I am a social scientist and, as such, I feel obliged to address the issues I discuss with objectivity, though not with neutrality. I am against the control of ideas and behaviors through the mechanisms I analyze in this text, and I will try to explain why. It so happens that, in this particular case, there is a special reason for my lack of neutrality. For three years, I have been the victim of cancellation resulting from an infamous slander based on a sordid chain of false accusations against which I have been unable to defend myself because I have not been able to find a forum where I can demonstrate the falsity of this slander. The damage to my reputation and my health is enormous. I cannot, therefore, be neutral when analyzing this topic. Even so, I will try to do so as objectively as possible.

I understand cancellation to mean the formal or informal prohibition or silencing of a thought or a thinker for reasons of non-conformity with the dominant political or cultural orthodoxy, reasons that are generally hidden and replaced by others of a non-political and non-cultural nature. This type of social control of thought and thinkers has a long history. It was declared eliminated or restricted by the emergence of liberal democracy and its principle of freedom of expression, but it has regained renewed intensity in recent times with the so-called “culture of cancellation.” It implies the summary exclusion of what is considered controversial, heterodox, or simply dangerous.

Well-known examples include the cancellations of Socrates, Giordano Bruno, Baruch Spinoza, Damião de Gois, Nikolai Bukharin, Rosa Luxemburg, intellectual opponents of civil and military dictatorships of all kinds, during the McCarthy era in the US, and more recently, in the so-called woke culture and some reactions against it. In democratic societies, whose essential political characteristic is that controversial or heterodox ideas are not dangerous as long as they do not involve insults, slander, or incitement to anti-democratic insurrection, cancellation must operate through ideological devices considered non-political. The most common in the recent period have to do with ethno-cultural diversity, sexuality, and corruption.

Canceling is the antithesis of accountability. Accountability implies argumentation, contradiction, proportionality, and respect for the law, the possibility of appeal and redress. Canceling, on the contrary, implies condemning without credible contradiction, silencing, boycotting, torturing, exiling, banning, killing civilly or even physically, with disregard for the law or total manipulation of the law. In view of this, resistance or opposition in the process of accountability is immeasurably easier than in the process of cancellation.

Cancellation is the product of a certain Zeitgeist, a broad cultural, social, political, and legal environment that leaves deep and lasting marks on society, even after it has formally ceased to exist. Cancellation is never legitimate. On the contrary, accountability is all the more urgent when racism, sexism, intolerance, hatred, the spread of false ideas and news, and practices that suppress democratic rights (such as the right to vote and to freely choose whom to vote for) are prevalent.

Cancellation today

Cancellation is now associated with the prevalence of social media as a form of popular digital culture that aims to publicly shame an influential public figure through allegations of unproven violations of standards of acceptability, morality, or legality, with the goal of silencing or eliminating the influence of the targeted public figure. The prevalence of social media is such that the difference between real life and virtual life disappears, especially among young people. A new form of sociability is emerging, centered on a narcissistic individualism mirrored in the network (or networks) in which the individual is integrated. This involves the ultra-rapid fabrication of prisms of information and evaluation based on participatory trust whose roots are no deeper than the superficiality of virtual relationships.

Cancellation culture has four specific characteristics. The first characteristic is the hyperbolization of the accusation in order to turn it into a public scandal, a scandal that is all the greater the more public knowledge and influence the target has, whether they are an intellectual, political leader, “celebrity,” or “influencer.” The accusation itself does not mean scandal. It may, in fact, be met with indifference or just resentment. To become a scandal, it must be processed by the amplifiers of social networks and the media, which may have their own interests in amplifying it. In the current case, the amplifiers belong predominantly to right-wing and far-right political forces, as well as to some left-wing and far-left forces whose only aspiration is to be recognized by the right.

The second characteristic is to demand uncritical participation and to turn any criticism into sufficient reason to cancel the critic. The fear this generates is the main driver of the feedback loop of cancel culture. The floodgates of hatred from users and network amplifiers open and instantly inundate the digital space.

The third characteristic is that the denunciation of unacceptable behavior or ideas can be carried out by any individual (real or virtual) who, in doing so, becomes the accuser, judge, and executor of the sentence. As a product of cancel culture, wokeism is based on the idea that social reality is a construct dominated by power, oppression, and group identity. Those who rebel against this constructed reality are always considered the most vulnerable, the most at risk, and therefore the most authentic. I designate as the David versus Goliath syndrome the envy, not necessarily conscious, that triggers the difference in the scale of public humanity between those who denounce and those who are denounced, as well as those who propose to reverse such difference as proof that hierarchy is always unfair and that resignation is not destiny.

