Hello everyone! As promised, I'll provide you with an explanation of what I consider to be
the definitive answer as to why cancel culture is what it is.
So, why does the Left's anti-racist witch-hunt grow even as its enemies shrink? What is this "cancel culture," and why does it exist? There's a short answer and a long answer to these questions.
The short answer is that cancel culture is a communist witch-hunt, and that America is a communist country.
If you're laughing at this proposition, I reiterate: America is a communist country for workers and peasants - read: Blacks and Hispanics.
Interested? This is the answer of one Mencius Moldbug, the pseudonym of one Curtis Yarvin, computer programmer and far-right blogger. And I happen to think it's a pretty good one. He argues for it primarily in his essay "
Technology, communism and the Brown Scare." I'll be using the ideas from that essay and others on his blog.
The Anatomy of a Witch-Hunt
First, in order to demonstrate that Cancel Culture is, indeed, a witch-hunt, we ought to define what a witch-hunt actually is. There are two parts to every witch-hunt: a conspiracy theory and the manipulation of common decency. I'll go over both sides of this.
A witch-hunt is always based on a conspiracy theory, the idea that there is a secret cabal out to "get you." The purpose of the conspiracy theory is to, as Moldbug put it, "invert the reality of power." In every successful witch-hunt, the witch-hunter must be able to convince the majority of normal, decent people that he isn't trying to kill a weird but harmless old widow, but is actually defending the community from a dangerous witch. Power - real power anyway - is the ability to harm people, so it's clear in reality who has power over whom in this scenario. As Moldbug put it:
Mencius Moldbug said:
In a country where anyone who speaks out against the witches is soon found dangling by his heels from an oak at midnight with his head shrunk to the size of a baseball, we won’t see a lot of witch-hunting and we know there’s a serious witch problem. In a country where witch-hunting is a stable and lucrative career, and also an amateur pastime enjoyed by millions of hobbyists on the weekend, we know there are no real witches worth a damn.
The easiest way to craft a conspiracy theory is to present a natural phenomenon as if it were merely the result of the existing order. Then, you can present yourself as the brave underdog, standing up for "the people" against this evil order. Because natural phenomena are, well, natural and always threatening to spring up should the revolution lift its foot just a little, the witch-hunter can convince the mass of people that he's not some bully-for-hire but a freedom-fighter trying to resist a nigh-infinite force. "Jews cause droughts. It’s easy to see how strong the Jews are—it hasn’t rained for a month! Throw the Jews down the well!"
So look at what the average SJW is rebelling against: difference. Men and women, whites and blacks, straights and gays - they're all different. In spite of all the Left's talk of "diversity," their entire worldview hinges on us all being the same deep down. It's one of the nonsensical contradictions at the core of their philosophy. Reality says otherwise. Differences between groups and between individuals are natural. But through the power of conspiratorial thinking, reality is warped such that differences are the result of oppression. "Smash the great conspiracy of differentness, without which we would all be gloriously the same! Throw the Jews down the well!"
Naturally, this sort of rhetoric appeals to people. They are allowed to bully some hapless victim, so their hindbrain's sadism itch is scratched. But they're also able to justify it as sort of a romantic rebellion against God, so it appeals to the higher ideals in their forebrain too. If you are knocking it, then you haven't been a part of it. The thrill of wielding power and using it to destroy your enemies is just so satisfying. People need that kind of stimulation in their lives, especially in such a peaceful society like ours. You are satisfying that urge every time you kill a video game character in GTA or Call of Duty. Think of something like that, but with real life people. I mean, in our society, Nazis have the same moral status as video game fodder. Why not treat them the same way?
Now, the thrill of the witch-hunt won't appeal to everyone. Most people are too decent. But then again, it doesn't need to appeal to most people. All the witch-hunter needs is a nod of approval from the community. They accomplish this through the second part of the witch-hunt: the abuse of common decency.
Suppose you are a normal, good-natured person who is entirely ignorant of politics and power games and only interested in going through their daily life. You don't believe or disbelieve in the conspiracy theory behind the witch-hunt, and you really don't care whether it's true or not. What you do know is that the witch-hunter's victim is a weirdo that was mean to you once. Now, on your own, you wouldn't jump from "that's an asshole" to "let's kill him!" But when the asshole gets purged, you're not going to speak up for him either. Why would you?
