Cancel culture is nothing more than a buzzword. There is a common sentiment that the practice of receiving online backlash for your actions is somehow a novel form of censorship. But after the recent removal of TikTok — one of the major sources of this inaccurate connotation — in the United States, I think it’s best we reground ourselves in the historicities that predate us. Any quick glance into a book (historical or fiction) will show that a mob-like majority rallying their pitchforks to “cancel” an unpopular figure because of a difference in beliefs has a long paper trail existing well before the internet: “The Scarlet Letter,” the life of Thomas Paine, Jesus’ crucifixion, and Martin Luther’s excommunication are just a few examples.

After delving into a book titled “Why I Am Not A Christian,” featuring a collection of essays from the world renowned British philosopher Bertrand Russell, I was shocked to learn of yet another case of cancel culture, involving corruption, lies, and legal malpractice. A deep dive into the series of events that occurred reveals some unsettling truths about the ways in which the praxis of religion operates as a cancel culture, subverts liberalism and democracy, and limits our capacity for improved ethical mechanisms.

The Life of Bertrand Russell

Born into aristocracy, Lord Bertrand Russell was the third Earl Russell and grandchild of two-time British Prime Minister John Russell. By just the age of six, Russell’s sister, parents, and grandfather had tragically passed. With limited family around, he distracted himself with his studies, taking a particular affinity to geometry. His mathematical disposition made him rather analytic, preferring rationality to faith; thus, he became religiously agnostic by his teenage years. After attending Trinity College, University of Cambridge, he abandoned pure mathematics for mathematical philosophy. He would focus on this area of study for much of his early philosophical career. 

Pursuing his obsession with mathematical logic, he made instrumental contributions as a logician and philosopher of language, ultimately pioneering the analytic tradition of philosophy both in tandem with and opposition to Gottlob Frege. Realizing he had a knack for explaining complex ideas to the layman, he then left the often inaccessible and esoteric realm of academic philosophy to pursue a career as a writer, journalist, and social activist. Russell went on to publish many political works throughout his career and tour the world, speaking at various academic institutions and events. After amassing global fame amongst his erudite peers, he gained teaching positions in the United States at the University of Chicago for two years and then the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).

The City College of New York (CCNY) Scandal

It was while teaching at UCLA in early 1940 that nineteen members of the City College of New York’s Philosophy Department unanimously voted in favor of inviting Russell to teach at their school. Elated, Acting President of CCNY Nelson Mead released a statement to the press, sharing the good news of Lord Russell’s appointment to teach there. However, his announcement yielded an unexpected reaction: Numerous New-York-based publications began to decry Russell’s appointment. In a matter of days, headlines and articles launched an all-out attack on the esteemed philosopher. No longer was Russell a logician and great thinker but instead a “professor of paganism,” according to The Tablet and, by the words of America, a Jesuit magazine, a morally depraved, irreligious, sexual deviant.

While hurtful, these verbal defamations quickly escalated to more intense calls to action that demanded the school reverse their decision to hire Russell. In an attempt to blockade these calls, a wave of support from reputable institutions, societies, and scholars around the world came to his defense: Phi Beta Kappa, the American Mathematical Association, Harvard Divinity School, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), The Herald Tribune, and more all chimed in to sing Bertrand’s praises. Even Einstein himself spoke out against the backlash towards Lord Russell. Weighing all voices, the motion for Russell’s appointment was revisited, and the committee voted eleven to seven in his favor again. 

However, his opposition was far too entitled and proactive. In anticipation of support from the CCNY Philosophy Department, dissenters pursued legal recourse. Mrs. Jean Kay, a city magistrate from Brooklyn, filed a taxpayer’s complaint to the New York Supreme Court to void Russell’s appointment because of his alien status and sexual immorality. Her lawyer Joseph Goldstein further argued that since he had not been appointed via a comprehensive exam and was an “atheist,” he was unfit to teach at a taxpayer-funded college that Mrs. Kay’s daughter might attend. To support Mrs. Kay’s claims, Goldstein cited four books as evidence of Russell’s alleged incompetence: Education and the Good Life, Marriage and Morals, Educations and the Modern World, and What I Believe.

