Regardless of how one may feel about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the millions of Americans who rightfully have a basic distrust of their government and its political leaders have good reason to observe the enormous multi-faceted "cancel" campaign being rolled out against the largest nation in the world – by land mass – with a strong degree of trepidation.
The "rules-based international order" just the other day was waging a remorseless emotion-driven war, in the name of science, against its own citizens who refused to be bullied into forced vaccination, cruelly using job loss and forfeiture of basic civil rights as weapons of "persuasion." The same cabal is now employing these histrionic tactics in the field of world power politics. The unprecedented (in formerly free Western nations) mass coordinated social attack on individuals that came with the coronavirus social control regimen is now being utilized against a country.
Global Systemic Punishment
The now-familiar coalescence of forces on display here should frighten anyone plugged into the modern world. Private corporations, celebrities, and credentialed professionals from various respected fields are working hand-in-glove with government to flex muscles of unified crossover coercive action. Lines are being permanently blurred, and a potent form of irregular warfare that has already been unleashed on private citizens is being further normed by the grand spectacle of war.
A highly interesting essay posted March 9 at Darren Beattie’s Revolver News illustrates the perils that come with the entrenchment of government-fomented universal social scorn campaigns:
“After January 6, major banks systematically cut off President Trump. Deutsche Bank, Signature Bank, and Banks United shuttered his accounts. Signature Bank took the added step of saying it would refuse services to any lawmaker objecting to the results of the 2020 election. Stripe halted payment processing for the Trump campaign as well as anybody present at January 6....
America First activist Michelle Malkin is an American dissident, so AirBNB banned both her and her husband from renting rooms. In 2019, Facebook entirely banned all links (even in private messages) to Unz.com, and right before the 2020 election, Twitter banned all links to the Hunter Biden story....
In the US, it is now routine for the regime and its media adjuncts to target unwanted media outlets, no matter how marginal. In January, DirecTV cut off OAN, a longtime objective of activists who despised the network for supporting President Trump’s claims of 2020 election fraud.”
All these things are now being done to Russia. “[T]his explosion is operating like a frenzied moral panic, a purity spiral, a virtue signal, or whatever you want to call it, and not clearly following any kind of rational plan,” Revolver correctly notes.
Everything from Russian opera singers to pro hockey players and even Russian restaurants have been targeted along the way. Companies hesitant to toe the “zero tolerance” line and completely divest themselves from doing business with Russia are called out for public condemnation.
The strategic policy implications of this are bad enough. When knee-jerk, bumper-sticker emotionalism rules the day, nuance and all other useful subtleties are fully discarded. But the most disconcerting facet of the cancel culture operation against Russia is how instantly it came together. The ruling establishment is letting friend and foe alike know that it can unite all its various components – commercial, cultural, social and governmental – against its assigned “enemy” at a moment’s notice.
‘Economic Devastation and Cultural Deprivation’
Given that the Biden administration has labeled not only Trump supporters but even parents concerned about what their local schools are teaching their children as potential “domestic terrorists,” the streamlining of cancel culture as a weapon of mass destruction bodes very poorly for the future.
In a revealing March 8 article at dominant media outlet The Atlantic titled “Of Course Putin Is Being Canceled – And that’s a good thing,” staff writer Helen Lewis ominously writes:
“A true cancellation typically involves the subject being cast out of their professional network, denied the ability to make money, and rejected by their social circle. One reason it is so alarming an experience is the sense of contagion — without obvious coordination, a person becomes a nonentity. Many of the canceled people I have known, or reported on, have experienced depression or even contemplated suicide.
Economic devastation and cultural deprivation are powerful punishments....
When a Russian spymaster complains about his country’s cancellation, our response should not be to laugh at an idiot confusing a culture war and a real one. Instead, we should recognize that economic and social isolation is a powerful weapon, and resolve to use it with the same restraint as any other weapon.”
The Hive knows its strength in an increasingly globalized world. While there may be no reason to shed any tears for Vladimir Putin, think of the individual lives here at home that have already been crushed by this acknowledged “powerful weapon,” and those destined to be dealt with similarly in the very near future in the name of vague and simplistic buzzwords like “democracy,” “health” and “science.”
~ Read more from Joe Schaeffer.
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