No one left to cancel with Africa Brooke

"You need to understand that understanding does not mean acceptance."

This Q&A is part of a series of conversations with people who are forging meaningful lives in a time of chaos and unpredictability. These interviews take time and skill to produce, but I keep them available to all subscribers rather than paywalling them. If you value the themes explored in these conversations, consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

Occasionally, I receive emails from readers of this newsletter saying that they’re unsubscribing because I wrote, suggested, or linked to something they deem problematic. Or makes them feel unsafe or outraged in some way. 

When I receive these emails, I feel a flash of reactivity course through my body. That activated nervous system state always has the same physical sensation: a hot fizzing in the center of my chest that radiates out to my fingertips. I take a beat, notice this feeling. Then I take a deep breath, and from there, I usually do nothing.  

Part of what I hope makes my writing worth reading is that I am not moderating what I say here to please you specifically. Because, well, how could I be? I can’t possibly do that for thousands of readers, most of whom I’ve never met. It’s almost a statistical certainty that I will disappoint you at some point.

To hear that I’ve disappointed someone, to sit with it patiently, and then not immediately do anything to try and fix or correct it represents huge progress for me. And one of the thinkers that has helped me shift to a less reactive, more grounded person online is the author, coach, podcaster, and consultant Africa Brooke. I discovered her work in early 2021, when she wrote a viral open letter entitled Why I’m Leaving the Cult of Wokeness. 

At the time, I had just quit my journalism job due in part to two bad experiences online during those bizarre months of 2020. (I wrote about one of them here). I knew I needed to take a big step back from being online. That conviction was strengthened by the realization that, with everyone stuck behind their screens during the pandemic, the entire internet was behaving like media Twitter had for the ten years prior. The world was definitely a worse place for it. 

Discovering Africa’s letter and following her work was the first step in a long (and still ongoing) journey to renegotiate my relationship to the internet and how I want to write on it. Her new book The Third Perspective: Brave Expression in the Age of Intolerance is not quite about culture wars or cancel culture — which we agree are imperfect terms that mean different things to different people — but rather an invitation to chart a new, more tolerant path away from those tropes.  

Even though the whims of cancellation have calmed down a bit since 2021, Africa’s message still feels urgent. She is based in London but is originally from Zimbabwe, and her perspective reminds readers that many of the argumentative frameworks we’ve inherited over the past decade aren’t immovable, and can often sound quite silly to people living in other contexts.

The themes of her work — self sabotage, self inquiry, personal responsibility — go far deeper than the so-called culture wars. She reminds us that what we are all ultimately looking for online, and in real life, is belonging. And that there are much better ways to find it. 

Credit: Sté Marques

Rosie: You could have really easily written a takedown of cancel culture or wokeness. I honestly would have read that book. But you didn’t do that. You mapped out a way of thinking for the reader, and you explored why this conversation is as much about our emotions and psychology — what happened to us when we were little kids, our overall sense of belonging — as it is about intellect, political beliefs, or rhetoric. I wonder if there was resistance to taking that approach?

Africa: I didn’t feel even tempted to write a rant about cancel culture or a takedown of it. Because I had already done that with my open letter, and it was really important that I did — to not try to be professional, or give an over-intellectualized take, or to come from the academic angle of talking about cancel culture. I had to just be fucking human and say: I am done, I’m not participating in this anymore

R: And that’s why it took off, right? Because so many people felt that way.  

A: Exactly. And with the book, I’ve realized that I’ve read and listened to so many things about so-called wokeness and cancel culture but so much of it never puts forward a solution. It just keeps people in the why. I realized that keeping people in the why sort of perpetuates the very same thing that we’re saying that we want to push back against. 

R: Your book and message has a lot about personal responsibility, which I gather comes from your work and experience with sobriety. One thing I’ve noticed on the left is that personal responsibility has come to be treated with suspicion. Like it’s only acceptable to blame structural, societal forces — all the “isms” — for our problems, and not also the choices we’re making for ourselves. So why do you think that is? And what is it about sobriety that helps you see personal responsibility as something we all need to prioritize? 

A: The idea of personal responsibility is so charged now in the western world and its language has been so politicized. For whatever reason it’s sort of associated with the right wing. 

R: Like Margaret Thatcher once saying there’s no such thing as society. 

