Tag: Cancel culture

Is it ‘cancellation’ not to laugh at something you don’t find funny?

By Daviemoo

I cannot understand how people genuinely delude themselves into believing cancel culture is real. Even saying it makes me roll my eyes.
Even in the very genuine cases of a raft of public outcry we see a temporary flame and then the natural fizzle which, short term, affects people- but never teaches them a lesson and then burns away to allow them to carry on being just as much of an anal fistula as they were before.
Look at some examples from pop culture: Chris Brown almost murdered his then girlfriend and after a couple of years he’s throwing out music, with stars like Lizzo (why Lizzo- how is CHRIS BROWN one of your favourite people…) still singing his praises, Piers Morgan’s cel-shaded pork face gurns from every bus that goes past despite his association with phone-hacking scandals and even today I had a short lived internet beef with John Cleese who swears blind he’d be cancelled by the BBC in a matter of days with his new diatribe, which he’s taking to… GB news! The BBC on which he appeared to swear that the BBC would cancel him. Yes, Cleese somehow managed to tell a BBC presenter on a BBC radio show that the BBC would never allow him to put his show on the BBC that he was on, because he would be cancelled-and not simply because it’s likely just not that funny.

In a way I feel sorry for the people who think they’re victims of cancel culture, or that people are sat at home waiting for them to cross some invisible line, at which point the hoards of social justice will descend to silence them! It must be weird, to think the problem is with a society that’s just too soft to cope with what you have to say, that people are oversensitive and weak and can’t handle your wit and risible pastiching of society. These are the thoughts of people in that group. Lawrence Fox spends his life wanking out what he thinks, no doubt, are provocative statements on twitter. The fact is, people like Fox just want to upset people because he likes to think he’s making other people a tenth as miserable as he is, when honestly I have no urge to correct or dispel any of the utter horse cum he regularly explodes onto social media: it’s the faint embarrassment of noticing your grandad quietly pissing himself in the corner I feel when I see another desperate attempt to get under our skin.

Perhaps it’d be a kindness to sit these people collectively down and explain that they’re pining for days long gone: we don’t laugh much at jokes about disabled people because we’ve seen disabled people speak about why it pisses them off. We don’t guffaw openly about homophobic or racist jokes because we understand how much splash damage they can do- are we soft, or just more empathetic- or, lets be honest, are we just bored of the same jokes that were told 30 years ago still being wheeled out today with a wink wink nudge nudge?

I don’t agree with what everyone keeps saying, necessarily. I do love comedy that walks close to an edge. But the art is in walking up to that line and staying on the side of it, not blundering over it, then getting angry when people don’t like what you say: you’re not cancelled and silenced if people tell you your comedy is shit, you’re just not funny…
I myself was a total edgelord at university- because I was immature, not because those things were actually funny. I’ve grown up, and so to those who still find jokes about people who exist around them and who aren’t as able to mount a defence all I can say is, I dunno, grow up? Or at the very least accept that you can find it funny if you do, but not everyone else has to agree?

The irony is, I have no real interest in policing what people do and don’t find funny: I wouldn’t have given a single fuck about where Cleese practices his showmanship even if it is on the ever sinking barge of GBEEBIES- it’s the simple temerity of whingeing about being denied a platform on the BBC, on the BBC. If you find anti trans or racist or homophobic jokes funny, all I have for you is a dismissive half frown: it’s not for me to tell you you’re right or wrong, but if you stand in the street screaming “I AM BEING SILENCED FOR MY VIEWS”, I don’t see how it’s a terrible transgression to ask you to shut the fuck up. And at what point do we turn to the infamous example of GB news letting one of their reporters go because he knelt on air whilst talking about BLM… So much for free speech.

The broader ridiculousness is that there is ALWAYS a line of speech people will stop at. It might not be saying something bigoted, but there is always a point where someone will say “yes we shouldn’t allow that”, but at least people like me are forthright about where our line is, unlike the crowd on the “other” side who pretend there is no line, that any speech is fair game and then- just like today- spend hours collectively writing column after column decrying, for example, Nicola Sturgeon for stating she doesn’t like tories. Do you want free speech or do you want people to only speak when they say what you agree with you? Because that’s how these things come across. You can’t tell people they’re too soft for not liking what you say then spend three solid days clutching your nanny’s pearls over the first minister of Scotland answering a question frankly. And the biggest, pant splitting, testicular torsion inducing irony of it is that this comes from the crowd who have spent years calling us snowflakes, remoaners, weak, fragile, nancies and this of course is when they’re not just flat calling us slurs like the guy who was referring to people like me as “benders” on twitter last night. God forbid we bite back at them rather than huddling on a street corner for them to spit on unimpeded, how dare we give as good as we get!
Of course, you’ll then meet that hilarious subset of “being nasty to nasty people doesn’t get you anywhere” types: you sure are right “Dan27834928” that being a dick to someone who was a dick to you doesn’t fix the problem, but there’s only so many times I can “live, laugh, love” homophobic slurs away before I simply want to tell these people exactly how much I’d like to flip them inside out rectum first…

It’s so consternating that we have these same folks fulsomely screaming the same lines about political correctness, the dreaded “w” word, how everyone is too sensitive these days when the fact is it isn’t even about sensitivity, it’s about emotional intelligence. It’s not up to everyone else to just let you blunder around being stupid because you think you have the right, and we could do that but there will come a day where someone won’t simply just disagree with you but will give you a cheerful lamping and you’ll get even more upset then, I’ve no doubt.

