Cancel Culture Hits its Peak in America
Cancel culture has now spread like a pandemic through the highest levels of society, but it looks about to get a lot meaner and more intrusive into your very livelihood and family security.
I only have to look back to the Biden years to remember when Republicans/conservatives were united against “cancel culture,” and I don’t have to look back much further than that to remember when they were all up against the idea of “hate crimes.”
“A crime is a crime,” they said. “It doesn’t matter if you murdered someone because he’s Black and you hate Blacks. It matters that you murdered someone at all. You shouldn’t get a worse sentence because hatred motivated you, rather than anger or vengeance or jealously or any other reason. You KILLED SOMEONE!”
I believed all of those things, too. The problem for me now, which leaves me out of sorts with many Republicans/conservatives, is that I STILL DO. I still believe it is terrible to fire someone for their political views. Sure, if they are speaking their views on the job and it is interfering with workplace morale or turning away customers, it is fair to say, “Your time isn’t your time for your speech when I’m paying you for your time. So, stop.” Then fire them for insubordination if they do not stop.
There are many ways my world was stood on its head during the Biden years, and there have been many more in the past eight months. Suddenly, Republicans are leading cancel culture, and they are the ones pushing hard against hate crimes. In fact, they’ve gone one worse on hate crimes than I’ve ever seen. Last I heard “speech” was not a crime at all; but now, if it is “hate speech,” it is not just cancelable as it was in the Biden days; it’s a crime that the US Attorney General says the government will be pursuing aggressively. Hate doesn’t just make a crime a worse crime; it now makes something that was never a crime into a crime.
AG Bondi said yesterday,
We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.
Wow! Didn’t ever expect that out of Republicans. I didn’t expect them to target anyone for speech of any kind. I thought they were the advocates of the constitution and free-speech. Some of them even used to argue you had to let Neo Nazis talk at colleges even if you hated what they had to say because they had free speech rights, even if they were saying hateful things about Jews.
They argued Charlie Kirk had a right to say things that enraged people because he had a right to free speech. Apparently, there was no principle behind all of that because it all just caved in. So long as people were saying things they agreed with, free speech was great; but speak hatefully against the people they like, and you're going to be pursued by the full might of US law enforcement. I was all for Charlie Kirk being able to say what he wanted, and I am for his wife now saying what she wants (even if it turns out I don’t like it) because free speech is more important than what they think.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has made quite the First Amendment-related faux pas: In a recent interview about what the federal government could do to deter political violence in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination, she said the federal government would "go after" anyone engaged in hate speech.
Bondi should know, however, that hate speech is vigorously protected by the First Amendment, and as such, cannot be policed.
Unfortunately, the attorney general made an illusory distinction between free speech and hate speech, implying that the latter was subject to government action.
"There's free speech and then there's hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society," she said.
Um, no! Definitively NO! There has never been a special classification for “hate speech” under constitutional law.
Who can miss how the world just stood on its head when someone who is supposed to be the nation’s expert in constitutional law says something like that (though she is no expert in law at all). The hypocrisy is rank, as Republicans said the exact opposite back when Biden was in control of turning the world into a read through the pages of Orwell’s 1984 with his thought police, governing what you could say about Covid:
Bondi sounds like Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris' pick to be vice president, who made similar claims during the 2024 campaign—and that's a very bad thing. . Both are appallingly wrong. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that so-called hate speech falls under First Amendment protection, most recently in the 2017 case Matal v. Tam, which was decided unanimously.
After numerous commentators—including many fellow conservatives—called out Bondi, she clarified that she was referring to "hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence." She's correct that true threats of violence against specific individuals or institutions lose First Amendment protection if they are specific enough, though general advocacy of violence is usually still protected. This kind of speech isn't called hate speech though; it's called incitement. Hate speech, on its own, is simply not a separate category of unprotected speech, from the standpoint of the Supreme Court.
And Bondi wasn’t even telling the truth when she changed “what she meant” any more than she was with her 180 on the Epstain when she change what she meant about having a list on her desk. She was speaking in the context of a student who was just arrested at Texas Tech for speaking acting vilely against people at a Charlie Kirk vigil. It may have been appropriate for the police to warn her to stop because she was disturbing the peace on the basis that this was an organized vigil and ranting at something like that or at a funeral clearly made it impossible to carry out something as sacred as a vigil for the deceased.
