The Psychology of Leftist Cancel Culture
A Summary of the Psychological Literature on Left-wing Cancel Culture
Ring-wing Cancel Squads
I have been abreast of the ‘right-wing cancellation’ discussion the past couple weeks, from whenever Trump got earsnicked; that surreal day.
With intrigue I watched
and debate whether it necessary to flatten the left with their own tools. With deepening intrigue I watched Scott Alexander, rationalist-extraordinaire, get involved, whereupon summarised the whole affair. I even reread Richard Hanania’s article he wrote a little while ago, arguing that men have become cowards when it comes to speaking their minds (something that appears so painfully true in my own life)1.I usually stay aside of politics, unless it concerns art or Free Speech. My Psychology PhD, as you may know by now, concerns the psychological effects of this fundamental right.
Before I continue, it’s worth stating I am strongly in favour of Free Speech. Those who know me in person understand the things I say, the jokes I make, the places I go, to be among the most extreme of people still claiming sanity. For a while, I have been wondering whether I should write a piece called, “How to Set the Overton Window.” As habit, I push boundaries of what could be said, and what should be said. My enemies, if I have such a thing, are those who wish ideas and jokes be silenced. By doing so, they crush both truth and joy; a fatal combination.
Over the past two weeks, the arguments for and against cancelling the radical left have been well worn. Most agree the behaviour to be immoral, and especially when conducted by a man, undignified and rather pathetic. But most also agree, that in some extreme cases, like when one incites violence, clearly defames another person, or is repeatedly harassing another person, cancellation, or at least censorship, is necessary. Yet, all three variations of ‘gone too far’ are protected by the law in Western countries. So what is it, exactly, I believe should be added to the conversation?
Recently, I watched
’s podcast episode on Unherd. The focus of the conversation was her failed defamation case against Luke Turner. The details of how this all unfolded, the character of Mr Turner, whether Nina should have ‘just let it go’, and why it is sometimes necessary to read extremist literature, are all reasons one should watch it - yet all reasons I won’t discuss now. What intrigued me, given I study this stuff, was the question she asked:“Who are the people … doing the censoring and the cancelling?
It is a question I will try to answer today.
Given
’s initial piece was called ‘Cancelling the Cancellers’, I’ve decided to dedicate this post to those lovely people, the ‘cancellers’. I begin by outlining Eric Kaufmann’s analysis of how Wokeness rose, my speculative theory for why ‘cancelling’ is as powerful as ever today, and end with what I know about the psychology of reputation destruction (censorship and cancellation).The Rise and Rise of Cancel Culture in Material Wokeism
The history of the radical left’s takeover and control of institutions, is often told in different ways. Richard Hanania, for instance, argues that Wokeness was born from the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the introduction of affirmative action policies to achieve in Lyndon Johnson’s words, “equality of result.” The result, beside from a sharp uptick in crime, divorce rates, and fatherlessness for the black communities (as documented by Thomas Sowell), was for Shelby Steele, the passing of moral authority from the white man to the black man; the admission of guilt for slavery meant the white man had no place to dictate morality and therefore policy.2
Personally, I lean on
’s analysis, that our current intellectual malaise is but the third of three ‘great awokenings’ over the past 300 years, the first being American Protestantism (1725 - 1750), and the second the Pentecostalist Azuna Street Revival (1815 - 1840). Today’s ‘awokening’, he defines as “cultural socialism”:…. cultural socialism … calls for the redistribution of resources, power and self-esteem from ‘oppressor’ to ‘oppressed’ race, gender and sexual identity groups (Kaufmann 2022). [It] also includes an emphasis on protecting such groups from expansively-defined harms, including subjectively experienced emotional ‘traumas’ known as ‘micro-aggressions’. This arguably stems from what Haslam (2016) terms ‘concept creep’ in psychotherapy, involving the medicalisation of formerly everyday emotions and behaviours.
