Pro-Israel Conservatives Go Full Cancel Culture
One of the consequences of the Hamas attack of October 7th, 2023, has been the wholesale conversion of conservative critics of ‘cancel culture’ into its most enthusiastic advocates.
Up until that event, a cluster of online activists attracted millions of followers and subscribers opposing the excesses of what has come to be called ‘Woke.’ Bari Weiss is a good example. She has defended victims of Woke, including a Palestinian family:
Woke activists encourage doxxing, censorship, and firing, of people with whom they disagree. Examples from the last few years are legion. One can google, for example, ‘Jodi Shaw,’ ‘Colin Wright,’ and ‘Roland Fryer.’ People have been cancelled for questioning whether the police are racist, and claiming that sex is binary.
In the article Woke Racism and Western Weakness, September 2022, I mentioned conservatives using similar language to the Woke left, in response to a conference entitled “Not Backing Down: Israel, Free Speech and the Battle for Palestinian Human Rights.” They said some Jewish students claimed they “will suffer immediate and irreparable harm” from this conference, and tried to get it cancelled:
https://rodmclaughlin.medium.com/woke-racism-and-western-weakness-b5ae5970299b.
Since October 7th, the Woke wave of cancel culture has been dwarfed by a conservative tsunami. KC Johnson is a leading archivist of false allegations of racism on campus. But today, he supports banning pro-Palestinian student groups, because he claims they are antisemitic: https://x.com/kcjohnson9/status/1723159740904018078.
Without missing a beat, influential conservative intellectuals, on both sides of the Atlantic, such as Megyn Kelly, and Douglas Murray, went full cancel-culture. They falsely claim that protests calling for a ceasefire to save the lives of Palestinian children are pro-terrorism. They say that Jews are scared, ignoring evidence of the sizeable Jewish presence at these protests.
False accusations of racism, claiming that a minority is frightened, the belief that words are violence — these are the techniques the Woke left has used against conservatives, or even biologists, in higher education, but also in government, corporations, and the media. Conservatives are now trying to intimidate critics of Israel using the same techniques.
The journalist Glenn Greenwald, a consistent opponent of assaults on freedom, wherever they come from, has chronicled numerous examples of conservative cancel culture on his System Update podcast: https://rumble.com/c/GGreenwald.
Conservatives not only claim that defending Palestinian human rights is pro-Hamas, they claim it is a consequence of Woke leftist ideology on campus. But the resistance of the Palestinians predates both. It started when Jewish militias ethnically-cleansed most of the Palestinians, directly after world war two.
Conservative cancel culture is more similar to Woke cancel culture than the defence of Palestinians is to either. The Western countries, particularly America, back Israel to the hilt. Those trying to suppress critical voices are complicit in mass murder.