I genuinely want to see these people in a world without this fabled cancel culture, otherwise known as being told they’re not funny/ wrong. In a world without it, people like Cleese wouldn’t be chewed out by netizens over his ill thought out move to a channel he recently called KGB news and whose ethical model he questioned.

Folk like this would have nothing to do if nobody is offended because cancel culture doesn’t exist: why would anyone go to see the show of a provocative comedian if nothing is provocative? What’s funny when nothing is off the table, nothing is too far and nothing is risqué? And even if that wasn’t the case, what excuse would they find for the increasingly empty seats every show as they stride across the stage, screaming racial epithets to the fewer and fewer people who equate offence level with brilliance like Kanye fans cheering on his increasingly petulant stunts.

Culture has changed, and it hasn’t changed entirely- plenty of people still find comedians like Cleese funny, plenty still watch ridiculous “news” channels like GB news- but it’s not enough. The people staffing these channels have a desperate need to prove that their views are the most popular: but why? I wear my remainership on my sleeve because even if it wasn’t the most popular choice I stand by it, and I’m fairly certain actual fact has lionised that opinion.
I wear my sexuality openly, not because I’m forcing it down your throat but because it’s a part of who I am and has made me the way I am and I’m not ashamed of it, even though you’re more likely now than in the past decade to get hate crimed. I don’t need to be on the winning and popular side, because I believe in what I say without the need of a mob behind me agreeing from behind anonymous profiles- and it seems to me that those on the other side fight endlessly for validation because there’s a gnawing sense of fear at the bottom of that well- that if they’re not popular, if people don’t secretly agree with them… maybe they’re wrong.

The finest hilarity with the type of person who associates themselves with these views is to point out that their divisive nonsense would be useless in a world without the thing they so hate. What would they spend days and hours booing about if they did exist in their anti politically-correct utopia? I invite you, and them, to imagine exactly how shite a world without the sort of thing they speak out against would be. Guarantee they’d be pinning for their precious cancel culture inside of a week.

I guess all I have to say is, I’m not even trying to be cruel with this piece, I just don’t understand how people can bitch about cancel culture and political correctness gone mad when, without it, they would be nothing.
The contrarians at GBEEBIES make their existence central to going “against the grain” because they genuinely believe their views are the right ones. I’m not the one to tell them whether that’s true or not, but I won’t lose sleep over whether I am because I don’t need the glib, seal clapping validation of a bunch of people who wait for me to tell them what they think- right or wrong, I’d rather just let people live their lives as they see fit without complaining about it, then railing against the resultant tide of people disagreeing with me as ‘cancel culture’ and not the missteps of someone with their finger far off the pulse of modern culture and discourse. Rather than be cruel, I just want to exhort people to think simplistically- is there any chance at all that the problem doesn’t lie with us, the people who don’t find you funny, entertaining or whatever, and it’s actually with you- the people who do nothing but denigrate us for not falling in line with you… food for thought.

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

Using war to push an anti-woke agenda is Western decadence at it’s finest

By Daviemoo

First and foremost- donate to Rainbow Railroad, a charity that helps LGBTQIA people escape anti rainbow regimes and did amazing work during Afghanistan. Secondly, exactly what and who are these right wing pundits helping or hoping to achieve with their scrivened nonsense about how “woke culture” has led to Putin’s moves in recent months?

Vladimir Putin has arguably been sowing seeds of discord in the west for years- would even decades be a tolerable turn of phrase? As the Berlin Wall crumbled he fled Dresden, Germany after destroying incriminating files, and he saw then that a society of liberty is anathema to his plans. He interfered heavily in the 2016 American election to install the gibbering sycophant Donald Trump and I firmly believe he hoped Trump would win re-election and America would be helping in this conflict. There’s proof to this pudding- remember that Trump was impeached for tacitly threatening not to help Ukraine if they did not toe Trump’s foolish line. Even this failure to manipulate worsened Ukraine’s diplomacy. If President Zelensky had said Trump DID threaten him this could be seen as a superpower threatening a weak nation, and if he denied it, people would assume he was lying to ensure he seemed like a strong leader. Every move came down on Putin’s side.

He interfered in Brexit, hoping that the UK’s departure from the EU would shake the core of the European counsel- not realising that the utter buffoonery that swept over the UK leading up to and after the Brexit campaign meant that we were likely such a hindrance that, save for Euros and some diplomats who were gifted and caring, the EU was likely to be relieved to see us go.

His plans are failing and as it stands he may well have started a war he cannot finish that will destabilise his regime unless he goes home and lays down an iron palm on Russia to crush dissidence.

The Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky was originally a gifted satirist who was elected to highest office and has done his absolute best to help his people since that day. He’s on the front line now helping to direct aid and relief and to tell his people what is happening.

Where, then, are our leaders?


Priti Patel and her home office minions are tweeting lassitudinal promises about how Ukranians can apply for seasonal fruit picking visas to escape a War Zone as other countries waive any visa requirements.