However, the police pushed it much further and arrested her for assault. I searched the internet for videos, and while I found many places that had the video of her taunting mourners like a complete jackass, I found none of her assaulting anyone. Maybe the multiple assaults that one story claimed happened off video, but with so many people recording things on cell phones, it’s hard to believe they caught the part of her acting like a disrespectful, hate-filled moron, yet they all missed the part where she was assaulting people. All I could find was one brief moment where she was dancing around like a provocative idiot, and tipped someone’s cap with her fingertips to taunt him. I’m thinking jailing her for assault might have been a little too stiff. Provoking to anger, sure; but, last I heard, that was not a jailable crime unless you carry it to the point of inciting a riot.
The university police department would only say that the student, 18-year-old Camryn Giselle Booker, was charged on Friday with simple assault, a class C misdemeanor that typically does not result in jail time.
And, yet, she was booked into jail overnight, instead of being told to cease and desist and leave the event. (As I say, maybe there was more to what happened than the videos show. The police claimed assault; so, if anyone can find a video of her doing more than tipping the bill of someone’s cap back, please post a link.)
I never agree with violent protest. Most Republicans never did either. Violence has never been treated as a form of speech in this nation that I am aware of, and the Supreme Court has been clear about that for quite some time. So, if tipping a cap was the most violent thing she did, then please! That is why I posted one of the videos of this incident in the Doomer Humor section because the commentator makes fun of what a preposterous call that was by the police, even though he says her behavior was equally preposterous and rude.
Had the event ended there, it might not have been quite the political big deal that it became, even with her being sent to jail for tipping someone cap back; but Texas’s Governor Greg Abbott had to make it political by grandstanding on it for some national attention:
In another video, Booker can be seen knocking the brim of the man's hat.
"This is what happened to the person who was mocking Charlie Kirk's assassination at Texas Tech," Abbott wrote in a post with an image of police putting Booker in handcuffs, adding the acronym for "f*** around and find out.
"Definitely picked the wrong school to taunt the death of Charlie Kirk," he wrote in another….
"Mocking and taunting aren't per se illegal activity. So the insinuation, at least as I can read it, is he's putting his thumb on the scales as governor of the state that institutions should be arresting people or expelling them for speech that he doesn't like," said Tyler Coward, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a group that advocates for free speech on college campuses. "That conflation is worrying and I think does send a chilling effect to people who might have a similar disposition to Charlie Kirk."
Apparently, there are still some actual conservatives among Republicans who are alarmed about the government clamping down on speech that people hate.
Given that conservative legal advocates have worked tirelessly to defeat public accommodation laws that clash with private entities' moral, political, or religious beliefs, many on the right were not pleased to hear Bondi adopting this position. The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh called her opinion "insane" and said that President Trump should fire her. Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) similarly clarified that the First Amendment absolutely protects hate speech, while noting that individuals could still suffer professional consequences for saying cruel things about Kirk.
Apparently, there are even some journalists who still stand up for what Charlie Kirk preached:
Ironically, Bondi could have avoided this mess had she listened more closely to one specific person: Charlie Kirk. As journalist Brad Polumbo pointed out, Kirk previously wrote on X: "Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There's ugly speech. There's gross speech. There's evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free."
Yet, it gets worse as members of the top levels of society in congress and the White House are taking the lead against hate speech, some of them pointing particularly to this young woman. Kirk, himself, would not have done that kind of grandstanding, even over people saying disgusting things about his own assassination (at least, not if he was true to his own words).
Something there is that Trumps free speech
Libel is wrong, of course. Lying about people and destroying their reputation with your lies is a crime, but even Blondi’s boss, apparently doesn’t understand that distinction because other news today is that the president is suing the New York Times because it said ugly things about him— but not necessarily because it lied:
President Trump accused The New York Times and four of its reporters of defaming him ahead of the 2024 election, claiming that a series of articles sought to undermine his candidacy and disparage his reputation as a successful businessman.
In a lawsuit filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Mr. Trump said the articles and a book published by two of the journalists were “specifically designed to try and damage President Trump’s business, personal and political reputation.”
According to the complaint, the articles and the book were published with “actual malice” toward Mr. Trump and caused “enormous” economic losses and damage to his “professional and occupational interests.” The lawsuit asked for damages of at least $15 billion.
