Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

"the left" didn't create "cancellation culture."

McCarthyism, HUAC, prejudice against youth culture and anything deviating from Christian norms, the Satanic Panic, homophobia and the AIDS crisis, redlining, book banning and moral panics over "groomers," Dixie Chicks, Sinead O'Connor, Kaepernick, boycotting Nike, boycotting Starbucks, boycotting Target, boycotting NASCAR, boycotting Gillette, boycotting Keurig, boycotting Bud Light, boycotting Disney. The right was cancelling long before the term "cancel culture" even existed.



We are talking about the recent wave which peaked in the 2010s.

Most of us remember the libertarian approach to speech in the 90s, the inappropriate jokes and all. And how it all got overturned


You're cherry picking. I understand you have an agenda and a narrative to push but it's still just cherry picking.


Censorship is a roman word, ergo your irrelevant -and distracting from the issue - historic tangent was not wide enough.


Ah I see, "it's only cancel culture if it comes from the leftist regions of Twitter, otherwise it's merely sparkling censorship," classic.


> We

There is no "we", it's you and your opinion- own it.

> i m surprised this isn't taken as common knowledge, but yes everything about cancellation culture started from leftist causes. I struggle to remember someone being cancelled for expressing "too progressive" ideas until recently.

We get it.

Not everybody is a UNIX coder of the 70s with clear memories of the 1960s and your limited world view is based on your own personal near term recollection and, seemingly, no actual reading of US history.

You might be interested to learn about the House Un-American Activities Committee and their attitude wrt cancelling progressives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_C...


the term "cancel culture" , which i used, refers to the most recent wave of censorship and was introduced in 2018. I assume well-informed readers can infer the context, and understand that i am not talking about the entire history of censorship.

Making berating comments doesn't really serve anything and reflects bad on the commenter.

The more interesting question is why did we go from a relatively laisez-faire attitude of the 90s, which was earned after decades of social activism, to a close-minded culture that fires people for being mildly annoying.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: