As Twitchy told you earlier, Barack Obama recently criticized wokeness and cancel culture. He made a lot of excellent points. But, as we also pointed out, he’s been guilty of many of the things he’s now condemning.
In an excellent thread, conservative writer John Hayward examined Obama’s own role in the rise of cancel culture:
This is well said, and I truly don't want to detract from how well he said it, but I must point out that Obama's brand of messianic populism was a major ingredient in the development of today's cancel culture. https://t.co/A5WQmdnSep
— John Hayward (@Doc_0) October 30, 2019
Everyone who criticized Barack Obama was portrayed as evil, driven by greed, racism, or money from their sinister corporate puppet masters. His early statements as president literally included telling his critics to shut up and go to the back of the bus.
— John Hayward (@Doc_0) October 30, 2019
Obama repeatedly attacked news organizations that criticized him, primarily Fox News, and unlike Trump's kvetching about a much wider range of media adversaries, Obama implied such criticism of him was a problem that needed to be fixed.
— John Hayward (@Doc_0) October 30, 2019
Obama's political machine infamously created a website called Attack Watch that gave his followers a Soviet-style mechanism for reporting friends and family members who were spreading "falsehoods" about his policies.
— John Hayward (@Doc_0) October 30, 2019
Obama and his supporters constantly insinuated, or outright stated, that criticism of him was "hate speech." A major feature of cancel culture is the belief that hate speech should not be protected as free speech. It is arguably the core belief of the New Censors.
— John Hayward (@Doc_0) October 30, 2019
Obama responded to the Tea Party by treating them like domestic terrorists. Tea Party groups were repeatedly (and falsely) attacked for hate speech. Those attacks were used to criticize their legitimacy as a political movement and their right to participate in public discourse.
— John Hayward (@Doc_0) October 30, 2019
If you wanted a sneak preview of what cancel culture would be like, you could have dropped by any of the Occupy Wall Street camps. They weren't big on vibrant discourse or politely entertaining counter-arguments. Their whole deal was forcing you to listen to them by squatting.
— John Hayward (@Doc_0) October 30, 2019
I'm no fan of Obama, and while I don't disagree that the behaviors you cite make these comments ironic, I think they're tangential to modern "cancel culture." That phenomenon started in the universities and spread from there. I don't know if we'd see much difference without Obama
— Trevor Smith (@TrevorJSmith_) October 30, 2019
Obama's campaign and presidency were enormously influential on campuses. That's definitely where this stuff incubated. As I said, he's not the sole factor and it might still have happened without him, but I think he had an impact.
— John Hayward (@Doc_0) October 30, 2019
Obama isn't solely responsible for the rise of cancel culture, but he did a LOT to make his followers – especially the young people he assiduously courted – feel like righteous crusaders who had every right to shut down heretical speech that threatened their noble cause. /end
— John Hayward (@Doc_0) October 30, 2019
Well said.
He's punching back twice as hard… at himself!
— ?Grim Creature? (@jtLOL) October 30, 2019
He's trying to put the genie back in the bottle. Someone should have explained that to him before he let it out
— Frankly Perturbed (@FPerturbed) October 30, 2019
Join the Conversation
VIP members get the ability to comment on articles.