Cancel Culture… America at the Tipping Point

Jun 21, 2020 Features / Columnists, News

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By Glenville Ashby, PhD

“Regardless of whether it is a dictatorship or a democracy, any large-scale political unit is a complex system” that has “the tendency to move from stability to instability quite suddenly.” – Niall Ferguson

The United States is in the throes of a revolution it hasn’t experienced in its long and complex history. Complex, many might agree, is far too euphemistic, and that a powerful, resourceful nation that has failed to honestly address one of the most sordid chapters in human history, is deserving of cataclysmic reform, really, a revolution to correct the past by destroying it.
Brazenly, pockets of this cultural revolution have unilaterally determined the new face of an America cleansed of her transgressions. Monuments are being ripped from their foundation, others suffer a less ugly fate, spray painted and vandalized beyond recognition. On June 2, a statue of the Confederate officer Charles Linn in Alabama was toppled. On June 5, a statue of Orville Hubbard, the late mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, was removed because of his purported racist views.
On June 10, a statue of Christopher Columbus in Boston was beheaded, and another bearing his likeness was tossed into a Virginia lake. Other statues that commemorated the infamous ‘discoverer’ escaped the indignity of decapitation; they were spray painted instead. So too was a bust of Juan Prince de Leon. On the same day, a statue depicting former Confederate President Jefferson Davis was torn down in Virginia. In Texas a statute of Confederate general Lawrence Sullivan was vandalized.
And the list of destroyed and vandalised statues and monuments continues to grow. But as unsettling as history might be, it is preserved for instructive reasons, at least in civil societies.
Amid these kinetic changes on the ground looms a Herculean struggle for power that threatens the very existence of America. While many erroneously believe that the effacement of historical reminders is justified, we must caution against iconoclasts and insurrectionists. History has cautioned against excess. Those bent on changing the present by destroying the past have assumed the role of self-appointed jurists, moral arbiters and purists. As they topple statues, dishonour artists, soldiers, historians, and politicians they are bending society to their will. Theirs is a cultural revolution, a power grab that is boundless and unrelenting. By skillfully resorting to vicious ad hominem attacks (weaponizing the most repulsive of words: racist, sexist, homophobe), this emerging and powerful class, the modern day ‘Red Guards,’ have silenced all dialogue and debate. There is absolutely no space for dissent. Theirs is the final judgment. With a stroke of a pen or a single word, many are blacklisted and delegitimised. And yes, echoes of the Taliban destroying Bamiyam Buddha statues do resound. Surely, America’s new cultural commissars are no different to Iran’s Mutawa (Moral Police), and in its potentially worst form, the Maha Nikaya of the Khmer Rouge.
Part of this cultural overreach is the part of the promulgation of singular ideas and agendas by the media, big tech companies, and tertiary institutions.
But left to fester, cultural revolutions feed on themselves with a frenzy that eventually ingests their very own. Zealotry, worn as a badge of honour, is measured by degrees, leaving little room for reason. Soon, extremists will find themselves relabelled as moderates, cast aside, and neutralized from within. Those that win out form the new security services, the vanguard of the new system that, history teaches, is far more threatening and suffocating than what it replaced. And the marginalized for whom the revolution swore to protect continue to suffer.
Are we as a nation at the tipping point? It’s anyone’s guess. What is certain is that a power struggle is waging within our borders. Extremism has long left the barn and conservatism is mounting its last stand.
More than ever, there is the likelihood that United States will implode. And as the voices for sweeping change grow ever more strident, I cannot help but recall the words of Charles Mackey who wrote in ’Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,’ “We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first, [never] recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity.”
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
Feedback: glenvilleashby@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter@glenvilleashby

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