Only two days later, Bertrand’s final fate was decided. The judge for the case, Judge McGeehan, revoked Russell’s appointment and did not allow attorney Nicholas Bucci — who was representing the Board that elected Russell — to respond because Mr. Bucci “informed the court that he would not serve an answer.” In a sworn affidavit, Mr. Bucci denied ever making this statement. Still, no one challenged the judge’s assertion. To ensure there was no possibility to push back against his decision, McGeehan connected Russell’s alleged “immorality” to Penal Law, escalating the powers of the New York State judicial branch beyond their prescribed scope to override any powers the Board of CCNY had. Frivolously citing from the four books that he somehow managed to read in just two days, Judge McGeehan characterized Russell through a series of out-of-context misquotes. He managed to fabricate a narrative that Betrand was an advocate for the incomprehensible abominations of childless marriages, private sex lives, nudity, non-monogamy, and homosexuality — some of the world’s most egregious phenomena. 

Outraged yet again, countless academics and professionals across the globe protested the decision. Even the City College of New York’s most famous alum, Upton Sinclair, advocated for Russell. But the deed was done.

Religious Malpractice

While the intolerance displayed by the “morally good Christians” involved in Russell’s auto-da-fé may come as a surprise to some, I’d argue this is their typical modus operandi. Russell’s CCNY Scandal is a great case study for religion because it is a microcosm of practices used by religious people throughout history, and today. By examining this trial, it becomes clear that the institution(s) of religion — as opposed to the spirituality of it — appears to often be a source of more harm than good.

One of the most damaging aspects of the praxis of religion is that it often stifles morality rather than enhancing it. To maintain the divine integrity of their holy texts — and thus their religions — the common pedagogical approach to teach religious ethics is an en bloc dogmatism that claims you must obey all commandments that lie within God’s text. They claim that because He is the source of all ethics, if you disobey one maxim, then you reject all maxims, and therefore reject Him. “The harm [of this method is] that the valid parts of conventional morality become discredited along with the invalid parts, and it comes to be thought that, if adultery is excusable, so are laziness, dishonesty, and unkindness,” writes Russell. However, such a perspective is both inhuman and impractical. 

The mere existence of religious sects proves the inability for these frameworks to be comprehensive of the human experience and spectrum of morality, as different yet equally valid worldviews produce different interpretations of the same religious texts. But therein lies the contradiction. A holy text cannot be the only and absolute source of ethics if only some of the ethics are applicable. And so in a final attempt to maintain the ethos of their deity, religious followers use the only tool remaining: fallacy. Religious people, like Judge McGeehan, are the most talented “straw-manners” in all of history. They pull suppositions out of thin air and make an explanatory appeal to an infinite set (ie. God). This was a major motif amid the trial. Judge McGeehan’s flouting of Russell’s words, lying, and ad hominem perfectly displayed the ways in which religions’ commitment to arbitrary moral perspectives undermines justice with unfounded logic. 

The harm of such a belief system that is rooted in irrationality is that it induces a moral psychosis of sorts where religious followers are no longer thinking for themselves. In fact, they are not thinking at all. They are simply abiding by the customs of their respective sects/denominations. That is, until they have no further use for these customs. And while this mode of morality need not have negative implications, in practice, it historically has. As Russell puts it, “[religion has been and] is an opponent of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label morality as a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. ‘The object of morals is not to make people happy,’ [they say.]” Despite Russell being supported by the university faculty and respected individuals around the world supporting CCNY’s decision to appoint him, the religiously motivated media publications and government officials still pushed back vehemently. This anti-pragmatic philosophy benefitted nobody, and as Russell says did not center human utility in the slightest.

Still, beyond irrationality and a lack of concern for humanism, religious followers persist further to worsen the already difficult world they actively engender. “What could be worse than being anti-human?” you might ask. “Converting others to be anti-human with you,” I’d respond. Emboldened with the gall of gods and fearful of punishment from sin, religious believers take it as their duty to spread their morally inhibited gospel and intervene in the lives of others whenever they deem fit. They pass judgement onto others based on how they are living — either in sin or in alignment with God. In small numbers, this could be a harmless practice. But via the large numbers that many great religions have attained, this yields a cancel culture that is adamant and cruel in its mission to rid the world of anything or anyone believed to behave antithetical to their religion. 

The key word here is “believed,” as the characteristics of who is disobedient to the words of religious texts is totally arbitrary and context-driven. For example, we now live in a world that no longer uses the Bible to justify slavery, but just a couple centuries ago, people were doing exactly that. And so it becomes evident that in any democratic society, we are subject to the nonexistent mercy of the morally incompetent majority. “A democracy in which the majority exercises its powers without restraint may be almost as tyrannical as dictatorship,” writes Bertrand. Fallacies and evangelism aside, it is religious cancel culture or judgmental ostracization that is most subversive to any liberal democracy because it does not tolerate minorities of any form. Rather than operating in such a way that every person has the right to communicate their opinions and convince others primarily using their faculties of discursive rationality, societies have instead become carceral states of sorts, where the morally inept majority is the jailer and anyone outside of that in-group becomes an inmate. Though it may not seem as extreme as I’ve characterized it, all you have to do is inquire about the experiences of those who live on the periphery of theocracies posing as democracies. Surely any person of color, queer person, and/or non-Christian throughout American history would not claim that their persecution has been committed by sane, freethinking, morally just men. And it was the same ilk of (wo)men that bent the law and stripped Russell of his freedom to teach.

