Stop Falling for RWNJ Cancel Culture Outrage
By Alicia R. Norman
I ran across an excellent comment on Daily Kos from a user named Rosencrantz. It was perhaps the most well-thought-out, insightful commentary on why liberals, although generally nicer humans than the folks on the right, keep losing the culture war.
It’s all quite simple: Republicans are beating our butts when it comes to messaging, and I don’t mean the specifically political kind.
I quote:
“It’s about normalizing the outrage, uniting their base, and giving the media some anti-Biden pro-nationalism to talk about for the next little while. That’s what Democrats don’t seem ever to understand and why they keep losing. Politics is more about the messaging and theatrics than passing policy. The party that can control the message has absolute power.
...Anyone who doesn’t believe me needs to ask why Democrats constantly struggle to win elections against worse and worse opponents and why they can never seem to get any bills passed without massive problems, even from their party members.
Answer: The right always gets to control the narrative and messaging, and Democrats are weak and scared and play a game they don’t fully understand. Democrats play politics by the rules, and Republicans Nevsky heavily into constantly changing the game/rules in their favour….”
Rosencrantz is 100 percent correct!
Right-wing outrage machine messaging is so strong, it engages and ensnares well-meaning and knowledgeable progressives. I cannot count the numerous, head-scratching times I have been shocked by moderates and liberals falling for the conservative culture war’s bait.
I was dismayed, for example, when the right started freaking about Mr. Potato Head, Pepe Le Pew, and “Green Eggs and Ham”, and folks who should’ve known better joined in. Even some of my most enlightened pals posted misinformation memes about snowflakes fearing “cartoons” on social media.
First, let us get a few things straight, shall we?
Dr. Suess Was Not “Canceled”
This was the most extensive disinformation campaign of all, and it primarily worked because many people, including progressives apparently, will latch onto any new culture war outrage without doing a shred of research.
The narrative was those damnable lefties were now offended by Dr. Suess’s books (for reasons never fully disclosed), and pretty damn soon, every book would be yanked off the shelves post haste.
Yeah, that wasn’t a thing that happened.
Suess’s estate discontinued a few books with outdated racist imagery, such as depicting scary Asians with slanty eyes and Black people with bones in their noses wearing grass skirts. These weren’t even books that people were reading anymore.
In other words, the estate was simply making a bid to modernize its brand while archiving relics of the past. It was a mere marketing decision. “Green Eggs and Ham” was never at risk.
That didn’t stop Representative, wannabe speaker Kevin McCarthy from sitting down and reading “Green Eggs and Ham” in front of a video camera like it was soon to be tossed into a bonfire. It was a pathetically transparent attempt to stoke up impotent rage against nostalgia stealing, social experimenting Libbie snowflakes, and it worked.
Many on the left fell for it, but thankfully, only for a short time.
Potato Head Was Not the victim of Wokeness
Whatever that means. Seriously, I have yet to find a single soul who knows what so-called wokeness is supposed to be and why we should hate and fear it so much.
When looking up the definition of woke, I found this offering by Merriam Webster:
Chiefly US slang: aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially racial and social justice).
Ah, so we’re all supposed to be pissed off about, I don’t know, facts? Like, facts as they pertain to how historically oppressed groups currently have to struggle with constant pain and disenfranchisement?
Okeedokee then.
Wait, I get it!
Woke is the new political correctness. They beat the dead horse of the PC Boogeyman unto death, so now we are supposed to fear the awakening realization that brown people can exist, be treated with human dignity, have jobs, and be in movies.
Invoking wokeness works too. I have even heard republican members of Congress link wokeism with taking the Covid-19 vaccine.
Real stuff.
Again it works, as people, hearing the dog whistle of, “Don’t be like those negro loving, commie liberals,” would rather ingest horse paste with ivermectin in it than to do their civic duty and get the jab.
Racism is a hell of a drug, and so apparently, it is sheep drench.
In any case, as with the Suess book archive, Hasbro decided to get with times. No one forced them to make Potato Head inclusive; it was a marketing decision. Companies are, after all, in the business of making money.
Same with Pepe Le Pew.
Things change. That’s okay.
