According to what passes for ‘the Left’ today, cancel culture is merely a figment of the right-wing imagination, a collective conspiracy theory with no grounding in reality. The guardians of the new cultural order – keeping the peace on campus, in the workplace and online – are kind, compassionate, tolerant sorts, preaching love and understanding whilst denouncing hate, whether written down, spoken or simply thought of. And that’s evident in the way they respond to anyone they perceive to be questioning their Utopia. They spread their message through cyberspace like a benign virus that smells of fresh flowers and newborn babies. This makes the wrong see the error of their ways via gentle, sympathetic persuasion; and if the wrong continue to be resistant, they convince the wrong it’s more effective in the long run if they step forward and admit they’re wrong before conversion to the right side of history can begin. After all, the first step to admitting one is an alcoholic is to stand up at an AA meeting and say it out loud.
Mumford & Sons – perhaps the dullest band since sliced Dire Straits – have effectively dispensed with the services of their banjo player Winston Marshall this week, though it helped that he conveniently fell on his sword after some of that gentle online persuasion. His crime was to publicly state how much he admired a recent critical exposé of that cuddly anarchist collective Antifa in a book by journalist Andy Ngo. ‘Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy’ is evidently not deemed to be suitable reading material – I mean, was ‘White Fragility’ out on loan at Marshall’s local library or something? Anyhow, sounding suspiciously like he might harbour the wrong opinions, Marshall did his best to appease the outraged masses (i.e. a few pink-heads on Twitter) by issuing the kind of grovelling public apology that used to be written on a board slung around the neck during the Cultural Revolution. He announced he was taking a break from the band to ‘examine his blind-spots’. I hear the CCP has a decent re-education camp in Xinjiang if you’re interested in some intellectual cleansing, Winston.
Hot on the heels of such a shocking revelation that the outlaw spirit of rock ‘n’ roll remains alive and kicking, another dramatic act of voluntary cancellation also took place this week. Piers Morgan, the sweaty tomato of breakfast television, stormed off-set during a live broadcast of ‘Good Morning Britain’ and will not be returning. No great loss to yours truly, as I’ve never seen the programme in question beyond snippets that routinely appear on social media; but a man who has turned hypocritical double standards into an art-form by spouting some of the worst lecturing and hectoring pro-lockdown fanaticism whilst simultaneously jetting off to Antigua for a pre-Christmas break is not one it’s easy to warm to. Even his hissy fit had all the appearance of a classic self-important prima donna gesture when replayed endlessly across Twitter in the hours after it happened.
Moron was seemingly incensed by a supine defence of the Duchess of Woke’s latest sob story from one of those endless slimy ‘royal experts’ who pepper television that airs when most people are either at work or still in bed. The co-host of the show wouldn’t back down on his own personal (and less favourable) opinion of Harry’s missus when before the cameras; and, as it turns out, he wouldn’t back down off-camera either – especially when ITV bosses told him to publicly refute everything he’d previously said about the new queen of our hearts. Apparently, in the wake of that exiled actress having played the mental health as well as the race card, one is not allowed to call out her bullshit and one must praise her stunning bravery. Morgan refused to budge, and according to reports, he walked rather than take the Winston Marshall route of apologising when you’ve nothing to apologise for. Lest we forget, an opinion is subjective; it’s both right and wrong, depending where you stand. Airing an opinion is not a crime; neither is refusing to fawn at the feet of a privileged professional victim – yet.
I guess it is quite amusing that a sanctimonious American millionairess has become the current darling of the Guardianistas, perhaps telling you everything you need to know about where the priorities of the so-called Left are situated in 2021. Most of the Grauniad’s journos were probably at school with Prince Harry, anyway. Up the workers and all that. Mind you, it’s no great surprise that the kind of frivolous fodder that excites the chattering classes means jack shit to the wider population; after all, the wider population has more pressing concerns right now. A year of being subjected to the kind of repressive restrictions on civil liberties that would’ve left Erich Honecker thinking ‘Bloody hell, that’s a bit much’ means the majority of the British people are hardly going to be sympathetic to luxury whingeing from the resident of a Californian mansion. But, of course, every Identitarian utterance of Her Royal Wokeness is politicised. Everything from Mr Potato Head to Dr Seuss is politicised now – as is a tragic event that anyone seeking to politicise should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for doing so; but, naturally a) they do and b) they’re not.
