It tried to squeeze Rich Lowry, but we’re fighting back.
Cancel culture is a kind of evolutionary leap for censorship. Instead of making an official or an office responsible for setting the limits of public discourse, there is now what looks like an uncoordinated and spontaneous eruption of public anger poured on one individual until his livelihood and reputation are destroyed or completely rewritten by the mob.
Cancellation is a ritual that takes up and combines the worst human traits as elicited by social media: the willingness to dogpile, the satisfaction of outrage aroused from the safety of one’s own home, the sudden flush of zeal as one joins a moralized mob going into a frenzy. The way it works is not entirely uncoordinated or spontaneous after all. The trouble is stirred up by professional liars and cynics. The mob comes together for its own dark pleasures, often in blessed ignorance of the truth, though no less dangerous.
In recent weeks, the mob and its allied cynics tried to squeeze Rich Lowry. The paid liars pretended that he said the N-word, when it was obvious that he had just mixed up the sounds in two different words: “migrant” and “immigrant.” Then a giant, digitally assembled crowd of malcontents who either don’t like Lowry or National Review, or who had just had a bad day before logging into social media, jumped in.
But the disgraceful part is that even though a moment’s reflection or research would have revealed their charge against Lowry for the lie that it was, two institutions, beholding the ignorant mob, withdrew invitations for Lowry to speak. That is what cancellation is intended to do — cow the fearful, and shut down the bold.
We’re not just going to stand by and take it. Cancellation is an attempt to unperson an individual. It is a kind of political Stalinism that is outsourced to volunteer apparatchiks, and then crowdsourced to the ignorant and impulsive.
We really believe that the cure for bad speech is more speech on behalf of the truth. We really believe that virtue and courage are owed respect, and cowardice and graveness are owed a rebuke. And so with your help, we’re going to organize a new speaking tour for Rich — replacing the opportunities that were lost and giving him many more. But we need your support to do it.
So please, between now and Friday, chip in whatever you can: $20, $50, $100, even $1,000 if you’re feeling especially generous. We appreciate any support you can give, and extend our gratitude.
