"We need to cancel 'cancel culture' online

Pianist and author Daryl Davis said “[w]e need to cancel cancel culture” online in an interview with Turning Point U.S.A. contributor and host of “The Spillover” Podcast Alex Clark.

“Everybody needs a platform,” Davis told Clark on last week’s episode of “The Spillover.” “In this country, the Supreme court ruled we have a right to hate. We don’t have the right to hurt.” He later added that “[h]ate speech is very unfortunate. It’s very harmful, emotionally harmful ok. But people need a platform to express that. And how you combat it is providing more positive speech.” Davis reportedly inspired over 200 Ku Klux Klan members to leave the organization and is known for his belief that more speech and discussions plant the seeds to change minds–not less. His attitude toward online speech is no different.

Davis explained that when extreme ideas are shut out of the public conversation they don’t simply disappear. In fact, those ideas crop up elsewhere. “If you drive those people off that platform, guess what, they will find another platform maybe in a darker area,” he said later adding that “they are surrounded by echo chambers and it just enables and builds up that platform.”