Now, the laws against libel and defamation in this country, so far as I am aware, are pretty close to universal in saying that you have to lie—have to publish statements of fact that are wrong—and typically have to do it with intent to harm (malice), not just by accident, in order for someone to successfully sue for libel. They don’t say anything against timing the truth so that it hurts you … even if their intent is to (figuratively, of course) bludgeon you with the truth.
The complaint claims that the defendants timed the publication of the articles and books “at the height of election season to inflict maximum electoral damage against President Trump.”
So what? Such is the life of a politician!
A spokesman for The Times responded: “This lawsuit has no merit. It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.”
A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The Times, said in a note to staff on Tuesday that the lawsuit was “frivolous,” adding that “everyone, regardless of their politics, should be troubled by the growing anti-press campaign led by President Trump and his administration.”
A spokeswoman for Penguin Random House said: “This is a meritless lawsuit. Penguin Random House stands by the book and its authors and will continue to uphold the values of the First Amendment that are fundamental to our role as a book publisher.”
Those are all things that the Republicans I grew up with and often voted for swore they believed in. Publish any scandalous thing you want about Bill Clinton, and, so long as the scandal was true, you were immune from being sued. Make big claims about Obama’s birth certificate without solid legal proof, and that’s OK, too, even if you time it to take down his hope of getting in office.
This one looks like a suit intended to intimidate anyone from even daring to say things that might prove damaging to the president, given that it sues The Times for more in financial damage than Trump has ever shown he has.
Trump has sued for a fraction of these claimed damages before and did get a settlement, not a court verdict. Businesses often settle without a legal verdict in order to end the pain someone is bringing against them:
The lawsuit against The Times is the latest in a series of legal actions taken by Mr. Trump against news outlets. He sued over the editing of a report on the CBS News program “60 Minutes,” resulting in a $16 million settlement with the network’s parent company, Paramount, in July. Last year, ABC News agreed to settle a defamation suit brought by Mr. Trump for $15 million, plus $1 million for his legal fees, over remarks made in an interview by the anchor George Stephanopoulos.
He won because taking on a popular president in a protracted legal battle might cause more than $16-million worth of damage to a major news program like 60-Minutes. Of course, if they lied, then he has a right to sue; but some of what he alleges as wrong is clearly opinion, not a claim of fact:
The lawsuit also pointed to another October article, by Mr. Schmidt, based on interviews with John F. Kelly, the former U.S. Marine general and one of Mr. Trump’s chiefs of staff during his first term. In that article, Mr. Kelly warned that Mr. Trump might rule like a dictator if he were re-elected….
Since when have opinions about what someone might do been libel or slander? In fact, if anyone asked me, I would say, at this point, it is pretty clear that it was an opinion that was accurate!
Mr. Trump has sued The Times on a previous occasion, without success.
In 2021, Mr. Trump sued the paper over a series of articles that investigated his finances and tax records. (Ms. Craig and Mr. Buettner were two of the reporters who wrote them.) The suit was dismissed in 2023 and Mr. Trump was ordered to pay The Times’s legal expenses.
It doesn’t matter how much newspapers damage you with what they say so long as what they say is the truth. If they lied in the matters Trump brings before the court now, I hope Trump wins. I am sick of publications that masquerade as “newspapers” by being on newsprint (or now online in a newspaper format) that make up lies like “Clinton has baby of Alien from Outer Space” or “Prince Harry Is Love Child of Diana and Egyptian Dodi Al Fayed.” We all know some of these publications’ infamous names without my having to name them. Inquiring minds certainly would know. Slaughter them with law suits would be my hope in order to end the endless lies.
Cancelled even for saying nothing!
However, now we even have people in today’s news who are getting cancelled by their employers for not saying anything at all. One that I have in mind got fired because of something his wife said about Charlie Kirk on social media:
Over the weekend, right-wing influencers, most notably Scarlett Johnson, a podcaster and social media manager for the conservative group Moms for Liberty, began to circulate Facebook posts written by Mr. Readling’s wife that referred to Charlie Kirk as a “Nazi.”