The fourth characteristic is the fact that cancellation, like a forest fire, spreads uncontrollably. But unlike a fire, no one mobilizes to put it out, and only a few hope that the scorched earth will eventually, after a long time, allow the fragile grass of truth to grow again, which, incidentally, few will relate to the causes of the previous fire. The initial abrupt silencing of the target and subsequent oblivion are the two hallmarks of cancel culture.

While it rages uncontrollably, cancellation merges the inner world of each participant into a virtual community that operates with crowd logic and acts as an echo chamber. Once participation has begun, anything that calls it into question becomes undesirable. The rejection of diversity and complexity is essential to the growth of the canceling community. Divergence implies expulsion and cancellation. Silence in the face of denunciation or a loss of activism in spreading it may be considered suspicious, but it does not call into question the dynamics of cancellation.

Cancellation in history: the inquisition and fatwas

Cancellation is a punishment for ideas or conduct considered unacceptable, immoral, or illegal. All societies have had means, procedures, and institutions charged with investigating the nature of ideas and conduct and imposing the appropriate punishment. Differences in means, procedures, and institutions are what distinguish societies. In this text, I will limit myself to two types of censorship and punishment mechanisms which, although created in what we call the Middle Ages, continued to have an important influence throughout the modern era and up to the present day.

These are mechanisms with strong links to the modern state, after its creation, but which have some formal autonomy in relation to it. I am referring to the courts of the Inquisition in the Catholic Church and the issuance of fatwas in the Islamic religion, although the situation in the latter case varies greatly from country to country. I do not intend to enter into the long historical debate about the origin, function, organization, and relationship with the state or civil authority of any of these institutions. I only intend to analyze the similarities and differences between the methods they use and the sanctions they apply.

The inquisition

Although it had existed since the 12th century, it was mainly from the 16th century onwards that the Inquisition took on an important role of social control, particularly with regard to sexuality and heresy (apostasy, blasphemy, witchcraft), two themes that, in different forms, frequently appear in cancellation proceedings. There were civil courts with similar functions, but the courts of the Holy Office of the Inquisition had a much greater ubiquity, territorial penetration, and social capillarity (“familiars,” clergy, itinerant judges).

The relationship with the state was close. Those condemned to death for heresy were handed over to the secular courts for them to declare and execute the final sentence. The King often attended the autos-da-fé, especially when the maximum penalty (death at the stake or by garrote) was imposed by the court of the Holy Office in collaboration with the civil court. The same close collaboration existed in the case of confiscation of goods and property.

The Inquisition Tribunal existed in Spain between 1478 and 1834 and in Portugal between 1536 and 1821. Relations between the two monarchies dictated the fate of Jews and Moors, who had freely practiced their religion for centuries. In Portugal, the persecution suffered by converts (New Christians or Marranos) accused of continuing to practice their religion in secret from 1497 onwards is well known. The persecution extended to the colonies of these countries. Examples include the Inquisition of Goa and the Inquisition of Brazil, in the case of Portugal, and the Inquisition of Peru and the Inquisition of Mexico, in the case of Spain. The victims also included those accused of practicing African religions (witchcraft) and, in India, Hinduism.

The tribunal of the Holy Office began with the “edict of grace” (later, “edict of faith”) in which, for thirty days, it accepted anonymous reports of all kinds, including rumors, gossip, and suspicions. The trust that the inquisitors placed in the informants was an incentive for opportunistic denunciation (motivated by revenge and rivalry or by the benefits that could result from the conviction of the accused). Informants with a closer relationship with the accused were particularly valued (business partners, workers in the same place, inhabitants of the same house, relatives).

The prestige that came with participating in the work of the Holy Office and the protection that would result from it led people who later became famous to be regular collaborators. This was the case with the painter Doménikos Theotokópoulos, better known as El Greco, who, in addition to painting figures of the Inquisition of Toledo, frequented the court as an interpreter and witness. The accusers were not subject to any adversarial proceedings.

