Paul Kengor: Punking the cancel culture

Watching the mohawked crowd slam-dancing in the mosh pit at the Electric Banana on Bigelow Boulevard in the 1990s, one wouldn’t have pictured punkers standing up to the bullies of the 2020s; that is, to the cancel culture. But then again, punk rockers always have rebelled against the status quo and not given a rip what anyone thinks about them or what they say.

The woke mobs of the cancel culture, however, are obsessed with what you think and say, and if they don’t like it, they throw a fit and shut you down.

Punkers are the ultimate nonconformists. The cancel-culturemongers, on the other hand, are the ultimate conformists. They claim to be about diversity, but no one blows with the wind like the woke; as they do, they blast dissenters.

Personally, I’m not surprised by the emergence of the cancel culture. It’s precisely the expected culmination of liberals’ attitude toward people they disagree with. They call you names and seek to silence you.

I recently came across a box of my columns for my college newspaper in the late 1980s, The Pitt News, where my opinions raised the ire of campus liberals. My goodbye column in May 1990 lamented liberals who reflexively called conservatives names like “Nazi,” “fascist,” “racist,” “homophobe.” Yes, even back then. Some of us have experienced these ideological temper tantrums for decades. Now, however, in an era of Twitter mobs and “snowflakes,” the culture at large is getting a taste of this behavior. And people are fed up, though most are afraid to fight back.

That brings me to those punk rockers.

Conservatives have been fighting back against cancel-culturemongers to no avail. What is needed is for nonconservatives to push back — liberals like Bill Maher and Piers Morgan, who have been vocal and fearless.

But maybe the most fearless foes against the woke warriors to date are punk rockers. Two cases in point are John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols, and John Joseph of the bands Bloodclot and Cro-Mags. A trigger warning as I quote these two guys: remember, they are punkers, and their language is what you’d expect of punkers, which is precisely my point.

Lydon refers to the wokesters as “tempestuous spoilt children coming out of colleges and universities with (expletive) for brains.” He blasts them for being “so bloody judgmental and vicious against anybody that doesn’t go with the current popular opinion.”

As for Joseph, brace yourself:

“Cancel culture can go (expletive) themselves,” protests Joseph. “I never gave a (expletive) what critics said in the ’70s and ’80s and I still don’t care.”

Again, before melting down over that language, remember that that’s precisely what these guys are fuming about. They’re boldly expressing the frustration that so many can’t out of fear of social-media shaming or losing jobs at the hands of progressive bullies launching campaigns against them.

Michale Graves of The Misfits calls cancel culture a “plague,” and urges “courage to others to stop being so weak minded and afraid.”

Leave it to punk rockers to raise the fists.

Personally, it brings me back full circle 30 years ago to the mohawk dudes and punker chicks diving into the mosh pit. They remain rebels today, and the cancel culture will not silence them. Like most of us, they’re tired of being punished for their thoughts.