New Polling Shows Great Disdain Among Americans for ‘Cancel Culture’

For much of our lives, we’ve been told that we need to learn from our history, lest we wish to repeat the more unsavory portions of it.  We’ve also been told that sunlight is the best disinfectant; an anecdote that seems to suggest that exposing the proverbial filth of the world is the best way to rid ourselves of it.

And this is true:  The ugliness of the white nationalist movement, for example, has largely been an underground phenomenon for the last several decades, allowing the horrid ideology to fester and grow with relatively few impediments from the oblivious world around them.

Had we been exposing and correcting these wayward Americans, things would not have gotten so out of hand.  But, instead, we canceled them, driving them away from the prying eyes of decency.

Nowadays, any past offenses could see someone “canceled”, or erased from history altogether.  Christopher Columbus, Abe Lincoln, and even Donald Trump have been “canceled” to some extent in recent years, but is this truly the right way to handle the issue?

A majority of Americans think not.

A Harvard CAPS-Harris poll released Monday suggests the next thing Americans want to “cancel” is the trend itself.

The poll, released to The Hill, shows increasing fatigue with the social media-fueled drive to “cancel” celebrities and public figures. Sixty-four percent of respondents said the cultural boycotts posed a threat to freedom in the U.S., while 36 percent disagreed. And while conservatives were more dominant in this opinion — 80 percent to 20 percent — the subject has divided Democrats as well.

The theme of the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was “America Uncanceled,” but more than just Republicans have grown weary of cancel culture. Among liberal voters, 48 percent believe cancel culture is a threat to personal freedom; a narrow margin against the 52 percent who do not. “Americans are showing increased and substantial concern about the growth of cancel culture,” Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey director Mark Penn said, continuing:

Tech companies beware that the public sees them of acting out of bias tilted towards the Democrats and voters are calling for new regulations to ensure fairness and openness. Amazon, in particular, still has a strong image compared to Facebook and Twitter, but that image may start to erode if they expand the banning of books on their platform.

Now we’ll just have to wait and see if this poll itself gets canceled, on account of the fact that it appears to run counter to the liberal narrative.