I was born in the late ’50s, a little too late to experience the McCarthy Era firsthand. For those of you not familiar, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R-IL) saw his political career rise, then fall, much like Daedalus, soaring high, then quickly crashing and burning. McCarthy was convinced that there were Communist sympathizers in both the Federal government and in the entertainment industry. Turns out, a couple of things were true: McCarthy was right, in that there were Communists and Communist sympathizers, in both the government and in Hollywood. He was also wrong in the way he pursued them, in what came to be called the “Red Scare” and the “Witch Hunts” of the 1950s.
There were Senate hearings held, the Committee on Un-American Activities, which should have given everybody a case of the heebie-jeebies. People were called into to testify. If they couldn’t prove they were not Communists, then they were expected to rat out anyone they knew who might be one. Those that refused to do so faced ruin. As a result, a number of prominent Hollywood and New York writers, directors, and actors were blackballed – their careers over, at least for years. They had to find other work, or in the cases of writers, write under pseudonyms. Not only were their livelihood’s threatened, they became social pariahs. Most of them found that their circle of friends were afraid to socialize with them, for fear of being accused as well. In retrospect, McCarthy and his friends went way too far. While there were Communists, plotting to overthrow the US government, sell secrets to the Soviet Union, and such, their ‘cure’ turned out to be much worse than the disease. In the 1950s, pop culture was almost universally Conservative. Movies and TV celebrated Conservative values – the nuclear family, patriotism, self-reliance, respect, hard work. But the heavy-handed way that McCarthy went after Communists and sympathizers rubbed many in the industry the wrong way. Couple that with the Frankfurt School‘s influence over the field of journalism at Columbia University, and you have a recipe for revolt. And revolt they did, with journalism, entertainment and education falling under the thrall of the neo-Marxist “Critical Theory” movement without even realizing it. Over the past 40 years or so, journalism, entertainment and education have drifted Left and have become adept at spreading this ideology. They’ve become so powerful and so pervasive that this has emboldened them to attempt to wipe out any and all thought that differs from their own.
Which brings us to Cancel Culture.
Cancel Culture ought to scare the ever-lovin’ crap out of you. If it doesn’t, you’re not paying attention. In a fundamental form, “cancel culture” is the McCarthyism of the Left – a sort of Comité de Sécurité Publique, where everyone in the mob fancies themselves Robespierre, and no one – and I mean no one is safe.
Do you know anybody who’s been doxed? I do. Several, in fact. You see, in today’s society, expressing an opinion that differs from the mainstream can bring down the white hot fury of a thousand suns on you, in the blink of an eye. A buddy of mine runs a security firm and another, unrelated business. In the course of doing work at his ‘day job,’ he drove his truck that was emblazoned with his security firm’s logos to the job site. Someone took exception to his truck and its signage. Understand, it’s just a security firm. There’s NOTHING on the truck that would suggest that it’s anti-anything, other than anti-criminal behavior. Nonetheless, some Leftist weasel took it upon himself to dox my buddy.
Not familiar with doxxing? Wikipedia defines it thusly: Doxing, or doxxing (from “dox”, abbreviation of documents), is the Internet-based practice of researching and publicly broadcasting private or identifying information (especially personally identifying information) about an individual or organization. The methods employed to acquire this information include searching publicly available databases and social media websites (like Facebook), hacking, and social engineering. It is closely related to Internet vigilantism and hacktivism.
Essentially, this assclown searched public (and possibly private) databases online, and decided that my friend should lose his business because the one doing the doxing felt threatened. God save us all from those who put ‘feels’ above ‘facts.’ I’m happy to report that my friend is none the worse for wear – his customers did not fire him or drop his company, and, aside from dealing with the pile-on of like-minded Leftists in social media, he’s not lost any significant sleep over this.
Everyone should be so lucky. If you click on the “cancel culture” bold link above, you’ll see a long list of folks who did the most innocuous of things, and lost their jobs for it. In many cases, they lost not just jobs, but careers, becoming social pariahs themselves, just like the Leftists in the 1950s.
George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This lesson has been lost on the Left and their affinity for Cancel Culture. Let’s hope that those victims on the Right survive this social onslaught, and that collectively, the Right, when we’ve returned to positions of power, don’t demand a pound of flesh in return. Revenge never ends well for anybody. And for those Leftists out there that think cancel culture is a legitimate technique to achieve their ends, remember this other old chestnut:
What goes around comes around.
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