Kathryn Marshall: The cancel culture mob could come looking for you, too

Due process goes out the window when it comes to cancel culture. By the time all the facts come to light, it is too lateAuthor of the article:Kathryn MarshallPublishing date:Jan 26, 2021  •  5 days ago  •  3 minute read

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You know it is getting bad when even Mr. Bean is calling you out. In an interview earlier this month, Rowan Atkinson equated cancel culture with a “medieval mob, roaming the streets looking for someone to burn.”

It is an apt comparison.

Kathryn Marshall: The cancel culture mob could come looking for you, too

In 2015, British journalist Jon Ronson wrote a great book called “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,” where he explored public shaming on the internet and interviewed people who had been on the receiving end of the online mob. No one could have predicted how online public shaming would mutate into the ubiquitous and toxic cancel culture that has become so powerful today.

A medieval mob, roaming the streets looking for someone to burnROWAN ATKINSON

Cancel culture doesn’t just come for celebrities and politicians. It pursues regular everyday folk, too. As an employment lawyer, I have seen my fair share of unjust terminations. One aspect of cancel culture I find particularly troubling is how the mob goes after people’s jobs. This is no trite matter. It is one thing to call someone out and shame them on online. But to attack a person’s ability to put food on the table is a line that shouldn’t be crossed. It doesn’t take much pressure from the cancel culture mob to cancel someone’s employment contract. Employers, especially large companies, are terrified of bad press and the thought of trending on Twitter for the wrong reasons is the stuff of nightmares

A few angry emails and an unsightly mention in a BuzzFeed article may be all it takes to get you cancelled at work. Forget about an investigation or proper human resources protocols — there isn’t time for that. One of cancel culture’s greatest strengths is its speed. With social media and the 24/7 news cycle, the process of cancelling a human can take mere hours.

In any other scenario where a complaint is made against an employee, there would usually be a proper investigation process undertaken by the employer that could take weeks, maybe months. The employee would be permitted to present a defence and the full context would be examined. Termination for cause, which is the capital offence of employment law, would be a last-resort option.

Due process goes out the window when it comes to cancel culture. By the time all the facts come to light, it is too late. The damage has been done and the mob is onto its next victim.

If companies would just keep their nerve instead of panicking and hitting the fire button, they could avoid potential liability from unjustly fired employees. The cancel culture mob usually loses interest after a few days, but the lawsuits from terminated employees linger.

A friend once asked me, isn’t cancel culture just the product of a free market, like consumer activism? The answer is no. Cancel culture is about power and control. It is a highly effective tool that gives a self-appointed and often small mob the power to control who has and doesn’t have a platform or voice. What it takes to be cancelled is completely fluid and changes almost daily. Cancel culture is the antithesis of free speech and the enemy of due process and fairness.

Cancel culture is the antithesis of free speech and the enemy of due process and fairness

The goal isn’t just to humiliate or to shame. And it certainly isn’t to elicit an apology. The objective is to literally remove a person from every semblance of their life — personal and professional. To destroy that person’s career, influence, respect and render them so radioactive that no company, person or employer will ever want to touch them with a 10-foot pole. In other words, cancelled.

There are always stories of a cancel culture victim months later, where some reporter has dredged up all the facts and evidence and tells the full story in the proper context. You read it and think — that was really unfair. And then you go about your day, while that person has to live the rest of their life with this humiliation plastered all over the internet.

Are there some people and groups out there who deserve to be deplatformed? Of course — this has always been the case.

But do the vast majority of people who have made a mistake or said or done the wrong thing at some point in their life deserve due process and a second chance?

Yes.

Cancel culture is a toxic practice that we should cancel.