The crime of heresy was considered so serious that even criminals, excommunicated persons, and the insane could denounce or testify. The most common denunciations were crypto-Judaism or crypto-Islamism, superstition, witchcraft, blasphemy, homosexuality, bigamy, Lutheranism, Freemasonry, and heresy (criticism of dogmas). Suspects were summoned before the inquisitors, and the terror was such that many confessed simply out of fear that their friends or neighbors would accuse them later. The accused were arrested and considered guilty unless they could prove their innocence. Such proof was difficult to obtain, not least because the accused did not know the details of the accusation, who had accused them, or the identity of the witnesses.

Therefore, a common possibility of acquittal lay in the accused denouncing other people. Confessions were obtained through threats of death, imprisonment, deprivation of food, and above all torture or the threat of torture, showing the instruments of torture that would be used. Over the centuries, the papacy produced several manuals on the authorization and use of torture. Torture could be applied either when the crime was not proven or when the confession was considered incomplete (basically for not having denounced other people, the so-called diminuto). The presence of the lawyer appointed by the Holy Office was a sham with no purpose of defending the accused. In fact, the said lawyer had no access to the case and often became another accuser.

The trials were secret and there was no appeal. There were three levels of punishment: penance, reconciliation, and death. Those who were penitent and reconciled were forced to wear the sambenito for months, a tunic that stigmatized them as convicts, a symbol of infamy. The most common penalties were exile, flogging, forced labor (for example, on ships), confiscation of property, imprisonment, and death by burning at the stake or garrotte. Exile served to exclude all undesirable individuals from society. The confiscation of property served not only to finance the Church (the inquisitors) and the State (to a lesser extent), but also to punish the family of the condemned, who were left at the mercy of public charity.

Fatwas

Like the judgments of the Holy Office, fatwas serve the function of social control and correction in terms of orthodoxy. But the similarities end there, since in Islam there is no centralized authority similar to the papacy in the Catholic Church. The history of the fatwa in Islam suggests that it can have three meanings: authoritative information about the Islamic religion; an opinion or consultation for a court; an interpretation of Islamic law. Fatwa is used in the Koran to mean “requesting a definitive answer” or “giving a definitive answer.” Today, the fatwa covers a vast field of legal theory, theology, philosophy, and orthodoxy, far beyond what is designated as jurisprudence (fiqh). The fatwa is not a judicial decision and covers matters far beyond the jurisdiction of the courts. Unlike a court decision, a fatwa is not binding; compliance with it is voluntary.

Given the lack of centralization in Islam, fatwas can be issued by different schools, and their authority depends on the authority of the religious leaders who issue them (the muftis). And when they issue a given fatwa, they must justify it in light of a given tradition or doctrine. The most highly qualified religious leaders (muftis) are considered “absolute” or “independent” interpreters of sharia, Islamic law. Throughout the history of Islam, there have been some very powerful muftis, including political leaders. In more recent times, the fatwa has been considered a legal opinion issued by an expert in Islamic law. In an attempt to harmonize and systematize fatwas, there are now three Councils of Islamic Ideology, one in Pakistan, one in Saudi Arabia, and one in Egypt, but their role is merely advisory and clarifying.

Fatwas are similar to the opinions of Roman jurists or the rabbinical responsa of Jewish scholars. Common to all is the fact that they consist of answers to questions, but the rhetorical style, conventional formulas, and language itself vary greatly according to the local Islamic culture. There are large collections of fatwas from the time of the Ottoman Empire and certain schools in India. Fatwas are not based on testimonial evidence or adversarial proceedings, but on the reading of textual sources and the interpretation given to them by the religious authority. Muftis do not examine the facts, but accept them as they are formulated in the questions of interpretation put to them.

Fatwas vary greatly in importance not only according to the authority of the mufti, but also according to their content. Minor fatwas contribute to social stability and the organization of current affairs, while major fatwas constitute an important statement in the general public interest on unprecedented or particularly difficult issues relating to religious legitimacy, doctrinal disputes, political criticism, and political mobilization. During the period of historical European colonialism, many anti-colonial fatwas were issued.

In the Ottoman Empire, a fatwa of 1727 authorized the printing of non-religious books, and vaccination was deemed legitimate by a fatwa of 1845. A fatwa from 1804 declared war in northern Nigeria, and fatwas from the early decades of the 19th century in India declared that country to be a country of infidels and incited Muslims to resist or emigrate. Contrary fatwas were subsequently issued.

