In Thursday night’s debate, the Oxford Union voted in favour of the motion “This House Would Cancel Cancel Culture”, with 144 members voting for the motion, 144 members voting against, and the tie-breaking vote cast by Union President Israr Khan.
The debate kicked off with Chief of Staff Siddhant Nagrath – in favour of the proposition – mockingly noting that his opposition, Rosalie Chapman, has “an extra knack for cancelling the Union”. Nagrath made a case for “debate, dialogue, discussion”. He argued that cancel culture is “mob mentality” rather than accountability, which blocks beneficial ideas.
He was followed by Chair of Consultative Committee Daniyal Vemuri who started by ‘roasting’ Nagrath for taking his “hack-ginity” as part of his pursuit of presidency in Michaelmas. Vemuri claimed that cancel culture is “in principle with free speech” and necessary for holding each other accountable. He referred to John Stuart Mill’s Harm Principle, arguing that speech can have harmful effects. He concluded with the statement, “free speech maniacs, please go ahead and cancel me”.
Dr Naomi Wolf, an American writer, self-proclaimed “feminist icon”, journalist, and vaccine-denier (this latter past-time wasn’t advertised in the term card) then argued in favour of the statement by listing statistics that supposedly demonstrated a link between the COVID-19 vaccines and infertility. She declared that her “cancellation” was an attempt to “silence” her. Looking up at the balcony, she continued to argue that many thinkers (Socrates, John Milton, Thomas Paine – the list went on) were themselves cancelled for their beliefs at the time.
The debate continued with the opposition speaker and Treasurer-elect Rosalie Chapman. She spoke in support of the victims and marginalised communities that themselves were “cancelled” by dominant powers. Chapman endorsed cancel culture as a sign of social progress, arguing that the racial slurs that “terrorised communities” still have inflammatory and harmful connotations. She later mentioned two Andrews, Prince and Tate, that haven’t been held accountable for their harassment of women and “cancelled”. Chapman finished by saying that “speech is only truly free for those in positions of power.”
Political commentator Dave Ruben spoke next for the proposition, stating that “free speech is literally his favourite thing to do”. He argued that people should be able to say things to each other’s face and agree to disagree without the fear of being silenced by a “weaponised mob”– Wolf nodded sadly the whole time. “Words are words, and you should have learned it in fourth grade.”
Ernest Owens, an award-winning journalist speaking against the statement, opened his speech by saying “if words do not matter, why are we here?”. He argued that speech used by criminals can have detrimental effects and those who claim otherwise are “intellectually dishonest”. Owens used Mein Kampf as an example of when something should be cancelled; an audience member asked for a point of information on this, and Owens responded “we are not going to deny holocaust in my time here” and that “there was a time when people that look like you would ‘cancel’ me”. Owens noted that cancel culture is only disliked by people like Trump because “it’s used to push back for rights”.
The final speaker for the proposition was Union Director of Strategy Eeshani Bendale, who spoke against cancel culture as a “pervasive social phenomenon”, which stops people from learning from their mistakes. Bendale pointed out that the consequences of cancel culture are harmful, regrettable and often irreversible, and that it is not the way to achieve accountability.
The closing speaker of the evening was human rights activist Peter Tatchell. He defined cancel culture as an “an act of withdrawing support from an individual, organisation, or regime” for their actions. Tatchell conceded that sometimes cancel culture has gone too far, but the motion would reject all forms of cancel culture, which is wrong. Cancelling oil companies, dictators, war criminals has a “moral and ethical purpose”, and cancelling cancel culture would result in “betrayal of human rights”.
Before the main debate began, the chamber voted against the motion “This house supports the break up between Europe and the US”. The discussion circled around the Western world, human rights, Russia, Ukraine and Trump. An elected committee member, accompanied by eager claps, argued against the motion and suggested returning the original US colonies to “Britannia”, arguing that the current US government lacks “King Charles’ strong hand”.
The emergency debate was followed by the signing ceremony of six scholarships for students from underprivileged backgrounds from Pakistan in memory of former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, who was also the first woman elected to the head of a democratic government in a Muslim-majority country.
This was followed by Rosalie Chapman’s proposition to establish the role of sexual violence officer. The motion passed unanimously except for one loud ‘nay’ from a member.
