Posted on 05/19/2021 6:46:18 AM PDT by Kaslin
When will it stop, we wonder? Is there no limit, we ask each other upon reading of the latest Cancel Culture outrage. Can nothing be left untouched?
Outside of the laments, we need a new way of thinking about this beyond simply highlighting its absurdity and waiting for the next episode. I hereby recommend we retire the term ‘Cancel Culture.’ We need to stop seeing what’s happening as a function of the old school culture wars where we worried about the design of Starbucks cups or edgy music corrupting our youth. Nor is this only political correctness run amok. What we’re witnessing the past few years is something new and different, and any hope for respite from the madness: that’s outmoded too.
Instead, in a bitterly divided nation – one in which political allegiance is often the defining characteristic of many Americans’ lives – this is now what politics at the ground level looks like. The political is now personal. Where’s the new battleground? Everywhere. What’s the new battleground? Everything.
With that proper understanding we can recognize that no one gets “canceled.” These are not cancellations; they are small-scale political assassinations. And we’re all potential targets. You didn’t get canceled, you got targeted for political assassination and economic assault, and usually it’s carried out.
No way, that stuff’s only for DC, I hear. Political assassination is only for the House of Cards wannabees on the Hill and the congressmen who wade into national issues on big cable news shows. Wrong. Political assassination happens in your town. You don’t even have to hold a public position, let alone be a politician. This is what a politically cleaving country looks like. We now live in an era of blacklists and mobs with digital pitchforks.
The Pennsylvania teacher removed for posting anti-Biden memes on her private Facebook page. The Mexican-American utility driver in San Diego fired for allegedly making an obscure white power hand sign while sitting in traffic, a gesture he claims he didn’t know existed. The Long Island pizzeria owner who faced an unsuccessful boycott for hanging a flag for the wrong presidential candidate near the back entrance of his store. Forget about the rare harassment by Antifa types of restaurant patrons in places like DC and Brooklyn, this – the small-town, small-scale attacks – are what the mob looks like. And just like any other political assassination, the mob just needs to dig up dirt or the semblance of it and let the outrage do the rest.
The other reason we should retire the term is there isn’t really an obscure, ill-defined culture around cancellation. These are specific, identifiable members of the Activist Left. They work for a reasonably small number of advocacy groups and media companies. They hunt for and collect names of those who engage in wrongthink. Then they put them on Twitter threads or websites with attractive layouts and try not to say the word blacklist out loud.
When many Americans hear that word – blacklist – they think about the McCarthy era and the rise of Communist sympathizers in Hollywood. Yet America’s history with blacklisting extends much further back and often involved not the government but – much like today – corporations responding to perceived threats. Workers in mining and other industrial towns faced the threat of blacklisting by dominant companies that could inhibit their ability not just to work for them, but to make a living in a town at all.
What we have today is closer to that, but the goal here is not for the companies to punish the employee, it’s for the Activist Left to punish the offender by threatening their livelihood. The companies respond not because the employee is the threat, but because the activists will threaten the companies’ livelihood if the company doesn’t perform as instructed. The activists are the ones planning and conducting the political assassination, the company is often just the reluctant executioner.
You may be a Midwestern town clerk, you may be a small market podcaster, you may be a Little League coach, but that does not make any of this low stakes. When your livelihood and position in your community is at risk, the stakes are about as high as they can get. Retire the term Cancel Culture, because it’s insufficient for the gravity of the moment.
Fascism works for me.
L
I would suggest replacing the phrase “cancel culture” with either “fascist purge” or “Stalinist purge”.
No. It’s an effective and accrate phrase. It’s our label for them. Usually they define us. I will continue using this phrase.
I like it - Just keep saying “’cancel culture’ is the same as ‘Stalinist purge’” (because it is)
agree. same as calling these leftist totalitarians “liberal” or “progressive”
Struggle Sessions.
“Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by eactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for commiting thought-crime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”
Censorship is the correct term. The left is hellbent on it.
“Those who control language control minds.” Ayn Rand
L
Yes, it's fascism.
Any new term has to reflect the leftist political nature of cancel culture, trying to invoke fascism is a waste of time because most people in the mainstream will automatically start thinking about far-right politics when they hear the word fascism. We need to be clear about what we’re opposing and that is Marxist groupthink. It works like fascism, no real difference in how the two strains of totalitarian thought operate, but there are structural differences and this is definitely a far-left phenomenon, egged on from the sidelines by America’s powerful political adversaries.
It’s complicated, some of us have been trying to sell the far left as fascist just because we know that fascism is the indefensible form of political evil, therefore since there is some resemblance why not go for this knockout blow? The problem is, it won’t resonate with a lot of people and it postpones that difficult day when we have to convince the majority of our fellow citizens that the far LEFT is the clear and present danger, and all the terminology that goes with LEFT has to be brought into the discussion, which of course is not the knockout blow because schools have done a pretty good job of softening up the population by presenting communism and socialism as “not really that bad and actually sort of good.”
This is how we got Biden and Harris, also with the help of some creative vote counting. Not really that bad and actually sort of good is how many will view your cancellation. I know that as a fact because I was already cancelled in my culture. Been there, done that. Trying to fight it is rather like trying to stop the daylight from coming into your house.
Of course what it really is, we have to admit, is a sort of slow-motion ethnic cleansing. Some of our fellow citizens figure they can stay in charge while allowing that process to play out, since we’re not model citizens for them, why not bring in millions of replacements? They will be so grateful and of course they will let the cancellers continue to run things. Right? Like the Vandals accepted the continued rule of the Roman emperors, how long did that last? Until there were more Vandals than Romans.
Censorship is the correct term. The left is hellbent on it.
~~~
Even the word ‘censorship’ is too mild.
I believe everyone should take responsibility for their own actions, and should be aware that the things they say and do can have consequences, and it’s not up the the state to protect people from other people’s opinions, but it’s something completely different when large groups form and take intimidating action against individuals and corporations with the explicit intent of doing them personal harm and loss, whether you call it a reaction or retaliation or even ‘social justice’.
I call it domestic terrorism.
If right wing groups assembled to do the things that the left did to get people fired, protested, and their publicly available services (I’m not calling it “social media”) turned off, they would be called terrorists.
How about the word ‘tyranny’ ?
Consider adding “progressive” to your list.
It was bad enough when leftists started calling themselves “liberals”. They ruined that fine old, respectable word.
But their use of the term “progressive”, that’s even worse. Because if you are not a “progressive”, you must be against progress. You must be an idiot.
Fascism, like all forms of socialism, is directed to the collective good over the individual. What differentiates the various forms of socialism is their identification of the social group. For fascism (the original Italian form of Mussolini) the social group was the nation-state, the collective of all the citizens. For the communists it is the "workers." But for today's socialists--BLM/Antifa/Democratic Party--the social group whose good they seek to promote is primarily racial: non-whites. There is a form of socialism that seeks the good of a racial group; its name is NAZISM. Same idea, just a different racial group. Today's left are NAZIS!
How about we actually do something to fight it rather than whine about what it is called?
The War on Thought. The Un-enlightment. The Descent into Darkness.
Funny you mention “progressive.” I started adding it to my list near the top, but a cascade of other words popped into my head and I plumb forgot to add it.
You are absolutely right. I think “progressive” (as well as stealing “liberal”) should be at the top of the list for the reason you state.
You can look up very long lists of words that they have either invented out of thin air or stolen. I find it frightening how easily they distort and invent the English language to their own twisted and nefarious needs. And the general population happily goes along with it.
Fascism is the most precise.
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