Cancel Culture in World Politics: Historical and Philosophical Roots

Abstract

In the West, “cancel culture” is spreading at epidemic speed as a vehicle of the “new ethics.” Although the concept of “cancel culture” remains opportunistic, there is a perceived need to identify the subject of research of this phenomenon from the standpoint of political science and meth-ods of historical and philosophical deconstruction in order to understand the genesis and true meaning of cancel culture and why it has so broadly and quickly acquired such an influence on world politics. My hypothesis is that cancel culture is connected by a socio-genetic code with evolution (more-over, mutation) of the underlying meanings of European culture going back to the sacralization of ancient sacrificial rituals, Aristotle’s tertium non datur principle, the ideology of the Crusades, positivist Karl Popper’s “contractual truth,” and school of analytical philosophy that gave rise to Soros-type “open society” cultural universalism. New media and especially social networking have become tools of cancel culture pressure at the international level. The COVID pandemic has high-lighted the depth of the crisis of the Open Society social project and globaliza-tion interpreted as bringing national cultural and political values in line with the standards of American political culture. The measures taken by Russia, China, and a number of other countries to protect their value sovereignty met with a tough reaction from the West in the form of “fencing off” and “punish-ment” similar to the “canceling of Hollywood movie stars” – i.e., declaring “maverick” countries to be “outcasts” that impede the “effective” project of “democratic globalization.” In this discussion article, the author considers ways to neutralize attempts to “cancel Russian culture” and shows that Russia has a “firewall” in the form of traditional values opposing the “new ethics” as well as in the form of creating new ties and open platforms for interaction at the international level. Considering the cyclic nature of relations of confron-tation and cooperation with Western civilization, it is in Russia’s interests to avoid self-isolation from the West and to build relations with it, combining the protection of value sovereignty and the media environment with balanced strategic empathy in order to avoid an escalation of events toward the brink of a nuclear catastrophe.