Trump’s Crusade Against Critics Is So Much Worse Than “Cancel Culture”

To use one of Obama’s favorite phrases, let’s be clear: “Cancel culture” refers to the prosecutorial and puritanical style of liberalism that became popular on the internet during the second half of the Obama administration and intensified during Trump’s first term, when the algorithms rewarded outrage but we were all still relatively new to the power and incentives of social media. It was a bad vibe. Discursive mistakes—insensitive jokes, ill-conceived tweets—could attract a mob of internet denunciation. The term could be overused, at times seeming to imply that people were out of line in criticizing celebrities and other powerful people for abusive behavior. But at its worst, cancel culture undermined solidarities, encouraged the bullying of some vulnerable people, and drove others to the right. Even worse, some of its targets lost their livelihoods.

This last aspect of cancel culture was its most pernicious, and at the time I called it “‘You’re Fired!’ liberalism.” (Yes, I was invoking The Apprentice.) I argued that while trying to get opponents dismissed from their jobs was an appropriate tactic for the right, given their apparent comfort with the cruelly precarious conditions for employees under neoliberal capitalism, it was unworthy of the left and would only expand the “anxious, resentful electorate that put Trump into power.” Unfortunately, I was right about that.

As misguided as “cancel culture” was, though, that’s not what Trump and his minions are up to today. Yes, the right’s leading influencers, from Vice President JD Vance to Laura Loomer, have whipped up the MAGA mob to get people—not only public figures like Jimmy Kimmel but public school teachers and crossing guards—fired from their jobs for opinions on Kirk that it deems unacceptable.