Reviewed by Josh Morris

The Canceling of the American Mind is explicitly a sequel to Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s 2018 book, The Coddling of the American Mind. The principle author, Greg Lukianoff, is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). He has a law degree from Stanford and has written about free speech for prominent publications such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. His co-author Rikki Schlott also works for FIRE and is a columnist at the New York Post. FIRE has defended free speech for decades, particularly in the realm of education. Many of the examples in the book involve FIRE representing the professors and students in question.

I. Summary
IA. What Is Cancel Culture?
IB. Cancel Culture at Work on the Left and Right
I.C. What To Do About Cancel Culture
II. Evaluation

Summary

In the first title, Coddling of the American Mind, Lukianoff and Haidt argued that American culture no longer prepared young people for life; instead, the culture coddles and protects the young, resulting in longterm immaturity. Coddling focuses on three main theses, labeled The Three Great Untruths. These are: (1) what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker, (2) always trust your feelings, and (3) life is a battle between good and bad people. Lukianoff and Haidt argue that our culture’s embracing of these themes is bad for everyone. Treating young people as fragile both exaggerates life’s dangers and denies them growth through challenging circumstances. Trusting our feelings uncritically leads to infantile relating and reactions. Placing people into binary categories of good and bad prevents us from dialogue and community. 

Canceling builds off of the theses and arguments of the first book, while focusing on Cancel Culture and its woes. The goals of the book are (A) to address the destructiveness of Cancel Culture, (B) to change the way people think about it, and (C) to provide some alternative ways of navigating society. The book touches on censorship, culture wars, raising kids, and the climate of academia. 

What Is Cancel Culture?

While Canceling has a longer definition of Cancel Culture (Lukianoff and Schlott, 31), I like their short definition. Cancel Culture is “the use of cheap rhetorical tactics to ‘win’ arguments without… actually winning arguments”(ibid., 9). This definition is witty and easy to understand. Canceling someone is deciding to no longer listen to them and exhorting others to do the same. It involves shunning or boycotting when someone has been deemed to have spoken inappropriately or represents views which the canceler does not support. This goes beyond disagreeing with someone.

The book offers six criteria. If the majority of these criteria are satisfied, “a true cancellation attempt has occurred” (ibid., 30):

1. Truthiness Are the things being said about you inaccurate? Are people distorting your words and making false accusations?
2. Punitiveness Are people denouncing you? Are you being blackmailed?
3. Deplatforming Are campaigners attempting to prevent you from publishing your work, attending meetings, giving speeches? 
4. Organization Does the criticism appear to be organized? Are you being swarmed?
5. Secondary Boycotts Do people who defend you have to fear adverse consequences?
6. Moral Grandstanding Is the tone ad hominem, repetitive, ritualistic, posturing, accusatory, outraged?

While this definition sounds extreme, that is the point the authors are making. Some are no longer satisfied with merely disagreeing with, or even correcting, other people, but call for others to be silenced and shunned. To illustrate: if they are in a corporate or academic setting, there are calls to have them fired; or, if they are in the entertainment industry, the calls are to have their source of productivity boycotted. For example the canceler(s) might demand that a comedian’s show be canceled, or a writer’s book not be published. Lukianoff and Schlott argue this is not only deeply unfair to the individual, but profoundly damaging to our society. “Cancel Culture has upended lives, ruined careers, undermined companies, hindered the production of knowledge, destroyed trust in institutions, and plunged us into an ever-worsening culture war” (ibid., 9). It is not something to be shrugged off or ignored, but rather to be understood and fought.

Winning arguments by shutting down the other side is not winning at all. American culture has lost its “shared sense of constructive argument” (ibid., 8). The authors claim both the Left and Right have retreated to their corners with little authentic dialogue between them. In the tradition of Coddling, the authors introduce a Fourth Great Untruth: “Bad people only have bad opinions.” That is, we should not listen to anyone who we do not like, no matter the veracity of what they are saying. Worse, proponents of this Untruth have found ways to quickly deem others to be “bad people.” This fits right along with the fragility, emotional reasoning, and black and white thinking highlighted in Coddling.

Cancel Culture at Work on the Left and Right

The authors argue that both sides of the political fence use Cancel Culture for their own ends, but the reasoning they use is slightly different.

The authors summarize the thinking on the Left as the Perfect Rhetorical Fortress. This strategy is a multi-layered approach to analyze whether someone’s opinion should be weighed, or even acknowledged. The proponents analyze the identity of the person they are hearing, asking themselves things such as, “Is this person conservative?” and filtering comments through an ideological grid oriented around race, sexuality, and gender. Only if the person in question is blameless along a many-layered line of hostile questioning, should their speech be granted airtime. Few people make it through this purity test. 

On the Right, the authors summarize the style of argumentation as the Efficient Rhetorical Fortress. They deem this “efficient” as it more quickly categorizes people than the Left’s criteria. They reduce the rules to: don’t listen to liberals, experts, or journalists. Again, if someone should fail any of these tests, they may safely be ignored.

