• Economy
  • Editor’s Pick
Money Rise Today – Investing and Stock News
  • Investing
  • Stock
Editor's Pick

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: Cancel culture’s rules are changing and conservatives can seize the day

by February 26, 2025
written by February 26, 2025
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

Editor’s note: The following essay first appeared in Ciy Journal and on the author’s Substack.

For the past decade, the political Right has lamented ‘cancel culture.’ The idea was that the Left unfairly stoked race and gender hysteria to restrict the terms of debate and to cast anyone deemed in violation of the mandated terms into a state of social annihilation. Teenagers who sang along with rap songs have been denied entry into college. Political figures who failed to use the latest euphemisms found themselves cast into the void. 

Now, with the second Trump administration, the rules of social annihilation are seemingly being rewritten in real time. The presidential appointments of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth might have been derailed, or not even attempted, in Trump’s first presidency. Yet, despite the salacious accusations against the two nominees, Senate Republicans held firm and confirmed both men.

Likewise, when left-wing journalists exposed a young DOGE staffer, Marko Elez, for pseudonymous social media posts, including ‘I was racist before it was cool’ and ‘normalize Indian hate,’ Elez resigned in what amounted to preemptive self-cancellation. Elez might have been ironically riding the ‘edge’ of the discourse, violating a taboo for a sense of thrill, but when his identity was revealed, he expected the old penalty. Then something different happened: Elez’s colleagues rallied to his support, with Vice President J. D. Vance arguing that ‘stupid social media activities should not ruin a kid’s life.’ What would have ended with a social death sentence five years ago instead became a short blip. The vice president rejected the calculus of left-wing cancel culture, demonstrating instead that forgiveness, loyalty, and a sense of proportion should be part of the decision-making process in such controversies. Elez was reinstated.

All of this is salutary, but in this period of renegotiation, the Right must take a deeper look at the dynamics of social cancellation and adopt a systematic method for moving forward. The Right’s longstanding proposal—to ‘cancel cancel culture’—might make for a good slogan, but it is not sufficient as a governing philosophy. The reality is that one cannot cancel cancel culture. Rules of etiquette, propriety, and acceptability will always exist; people who violate a society’s core taboos will always risk exclusion.

In other words, all cultures cancel. The question is, for what, and by whom.

Americans are tired of the narrow discourse and injustices of the past decade.

When the Left had power over the culture, it had a ready-made answer to the questions of values and power. It proposed intersectionality, critical race theory, and gender cultism as an operating ideology and guide for policing the discourse. If you violated the tenets of those theories in a work chat or a social media post, you placed yourself at risk of social consequences. The New York Times, The Atlantic, or Gawker could ruin a career or delete an individual from polite society by exposing an ideological faux pas. Even ostensibly right-wing institutions often buckled to their demands.

Now that the Right finds itself ascendant, it has the opportunity to provide a better answer to these questions. We should acknowledge that culture is a way for society to establish a particular hierarchy of values and to provide a way to police the boundaries. And then we should propose a new set of values that expands the range of acceptable discourse rightward and provides a method for adjudicating the limits. From the perspective of practical politics, this will determine how the Right can protect its own members from unjust cancellation attempts and how it can enforce just consequences on political opponents who violate the new terms.

A number of upcoming events will put the new rules to the test. The confirmations of RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth dominated headlines, but there will be lower-profile test cases for deputy secretary and assistant secretary nominees, who are perhaps more vulnerable. The Left will try to use past provocative public statements by these nominees against them. Republican senators should resist the temptation to react within that framing; instead, they should maintain a sense of proportion and treat each case in its fullest context. Social media posts, often imbued with irony and hyperbole, should no longer be grounds for automatic social and professional annihilation.

Americans are tired of the narrow discourse and injustices of the past decade. If we can rewrite the rules of cancel culture, then the Trump presidency could mark a new era of cultural freedom. And the Right can shift from a posture of permanent defense to one of governing in the name of its own principles.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS
0 comment
0
FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail

previous post
Home Depot earnings beat Wall Street estimates as retailer breaks comparable sales losing streak
next post
CDC seems to defy Trump executive order by participating in WHO vaccine conference

related articles

Trump denounces court’s ‘political’ tariff decision, calls on...