So, his employer, Texas Roadhouse, fired him as their restaurant manager. Now, they may have had the legal right to fire him for something his wife was saying if keeping him employed was damaging their business—although I find that bit cowardly—but what I am up in arms about is the Republican social influencers who actively sought to cancel him after all the complaining Republicans did about “cancel culture” when it was coming there way, especially when it was coming the way of Charlie Kirk!
“The wife of the manager of Texas Roadhouse in Milton, FL wrote the posts below. The servers are upset & feel intimidated,” Johnson posted on X Saturday. Just one day later, Mr. Readling’s father said on Facebook that his son had been fired. He also described Mrs. Readling as his “soon to be ex–daughter-in-law” and someone who “needs serious mental health support.” He also claimed that Matthew was “unable to put a retraction [sic] on Facebook because his company told him not to.”
Apparently, this man cancelled her as his daughter-in-law. Why did a conservative on social media they think they had a right to go after the husband of someone whose wife wrote things they hated on social media. I would never cancel someone because of the views of someone in their family.
Again, we don’t know all the details for certain, but we do know the outcry to get people fired was real, and that it is now Republicans who are seeking to exterminate those who express feelings or beliefs they hate. But it gets much worse than this!
Cancel culture now goes all the way to the top of society!
It not only goes to the top. It does so with massive intensity now.
Conservatives are creating their own superpowered cancellation machine, using public shaming along with the full force of government. The website “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” compiles posts from people celebrating his killing or simply being dismissive about it with the goal of getting them fired and publicly humiliating them. A conservative think-tank employee started a X-based “trophy case” of people who lost their jobs for ugly social media posts about Kirk’s killing; very few are people with any fame or notoriety, but rather random citizens who made nasty comments that were picked up by conservative activists and used to demand their firing….
Yet, it gets even worse than these grassroots efforts to cancel people all over the place. It goes all the way to the top of government:
The Republican representative Clay Higgins pledged “to use Congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk” and added, “I’m also going after their business licenses and permitting, their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively, they should be kicked [out] from every school, and their drivers licenses should be revoked”.
Remember when Republicans and independent conservatives were up in arms over Biden canceling people’s jobs, just like this guy promises to do, over their “dangerous” opinions about vaccines—opinions that he said could kill people if they spread? (I do, having been fired for not getting the vaccine and then having had my writing as my last remaining source of income severely censored by Google, whom Team Biden was pressuring to censor anyone who didn’t speak the party line.)
Congressman Randy Fine – also a Republican – tweeted: “If you are aware of anyone in the 6th District of Florida – or heck, anywhere in the state – who works at any level of government, works for an entity that gets money from government (health care, university), or holds a professional license (lawyer, medical professional, teacher) that is publicly celebrating the violence, please contact my office. I will demand their firing, defunding, and license revocation.”
Now, that’s some serious government cancel culture! And it goes way broader than Biden’s focus on Covid and vaccines by being open to persecuting anyone who celebrates any violence that Fine considers wrong or offensive. And now we know Trump’s AG may even come after you. Members of congress may terminate you in every way they can think of. Even the vice president:
Vance encouraged more of this snitching: “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out – and, hell, call their employer.” Other Republican senators have used their own social media accounts to target private individuals and demand their employers drop them.
While I’ve heard a number of Democrats call it reprehensible that anyone celebrate Charlie Kirk’s murder, and I’m sure that is the opinion of most and is certainly my own opinion, it is more than evident we have reached peak cancel culture … just as it seemed that it was fading. Ironically, the Kirk assassination has caused many high-level Republicans to become quite self-righteous in being the new champions of cancel culture.
Never let a tragedy go to waste. If you can use it to make your government bigger, more intrusive into every area of individual lives—even stripping citizens of their livelihoods as Biden did (so long as they are the ones YOU hate)—to make government more powerful over individuals, then never let a crisis go to waste!
This is how the Deep State digs itself deeper and becomes more and more authoritarian. Every crisis is an opportunity to strip away more civil liberties. Grasp an emergency or a great wrong like 9/11 like it is the brass ring to gain more power over individual citizens. And now we see with certainty that Republicans are no less prone to grasping for power than Democrats and that the warnings against authoritarian government were clearly merited because this is the most authoritarian we’ve ever seen. That is not surprising, except that Republicans always said their reason for existence was to stand against that sort of thing. Now many of them are its champions, and they are using the understandable animosity felt over what was done to Charlie Kirk to seize that power over the individual and to justify it.