As Cancel Culture Increases Control of America’s Public Square, Conservatives Are Responding

President Donald Trump gestures as he arrives for the Independence Day events at Mount Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone, S.D., on July 3, 2020. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Commentary

In his speech at Mount Rushmore last July 4, former President Donald J. Trump showed how well he understood the agenda of the increasingly radical American progressive left when it comes to their determination to change America’s cultural foundations.

Standing in front of the sculpted faces of some of America’s greatest presidents, Trump told the nation:

“1776 represented the culmination of thousands of years of Western civilization and the triumph of not only spirit, but of wisdom, philosophy, and reason.

“And yet, as we meet here tonight, there is a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought so hard for, struggled, they bled to secure. Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.

“Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities. Many of these people have no idea why they’re doing this, but some know what they are doing.

“They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive, but no, the American people are strong and proud and they will not allow our country and all of its values, history, and culture to be taken from them.

“One of their political weapons is cancel culture, driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and to our values and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America.” The events of the past few months have demonstrated that Trump may have understated the threat. An election was seemingly blatantly stolen from him, and since then what could be called “woke corporate cancel culture” has continued to grow at an exponential rate, constantly on the prowl for new victims.

Even Americans who deliberately try to tune out all political news are having to pay attention, as both The Muppets and Dr. Seuss recently managed to run afoul of these radical activists.

It’s not just the corporate mainstream media or Big Tech that are attempting to turn the American public square into a progressive leftist echo chamber by driving conservatives out into the wilderness.

Internet services are deplatforming firearms websites. Donation sites and payment processors such as GoFundMe and Patreon are expelling customers who attempt to raise money for conservative organizations and causes. Meanwhile, these same services leave alone accounts raising funds for “bloody revolution,” as long as they’re properly leftist.

Independent investigative journalist and UncoverDC editor-in-chief Tracy Beanz was recently deplatformed by Patreon after a Rolling Stone article targeted her as a supposed “influencer” in the “QAnon movement,” a claim that’s false.

As another example, I didn’t voluntarily leave Twitter, where I had garnered more than 270,000 followers since joining in 2012. Like millions of others, I was permanently banned from the service for spreading “election disinformation” in January.

And I had just established a new account on the alternative social media site Parler when it was suddenly taken offline by Amazon Web Services.

Parler’s Going Dark Was a Huge Wake-Up Call

After Parler went dark, it was revealed the company didn’t have any private server network or any backup capability once Amazon shut them out. That seems to have led directly to former Parler CEO John Matze being forced out in early February. Matze is now suing the Parler executive board over his firing.

In a video he made about this controversy, radio show host and Parler investor Dan Bongino talked about several “bad decisions” that had been made early on in Parler’s formation that had directly led to this major setback.

It’s become clear that any conservative content creator or website that relies on one of the big cancel culture corporations for its access to the internet is leaving itself vulnerable to censorship.

What happened to Parler was a huge wake-up call to conservative America. And some have already begun responding to the threat.

The first step in protecting the right of all Americans to have access to the nation’s public square is electing effective political leadership that understands the fight against cancel culture and how to win that fight.

Fighting Back: American Priority’s GAPP

As a great example of people getting involved in this crucial battle, Alex Phillips of American Priority has launched the Great American Patriot Project (GAPP), which has the specific purpose of electing public officials who will take action for conservatives and their place in the American public square.

The mission statement for GAPP says: “Support vetted patriot candidates to run for State and Federal Office under the Republican ticket under the conventional PAC and support the development and promotion of narratives to support policies, programs and candidates that are Patriot/America First in nature as well as the removal of establishment GOP politicians at the State and Federal level.”

Best known for holding the yearly AMPFest conservative conference at the Trump Doral Resort in Miami every October, American Priority is putting money behind creating an effective network to find, support, and elect candidates for local state and federal offices.

One of the biggest problems in recent years has been candidates who take advantage of a surging conservative/MAGA movement to get elected and then promptly turned their backs on the people who put them into office once they got to Washington or the governor’s office, or the state legislature. There certainly does need to be a more consistent vetting process so this doesn’t continue to happen.

American Priority is stepping into the “gapp,” so to speak, and working to organize conservatives to put thoroughly vetted candidates in office who won’t merely talk a good game against the radical left, they’ll actually fight them.

GAPP is a multi-faceted approach to dealing with both the political enablement of cancel culture by the political elite class and the paralysis of the courts and law enforcement against attempts to censor and isolate the conservative viewpoint from the broader culture.

GAPP Priority: Replacing Ineffective Political Leaders

The bitter truth is that too many of our political leaders on the right let us down in the past several years. They talked a good game, but every time the moment arrived to take action, they retreated.

In Washington, senators and House members contented themselves with calling in Jack Dorsey of Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, and Sundar Pichai of Google for multiple theatrical congressional hearings, during which grandstanding members of Congress angrily yelled at them for the cameras and then—nothing happened.

Cancel culture continued on its merry way unabated while Congress wouldn’t take any action, even after Trump called for a revocation of Section 230, the FCC regulation that has been used to justify the increasing censorship.

The focus of American Priority’s GAPP will be on changing this pattern of inaction and retreat by finding, running, and supporting American patriot candidates for political office at the local, state, and federal levels who will do more than just grandstand for the cameras when it comes to taking on cancel culture. They will enforce the current laws and write new laws protecting the speech of all Americans.

If the American people want real change after watching all the insanity of the past few years as the progressive left made real strides in moving forward on their radical agenda, they’re going to have to get involved. Passivity and merely watching the show from the sidelines is no longer an option.

GAPP is a good start, and a positive sign that many people recognize this challenge and are rising to meet it.

Brian Cates is a writer based in South Texas and author of “Nobody Asked For My Opinion … But Here It Is Anyway!” He can be reached on Telegram at t.me/drawandstrikechannel.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.