How the right learned to stop worrying and love cancel culture

A rock band’s tour canceled after one of the band members made a tasteless joke. A working-class cashier fired from her job at the behest of an online mob who were horrified by something she said on Facebook. A schoolteacher suspended after being dogpiled for a daft remark she made online. Has the left-wing digital mob been on the rampage again? Actually, no — this time it’s right-wingers who are furiously demanding the scalps of everyone who offends them.

So this is what we have to look forward to if Trump ousts Biden?

There has been a frenzy of cancellation in the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. People who’ve made tawdry comments about the shooting are being hunted, doxxed, shamed, fired. Most decent folk will think it is wrong to make wisecracks about an incident in which a presidential candidate was targeted for death and an ordinary citizen was killed. I do. But should it be a cancellable offense, a reputation-shattering crime? I’m not sure it should.

Consider the headline-grabbing case of Tenacious D. This is the comedy rock band made up of Hollywood star Jack Black and his bandmate Kyle Gass. Last Sunday they were performing in Sydney. It was Glass’s sixty-fourth birthday. Black brought a cake on stage and told Glass to make a wish. You can probably guess what he said. Yep: “Don’t miss Trump next time.”

Crass? Yes. Too soon? Sure. But a speechcrime of such epic proportions that Tenacious D must now consider its future? That’s an overreaction, surely? And yet following a tsunami of media rage, the band has canceled the rest of its tour, Gass has been dumped by his talent agency, and Black says “all future creative plans” are on hold. All that over a five-word quip made in the heat of the moment at a sweaty gig?

We need some perspective here. A sixty-four-year-old comedy rocker making fun of a tragic incident might not be everyone’s cup of tea but it is not the end of the world. Whatever happened to the punk spirit? The Sex Pistols sang “God Save the Queen / She ain’t no human being.” That was pretty offensive. Or how about Morrissey’s 1988 Thatcher-bashing ballad, “Margaret on the Guillotine?” He said having Maggie on a guillotine is a “wonderful dream.” Was that incitement to violence? Perhaps it was. But it was also a beautiful song. I still listen to it frequently.

We cannot cancel all art and comedy that makes light of the shooting of Trump. Believe me, there’s going to be a lot of it. Trump-supporting right-wingers have a choice: they can either mimic the intolerant left they claim to hate and rage until they’re hoarse against everyone who says something off-color about this terrible incident, or they can chill out and understand that occasionally hearing offensive things is the price you pay for living in a free society. What a small price for liberty! 

Jack Black will be fine. He currently has three movies in post-production. Kyle Gass might be fine too, eventually. The same cannot be said for the unfamous people, the little people, who’ve also been swept in the post-shooting purge. Like the middle-aged cashier for Home Depot, who has been given the heave-ho for writing “Too bad they weren’t a better shooter!” on her private Facebook page.

There is video footage of a man confronting the cashier at her place of work. It makes for horrible viewing. I know we’re meant to be disgusted by the woman, but I found myself far more disgusted by the man barking at her as she was just trying to earn an honest crust. She looks normal, unassuming, nervous, completely undeserving of this ritualistic shaming being visited on her by a bloke who hated what she said online.

His video was later shared by the “anti-woke” social-media group, Libs of TikTok, where it got tens of thousands of likes. It blew up and the lady was canned. For a throwaway comment hardly anyone would have read had it not been so feverishly shared by Trump fans online. This was a witch-hunt, pure and simple, indistinguishable from those carried out by the hateful left. Only where the left goes after blasphemous women who deviate from the gender ideology, the right goes after sinful women who engage in Trump-bashing. Same result, though: women lose their reputations and even their livelihoods courtesy of the virtual pitchforks of a perma-furious mob.

A schoolteacher in Oklahoma has been suspended after writing “Wish they had a better scope!” on Facebook. Her comment had two likes. And yet, once again, the right-leaning offenserati blew it up and an ordinary citizen found herself in the eye of a ruthless storm. A Pennsylvania firefighter was let go too, after writing “too bad it didn’t hit him square” on his private Facebook page. His post was intended for his friends alone, but as the Daily Mail says, “it was shared on X and quickly went viral, sparking fierce repercussions.” Shorter version: the mob got hold of it.

The firefighter issued a statement and it is honestly one of the saddest things I’ve read in ages. “I can’t do this… I have never felt so unsafe in my life,” he wrote, describing the threats he and his family have received since he was shamed across social media. “It’s one thing to ruin my life, I accept that,” he pleaded with the mob, “but to put everyone else in danger around me… this is not OK.”

Tell me, what is more immoral, more inhuman, more gross? A man making a crass gag among friends, or a fuming army of hotheads seeking to destroy that man’s life and terrify his loved ones? It’s the latter, isn’t it? Mob vengeance is a far greater threat to reason and decency than a daft joke could ever be. The urge to devastate an individual’s life over something he said is infinitely more alien to me than the cracking of a sick joke. I have done the latter — we all have, right? — but I would never dream of doing the former. No matter how offended I felt.

So this is what we have to look forward to if Trump ousts Biden? Four more years of cancel culture? Those of us whose commitment to free speech is principled rather than contingent, who think everyone from J.K. Rowling to the Home Depot lady should enjoy the liberty of expression, really do have our work cut out for us. 

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.