“Cancel culture is real and getting worse due to Black Lives Matter orthodoxy”
My column at Real Clear Politics: “Trump was right about cancel culture, and so were the Harper’s letter signatories”
I have a column today at Real Clear Politics, Cancel Culture is Real.
Read the whole thing at the link, and share it. Here is a brief excerpt:
During his July 4, 2020 speech at Mount Rushmore, President Donald Trump referred to the “political weapon” of “cancel culture,” describing it as “driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees.”
Trump’s cancel culture reference was scorned by liberal media outlets such as The New York Times, calling such “culture war” comments a “straw-man version of the left.” Similarly, liberal writer Judd Legum dismissed claims of “cancel culture” as “something that does not exist.”
Yet cancel culture is very real, and it’s getting worse with the increased power of the Black Lives Matter movement. There are numerous documented examples of people being investigated or losing their jobs for criticizing BLM’s origins or tactics.
Even left-of-center authors and professors, in an open letter in Harper’s Magazine, decried the growing “intolerance of opposing views [and] a vogue for public shaming and ostracism …” They too were met with denials that cancel culture was a real problem.
This cancel culture has nothing to do with criticism or debate, and everything to do with silencing opposition so there is no debate. I know. I’m going through it now over my criticisms of BLM….
After discussion of the problem, including the details of my situation, I conclude:
Trump was right about cancel culture, and so were the Harper’s letter signatories. Cancel culture is real and getting worse due to Black Lives Matter orthodoxy.
Head over to RCP for the full column, and spread the link!
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Comments
#PushBackNow
#push back hard
#DefundDEMS
BLM is a DEM fund raising operation ….
Lots of insight into it when you see it is almost exclusively Twenty something white ex college crackers.
Black Lives Matter started a riot at an otherwise peaceful restaurant in Dallas by attacking customers and staff. This is what Cultural Marxism looks like.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1283193566882263042
https://mobile.twitter.com/stillgray/status/1283193566882263042?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1283193566882263042%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.weaselzippers.us%2F452416-blm-invades-dallas-restaurant-patrons-fight-back-black-guy-calls-them-out%2F
My peace plan, expel all the palestinians.
They too were met with denials that cancel culture was a real problem.
The deniers will say it’s not a problem, until THEY get cancelled.
And it will happen. Like ‘everybody must get stoned’. Just substitute ‘cancel’:
Well, they’ll stone ya when you’re trying to be so good
They’ll stone ya just a-like they said they would
They’ll stone ya when you’re tryin’ to go home
Then they’ll stone ya when you’re there all alone
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned
They are coming for you no matter what you do, so you better figure out how you going to deal with it.
9mm
From the RCP article: Even left-of-center authors and professors, in an open letter in Harper’s Magazine, decried the growing “intolerance of opposing views [and] a vogue for public shaming and ostracism …” They too were met with denials that cancel culture was a real problem.
And then efforts were made to cancel several of the signatories, showing progressives’ usual complete lack of self-awareness.
Sorry that was suppose to be reply not down vote.. please change that Professor!
Exactly, they weren’t complaining of having dialogue, they are complaining that THEY were being cancelled, just like those awful deserving conservatives
Absolutely. The new orthodoxy has all the trappings of a religion. True believers, those viewed as pagan non-believers, there are heretics and or apostate being denounced and pushed out/cancelled.
There are indulgences for sale in the form of donations to blm and d causes/candidates.
What remains to be seen is the number of adherents to the new orthodoxy; we will find out in November.
Cancel culture religion is much like Islam, both are intolerant, ignorant and violent.
Black Lives Matter is the ideal Trojan horse; an appealing (at least if you don’t think too much about it) camouflage on the exterior, but a Marxist totalitarian revolution (or perhaps the Borg Collective, a simplified version for the TV generation) hidden inside.
That’s the only innovation here. As for the Marxist revolution bit, we have enough historical examples to know how those progress.
https://reason.com/2020/07/14/gary-garrels-san-francisco-museum-modern-art-racism/
GLARING example
swear the article here was NOT present when I posted, but maybe the site issues (cloudflare issue from errors I get) were cache
Leftists lie with the ease you breath
Professor Jacobson,
I read your piece at RCP and then clicked on the link to your colleagues’ letter to the Cornell Daily Sun. I must say, with colleagues like that, who needs backstabbing flat-earthers?
I strongly suggest you get in touch with James O’Keefe and Project Veritas. When people insist on denying the painfully obvious truth, a few undercover videos would be as close as what is now considered to be empirical evidence of a widespread phenomenon as is to be had in this situation.
If a few, extremely, extremely rare videos of police wrongdoing can be used as justification to broad brush an insidious narrative about 800,000 law enforcement officers who respond to 240 million 9-1-1 calls every year (this does not include the much more numerous non 9-1-1 calls); who make over 10 million arrests per year; who are killed in the line of duty at an average of 163 officers per year over the last 10 years; who are assaulted with injuries at the rate of almost 14,000 officers per year over the last 10 years; then a few undercover videos of people being cancelled for disagreeing with the BLM and related dogmas in some mandated university and corporate anti-racism training sessions ought to go a long way.
Look at the huge numbers cited regarding the police and their interactions. From those numbers last year came the deaths of 19 unarmed whites and 9 unarmed blacks at the hands of the police (almost all of which were justified … usually involving the officer being attacked).
Again, bearing in mind the huge numbers cited of police interactions, what is the justification for upending our society and culture over the infinitesimal number of unarmed black men killed (and twice as many unarmed white men were killed) by police? And, again, almost all were justified.
The numbers tell the true story, not a disturbingly graphic video. Nevertheless, if the BLM narrative is to be built and believed based on a video in the face of overwhelming statistics that refute it, then a few undercover videos of people being cancelled for opposing the tenets of BLM should serve as overwhelming and undeniable evidence that a cancel culture does exist.
If you can present an undercover video or two of cancel culture in action from a comparatively minuscule number of interactions/attempts, then not only will cancel culture be shown to unquestionably exist, by the metrics of prevalence employed by BLM, it will also be revealed that of these two phenomena, the one with the staggeringly huge denominator will be unmasked as all but a complete and sinister fairy tale. And that with the denominator of interactions a tiny fraction of the other will conversely be shown to very likely be widespread.
Maybe Alinsky would’ve said, “Make them live by their criteria.”
I really think it’s time for independent conservative bloggers to start building alliances and/or merge to pool their skills and resources and create new wholes bigger than the sum of their parts. (And hopefully then get investment backing.) For years now the mode has been reacting to and critiquing the news as processed and proffered by the corrupt establishment media.
It’s time to take it to the next level and be a part of first-hand news gathering and reporting. A new generation of young conservative bloggers could then replace the Legal Insurrections, Instapundits, Powerlineblogs, etc., etc., as the veteran bloggers move towards a higher tier of the news business.
“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, and here I am stuck in the middle with you…”
Leftilibrals always seem to think they’re centrists. Everyone farther left is a good-intentioned radical and anyone to the right is an evil-intentioned reactionary. Meanwhile they’re the high-minded and neutral voices of reason in the eye of the storm. In their own minds.
Such myopia helps explain why they always act surprised when they reap the whirlwinds of change.
The country made a mistake years ago in not returning the freed slaves to Africa–as Lincoln had proposed–and are now paying the price.
Take a look at my comments on how and why BLM needs to understand the teachings of Chairman Mao and how the Maoists plan to exploit and take over BLM works. https://oberlinchaos.com/litigation/hall-of-shame/black-lives-matter-mao/