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In short, boycotts are good and cancel culture is bad. This should be as clear as day to anyone, but the two have been conflated for various reasons in recent years. Let’s look at both so we can put a rest to the notion that if you’re pushing for boycotts, you’re participating in cancel culture.
First, let’s look at cancel culture. Even the progressive Merriam-Webster definition is fine for these purposes. They definite it as “the practice or tendency of engaging in mass canceling as a way of expressing disapproval and exerting social pressure.”
The extended definition by Demetria Slyt makes it even easier to see why cancel culture is bad while boycotting is good. “For those of you who aren’t aware, cancel culture refers to the mass withdrawal of support from public figures or celebrities who have done things that aren’t socially accepted today. This practice of ‘canceling’ or mass shaming often occurs on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.”
There are two keys to understand why cancel culture is bad. First, it almost always targets an individual through mass shaming over something that was said or done with the goal of damaging that individual in some tangible way. An example was the cancellation of Kevin Hart. Old Tweets demonstrating that he was allegedly homophobic in the past relieved him from hosting the Academy Awards. According to Breitbart:
Kevin Hart knows what it feels like to be “cancelled.” The actor-comedian was invited to host the Oscars two years ago but was forced to step down before the job even began after the media dug through his old tweets and accused him of homophobia. Now Hart is hitting back at cancel culture’s practitioners, saying they leave no room for growth or redemption.
“We’re letting people control and dictate the start and finish of people’s lives,” Hart said in an interview with Deadline. “If people [have done something] wrong, the idea of canceling those people, and ending whatever career or thing they have…If it’s just over, then what’s the teachable moment for them? What, it’s over, and then you can’t do nothing else for the rest of your life, because you made a mistake?”
Kevin Hart spoke to Deadline to promote his Emmy chances for his Netflix special Kevin Hart: Don’t F**k This Up. But the lengthy conversation turned toward more controversial subjects including cancel culture and his friend Ellen DeGeneres, who is facing her own cancel mob.
The second reason cancel culture is bad is because it invariably pertains to “wokeness.” Most of the time this manifests when a celebrity isn’t progressive enough in their words or actions and therefore is targeted by the left for being a Nazi or something. Sometimes, it happens when someone who is or was viewed as right-leaning gets “woke” on a subject, at which point it’s the right that engages in cancel culture. The former is much more frequent than the latter. Neither is a good thing.
Righteous boycotts are not cancel culture. They should not be viewed in the same category. With boycotts, we are denying the use of products or services offered by companies that work against our worldview. The primary thing that separates it from cancel culture is there is direct influence on our own lives by companies that oppose our worldview. This isn’t the case with cancel culture. No members of the LGBTQ community would have been harmed if Kevin Hart hosted the Oscars. They may have had their feelings hurt, but Hart was not working against their interests. He’s a comedian who made inappropriate comments on Twitter at a time when those comments weren’t nearly as inappropriate as the hyper-sensitive now.
Companies like Coca-Cola and Major League Baseball didn’t just make comments. They are actively working to push a leftist agenda in opposition to our best interests as conservatives and/or Christians. There is tangible harm their actions and donations have against us. Calling for boycotts of these entities is not engaging in frivolous cancel culture. It’s defending our rights and positioning our buying power with organizations that do not actively hate us.
It’s somewhat understandable that many on the right conflate the two because the folks on the left who engage in cancel culture also engage in boycotts. The ones who canceled Hart also tried to cancel Goya Foods because the CEO supported Donald Trump. But conservatives can and should be more selective. We should separate the two actions; canceling someone we do not like is very different from boycotting a company that works against us.
Perhaps the easiest way to differentiate the two practices is to understand what they represent. Boycotts are a form of financial activism that tries to either correct the ideological direction of a company or reduce their power. Cancel culture is a form of lazy Cultural Marxism. It uses shaming and pressure to punish someone, not because they caused or are causing material harm to the aggrieved but because they simply weren’t woke enough (or, in some cases, were too woke).
Cancel culture is bad. Righteous boycotts are good. Understanding the difference between the two is key for conservatives in order to end the former while advancing the latter.
‘The Purge’ by Big Tech targets conservatives, including us
Just when we thought the Covid-19 lockdowns were ending and our ability to stay afloat was improving, censorship reared its ugly head.
For the last few months, NOQ Report has appealed to our readers for assistance in staying afloat through Covid-19 lockdowns. The downturn in the economy has limited our ability to generate proper ad revenue just as our traffic was skyrocketing. We had our first sustained stretch of three months with over a million visitors in November, December, and January, but February saw a dip.
It wasn’t just the shortened month. We expected that. We also expected the continuation of dropping traffic from “woke” Big Tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, but it has actually been much worse than anticipated. Our Twitter account was banned. One of our YouTube accounts was banned and another has been suspended. Facebook “fact-checks” everything we post. Spotify canceled us. Why? Because we believe in the truth prevailing, and that means we will continue to discuss “taboo” topics.
The 2020 presidential election was stolen. You can’t say that on Big Tech platforms without risking cancelation, but we’d rather get cancelled for telling the truth rather than staying around to repeat mainstream media’s lies. They have been covering it up since before the election and they’ve convinced the vast majority of conservative news outlets that they will be harmed if they continue to discuss voter fraud. We refuse to back down. The truth is the truth.
The lies associated with Covid-19 are only slightly more prevalent than the suppression of valid scientific information that runs counter to the prescribed narrative. We should be allowed to ask questions about the vaccines, for example, as there is ample evidence for concern. One does not have to be an “anti-vaxxer” in order to want answers about vaccines that are still considered experimental and that have a track record in a short period of time of having side-effects. These questions are not allowed on Big Tech which is just another reason we are getting cancelled.
There are more topics that they refuse to allow. In turn, we refuse to stop discussing them. This is why we desperately need your help. The best way NOQ Report readers can help is to donate. Our Giving Fuel page makes it easy to donate one-time or monthly. Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal as well. We are on track to be short by about $5300 per month in order to maintain operations.
The second way to help is to become a partner. We’ve strongly considered seeking angel investors in the past but because we were paying the bills, it didn’t seem necessary. Now, we’re struggling to pay the bills. We had 5,657,724 sessions on our website from November, 2020, through February, 2021. Our intention is to elevate that to higher levels this year by focusing on a strategy that relies on free speech rather than being beholden to progressive Big Tech companies.
During that four-month stretch, Twitter and Facebook accounted for about 20% of our traffic. We are actively working on operating as if that traffic is zero, replacing it with platforms that operate more freely such as Gab, Parler, and others. While we were never as dependent on Big Tech as most conservative sites, we’d like to be completely free from them. That doesn’t mean we will block them, but we refuse to be beholden to companies that absolutely despise us simply because of our political ideology.
We’re heading in the right direction and we believe we’re ready talk to patriotic investors who want to not only “get in on the action” but more importantly who want to help America hear the truth. Interested investors should contact me directly with the contact button above.
As the world spirals towards radical progressivism, the need for truthful journalism has never been greater. But in these times, we need as many conservative media voices as possible. Please help keep NOQ Report going.
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