We now live in an era where people are constantly looking over their shoulders, or computer screens, worried that whatever opinion they post might make them victims of cancel culture.
There is no opportunity to change one’s mind, nor is there room to defend opinions you genuinely believe. And this is a huge problem for any civil society.
Internet commenters have decried the rise of social justice-fueled intolerance, after a woman was purportedly fired from her job simply for having accounts on conservative-leaning social media platforms.
Colleen Oefelein, an associate literary agent with the New York City-based Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency, was sacked after her boss learned that she owned accounts on Gab and Parler. The agency’s owner, Jennifer DeChiara, publicly announced on Twitter that the firm had dropped Oefelein after making the “distressing” discovery.
I noticed quite a number of my followers got nuked along with me on Twitter. Many are on Gab as are we.
We warned you this would happen.
‘Freeze peach!’ That has long been the mocking, infantile cry of the middle-class left whenever anyone complains about clampdowns on freedom of speech. There is no ‘free-speech crisis’, radicals insist. No Platforming right-wingers on university campuses is not censorship – it’s just students freely choosing not to associate with people who have horrible views. And alt-right types being turfed off Twitter and Facebook is not censorship, either – that’s just private companies enforcing their terms and conditions. Who knew lefties were so supportive of private property rights?
Rough translation – If I have been abused by the adopted half-brother of my transgender father’s partner who has become my mother, is it incest?
The freedom of a satirical cartoonist to satirise has limits even in France, it appears. The best-known, and best, French daily newspaper, Le Monde, this week bowed to some of its readers — and infuriated others — by apologising for a website cartoon which, it said, “could be interpreted” as an insult to transgender people and a “minimisation” of incest.
In the current environment, it is rare to run across a piece of news you thoroughly enjoy. The Spectator provided one. On January 15, they launched Wokeyleaks. In the inaugural post, a user who goes by They/Them—to obscure their identity and take a poke at pronoun culture—exposes the woke hypocrisy of the famous in our midst. Celebrities are often the most woke in our culture, and the behind-the-scenes view is just delicious.
Hundreds of authors, editors and publishing agents have signed a letter demanding their own industry ban any book deals for Donald Trump.
The letter, titled “No Book Deals for Traitors,” has more than 250 people in the publishing world urging their colleagues not to let the president or any of his officials have a forum once he’s out of office.
Barton Thorne, who is in his fourth year leading Cordova High School in Shelby County, reportedly said during a nine-minute morning announcement that free speech is being threatened by the actions of privately held tech companies, the Commercial Appeal reported.
The federal government needs to fund the de-programming of white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Friday night.
Harvard’s cancel culture is just warming up. After Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) was given the boot this week from the Harvard Institute of Politics Senior Advisory Committee, students are now demanding that degrees be revoked from White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, Sen. Ted Cruz, and Rep. Dan Crenshaw.
The left has redefined language, what is said and what it means — words now mean what they say they mean, “nothing more and nothing less.” Silence can become “violence.” Actual violence and destruction can sometimes be “mostly peaceful” at other times, “insurrection” or “sedition.”
Control the meaning of things and you control the narrative — control the narrative and you control communication. Through the control of communication, such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, they hope to control America and Americans.
The company’s “political action committee is indefinitely suspending contributions to those members of Congress who voted against the lawful certification of state electoral college votes” in light of Wednesday’s riot at the Capitol building, Walmart said in a statement according to Reuters.
With the Democrats in control of the government, these leftist internet platforms know they have nothing to fear by doing this, that if anything the Democrats controlling Congress will applaud them and encourage them to censor more conservative and Republican outlets, to shut them all down if possible.
Reeling from the pandemic and a horrifying crime surge, the city shouldn’t waste another minute on trifling incidents.
The day after Christmas, in the lobby of a tony lower Manhattan hotel, a 22-year-old woman misplaced her cell phone. Somewhat intemperately, she accused a 14-year-old boy standing nearby of having stolen it. The boy’s father, noted jazz musician Keyon Harrold, filmed Miya Ponsetto as she had a meltdown—she screamed and yelled and chased his son, tackling him to the ground.
The online culture warriors really are the modern equivalent of the medieval mob.
Actor, comedian and national treasure Rowan Atkinson has attacked cancel culture, comparing it to the actions of the ‘medieval mob’. In a world where ‘controversial’ opinions can be banned from social media and dissenters are subjected to hate campaigns, he could not be more right.
In 2021, let’s put a stop to the malicious vogue for shaming anyone who speaks out of turn.
By now most of us will be familiar with ‘gaslighting’, a term which describes the tactic of contradicting observable reality as a means to undermine someone’s security in their own point of view. The word comes from the 1940 movie, Gaslight, in which a husband convinces his wife that she is going insane by, among other things, dimming the lights and then denying that the house is getting darker when she complains. Social-justice activists are well-known for levelling the charge of ‘gaslighting’ at their opponents, yet it is a strategy that they have themselves perfected. Even their accusations of ‘gaslighting’ are a form of gaslighting, given that we are expected to believe that they are somehow not guilty of the very behaviour they are projecting on to others.