Boris Johnson stands in front of a jet, brow furrowed like a trench as he’s briefed by people actually doing their important jobs- and sycophantic counsellors are tweeting this picture, well lit and staged, stating that Johnson is “on the front lines”- I beg these people to look up what the front line actually is.

Liz Truss stands before a Ukrainian and UK flag, heedless of wasting more taxpayer money on vain photoshoots when she should be engaging in real diplomacy and not yet more gesture politics. Her boundless buffoonery has been an embarrassment to the UK for weeks as she’s muddled into this conflict and spouted misinformation glibly to senior diplomats.

And the right arm of the right wing, the British press, is focusing on it’s favourite topic; how the gays and the trans and the people of colour are all responsible for this situation.

Right wing columnist Zoe Strimpel has written what I can only term as the most self indulgent bit of twaffle I have ever come across in my waking life- and unfortunately the sentiments of said diatribe are shared widely amongst the arc of the right with even sentient potatoes like Lawrence “I wear a mask when its convenient to me because I’m just a paid marionette for outrage culture” Fox using their feather weight to push the agenda too. Strimpel writes that it shows decadence that a society is focusing on, and I quote “woke acceptance” instead of war. And yet as someone who follows a huge amount of gay and trans activists on twitter, a giant swath of POC activists all I’ve seen is a coming together of people desperate to help in whatever way they can, and all this as right wing puppets pluck their favourite string – how it’s everyone else’s fault but theirs.

Ukraine is not LGBT+ friendly- and yet they are invaded. NATO is not even closely linked to any LGBT+ issues or affiliations. And yet they stand as one of the key defences against Putin’s totalitarian regime. The sheer decadence, the self involved wankery of the right to start condemning LGBT+ people for having the temerity to ask for simple equal treatment, for people to be polite, would be hilarious were it not for the severity of the situation.

The sheer deluded mindset of right wingers in war…

The idea that someone can, with no irony declared, sit before their laptop and write an excoriating article about how if we were just less accepting of LGBT+ people then we wouldn’t be at war; I cannot imagine the broken psyches that rest heavy upon the frontal lobes of these fools.

One issue is not like the other, but I do have a key question for these anti woke folk; would you, then, prefer to live in a regime like Russia? A poor country ruled over by a kleptocrat, who is on your side of the trans argument? Would you like to see LGBT+ people interred or forced to live miserable lives so you don’t have to think for one second about anyone with any difference to you? And who would you focus your ire on in an angry newspaper column in a country that would think that women should be married and producing children instead of hurling another recycled argument about lefties into the void from the pages of a right wing rag?

The utter dumbfuckery of the right to focus on LGBT+ inclusion at this time and ascribe it blame is hilartious and here is my true retort:

If anything is to blame for an authoritarian man seeking to cannibalise other countries in Europe into his regime, it’s not people fighting for civil liberties, it’s the power drunk flag waving plutocrats, standing under a Union Jack as an umbrella against the blood of everyone they want to throw to the dogs so they don’t have to ask someone’s pronouns when they say hello. It’s the people who gleefully voted to shrink our borders out of spite or some misplaced pride in British hard workingness. It’s the people who spend all their time attacking their fellow countryfolk instead of asking how we can make this place better for all of us.

And above all, it’s those safely over the age limit for national service calling for it’s reinstatement, those amongst us willing, yet again, to cast the young into the fire to maintain their selfish lifestyles. Perhaps we should reinstate national service- and those of you amongst us who voted for Brexit and Boris can go to the front lines for us, you can stand proud for the country you’ve created, use your sovereignty as shields and your reclamation of Britishness as a sword and as the bullets rain down on you, remember this phrase: you, however much you may not realise it, voted for this.

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

Oh just shut the f*ck up about “free speech” and start defending your sh*t takes if you believe them…

By Daviemoo

And so begins another week in the UK where another entitled person – shocking no one, a cisgender straight white man – rails against the terrors of the cancel culture machine, a machine that literally stops nobody who decries it.

The ex member of Mumford & Sons, Winston Marshall unleashed his full potential as a spewer of nonsense today on GB news, or as I like to call it, “Gammon Blithering news”. Railing against the horrific, life ending effects of a cancel culture that’s claimed literally not one person who has spoken out against it, he explained his ire with people “cancelling” Joe Rogan’s podcast and stating that he sees this as trying to censor free speech.

Ultimately, adopting phraseology which allows you to attack people who are more adept at navigating the human experience than you is the ultimate weapon of people utterly ill suited to sharing the planet with others. If someone told me my behaviour was offensive to them and rather than even hearing them out I declared them woke, I’d probably be ashamed- and therein seems to be the crux- those anti woke amongst us are desperate to be allowed to continue verbally shitting their pants in public without being called out on the stench of their ridiculous words.

Listen reader, you and I are as bored as each other with this absolutely bottom drawer argument about cancel culture, wokeness and free speech so, dearest reader- lets do some debunking.

Cancel culture

Not one person that complains about cancel culture has ever been a victim of it. Let’s look at some examples.
JK Rowling- constantly stirring up transphobia, still rakes in millions, lives in a castle.

