Veteran Singapore blogger Xiaxue has been in the spotlight recently after her alleged racist tweets from 2010 were dug out by netizens and reported to the police.
Yesterday (July 23), Alfian Sa’at, a Singaporean playwright joined in the fray to respond to Xiaxue’s 19 Minute Instagram video which she captioned “#CancelCancelCulture”, where she explained her own take on what the “culture” is about.
Alfian said in his post that he disagreed with her definition and distinction between “boycotting” and “cancelling”.
He cited Colin Kaepernick, the former American National Football League player as an example.
Kaepernick knelt down during his country’s national anthem as a form of protest against police brutality and racial inequality, which led to many people being unhappy and resulted in complaints to Nike, demanding them to drop their sponsorship deals.
Alfian added that Xiaxue’s definition of “cancelling” is how boycotts work, and he also disagreed that cancelling is done by a “select group of people”.
Using the petition created by netizens for Xiaxue to get charged, which garnered over 28,000 signatures, he stated that companies who work with her look at that number as a gauge of her “popularity” or “infamy”, and the decision to pull the switch ultimately lies with the companies.
He again cited Colin Kaepernick, saying that Nike stood by him as the brand was for “social justice”.
He added: “Ultimately, it is not mobs that ‘cancel’ a public personality; it’s the companies that do it by *actually* cancelling endorsement and advertising deals.”
You can see his post in full below.