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Someone tried to assassinate Donald Trump as he gave a speech in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania last Saturday. The shooter missed by centimeters, only grazing Trump’s ear. Three other people were shot, however, one fatally. The iconic image of Trump raising his fist in defiance is the stuff memes are made of. It was an emotional event.

In the days since, some Right-wingers have been trying to “cancel” those liberals who have made light of the event, or more commonly lamenting that the assassin did not succeed. The first such major example involved the Gen-X musical comedy duo Tenacious D. The day after the shooting, singer Jack Black had a cake with candles presented to his musical partner, Kyle Gass, for his birthday on stage during a performance in Australia and asked him to make a wish. Gass said, “Don’t miss Trump next time!” Video of the event then went viral online.

Tenacious D's Kyle Gass makes joke about Trump shooting on stage during show

Part of the reason this got so much attention is because some weeks earlier, a video of Jack Black himself had gone viral in which he gave an embarrassingly enthusiastic pro-Biden speech. It looked absurd in the aftermath of Genocide Joe’s scatterbrained debate performance a week later. Had this not happened, the Tenacious D clip might have flown under the radar. But it didn’t, and both Black and Gass were forced to apologize publicly, and Black cancelled the remainder of Tenacious D’s tour.

Jack Black endorses President Biden for re election

Meanwhile, the Jewish-run Libs of TikTok Twitter/X account has been organizing mobs in an attempt to get random normies fired from their jobs for stating on social media that they wish the assassination attempt had been successful. Several of these crusades have been successful. This has sparked some debate online about the ethics of Right-wing cancel culture (RWCC). The two people who have become the biggest causes célèbres in relation to this are a Home Depot cashier and a firefighter.

BREAKING: Home Depot confirmed this person is no longer an employee. https://t.co/LMfoMU5ava pic.twitter.com/DoH9JR2lsL

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 16, 2024

Meet Tony Bendele, a firefighter in Sunbury, PA. He’s upset that the bullet missed.

A bullet did hit Corey though, a rally attendee who was also a firefighter.

This is especially disgusting coming from a fellow firefighter and someone who’s supposed to protect others. pic.twitter.com/cKUHkOXACZ

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 15, 2024

BREAKING: Tony has resigned his position as a firefighter https://t.co/vUhMeE43AL pic.twitter.com/UzbP61czW6

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 15, 2024

The pro-RWCC side is making the argument that we are at war, and that “being the bigger man” only guarantees that we will continue losing. In other words: Screw your moral high ground. We must fight back, and we have to be willing to play as dirty as the Left.

The other side contends that after making their opposition to cancel culture a central theme for several years, this makes conservatives look hypocritical and insincere. Some people on the far Right may have been of the “eye for an eye” mentality all along, but most of the Right has spent the better part of the last decade billing themselves as “the people who don’t get offended by jokes,” and thus see jumping at the opportunity do so as a bad look. Then there is the more principled argument that cancel culture is wrong whether it is us or them doing it, because two wrongs don’t make a right.

I’m in the anti-RWCC camp, at least on this issue. For me it’s not even about the principle per se. There are strategic reasons not to engage in RWCC. The first is that “cancel culture” is extremely unpopular. The argument in favor of it boils down to “The Left has been doing it to us for years!” My response is: “And how’s that working out for them?”

You often hear Right-wingers say that the Left never criticizes the people on their own fringe, but this is not always true. They don’t do it as often as the Right does, but they sometimes do if there are people there genuinely causing problems for them. For example, they started cracking down on the “defund the police” rhetoric after they saw that it was costing them votes. Similarly, there has been a lot of internal pushback within the Left against “cancel culture” because it makes them look bad. Many lib celebrities such as Sarah Silverman and Bill Maher have tried to distance themselves from it. Indeed, the BBC is rolling out a new anti-cancel culture drama about a news anchor who gets cancelled for making a sexist joke. You could therefore say that the Left are having an “optics debate” about it.

