| A witch hunt is usually characterized by 1. Either no wrongdoing, or minimal wrongdoing. 2. The ability to grant oneself absolution by implicating others The implied result is that since there isn't really any wrongful act, the only way to avoid the hunt is to accuse others. And in this way the "investigators" can go after whomever they want. There's also an implied (3) The investigation is done by someone with traditional authority. The connotation of a witch hunt is therefore a fake investigation for solely political purposes. That is used to implicate more political enemies. So cancel culture: If I had to, I'd describe this as a movement (or a collection of them) that tries to pressure powerful entities to take acts they deem to be moral by through social and economic pressure. That's really it. To people who disagree with the moral position, there can be similarities to (1), but (2) certainly isn't present, and the people pressuring for accountability/action/whatever aren't usually traditional authority figures. In fact individual movements may be entirely leaderless and decentralized (so no 3). Since moral and political lines are correlated, there can also be an appearance of similarity to the politicalized investigation aspect, but beyond the most surface level similarities, there isn't much in common. |