No, Gen Z did not invent cancel culture

The meme that made me think about cultural erasure throughout history.

Cancel culture refers to when a person or organization says or does something that is deemed unacceptable by society as a whole and results in the person or organization being shunned or boycotted.

One day I saw a meme about the Chinese cultural revolution and had a thought about culture being ‘cancelled’. Obviously using ‘cancelled’ to describe cultures being wiped out is wrong as it trivialises the matter. But what I found was that colonisers or governments wiping up cultures is a practice that feels like it’s been around as long as humanity itself.

The Roman Empire was one of the biggest empires in human history. It ranged from the British Isles to the Middle East. Rome as it expanded wanted to absorb the indigenous cultures and make them as Roman as possible.

The process was called Romanisation. The term Romanisation is attributed to British historian Francis Haverfield and he described the process in which the territories conquered by Rome were being ‘civilised’. Romanisation involved the indigenous population of territories conquered by Rome adopting the use of the Latin language as well as Roman behaviour and culture.

What is interesting about Romanisation is that cultures were not completely wiped out. If people obeyed Roman authorities, they were able to keep their cultures alive for the most part, of course they were expected to speak Latin and adopt Roman behaviours. However those who resisted Roman rule were brutally pacified as in the case of the Jewish People, where millions were killed, and cities were razed as punishment for resisting.

The effects of Romanisation can be seen to this day, with countries like France, Portugal and Spain having languages based on Latin. Religion is also one of the lasting effects of Romanisation as Roman Catholism spread to be one of the most dominant religions in the world.

When it comes to more modern times, one can’t discount the ultimate destroyer of cultures. At the height of its empire, it controlled a third of the world and desire to spread its own culture and ‘civilise’ those it deemed ‘savage’. Can you guess who I am referring to here? If you guessed Britain, you would be correct.

British destruction of culture, unlike the Romans has had a much greater effect on the world as we know it. Many peoples were affected by the British and their colonial rule, including Māori.

When Te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed Māori made up 95 percent of Aotearoa’s population. Meriana Johnsen a writer for The Spinoff noted in her article In search of a place to just be Māori that only 60 years later due to increased Pakeha immigration and disease such as smallpox effecting Māori populations that would that number decrease to only 5 percent.

Policy put in place by the colonial government directly contributed to Māori cultural decline as well. Legislation like the Education Ordnance Act of 1847 made English the ‘normal’ language used in schools. Te reo Māori would later be banned in schools and those who spoke it would be punished for doing so. Later on native schools would be founded with the intention of assimilating Māori communities by using the English language.

With te reo being an important part of Māori culture, the decline in the use of te reo meant a decline in traditional Māori culture as well. In the article Remembering the Māori Language Petition and the revival of te reo Māori. Notes that in 1910, 90 percent of Māori children could speak te reo, by 1970 that number was only 5 percent. Te reo was on the verge of extinction and with it an important part of Māori culture would be gone forever. Fortunately in the case of te reo Māori, in 1987 it was made an official language with Aotearoa, and effects to preserve the language have been working towards a greater acceptance of the language.

The story of Māori culture being nearly bought to extinction by British colonial rule is not unique to Aotearoa, with the indigenous peoples of Africa, Australia, Canada, India and Ireland to name a few facing similar cultural oppression all in the name of ‘spreading civilisation’.

In the case of Rome and Britain, cultural erasure happened at the hands of colonists seeking to spread their beliefs to those they conquered whether they liked it or not. But there was a case where a culture was wiped out my its own people. That being China during the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 70s.

The Chinese leader at the time Mao Zedong managed to rally millions of people behind him all in the goal of preserving the power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to do so involved purging remnants of capitalism and traditional Chinese culture.

The CCPs youth wing the Red Guards were urged on by Mao and fellow party members to destroy ancient temples and religious sites all in the name of preserving communism. Mao replaced traditional Chinese culture with his own cult of personality.

A symbol of that being the sacred little red book, officially known as Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. James Fell a historian and author of the book This Day in History Sh!t Went Down noted that “He (Mao) called on his cult followers to rise up in violent class struggle”, proclaiming “to rebel is justified.” Jesus Muppet-Fucking Christ this shit sounds familiar. Anyway, instead of Twitter, he had a “Little Red Book,” a collection of his sayings for his followers to fawn over. The cultural revolution has also had a lasting effect on China to this day, with Fell calling “Mao’s big plan” a failure that resulted potentially the deaths of millions and setting China back years.

What is interesting about the Cultural Revolution is the aspects of modern ‘Cancel Culture’ manifesting itself, as members of the Red Guards were encouraged to snitch on their parents and their teachers for being ‘reactionary’ and ‘counter revolutionary’. People who were snitched on were subject to ‘struggle sessions’ where people were humiliated in public, beaten and forced to confess to their crimes. People were pitted against one another, with children turning in their parents and even spouses betraying one another.

The leads us to 2023, where the term ‘cancel culture’ is thrown around by various groups of people who spread hate speech or disinformation. They accuse the government of being communist or fascist or even both at the same time… somehow? There are still places where one can be ‘cancelled’ by the government for criticising the government such as in Singapore, where there are laws protecting the judiciary from criticism.

Whilst not cancel culture in the colloquial sense, it is certainly an attempt for governments to maintain power. Professor James Ockey of the University of Canterbury believes that there is a difference between cancel culture and a government censoring it’s people saying “personally, I think it is fundamentally different when one is “cancelled” by the state for discussing topics the state wants to keep out of the public eye as opposed to being cancelled through public shaming. “

So that brings me back to the meme I saw ages ago, it’s made me think that the more things change the more they remain the same. How cultural erasure is something that humanity has been doing for nearly as long as we have been on this planet for. I find it ironic when some people make the claim that they are being ‘cancelled’ for opposing the greater use of te reo Māori by society, when they have no idea what it is like to actually have their own culture erased.