Cancel culture: mass hysteria no different from medieval witch hunts

[John’s Note: While I write the vast majority of the articles published here and do not solicit guest blogs (in fact, I reject most unsolicited material) but occasionally, I make an exception. This is one of those occasions. Even more rare, this is the second article by Avi Kumar published here, making history our first “repeat” guest appearance.]

We remember what went on in the Middle Ages/ Medieval period in Europe, better known as the Dark ages, as we analyze history. We laugh at how ridiculous people could be: witches were burned at the stake. Lynch mobs murdered innocent people because of their skin color. Self-flagellation and mass hysteria. Yes, we look back at our forefather’s absurd antics and laugh.  But then some of us (conservatives) ponder how many of these practices are not really much different from what the left does today. The same sort of mindset of those who burned witches at the stake infects the liberals who dominate our college campuses nowadays. 

Imagine being accused of being a witch or heretic during the Dark Ages. It meant more than being banned from attending church; you would be shunned, shamed, and perhaps even exiled from a close knit community. The Scarlet Letter is a novel that was inspired by historical behavior. However, the purity tests for today’s liberals are not triggered by immoral behavior, but political correctness.  

In a notorious case in 1425, Hermann II, Count of Celje accused his daughter-in-law Veronika of Desenice of witchcraft. Although she was acquitted by a court, he had her intentionally drowned. The accusations of witchcraft were apparently used as a pretext for him to have her murdered because she was of lower nobility and he did not see her as suitable enough for his son. 

Then there was also a case where a 16th century Italian merchant named Mennocio said, ‘Just as cheese is made out of milk – and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels. The most holy majesty decreed that these should be God and the angels, and among that number of angels there was also God.’  He was executed for his blasphemy, merely for implying that God and angels came out of the world spontaneously, just as he believed worms can spontaneously come out of cheese. Of course, the most famous example of medieval cancel culture was probably Joan of Arc, burned at the stake in 1491. Despite being widely regarded as a war hero, she was accused of heresy and rather abruptly ‘cancelled’ via public execution.

Contrast those brutal days with today, and understand that Richard Dawkins became the world’s most famous and celebrated atheist after his book The God Delusion sold over 3 million copies. Atheism pays well these days. And even though Dawkins has made quite a few controversial statements regarding controversial subjects like pedophilia, the cancel culture crowd (CCC) has largely ignored them. The CCC wasn’t so forgiving to Brendan Eich, the Christian entrepreneurial web developer who started Mozilla Corporation and created their Firefox browser–he was “outed” for contributing to legislation opposing gay marriage in California and forced to resign from his own company. Cancelled.

Today you can be branded RACIST SEXIST FASCIST HOMOPHOBE by a mob for something as silly as a culturally appropriated Halloween costume, refusing to do a gay wedding, or like Nick Sandman, simply standing there and smiling at a Native American man trying to provoke a reaction from him.  The mob acts as judge, jury, and executioner. There are no parameters, no logic, laws of conduct in place – everything is dictated by the mood of the mob and the loudest voice that condemns you. You’ve probably experienced it – people are so quick to unfriend you on social media if they even SUSPECT you of being a conservative and a Trump supporter. 

People have been suspended from college, fraternities and other social clubs, lost jobs and simply been harassed by their former friends and neighbors because of this type of mob behavior. Cancel culture is the modern equivalent of excommunication, where competent professionals are made outcasts for saying the wrong word or gender pronoun. You cannot have a basic discussion where you even slightly disagree about late term abortion or climate change without being branded as some sort of “ist” whether it’s racist, misogynist, white supremacist, or whatever. In an effort to simplify their own stressful life, employers, colleges and media will oftentimes take the easy way out, so they bow to mob pressure and ‘cancel’ the targets of the SJW witch hunt. Cancel culture is today’s equivalent to excommunication. The loudest and most obnoxious voices typically win, regardless of whether they are right or wrong.

 Still, you cannot eliminate free will.  

There is a correlation between low church attendance and high rates of single motherhood and depression/ suicide. But we can’t say this openly in modern society.  At one time the Soviet Union basically banned most religions, controlled virtually all of their internal media and every other form of information,  but eventually failed to suppress a desire for more capitalism and less socialism after American-made movies showed their propaganda that claimed average Americans suffered terrible hardships were lies.

The woke mob may control schools colleges media and news, but they don’t have a fraction of the power that the Soviet Union once had. The youth who follow the Bernie Sanders socialism cult believe that their form of socialism will be something better than what we’ve seen in Cuba, Soviet Union or Venezuela. These Starbucks sipping, iPhone-wielding Marxists have no end goal other than to demolish western civilization which they view as the ultimate evil. 

While people like Richard Dawkins or Harry Potter author JK Rowling have the money and status to stand up to the mob when the cancel culture attacks, most of us don’t have that kind of wealth and power at our disposal. 

As Winston Churchill famously pointed out, the person who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last still gets eaten. The time has come to stand up for what you believe in, or risk getting canceled yourself. Antifa even tried to shut down the biker rally at Sturgis. That didn’t work out so well for the cancel crowd, however.

When the mob runs out of existing targets, they’ll simply make new ones. But they only want soft targets. They don’t want their victims to fight back.