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In the days following Charlie Kirk's murder, has seen a wave of employers being contacted regarding off-color remarks made by employees on social media about his passing. The debate is, does this constitute cancel culture, but by the right instead of the typical left? Some have argued that it is not the same thing, due to the disparaging comments being immediate, vs old comments dredged up in an attempt to cancel someone. There is a big difference between someone desecrating Charlie Kirk in an overt manner right after his passing, compared to a social media post made 10+ years ago against living targets that could be deemed as racist only under the most uncharitable light.
My take is, contacting an employer with the intent of getting someone fired for something not work-related or fired in the public interest as a 'concerned citizen', by definition, is cancel culture. Sure, one can argue that this is a different degree of cancelation, but it's the same principle. Someone posting a vile comment on his social media celebrating someone's death doesn’t necessarily affect his ability to do his job, like making sandwiches or whatever. Sure, if said individual confessed on social media to spitting in customers' sandwiches or making disparaging remarks about customers, go ahead and get his ass fired to protect the customers if no one else. But this is not like that. Consumers and other employees are not negatively affected by an employee holding a grudge against a dead podcaster.
To turn the tables, imagine if George Soros died and many of those same people wrote "good riddance" on their social media accounts, should this be grounds for cancelation? By the above logic, yes if you want to be morally consistent.
relevant tweet https://x.com/politicalmath/status/1967066826590028174
Ask yourself this. Would these people be getting fired for saying Charlie Kirk deserved to die, had the way not been paved with firing tradesmen for making the OK symbol out their truck window?
I mean maybe. But the right did not establish this norm of getting people fired for speech. The right did not force companies to adopt formal policies around making sure everyone feels safe about their employees outside speech. The right did not force every social media company to adopt draconian and expansive speech codes.
But now that those are the rules, and I mean actual codified rules, at many institutions, why shouldn't the right avail themselves of them? If I'm against a law, but the law passes anyways, why should I not take full advantage of it? Many people see the right "playing by the left's rules", but I see the left complaining that those rules were only supposed to be for them!
The right established a norm that every single politician must be a christian, even though many are clearly faking it. Up until the 2010s it was right-wingers demanding censorship of media. Illiberal leftist cancel culture is a recent development, puritanical cancel culture has been going on for thousands of years. Which doesn't mean illiberal leftist cancel culture was justified as "revenge" for puritanical cancel culture, they are both bad and often for the same reasons. I switched on a dime from complaining about conservatives to complaining about SJW feminazis in 2012. I expect the same from conservatives who supposedly believe in free speech. It's incredibly annoying when the side currently in power pretends that they have no power and refuses to even attempt to wield it responsibly.
All we have is government power (for now) and it’s not at all universal (see the anarchotyranny of the UK and Canada)
That’s a tradition, and no it wasn’t the right. Christianity was what the country was founded on.
The country was founded on religious freedom and separation of church and state. The founders were significantly less Christian than any powerful politicians after their time. Even a democrat nowadays couldn't get away with blaspheming the way Jefferson did. After "under God" was added to the pledge of allegiance and the currency, everyone has had to pay the Jesus tax.
The founding documents make reference to a Creator. Who is this creator if not God? How can man be “created equal” if there is no creator?
Whoever built the computers that are running the simulation we're in. The founders called him the "clock maker" but that's how I interpret it now.
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He didn't say they weren't very religious, he said they weren't very Christian. Obviously the "Creator" refers to God. But not to the Christian God.
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You're quite wrong, the US was founded because the old country wasn't christian enough for the desires of the pilgrims.
The pilgrims founded Massachusetts, not the US. And "wasn't Christian enough" is misleading - that's they way the pilgrims saw it, but "the wrong kind of Christian" is how a neutral observer would describe it.
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I don't share your confidence in straighforwardly categorizing the second great awakening as a work of "the right".
It’s always been a bit of a thing for sure, but I think the commenter above is referring to the Cold War era where right wing actors added “under God” to the Pledge, and stuff like that. Also around the same time the first Catholic was President and begrudgingly accepted as also OK.
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