‘Cancel culture’, globalisation and the future
Some may think Fisher exaggerates his thesis; that it’s melodramatic to claim the future has been taken from us. But others back up his perspective.
In 2004, in ‘Well and Good: How We Feel and Why It Matters’, the Australian writer Richard Eckersley suggested that the only version of tomorrow on offer is a bigger version of today: an accelerated, more materialist, wealthier version of the present globalised order. This effectively said to Western populations: “don’t worry, the future has already been decided by people with more power and influence than you. They know what is best for you and the planet.”
In today’s bleaker climate, Eckersley seems too positive if anything. At his time of writing, before the 2008 financial crisis put an end to the long economic boom, he saw the problem as “linear optimism”: political elites could only promise a bigger, better version of the present. Now, with our unfolding economic and environmental crises, we do not even have that narrow offering. But his wider argument chimes with Fisher.
Disappointment, anger and loss characterise so much of our politics, government and culture. No one really thinks Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Joe Biden or indeed Keir Starmer have anything original to say or are up for the challenges we face. But where are our feasible alternatives at a world-system level?
Instead, concepts like ‘cancel culture’ dominate our politics. It is not an accident that in the present climate it is the ideologically-charged Right who have come up with some of the most effective framing: alongside ‘cancel culture’ sit such terms as ‘culture wars’ and ‘virtue signalling.’
The forces of the Right have been in the ascendant globally over the past four decades. Yet while their version of the world once had at least the pretence of a better future, it has been blown apart. Everywhere, we are facing new challenges and pressures.
The rise of concepts like ‘cancel culture’ is in part a diversion from the Right’s abject failure, particularly in the economic dimension. But it is also a belated realisation on the part of the Right that the old cultures of authority, deference and control have steadily diminished, and that new forms of social control and manipulation are needed. The aim is not only to delegitimise new voices, but to stop us thinking and being creative about the big questions – to stop us imagining a different future.