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Conservatives have a ‘cancel culture’ of their own

cigaretteman

HR King
May 29, 2001
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Opinion by
Max Boot
Columnist
July 10, 2020 at 9:24 a.m. CDT
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For as long as I can remember, conservatives have been denouncing the intolerance of the left. I was decrying “political correctness” as a student columnist at the University of California at Berkeley 30 years ago. Now the catchphrase is “cancel culture.” In his Mount Rushmore speech last week, President Trump decried a “new far-left fascism” that is “driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees.”

It’s true that some leftists try to repress viewpoints they find offensive. A group of intellectual luminaries has even faced a backlash for releasing an open letter decrying this trend. But here’s the thing. The right has little standing to complain about the left’s cancel culture, because it has its own cancel culture that is just as pervasive and might be even more powerful.

Trump’s hypocrisy is glaring. As my fellow Post columnist Catherine Rampell pointed out, he is trying to intimidate critical media organizations, stop the publication of books that he doesn’t like, and purge the executive branch of anyone who disagrees with him. To cite but one egregious example: Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was fired from the National Security Council and now has been forced into early retirement, without a peep of protest from Republicans, because he testified truthfully about Trump’s impeachable conduct.

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The rest of the conservative movement can be just as intolerant of dissent. I learned this the hard way when I was the op-ed editor of the Wall Street Journal from 1997 to 2002. As I recount in my book “The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right,” I was nearly fired for trying to run an op-ed critical of supply-side economics by Paul Krugman, a future Nobel laureate in economics. The editorial-page philosophy was that it would run one liberal column a week; if readers wanted more, they could turn to the New York Times.

In more recent years, I have been dismayed to see conservative organizations purging Never Trumpers. There are practically no Trump critics left at Fox News save for Juan Williams,whose liberal views probably have little resonance with its conservative audience. Never Trump conservatives such as Steve Hayes, George F. Will and Bill Kristol are long gone at the network. Fox’s prime-time programming is wall-to-wall Trump idolatry.

Something similar happened at National Review. The conservative magazine ran a cover article in January 2016 “Against Trump,” but it has since become noisily pro-Trump. When it does gingerly criticize Trump, it typically asserts that his opponents are way worse. Two of its leading Trump skeptics— David French and Jonah Goldberg —decamped to a new website called the Dispatch. Another new website, the Bulwark, was started by refugees from the Weekly Standard, which had been the most anti-Trump conservative publication until it was shuttered at the end of 2018 by its owner, a major Republican donor named Philip Anschutz.

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These are hardly isolated examples. Sol Stern, a former fellow at the Manhattan Institute and longtime contributor to its influential magazine, City Journal, has just published an essay in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas recounting how these New York-based entities were Trumpified. (The Manhattan Institute’s director of communications declined to comment on Stern’s article.)

Initially, City Journal, like other conservative organs, was quite critical of the reality TV star. But once it became clear Trump was going to be the Republican nominee, criticism of him all but vanished from its pages. When Stern pitched an article about “Trump’s hate-filled campaign rallies,” he was told, “We’re steering clear of that now.” The pressure to toe the Trump line only intensified after his election, because, Stern writes, the Manhattan Institute’s major supporters include Trump donors such as Rebekah Mercer and Paul Singer.

Stern resigned in protest in October 2017. He hoped that his letter of resignation would spark an “internal conversation about City Journal’s political direction in the Trump era,” but, he writes, it never happened. “The historical validation of Trump thus became our magazine’s default position. For a journal of ideas, this was a dereliction of duty.”

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Not even Trump’s catastrophic mishandling of the novel coronavirus has altered City Journal’s approach. While the magazine has blasted New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s performance as a “daily exercise in justification, accountability denial and self-aggrandizement,” it has hardly mentioned Trump’s scandalous role. Stern notes: “Only one piece, written by an outside contributor, cited the President’s slow response to the crisis. Yet even that minor criticism was rendered moot when the writer falsely claimed that Trump’s performance was no worse than that of any other world leader.”

All organizations have the right to tell their audiences what they want to hear. But when it comes to a diversity of opinions, the right doesn’t practice what it preaches. It (rightly) demands conservative representation in universities, corporations and mainstream media organizations, but it shuns liberal views in its own sphere of control — which now extends to the entire federal government.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/10/conservatives-have-cancel-culture-their-own/
 
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Both cancel cultures suck.

Left cancel culture is about actions, statements or ideals and they will try to shut down anyone who has violated those even if that person's violation was 10 years before the left decided that action/statement/ideal was wrong.