When MP Jo Cox was murdered on the eve of the 2016 EU Referendum, the ramifications of the horrible killing continued to ricochet through parliamentary discourse in the worst possible way for several years afterwards, and it was often a way that was hardly respectful to the murdered woman’s memory. Labour MP and long-time opportunistic offender Jess Phillips invoked Jo Cox’s name and the fate that befell her during one of the heated debates leading up the Great Prorogue of 2019, implying that Boris Johnson’s clumsy attempts to shut up the opposition benches in order that he might speak without being drowned out by screams of ‘Tory Scum’ somehow equated with the ‘silencing’ of Jo Cox. And now that her felicitous flirtation with running for her party’s leadership seems extremely distant, Phillips has finally resurfaced to air her much-needed words and wisdom on another murder that has only just resulted in the discovery of a body.
But Phillips is not alone. Baroness Jones, the…er…world famous Green Party Peer has suggested the introduction of a 6pm curfew for men in the light of human remains – apparently those of 33-year-old Sarah Everard, missing for over a week – being found in woodland in Kent. The fact a serving Met officer has been arrested on suspicion of murder has presented some with a gruesome gift; we all know the organisation is institutionally racist, so I guess the appalling (alleged) actions of one employee must mean it’s institutionally sexist as well. What about institutionally f***ing useless? I guess putting police on the streets at night might help generate a greater sense of safety, but it’s surely more important to invest in daytime patrols looking out for pensioners on park benches that need a damn good fining.
Social media has been full of the usual suspects rushing to hijack the murder of someone none of them knew and claiming it for their cause; Sarah Everard is now representative of all violence towards women, something that is as inherent in the male of the species as racism is in anyone with white skin. All those exploiting this tragedy to fit an existing agenda are beneath contempt. Are any of them considering the feelings of Sarah Everard’s loved ones in all this, those who might actually want to grieve in private as the shock sinks in – something that would be greatly helped without her name being used in a game of political pass-the-parcel by despicable parasites who should (but rarely do) know better? Clearly not. Yeah, it’s kind of hard to draw any positives from this one.
© The Editor
winegumtelegram 
The greatest loss from the woke-world’s ubiquitous whinging is tolerance. A balanced society is based upon the ability of its members to demonstrate tolerance of things outside their own personal sphere of preference, but the alleged openness of the wokedom brigade is never open to tolerance of actions, words or even thoughts, which conflict with their precious agenda.
Once freedom of speech started to be compromised by excluding anything remotely interpreted as incitement, it was the thin end of the wedge towards its complete loss. The next inevitable stage is the loss of freedom of thought, a process which is now well underway and probably unstoppable, unless or until some revival of common sense, balance and tolerance appears to resume supremacy – I won’t be holding my breath.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The little men and little women empowered by devolution march on – Scotland passes its ludicrous ‘Hate Crime’ bill and Mark Drakeford endorses the ‘male curfew’ (though is he thinking of the sheep?). Also, interesting that many of those pedalling the ‘all men are rapists’ line are often the same people who are quick to point out not all Muslims advocate acts of terrorism whenever there’s an Islamist ‘incident’. And they’re also the same who are perfectly happy for men to invade women-only safe spaces as long as the geezers in question identify as female. What a glorious minefield it is.
LikeLike
One issue no-one has yet had the courage to raise about the Sarah Everard case is that she was allegedly returning from having dinner with friends, during which journey she was also phoning to arrange to meet up the next day with someone else not from her household. Just which parts of the lockdown rules don’t these carefree/careless London folk understand? You’re not currently allowed to dine with friends elsewhere or to conjoin with those outside your household – I look forward to seeing her friends being fined for their transgressions.
Put bluntly, if the unfortunate Sarah had simply adhered to ‘the rules’, she would be alive today. But we’re not allowed to say or even think that, we’re just supposed to go blindly along with the arguments of the woke, man-hating, curfew-mongers instead.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I must admit the first thing that crossed my mind when the subject of curfews came up was: Aren’t we all supposed to be under curfew at the moment as it is, anyway? Perhaps another reason this particular crime has grabbed the zeitgeist is simply because it seems strange someone was out and about visiting friends at the time. It’s almost like a throwback to what used to happen in the old days, when people were free to roam and faced the potential risk that came with it.
LikeLike
The whole farrago speaks to the divisiveness in society now, at least in the part of society that spends quantum of time on social media (which is, let’s face it, most of us, and even the ones that aren’t active on the net are influenced by what’s in the ‘ether’, so to speak).
So, just as one can either think Trump is the best thing since sliced bread, or a worse threat to humanity than Hitler, but nothing in between – ditto Brexit, ditto Corbyn, etc – one is either in Team Meghan or Team God Queen and Country (if one is right of centre), with no nuance whatever tolerated.
Well, it’s possible to think that the British tabloid media is intrusive to an unpleasant and totally unethical degree, and also to suspect that Meghan Markle is a rather opportunistic and narcissistic person. I mean, there’s no actual contradiction here. Both things can actually be true. Piers Morgan vs Meghan Markle? I hope they both lose.
LikeLiked by 1 person