Define "cancel". I've given mine several times in this discussion: "rich, powerful, or famous people facing unwanted negative consequences of actions or expressions that liberals disagree with".
Obviously I don't agree there's no such thing. What I disagree with is that we should avoid "cancel", because the active definition is little different than "liberal complaints shouldn't affect anything."
Classical liberalism (quoting John Stuart Mill) says:
"""We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavourable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We are not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it (though not to parade the avoidance), for we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us. We have a right, and it may be our duty, to caution others against him, if we think his example or conversation likely to have a pernicious effect on those with whom he associates. We may give others a preference over him in optional good offices, except those which tend to his improvement. In these various modes a person may suffer very severe penalties at the hands of others, for faults which directly concern only himself; but he suffers these penalties only in so far as they are the natural, and, as it were, the spontaneous consequences of the faults themselves, not because they are purposely inflicted on him for the sake of punishment. """
so of course there's no appeal to classical liberalism because "unfavourable opinion" and "deviance" are closely connected.
The "more current event" discussed here is that Seuss was neither "banned" nor "canceled".
I'm not defining cancel culture (a phrase I avoid; it's the opposite of culture), but people who use it have a working definition and it's not just "liberal complaints". Anyway, Liberalism is dead, Patrick Deneen wrote an (overlong) obit.
This just flew by on Apple News: "Cancel culture strikes again: Mumford & Son banjoist steps away from band after praising anti-Antifa book". Whatever you call it, this is not classical liberalism. Something new has emerged with social media combined with Critical Theory, etc. It's worth studying, not dismissing as little different from past boycotts or campaigns.
If the NRA stops giving campaign contributions to a Senator who voted for gun-control laws, then is the NRA cancelling the Senator? Some definitions are so broad that they include this otherwise totally acceptable behavior. Since most people say "cancel" is a universally bad thing, those definitions cannot be correct.
If a low-level service worker is fired for supporting the LGBTQ movement while not at work, then have they been canceled? Some definitions only apply to the rich or famous ("public figures and companies"), so exclude those people. Yet obvious if the roles are reversed, with a CEO fired for being against the LGBTQ movement, then people have no problems applying the "cancel" label.
Which is why I argue that "working definition" you refer to appears mostly like a rhetorical technique against left-leaning views.
So far no one had given me any definition, much less one which appears to be a better fit than the one I gave.
Even within the context "public figures and companies", you tell me: by your understanding of "cancel", was Kaepernick canceled? If so, then Trump was a one of the loudest people calling for his cancelling, yes? If not, why not?
Was Cooper (in the direct parent comment you replied to) canceled after he was fired from being CEO at the company he founded? If not, why not?
> "This just flew by on Apple News"
If my thesis is correct, that "cancel culture" is little different from "liberal complaints", then of course it would be a headline on Fox News.
> this is not classical liberalism
This is exactly classic liberalism. It's hard to get more classic than John Stuart Mill, and I just quoted the relevant text from "On Liberty".
You were wrong on three major points -- own them instead of doubling down. Now you waste too many words trying to make J.S. Mill an SJW. No, that is ahistorical nonsense. Getting people fired through social media smear campaigns is novel, everyone sees it, some call it "cancel culture". This is not hard to understand.
Obviously I don't agree there's no such thing. What I disagree with is that we should avoid "cancel", because the active definition is little different than "liberal complaints shouldn't affect anything."
Classical liberalism (quoting John Stuart Mill) says:
"""We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavourable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We are not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it (though not to parade the avoidance), for we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us. We have a right, and it may be our duty, to caution others against him, if we think his example or conversation likely to have a pernicious effect on those with whom he associates. We may give others a preference over him in optional good offices, except those which tend to his improvement. In these various modes a person may suffer very severe penalties at the hands of others, for faults which directly concern only himself; but he suffers these penalties only in so far as they are the natural, and, as it were, the spontaneous consequences of the faults themselves, not because they are purposely inflicted on him for the sake of punishment. """
so of course there's no appeal to classical liberalism because "unfavourable opinion" and "deviance" are closely connected.
The "more current event" discussed here is that Seuss was neither "banned" nor "canceled".