A rant on labelling

Backlash as a social phenomenon wasn’t born in the modern age, but it has sprouted and flourished in the whirlwind of today’s unending war between worldviews and ideologies. Only now it’s called something else: cancel culture.

There’s just one problem; terming it a culture gives the influential class the means to shrug off their turn to listen. Backlash holds accountable the sources of influence, whereas cancel culture puts the blame on the critics and by extension the criticisms, however rightly earned, aimed at such sources; one is the cause of backlash but a victim of culture. These domineering voices would leap at the chance of crying victimhood while scorning the prospect of having to treat their speech with as much care as they do their appearance. They fail to realise that the weight of their words reaches far beyond the pages and into the principles they—and their devotees—choose to live by.

Those who think they’re being cancelled are so busy lambasting such ‘cruel’ treatment as taking away their freedom of expression they seem to forget that their critics are merely practising their own; what’s different is they’re now the subject of the talks, and they can't bear it. Freedom of expression is sacred until it’s not.