Chris Hedges' observations about Cancel Culture — my Niemöllerian comment

© 2021 Peter Free

 

15 February 2021

 

 

Consider Cancel Culture . . .

 

. . . in which one is exterminated, from work or electronic platform, if one speaks against the mind-manipulated Mainstream.

 

 

Of this American cultural trend

 

Chris Hedges observed that:

 

 

The cancel culture . . .  has become the boutique activism of a liberal class that lacks the courage and the organizational skills to challenge the actual centers of power — the military-industrial complex, lethal militarized police, the prison system, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the intelligence agencies that make us the most spied upon, watched, photographed and monitored population in human history, the fossil fuel industry, and a political and economic system captured by oligarchic power. 

 

The well-financed Israel lobby is a master of the cancel culture, shutting down critics of the Israeli apartheid state and those of us who support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement as anti-Semites.

 

The cancel culture fueled the persecution of Julian Assange, the censorship of WikiLeaks and the Silicon Valley algorithms that steer readers away from content . . . critical of imperial and corporate power.

 

[T]his bullying will be used by social media platforms, which are integrated into the state security and surveillance organs . . . [to] ruthlessly silence dissidents, intellectuals, artists and independent journalism.

 

Once you control what people say you control what they think.

 

© 2021 Chris Hedges, Cancel Culture, Where Liberalism Goes to Die, ScheerPost (15 February 2021)

 

 

This matters because . . .

 

. . . of the "they came for" phenomenon.

 

Meaning Martin Niemöller's:

 

 

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

 

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

 

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

 

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

 

Martin Niemöller, "First they came for the socialists . . .", Holocaust Encyclopedia (30 May 2012)

 

 

The moral? — Better a hostile cacophony . . .

 

. . . than the Establishment-sponsored "Hymn of Cloned Cowardice".

 

Plutocratic America's manipulative speech constraints — founded upon pretended sympathy for the perpetual fractionalization of personal identity — eagerly imprison questioners of the status quo inside Silence's prison.

 

Anticipate the knock on your door . . .