Originally Posted by
Beanz
The right keep banging on about "cancel culture" as if the powerful establishment elitists they adore don't have a long proven track record of cancelling people and things.
π΅ The British state "cancelled" James Connolly by tying him to a chair and shooting him to death because he fought for Irish liberation.
π΅ After WWII the British and Americans decided to "cancel" the main Greek anti-Nazi resistance organisation EAM because they were too left-wing, resulting in the "white terror" persecution campaign against the anti-Nazi freedom fighters, and the eventual installation of the brutal Greek military dictatorships of the 1960s and '70s.
π΅ Between 1945 qnd 1975 the US government used the House Un-American Activities Committee to "cancel" the careers of thousands of people with left-wing views. The McCarthyite Witch Hunt didn't just ruin the careers of hundreds of actors and writers in Hollywood, it ruined the lives of vast numbers of ordinary people like teachers, academics, factory and construction workers too.
π΅ Similarly the BBC conspired with MI5 to "cancel" the careers of thousands of people with socialist and other left-leaning views, implementing a blacklist of left-wing actors, presenters, and writers that lasted well into the 1980s.
π΅ The British state "cancelled" the code-breaker and pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing by persecuting him for homosexuality to the extent of chemically castrating him.
π΅ The US Olympics Committee "cancelled" the careers of 200m gold medallist Tommie Smith and bronze medallist John Carlos for their black power salute at the 1968 Olympic Games. Smith had just broken the world record, and he was never allowed to run in a competitive race again! The Australian silver medallist Peter Norman was also "cancelled" by the Australian sporting authorities for showing solidarity with the Smith and Carlos protest.
π΅ For decades the British and American states have provided huge amounts of support to right-wing military dictatorships across the world (Cuba, Indonesia, Brazil, Greece, Chile, Cambodia, Honduras, Spain, Iran, Bolivia, Philippines, Portugal, Uruguay, El Salvador, Chad, Grenada ...) as they "cancelled" the lives of hundreds of thousands of left-wing people.
π΅ The US attempted to "cancel" the singing career of left-wing activist Paul Robeson by revoking his passport.
π΅ The US boxing authorities tried to "cancel" the career of Mohammed Ali by revoking his titles and withdrawing his boxing licence when he refused to participate in imperialist war-mongering in Vietnam.
π΅ The British state "cancelled" the Miami Show Band by installing a bomb on their tour bus, then machine gunning the band members when the bomb detonated prematurely. They also "cancelled" the lives of 26 unarmed civilians on Bloody Sunday in 1972.
π΅ The British and American governments supported Apartheid South Africa as they "cancelled" anti-Apartheid protesters with mass political imprisonment and outright murder (such as the letter bomb campaign that killed Ruth First).
π΅ With the help of the UK government, eight of the biggest UK construction firms maintained a secret blacklist of trade union activist workers, that lasted between 1983 and 2009. Hundreds of construction workers had their careers "cancelled", just for arguing in favour of better pay and safer working conditions.
π΅ In 2018 the Saudi regime "cancelled" the journalist Jamal Khashoggi by luring him to a Saudi embassy, murdering him, and dismembering his body. They've also "cancelled" thousands of civilian lives in Yemen with their campaign of war crimes, and genocidal starvation tactics. Britain and the United States continue arming this barbaric regime to the teeth, despite knowing perfectly well that the weapons they flog them are being used to commit war crimes.
π΅ The NFL clubs have conspired to "cancel" the American Football career of Colin Colin Kaepernick for his protests against anti-black racism and police brutality.
It's funny how the right don't give a damn about all the actual "cancel culture" that has, for decades, denied people their livelihoods, their liberty, their freedom of expression, and even their lives for their left-wing, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist beliefs ... yet they erupt into "cancel culture" outrage whenever one of their extreme-right ideologues gets their YouTube/Twitter account taken down for brazenly and repeatedly defying the community standards with racist hate speech, bigotry, bullying, promotion of genocide, and celebration of acts of extreme-right terrorism.
The right absolutely adore posturing as victims like this, because once you've inflated your audience's victim complexes to the size of hot air balloons, it only takes tiny puffs of right-wing ultranationalist rhetoric to get them all floating towards fascism.
Thus the latest extreme-right bigot to get themselves booted off social media becomes their latest cause célèbre, while the plight of the hundreds of thousands of people to have actually suffered brutal state persecution like political imprisonment, blacklisting, and death is completely ignored, because it simply doesn't fit their victimhood narrative.
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