Canceling Comedians While the World Burns: A Critique Of The Contemporary Left

by Ben Burgis

far too many American socialists get most of their understanding of radical politics not from any sort of analysis of what’s going on around them in the here and now but from reading the works of long-dead revolutionaries.

One thing that all of the flaws of the contemporary left I discuss in this book have in common is that they’re symptoms of what I’ve come to think of as the pathologies of powerlessness.

Inside the walls of the VC, everyone tends to avoid talking about how much fun they’re having when they denounce and shame allegedly deserving victims. After all, once you’ve admitted that, you pretty much have to concede that there’s a tremendous psychological incentive to nurture and exaggerate small grievances (so you have a justification for throwing stones), to search for and emphasize subtle respects in which you’re oppressed (so you have standing to throw stones), and to ignore anything that might complicate your understanding of the victim’s alleged transgression (so you aren’t talked out of throwing stones).

Most leftists are officially committed to the position that even imprisoned rapists and murderers should be treated more compassionately. Even those of us who don’t go around calling ourselves “prison abolitionists” think that people who’ve committed these crimes should be serving shorter terms in more humane prisons with a greater focus on rehabilitation. Yet somehow far too many of us are comfortable with the idea that enthusiastically cruel social shaming should be the standard punishment for Bad Takes and problematic jokes.

I’ve been framing my critique of the current iteration of the left in strategic terms throughout this book, but what I worry most about is that far too many leftists don’t bother thinking about strategic issues at all because, even if they aren’t fully conscious of this, they don’t take seriously the possibility that they could win. Instead, they see their role as simply “taking a stand” against forces too powerful to ever actually be defeated.

Some leftists like to talk about “fighting the good fight.” I hate that phrase. Life is short. There are mountains to climb and philosophical texts to grapple with and sexual relationships to pursue and friends to spend time with and music to listen to and whiskey to drink. These things are all a lot more fun than marching through the streets shouting about police violence and hoping the cops don’t decide to give you an in-person demonstration of the problem. Why bother with the “good fight” if you aren’t going to fight to win?