Lisa Eckhart
Photo: Hubert Mican / First Look / picture allianceThe new trend of the summer is "Talking about Cancel Culture" and many people are already participating, but not all of them and we are still a democracy and everyone is allowed to participate, so welcome to the introductory course in Cancel Culture Studies. With our little FAQ it is easy to get involved in the discourse. Perhaps you've been with us for a long time, because if you recently said to your partner, "So this new rye bread from the baker, that wasn't so good, we won't buy it again", then you are right in the middle of it because you canceled the bread. But let's start with the basics: what we know, what we don't know.
Margarete Stokowski, arrow to the right
Rosanna Graf
Born in 1986, was born in Poland and grew up in Berlin. She studied philosophy and social sciences and has been working as a freelance writer since 2009. Her feminist bestseller "Unterrum frei" was published in 2016 by Rowohlt Verlag. In 2018 "The Last Days of Patriarchy" followed, a collection of columns from SPIEGEL ONLINE and "taz".
What does "Cancel Culture" mean?
Like everything else, the term "cancel culture" comes from American and means in German "ick have a cancellation here again" (cancellation comes from Latin and means "ah no, I don't want to"). In the current political discourse is"Cancel Culture" is a name for something that was previously called "this new political correctness" or sometimes "prohibitions on speaking and thinking". ("Do not think," one of the most embarrassing terms, and "Cancel Culture" is no better.) Some also explain the term "Cancel Culture" as "Boycott", where "Boycott" is a big word and "Cancel Culture" is also small online activities includes, such as blocking Twitter accounts, which are annoying anyway. But also larger ones, such as the exclusion of assaulting men from filming or the removal of texts from reading lists at universities.
But why "cancel" and "culture" now?
Let's start from the back. "Culture", okay, doesn't need to be explained. Is called culture and is part of the term "Cancel Culture" to make things look like a serious phenomenon. "Cancel": Literally it means "cancel", "cancel" or "take back", in the context of "cancel culture" it should mean in the narrower sense that the work or presence of a person due to previous work, activities or statements of this person from at least one other person with a Twitter / Insta / Tiktok account is not welcomed. The social media aspect should not be neglected, otherwise there would be no difference to statements like "Why should I read 'Faust 2' when 'Faust 1' was already so painful" or "Tina is no longer my girlfriend, you can tell her, "and that wouldn't be really new.
It's too fast for me, I'm over 60, I can't get in there anyway, right?
more on the subject
Debate about Lindemann poem: nothing else rhymes with heavenA column by Margarete Stokowski
Do not be sorry! The Internet is fast, but measure yourself against the features section, the clock ticks differently: While at the latest since the invention of the push notification, many people have the feeling that they cannot always keep up with the news, there is in the German feature section Small oases of deceleration, especially when you just want to say again how militant and close to Hitler the left or feminism is now, there is always a place to be. The cancel culture debate is just a continuation of this idea. Don't be afraid of what you've already eaten. Maxim Biller, for example, delivered a so-called thinkpiece (also from English, actually: a text with deeper thoughts on a topic, but sometimes more specifically: a small piece of an older thought, but on two newspaper pages) about Till Lindemann's rape poem At the beginning of June, the debate was over for almost two months. So everything is easy. That's the pace. Biller did not write directly about "Cancel Culture", but about alleged "bans" on certain works of art by the left, which amounts to the same thing. However, the vast majority of people who are seen as part of the "Cancel Culture" are not in a position to prohibit anything, but simply criticize certain works, artists or institutions and do not want to do business or common cause with them.
So "cancel culture" means that some people don't like some people or their work?
Yes. Whereby "dislike" means here: people recognize discriminatory behavior, such as misogyny or anti-Semitism, and criticize it. In individual cases, the criticized lose a job as a result, but often get another very quickly.
But that's not new, is it?
It is only new in that the term is used to stage an alleged threat from links that in fact does not exist. In this respect, the idea of an alleged "cancel culture" does not differ from right-wing conspiracy theories, it is just simpler.
But what about the cabaret artist and author Lisa Eckhart , hasn't her appearance at a literature festival been canceled due to threats?
No. It looks like not because of actual threats (as various media initially wrote), but out of fear of protests. Eckhart is criticized, among other things, because her cabaret program contains anti-Semitic, homophobic and trans-hostile, racist jokes. The organizers of the Hamburg literature festival Harbor Front, who first invited Eckhart out and then invited him back in, referred to statements made by the operator of an event location in St. Pauli. They themselves write that there were no threats, but "worried warnings from the neighborhood". For them, only the "ominously rampant 'Cancel Culture'", in other words: a ghost, was threatening.
But isn't it good when the artist is protected?
Eckhart was not "protected" by the operators of the venue, but forbidden her appearance, and the legitimate criticism of her was then used to create a scandal that is supposed to prove the alleged militancy of the left, although there is no evidence for this. I can say from my own experience that literary organizers are sometimes overwhelmed when safety measures have to be taken for a reading, but most get it in the end.
But you could also say: "better safe than sorry", right?
The question is: who will be protected and who will be convicted? When is there a debate? The cabaret artist Idil Baydar receives death threats from NSU 2.0. Who cares? Is there a debate about cancel culture by Nazis against Baydar? No. When the "Umweltsau" song in the WDR was "canceled" because of protests by Nazis, was there any talk of cancel culture? No. For a "taz" satirical text about the police, Hengameh Yaghoobifarah received several criminal complaints from various sources and three distancing texts from the taz editorial team (including the chief editor). From the same taz it is now said about Eckhart: "Satire must be allowed to hurt". Does anyone notice anything?
But isn't it good for the left if its criticism gets through? There's a debate now.
The criticism does not come across, but is directly reinterpreted as potential violence, and no, of course that is not good. The term "cancel culture" is basically just a rebranding (renaming) of "you are probably not allowed to say anything more", but actually more dangerous because a violent, powerful mob is fantasized about.
Isn't it again an exaggeration to say that "a mob is fantasizing"?
Unfortunately, no. In the BR, Knut Cordsen said about the Eckhart case: "An organizer buckles from threatened violence" (which did not exist) and "the mob determines who is allowed to appear", although there was no mob. In the "Tagesspiegel" it was said: "Political opponents should be silenced with aggressive methods." And in the "taz" the sociologist Levent Tezcan recently wrote, not about Eckhart, but in general: "With a quasi-religious fury, a new generation of people of color wants to exterminate even the most hidden racist impulse in the soul." Even leftists and liberals are "no longer immune to being branded as racists" because "these new minority representatives" are "armed with the moral armor of minority status" and a "perverse logic". Brief speech analysis: do you notice anything? Quasi-religious, furor, exterminate, brand, tanks? Anyone who describes people who criticize discrimination in this way offers right-wing extremists all the food they need to defend themselves against an imagined threat. And that's really dangerous.
Icon: The mirror