Kaufmann traces several movements that helped form the sinking anchor that is today’s great and diverse society (I’ve discovered he’s got a Substack where he shares excerpts from his new book, Taboo - check it out). Here, I’ll just mention those relevant to modern leftist cancel culture.3
In the 19th century the use of ‘bourgeoise’ as a slanderous term by the ironically privileged and narcissistic Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, helped initially tile the road.4 By the 1930s, radicals liked to dispose of the popular artists from the ‘American Scene School’, like Thomas Hart Benton, by labelling them “fascists”. As Kaufman writes, “Here [we have] the added feature of ‘cancel culture’ in which the definition of a term like fascism undergoes concept creep in order to silence competing forms of artistic expression.”
Cancel culture and reputation destruction is far more effective if the accused has committed sacrilegious acts. To the radical left fundamentalist, the rise of cultural socialism in the 1960s marked the consecration of various different words in reference to their oppressor-oppressed victimology complexes. The first, and arguably, most effective, was being white and therefore forever ‘racist’. Kaufmann quotes Susan Sontag, writing in 1966 in the Partisan Review:
‘The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone—its ideologies and inventions—which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself… This is a passionately racist country; it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future’.
To the slanderous word ‘racist’, later puritanical waves added ‘sexist’, ‘homophobic’, and the most recent, ‘transphobic’. Being labelled one of these words, especially in the left-leaning institutions, is a reputational death sentence. One can interpret these actions under Rene Girard’s view of the role of sacrifice in religion, "a sacred obligation to be neglected at grave peril".5 To the radical leftists, you are being sacrificed to their multi-coloured God, or as
might put it, the Eye at the End of Time:Their Church of Woke is the secular faith of progress in the name of social justice conceptualized as liberation from all unchosen bonds of birth and biology, all watched over by the purity spiraling judgement of the eschatological Eye at the End of Time. Pride parades are its festivals; the succession of Days of Remembrance and Days of Celebration its liturgical calendar; the prismatic pennant of pederasty its sacred banner; transsexuals, its monastic flagellants; bottom surgery, its mortification of the flesh; the Climate, its Earth Mother; the enslavement of Africans, its Original Sin9; Civil Rights, its Exodus; the Holocaust, its Passion; the Austrian painter, its devil; The Science, its scripture.
If you’ve ever been on a university campus, this is the world we now live in. 6
As Kaufmann has noted elsewhere, the rise of this new secular religion has been accompanied by a massive demographic change in many institutions - women have started playing the corporate and political game.7 The growing feminisation of institutions and the making illegal of men’s traditional way of settling differences (physical dueling), alongside the rise of Wokeism, is creating a culture where censorship, gossip, and social exclusion, is more condoned than it once was.
The Normalisation of Indirect Aggression (Or the Criminalising of Direct Aggression)
Male and female humans (and animals) differ on average in how they express aggression. Males, because of their larger body size and greater strength, are more likely to use direct aggression - they stand and fight. Females, because of their smaller size and need to stay alive (to protect their young), are more likely to use indirect aggression - they gossip and verbally backstab.8
Not so long ago, men settling differences by way of physical challenge was condoned. Dueling was considered honourable, even gentlemanly. Today, our police mummy has jumped in and told us naughty-boys this is uncivilised. (Of course, there are many benefits making illegal lethal violence between men; most of all, men don’t needlessly die when they have a disagreement.) For women, however, it was sometimes necessary to tell a powerful other they have been wronged. They may have lacked both the physical strength and social positioning to ‘get one back’.
As men were tricked into thinking settling their differences by physical confrontation was barbaric instead of honourable, women, as a result of the industrial revolution, later technological advances such as the pill, and as Mary Harrington describes it, the victory of feminism of freedom over the feminism of care, sought to gain the same social positioning as men. They wanted to work at the same companies (not the dirty, gross ones though); they wanted to run the same countries.