Human beings are weirdos. On the one hand, we love being assholes to other people (remember that sadism itch?). One the other hand, we also love punishing assholes, both out of sadism and because we value community cohesion. And, let's face it, being an asshole all the time makes it difficult for people to live peacefully. Assholes are unpleasant to be around. But you can't ban people from being offensive. It's just plain impractical. However, you can ban people from being offensive towards certain groups of people. Traditionally, the nobility of a society have had the privilege to punish those that offend them by law if said offender was of a lower class.
For example, let's take this Tweet.
This is very obviously offensive. But to whom? Well, if Mel Gibson was king of America (Quoth Moldbug: "not my ideal outcome—but perhaps still preferable to present conditions"), this would count as
lèse-majesté (lit. "to do wrong with majesty"). Or if America were a Christian nation, Pax would be guilty of blasphemy. After all, to insinuate that the Son of the Most High would let himself get taken from behind in the rear or go out dressed like a whore is sinful. Or...
But if you're a decent, average observer, you are unaware of these power dynamics. All you know is that someone said something offensive. True enough, but since you're not interested in the political patterns of who does and doesn’t have the right not to be offended, your decent, good-natured desire that everyone should be nice to everyone else gets captured by the strong and used as a weapon against the weak.
Communism is as American as Apple Pie
But wait: we've gotten mixed up along the way here. The Pax Dickinson tweet wouldn't register to the modern witch-hunter as offensive because it insulted Mel Gibson or Jesus Christ. Dickinson would be guilty of offending blacks and prostitutes. But this doesn't compute. Neither of these groups are the ruling class in Western society. So what gives?
Let's back up.
Remember how we said that America was a communist country? Well, it's obvious that we need to clarify what that means, and that mean refuting the idiotic strawmen.
First, America is not a capital-C Communist country. It's not under the control of the KGB or any such evil conspiracy, contrary to the words of the McCarthyites of the 1950s. Although there were some Stalinists within FDR's administration, they saw themselves as the senior partners in that relationship. But more on that later.
Second, America has not achieved communism. No country has ever achieved communism. Every modern communist country, from Venezuela to Cuba to China to the USSR before its decline, has had massive inequality between the rich and poor, markets, and totalitarian state control. None of this is actual communism, and none of these countries ever claimed to have achieved communism in their official propaganda. So we can't say America isn't a communist country on the grounds that we have hedgefund billionaires, especially since most of those billionaires are progressives. Hypocrisy, too, is as American as apple pie.
Third and finally, there's the dualist argument against communism. This argument claims that there is a "moderate" leftism and a "radical" leftism, and that these things have nothing whatsoever to do with one another. One is as meek and mild as a spring lamb and sounds like NPR. The other snuffs out reactionaries with a bullet to the back of the head and has a Slavic growl. But would progressives accept such a distinction with Nazis? I mean,
Rudolph Hess was about as harmless as Jimmy Carter, and no doubt, if the Nazis had won the war, that whole "killing the Jews" thing would've come to be seen as a mutation of "real Nazism," an aberration created by Hitler's cult of personality. If so-called moderate leftists were really anti-communist (as opposed to being anti-Communist/anti-Soviet, a very real phenomenon), then we'd expect them to treat communists like Nazis. Instead, they treat anti-communists like Nazis and invite actual communists to their dinner parties. Huh.
To demonstrate the communist roots of America, all one has to do is look for who had the same viewpoints NPR espouses today. Moldbug's example is
Thomas Wentworth Higginson: Unitarian minister, author, and
terrorist financier (Quoth Moldbug: "If you have to get your balls groped at the airport, it’s because America isn’t your country. It’s John Brown’s country—you just live here"). In 1891, he helped found the
Society of Friends of Russian Freedom, an organization dedicated to the overthrow of the Russian Tsar. As an old man, Higginson helped Jack London and Upton Sinclair start the
Intercollegiate Socialist Society, later known as
League for Industrial Democracy; that organization begat the
SDS; And it, in turn, begat
Bill Ayers, far-left terrorist and
good friend of one Mr. Barrack H. Obama.
If all this doesn't convince you, then read some of
Mr. Higginson's writings. The ideas found within are basically mainstream leftist politics now. Leftism/progressivism/"liberalism"/socialism/communism/whatever you call it is an unbroken intellectual tradition in America. Thus, "communism is as American as apple pie, and America today is a completely communist country."
