live. You do you. I’ll do me. I’ll live in a house and you live in a greenhouse. Then we can all get on with our day.

The Paradox I Can’t Unsee

The people who hate cancel culture say it’s a mob. A toxic, unforgiving mob that ruins society. They say it silences debate. It punishes thought. That it makes everyone walk on eggshells. And look—I’ve seen examples that seem to fit that description. I’m not here to say cancel culture isn’t real or never goes too far. I just choose to ignore it. But here’s where my brain gets stuck.

The people who say this, the ones who are most furious about being silenced by the mob… want to silence the mob they angrily accuse of doing the silencing. They want to de-platform the de-platformers. They want to shout down the people who shout down people. They want to organise and pressure the ‘cancellers’ out of being able to organise cancelling. And I just don’t get it.

If the problem is a mob mentality, how is organising a mob the solution? If the problem is ruining lives over disagreements, how is trying to ruin the lives of the ‘ruiners’ any different? If the problem is that no one can speak freely, why does the answer feel like making sure certain people can’t speak at all? And both sides sit evenly on both sides of a coin.

I once met a woman who said to me, “I cannot tolerate judgemental people.” I thought, ‘Okay, well nice talking to you’ and I walked away. I’ve heard the explanation. People tell me it’s the ‘Paradox of Tolerance.’ You have to be intolerant of intolerance, otherwise the intolerant people will take over. I understand the logic. I really do. At least I think I do… I mean, the truth is, the only thing I am truly sure about is that I’m unsure if I’m sure.

See, it looks to me like two mobs throwing rocks at each other and both insisting they’re the one standing for peace.

The Part That Really Makes My Head Spin

Okay, so that’s the first layer of my confusion. But there’s a second layer that gets even messier.

I watch the same people who rage against cancel culture, the ones who say we need to protect free speech and stop policing language… and then I watch them turn around and demand that people be silenced for criticising Israel.

I watch them condemn anyone who calls out the actions of the Israeli government. I watch them call it antisemitism. I watch people lose jobs, lose opportunities, get dragged through the mud for saying things like “I condemn Israel’s military actions in Gaza.” And at the same time? These same people will turn around and condemn Muslim people—entire communities, entire faiths—for the exact same kinds of things. They’ll criticise Muslim-majority nations. They’ll repeat negative stereotypes.

One gets you cancelled. The other gets nods of approval. I don’t understand how that works.

If the principle is “we shouldn’t punish people for speech,” then shouldn’t that apply to everyone? If the principle is “we need to protect vulnerable groups from hatred,” then shouldn’t that also apply to everyone?

But it doesn’t. And when I point this out, people get angry. They explain to me why it’s different. They talk about history. They talk about the difference between criticising a government and attacking a people. They talk about definitions of antisemitism. And I listen. I really do. I’m not trying to be difficult. But from where I’m sitting, it still looks like a double standard. It looks like some speech is protected and some speech is punished, and the deciding factor seems to be which team you’re on and who has home ground advantage.

What I Keep Coming Back To

Maybe that’s what confuses me most of all. Everyone involved in these fights seems so sure they’re right. The anti-cancel culture people are sure they’re defending free speech. The people they’re fighting are sure they’re defending vulnerable communities. And the people outside the Jewish/Muslim double standard are correct that Jews and Muslims are both being used for some political and media agenda.

I don’t have a tidy conclusion. I don’t have a side I’m trying to sell you. I’m not secretly arguing that cancel culture is good. I’m not secretly arguing that all Israeli’s are evil or that all Muslims are blameless.

And I guess I’m writing this because I wonder if anyone else feels the same way. Like we’re watching a war where both sides are using the same weapons, making the same arguments, convinced of their own righteousness while only one can be right and the other be wrong.

In the end, I’m lucky to be average. White, middle-class, heterosexual male who was born to not feel an unbeatable strong need to wear a dress—or have birds land on my branches. I’m lucky to live in Australia where, unlike many other western countries, we still have the opportunity to save ourselves by not turning on each other and other cultures. I use the word ‘lucky’ deliberately because it seems to me that everyone else on the planet that doesn’t fit the categories I describe is subjected to some form of discrimination in their lives.

It shouldn’t be about luck. I’m a human being like every other human being on the planet—like those before me and (maybe given AI and robotics) those after me. I don’t like Disco, and wish I could erase those horrifying days from my memory. Even with all of the Marijuana I smoked back then, it still didn’t help disco sound good. But I’m not wanting to cancel disco.

Well, maybe I am.