But women would have to play by the rules of men, as men, throughout the latter half of the 20th century, still dominated proceedings. “Snitching ain’t gonna work here, honey. In fact, you’ll get crushed if you even try that shit.” In most cases nothing came of it, but occasionally, the discouragement of women to use their only way to ‘get one back’, meant truly despicable men, like Harvey Weinstein, could get away with being a serial rapist.9
Then the internet was invented.
This new technology, combined with a rapidly progressing fundamentalist ideology - material wokeism, and increasing number of power-seeking women, finally flipped the dynamic in universities and workplaces. Not only would reputation destruction cause area of effect damage over the victim’s community; now, the area of effect was over the entire world. Whether or not the victim was guilty of their crimes, it became the most effective measure to ‘get rid of someone’. When one’s reputation is destroyed, they are destroyed; as Roger Brown says in the film Headhunters:
“Reputation is everything.”
Humans are social animals. Your reputation is a psychological abstract that exists in the minds of everybody you know, or more precisely, everybody that knows you. Add to that reputation “racist”, “misogynist”, “conservative”, and good luck rising in Woke hierarchies.10
Those who revel in indirect aggression are having a field day. Using anonymous handles and/or organising mobs without fear of any government intervention, they scourge the names of people both guilty of bad things and those who really aren’t guilty of anything at all. Direct aggression is considered uncivilised and against the law, but indirect aggression … well, so far that’s helped the final takeover and power maintenance of the institutions by the left. What I believe then to be the thrust of
’s article, is that this isn’t going to change until the both sides suffer the dreaded consequences of cancellation. A bipartisan agreement that indirect aggression sucks ass needs to occur before using what is said on one’s instagram and facebook, as reason to terminate someone from their job, is illegal.Beside from there likely being a large part of the right who think cancellation tactics are pathetic and immoral, for right-wing cancellation tactics to work, three things need to happen (forgive me, if you’ve heard these before):
The right needs to become more puritanical and dogmatic.
The right needs to produce is own consecrated words (outside of traditional Christian taboos), based upon the left’s classic oppressed-oppressor complex. The way I see this happening, is how the white working class (and more broadly, the entire working class) are now being judged as the new ‘oppressed class’, similar to classic economic Marxism. The ‘Elites’ are the old ‘bourgeoise’, and being slandered one may lose you favour.
The right, perhaps the most important, needs, not a share of the power, but a control of culture. Without it, most cancellation attempts simply won’t work unless in specific, isolated areas.
If they occur, well at least the top two, you can count me as an enemy. I despise dogmatism and victimhood; each of their dark shadows threaten to consume both truth and morality. Admittedly, I am an optimist and at times an idealist; yet I do believe the anti-intellectual, anti-artistic, Macroculture movement of our time, material wokeism, need not be back-broken using the methods of rogues and assassins, but of nobles and aesthetes who confront their foes head on without dirty tricks.
But let’s look into the psychological breakdown of those who censor and cancel.
Hopefully by exposing their characters, one will never want to become them.
The Rogue Cancer Stage 1: Censors
A few days ago I described censors and cancellers as ‘rogue cancers’. Like a malignant tumour, they chew upon a healthy and vibrant intellectual environment, slowly degenerating and destroying it, sometimes out of a desire to do good, but sometimes out of pure malevolence. If one isn’t willing to identify and electrify the problem organ, hardcore radiotherapy that shit, then the cancer will indeed kill its host.
The first sign you’ve got a malignant tumour, is when people start to “sshh, sshh” you, state things like “you can’t say that”, or “that’s like cultural appropriation” [you listening to Eminem].
Stage 1 of course, is censorship; the desire to silence ideas, jokes, words, and phrases one thinks are immoral, they don’t like - or, which is more likely than both of those - because all their friends say it should be silenced, too.