Donald Trump – he wasn’t cancelled, he lost an election because he was about as good at being a president as I am at being a blue whale

Joe Rogan – his podcast is one of the widely disseminated pieces of media that exists today even with episodes removed

Kathleen Stock – Regularly making the rounds on British media, stepped down voluntarily from her teaching role and her university protected her, immediately obtained another job

Yes some people have been wrongly accused of x and y and people have jumped on them, and this isn’t cancel culture. Its mob mentality. Normally these people are successful and people are quick to attack them because people love to see the fall of a star. It’s now par for the course for these so called “cancel culture victims” to actually be seen and heard wider from the front pages of our unquestionably right leaning media. In a way it’s become a lucrative side gig to claim cancellation and lap up money and accolades from your blind defenders. At worst cancel culture means a change of status, of employer or something else- but never for these people does it mean CANCELLATION.

“Wokeness”

Woke comes from slang to mean that someone is awakened to the existence of racial injustice. It’s now regularly thrown at people like myself as an insult, a pejorative term to indicate that I’m offended by everything and yet I have sound solid reasoning for my stances for and against certain things, whereas it’s all too easy to throw out the “oh that’s woke” flare that means that you can 1 attract your fellow thoughtless to defend whatever you’re saying and 2 immediately insulate yourself from the critique- after all, why SHOULD you have to moderate how you speak to people if theyre offended by everything? Is it because humans have been doing that since literally the beginning of time.

I’ve no doubt that if everyone walked around saying what they thought the world would look something akin to the middle of a disaster movie, riots in the street every day. It’s not woke to ask someone not to say something stupid or offensive, it’s common sense- and if you immediately declare something woke without even listening to reasoning then you’re hardly a brainbox- in fact, it takes a stupefying dearth of independent thought to simply disregard everything you don’t understand as just another thing you don’t need to learn or account for in your own behaviour. If children learn not to urinate in their pants by age 4 it’s eminently possible for an adult to learn that something they do or say is rude and adapt their behaviour.

Free speech

Ah free speech. I’ve said this literally hundreds of times: free speech actually doesn’t exist. If you walked down the street exclaiming how much you wanted to fucking murder every bastard who got in your way, you’d be in the back of a police van fairly quickly- not as quickly as before the conservatives gutted police numbers, but still. If you walked into my office as a new employee and called me a fag, I’d rightly complain and if justice prevailed you would lose your job.

Of course you’re able to say whatever you want. But should you? Free speech has been used as license for utter, mind boggling stupidity for years in online discourse. Racist people will use the N word and then cry FREE SPEECH when they lose their liveliehoods over it, shocked that they’re being punished for using hate speech- because you see, free speech is often in an intimate tango with hate speech. It’s never someone like me talking about how terrible the state of the world is decrying my lack of free speech, because what I’m saying shouldn’t be offensive to you –  I’m looking out for your interests. So we see this neat intersection between free speech and hate speech, and these two things are distinct. Saying something discriminatory isn’t something to be proud of and even if you were absolutely able to do it, you exercising that right means you’re… well, an asshole. It’s that simple. You can think it all you want, but it’s possible to have thoughts and believe them deeply and not say them-  I believe I want to mount some of the more muscular guys at the gym but I fully expect they’d probably be pretty offended if I sashayed over and gave them the laundry list of tawdry acts I’d perform on them. It’s common sense to keep your thoughts in your head- and the free speech bayers often lack common sense in place of the ability to censor or hold in their thoughts.

Additionally, let’s go further with all these things.

Many of the Cancel Woke Free Speech shouters claim they want people to be able to say whatever they want. Recently in Germany a far right politician ran on the platform of “you should be able to say whatever you want!” and when a political commentator said “yeah, listen to the Nazi bitch” she… sued him.

So it’s never, ever about being able to say whatever you want. And if someone from Isis was online spouting off about the west being decadent and disgusting I guarantee they’d raise their hackles- it’s exclusively about right wing bigotry being allowed. Let’s put it this way- if they really believed in free speech they wouldn’t get so pissed off when we called them out on their disgusting words and actions.

Joe Rogan has the ability to say the N word. He shouldn’t. Society dictates that- if he wants to do it, society is allowed to call him out. He’s absolutely able to platform anti vaccine propogandists- should he? It’s easy enough to find well reviewed peer confirmed data that shows vaccines are safe and effective. So he’s being called out for doing shitty things, and for being WRONG… and if it’s now become “cancel culture” to tell someone they’re wrong then the problem isn’t political correctness gone mad- it’s stupid people becoming far too confident in being able to create verbal diarrhoea without being told they are being stupid.

If you don’t want to be called stupid, either be smart, or be quiet.

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

The War on Woke is Fake News, and Cancel Culture is Nonsense- Stop Buying into it

By Daviemoo

Throughout 2020 and 2021 we’ve been lambasted daily by shouted stories of cancelled professors, of anti-woke comedians storming from interviews, having gigs cancelled, losing work… and where have we seen these stories? The front pages of newspapers, prime time radio and TV interviews, endless magazine spreads. I have seen more of Kathleen Stock’s face than my own father’s this year. When will the ignorant masses of this country wake up and realise that they’re expending endless energy on empowering a movement built out of matchsticks and playing cards?

John Cleese was in the news again recently for apparently storming out of an interview, something to do with being asked a question – I don’t know. I’m not interested. I’m not interested in that or in the aforementioned Stock’s voluntary decision to leave her job despite the full support of the university being broadcast writ large on social media. But I have no choice but to care. I can’t get away from these things. I see them on social media so down goes the phone, but there they are, flitting from station to station like angry little puppets desperate to decry the UNFAIRNESS of facing public anger for their actions.

