Shutting Down the Discussion
As happens frequently these days, the cancel culture mob has once again tried to deny its own existence by screaming from the rooftops, “There is no such thing as cancel culture! We are the cancel culture mob, so we ought to know!” In the latest case, the victim of the mob’s spiteful claims of non-existence was a popular podcaster, as described in a “woke” news article from NBC News, represented perfectly by this self-parodic headline: “Joe Rogan criticized, mocked after saying straight white men are silenced by ‘woke’ culture.”
Rogan, who is just a name without a voice in my life, commented in an interview that, “You can never be woke enough, that’s the problem. It keeps going further and further and further down the line, and if you get to the point where you capitulate, where you agree to all these demands, it’ll eventually get to straight white men are not allowed to talk.”
As a sample of the public ridicule to which Rogan is being subjected for this supposedly outrageous claim, NBC provides this:
“Joe Rogan made his comments about straight white men not being able to talk due to ‘woke culture’ on his podcast which was acquired by Spotify in a $100m deal, that has 11 million listeners per episode and lets him talk about literally anything,” one Twitter user wrote.
That comment just about sums up the typical “Who, us?” method of denial from the cancel thugs. Every day, teachers and university instructors, military officers and office workers, entertainers and low-wage service workers, lose their jobs, or are threatened with demotion or suspension, for daring to speak or behave in a manner that the hypersensitive neo-Marxist crowd regards as in some way disrespectful of its social justice, systemic oppression mumbo jumbo. And these people suffer said consequences because the mob, whether locally or nationally, gangs up on them and demands to the powers that be that these individuals be punished and excluded from this or that segment of society for not complying perfectly with the most current leftist talking points.
But then, whenever someone with a wider audience, some economic clout, and a little nerve, stands up and calls out the cancel thugs for engendering this inhumane, merciless, hateful social climate, that celebrity critic is immediately mocked, with the assistance of the media of course, for suggesting that anyone is being “silenced” by the “woke culture” — scare quotes theirs — since after all, that rich celebrity has a huge contract and a massive audience, so how can he claim to be losing his ability to speak?
Question for the mob (which I know is rhetorical, of course, since no member of the mob could or would read anything I am saying): Is it not precisely the point of your swarming mockery of Rogan’s statement that he should not have such an uncontrolled platform on which to speak his non-compliant thoughts, and that you wish he could be shut down? Would you not be cheering if he did lose his platform and his Spotify contract for daring to accuse you of intending to cancel “straight white men”? Just as you cheer every time a teacher or soldier or entertainer or bartender actually does lose his or her job for being non-compliant? In fact, is it not the main goal and function of your swarming tactics to create enough negative public force against non-compliant speech that all of the guilty will ultimately lose their platforms and jobs, the respect of their peers and colleagues, and even the protection of their basic human rights?
Note: Rogan did not say that he, or straight white men in general, had in fact been silenced — yet. He said that this is the trajectory America is on, as long as it increasingly bends to the will of the radical speech controllers of cancel culture, such as by apologizing and capitulating every time the mob claims offense. If that trajectory may be judged by the intentions of those “criticizing and mocking” him on social media (and in the mainstream media) today, can anyone honestly deny that his statement is well on its way to being proved true?
