By William Haupt III | The Center Square
President
Donald Trump - Evan Vucci / AP
“Democracy can’t live in darkness. When the light of free
speech is dimmed, it dies.”
– Ella Wilcox
Since Donald Trump took office, the rise of cancel
culture, the banning of someone from society, emerged as the leftist tool to
silence everyone who supported the president and the GOP. With the help of the
media, they conspired to ban Trump from politics. They made generic accusations
that couldn’t be proven or defended to discredit Trump and his supporters. It
was not good enough to end Trump’s career. They had to destroy his character
and that of everyone who supported him.
Cancel culture became the weapon of mass destruction by
the left to quench their thirst to banish a popular leader, to shame his
supporters, and discredit everyone who refused to buy into socialism. They
rewrote history to engender race and ethnicity to portray our founders as
racists. Members of the GOP and their party members who didn’t ascribe to their
credo, recite their rituals, or support their anti-American socialist causes
were assaulted, silenced, blacklisted and finally canceled out.
Cancel culture on social sites and in the liberal media
morphed from a leftist journalist rallying cry against Trump into everyday
public discourse. Morning Consult fielded a study on media cancel culture and
found the majority of political moderates said they no longer trusted
traditional print media.
“Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn, and most
fools do.”
– Dale Carnegie
Trump cancel culture grew rapidly on social media and on
political forums into a “group shaming.” Numbers from a recent Emory poll
revealed that 76% of all Americans believe cancel culture “has gone way too
far.” Another 39% of Americans admit they have tuned out social media and do
not listen to national news networks. Only 9% felt it was effective and 16% had
no opinion either way.
Pollsters found that age is the most reliable criteria to
predict political views. “Post-Millennials” or Generation Z and Millennials are
most aggressive punishing people or institutions for their views. Generation X
and Baby Boomers have the strongest distaste towards it. Cancel culture is
driven by the young, who are easily influenced by social media, traditional
news, their friends and celebrities.
Millennial journalist Ernest Owens wrote, “Old, powerful
people often seem to be more upset by online criticism than they are by
injustice. They deny overt prejudice exists across America and white
conservatives promote racism daily.” But evidence by recent pollsters tells a
different story.
Over half of voters 18-34, 55%, admitted they have taken
part in cancel culture and will continue to do so. Yet less than a third of the
voters 60 or older, 11%, that identify as moderates claimed they rarely ganged
up with social media groups to cancel someone out. And 40% said they never did.
“Every generation thinks their folks are square, and
their folks are unaware.”
– John Sebastian
The day after Donald Trump won the election in 2016, the
media intersected cancel culture into its regular debates and in the middle of
discussions about race and diversity and how detrimental the Trump presidency
would be for American equality. This spieled out of newsrooms and onto social
media forums. This continued daily on TV news shows and in national newspapers
for four years.
Conservative cancel culture got so out of control, The
New York Times, America’s most far leftist newspaper, demoted editorial page
editor James Bennet after other Times writers punished him for publishing an
op-ed from Sen. Tom Cotton supporting the use of military to quell violent
protests. One editor, Bari Weiss, resigned claiming the paper had betrayed its
duty to report the news fairly. “My forays into 'Wrongthink' made me the
subject of continual bullying by colleagues. Twitter is their new editor.”
Vowing to cancel out Donald Trump, we witnessed a
marathonian rage against everyone who did not buy into leftist hateism. Anyone
who did not purchase a Black Lives Matter T-shirt from Target or said “All
lives matter” was branded a racist. Anyone who did not condone violent Antifa
and BLM protests were labeled radical right wing racists and canceled out on
social media and in the press.
“Freedom of the press does not mean the press has a right
to slander and lie.”
– Donald Trump
During the Obama years, the left was spoiled by the media
who worshiped Obama. They covered his mistakes in the court of public opinion.
They blamed the GOP for his disdain for bipartisanship. The marriage of media
and the left silenced all truths about his inept foreign policy and domestic
affairs. They canceled out everyone who dared to criticize his political
failures and his catastrophic mistakes like Benghazi. They turned a loser into
a hero by canceling out conservative free speech.
On July 4th at Mount Rushmore, Donald Trump said, “We
need open debate, not speech codes or cancel culture. We embrace tolerance, not
prejudice. The liberal weapon of cancel culture is to drive people from their
jobs, shame dissenters, and demand submission from all who disagree. That is
totalitarianism, and completely alien to American culture and values. We won’t
tolerate it.”
The response from the media was bizarre, absurd and flat
out denial. Comments on leftist social media, from liberal elites and the media
attacked everything Trump said. They barked that cancel culture is a myth.
There is no culture war against America today, its past, its founders or their
moral values. The NY Times retorted, “This is a right-wing lie to discredit the
media and The Democratic Party.”
“Fake news is cheap to produce. Genuine journalism is
expensive.”
– Toomas Hendrik
The election of Donald Trump led to total disintegration
of American political and media standards. Those who queried the left’s bogus
FBI and DOJ claims in 2016 were canceled out as conspiracy theorists. The media
was a willing scribe for Democrats and peddles of untrue tidings from evasive
sources to discredit Trump. When he exposed them as liars, they countered with
more lies.
Karl Marx said, “Seeding of lies grows false truths.” The
left and the media targeted anyone who did not agree with them. They silenced
all who opposed the left. They sent GOP supporters a message: if you express
your views you will be canceled out. While Trump was in office, leftist cancel
culture tactics hurt innocent people, stopped public discourse, and totally
destroyed all media credibility.
Although media tried to cancel him out daily, Trump’s
domestic and foreign policies were the best in U.S. history. He had record low
unemployment; cut taxes and improved the lives of all Americans for four years.
America will only realize his greatness after he is gone and they lose all they
gained, as they watch the left take everything away and replace it with
liberty-killing socialism.
When Plato asked Socrates how to judge justice in a
republic, Socrates replied, “In a good city justice is debated. If we cease
public discourse, we cease having justice in the city. For justice to exist in
the republic, and for it to maintain public justice, the public must debate what
is good and bad in the republic. A republic must know what they are doing wrong
and doing right to survive. ”
Contributing Columnist William Haupt III is a retired
professional journalist, author, and citizen legislator in California for over
40 years. He got his start working to approve California Proposition 13.