In my eyes and the eyes of others, having to listen to people face anger, irritation and more for the things they say and do is ludicrous. Should I be allowed to walk around screaming offensive slurs because it’s my right or is that just public flippancy and makes me an indecent idiot who deserves whatever comes to me?

These people who ask for the public’s indulgence as they hammer out offensive thought patterns, who ask for the public’s allowance to make insensitive jokes or to platform views akin to the far right don’t seem to be aware that public discourse is always constrained by decency. If you want the right to platform bigoted views then it won’t be granted by those but the worst in society – you aren’t being cancelled for being gender critical, you’re aligning yourself with the parts of society who agree with you- and if you don’t like that, it’s not because society needs to chance to accept your idiotic prevarications.

When it comes to the war on woke- it’s the most obvious false flag in all of discourse.
Trans people aren’t trying to erase or change women’s rights, they’re trying to broaden understanding of what makes a woman- and that doesn’t take away from what the core tenets of womanhood are to the individual woman or women at large, it allows for the broader acceptance of people who may not fit those stereotypes whether trans or not.

People of colour face systemic racism. It’s that simple and to deny that is insane.

The acceptance of, and changing of public spaces for, disabled people is not some grumbling concession- it’s necessary for disabled people to be able to feel part of society and therefore contribute to it.

The war on woke is laughable. Firstly, I am woke and I wear that label indifferently. It’s not an insult or a compliment. It just is.

Secondly, woke means awake to racial injustice. If you’re not woke you’re denying people’s founded experience out of pure, sheer and total ignorance. Hardly a good look.

People have become so fed up of the changes in the world to try and make more people feel part of it that they’ve up and lost any ability to empathise, and therefore anything they’re asked to do to accommodate people is WOKE and if they don’t do it they’re CANCELLED- at least that’s the narrative. If you want to live life in ignorance which some folk do, you can. People have and will for all of time. But being asked not to say racial slurs, asking if pe0ple can use inclusive language isn’t like being dragged shackled to the stake and burned before a baying audience. The desperation to be seen as oppressed, chained, forced, coerced, is ridiculous. And the idea of cancellation is pathetic when it never affects anyone negatively for long- because they literally always bounce back from it and in fact use their supposed cancellation as a platform to grow even larger.

The fact is, if you’re tired of it, whichever side you’re on, you’re not the only one. We’re all fighting an imaginary war armed with peashooters while the real war sails on over our heads, tory turrets tumbling our right to protest, our nationality, our NHS, raising taxes. While you’re saying you don’t use pronouns and I’m telling you that’s impossible, VIP lanes for PPE supply are set up.

We’re pitted against each other by a far right government with wet dreams of being in charge of everything and who push out this constant message of “you’re the victim because of the trans and the gays and the people of colour and the forriners landing on our beaches”, as they stick their hands in your back pocket for all your loose change.

The fact is, until we disengage (on BOTH sides) from this endless cacophony of nonsense from a media complicit in pushing fake outrage pieces, our rights are up for grabs and this factionalisation does nothing but hurt all of us. If we could put down our arms and realise that working class issues also encompass any and all minorities- because almost every minority is also typically working class but has less of a voice: we would be able to face down the bigotry and tear it out and- united- oust a government indifferent to the suffering, not only of minorities, but of everyone who is not then. Until then tribalism will lead us back and back and back again to these same tired points.

The ultimate question is- do you want to disengage from fighting people just like you who want a better life, or do you want to continue a fight that’s damning everyone but the ruling elite to some form of oppression or other?

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

There’s no such f*cking thing as cancel culture you snowflakes!

By Daviemoo

Day after day, social media is suffused with angry knee jerking people, yelling to the high hills about how you can’t say or do anything these days without being cancelled. But people seem to fail to realise the irony of the platforms from which they speak. As John Cleese’s documentary on “cancel culture” arrives to cause more unnecessary culture war rehashing, I’m here to tell you the cold hard fact that cancel culture just isn’t a thing- you’re just not funny for being a prick.

One of my favourite examples of people who mysteriously believed they were “cancelled/censored/silenced”, was Rosie Duffield, MP, who endorsed transphobic views on twitter and has subsequently faced cancellation… by being in several national newspapers, talking about how silenced she is.

I’m not sure if Ms. Duffield is aware, but speaking from a double page spread is actually NOT what being silenced is.
I’ve spoken several times on transphobia and it’s clownery, but for an MP to speak on being “cancelled” because she espouses views contrary to the idea that she would seek to work with any of her voters- is highly ironic. She was platformed by those who voted for her, only to turn around and essentially endorse the idea that they do not deserve the rights they have- and feels aggrieved by being called out on this.

The cherry on top, is the idea of silence while being interviewed by national media is… comical at best. When is the last time an everyday trans person was interviewed to platform their views…

Instead, we see the same faces pushed to media- trans people who agree to toe the line of the gender critical or people who aren’t even accepted by the trans community for what could be considered radical views. And so the media giant turns the screw more- “we thought you wanted representation” they say, platforming trans people who agree it’s a sexual perversion – who never, oddly, stop to wonder if it’s just THEM who feel that way. Or gay people like Darren Grimes who decry “identity politics” and in the same breath refer to themselves as a working class gay man. Irony is lost on these people- specifically because their brains don’t have the acuity for it, clearly.