The same contradiction between fatwas on controversial political issues also took place in Algeria during the 19th century. In 1904, the ulama of Fez issued a fatwa demanding the dismissal of all European officials hired by the sultan. The fatwa of the Ottoman sultan on November 14, 1914, declaring jihad, marked the official entry of the Ottoman Empire into World War I. In 1933, the ulama of Iraq issued a fatwa demanding a boycott of Zionist products. During the 20th century, perhaps the most famous (and infamous) fatwa in recent times is that of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, condemning Salman Rushdie to death for publishing the book The Satanic Verses and for the blasphemy, apostasy, and attack on Islam that the book contained.

According to the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, there have recently been significant developments regarding the character of the mufti, the medium through which fatwas are communicated, the types of questions asked, and the methodologies by which muftis arrive at their answers. According to the traditional principles of Islamic jurisprudence (usūl al-fiqh), a mufti must acquire a high level of specialized knowledge before issuing fatwas; however, many militant and reformist movements have issued fatwas by non-specialists, which have been widely publicized and followed. For example, in 1998, Osama bin Laden, along with four other associates calling themselves the World Islamic Front, issued a fatwa calling for a “Jihad against Jews and Crusaders.”

The fatwa proclaimed that it was the individual duty of all Muslims to kill as many Americans as possible, including civilians. In addition to denouncing the content of this and other fatwas attributed to bin Laden, many Muslim jurists have pointed out bin Laden's lack of the necessary qualifications to issue fatwas or declare jihad. In recent times, the fatwas of militant extremists (recommending suicide bombings, indiscriminate murder of passersby) are considered examples of disregard for the classical jurisprudence on which fatwas should be based. In July 2005, nearly two hundred prominent ulamas gathered in Jordan to issue a ruling recognizing the legitimacy of eight schools of Islamic law, prohibiting the declaration of any member of these schools as an apostate, and declaring that only scholars trained in accordance with the requirements of a recognized school of law could issue fatwas. One of the main objectives of the declaration, known as the “Amman Message1,” was to delegitimize fatwas issued by leaders of violent Islamic movements.

It is estimated that one-third of the world's Muslims currently live in countries with non-Muslim majorities. The demand for fatwas on issues such as attending church weddings, responding to the French ban on the hijab in public schools, or purchasing homes through mortgages has led to the controversial development of what, since 1994, has been termed fiqh al-aqalliyyat, or the jurisprudence of (Muslim) minorities. Organizations such as the Fiqh Council of North America, established in 1986, and the European Council for Fatwa and Research, founded in 1997, have sought to provide authoritative rulings that address the concerns of Muslim minorities, facilitate their adherence to Islamic law, and emphasize the compatibility of Islam with life in diverse modern contexts.

The international members of the ECFR have adopted an explicit methodology of drawing on the four main schools of law, as well as a range of other legal concepts, in order to produce collective fatwas appropriate to European contexts. For example, an ECFR decision issued in 2001 allowed a woman who had converted to Islam to remain married to her non-Muslim husband; the muftis justified this position in part on the basis of existing European laws and customs that guarantee women religious freedom. While this type of decision was welcomed by many, it was criticized by others as creating a divisive system of exceptions.

In fact, one of the most important developments has been the emergence of women as muftis and the consequent request that fatwas be issued by a mufti or a female legal expert. What has been termed “fatwa wars” reflects the intensity of political controversies that have escalated in the Islamic world in recent times. This type of polarization is not very different from the social polarization that underlies cancel culture, where the concept of “culture war” has been invoked, or the “Vatican wars,” which, incidentally, have seen some very unchristian incidents.

Cancellations, sentences of the holy office, and fatwas

The Inquisition's legal proceedings have been compared to the infamous Stalinist trials between 1936 and 1938, “the Moscow trials,” but they could equally be compared to the Volksgerichtshof, the Nazi courts of the same period. The denunciation processes of the Inquisition have also been compared to those prevalent in Russia in the early years of the Romanov dynasty in the early 17th century. There are also those who consider them to be real embodiments of the process in Kafka's fiction.

