Brendan O’Neill

Cancel culture doesn’t exist, they say. And yet with the flick of a switch, billionaire capitalists voted for by precisely nobody have just silenced a man who is still the democratically elected president of the United States. With the push of a button in their vast temples to technology, the new capitalist oligarchs of Silicon Valley have prevented a man who won the second largest vote in the history of the American republic just two months ago — 74million votes — from engaging with his supporters (and critics) in the new public square of the internet age.

Not only does cancel culture exist — it is the means through which the powerful, unaccountable oligarchies of the internet era and their clueless cheerleaders in the liberal elites interfere in the democratic process and purge voices they disapprove of. That’s what Twitter’s permanent suspension of Donald Trump confirms.

The new capitalists’ cancellation of the democratically elected president of the United States is a very significant turning point in the politics and culture of the Western world. We underestimate the significance of this act of unilateral purging at our peril. It demonstrates that the greatest threat to freedom and democracy comes not from the oafs and hard-right clowns who stormed the Capitol this week, but from the technocratic elites who spy in the breaching of the Capitol an opportunity to consolidate their cultural power and their political dominance.

Twitter’s ban on Trump is extraordinary for many reasons. First, there’s the arrogance of it. Make no mistake: this is the bosses vs democracy; corporates vs the people; exceptionally wealthy and aloof elites determining which elected politicians may engage in online discussion, which is where most political and public debate takes place in the 21st century. Those who cannot see how concerning and sinister it is that a handful of Big Tech companies have secured a virtual monopoly over the social side of the internet, and are now exploiting their monopolistic power to dictate what political opinions it is acceptable to hold and express in these forums, urgently needs a wake-up call.

Secondly, there is Twitter’s deeply disturbing justification for why it suspended Trump. It says Trump’s account ran the ‘risk’ of ‘inciting violence’. And yet the two tweets of his that it cites do nothing of the sort. In one, Trump describes his voters as ‘great American patriots’ and insists they will have a ‘GIANT VOICE’ in the future. In the other he confirms that he will not be attending the inauguration of Joe Biden. That’s it. In what warped moral universe can such standard, boastful Trump-made statements be interpreted as calls for violence?

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HT: The Anonymous Professor.

Kurt Schlichter has some choice words for our liberal fascist overlords.

So, the Establishment has decided to address the grievances of people who feel disenfranchised, silenced, and subjected to double standards with much more disenfranchisement, silencing, and double standards. Seems like an on-brand move for the most corrupt, unwise, and incompetent – yet remarkably arrogant – ruling caste America has ever known. Good plan – deny them the right to pick their 2024 president, clap like trained seals as corporate overlords cut off their ability to express themselves, and continue to treat their own supporters well and dissenters much, much worse. That’s sustainable. Say, let’s put out this blazing fire with this handy can of gasoline.

Yeah, they are having fun for now. While the supine GOP is tweeting hack cliches about Muh Not Who We Are, the left is trying to tighten the noose. But we’re woke. Rasmussen puts Trump’s popularity at 51%, rising after the riots. We aren’t blaming Trump for the riots. And we sure aren’t rolling over for these bastards.

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Germany’s Prime Minister Hermann Goering, with his staff, Berlin on Nov. 4, 1933, after the trial of Marinus Van Der Lubbe accused of responsibility for the Burning of the Reichstag.

Nancy Pelosi is our contemporary Herman Goering, opportunistically seizing on last week’s Capitol Hill Protests as a crisis justifying banning the opposition and enacting one-party rule.

The British Daily Mail reports:

Dems will call on Pence to use the 25th Amendment today, or else Pelosi will begin impeachment of ‘deranged, unhinged and dangerous’ Trump – as she raises fears he will pardon MAGA mob

Pelosi told 60 Minutes on Sunday that she wants impeachment for Donald Trump so he can’t run for office in the future

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But that’s not all! Beyond officially and permanently ostracizing Trump (the Ancient Greeks only banished unpopular leaders for five years), Pelosi is exploring the alluring possibility of deeming that protest an “insurrection” and expelling GOP House members and Senators on the basis of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment, Section 3:

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

PELOSI outlines her plan of action in a letter to Democrats.