The irony of this whole farcical debate about cancel culture, is that many of those who proclaim to think it’s an attack on their freedom, their views, their lifestyles- themselves- often cheerfully propagate their own versions of it!
Take Cleese for example, who is cheerfully creating a TV show talking about how hard cancel culture is for folk of his ilk- forgetting, I’m sure, to mention that he sued a journalist for saying something Cleese didn’t like- is that cancel culture? Cancelling a person with an opinion? Or is that the good type of cancel culture that those who benefit from it overlook.

The crux of the argument seems to be is that many people these days seem to feel that they are cancelled for espousing their horrible views- but never before has this been such flagrant nonsense, with the four year tenure of a pussy grabbing mask denying gobshite like Trump, lauded for “telling people like it is” recently coming to a close- the man’s only selling point that his head was too empty to say anything with grace or just not speak when he could be megaphoning his own greatness to a feverish crowd, or a PM in the UK who has described Muslim women as letterboxes and criminals, gay men as tank topped bum boys, black people as having “watermelon smiles” and his only response? “Out of context”. Having read it- the context makes it worse. So never before has it been so clear that the people who decry cancel culture’s issues isn’t that they’re being punished for espousing disgusting views- its’ that they didn’t already have the insulation of a platform to say it from with safety.

Equally, looking at examples of people who did suffer “cancellation” seem to truly deserve it. Openly being racist, homophobic, misogynistic, ableist and that being your only schtick means you’re trying to profit from hatred- are we in a world where profiting off hatred is ok? If so, what a sad society we’ve become. But I can find scarce examples of people who have successfully been cancelled- Paris Hilton’s homophobic rant didn’t stop her from creating a TV show where she “interviewed” for her best friend. Rowling is still jogging along cheerfully throwing bigot baguettes out of her hamper for her slavering crowd of followers. But lets look at Janet Jackson- thrown under the bus by a co-worker and lost her jobs and footing… strange, I wonder what was different about Jackson compared to, I don’t know… white people being bigoted. It’s a mystery!

That’s the real message I get whenever I hear the bleating of “WoKe CaNcEl CuLtUrE”- I’m just angry that I’m not already famous enough to say this and survive it.

The fact is, racial, anti LGBTQIA humour, ridiculous sentiments like anti vaccination stances or similar, has been the safety net of many a waning star to gain a quick following from people who will blindly support you because they’re a one issue voter.

Those glibly hashtagging #IStandWithRosie or sharing Cleese’s documentary with unbridled glee that SOMEONE IS FINALLY SAYING IT couldn’t care less that Duffield drove two gay staff members to quit with her mindless rhetoric, or that Cleese thinks London “is not an English city any more” as long as they keep pushing the victim mentality that’s hilariously common with people in this regressive mindset.

Gaslighting is a term I don’t like to throw around but when you have vast portions of society on your side simply by dint of your gender or the fact you were a beloved comedian in your youth, accusing minorities of cancelling you because you don’t like being told your views are incorrect and damaging, or that your comedy relies on punching down on people’s existences.

The irony is that nobody in this crowd of oh so oppressed for their thoughts people, never stop to put themselves in the position of the people who suffer for their thoughts, their humour, their thoughtless words. Are people just moaning for the sake of it, or could it be that your endless rehashing of shit humour, your banal and frankly incorrect assumptions about someone because of what arouses them or their skin colour, is just tedious enough that we’re bored of smiling and nodding and privately deleting your number from our phones.

Your want the impunity to speak, but don’t have the stones to cope with the reaction to it. Clearly it’s better to wander the world shouting racial slurs because THATS WHAT MY GRANDMA DID than try and empathise or just, generally, not be a sack of cat sick.

It’s an irony. I have thoughts often about people that would surely hurt them should I speak them- so I just don’t. And if i do say something insensitive, even if my immediate reaction is to defend myself because I don’t like to be accused of doing cruel things with intent, I’d be seriously let down by myself if i didn’t apologise and try and understand what I’d said and why it was damaging.

Much like other ridiculous ideas (see “electing a silly haired right wing chittering gibbon as leader”), the cancel culture garbage has been imported from America. Over in America over 60 percent of polled citizens believe that cancel culture is an issue which is affecting mainstream society: to this I would politely ask these polled Americans, what views is it that you hold that you’re so worried you’ll be cancelled over?
With an ex president who won based on racial populism, desperate to build an ineffective wall between your neighbours, you can’t think it’s racism? And with a supreme court stacked with anti LGBTQIA bigots, and where literal members of the GOP refuse to publicly come out despite myriad statements from sex workers about their private proclivities, it cant be that you worry about being labelled a homophobe. I dread to think what it is that keeps you awake at night, wondering for whom the imaginary cancel bell is tolling today…

Ultimately, modern society is built on the promise that to co-exist humans have to put aside their petty nonsense and work together to further human interest, and many of us have to bury resentment about the snippy way we’re treated in service jobs or the outright aggression we face from strangers based on the bodies we were born in or what it is that arouses those bodies, but more and more it seems that a bunch of oversensitive folk, somehow on the more right and yet more wrong side of the spectrum, seem absolutely fervent that they should be able to say and do whatever they want without impunity – but when spoken back to, suddenly their free speech is being CANCELLED! What about our free speech to decry your bullshit, Karen?