My objective is more limited. It is to analyze the cancellation produced by cancel culture with two instruments of control of thought and conduct which, although very old, have remained to this day, surviving various political regimes and the profound social and cultural transformations that have taken place in the meantime. The Tribunal of the Holy Office was abolished in the early 19th century and had been losing importance long before that, as I mentioned, but control of orthodoxy, now practically limited to members of the clergy, continues to be exercised by the Holy See through a department of the Roman Curia, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

This department is the direct successor to the department that regulated the Inquisition, the Supreme and Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office. It maintains the inquisitorial procedures of the Holy Office, based on the interpretation of sacred texts by experts (such as fatwas), and the clergy affected have few rights of defense. Convictions result in various prohibitions on clerical or theological duties, ostracism, and stigmatization.

What the three mechanisms for controlling thought and behavior have in common can be summarized as follows. All of these mechanisms deny the principles of democratic argumentation, procedural guarantees, and the fundamental rights of the constitutions that followed the American and French revolutions. None of them is based on the analysis of facts, but on the authoritarian interpretation of standards of acceptability, morality, or legality. All accept anonymous complaints to which the accused have no access. In the case of fatwas – because they are responses to specific questions – the situation is different, although the identity of the questioner may remain secret. In any case, the impact of the fatwa is equally beyond the control of those who may be affected by it, as is the case with the sentences of the Holy Office and cancellation.

The fact that the accusations may be opportunistic or false is of no importance since, once made, the accused is pronounced guilty and the possibilities of proving their innocence are very limited or non-existent. Given the prestige that comes from participating in a movement driven by central authority or the principle of the crowd, notorious people from the past, like notorious people today (political commentators, journalists, and well-known influencers), take great pains to amplify and confirm the accusations. The rewards on social media are immediate, which feeds back into the structural narcissism of the system. All three mechanisms reject the principle of adversarial proceedings. The victims of condemnation are exposed to forms of public vulnerability from which they cannot defend themselves.

There are more similarities between cancel culture and the Holy Office than between either of them and fatwas. Due to the decentralization of Islam, fatwas only exceptionally achieve the unanimity typical of both cancel culture and the Inquisition. Although the exercise of true adversarial proceedings does not exist in any of them, in Islam the fact that there are contradictory fatwas creates a form of adversarial proceedings which, without being democratic, allows a right of choice that contradicts the unanimity of the principle of the crowd that presides over cancellation or the Holy Office.

In the case of fatwas, only condemnations handed down by highly prestigious religious leaders achieve levels of consensus and unanimity similar to those of cancellation and the Inquisition. Women, intellectuals, artists, and filmmakers have been victims of major fatwas when these take on the status of judicial sentences. In these cases, decentralization makes punishments more chaotic and unpredictable and includes flogging, exile, and death (by stoning, for example).

There are more similarities between the mechanism of cancellation and that of the Inquisition. Both mechanisms of social control are driven by a highly centralized power that allows for unanimity in condemnations. In the Inquisition, centralization was institutionally guaranteed by the Holy See, while in the case of cancellation, centralization is guaranteed by the principle of the digital crowd and the instantaneous consensus and unanimity that it allows. The principle of the digital crowd, far from acting as an agent of democratization of opinion, closes the debate and shields the consensus obtained in relation to any minimally divergent position. Those who diverge are immediately considered suspicious and, depending on the era, may themselves become the target of the Holy Office or of cancellation.

For this reason, denunciation produces a syndrome of terror that extends to the entire circle closest to the denounced, whether it be their family or workplace. In theory, the maximum solidarity to which the accused could aspire would be silence, but in reality, silence itself becomes a tacit amplifier of denunciations: those who belong to the circle closest to the accused have an obligation to know more than others do. And they all do know. Silence is complicity. That is why the workplace or community proximity are the privileged fields for opportunistic denunciations, those that produce the dividends of envy—of social capital, for example, of the institutional power and prestige previously held by the accused.

What is formally required is a confession, but a confession is nothing more than confirmation, and therefore the accusation is both the starting point and the end point. In the Inquisition, torture was the great agent of confirmation. As Alexandre Herculano said, anyone subjected to torture by the Inquisition could confess to having swallowed the moon. In cancellation, torture is the very silencing imposed on the accused. Everything he says confirms both the accusation and what he does not say. He may try to make an honest self-criticism, but this always functions as the diminuto of the Inquisition. In other words, whatever its extent, it is always considered incomplete because the accusations, as they are vague and anonymous, have an elasticity and amplifiers that allow them to be increased to infinity.