A House vote Monday or Tuesday on a resolution calling on @VP to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump.

He'll have 24 hours.

"Next, we will proceed with bringing impeachment legislation to the Floor," she says. pic.twitter.com/8pVoRXedos

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) January 10, 2021

As Karl Marx observed: “History repeats itself, the first time as Tragedy, the second time as Farce.”

Wikipedia article.

In 1983, Susan Rosenberg planted a bomb outside the US Senate chamber to assassinate Republican senators.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman @RepJerryNadler got Pres. Clinton to pardon Susan Rosenberg.

She’s now a board member of Black Lives Matter Network, Inc. pic.twitter.com/YchS2z5dFE

— Mike Yoder (@Yoder_Esqq) January 10, 2021

Big fan, not a great look.

Are we gonna apologize for the language here @JustinThomas34 @PGATOUR ? pic.twitter.com/QvIYdOv7F9

— Imsolazy (@DustyBurlap) January 10, 2021

A pro golfer misses a putt and vents his frustration with an expletive, and voilà the miscreant’s crime against Political Correctness is international news, meriting a story in the (generally conservative) NY Post.

Sheer insanity, too! The obscenity employed when something frustratingly goes amiss –you miss the key putt, you bang your finger with a hammer– has no real object beyond the unfortunate event. And this kind of swearing is standard human, letting-off-steam behavior. The Puritan fathers of Old Salem have nothing on the nincompoop generation running Establishment Media and Big Tech today.

The scumbag shitheel who wrote that article is identified here.

Jessica Cluess

NY Post:

A critically acclaimed young adult author has been “canceled” and dropped by her agent after vociferously defending classic books in a Twitter-fueled rage.

Jessica Cluess, the author of the popular “Kingdom of Fire” series (among others) picked a fight with an anti-racist and anti-bias educator Lorena Germán who founded the #DisruptTexts movement which aims to get more works by people of color into schools and to look critically at works by famous white “classic” authors.

“Did y’all know that many of the ‘classics’ were written before the 50s? Think of US society before then & the values that shaped this nation afterwards. THAT is what is in those books. That is why we gotta switch it up. It ain’t just about ‘being old,”‘ Germán tweeted on her now-private account on Nov. 30.

The tweet triggered Cluess, who then sent out a volley of now-deleted tweets (which were captured by the Daily Mail) including one which [Correctly — JDZ] called Germán an “idiot.”

The series of Cluess tweets read:

“If you think Hawthorne was on the side of the judgmental Puritans in The Scarlet Letter then you are an absolute idiot and should not have the title of educator in your bio.”

“If you think Upton Sinclair was on the side of the meat packing industry then you are a fool and should sit down and feel bad about yourself.”

“Ah yes, remember Their Eyes Were Watching God, and other literature of the extraordinary Harlem Renaissance? I guess not. D–k. This anti-intellectual, anti-curiosity bulls–t is poison and I will stand here and scream that it is sheer godd**n evil until my hair falls out. I do not care.” …

Soon a Twitter mob got on board and called Cluess a racist and demanded her publisher Penguin/Random House drop her, prompting the author to delete her tweets and issue an apology saying: “I take full responsibility for my unproved anger against Lorena Germán and the impact of my words on her and all who read them… I want to acknowledge the pain I caused, and to apologize sincerely for it. My words were misguided, wrong, and deeply hurtful.”

While there has been no word from Penguin/Random House, two days later on Dec. 3, Cluess’ agent at the renowned Janklow & Nesbit literary agency, Brooks Sherman, dropped her as a client.

“I hold myself to certain personal and professional standards for the values I support. I no longer represent Jessica Cluess. Her tweets against Loren Germán earlier this week were racist and unacceptable,” Brooks wrote in a tweet. He has since deactivated his account.

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As you see, even groveling and recantation are not enough. The heretic must be impoverished as well and deprived of her means of livelihood.

Happily, the days of traditional publishing being a necessity are over. You don’t need an agent or a large corporation. You can just epublish yourself.

