“Bad Religion Run Amuck”: Nick Cave Wades Into Cancel Culture Debate Once Again
"It saddens me that our unique voices are being worn down and everyone is communicating within the safe and strident anti-wonder of grievance politics."
Overnight, musician Nick Cave has one again addressed cancel culture, this time penning an essay about “political correctness” as part of his letter series The Red Hand Files.
Responding to two separate questions from fans, one explicitly about cancel culture, the other about the concept of mercy, Cave called contemporary discourse “bad religion.”
“As far as I can see, cancel culture is mercy’s antithesis,” he writes. “Political correctness has grown to become the unhappiest religion in the world. Its once honourable attempt to reimagine our society in a more equitable way now embodies all the worst aspects that religion has to offer (and none of the beauty) — moral certainty and self-righteousness shorn even of the capacity for redemption. It has become quite literally, bad religion run amuck.”
just once i would love anyone who rails against "political correctness" gone mad / run amuck to have examples https://t.co/DlNeSopHSH
— Tiger Webb (@tfswebb) August 13, 2020
Later, Cave criticises those who he sees as silencing discourse. “Cancel culture’s refusal to engage with uncomfortable ideas has an asphyxiating effect on the creative soul of a society. Compassion is the primary experience — the heart event — out of which emerges the genius and generosity of the imagination.”
This marks the second time that the musician has spoken about the umbrella term “cancel culture”. Two years ago, again on The Red Hand Files website, Cave was asked about the “cultural sea change” in artistic representation of minorities and disenfranchised communities.
Addressing this issue in regards to gender in particular, Cave wrote that such a movement “was in danger of eroding those bright edges of personhood, and grinding them down into monotonous identity politics – where some women have traded in their inherent wildness and sense of awe, for a one-size-fits-all protestation against a uniform concept of maleness which I’m not sure I recognise.
“Whatever happened between us, it saddens me that something of our individual nature has disappeared into the divide, our unique voices are being worn down and everyone is communicating within the safe and strident anti-wonder of grievance politics.”
Both times, the comments have attracted Nick Cave ire online. Not that Cave will be tapped into that discourse — he has previously written that “social media was by its nature undermining both nuance and connectivity.”