If Not Religion, Then What?

Now, I suppose the religious defender may be wondering where I stand in my personal beliefs if I am so quick to poke holes in any and all religions. So, it is only right that I provide solvencies to refill the gaps. Luckily, we can revisit Russell’s words for the priorities of an ideal society. In accordance with the status quo, Russell believed that a liberal democracy is the best form of government, but he wanted greater clarity as to the function of such a government. And I am inclined to agree. As fundamental as Christianity is to much of Western society, liberalism and democracy are also just as important. The ability for Mrs. Kay to even state her claim is protected under the notion of a liberal democracy. 

Simply put, Russell believes that a liberal democracy is one that places discourse as its greatest virtue. In a liberal democracy, everyone should be free to express their opinion to the public. When a consensus is necessary, then a majority rule shall be employed. Otherwise, any and all opinions can be communicated and maintained. However he says, we should leave discourse to the experts in conversations of expertise. “Whether a man is a good mathematician, or physicist, or chemist, can only be judged by other mathematicians, or physicists, or chemists. By them, however, it can be judged with a fair degree of unanimity,” explains Russell.

We must prioritize preserving the integrity of a liberal democracy that yields to expertise but does not totally defer to it. I believe we should establish a sphere of discourse that uses rationality to weigh the logical integrity of arguments. In this, it would be most rational to grant higher degrees of credence to individuals of higher expertise. This does not mean, as Russell says, to only believe experts in their respective fields because experts have been wrong before. None of this, of course, is new to Western democracies; I fear I am repeating the words of the founding fathers of many democracies. Still, if we were truly taking advantage of the methodologies they envisioned, cases such as the CCNY trial could have never played out the way it did. 

Furthermore, beyond logos, we must also reconsider the source of our ethics. As I have stated before, religion most commonly attributes the origin of morality to deities, but as also stated, this cannot be. Again, the fact that there exists infighting within every religion prevents this possibility. It is time we apply rationality to the discipline of ethics. We should start anew and create ethical frameworks that weigh the validity of maxims on their capacity for utility and practicality. And Russell provides the perfect ethic(s) to begin with: “The good life is one led by love and guided by knowledge.” Or as I like to call it, we should live constantly with “radical empathy” as our North Star. Were this ethic employed amid Russell’s trial, he may have fared better against the cancel culture he was berated with.

By expanding our knowledge of those who come from differing lives and perspectives, we can treat others with greater kindness than before, with the hopes that others do the same for us. And vice versa: If we employ a kindness and tolerance to opinions inconsistent with those that we hold and grant them the utmost respect, then we can educate ourselves to better understand opposing views. In a feedback loop, we continuously elevate our knowledge and kindness in unison. The beauty of this framework is that it inspires people to fully learn with the intention of comprehending opposing perspectives. By granting rival views the fullest respect, you can then better understand when disagreement is inevitable and from where disagreement spawns. In starting here, human happiness has a higher potential to be optimized.

Additionally, an ethic of empathy is often the leading principle of various religions. I’m sure anyone familiar with Christianity sees the resemblance of Russell’s statement to the Golden Rule. People need not totally abandon theistic faith to implement this pragmatic axiom of radical empathy because many already preach the same message. Though this may be where Russell and I diverge largely, I believe it is fully feasible to maintain this ethic of empathy alongside religion. 

If religious people were to use their holy texts as poetry rather than step-by-step manuals, then there would be no incompatibility between conventional ethics and religion. While this would require a total abandonment of en bloc morality, this is not as difficult of a task as religious people might claim. Most practitioners of religion already pick and choose which parts of their religious texts they want to abide by. The only barrier between them doing away with ruthlessly cancelling others for “disobeying” God’s ethics is confessing that they too are disobedient in the same way. Once released from the shackles of dogmatism, religious believers could treat theology as a philosophical art and use rationality to bend it to the benefit of humans for the optimization of human happiness. But if people remain enchained, the cycle of cancel culture, ranging from scales of cyberbullying to nuclear warfare, will continue to stain — if not end — humanity.