The Republicans had a strong beginning to its convention, with many speakers attacking the left’s “cancel culture,” a theme that has become a major — and promising — GOP narrative since President Donald Trump addressed the issue in his Mt. Rushmore speech earlier this year.
If the phrase “cancel culture” has a drawback, it is that it is too modern — “cultural revolution” is a better phrase, correctly conjuring images of its historical antecedent in Mao’s Communist China.
That is, in fact, what we are living through — Americans across the country are experiencing incidents in their workplaces, in their colleges, and even out in public — that are virtually indistinguishable from Maoist “struggle sessions.”
If you’re berated in your workplace or in public, you may be one of the lucky ones — at least your business isn’t being burned down or looted. At least you aren’t being beaten to near-death by rioters.
The source of the poison is higher education, where far-left professors pass the doctrine of cultural revolution on to the next generation. Here, the government has a considerable degree of power. To begin healing the nation, President Trump simply has to follow through on his warning to defund higher education institutions that indoctrinate and radicalize America’s students.
Another power center of the cultural revolution is corporate America, which many Republicans still believe is their ally. President Trump, as always, is ahead of the curve, calling for a boycott of tire manufacturer Goodyear for instructing its employees that the slogans “Make America Great Again” and “Blue Lives Matter” and “political” materials are unacceptable among its employees, while “Black Lives Matter” and LGBT Pride are acceptable.
Under fire from Trump, Goodyear lamely argued that there’s a difference between “political” activity and “racial injustice and other equity issues.”
Mao’s Red Guards probably didn’t think their values were “political” either.
Clearly, corporations cannot be trusted to define what is a “political” activity. We’ve seen it with Goodyear, we’ve seen it with Big Tech — left to their own devices they will march to the drum of their most radical left-wing employees.
A major step in Republicans shedding their 1980s laissez-faire orthodoxies must be a serious effort to define what corporate “political” activities actually are, and impose strict restrictions on them. If corporations are allowed to continue sending billions of dollars to “social justice” campaigns, the cultural revolution will continue.
Republicans must target not just corporate donations to parties, PACs, and political candidates, but also impose regulations on the ever-broadening field of “Corporate Social Responsibility,” the banner under which most corporate wokeness operates.
Democrats were once the party that opposed corporate dominance in politics. Republicans must seize that mantle.
Republicans must also tackle the question of corporate racism. Why are corporations allowed to openly belittle and demonize their white employees, bombarding them with presentations redefining everyday behavior and character traits as signs of “white privilege” and “white supremacy”? Breitbart News exclusively such activities occurring at one of the largest and most powerful PR firms in the world, Publicis Groupe.
Questions need to be asked: why aren’t these companies facing lawsuits for their open racism? Does the existing framework of Civil Rights law only protect some races from discrimination and not others? Does the law need to be changed?
When there is a serious risk of more class-action lawsuits like the Damore case against Google, in which former employees sued the company for discrimination against whites, males, and Asians, corporate America will get the message.
Democrats have abandoned the principles of equality before the law and freedom from discrimination, two values with enduring appeal to Americans of every race and background. Here again is an opportunity for Republicans.
In truth, with polls consistently showing widespread public opposition to racist leftist policies like affirmative action, it has been an opportunity for some time — Republican leaders have just been too cowardly or too indoctrinated by elite higher education institutions to seize it. They need to stiffen their spines.
Thanks to Trump, opposition “cancel culture” has become a major talking point among Republicans. Even neocons like Nikki Haley are talking about it. To ensure it becomes more than just a campaign slogan, conservatives inside and outside the Republican apparatus should start thinking about concrete policies to bring this destructive, racist, cultural revolution to its well-deserved end.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News, where he has published material from whistleblowers inside Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
Bokhari’s upcoming book, #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election is currently available for preoder at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers.
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