May 30, 2025

President Trump teases ‘last day, but not really’...

May 30, 2025

State Dept says DOGE’s changes will be permanent...

May 30, 2025

Jill Biden should have to answer for ‘cover...

May 29, 2025

DOGE staffing shakeup as Elon Musk hangs up...

May 29, 2025

Hawley urges DOJ probe of Chinese trucking company

May 29, 2025

Less than half of DOGE-terminated contracts can be...

May 29, 2025

Flashback: Top five wildest moments from Elon Musk’s...

May 29, 2025

Sen Ron Johnson suggests he may not run...

May 29, 2025

Justice Department tells American Bar Association it will...

May 29, 2025
Enter Your Information Below To Receive Free Trading Ideas, Latest News, And Articles.


Your information is secure and your privacy is protected. By opting in you agree to receive emails from us. Remember that you can opt-out any time, we hate spam too!

Latest News

  • Federal judge skeptical of effort to block Musk’s DOGE from accessing data, firing employees

    February 17, 2025
  • Fed rate cuts in September could boost General Motors’ profitability, CFO predicts

    July 23, 2024
  • Trump blasts DOJ for ‘election interference,’ calls Jack Smith case a ‘scam’ after judge unseals key filing

    October 3, 2024
  • Trump says Israel should hit Iran’s nuclear facilities, slamming Biden’s response

    October 5, 2024
  • Trump’s Day One actions reversed Biden-era health policies, including efforts to expand ObamaCare

    January 22, 2025

Popular Posts

  • 1

    Secret Service admits leaning on ‘state and local partners’ after claim it ignored Trump team’s past requests

    July 21, 2024
  • 2

    Elon and Vivek should tackle US funding for this boondoogle organization and score a multimillion dollar win

    December 4, 2024
  • 3

    Forex Profit Calculator: Maximize Your Trading Potential

    July 10, 2024
  • 4

    Five more House Democrats call on Biden to drop out, third US senator

    July 19, 2024
  • 5

    Biden calls to ‘lower the temperature’ then bashes Trump in NAACP speech

    July 17, 2024

Categories

  • Economy (829)
  • Editor's Pick (4,723)
  • Investing (624)
  • Stock (773)

Latest Posts

  • EURGBP and EURCHF: EURGBP has fallen to a two-year low

    July 15, 2024
  • Netanyahu’s meeting at White House moved amid Biden’s COVID recovery, Harris campaigning

    July 23, 2024
  • Jeff Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sanchez sparks backlash at Trump inauguration with lingerie-inspired outfit

    January 20, 2025

Recent Posts

  • Nvidia hit a $4 trillion market valuation

    November 20, 2024
  • Super Micro Computer stock plummets 20% as CEO attributes underperformance to Nvidia delays

    August 7, 2024
  • Bitcoin is close to returning to the weekly open price

    August 7, 2024

Editor’s Pick

  • Aleph Zero (AZERO): Everything You Need to Know

    September 4, 2024
  • Judge blocks Albertsons-Kroger $25 billion supermarket merger

    December 11, 2024
  • Pritzker trolls Trump by ‘renaming’ Lake Michigan as ‘Lake Illinois,’ joking he’d annex Green Bay

    February 8, 2025
  • About us
  • Contacts
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions

Disclaimer: moneyrisetoday.com, its managers, its employees, and assigns (collectively “The Company”) do not make any guarantee or warranty about what is advertised above. Information provided by this website is for research purposes only and should not be considered as personalized financial advice. The Company is not affiliated with, nor does it receive compensation from, any specific security. The Company is not registered or licensed by any governing body in any jurisdiction to give investing advice or provide investment recommendation. Any investments recommended here should be taken into consideration only after consulting with your investment advisor and after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company.

Copyright © 2025 moneyrisetoday.com | All Rights Reserved

Money Rise Today – Investing and Stock News
  • Economy
  • Editor’s Pick
Money Rise Today – Investing and Stock News
  • Investing
  • Stock