The death of Charlie Kirk has been a galvanizing moment for conservatives. Each of us, in his own way, knew that the left wanted to unleash violence against us. Between the recent mass shooting at a Catholic school and the assassination of Charlie, it felt as if the extreme left had declared war. The murder of Charlie was a wake-up moment. Would we collectively do nothing, or would we make this our turning point?
What was different about this was the vitriol and vile comments and videos posted online by the left. Some, like Stephen King, made up allegations about Charlie. Others reveled in his death, showing all of us who they really were and what they thought about conservatives. It wasn’t a small number. My social media were inundated with screen shots of people unleashing their hatred.
The right did something it rarely did. It started to call for cancelations.
I went through cancelation by the radical left a few years ago. A man, posing as a lesbian online, threatened my life, forcing me to get several protective orders. This individual rallied other mindless radicals, who pressed my publisher to cancel all my contracts going forward for a sci fi series I had written for over 35 years. I was told it was because my conservative posts, nowhere near as bad as what has been posted about Charlie, were inflammatory.
Cancelation is devastating, costly, and impossible to shake. I moved on to write other series that became huge sellers. I refused to apologize because I hadn’t done anything wrong. Instead, I committed myself to becoming more successful, mostly because I knew that it would drive my haters to new levels of insanity. Years later, there isn’t a week that goes by when someone isn’t calling me a fascist, Nazi, a homophobe, a transphobe, and any number of other slurs. Every time I publish a book, I get a handful of nasty reviews from people who never even purchased my book.
Cancelation doesn’t go away. Hate doesn’t disappear once you’ve lost your job or your career. It’s a shadow that stalks you, always close at hand.
When I first saw the cries to cancel people who were posting nasty stuff about Charlie, I hesitated. Cancelation has been the tool of the mindless woke mob. A part of me thought we should be better than them. I clutched a piece of moral high ground for a few hours. I’m sure we all wondered what Charlie would want us to do.
As time passed, and I saw the staggering number of liberals lighting up social media with their hate, my thinking on the subject changed. Now I find myself solidly in the camp of those calling to cancel these people.
We have tried to be the good guys for years now. What it has gotten us is thousands of people who have been canceled. We had our presidential candidate arrested. We were labeled by the sitting president as “threats to democracy,” the first time a candidate went after the followers of his opponent. Kamala Harris fed the hate, calling Trump a fascist.
I saw statues of presidents torn down. These people, opposed to cutting a bloated federal workforce, set fire to car dealerships. They tried to rewrite our history to fit their social narrative. The woke told us what words we could and couldn’t use. They forced our wives and daughters to worry about who might be in the bathroom with them. If we opened our mouths in protest, they brought their wrath down on us.
We tried to be a loyal opposition. The result of that is that they assassinated a Christian man who preached dialogue over hate.
Taking the high road hasn’t worked.
I’m in favor of canceling those on the left we find offensive. They often have said that they never canceled us...that all that happened was repercussions of things we said. They established the rules of this game we find ourselves in. That means they need to feel the impact of their hateful words and images.
The difference in reactions will be stark. When I was canceled, I had five publishers reach out to me to talk about working together. Conservatives support one another in hard times. The left doesn’t. Leftists will whine and cry, but that will likely be the end of their support. The media, who ignored conservatives being canceled, will scream that we are being unfair. I’m comfortable with their angst. I believe that the only way for them to realize that cancelation is wrong is for them to experience it themselves.
Is it a slippery slope? Perhaps, but we’ve tried being the bigger man, and now it has cost us dearly. We can no longer afford to be targets. As Admiral Yamamoto allegedly said after the attack on Pearl Harbor, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” Leftists need to understand that there are consequences to their words.
Blaine Pardoe is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning author canceled by one of his publishers in 2022. His conservative political thriller series, Blue Dawn, is the story of the violent overthrow of the government by radical progressives. His new series, Tenure, is about a Punisher-like hero who goes after the woke. He also authors the bestselling military science fiction series Land&Sea.
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