Cancel culture expert and author Evan Nierman discusses in The Hill a new effort to cancel Hollywood A-lister Will Smith, this time using 7-year-old comments the actor made months before the 2016 presidential election.

Thanks to the media, a 7-year-old YouTube clip of the actor denouncing Trump supporters has gone viral on Twitter. The 2016 clip in which Smith says he wants to “cleanse” the U.S. of Trump supporters is blowing up all over social media, just days after the former president was charged with 34 felonies.

Evan notes that Smith’s use of the word “cleanse” was incredibly ill-conceived no matter when he said it. The word carries with it tremendous baggage, reminding many of the war in the former Yugoslavia where “ethnic cleansing” was a stand-in term for genocidal murder. But to vilify the actor for a passing comment he made seven years ago in a different political climate and set of circumstances strikes at the heart of why cancel culture is such a dangerous practice, Evan says in The Hill article.

Read the entire article here.