Bioleninism in Modern America
Now that that's out of the way, what is communism, exactly? To understand this, I'm enlisting one of the jewels of the dissident right, the theory of
Bioleninism. Under this theory, Leninism is defined as the political strategy of building a political movement to overthrow the current regime by using the dregs of society - the downtrodden, the weirdos, the lumpenproletariat - to form the backbone of the Party, with which you'll rule with an iron fist.
Here's how it works: the Party offers high status to groups that would otherwise have low status. Said groups now have a positive incentive to be loyal to the Party and despise whomever the Party claims is the enemy. When the Party obtains absolute power, they'll remain loyal in spite of any oppression because the alternative would involve the restoration of the old status quo - an unthinkable prospect. In Russia, classical Leninism, such groups include “workers and peasants,” as well as Jews and other non-Russian ethnic minorities. In Bioleninism, they are “marginalized groups” like women, blacks, mestizo Hispanics, nonwhite Muslims (especially those of Arab, African, or “Asian” descent), gays, and transgender people. Biology, rather than class, is the determining factor here.
Now, the Party doesn't necessarily care about improving the livelihoods of their charges. In fact, they are often motivated by what Moldbug calls "callous altruism" or what Charles Dickens called "
telescopic philanthropy." In the revolution, the Party's leadership is often made up of people who are emotionally, culturally, and socially removed from the actual "marginalized groups" they're supposed to be helping, and that doesn't really lend itself to being all too concerned with the actual well-being of the people you're supposedly "helping." By the way, how did classic Leninism turn out for the actual workers and peasants it was supposed to help? Anyone? Anyone?
Bueller?
And how did Bioleninism turn out for (for instance) black people? Well, when Higginson and his amazing friends freed the poor negroes in the 1860s,
a fourth of the slaves died. Quoth Moldbug: "Naturally, since America is a communist country, this episode—which might under other regimes be viewed as an outbreak of mass criminal insanity—is considered one of the most glorious in our glorious history." And for the past sixty-odd years, one of the main focuses of political life was to advance the economic status of the Black Americans. Today, black areas that were once thriving business districts are now burnt-out ghettos home to feral thugs, and in most of those areas, there's a street named after Dr. King,
who was also a communist. But don't take my word for it,
ask black economics man!
Ultimately, this system - communism, Leninism, Bioleninism, socialism, leftism, whatever you want to call it - is evil, plain and simple. It's evil because it's a fucking lie from top to bottom. A truly charitable person wills the good of the other. If a truly charitable person's well-intentioned actions cause the ruination of the person they were trying to help, they wouldn't go "oh well, we tried" like so many champagne socialists do when confronted with the effects of their preferred policies. It's all about power, plain and simple. It's all about freeing the slaves so that they treat you as their new master. Callous altruism is sadism and power-hunger disguised as charity.
This is why I never, ever, ever, ever take seriously accusations of MUH RACISM, MUH SEXISM, MUH TRANSPHOBIA, or any other buzzwords you can think of. The kind of people who make such accusations are usually either party leaders, witch-hunters (read: petty bureaucrat and bullies for hire), or direct beneficiaries of Bioleninism. It's all cynical power-mongering. Once you see this, you can't un-see it. It's just
everywhere.
How Do You Beat It?
The short answer is that you can't, at least not on your own. The people behind this purge have the tacit approval of the taste-testers of society. If those blue checkmarks come after you, most people will either nod in approval while you're being cancelled or tacitly approve of it, if they are even paying attention at all. These people are part of an intellectual tradition that has claimed the lives of over a hundred million people in the past century. Getting you fired from your job is the least for it to do.
If you can't avoid their attention, then go on the offensive. As Moldbug put it:
Mencius Moldbug said:
Don't be defensive. Attack. If possible, attack in depth and preemptively. (What do you think I’m doing here?) One of the things that this evil machine is capable of, for example, is covering up hatefacts—
realities that embarrass it or contradict its narrative. Your goal in attacking it is to embarrass and contradict it, creating a counter-narrative that it cannot incorporate into its own entertainment product. If you succeed,
you will be covered up as well—which is exactly what you want. So the purpose of your attack is not to draw attention, but to avoid attention.
Over time, however, the number of people who are purged by this system, by this machine, will grow. Share the information in this essay with them. Open their eyes to the heinousness of what's going on behind the scenes. Let them know what happened to them. Over time, this will form a community of resistance against them, one with its own schools of thought and moral systems, that the overarching power structure cannot abide by. And when the thing inevitably collapses (and it will collapse, just as the old Marxist-Leninist regime in Russia did), your community will take the reigns of power from it.