Both sides are accused of childish behavior and faulty reasoning. Like the cognitive distortions of Coddling, I appreciated their list of “dirty tactics” (ibid., 94). The dirty tactics follow. I will offer a working definition and examples for most.

Whataboutism

Definition When raising a point, perhaps you’ve had someone counter with “what about…?” This tactic involves defending against criticism, or deflecting it by bringing up the other side’s wrongdoing or raising a different issue. This could be in the form of a counter-accusation or a completely different topic, as long as it subverts the need for a careful justification of whatever was currently under discussion.

Example

Person A “Did you make this mess in the kitchen?”
Person B “What about your constant messes in the living room!?”

The topic of the mess in the kitchen is being deflected and ignored in favor of discussing the other person’s troubles with keeping the living room clean.

Straw manning

Definition This is when one presents their opponent’s position by constructing a weak and inaccurate version, then refuting it. This is a famous logical fallacy.

Example

Person A “I think our country should have tighter gun laws.”
Person B “You just want to take everyone’s guns and make it impossible for law-abiding citizens to defend themselves?”

The topic of tighter gun laws is not seriously explored or considered. Instead, an inflammatory version of gun control is brought up, which neither person may even desire. This shortcircuits honest discussion and likely will increase tension at the cost of understanding.

Minimization

Definition Claiming a problem does not exist or is too small-scale or unimportant to worry about.

Example The book offers this example:

Cancel Culture isn’t real… It’s turned into a catch-all for when people in power face consequences for their actions or receive any type of criticism, something that they’re not used to.(ibid., 95)

Instead of engaging the potential issue of Cancel Culture, it is declared a non-issue. It is also implied to be a tool of victims to finally oppose their powerful oppressors.

Motte and Bailey

Definition This involves conflating two similar arguments, retreating from the unreasonable one (the bailey) to the more reasonable one (the motte). Essentially, a speaker/author spouts an inflammatory or extreme view and then reinterprets it to something more reasonable when pressed on its implications.

Example The book suggests “defund the police” (the bailey) may be reduced to “reimagining community safety” (the motte) when challenged (ibid., 97). The phrase “defund the police” means removing resources from the police force. This could indicate reduction of police staffing, buildings, or operations. Reimagining community safety may involve merely including additional programs to traditional policing. Programs may include crisis centers, neighborhood watches, or investment in other social services. While shrinking or eliminating police capabilities is controversial, adding additional community programs is often broadly supported.

Underdogging

Definition Claiming your viewpoint is more valid because you speak for a victim or disadvantaged party.

Example

Person A “I’m not sure what he said about our boss is accurate.”
Person B “Does it matter? The boss always calls the shots. I’m just standing up for us average-Joes!”

The fact the boss holds a position of authority over the employees neither undermines the truth of his claims nor absolves the employees from making slanderous or untruthful declarations.

Accusing Bad Faith

Definition Asserting your opponent has sinister motives, is selfish, or disingenuous.

Example

Person A “I’d like to see us perform more safety checks on our projects.”
Person B “You say that because you want to suck up to the boss.”

While pleasing others or obtaining selfish profit may be someone’s motivation, or part of their motivation, it prevents dialogue when the first reaction is accusatory like this. We should attempt to give others the benefit of the doubt. What could be other motives for what they’ve are said? Also one’s motives are strictly speaking irrelevant to the truth of what they say. Will the safety checks improve the organization or not?

Some More Dirty Tactics

Here are a few more without explicit examples.

1. Projecting Hypocrisy Asserting your opponent is hypocritical without checking their consistency. Be sure to carefully see instances of inconsistency before throwing out labels.
2. Dodging with “That’s Offensive” Rather than engaging with an argument’s substance, merely object with, “That’s offensive.” This is a deflection that prevents the need to engage the topic.
3. Offense Archeology Digging into someone’s past for offensive speech. The authors point out how this is increasingly easy now that social media documents so much of people’s past words and actions.
4. Making Stuff Up Fabricating information or lying to bolster a weak argument.

The book is full of real-life examples across a range of disciplines: academia, publishing, education, clinical counseling, and politics. The effects of Cancel Culture are wide-ranging. Some people are embarrassed or mobbed temporarily, others face the longer term consequences of losing friends and careers. For many, the cost of being canceled is temporary discomfort. For others, the effects can be particularly devastating. Consider the story of Lukianoff’s personal friend Mike Adams. Professor Adams was embroiled in a free speech controversy at the University of North Carolina. He experienced personal attacks, threats, absurd accusations, and eventually loss of job and pension. Despite winning his court settlement against the university, he committed suicide. The authors stress that even if one disagreed with his comments, no one should be subjected to such a psychologically damaging ordeal.