It’s Called Progress, and it’s a Good Thing
As I see the culture war madness play out and the constant label of anything changing as wokeism and cancel culture, I am reminded of when silent films were replaced by talkies, which would later be known as “movies.”
People flipped the hell out, especially actors. Even Charlie Chaplin, a progressive man by the day’s standards, had this to say, “[Talkies] are spoiling the oldest art in the world — the art of pantomime.” Gladys Hall in Motion Picture Magazine, May 1929.
I am sure Republicans and some Liberals would have agreed and vehemently claimed silent films were being cancel cultured.
Interestingly, Chaplin would later do a few Talkies of his own, including the well-respected “Monsieur Verdoux” (1947), which was supposedly his most dialogue-filled work.
Mainstream Liberals Pundits like Maher Fall for it too
Unfortunately, in a bid to seem moderate or even open to hearing “the other side,” progressives and liberals decry what they see as cancel culture and wokeism in situations where the outrage has been manufactured wholesale.
The worst offender of this knee-jerk response is Bill Maher.
Now, I like some of Bill Maher’s stuff and often find him quite witty. However, I also find that he simply goes with the narrative the Republicans punt his way in an effort to pretend the left is just as bad as the right.
For instance, I watched Maher make fun of Black Lives Matter organizers for being affronted by the term “All Lives Matter.” He failed to recognize that the “All Lives Matter” come back was cultivated as a strawman argument to silence Black dissent.
By pretending the BLM was saying “only” Black Lives Matter,” and not simply that Black Lives Matter “too,” the antagonistic, in-your-face reply could be used to build resentment and stymie genuine discussion.
It’s like saying, “Other houses are on fire too,” when only your neighbor’s house is ablaze and in need of immediate fire department rescue.
And no, Bill, the defund the police movement is not about eradicating law enforcement. It is about taking some police department funding and allocating it towards better training, especially in regards to handling mentally ill people who simply need help.
No one said they wanted to decriminalize every law either. We’re just talking about the stuff that should not be illegal -- like smoking marijuana. People should never spend 20 years in jail with rapists for smoking plants.
Transpeople are “not” changing their entire existence just to sneak into bathrooms and assault individuals. It’s the other way around! Trans men and women are the most commonly preyed upon, assaulted, and even murdered of any minority group.
By perpetuating the above kernels of disinformation, Bill Maher is a perfect example of how some on the left willingly guzzle the right-wing culture war narrative.
Align on the Right Side of History
Sadly, a lie makes its way around the world before the truth can get its boots on. This is how disinformation and misinformation works. But you don’t have to be the carriers of it.
In the future, could we pretty please, with sugar on it, make sure the latest outrage winding its way around social media is even a thing?
That way, maybe, just maybe, we can put that disinformation dog to rest before it has a chance to bite and stop giving right-wing nut job’s outrage machine so much damn power!
Copyright©2021 Alicia R. Norman
About the author: Alicia R. Norman is a freelance writer as well as a graphic illustrator/animator. Norman’s primary goal is to combine vivid storytelling with animation in order to create scintillating, fun, and/or thought-provoking films. Official website: www.luvmultimedia.com
The opinions expressed are her own and may not reflect those of anyone else associated with this blog.
I think the right, politically, is just... addicted to anger. And anywhere they can put their anger that feeds it and allows it to continue, the flock to like flies on death. Look at the post Bush years. Has the right dealt with anything calmly, or with dignity - for themselves or others? Have they, in their policies, their votes and their actions, defined themselves by who / what they stand for, or by who / what they stand against? The answer has always, always, always been, who they've been against. And it's everybody. Everybody who doesn't think, speak, act, talk, or vote like they do. "Other" has come to mean "other than myself and those exactly like me", and "other" has become synonymous with lesser. They will always be hateful, angry, and against what / who they hate. It's everything they run on. It's all they have. That's why they have to fight so hard to normalize it. Because if that's not normal, then they themselves become the "others". And then they would have to hate themselves. And THAT - is the harshest truth that they cannot face. So they hate, to continue to fight to reinvent a world, where everyone else is just like them - so they never have to face the truth of themselves.
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