In my view, the desire to censor is on a spectrum. A survey of 42,684 New Zealanders defined two types of individuals at either end - ‘censors’ and ‘tolerators’. ‘Censors’, those that endorsed banning offensive speech to minority groups (a key ideological addition that impairs their findings, I believe11), and banning speech they disagree with, comprise only 2.6% of the sample, a tiny minority. A larger minority fit the profile of ‘moderates’ (25%), but by far the largest group are the ‘tolerators’ (73.2%), who celebrate the ability of others to share their views even if they disagree with them, and do not believe speech offensive to minorities should be banned. I would imagine in a country like the United States where 1), you guys actually have freedom of speech written into your constitution, and 2), are more right-wing, that the ‘tolerator’ percentage would be even greater - which would further expose the fact that the nation is being held hostage by the speech codes of a tiny minority of crazies.12
The ‘censors’, and by contrast, the ‘tolerators’, were associated with other psychological traits. Here the authors summarise the main findings:
Relative to the “tolerators” profile, neuroticism was associated with higher log-odds of belonging to the “censors” profile (b = 0.758, OR = 2.135, p = .001), as was vengeful rumination (b = 0.788, OR = 2.200, p < .001). Having the highest level of neuroticism was associated with a 113.5% increase in the odds of belonging to the “censors” profile relative to having the lowest level, while having the highest level of vengeful rumination was associated with a 120% increase in odds compared with the lowest level of vengeful rumination. By contrast, openness to experience (b = −0.566, OR = 0.568, p = .008) and modesty (b = −1.089, OR = 0.292, p < .001) were associated with lower odds of belonging to the “censors” profile (i.e., 43.2% and 70.8% decrease at the highest vs. lowest levels, respectively).
Neuroticism, for those who don’t know, can best described as the likelihood to experience negative emotion and/or emotional instability. Someone high in neuroticism will experience higher rates of anxiety and depression, and will also cycle between good and bad moods more dramatically and more frequently than the norm. It makes sense then, if you ain’t feeling good, you don’t want to hear what the bloody enemy has to say.
Vengeful rumination, is what it sounds. It is the repetitive reflection on first, past events where one perceives they were wronged, and second, the desire to equalise this transgression. Naturally, political enemies are predisposed to see what the other has done as a transgression that needs to be righted. “That bloody policy, see … it’s screwed me.” But, it was largely reserved for exactly that - a policy. Now, the radical left has labeled an entire race and an entire sex as being the perpetrators of all history’s crimes without the ability to redeem themselves. Thus it is justified on infinitum to enact revenge in the form of censorship and cancellation. You are their sacrifice, remember. It’s quite genius when you think about it.
Openness to experience, is once more what it sounds. It is the enjoyment of new things, ideas, and experiences. Those high in openness to experience are generally creative, like abstract ideas, and are sensitive to art. It makes sense, that those who are more open, are more willing to permit opposing viewpoints and (if they are not insecure) even jokes that ridicule themselves or their own group. Past research suggests left-wingers are higher in this trait (which is why most successful artists are left-wing, they say), yet I wouldn’t be surprised if this is an artefact of a time since passed.13
Modesty is the degree to which one underplays their achievements. Some also refer to this, in a more specific sense, to Intellectual Humility. One who is modest, or intellectually humble, tends to realise and even express the extent of what they don’t know, and are more willing admit flaws in their thinking, as well as possible bias as a result of genetic or social factors. At the other end, it makes sense that arrogance, the thought ‘my way is the best way because I think it’, is predictive of silencing the other side - because it sucks, right? So who cares.
So far then, based on this research, the highest chance of being a ‘censor’ would be the following:
An emotionally fragile, revenge drinking, rigid thinking, and arrogant person.
Nice one (this is exactly how I would describe Marx’s psychological breakdown after reading his biography).
But the researchers discovered some demographic factors that also were associated with a higher chance of being a ‘censor’.
Those who were women14; those who were under 50 and older than 25; those who were less educated; those who reported anything other than New Zealand European ethnicity; and finally, those who were politically left-wing, were all more likely to belong to the ‘censors’ group.
Along with these personality traits and demographics, the support of online censorship in particular, may be the result of what is called the Third Person Effect.
