The Uncancellable Left

Essay May 28, 2021 

 

'As someone who has a certain respect for what remains of the norms and implied rules of that ever-evolving language, American English, I try to keep up to date despite my advancing age. Despite this, the phrase “woke” grates the grammar fascist in me beyond explanation, so I have tried to soothe the tension by relying, respectfully but firmly, on the word “awake” to explain my commitment to helping purge society of all that is evil, wrong, and presumably “asleep.” I am desperately trying to become more awake.

In my quest to achieve a hyper-caffeinated version of being “awake” I am gratified to see the great movement forward has managed to cleanse such critical media outlets as Teen Vogue, the New York Times and children’s literature of racists, homophobes, and fascists. However, it seems to me that we have much bigger fish to fry. My awakened soul has called me to alert my comrades with the pitchforks, torches, and cancellation privileges to a number of unacceptably asleep individuals and historical movements that should be purged, cancelled, removed, and obliterated from our accepted discourse and intellectual lives. Out with discussion, pluralism, and context; in with the perfect amount of tolerance for the demands of purity.

Now, I don’t mean to cast aspersions upon my sleepless comrades who have focused rather narrowly on members of the American Founding, Dr. Seuss, Aristotle, and other unmistakably obvious candidates for expulsion from history, but we must face reality. 

A number of intellectual giants of the left must go. 

Karl Marx must be cancelled. This, of course, isn’t a secret to anyone who has actually bothered to read his historical theory, which has large sections focused on racial determinism............The same holds true for Rousseau..........It begins with one of the most widely recognized individuals among fashionably sensible awake people, Che Guevara. While Che’s face adorns countless t-shirts at elite universities and awake political gatherings in the understandable spirit of kinship with peasants wearing colorful clothing throughout South and Central America, he, along with his comrade Fidel Castro, also targeted and imprisoned gay people as well as engaged in racist activities in his lifetime. The Argentine author Guillermina Sutter Schneidner rightly describes him as a “Racist, Homophobe and Mass Murderer”...........Antonio Gramsci, made a fateful and regrettable decision to argue that heterosexual monogamy was essential to achieving Marxist hegemony. ...........Paul Moreno is one of many scholars who has shown quite clearly that the earlier labor movement actively viewed former slaves as nothing but strikebreakers............ 1619 Project has accomplished anything, we must likewise jettison any glorification of organized labor and its racist founding........... Jean Paul Sartre, who regrettably had quite a bit of sexist language and imagery in his writing.............revealed by one of his friends to have paid young Algerian boys to have sex with him in graveyards. ...........To Read More....