People who refuse to change their thoughts, their actions to accommodate society are the reason it’s being cut to ribbons as it’s dragged along by those of us who want to make the world better. If you want to watch historical comedy series’ that make racial or homophobic jokes, no one is going to castigate you for it, but at some point maybe it’s better that we… move on as a society or at least share the stage with comedians from those minorities who get to make fun of the people who make careers out of stepping on our backs.

The Radicalisation of the Left

By Daviemoo

In a country utterly obsessed with woke cancel culture, with media outlets like the BBC and the guardian facing daily callouts on it’s factionalisation of the transphobia row, where racist events like the euro cup are fully expected by POC and their allies and where anti LGBTQIA sentiment is slowly burning backwards- can we really claim surprise that those pushing for tolerance are getting happier and happier to claim the weighty mantle of “radicalised” against the other side?

Here’s an excerpt from an email I’ve just sent my long time friend Pam: “People will literally twist themselves in knots to avoid actually confronting their implicit biases cos they cannot admit that we might be in the wrong and have work to do to make the world a better place; It’s up to everyone else to take the blame, it’s everyone else’s job to do the work to make the world better. The second you say hey so maybe our country is racist its IT IS NOT PEOPLE ARE JUST SENSITIVE CANCEL CULTURE WOKE SNOWFLAKE… it’s literally more work to cling to your rhetoric than just admit it and work on yourself.”

I often laugh when I read the endless epithets I’m gifted online by the supposed anti woke brigades: woke, weak, snowflake, SJW. What’s thrown at me as an insult, I wear with pride. If it’s woke to care about others, weak to be offended by hate speech, snowflakey to demand racists are held to account then I am the SJW you so angrily proclaim me to be, and I couldn’t be happier about that.

I’m also not quite sure what a “radical leftist” is, and why they are apparently so dangerous. I hardly plan to break into the houses of parliament and force Boris Johnson to respect people’s pronouns at gunpoint. It just so happens that I’m very much frustrated by injustice and therefore, loud about it’s removal from a society that has the means but not the wherewithal.

Easy as it may be to rest in your ignorant shell, there comes a time where those with any moral fibre become embroiled in the fights that may not directly involve us and suddenly become aware of the impact we can have just by standing shoulder to shoulder with others.

I can’t tell you how many times a month I’m asked if I’m trans because I defend my trans brothers, sisters and enby folk. I’m not trans, and I can scarcely imagine their struggle- but imagine I have, to the best of my abilities. But you shouldn’t have to put yourself in someone else’s shoes to empathise with their plight.

As a white (as fuck- I am roughly the colour of fresh milk) cis man, I will never understand even a corner of the struggle that POC face in a country with such blatant systemic racism oozing from every crack in it’s wall of ignorance- but that doesn’t mean I can’t empathise fully with those who suffer from it, and want to do what I can to chip away at that wall, to expedite the drainage of such disgusting pus that festers in the wounds of every heart it infects.

Today, as is par for the course, my insistence that a man who tweeted the N word, blaming the POC players for England’s loss at the Euros led to me being compared to Nazis. This comparison always confuses me: Nazi ideology was based on only the able bodied arian white folks being the cream of society, able to live on the backs and deaths of anyone who was other, on the subjugation of those seen as lesser- and the weakness of a mind who compares a demand for consequences to that is beyond the stupidity I can muster the energy to comprehend.

Nazism is the most abhorrent system of thinking that’s been widely accepted and known to humanity- so for internet weaklings to compare holding people to account for their own actions, to conflate holding people to account for refusing to absorb the simple truth that racism is appalling and only believed by fools and willing bigots- should be, but is not, laughable.

The invective that right-wing aligned people throw at the supposed “woke” always misses the fundamental hypocrisy that nazis were… far right politically.

As right wing populism grows underfoot, as it snakes into the houses of parliament, the left are further demonised by a press monopolised by right wing punditry: from Rupert Murdoch’s empire to what I can only equate to “tabloid-lite” papers like the daily mail, England in particular is beset by bigotry at every turn, and every word carefully selected by journalists to toe the line and maintain the fiction that England isn’t steeped in the blood of the people of colour who were dragged here to build it, manufacture for it and better it at their own expense, is another brick in the wall mentioned above- as one falls out, another journalist who believes the rhetoric that white people could ever truly understand daily racial abuse will simply slide another block in.

Is it any wonder…

That leads me to the whole point of this post: Is it any wonder that, as this system propagates itself even in the face of it’s own hypocrisy, as it grows and maintains itself even under growing calls for it’s examination, it’s dismantlement, it’s replacement with equity for all who share this land, that those who have patiently or impatiently watched it’s sinuous twisting of the truth for it’s own benefit, have grown tired and become, to use the descriptor the right so love- Radicalised.

I’m not quite sure what reaction right wingers expect from me when they call me a radical lefty. “Yep” is usually it. I am. They see the moniker of radical as a terrible thing, because of course they equate it to the oft-disparaged, even in their own rags, far-right.

Here is the difference.

On the far left we have people willing to fight for equality, equity and fairness in a system that’s always been kiltered to cater to the few instead of the many.

