“Cancel culture” is, unfortunately, one of the hottest issues in political discourse today. Cancel culture discourse has now reached the forefront of debate and has become a new weapon of the political Right.

“Canceling,” as the term is used today, is the exposing, ostracizing and de-platforming of an individual or organization by a group of people on the internet. The origins of canceling on Twitter trace back to a strategy of toppling a powerful individual who could not be held accountable any other way. The phrase has evolved from a tool to expose abusers to a hashtag during YouTuber drama to a highly charged political term.

Nowadays, we have the nebulous term “cancel culture,” typically used to describe the many aspects of canceling in a critical light. Debates over cancel culture often center around the morality of canceling someone or whether or not cancel culture is a real thing at all. Recently, however, there has been a massive resurgence of discourse on cancel culture to the extent that it has become one of the most prized weapons of the Right.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced in March 2020 that they would be ceasing publication of six of the late author’s books due to “portrayals of people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.” The decision to retract some racist stereotypes and imagery from children’s books should be no big deal, right? Well, not to Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who described the event as “a depraved sociopolitical purge drove by hysteria and lunacy.”

If you sat down and watched every segment that Fox News has done about Dr. Seuss in the past month, you’d be sitting for countless hours. Floor to sky coverage of “the canceling of Dr. Seuss” has been spewing from every conservative media outlet nonstop. From complaining about soft Gen Z liberals to comparing this to George Orwell’s 1984, Right-wing media now uses events like this as one of their main rallying points to rake in support from their followers.

Cancel culture is a part of the greater culture war, which describes every argument about beliefs, values and practices that we take part in. Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling, the political affiliation of Goya Foods, Cardi B’s WAP and the branding change to Mr. Potato Head are just a few of the cultural battles that have occurred in recent years. Can you imagine a more pointless use of our energy?

I want to be clear that not all culture war topics are equally irrelevant. There is a litany of critical social issues that demand our attention to improve the lives of many. That said, of the social issues that matter, discrimination and political violence come to mind for me, not Dr. Seuss. This largely-pointless back-and-forth becomes an actual problem when it starts to become the forefront of our conversations. 

Ohio representative Jim Jordan called cancel culture “the #1 issue for the country to address today.” As of April 2021, 575,000 people have died from COVID-19. The GOP’s response to this crisis and others in contrast with how seriously they take the culture war is striking. I can think of at least 500 issues more pressing than cancel culture, but it seems like this is the only card the Right has to play right now.

In the wake of the Trump presidency being over, the Right has scrambled to find something to scream about to make up for the fact that they have no serious plans for anything. No COVID response, no infrastructure proposals, certainly no bending of the knee on police reform or climate action. Nope, just constant debate over meaningless social clashes rather than getting anything productive done.