A friend who works for a conservative website shared an email with me that was sent to the staff, “We have to be careful” about how they write about Black Lives Matter, it said. Not because what they were reporting was inaccurate, but because it could upset the mob, and upsetting the mob nowadays is worse than being inaccurate. “Truth” can be whatever you want it to be, the mob, on the other hand, can seemingly make reality anything they want it to be by force of will or worse.
It’s not even Black Lives Matter, really, at least not the rank and file protestors taking to the streets in righteous indignation over what happened to George Floyd. It’s the Marxist leadership that coupled with, or refused to de-couple with, ANTIFA and other Black Bloc groups hell-bent on destruction of property and society. There’s a lot of money in this racket and it’s all based on fear.
The “woke” companies funding these radicals are doing so for a few different reasons. The first is they want to appear to be down with the struggle. The target demographic of Nike, for example, isn’t a married 40 year old professional with a couple of kids, they’re the kids who can barely afford their products because, like the people in China making them for pennies per day, they’re just little kids.
How “woke” can a company be if it uses sweatshop labor? How interested in “justice” can a movement be if it embraces a company doing that?
Doesn’t really matter, both are making bank. Turns out “rage” is all the rage these days, and being offended is a growth industry, even in a time of pandemic.
The problem with rage is you have to keep it going. An emotional state is only useful during it, and they tend to quickly burn out - there have been lots of feuds in history, but very few Hatfields and McCoys.
In order to keep the rage fires burning, anything is being used for fuel. The comments section of conservative websites? As the Federalist and Zerohedge found out this week, it’s game on. Weird how a company like Google, which exists in its current configuration only through a blind eye being turned to its content control abuses by regulators and spineless or complicit legislators who immunize it from liability for content on their sites, is making other outlets responsible for the part of their websites over which they explicitly exert no control. It screams of hypocrisy, mostly because it is, but the people who’d have any impact by calling it out are literally on the same team – this case being NBC News – so who’d do it who would matter? No one.
You can act 10 feet tall and bullet proof when the guards against abuse are helping you abuse.
But it’s not just conservative websites and Tucker Carlson, who is destroying everyone else in the ratings but is facing a boycott by these fascists because of his refusal to conform and stop speaking the truth, it’s everything. Anything that can be combustible will be used to keep the rage burning, no matter how absurd.
Aunt Jemima? She’s got to go. A hundred years ago she was a racist stereotype, today she’s a smiling black woman. You don’t see many faces in the grocery aisle, of any color, but the people who are changing what constitutes a movie worthy of being considered one of the year’s best based upon “representation” or “inclusion” are demanding Aunt Jemima be wiped from history for sins committed before anyone demanding the change was alive to be offended by them.
It’s not limited to the United States, crazy cannot be contained. Everywhere there are leftists, this insanity has spread. Statues of Winston Churchill are under threat, a brewing company in Australia is having their products pulled from shelves because its name is “Colonial Brewing.” When will they go after Sam Adams? Laugh, but if they’re going after an Abraham Lincoln statues in Boston because 8,300 signed an online petition, it won’t be long.
The only way any of this works is through the exploitation of the fact that we’re out of real problems. Something about the brains of liberals will not let them accept that we have it better than anyone who has lived before us. I wrote about this in my book – we don’t get up every morning struggling to forage for enough food to keep our family alive that day, only to do it again the next. We don’t have to worry about a cut on our hands that could get infected and kill us; or some random stranger coming along and stealing everything we have or drafting us to fight in their army against someone we’ve never heard of. Even our homeless need charging stations for their iPhones; obesity is a problem among the poor.
We have the freedom to create things to be outraged over, and leftists seem to have the need. That need is being exploited to make some people very rich and powerful.
This movement, like so many others, isn’t about justice, it’s about control. And it’s about money. Every old tweet, blog post, Facebook status, or even rumor of something “unacceptable” said in the past is now potential kindling to keep that rage going and that cash flowing.
There are so many things to call this mentality: cancel culture, fascism, you name it. But one thing it is not is sane.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily radio show on WCBM in Maryland, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.