On the far right? Literally nazis.

The Myth of the “Tolerant Left”

It’s been said before many times but it bears repeating that the tolerant left is a myth.

Do we “tolerate” (a word anyone who follows my video posts will know I detest), or as I prefer to call it, accept people whose needs and wants are different to our own? Absolutely. Do we try to cater for those who need different requirements than us to exist with dignity and prosper in a world that caters to homogeny? We do, or we try.

What we don’t, won’t and can’t tolerate under our wide arching but moral beliefs, is bigotry.

If you think we should accept that people have a difference of opinion on whether tomato soup is the best soup, I can cope with that. Accepting that you think gay people are disgusting, that POC are lesser than you with your white skin etc, that’s quite another thing.

To tolerate the existence of beliefs that mean others should suffer for their existence when it harms no one and is as normal as any other is the cognitive dissonance I feel the right are well known for in leftist circles.

There are many right wing arguments I’ve gone to pains to debunk over the years, including:
Gayness is not a choice, but even if it was it’s still not unworthy of respect in a democratic society, hiring practices that prioritise people of colour are not “biased” in a country where POC are underrepresented in many workplaces and specialities, trans women are not comparable with cis men.

But as time goes on I’ve realised that all I’m doing is recycling talking points to shut right wing mouthpieces up when they begin their usual ignorant sermonising. You can not change the mind of someone who has willingly immersed themselves in bigotry, even if it’s more work to continue to cling to and push said bigotry- because the terrifying reality for these people is that they would have to question themselves, realise that the bias is with them, that they are in fact in the wrong, and they’d need to do work on themselves to improve- so the choice comes to continue to cling to bigotry over questioning their own internal bias and ask whether it’s worth keeping that ignorance alive, or letting it die and becoming something else.

The war on woke is essentially a bunch of people claiming that they’re fighting for their freedom – their freedom to remain ignorant in a world filling, daily, with information that proves their choice to stick to ignorance makes them part of the problem.

I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’m told that the fact I’m not willing to compromise and have calm discourse with racists and bigots and scumbags, oh my, is the reason for their continued ignorance- so let me spell this out for you:
We are not your mothers. We are not here to teach you. The resources exist in the world to help you- you need only stop knee jerk reacting with your fragile emotions towards the changes that keep happening, and listen to POC, listen to minorities, read the books that are written about these topics- and realise that when you simply start to address those inner biases you’re doing the same thing we did to become your most terrified title: woke.

So Many Causes, not Enough Time

One of the strangest things someone said to me recently is that they’re surprised I have enough time to work when I’m so busy being a “woke warrior”.

The short answer is: if you care about black oppression, trans rights disinformation or the other glaring issues you see daily – you’ll make time. I’m surprised people have all the time in the world to watch a 1 hour and 20 minute football match which includes kneeling for BLM, LGBTQIA representation and a hugely diverse set of players and still miss the point of the hilariously mistitled “gesture politics” that take place. Again as I’ve argued with someone recently, if you see these things as gesture politics you’re probably likely to not have ever needed to see that representation and therefore are incapable of understanding how much it means to those who do. If you think a rainbow armband or taking the knee are unnecessary then please tack on the words “for you”. Because for those it represents, many are thankful to feel like we’re cared for by others who may or may not be like us.

The mental gymnastics involved in decrying kneeling against racism, only to go on and leave so many racist comments a 19 year old player for your country’s team that he deletes his social media, or to give the usual tired bleating of “the gays forcing it in our faces!” but say nothing when a gay man walking down the street in liverpool is assaulted so badly he’s convinced he is about to die, is quite something to watch play out in real time.

It may be easier to simply start questioning why these things are being introduced to you, why they please those they’re for and why they annoy you so- simply because you’re suddenly made aware that the world does not cater to you exclusively, and that others deserve the same basic experience of existence without conflict that you have.

Wrapping up…

This blog was essentially a place for me to write down my thoughts as I grow more frustrated with the country I’ve been raised in, to get to grips with my own frustrations when it comes to politics. It’s become one of the few things I have that allows me to vent my anger at a world so screwed up that I willingly paid for it to be hosted. I don’t even really care if others read it. I just wanted a space that was mine, where I could write down my thoughts and explore my ideas out loud.

A few people have said they appreciate it and I’m very glad of that. It’s becoming more isolating to hold moral views- I’ve tried to reason with people I grew up with who refuse to let of of bigotry, I tried to gently explain that I’m allowed to exist as a gay man with people who think gay sex is worse than murder, I’ve tried to gently express hope that I’ll be accepted- no more.

It seems that as we’re accused more and more of being extreme, so we have to become that. The country takes drunken lurching step after step to the right, and as we dig in our heels, lean back and pull on the tautened rope we’ve thrown around it’s neck, we become more tired and less capable of patience.

Blamed constantly for “radicalisation”, I’d like the right wingers who throw the labels I’ve brought up in this blog post to ask the question: do you blame us? Do you take ownership for your own part in our radicalisation, as we have to become louder, more indignant, more insistent to work to counteract your hateful rhetoric? Or is it, as is always the right wing way, our own fault: no one is responsible, it’s a hum dinger, clearly people are just magically becoming radicalised by… I don’t know, society, music, drugs, instead of the appalling behaviours of our fellow man- otherwise known as you.