Time to Cancel Cancel-Culture

Restoring the Voice of the Silenced Majority

For the beleaguered soul who has been social-media silenced on account of twitterstorms from the cancel mob for daring to tweet obvious biological realities (such as men don’t have periods and can’t give birth), or having generated Facebook ragefests from a post questioning the efficacy of fabric masks, hope emerges. Take heart silenced sensible majority: return to your keyboard posts and man (or, “person”) your battle-stations. Movements are afoot to defend your voice and in effect cancel the poisonous cancel culture mob.

If being de-platformed or demonetized were not bad enough, cancel culture’s efforts to in effect “erase” the unwitting unwokesters don’t stop there. Ask LA Galaxy player Alexander Katai, whose career was swiftly cancelled last year following a social media post by his Serbian wife regarding the violent looters who took to the streets after George Floyd’s killing. The player’s denouncement of his wife, his own apology, and promise to “do better” were not enough for the crazed thong. They demanded his livelihood and career – and this is exactly what they got, yielding to them yet another priceless pelt they could add to their growing collection of the cancelled.

J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy remarked in an interview with Charlie Kirk that the cancel mob has more power to negatively impact people than most politicians. Perhaps our wellness and job security are not tied so much to the actions of elected officials, but the capricious cancel mob lying in wait around us. As Vance pointed out in recounting the sad circumstance of a friend who became the target of a rallying cry to get him fired, one wrong post could cost you your job.

Individuals are not the only ones that the mob seeks to destroy. Consider what happened last summer when Robert Unanue the CEO of Goya Foods merely praised Donald Trump for having a business-friendly growth plan for America because he was a builder (not a politician). When Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (R-NY), Chrissy Teigan and other elites called for an immediate boycott against Goya, Americans demonstrated their push-back in the only way they could at the time - by engaging in an organized “buy-cott.” As a consequence, Goya food sales soared following the controversy.

These truly grass-roots efforts of standing up to the mob come at a time when normal Americans and Brits (most notably J.K. Rowling) are simply fatigued at the cacophonous screechings and perpetuitous lynchings of the woke legion. What the sensible and silenced majority has lacked in our efforts to beat back the mob is organization. Enter Unsilenced Majority, a group founded by Mike Davis, a former staffer for the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The aim of Unsilenced Majority is to focus on the key issues of facilitating “free expression without fear of retribution,” and addressing “worker firings, cancel culture in education, and corporate wokeism.” Davis hopes to leverage the very tactics of the progressive left to accomplish the organization’s aims, to, in effect give them a dose of their own medicine.

The organization maintains that “corporate censorship, thought-policing and politically motivated blacklists and boycotts are having a corrosive effect on our country and will ultimately lead to a less free world.” I believe most sensible Americans would agree, and not just those of the Baby-Boomer, Gen-X cohort. As a high school teacher I am increasingly running into young people who recognize that cancel culture is out of control – that the capricious nature of the morality gods, overlording undue power means that at some point they could likely be targeted for cancellation.

At the high school I teach at, one young woman - a high school senior we’ll call “Lara” remarked in her capstone speech decrying cancel culture that, “like children bullying each other on the playground, those involved in cancel culture bully others,” pointing out its absurdity adding, “it is completely contrary to change and social justice.” Lara was not alone among her peers in sighting the malevolence of the cancel mob – as many students in my classes have expressed concern and disdain for the mob’s cruel tactics. Perhaps there is hope for change, yet.

There are many reasons why card-carrying members of the vicious cancel mob do what they do; one of which is seeking higher social status. In their public pearl-clutching with moral horror for justice, they have opportunity to wave their virtue credentials – generating “likes” and feeling momentarily superior. Perhaps with efforts by the Unsilenced Majority, and a greater awareness among people as to the hypocrisy of the mindless mob, pressure can be brought to bear to shame them for once, for the purpose of advancing true social justice.