Cancelling the Left

Like the old Soviet Bloc countries, America is plagued by leftists driven to punish citizens for dissenting from their doctrines. The advent of social media, however, has given them a more interesting set of means. There’s no need for a well-organized secret police force when you can crowd-source an organic information network. Whereas an organization like the Stasi had hundreds of thousands of citizen informants feeding their friends and neighbors to Marxists, we have millions. The difference, however, is that the majority of them are their own bosses as they both carry out and report their surveillance on platforms like X or Meta.

Such is the machine of cancel culture, and by now, we should all be well-acquainted with how it works. Innocuous behavior like donating $25 to Kyle Rittenhouse’s defense, smiling at an activist beating a drum in your face, posting a meme, or even wearing face paint at a football game is noticed by an offended informant. Then they spread the word and swarm around their target producing controversy–pointing and shrieking in the hopes that a frightened supervisor, administrator, or family member decides to sacrifice their target to them for the sake of peace.

In this way, even the punishments are mostly crowdsourced these days. The government (usually) doesn’t force companies to fire the targets of our modern Stasi or (officially) send the rioters who burn down their cities. To be sure, the left does have well-organized activist networks and terrorist organizations, but the most apparent role of the state is simply turning a blind eye if these agents break the law in pursuit of their quarry.

Naturally, as conservatives have been the primary victims of cancel culture, they have also been its primary critics. But this has caused a rather curious phenomenon in the wake of the attempted assassination of President Trump and his instinctive (and photogenic) response of “Fight!” Suddenly, some of the leftists who have been openly wishing for Trump’s death for years are finally being noticed. Whether it’s a famous band like Tenacious D or a poor and unknown cashier at Home Depot, a few leftists openly calling for assassination are facing unexpected consequences. And this time, it’s the right swarming the targets and informing supervisors. For once, we are cancelling the left.

Predictably, the usual soft-hearted conservatives are shocked and appalled by this turn of events. They’ve spent decades imagining if the situation were reversed and the left responding with ashamed repentance. But now that it actually is reversed–even to the smallest extent–they are rushing to the left’s defense to make sure they don’t have to repent.

Thus far, these defenses have come in two different flavors: a moral appeal against hypocrisy and a strategic appeal to peacemaking. Let’s take a look at each of these.

Cancelling the Left is Immoral?

The appeal against hypocrisy is fairly simple: “If cancel culture is evil, then it’s evil for us to use it.” In other words, the very fact that conservatives objected to men being cancelled over political beliefs means that integrity compels them to refuse taking such actions against the pro-assassination crowd now.

This might be a valid objection if we were morally opposed to social consequences for odious beliefs, but this was never the case. The reason we opposed cancel culture in the first place is that it was being used by the wicked against good men. The left cancelled people for actions that ranged from completely harmless to morally righteous. It is only the moderates who tried to remain aloof and neutral by condemning the means rather than opposing the evil itself.

It is certainly true that adopting cancel culture represents a massive shift in custom. Free speech, after all, was as much a social contract as a legal reality in the United States. One can hardly say “I disagree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” and then immediately fire the person. Nevertheless, social contracts are not moral absolutes, and it is foolish to treat them as such. When one party breaks a contract, the other party is hardly obligated to continue holding up their end. If a tenant refuses to pay rent, the landlord who evicts him is not “sinking to his level.”

To be sure, I greatly preferred the old social contract where people could talk about their politics and religion in public without fear of reprisal (though openly advocating for assassination was always beyond the pale.) However, the right cannot unilaterally re-establish that contract, no matter how much we might want to. After all, the landlord can’t force delinquent tenants to pay rent simply by refusing to evict them. And that brings us to the strategic appeal to peacemaking. If conservatives want cancel culture to end, shouldn’t we refrain from cancelling the left?

Cancelling the Left Prevents Peace?

The problem with this view is that it completely fails to understand the modern left. Their long march through our institutions is nearly complete. Cancel culture has done nothing but accelerate their success. So what motivation do they have to stop cancelling their political opponents? Because it’s wrong? Well, they’ve already painted their opponents as Nazis specifically to remove moral value from the equation. Because it betrays their own principles and makes them hypocrites? Well, they don’t operate on principles, but on a narrative of good victims vs evil oppressors which they themselves manipulate. Because what goes around comes around? That one could actually work if they believed it would happen, but our frightened conservatives are working specifically to prevent that.

The left broke the old social contracts precisely because they favor a new one: constantly monitoring all speech and punishing their critics. Thus far, they’ve been quite successful in imposing this new contract on America. Conservatives, meanwhile, have done nothing to make them think they can’t have their way. Accordingly, the left won’t stop while they can still advance by attacking their opponents with absolute impunity. There’s a word for their mindset: warfare.

And that’s really the difference between those who want to return fire by cancelling leftists and those who do not: It boils down to whether “culture war” is empty rhetoric or a daily reality. Those of us who have actually lost things for stating what everyone believed until about 5 minutes ago understand that war is our reality whether we want it or not. Telling us that we’re sinking to their level by cancelling someone is therefore like telling a soldier he’s sinking to the enemy’s level by returning fire. It’s pure absurdity. They started this war, and now they’re going to have to deal with retaliation.

Finding a New Peace

Of course, like good schoolmarms, conservatives will now respond, “It doesn’t matter who started it; it’s time to stop it.” And to be fair, there are circumstances when it really doesn’t matter who started it. For example, if there’s a just authority who is ready and willing to step in and restore a just peace, then appealing to that authority makes far more sense than striking back in kind. That’s why parents tell their kids not to. Or alternatively, if a destructive conflict has gone on for so long that both sides realize they’d be better off suing for peace, then it makes sense to try and work out a treaty rather than continuing the fight. Unfortunately, Americans don’t find ourselves in either of these situations.

There’s no appropriate authority on Earth to whom we can appeal because our government has been weaponized against the American people in countless ways. They have done nothing but protect the left as they cancel us. Indeed, Donald Trump’s popularity is driven by the idea that he would become that kind of amenable authority, and we can see how threatened the left is by such a prospect.

Neither do both sides realize we’d be better off with peace. After all, the conflict has been entirely one-sided thus far. The left has been curb-stomping conservatives for a generation with virtually no reprisals. Terms for peace are dictated by the winners, and right now, that’s still the left. The only social contract they’re interested in establishing is their new one where anyone who disagrees with them is socially, economically, and (if necessary) physically destroyed. The only question in their minds is whether the right will surrender to them before they’re destroyed. Before they’ll consider peace, the right needs to show them they can’t actually win.

And that brings us back to the nature of our American Stasi. The original relied on civilian informants for its work, and that has only been amplified in our own crowd-sourced version. Is it better to target celebrities like Jack Black than random cashiers at Home Depot? Sure. But let’s not pretend that the rank-and-file aren’t legitimate targets. They are the gears of the machine. They are the foot soldiers. They drive the social media outrage, report our friends to HR, accuse us of thought crimes, and unperson us by calling us Nazis. But they don’t wear uniforms. We recognize them only by the statements they make (like asking for better assassins) and they are indeed fair game.

Conservatives cannot force leftists to end cancel culture without either subjecting them to it or to something even worse. I sympathize with the conservative desire to live in peace without the ugliness of a culture war, but at the end of the day, it’s not up to us. It only takes one side to start a war, and the left has already done so. If the right wants a just peace with more reasonable social contracts, then we have no choice but to fight for it. And we can’t afford to pull our punches.