A: Exactly, and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps etc. So we’ve politicized so much of our language, that before we even get curious and engage with it intentionally, we think: “Okay is this leftist term or a right wing term? Can I say this?”

But personal responsibility taps into the language around victimhood, which for me was a big thing that I had to discover not only in the context of things happening culturally, but in my sobriety. For a while, I had blamed my own decision-making and my own alcoholism on my father because he was an alcoholic, because of our upbringing, because of being an immigrant etc. When I looked at myself through an honest lens through maintaining sobriety, I did have to take ownership of it. To say actually: These were my decisions. I was drinking and partying and doing drugs in that way because it felt good for me and because it’s what everyone around me was doing. My father had nothing to do with it.

This is a place where we can hold multiple truths. We can acknowledge the systems we’re under, the various forms of oppression, the injustice, misogyny, racism, sexism. But also at some point you do need some self inquiry. You do need to look at the result in your personal life and say, okay what part am I playing in the breakdown of my relationships? What part am I playing in the fact that in any job that I go to, I seem to feel that I'm disliked by everyone? What am I not seeing? What are my own blind spots?  

R: I think part of what can be so alluring about these punitive and unforgiving online spaces is that being right and being correct feels really good. I definitely experienced that as a journalist. It gives you a sense of control in an out of control world. When you see someone doing something wrong online, and it’s your self appointed job to rectify it, that whole cycle gives you a hit of chemicals like dopamine and adrenaline. It’s kind of addicting, even if the resulting worldview — that most people are awful and intolerant — can make you pretty miserable. 

A: I do think that a lot of this is projection. When I participated in cancel culture and online takedowns, my offline life felt very out of control. I felt a general dissatisfaction in life, and was dealing with past shames that were un-dealt with. That dissatisfaction with myself internally was being projected out onto the world. So being able to get applauded or have some sort of moral perfection online, where we get to curate these identities that use the right language, then have this community that always has your back.

So when you start to get applauded for these things, you not only get those good chemicals in your brain, but you also get a feeling of belonging. Even though the belonging actually goes against your true values, you will still engage with it because that’s where you feel a sense of being connected to the world. 

I think that’s where belonging is something that underpins a lot of this. The lengths that we’re willing to go in order to belong. We’re willing to self betray consciously and unconsciously in order to belong and we really see that online when we get to create these morally perfect versions of ourselves.

R: Yes, seeking that sense of belonging is really powerful.

A: Why we get so enraged when we see people who are not morally perfect — people who say, “Yes, I said that ten years ago, but I’ve changed and I’m not going to continue to apologize for that” — it’s because that person shows us that we have an inability to hold multiple truths about ourselves. When we see someone who is willing to accept all parts of them whether you like it or not. If you haven’t done that for yourself it will always enrage you.

That’s part of cancel culture: We can't face our own contradictions so why would I be able to face someone else’s? In fact, what I will do is just comb through every single person and try to find fault, so I can deal with the fault in them instead of dealing with me. 

R: That comes back to this idea from your book that there’s “no one left to cancel” — we’re all flawed, wrong, and imperfect and it’s only a matter of time before we’re exposed. It’s an idea that’s both terrifying and liberating. If no one is perfect, you don’t have to be perfect either. You can still find belonging. 

A: Right. And we walk around the real, offline world every single day where we know that. We have family members, people we actually love, who say some fucked up shit and sometimes you might find yourself laughing and say, “Oh my god auntie, you cant say that.” We understand that the real world is not politically correct, but for whatever reason we try to force ourselves to be when we’re online. 

We used to think there was a clear separation between online and offline. That is just not the case anymore especially in the post pandemic world. Our online and offline lives — and you don't need to be a public person or a public figure — are pretty much one in the same.

R: People occasionally email me saying something I wrote or linked to in my newsletter has made them feel unsafe. How do you grapple with this idea that speech, debate, disagreement, or even just an article in a mainstream publication can make people feel unsafe or threatened? 

A: It’s a very western thing, and I say that as someone who now lives in the west and has for a longtime, but I have something to compare it to. There’s a cultural thing here where now more than ever, people expect the world to be designed to suit their sensitivities. When we think of ego we think of someone who is overly confident, but ego is also in the realm of victimhood. There is a big difference between actually being a victim (someone who has been victimized) versus victimhood, which is worn as an identity whether or not you have been a victim of anything. 

