“It’s true, cancel culture is contagious, and more importantly, it’s an incurable disease,” – this is how Zoran Kurelić, a tenured professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Zagreb, answered the question that is also the title of his lecture: “Is cancel culture an infectious disease?”
Cancel culture implies political correctness in the digital world as a form of cultural boycott, Kurelić explained, while adding that it has arrived in Croatia and it’s here to stay – just as it is all over the world.
By simply saying that “women don’t have penises”, people in America can lose their jobs within 24 hours, he said.
In Croatia, we have all the resources with which cancel culture is built and created, and we can be certain that this “virus” will undoubtedly enter our private, business and educational lives, explained the esteemed professor. The systematic and organized refusal to interact with states, societies, cultures or people is best manifested in current world crises and events that leave an indelible mark. Currently, almost the entire world’s population does the same thing, without even being aware of its effect.
The various and often negative reactions to Russian culture prompted by Putin’s dictatorship and the invasion of Ukraine are a reflection of the existence and effectiveness of cancel culture, which, as it were, has the task of canceling something from the public discourse. In this way, we become a segment of political activity that is much more dramatic than the cancellation itself.
The globally known and renowned writer J.K. Rawling also struggled with cancel culture because she believes that “transsexual women are not women”. For this statement she was attacked by many people who then labeled her as a fascist. However, the fact is that the hugely popular writer behind the Harry Potter series cannot be dismissed from the discourse just like that. Precisely because of this, the conclusion is that we cannot hide from the phenomenon of cancel culture, but that we are forced to become aware of it and learn to react to it.
