Mob rule

It's not so much canceling, as inciting a mob that I worry about

I’ve been thinking about “canceling” and whether it describes the phenomenon on the rise in our woke society.

The Left tries to cancel people who dare to speak out against their agenda. Cancel here means silence and take away the livelihood of the enemy. Conservatives sometimes respond by thinking it’s wrong to, say, fire someone — that doing so would be acting in the same way. As a result, normal people have lost a lot of ground in our traditional institutions.

Firing someone because they don’t fit in with your standards is not canceling. Others don’t have to be involved. The institution (in its leader or leaders) takes responsibility for its unity and purpose. Otherwise we wouldn’t have any meaningful organizations or communities.

It’s better to think in terms of a mob.

Getting everyone else to attack someone because they dare to express their opinion is inciting the mob.

Firing someone because you are pushed to it by a mob is different from guarding your mission. Mob rule harms our life together. The lockdown of 2020 is one example of those in power using the mob, incited by fear, to impose absurd and irrational behaviors and even to control minds.

Another example of pure mob behavior, a precursor to BLM mind-control complete with its trans aspect, was the woke knitting wars. It started with this, an innocent Instagram post by a popular knitter, and continued with this, perfectly normal political expression (if tasteless; I prefer my knits slogan-free, but that’s just me).

The very absurdity of the idea of a vast horde of knitters rising up to drive other unsuspecting knitters — knitters! — out of the community, often crushing their businesses and their personalities, highlights how drunk and dangerous the mob can easily become.

That’s mob behavior.

Some call the phenomenon a purity spiral. Once it starts, there’s no end, because there’s no ultimate purity anyone can achieve to pass the test posed by the ones in power, and victims will be claimed. (The knitting wars referenced above came to settle here — peak self-harming purity spiral fallout.)

Power is the main element. Inciting a mob, demanding purity by threatening with the mob, is something a morally weak person can do to feel more powerful. Once the drug of power is sampled, addiction ensues. It takes self-control and restraint to resist that heady feeling of getting others to pound someone unsuspecting, someone simply acting and speaking with free unconcern for his safety, relying on the good will of others.

When done on a large scale, it leads to tyranny. Our founding fathers tried to make a political system that resists the mob and its political manifestation, faction, because they understood the danger of raw power. We need to protect that system because it guarantees our freedoms.

If you want to be free, make up your mind now that if the mob comes after you, you will not stand down.

The key to defending yourself against a mob attack is never to apologize. Once you apologize, they will complete the job. Mobs are collections of bullies — an aggregate of bullying. Like individual bullies, they don’t prevail when someone, even someone weaker and smaller than they, stands up to them. They thrive on their victim’s submission. Take the beating rather than submit. But the truth is, if you stand up against them, they usually — not always, but usually — subside.