While this is an extreme case, it illustrates a point. Cancel Culture aims to protect people by quarantining or punishing harmful speech. Let’s emphasize here that what’s canceled is not physical violence–just words. But then the cancelers cause their own harm, including threatening or sometimes perpetrating physical violence. By drawing on the very methods it decries, Cancel Culture is hypocritical, willing to destroy some in the supposed protection of others. Cancel Culture’s hypocrisy is especially serious because goals and outcomes are the point, as opposed to, say, truth-seeking. So, if in an attempt to deliver certain outcomes (safety), one undermines those same outcomes, that’s a failed project. The charge leveled here is not another form of whataboutism, because those concern truth claims. The charge here is that the goals of a certain practice (Cancel Culture) are undermined by the practice itself.

The authors also flag DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) hiring statements. They claim both universities and workplaces increasingly prioritize political outlooks over competence. This politicalization accelerates the distrust of expertise. After all, why trust scholars, journalists, medical staff chosen for ideological purity instead of subject matter mastery? One study showed 22% of academic hiring committee members were willing to discriminate against applicants supporting a particular presidential candidate. This phenomenon is summarized with a great quote, “where all think alike, no one thinks very much” (ibid., 79). Such conformity of opinion results in groupthink and less critical reasoning. 

What To Do About Cancel Culture

The authors offer advice to schools, parents, businesses, and individuals. Since canceling often involves deep mining of digital records for videos and quotes, they recommend staying off social media as much as possible. Encourage your kids to think of others, emphasize in-person friendships, and teach them to expect differences between people. This gives opponents less ammo while also supplying a stronger social foundation for your kids. Face-to-face friendships provide them with the fullest social benefits. Reducing screen time, where people are often more harsh and less empathetic, shields them from negativity they don’t need. Teaching them that people are different and that varying opinions are fine will help them develop beyond black and white thinking. We should foster emotional well-being and anti-fragility. Instead of protecting kids from potentially offensive speech, we should explain it to them, teaching forgiveness. Redemption should be favored over punishment.

The book calls on corporations to resist turning HR into a bias response team. Executives should ask themselves if the company has a diversity of political opinions and educational opportunities, not just diversity of race and gender. Businesses need to lead by focusing on the work of the company and its values, rather than commenting on every social or political issue.

The authors call for a return to curiosity and critical thinking. Ironically, higher education fails at its basic responsibility to instill critical thinking. This is in spite of being extremely expensive and irritatingly bureaucratic. Colleges are a ground zero for these rhetorical fortresses. Instead of using the dirty tactics, or the rhetorical tricks to avoid critical thinking, we should bring back tolerant sayings. Some tolerant sayings used to be more common. The authors suggest: “To each his own,” “Everyone is entitled to their opinion,” and “It’s a free country.” Only by resisting childish ways of thinking will America be able to get back on solid ground. This means we must talk to each other like adults and seriously consider being wrong.

Evaluation

Canceling directly raises issues and attempts to give clear solutions. The authors successfully draw out the destructiveness of Cancel Culture with a myriad of examples. Among the most compelling portions is its dismantling of the logic of this sort of thinking. The cognitive distortions driving Cancel Culture are pathological and immature. Arguments are not “won” by finding ways to ignore the other side or by shouting them down. I am reminded of Melkor, the Satan character in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. During the song of creation, Melkor gathers his fallen angels to shout down God, trying to overwhelm the melody because he wants things to go his way. Like an immature, angry child, he resorts to shouting his demands. He doesn’t try to understand the larger picture or the God character’s reasoning. This same immature strategy is often pursued today. Cancel Culture teaches us that if we do not like what we hear, we should yell as loud as we can overpowering others. There’s something devious and childish about this. Young children scream when they do not get their way, why are adults doing the same? While staying off social media may reduce the number of things people may attack us on, understanding the illogic of Cancel Culture and helping others do the same will have positive lasting effects. We should learn these “dirty tactics” and be sure we do not use them against others. Modeling the right way and teaching it to others is within our power.

I would have liked more studies and less examples from the authors’ own lives. I found their anecdotes powerful, but there were too many. To some extent, this helped make their case, but it also resulted in a longer and more repetitive book. Canceling attempts to take on higher education, grade school, medical school, clinical counseling, journalism, publishing, and people’s personal lives. That’s a lot of ground to cover and hard to cover well. The book may have done better with more focus. The authors could have made the general case and then illustrated it in just one or two problem domains. Coddling covered three Untruths in the same length, compared to the single Untruth of this book. I found the first book to be more concise, with a higher amount of content per page.

For the Christian, Paul guides us in 2 Corinthians 10:5 to demolish arguments and pretensions, to take thoughts captive and analyze them. Paul engaged in dialogue with his enemies and opponents (for example in Acts 17 and before the governing authorities). He did not ignore them, shout them down, or dismiss them. Jesus modeled the same with the Pharisees. He actively engaged them even though he deeply disagreed with them on significant points. Jesus got heated, but he sought their welfare. Jesus actually commanded us to love our enemies rather than disown them (Matt 5:42-45). The Christian believer should follow these great examples by having calm, reasoned dialogues with others. The Christian should be willing to listen to and engage opponents rather than merely cancel them. 

Josh Morris is a software engineer with a BS from The Ohio State University. He’s also served as a deacon at Dwell Community Church for over 20 years. More of his writing may be found at his website.