The Third Person Effect in regards to online censorship is the illusion that media online, like political propaganda, is more persuasive to another person than yourself. “That Donald Trump is the GOAT ad won’t affect me, but Jimmy, oh dear, he’s not that bright! HE’S GOING TO BECOME A FASCIST, OH NO!” Because of the decentralisation of media communication and information, I would imagine many good-to-do leftists would support censorship out of the fear that a large block of the population are susceptible to radical political persuasion; without, ironically, having the self-awareness to realise that drag-queens for kids might be the thing that’s making them susceptible.
Finally, the other psychological constellation of traits that predicts censorship from the left many of the above traits are correlated with, is Left-Wing Authoritarianism (LWA). Those high in LWA, which subsumes certain anti-social personality traits, perform the ultimate form of censorship - cancellation.
The Rogue Cancer Stage 2: Cancellers
Cancellation is the metaphorical character assassination of another human. Not simply does one desire another’s silence as with censorship; but one desires their removal from society - their effective death. Yet the desire for another human’s ‘death’ may not be capturing the plethora of evil that encapsulates such a person, a true canceller, as death - as in physical death - can be merciful. Reputational death is worse in so far as the victim has to suffer the continuous humiliation of firstly, losing their place in society and perhaps more (like their financials, their husband or wife), and second, being labelled whatever nasty thing it is they are to supposed to have done. Left-wing authoritarianism (LWA) captures the desire to metaphorically character assassinate another human.
Without going into too much detail, those free-thinkers left inside psychology, will know of the overwhelming left-wing bias in psychological research, indeed, the universities as a whole. I’m sure many of you would have seen this graph from a few years ago:
One way this manifests, is the denial that left-wingers can be authoritarian (as if communism wasn’t a thing). For years, there was a Right-Wing Authoritarian scale but no mirror scale. Recently, researchers identified three correlated dimensions, said to make up LWA; anti-conventionalism, top-down censorship, and anti-hierarchal aggression.
Anti-conventionalism is progressive moral absolutism; the belief progressive values are superior and that conservatives are “inherently immoral”. They desire ideological purity through the means of “coercively imposing left-wing beliefs and ideals on others.”
One form of coercion is top-down censorship. Here, the authors define it as the justification of an authority, usually government, to suppress right-wing views and behaviours.
Another form, and what I would speculate to be central to the desire to remove a political enemy from society, is anti-hierarchical aggression (AHA), the overthrowing of the established order or hierarchy, the revolutionary instinct. The individual traits that make up this dimension are similar to Social Dominance Orientation, and include disagreeablesness, low honesty-humility, low conscientiousness, and psychopathic disinhibition and meanness.
Here are some of statements that correlated with AHA:
Several stand out as quite shocking - perhaps the most, as what happened recently with the checkout girl, is the second from the bottom:
“If a few of the worst Republican politicians were assassinated, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
Of course, as the authors detail, those that score high in LWA are not only willing to commit indirect aggression, but direct aggression, as those lovely Antifa trans-chaps like to do.
It makes sense that an individual who is certain of the superiority of progressive belief, who endorses authoritarian censorship of right-wing views, and who is behaviourally aggressive and has psychopathic traits, would happily engage in metaphorical character assassination or cancellation. One could go as far to say that to them, cancellation is only is an intermediary step; that physical violence is the ultimate form of political action.
Thank you all for reading.
If you enjoyed this, please consider giving it a like, or if you have some thoughts, share them in the comments. Even better, click the subscribe button for more essays on culture, reviews, and even some short stories. (I’ve also added a tip function, if you feel like tipping the bro.)
Chur, and have a good day and night,
The Delinquent Academic
One of the reasons for this occurring that he misses, I believe; is that men believe if the share their ‘problematic thoughts’ they won’t get laid.
Kaufmann mentions both Steele and Sowell, by the way.
Of course, censorship and cancellation have been around for as long as human language. As civilisations were established, whoever was in power had an incentive to crush ideas which challenged their grip on proceedings. Often these were religious majorities, and/or conservatives. The right can never claim to be a historical bastion of Free Speech; this is factually untrue.
