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The Bad Faith Behind the “Cancel Culture” Panic
Cancel culture is real. But it is ill defined in its popular use in the rhetoric of conservative pundits and Republican politicians. In the Republicans’ war on so-called political correctness, “cancelling” is synonymous with “censorship” but none of what they choose to rant against is government action that violates Constitutional protections of free speech.
The private corporations that are currently drawing Republican outrage, from Twitter to Hasbro and Dr. Seuss Enterprises are making business decisions about their product lines and how to market them. Imposing a chilling effect on free speech with the full power of the state is exactly what the Republican Attorney General for the State of Texas Ken Paxton is doing by opening a taxpayer funded investigation against Twitter.
Paxton issued civil investigative demands (CID) to Twitter, Google, Facebook, Amazon Web Services and Apple, asking the companies for their policies and practices regarding content moderation. “And just last week,” Paxton wrote in a press release in January, “this discriminatory action included the unprecedented step of removing and blocking President Donald Trump from online media platforms.”
In fact, no one does cancel culture better than conservatives. Just ask Colin Kaepernick, who was ostracized by the National Football League in the…