For a Libertarian Cancel Culture
On December 1, 2024, Elon Musk decreed: “Cancel culture has been canceled.” Musk had his reasons for saying this. After all the mainstream media, the Deep State, and the Big Tech had tried to cancel Trump in every way, he had just won a landslide victory in the presidential election. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., also a target of massive cancellation for years, helped in this Trump victory and was nominated as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Musk himself was also instrumental in this victory, by buying Twitter/X and giving room to many – but not all – expressions of ideas that were previously canceled on this social network. But the main reason was that Trump’s victory marked a tremendous defeat for Wokism, which had until then been the main motivator of dissident cancellations and is the main declared enemy of Musk – who lost a son to this perverse ideology.
But is Cancel Culture really over? And would this end be something good or bad? For a long time we have seen the entire right wing, from conservatives to libertarians, complaining about the so-called Cancel Culture as an unacceptable attack on freedom. However, in addition to Cancel Culture not being an assault on freedom, it is the only way to achieve and maintain a free society.
The cancellation of a person occurs as follows. When someone is caught in an act or expresses an opinion that is considered intolerable by an organized group, this group starts a campaign to expose that person as someone socially inadequate, putting pressure on their personal relationships and even demanding that their employer fire them. Any person or company that continues to maintain relationships with the canceled party is also threatened with being canceled. If the state does not get involved – as happened in Trump’s cancellation and the censorship of social media – and no coercion is used, cancellation is compatible with libertarian ethics – even if that person loses friends, relationships, job, business, and social media profiles.
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Article from LewRockwell
LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