Marx and Engels are great character studies in the psychology of cancel culture; they worked tirelessly to shit on other thinkers, especially their own kind.
I, admittedly, ripped this quote straight from wikipedia. Have mercy on me. I am a victim … of something. Pls.
I count myself very lucky I study at a university and under a professor where being ‘sacrificed’ to ‘The Eye at the End of Time’, is incredibly rare. There are signs a ‘free speech bulwark’ is being constructed at my institution to defend against the menace of cancel culture, as I have recently written in this essay. Yet, across the country, especially up North in ‘woker’ areas, the reverse is occurring.
He may have added this factor in his most recent book; I am referencing his earlier writings.
It is understandable then, that when a member of each sex employs the opposite sex’s aggression method, they are shunned by other members of their group. As a young boy who went to a couple of the most fiercely competitive only-male schools in my country, it was understood if you have a problem with someone, you wouldn’t “talk shit” behind their back; you would stand and fight. Even if you lost, you lost with dignity and you gained the respect of your peers.
Whenever I critically examine the role of women in society, I get backlash. I might be a psychology PhD, but seemingly I’m missing understanding of the fundamental trait that provokes this response. I could talk tirelessly of the tyrannical actions of men and get agreement from men (and women, of course), but as soon as I say women might have mis-stepped here or there, I am ‘punching down’ or something. I do not think, absurdly, that one of the sexes is somehow morally superior, though one could make a strong case for the consequences of men’s misbehaviour to be more damaging than that of women’s. I am simply trying to come at the truth; though, as I have directly experienced, some people seem to think I am saying these bloody things ‘to oppress women’ or whatever. It couldn’t be further from my intention. I think from now on I need to learn to ignore these ‘sexist’ calls, because I’m falling into the left’s moral matrix trap the
talked about.Which is a nasty irony; the blatant denial of hierarchy by those in power on the left has to be one of the mightiest bullshits.
One can see how deep the rot goes. By all accounts, these researchers are not ‘radical’, indeed, I’ve heard most of them support Freedom of Speech. Yet they include the concept creep of ‘offensive speech’ only being possible to minority groups, as if offence is based on ethnicity or something silly. In my research lab, it appears I am in the minority who believes ‘racism’ can be conducted by any race upon any race. The majority view, is that only whites can be racist. In this world, though it is never said, is the implication: Given my skin colour, and my sex, only I can be racist, and only I can offend the other groups. It’s good fun, tbh; I like being the heel.
Though, I don’t know which is worse; that the entire nation is being held hostage by the speech codes by a tiny minority of crazies, or that the rest of you idiots submitted to this nonsense?
In my own life at least, I know several people, especially men, who are incredibly high in this trait, and who in a normal situation would be left-wingers, but who now identify with the right (or at least, not with the left anymore). Creatives are increasingly beginning to understand that the left, who controls institutions of cultural power - the media, Hollywood, publishing houses, the tech-companies - are thoroughly unfriendly to any art that might for a second challenge their worldview. Comedy, in particular, has been surging in popularity in part because of their artists willingness to speak truth to power, in the form of satire and humour. (Here, I discuss how we could support artists who are rising up in opposition, from the Microculture.)
The researchers suggested the increased likelihood of women belonging to the ‘censors’ group was an artefact of the sample being two/thirds women. That’s some nice virtue signaling, but this has been found in other places, too - that women are more ‘pro’ censorship. This is probably down to two reasons - woman are more compassionate than men, and believe that some speech is simply too offensive to allowed to propagate, and second, young women in particular are very left wing these days.
Well presented. I will nitpick at one thing: calling the attempt to assassinate Trump as him being "earsnicked" is trivializing. As for Free Speech, we are free to speak and free to take the consequences of having spoken. The real issue is our political system which has "structures" (laws, positions of power, etc.) in place to dole out consequences as well as being the ones who determine which speech deserves what consequences. Break down that system and rebuild from the principle of individual rights, and many of today's ills will fade away like mist.