Anyone with a spouse, child, parent, or close friend victimized by 21st-century “cancel culture” already knows it to be a profoundly disturbing, unjust, and soul-destroying experience.
Vicious playwrights and the frantic mobs that follow their scripts have no respect for the limits of moral decency. The development of social media has empowered self-interested actors to “cancel” anyone who stands in the way of their unrealized ambitions or desires. Their unfortunate victims often end up jobless, isolated, and broke.
Generally, those who take great pains to destroy other people gain little more than empty satisfaction. Everyone loses the capacity to understand different perspectives and live in harmony.
The Pathology of ‘Mimetic Desire’
On the death in 2015 of René Girard, who was the Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French Language, Literature and Civilization at Stanford University, a French scholar compared the eminent philosopher of social science to the famous 19th-century historian and moralist Alexis de Tocqueville.
Tocqueville is credited with identifying social anomalies in the young American Republic which evaded the notice of its own citizens. Girard is said to have performed the same role with respect to human culture in general.
Girard maintained that, above and beyond our natural instincts and appetites, there is a form of human desire that pathologically triggers destructive motives. He called this “mimetic desire,” a compulsive imitation of the desires of others which leads to a fanatic rivalry with the one being imitated.
In his 2016 book “God’s Gamble,” American Catholic scholar Gil Bailie provided a concise account of Girard’s thesis: “Human desire, Girard argues, is always aroused, redirected, and intensified by the desire of another. We desire what we see another desiring, striving to obtain, or enjoying. Two children in a room full of toys inevitably want the same toy, and the more emphatically each expresses a desire for it, the more the other desires it and the more heated the rivalry between the two becomes.”
When people become disappointed with their own lives, they are likely to engage in increasingly aggressive mimetic contests. The prestige of a successful individual attracts the frustrated imitator into an all-consuming conflict with the model from whom his or her desire is acquired.
Mimetic conflicts are generally characterized by wildly accusatory gestures. Friends and admirers can become convinced that a respected colleague is the ultimate bête noire responsible for an imagined societal crisis. As the binary rivalry escalates in intensity, accusations grow more fantastic. As one false allegation is heaped upon another, the targeted individual acquires the form of a superhuman monster who must be destroyed in order to restore peace in the community.
The Case of Caylan Ford
The case of Caylan Ford is a dramatic example of the human suffering that can be inflicted on innocent people by mimetic rivals and the self-serving mobs that rally under their influence.
Throughout her formative years, Ford devoted her attention to the study of totalitarianism. She worked with dissidents, refugees, and exiles who had suffered imprisonment and torture for their beliefs. At age 16, she claimed the honour of being the youngest Canadian to be blacklisted by the Chinese Communist Party.
Some 10 years ago, Ford began to notice that some of the troubling characteristics of totalitarian regimes were becoming increasingly prevalent in our own society. As a result, she eventually decided to run for public office.
Ford recounts that in 2019, she became a candidate for the United Conservative Party in the Alberta provincial election. She ran in a traditionally “progressive” riding. Her principal opponents were the leader of Alberta’s Liberal Party and the sitting justice minister for the socialist NDP provincial government. Nevertheless, as her campaign wore on, internal polling began to indicate that she was on track to win.
Less than a month before election day, PressProgress, a website aligned with the New Democratic Party, published an anonymous accusation claiming that some years earlier Ford had “echoed white nationalist rhetoric.”
With no thorough investigation of the allegations, the media piled on. Ford recalls being publicly branded as a white supremacist, a “crypto-fascist,” a Nazi, and a terrorist sympathizer. The New Democratic Party almost immediately issued a press release demanding that she be removed from the ballot and the United Conservative Party of Alberta asked for her resignation. It wasn’t “a moral decision” she said. “The party couldn’t afford to be distracted, and I wasn’t worth losing a news cycle over.”
The morning after she resigned, the story was national news. One provincial party leader issued a press release declaring that her “support of white supremacists values will sicken people across the province.”
Ford’s anonymous detractor appears to have been a former party member with unrealized political ambitions of his own—a man with a history of inventing false and malicious statements, and a classic example of the “Satanic accuser” driven by Girard’s concept of mimetic desire.
Ford has denied all of the allegations against her and is seeking to raise funds for a defamation claim.
The Horrific Cost of False Allegations
For victims of false allegations the consequences can be horrific. In most cases those targeted are unlikely to be high-born inheritors of wealth and privilege.
The costs of cancel culture are often borne by people who can least afford it. Hard-working individuals who have worked their way up to management-level positions are increasingly being bullied by lower-ranking colleagues in their own workplace.
An April 2015 edition of “Nursing Times” reported that: “Upwards bullying in the workplace occurs when a team member pursues a campaign of bullying against their manager or supervisor. The bully is likely to be oppositional towards authority, which means they oppose the views, aims or wishes of authority figures on principle. Their opposition to authority is automatic, emotionally derived and persistent.” Bullying and cancel culture are becoming ubiquitous in schools, colleges, hospitals, public service organizations, private businesses, and politics.
The political arena has become a veritable minefield. Aggressive Marxist mobs in North American cities regularly gin up public antipathy toward political opponents with false allegations of racism, fascism, treachery, corruption, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, etc. The regime media is willing to support almost any spurious charge against a conservative candidate.
Ford pensively recalls that the person she saw being discussed in the press was a stranger to her. She remembers the attacks as “dizzying and disorienting.” She said: “It’s like encountering a funhouse image of yourself; someone with your features, but none of your dimensions.”
In addition to the emotional distress, cancel culture victims face crippling career setbacks. Ford was told by some that she would never be able to redeem her reputation and would forever represent a liability for potential employers. For a mother with young children, that is a devastating proposition.
Only the Courts Can Mitigate the Damage of Cancel Culture
In the twilight of Western Christendom, our reserves of moral decency have become precariously low. Woke ideologues, and the press flunkies who follow them, are thrilled by their ability to control people and shape events.
It is difficult to imagine another “Great Awakening” on the immediate horizon of Western civilization. Restoring the levels of faith and compassion that would temper the murderous impulses of cancel culture will require lifetimes of patience and commitment.
Judaeo-Christian parables, like the story of Daniel who used his knowledge of the Torah to save a righteous woman from wicked judges who falsely accused her of adultery, are no longer part of the canon that forms our moral code. Today, schools and universities teach “critical race theory” and the legitimization of hate.
Serial accusers claim that the deliberate destruction of fellow human beings is a means of restoring peace in a community. They wrap themselves in false virtue to intimidate anyone who might have the courage to support a victim.
Forgiveness is never an option. When the mob controls justice, there is no means by which the falsely accused can be redeemed. Cancel culture is not about accountability. It’s about punishment.
The only present recourse for cancel-culture victims is an appeal to courts of civil law. This can be a long, costly, and uncertain process.
In the United States, CNN’s 2019 decision to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann for the sum of US$25,000,000 represented a big victory for the “little guys” who dare to stand up to the power of regime media.
In Canada, large settlements in defamation cases have been relatively rare. However, mass news dissemination and the pernicious influence of social media are becoming key factors in the escalation of damage awards in Canadian courts.
We can only hope that, by the time Caylan Ford and other victims have their day in court, wise judges will be prepared to dispense “actual justice” over the abstract claims of “social justice” conjured up by self-serving woke accusers.
