There’s a simple way to end cancel culture
Now that people have begun to realise that such a thing as “cancel culture” exists, the question we ought to address is: “How do we cancel it?” An answer presents itself in the case of J K Rowling.
Over recent months, the malcontents of the far-left have tried their best to “cancel” the Harry Potter author. Principally for her view that born-women are different from trans women and that we should be able to say this and all still get along. For the dementors on social media, this is about the biggest heresy they can imagine. As their dead-eyed mantra goes: “Trans women are women”. And as the Labour MP Nadia Whittome said yesterday on Twitter, any “debate” about this “is an effective rollback of assumed equality”. Meaning that the rest of us must not debate, and must simply accept the assertions of people like Whittome and shut up.
Fortunately, the general public is not as easily demented as certain Labour MPS. And while the online maniacs would like to pretend that their social media campaign has “cancelled” JK Rowling, the author’s sales figures would suggest otherwise. This week the children’s division of her publishers, Bloomsbury, announced that sales were up 27 per cent over the past few months.
Rowling’s books had proved a particular bestseller during the lockdown period.
Of course, the usual fanatics spun this as “Harry Potter books continue to sell despite author’s disgraceful transphobia”. But their desperation is beginning to show. Most of us are able to hold more than one idea in our head at any one time. And even if Rowling were the appalling bigot that her critics pretend that she is, there is no reason why the Harry Potter books should not continue to sell.
But I would suggest that there is another lesson to take from this. Which is that the “cancel culture” mob are themselves the outsiders, the weirdos, and the people most needing to be ostracised from the rest of society. It is not JK Rowling who should be portrayed as the freak, but rather the people who try to present her in such a way simply for saying things that the vast majority of the public would agree with. This is how “cancel culture” will end. By people who are “cancelled” realising that they are actually on the successful, winning side. And to recognise that the strange, unappealing people who have created this unpleasant trend are the ones we could really all do without.