Right cancel culture is about anyone who criticizes or dares to defy their cult leader. The right has canceled their longtime senator and Trump's first Attorney General Jeff Sessions because Jeff Sessions followed the law over Trump's bidding.

You want to know what's crazy. Jeff Sessions of all people was the best and most unbiased attorney general Trump has ever had.
 
The last "cancel culture" in this country was Joe McCarthy's red hunt. Nothing even close to that has occurred until today. This isn't as bad, but it's getting there. And, it's coming from the left - that's a fact.
 
The last "cancel culture" in this country was Joe McCarthy's red hunt. Nothing even close to that has occurred until today. This isn't as bad, but it's getting there. And, it's coming from the left - that's a fact.

I think the article very much points out that cancel culture exists for those who go against the right's cult leader as well.

Jeff Sessions was a leader of the Republican party, now they turned against him because he followed the law and recused himself. He is hated on the right because he did what everyone prior to 2016 agreed with the legal and morally correct thing to do. And he's certainly not the only one.

A long time ago the group formerly known and the Dixie Chicks went from super popular country group to couldn't get a song on country radio because they spoke out against the right's leader at that time. And Bush's following wasn't half as cultish as Trump's. They criticized the president at the time and they went from being loved by country music fans to not being able to get on the radio.

And before you say the left does that too. . . no not really, not unless it gets racist or sexist. Tim Allen for example keeps himself pretty busy. I never saw any sort of big movement to boycott Toy Story 4 or any of his previous work for that matter.

True Last Man Standing probably doesn't have a strong liberal audience but the show is pretty branded for conservatives. I was a kid at the time so maybe I just never noticed but I never felt like Home Improvement was political.
 
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I think the article very much points out that cancel culture exists for those who go against the right's cult leader as well.

Jeff Sessions was a leader of the Republican party, now they turned against him because he followed the law and recused himself. He is hated on the right because he did what everyone prior to 2016 agreed with the legal and morally correct thing to do. And he's certainly not the only one.

A long time ago the group formerly known and the Dixie Chicks went from super popular country group to couldn't get a song on country radio because they spoke out against the right's leader at that time. And Bush's following wasn't half as cultish as Trump's. They criticized the president at the time and they went from being loved by country music fans to not being able to get on the radio.

And before you say the left does that too. . . no not really, not unless it gets racist or sexist. Tim Allen for example keeps himself pretty busy. I never saw any sort of big movement to boycott Toy Story 4.

o_Oo_Oo_O
 
The last "cancel culture" in this country was Joe McCarthy's red hunt. Nothing even close to that has occurred until today. This isn't as bad, but it's getting there. And, it's coming from the left - that's a fact.

Dixie Chicks (I mean, The Chicks) got cancelled in 2004, largely by the right.
 
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Ellen sat next to George Bush at a football game and the left almost broke Twitter.

In 2016 someone wrote the word “Trump” in chalk on a liberal college sidewalk and students needed counseling and described themselves as “in danger”.

Every time someone not far left tries to speak at a college a riot ensues.

And when all of this shit gets brought here and pointed to as crazy, the lefties here defend it or deflect. The least you could do is own it.
 
Ellen sat next to George Bush at a football game and the left almost broke Twitter.

In 2016 someone wrote the word “Trump” in chalk on a liberal college sidewalk and students needed counseling and described themselves as “in danger”.

Every time someone not far left tries to speak at a college a riot ensues.

And when all of this shit gets brought here and pointed to as crazy, the lefties here defend it or deflect. The least you could do is own it.

Lol none of this is true
 
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So that happens whenever there is non far left speaker? these protests happen when a moderate speaks on campus ?

Youre not the only one who can exaggerate.

The difference between you and me is that you see isolated incidents and generalize a whole segment of the population. For example, im not grouping all conservatives in to this territory:
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Ellen sat next to George Bush at a football game and the left almost broke Twitter.

Not true. not even the #1 trending topic that day

In 2016 someone wrote the word “Trump” in chalk on a liberal college sidewalk and students needed counseling and described themselves as “in danger”.

That represents all liberals? You cant argue that Trump has escalated violence against some groups.

Every time someone not far left tries to speak at a college a riot ensues.

Really? not far left? so if a moderate spoke there has been a riot EVERYTIME

And when all of this shit gets brought here and pointed to as crazy, the lefties here defend it or deflect. The least you could do is own it.
Youre the one that will deflect all of the above. You can exaggerate but liberals cant
 
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