Via Vanderleun:

Wikileaks just dumped all of their files online. Everything from Hillary Clinton’s emails, McCain’s being guilty, Vegas shooting done by an FBI sniper, Steve Jobs HIV letter, PedoPodesta, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Bilderberg, CIA agents arrested for rape, WHO pandemic. Happy Digging! Here you go, please read and pass it on….. https://file.wikileaks.org/file/… These are Clinton’s emails: https://file.wikileaks.org/file/clinton-emails/

Send to everyone you can as fast as you can!

Babylon Bee:

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Ignorant Republicans rioted yesterday but didn’t even snag any free big-screen TVs out of the deal, sources at the Capitol Building reported.

The short-sighted protesters stormed the Capitol without stealing a bunch of stuff, prompting many to question whether they really understand the purpose of a peaceful protest at all.

“Look at these morons, rioting at the Capitol when there’s a perfectly good Target just down the street,” said one CNN reporter. “If they’d looted a bunch of local businesses in the name of social justice or whatever, we’d be covering this protest a heck of a lot differently, I’ll tell you that.

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Those who followed my blog will be aware that I vehemently opposed Trump’s nomination and did not vote for him in 2016. Watching his behavior at the inauguration, I became persuaded I’d been wrong, that he really was sincere, and I sat down and mentally compared Trump’s deficiencies to those of other presidents during my own lifetime (Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Carter, &c.) and concluded that, really, compared to others, he was not worse. Not every president was Ronald Reagan.

As his administration progressed, I found myself very happy with his appointments and his policies, by and large. I was always an opponent of Protectionism, but one must admit that it has a long political tradition in this country, and de-industrializing America and enormously enriching and empowering China is undoubtedly a very dangerous thing to do.

A lot of Trump’s appointments did not work out. He seems to be bad at working with people with strong opinions and large egos. Trump obviously is a spoiled, narcissistic millionaire. But, oddly, I thought the appointees I liked the very best, Jim Mattis and John Bolton, turned out to behave, IMO, even worse than Trump. Mattis revealed himself to be a great talker and self promoter, but an empty uniform principally concerned with being well aligned with establishment opinion. Mattis did nothing to oppose fashionable PC in the military.

John Bolton obviously proved to be an egomaniac fully competitive with Trump, and a greedy and disloyal subordinate, bent upon revenge and so eager to cash-in with a tell-all book that he felt not need to wait until the administration he would be savaging was out of office. A lot of people would not be quite so willing to give aid and comfort to the democrats.

Trump’s policy decisions, on the other hand, were generally great. Trump dismissed catastrophist superstition out of hand. He cleared away regulatory obstacles to oil production, creating millions of jobs, helping the economy, dramatically lowering energy prices, and making America energy independent again. He gave America back working dishwashers and useful showerheads. He blocked communist Woke propaganda where he could. He sold oil leases on the North Slope. And he restarted the Space Program.

Trump suffers obviously from Trumpiness, but he has one great and supreme virtue: he fights. We live in an emasculated age of trimmers, grovelers, conformists, and opportunists, all sticking a wet index finger up to find out which way the wind is blowing. When the Establishment turns its unlimited powers of credentialing and decredentialing, of ridicule, spin, and narrative framing, strong men surrender and run and hide. Not Good Old Trump. He stood up to them and fought back.

I could today be saying: I told you so. I said, back then, that Trump was limited and could very well screw up and hand the presidency and big fat mandate over to the democrats after one term, but I won’t be doing that.

Yes, Trump as out of his depth dealing with the stolen election mess. Yes, he did not seem able to locate and employ effective professional legal representation. But, when you come right down to it, most of the GOP leadership and the conservative commentariat funked out. It was Trump and a handful of real conservatives, Cruz and Hawley, who actually tried to fight. There was obviously little time, the holidays come between the election and the vote certification. Our judges tend to be democrat tools or just too timid to venture into the stormy waters of a contested presidential election. The Republican Party was not united and did not have Trump’s back. Shit happens. Ephialtes showed the Persians the way around the pass at Thermopylae. General Ewell should have taken the high ground on July 1st.

Things look black today. They have the presidency, the House, and the Senate. And they are vindictive. They will try to impeach Trump a second time. As Instapundit put it: “Big Tech today settles all family business.” But it is not the end. 74 million Americans voted for Trump. There will be resistance.