This is to say nothing about the Right-wing backlash that Left-wing “cancel culture” has instigated. It was a contributing factor to events such as Gamergate, and cancelled celebrities will often become even more Right-wing, because at that point they have nothing to lose and nowhere else to go. When they cancel people such as Rosanne Barr, Kevin Spacey, or whatshername from Star Wars, it angers the people who enjoyed watching their work.

You might respond that “cancel culture” is effective at silencing people. Yes, it will make people watch what they say, but it also makes them resent the ones making them do it.
What those who say that “the Left do it!” don’t seem to grasp is that when the Left engage in this sort of thing, it comes at a cost. It has not been to the Left’s. “Cancel culture” was born out of liberal hubris, a sense that their cultural power was so absolute that they could crush anyone for even minor infractions with no consequences. In fact, there were serious consequences. It’s been very bad for their brand and has radicalized their opponents. It’s thus strange that so many on the Right are defending this sort of behavior just when the Left are trying to put a stop to it.

We can draw a few conclusions from this. First of all, pick your battles. You have to ask whether white-knighting for Donald Trump is advancing anything genuinely Right-wing in the first place. It is debatable. One could argue that the idea of Trump is Right-wing, even if the man himself is not. I’ll leave it up to you to decide.

Second, if you can cancel a big-name journalist, politician, or anti-white celebrity, fine. If you can cancel Tim Wise, great.  If you can get a university professor fired for being anti-white, terrific. But the cashier at Home Depot is just repeating what she’s been told to believe by the system. She has been told that Trump is Meme Hitler, and why wouldn’t you wish death upon Meme Hitler? She is a victim of a sick system, and is a symptom of a broader disease.

Was Kyle Gass’ joke really that offensive? Joking about wishing death upon famous people you don’t like is, if anything, passé. I’ve heard similar jokes before, such as the one about it being too bad that Seth McFarlane hadn’t boarded Flight 11 on 9/11; it turns out he was supposed to be on it but overslept. Similarly, some joke that if Mark David Chapman had aimed a little further to the left and hit Yoko Ono instead of John Lennon, he’d be a hero today.

And no, I don’t think it disrespects the innocent victims who were killed and injured to say that you wish the assassin had hit Trump instead. Forget about principles and strategy for a moment. Chimping out over a joke that isn’t even that offensive just makes you look uncool. It’s just like how snitching and weaponizing management against labor is uncool. Granted, if Trump had died and some were making light of it, that would be in poor taste and it would be appropriate to scold them. Thus, even if I were to concede that there may be occasions when RWCC may be appropriate, cashiers and firemen are poor choices of targets — and Donald Trump is a poor choice of a hill to die on.

Moreover, the Right cannot win a tit-for-tat cancel culture war of attrition with the Left for structural and institutional reasons. It took joking about a once-in-a-generation black swan event for a liberal to get cancelled by the Right. On the rare occasions when the Right is able to successfully cancel a Lefty, it’s because he said something insensitive in response to an emotionally-charged, one-time event. We still can’t cancel people for being anti-white or anti-Christian. We also can’t cancel people for gloating about white replacement. In short, the Right lacks the ability to cancel a liberal for actually being a liberal.

Until this week, when was the last time the Right successfully canceled someone on the Left? When Kathy Griffin posted a video of herself holding a mask that looked like Trump’s severed head in 2017? Prior to that, you’d have to go all the way back to when the Dixie Chicks criticized George W. Bush in 2003. Maybe I’m being hyperbolic. Once every few months, I will hear about someone getting fired for an anti-white TikTok rant. The point is that a liberal has to mess up pretty badly to get cancelled by the Right, whereas Right-wingers can get cancelled simply for microaggressions.

Some may speak derisively about taking the moral high ground. What good is it when you are under constant attack from your enemies? But if you engage in RWCC, you are firstly not going to win, and secondly you will forfeit the right to complain when the Left does it — which they will do far more frequently, effectively, and efficiently than we can. When that happens, you’ll be wishing you still had the moral high ground.