The accused-convicted must be exposed to the whole of society because the aim is not to correct the accused-convicted, but to instill social terror that the same thing could happen to others. Hence the importance of sambenitos. But while in the Inquisition sambenitos operated through overexposure, in cancel culture they operate through over-concealment. The garments are now the garments of invisibility that extend to the disappearance from public space, the disappearance of their books from libraries and bookstores, their image as an attraction in the media, the elimination of their name in citations and bibliographies, to the look of contempt or hatred if he happens to appear in public space, to the whispering about who is the accused-condemned in case the passerby-partner of the occasion has not identified him.

As in the Inquisition, the penalty of cancellation begins to be enforced with the denunciation. However, there is an informality in cancellation created by the principle of the digital crowd that did not exist in the Inquisition. In that era, it was necessary to carefully measure the severity of the accusations in order to calibrate the punishment, which could be lighter or heavier. The heaviest punishments were exile, confiscation, and death. In the case of cancellation, these three punishments can overlap without contradiction. Exile can be escape to another place far away or to the same place where one has always lived. In the latter case, the usual place is the place of never. After the accusation, one is there in a totally different way: not as a place of comfort and rest for new outings or trips, but rather as a place of refuge, a safe hiding place. It is the new form of house arrest decreed by the digital crowd.

Exile means confiscation, not because of what is stolen from you, but because of what you are prevented from earning. If you were a carpenter, you no longer have orders; if you were an actor, you no longer have contracts to perform or film; if you were a writer, you can no longer publish or sell your books. Exile combined with confiscation cumulatively leads to the most severe punishment: death. Death is considered civil when the body and spirit of the accused and convicted person remain alive, but their life is secret, not because it is imprisoned somewhere, but because it is forgotten everywhere. Oblivion is a sentence of perpetual death.

Civil death slips into physical death, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, but in any case, no one notices. Only after it occurs does anyone dare to remember. But there is no resurrection because resurrection was appropriated by a human being who committed the scandal of considering himself the son of God. More courageous was the slave Rosa Egipcíaca, who was born on the coast of Ajudá, now Benin, in 1719, and died in the dungeons (or perhaps working in the kitchens) of the Inquisition in Lisbon in 1771, after writing the first book by a black woman in Brazil, Sagrada Teologia do Amor Divino das Almas Peregrinas (Sacred Theology of Divine Love of Pilgrim Souls). This resurrection, made possible by effort and sacrifice, is the only one worthy of the name. For that reason, is it so rare?

Conclusion

To illustrate the spread of cancel culture, Bromwich wrote in the New York Times in 2018 that “almost anyone worth knowing has been canceled by someone”2. This is so because, although the rules governing cancellation are ambiguous and vary with the specific climate of social media at any given moment, its effects are unambiguous: it transforms inclusion into exclusion, influential voices into silenced voices, sought-after and welcome presences into avoided and ostracized presences.

Cancellation is an instrument of ideological purging. Although the right and the far right have been more successful in using the culture of cancellation to their advantage, the left and the far left have also resorted to it, and if they do so with less intensity or less success, this is not the result of political choices, but simply of having less representation in the world of social media.

Cancel culture is not a social movement, nor does it contribute to the democratization of discourse. Social movements have historically been movements of inclusion, diversifying voices rather than silencing them, and whenever they have changed the dominant discourse, they have done so through hard political struggles and investment in much argumentation. They have taken many risks rather than riding on impunity. They did not seek to replace those in power, but rather to transform power. The voice they obtained was hard-won and against the silencers in the service of dominant power and culture. They never sought public humiliation of anyone, even though they were often the object of it. They always sought public debate and, therefore, the confrontation of ideas rather than the restriction of debate according to vague criteria of political correctness, acceptability, or legality.

Cancellation implies epistemicide, epistemic control over the epistemic diversity of society and the world. It creates abysmal lines that deprive those affected by them of the rights considered inalienable by human beings treated as fully human. It prevents the recognition of the complexity of issues and the rigorous debate that it raises. In doing so, it fosters a culture of mediocrity, dogmatism, mimicry, and scattered unanimities polarized among themselves. Education, democratic coexistence, and intersubjectivity are the great victims of cancellation. Cancellation is the breeding ground for new forms of societal and political fascism.

Notes

1 The Amman message.
2 Everyone Is Canceled.