YouTube star ContraPoints discusses calling ‘cancel culture’ a modern guillotine

YouTube star Natalie Wynn, known as ContraPoints on the platform, said Monday she is glad she published her video describing “cancel culture” as a modern-day guillotine, even though she was worried she’d be attacked by her own “side” when she released it last month. 

“I was very worried about it. It’s a topic I’ve wanted to cover for probably two years, I always put it off,” she said in an Hill.TV interview, adding that she had concerns it would be used by people to dismiss all complaints over bigotry or other concerns. 

“So I worried about a video I made being used the wrong way, by that kind of person. And then I also worried about the risk of being attacked by people on my own side, internet leftist politics,” she said. “Because it is difficult to have a nuanced take on this topic.”

Ultimately, though, she said she is glad she published her video and said the response has been “overwhelmingly positive.” 

Wynn’s one hour and 40 minute long video was uploaded on Jan. 2. In it, she compares modern day “cancel culture” to the guillotine. 

“The bringer of justice, the people’s avenger, but also like the guillotine it can become a sadistic entertainment spectacle,” she said in the video. “We do have a teensy bit of a reign of terror situation on our hands.” 

Wynn said she finally was pushed to make the video after experiencing her own “cancel culture,” after she included a well-known trans man who she said had apparently made some controversial remarks.

She told Hill.TV she felt “stuck” being tied to the remarks she didn’t believe but also not wanting to fully condemn an “elder” in her community who had done “decades of good activism.” 

Asked by “Rising” host Krystal Ball if she feels she’s held to a higher standard due to her platform, Wynn said “100 percent.” 

“I think that because I am a highly visible trans person at a time when there’s sort of not a lot of good trans representation there is an extremely high bar, because people are sort of expecting me to be the one that represents them,” Wynn added.


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