Commentary
Cancel culture is one of the most dangerous phenomena America has ever seen. Our country was founded on the right to disagree with opposing opinions, but that principle has come under attack.
While the left continues to
claim that “cancel culture” is a myth, it’s in fact very real and very Orwellian. Making matters worse is that massive corporations and Big Tech robber barons have the power, and are exercising that power, to “memory-hole” thoughts and ideas that are offensive to the woke sensibilities of their pampered CEOs and employees.
Consider the case of author Abigail Shrier, who wrote the book “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.” Bowing to the woke mob (which as it turns out was
one Twitter user), Target briefly removed the book from its online store and
Amazon allegedly suspended a paid ad for the book.
Meanwhile, last year
HBO Max removed the 1939 Oscar-winning film “Gone With the Wind” from its platform because screenwriter John Ridley wrote an
op-ed in the LA Times calling for HBO to remove the movie because it “glorifies the Antebellum South.” After some backlash for the decision, HBO added the film back to the online catalog with “an introductory disclaimer that discuss[es] the historical context of the classic film,” Variety reported. This was clearly necessary given the fact that people watching movies from 1939 are stupid and don’t understand historical context without being bludgeoned over the head with preachy messages from HBO Max.
And let us not forget the time that Amazon
removed a documentary about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Yes, you read that right, but I’m going to say it again because it’s so crazy. Amazon removed a documentary about the longest-tenured Supreme Court justice who is also the second black justice in the history of the highest court in the land. As tennis great John McEnroe would say: “YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!”
The examples are too numerous to list. Try to search the subject of a story published in Breitbart, Washington Free Beacon, or Daily Wire in your Google search. You won’t find it; unless you include the subject of the story and enter the publication in the search bar.
But don’t worry America, the high-level folks running the cancel-culture commando squads only listen to the best of the best. For example, Nike cancelled a Betsy Ross flag sneaker because zero-time Super Bowl champion
Colin Kaepernick was reportedly offended by the symbol of America’s first flag. Not to be outdone, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred bent the knee to the perpetually offended by
moving the MLB All Star Game from Atlanta to (much-whiter) Denver because Joe Biden gaslit America by saying that Georgia’s new voting integrity law was (somehow) Jim Crow 2.0. (Yes, leading Democrat politicians truly believe that black Americans do not have the wherewithal to obtain IDs and follow election laws, like everyone else.)
If you don’t recognize how dangerous it is for billion-dollar corporations and Big Tech robber barons to be censoring and cancelling things with which they disagree, I would suggest you put down your Facebook echo chamber and read one of these books before they’re banned by Amazon and removed from your local Barnes and Noble: “1984,” “Brave New World,” and “Fahrenheit 451.” If you’re more of a non-fiction reader, I would suggest topics chronicling the rise of the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, or the People’s Republic of China.
Cancel culture at this high level goes far beyond threatening the livelihoods of everyday Americans. It creates a real chilling effect that suppresses the free exchange of ideas and replaces it with a system in which the most powerful can designate what is rightthink and what is wrongthink. Wrongthink will be memory-holed by Amazon, Google, Facebook, and other corporations that have a far greater ability to censor speech and ideas than even our currently woke federal government. Rightthink will be pushed on Americans through corporate indoctrination sessions, insane curriculum in K-12 and universities, and in the medium formerly known as entertainment.
The question for us is this—will we continue to let this dangerous trend continue to rip America apart at the seams, or will we fight back for an America where unfettered, competing ideas will lead to robust and informed debate and the resulting progress that comes from such debate?
It’s time for the unsilenced majority to choose the latter and fight back for the future of the United States of America.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
