Cancel Culture uses social media to shame individuals and eliminate support for public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. Once reserved for high-profile individuals, the practice has spread to include everyday people. Canceling’s greatest “benefit” is as an intimidation tactic to silence heterodox thought on issues such as gender identity and conservative politics. Once upon a time, stifling speech through fear and harassment would have been considered un-American. Not so much today.
In the past, bullying would have been considered an underhanded means of forcing compliance. Today there are actually those who frame cancel culture as a positive method to “reduce perceived harm to an individual or demographic, thereby creating social change.”
How ironic that people allow Cancel Cultural bullying as a way to make people behave the way they want, but call it "psychological abuse" when a marriage partner or parent does it in their family. If you don't like psychological abuse in a marriage, then don't accept it in regular society.
“If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it…does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don’t celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe.”
“If Americans believed in political correctness, we’d still be King George’s boys—subjects bound to the British crown.”
Scholastic’s “anti” student rightfully identified cancel culture for what it is – public condemnation without context or humanity. But lost in the debate over the pros and cons of cancel culture is the foregone conclusion that anyone expressing an “offensive” opinion is by definition wrong. Society does not just cancel youthful indiscretions or outdated opinions. It cancels in order to stamp out the arguments of those opposed to the reordering of society by cultural elites. Proponents know the power of cancel culture to effect social change because it encourages self-censorship by you and me. We just stop sharing our thoughts out of fear. And what happens then?
In a 1999 address at Harvard Law School, the late Charlton Heston described what we are experiencing as a “new McCarthyism.” He said, “I believe that we are again engaged in a great civil war, a cultural war that’s about to hijack your birthright to think and say what lives in your heart… Now, what does all of this mean? Among other things, it means that telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can’t be far behind.”
Heston also gave us the antidote to this conspiracy of silence – a willingness to “disavow cultural correctness with massive disobedience of rogue authority, social directives, and onerous laws that weaken personal freedom.” That means speaking up and taking action – in civil and peaceful ways – when we see or hear that which is harmful. It is risky, and it takes courage, but it is the only way for us to resist this tyranny of political correctness.
Author Robert Henderson argues that when people are afraid to speak their minds, they begin to lie about what they do believe, which, Henderson points out, was common in Communist circles. Soon “honesty becomes unfashionable,” and people begin to “operate under the assumption that others hold certain opinions, which, in fact, they do not.” In the end, Henderson contends, as “individuals lose jobs or prominence because of things that they have said in the past, we will all become more adept at expressing falsehoods. It is likely that such a system will select for individuals predisposed to being comfortable with deception. Over time, only liars will speak openly.”
Gender identity theory is an invention. Male and female are not a construct. It is a classification based on the DNA and reproductive system present in every person at birth. All of the cross-sex hormones and plastic surgery in the world cannot turn a man into a woman nor a woman into a man. Such a person will always be an imitation.
The solution to racism will not be found, however, in critical race theory which ignores and discounts the blood shed to end the shameful institution of slavery, the abolition of laws designed to segregate and disadvantage, the creation of laws to establish and protect rights, and the advancement of people of color to positions of prominence and power in literally every walk of life.
Gender identity theory is the belief that the meaning of male and female is a social “construct,” that is, socially created and not related to one’s biological sex. Therefore, one’s sex is not fixed by DNA or reproductive organs but is a matter of feelings and how one self-identifies. According to the theory, any attempt by governments, institutions or individuals to define identity biologically is a form of oppression and discrimination.
Cancel Culture uses social media to shame individuals and eliminate support for public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. Once reserved for high-profile individuals, the practice has spread to include everyday people. Canceling’s greatest “benefit” is as an intimidation tactic to silence heterodox thought on issues such as gender identity and conservative politics. Once upon a time, stifling speech through fear and harassment would have been considered un-American. Not so much today.