In the past 48 hours, I’ve had a heated “cancel culture” experience in a Facebook post I made. In the 130+ comments that ensued, here’s a taste of what my liberal brothers and sisters have been calling me:

The Name-Calling

I have been called; reactive, dismissive, pedantic, patronizing, tone deaf, too “wise” to learn, a fragile white man, an old white man, a middle-aged white man, a white man, an economically privileged white man, a privileged man, a man, a claimer of victimhood, a reverse victim, an oppressor, an abuser, a name-caller, an intentional misspeller of names, an intentional fomenter of controversy, a user of teachers as pawns, a misuser of grammar, a recruiter of warriors against diversity, a jailer of queers, a jailer of kids, a MAGA-ist, Ron DeSantis, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, a DARVO enactor, a denier, and an attacker (…to be fair, I’m at least a few of these).

The Controversy

This all started over what was admittedly, a poorly translated title from French of an event I’m hosting with 2 other Aikido teachers exploring the universal principles of the art. The title of the event is “Diversity & Unity In Aikido” and it was emblazoned right under pictures of us 3 teachers…. all white men.

Now hindsight is 20/20 and well, we just didn’t predict the controversy it would spark with a segment of our fellow left-of-center Americans. Our bad.

So I made the fateful post and left for a few hours to take my daughters to roller skating class and Scouts. By the time I got back to Facebook, it had become a full-blown controversy.

Initially, I made several good-faith efforts to engage the comments to clarify what we meant. But it soon became clear that no matter how much I tried to dialogue, nothing would satisfy the growing mob.

There were demands we change the title, demands we add people of color and women to the panel, or even elevate less experienced younger practitioners to teach with us. All good things that a quick browse through my blog will show I’ve regularly done.

Some of whom I engaged in the comments were open and willing to engage, even if we didn’t totally agree. But for the majority, it was like they already had their conclusions and they just didn’t want to reason.

On its face, the controversy was about the use/misuse of the word diversity. That was fair enough because it was in fact easy it confuse. But something didn’t add up…

I was being insulted, accused, pilloried, and subjected to “purity tests” by a mob of my fellow left-of-center American Aikidoka. I understood that our faux pax was particularly triggering, but that was also easy to see as unintentional if one tried. There was something about how the call-out punishment did not match the typo crime.

The Pivot

So I pivoted and took a stand calling out the unfolding moral panic for what it was; a woke mob playing identity politics. Straight up liberal on liberal cancel culture.

There was a time when being a socially aware liberal was about speaking truth to power, speaking up and making space for those who have no voice, taking on “the man”, “the system”, and “the powers that be”. It was about fighting the good fight to make sure that everyone had equal opportunities. Because that is the right thing to do.

But at some point cancel culture crept in under the radar and some of our big tent brothers and sisters began to see their fellow liberals as “the man”, “the system”, and “the powers that be”. Liberals began eating our own in a destructive trend of canceling and calling out their natural allies.

I totally get that these days the ultra-conservative right has weaponized the words “woke”, “cancel”, and “identity politics” in very divisive ways. Especially in the U.S. And that’s an appropriation that truly does suck.

But let’s not forget that these terms were invented by the left. Just because they’ve been weaponized by the right should not exclude us on the left from using them. Especially to call out a moral panic among liberals, directed towards liberals.

The Power

There’s a reason someone on the left can’t cancel someone on the right. They simply don’t care what liberals think. So there’s no place for that power to land.

But those with liberal values do care what liberals think. Especially what other liberals think about us. And that’s exactly where cancel culture wields its power. Socially.

We are so dam afraid of being called out by our fellow liberals that we give cancel culture its power. It’s passive-aggressive and shadowy and it cripples us because it hits us right in our values.

So yes, I’m calling this what it is. The toxic and dark underbelly of our beloved social justice warriors.

In other words, Cancel Culture.