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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
Yes it does. And it is wrong. But before armistice is offered, the right is entitled to extract it's pound of flesh.
Didn't they already do that by getting that Home Depot cashier fired after the Trump shooting? How many pounds of flesh will it take before we're back to even and can start behaving in a civilized way?
There's this great asymmetry that few seem to notice. The right gets to cancel in the immediate aftermath of one of theirs eating a bullet. The left gets to cancel all the time for a great many reasons. Personally, I'm happy that general norms of polite society still blanch at literally celebrating our murders in front of our families. For now.
I know these things are uncoordinated. But if you were the left, why the hell would you declare an armistice when this is the state of play? The only rule you have to abide is to not celebrate immediately after a righty is killed. And even then, many are morally too far gone to even follow that one rule.
Because the 2028 election will probably be determined by which side acts less obnoxiously hysterical in the next 3 years. If the republicans spend that time shrieking about transgenderism and canceling people, the democrats have a good chance at recapturing the normie vote. The 2024 election proved to anyone paying attention that any flavor of smug wokeness is not good politics. So we can either have a continual orgy of vengeance in which each side takes power, alienates the normies and then loses in 4 years, or both sides can decide to actually try winning.
I mean it's quite clear at this point that keeping lefty cancel culture and transgenderism in the public eye is very good for republican electoral prospects. Republicans just need to make it look like they're responding to left wing overreach(like they do when it's celebrating murder) so they don't seem like they're pulling shit out of their ass.
I think focusing on transgenderism was good for their electoral prospects in 2024. But if republicans make it their main culture war wedge issue in 2028, I think it could wear out its welcome. It's a safe-edgy position that everyone on the right can sort of get behind - it unites evangelicals, fundamentalist Jews, wignats, groypers, IDW debate bros, and even some feminists. But most people haven't met a trans person in real life, I think there is a limit to the amount of vitriol that can be stirred up. The constant drumbeat of trans bad will just sound like bullying the longer it goes on, especially when it takes the form of the same old misandry that young white males have been dealing with their whole lives. If the right doesn't embrace white identity, I think there's a good chance they won't be able to unite behind anything after Trump is gone.
I predict that the constant drumbeat of "trans bad" will continue to work until parents feel secure that government force is not going to shut them out of medical decisions relating to their children.
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It’s certainly possible that anti-trans could become a difficult position to defend in the minds of the public; but the more likely scenario is a salacious hate crime- of the sort which the trans lobby, for all its claims, hasn’t been able to produce yet. Rhetoric does not tend to radicalize people in favor of already unpopular groups, rather the opposite.
It’s also possible that bringing up trans is bad for whatever party is perceived as putting it in the spotlight; that’s certainly a very reasonable interpretation of recent political trends. But at the moment, democrat’s own public statements are what keeps getting them in hot water over the trans issue- yes republicans amplify them but that’s normal politics.
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It's only a testament to how far we've come that liberals are describing it as "safe-edgy".
We don't need to rely on "trans bad" and bullying. We can go after the doctor Mengeles that pushed the practice on unsuspecting parents of vulnerable children, we can go after corrupt academics, we can go after healthcare providers that cynically used this fad to extract money. We can keep hammering this issue longer than you can imagine, outflanking you from the left as we're doing so.
The true depth of this scandal is yet to hit the mainatream, and if it does, you will be looking at the innocent days of the year of Our Lord 2025 with wistful nostalgia.
We can always just counter by pointing out how many of the same people opposing trans kids have also defended circumcision. Personally I think chopping off a baby's genitals with a meat cleaver is a little worse than letting them dress in opposite-sex clothes. An unwoke democratic party would be able to take the gloves off and make arguments like this without worrying about being called anti-semitic.
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