I have empathy for people who behave in that way because I can recognize it in a past version of myself. The reason why it was happening is because I had been in echo chambers for so long where there was never anything uncomfortable because nothing gets in and nothing gets out. I didn't have to engage with so-called wrong thinkers, because if someone told me something was problematic or I shouldn't listen to it, I wouldn't engage with it. There is something religious about it. You curate your life in such a way that you are never uncomfortable. 

So by virtue of doing that, you're not an emotionally resilient person, you don't have any emotional or mental flexibility to be able to use discernment. To be able to somatically feel that discomfort in your body that says, “actually this is just not for me.” Or to be curious about it and say, “Why am I feeling so uncomfortable about this? What idea did I have of Rosie? Why do I feel so disappointed in her because she wrote this? What did I expect her to write?” We’re so void of self inquiry that we make the other person the problem.

R: One of the things I’ve learned is that I can trust myself to engage in good faith with an article or writer or idea I disagree with and still walk away with my beliefs intact. It’s going to be okay. I don’t have to demonize that person or dismiss them entirely. 

A: I often laugh. I can't believe my ancestors had to fight so hard for me to be sitting online terrified that someone has used the wrong term. When you really think about it and you think about the things that are happening in the world, the adversity people are experiencing, and you think to yourself, what are we actually worrying about here? What are we talking about? When there are no problems, people will create problems. I think about that all the time. 

R: Your book points to a spectrum where there are people who are afraid to speak their views on the one hand, and then people who are always saying their views in full in a reactive way. 

When I filled out one of the questionnaires in the book, I identified more with the person who needs to apply that filter more often. And that’s consistent with how I’ve changed my approach to publishing online. Whereas in my journalism days it was about always hitting publish to stay relevant, these days I’m really strict about what I choose to put out there. I only hit publish if I’m certain I can stand grounded in what I’m saying and detach a bit from the outcome. You call this “ownership mentality” in the book, which I really resonated with.  

This is quite different from the usual wokeness conversation, and I really appreciated you pointing out that we also need to develop discernment or “social filters” to respond to a situation appropriately or empathetically. And to just function as a society.

A: When I published the open letter, I wanted to be so intentional about not hopping from one echo chamber to another. It would have been so easy to go from woke to anti-woke, which I also think is completely useless too. But this idea of the third perspective is something I always embodied from the beginning.

This is not just about people that are silencing themselves full stop. It’s about people who believe they are so called free-thinkers, people that believe that everyone should just say whatever the fuck they want to say, people that are maybe so excited and supportive of my work because they think I am championing their behavior of just saying whatever they want to say. 

R: A lot of my readers are, like me, people who believe in traditionally left-leaning causes like climate, inclusivity, equality etc. I want to hear you make the case that broadening our argumentative horizons to be less polarized can help those causes. That engaging with other viewpoints isn’t being a bad ally, or apologizing for the oppressor, or giving up.

A: You need to understand that understanding does not mean acceptance. At the very least, understanding is going to make sure that your convictions and your stance come from a place of integrity and self awareness. 

The work that I do now has made me even more of a social justice warrior, but in the right way. Because now I have a better understanding of the world. I have a full spectrum view, instead of a limited view, I don't feel terrified by people using the wrong language. Because how are you an advocate when you shiver at people using the wrong language? 

You need to be able to have that mental flexibility, that behavioral flexibility, and I think it can start from understanding that understanding does not mean acceptance. You can understand someone’s position, read the books and listen to the podcasts that you have been told are problematic, and realize that actually it strengthened your inner resistance, your inner resilience, but you don't have to throw them out of the window. 

R: I also just think it’s a lifestyle improvement. It’s not fun to go through life just waiting for every person you interact with or every thing you read to reveal it is problematic or evil in some way. 

A: It’s really not. And from a social reputational point of view, you will have much more exciting connections with people when you’re able to understand things from all sides, when you're someone that can engage in uncomfortable conversations, you’re someone that is able to add some humor into it but can still stand firm in what you believe in you’re someone that is able to navigate the real world with confidence. That is so valuable socially.

For me a lot of these things come back to belonging. It will absolutely improve that aspect of your life in terms of belonging. And that’s something that people miss out on so much. 

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Thanks for reading. You can find out more about Africa’s work on her website, follow her on Instagram, and find out where to buy her book here.

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