Most people have probably heard about China’s social credit system, which assigns each Chinese citizen a social credit “score.” Behavior that the government likes increases your score, while behavior the government doesn’t like decreases your score. If you fail to pay your debts, if you jaywalk in public, or if you associate with political dissidents, your score will decrease. That will affect your chances of getting a job, getting a spot to study at university, or even buying tickets to travel by train or plane.
With China’s massive system of video surveillance, social credit scores have been tied into facial recognition systems so that everything a Chinese citizen does is recorded in real time and tied to their social credit score. A recent video demonstrated a Chinese citizen being shamed as he jaywalked, with his picture, name, and government ID number being flashed on a screen for everyone to see. Clearly social shaming is alive and well in China.
Americans may criticize China and think that that can’t happen here, but isn’t it happening already? The rise in “cancel culture” is in a way even more dangerous than what is happening in China because it isn’t occurring as a result of direct government action. Cancel culture is a social phenomenon that is trying to change and manipulate American society through coercion in order to socially engineer Americans to change their way of life. And unfortunately it is becoming far too successful.
Cancel culture is the way that leftists force their way of life on the rest of the American people. Whether it’s social media giants de-monetizing and then de-platforming conservative content creators, LGBTQ groups trying to force their views on companies by organizing boycotts, or Twitter mobs doxxing and trying to silence conservative voices, the goal is to get Americans to think twice before uttering anything that goes against modern leftist orthodoxy.
Make a comment on social media that transgendered people are delusional and in need of mental treatment and you might find yourself out of a job if an angered LGBTQ activist decides to contact your company and make your life a living hell. Wear a MAGA hat downtown in any large American city and you can expect to face verbal abuse, if not outright physical attacks. The left is hateful, intolerant, and proud of its hate and intolerance, seeing it as virtuous. And it isn’t about to back down from putting that hate and intolerance on display.
For too long conservatives have played the role of nice guy. They’re too hesitant to state their true beliefs lest they be derided by family, friends, and coworkers. That has to stop. Conservatives have to start standing up for their beliefs and going toe to toe with leftists. No more tolerance of physical and verbal abuse, no more apologizing for stating that men are men and women are women, and no more playing the left’s game of trying to justify why we need to exercise our basic human rights such as the right to bear arms. Unless conservatives develop a spine and start becoming vocal about their beliefs, the left’s incessant pushing of cancel culture will turn the US into an ideologically totalitarian society that would make China look free by comparison.